outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

That’s useful information for virologists but it’s irrelevant to us. It doesn’t matter how long a measurable amount survives on a surface. It matters if you can catch it from a surface, from the amount. That study has nothing to say about that, but all the evidence is not.

Cannot stress this enough: do not worry about that study.

There was some commentary by dr norman swan on the radio this morning saying the study was using a simulated snot an was focussed on dark, cold and humid conditions (such as might be found in abattoirs). Sunlight and dry conditions reduce the half life but it might go some way to showing why transmission has been so bad in places like abattoirs.

Not even monkey snot or rat snot or bunny snot but simulated snot? Bah.

Simulated Snot is the name of my new thrash metal band

My pop punk band is called Snot Rocket.

Snocket

(Snot Rocket used to be called Snot from Both Sides, but that's gross)

Snocket From the Tombs

Tbs for a second, the survives better in dark, cold, humid conditions bodes ill for the western europe winter, idk about rest of northern hemisphere, maybe elsewhere less humid or less dark

Re the Csiro study, the half life was ~2 days at 20 °C on most of the materials, ~12 hours at 30 °C. Room temperature ~25 °C wasn't tested. If its about a day, that means if 1000 infectious virii are exhaled onto a surface, 10 days later we'd expect 1 remaining. And innoculum matters.

I'm not sure we have any confirmed transmissions by fomite, yet. Granted, tough to demonstrate (the secondary infected can't have directly interacted), but I do think people who were quarantining their Amz deliveries were overreacting.

(Snot Rocket used to be called Snot from Both Sides, but that's gross)

I've looked at snot from both sides now

The most frightening thing about that Washington Post article is that even though the writer was a COVID denier, his party that got his whole family sick and caused two deaths wasn't a huge, wild, "Let's get COVID to own the libs" party. It was a six-person family get-together, nobody had any symptoms when it started, and they even spent some of their time outside at a lake. That's exactly the kind of small-scale, one-time event that plenty of people who do take COVID seriously have been finding ways to justify.

You start to hear jokes about, you know, a skydiver jumps out of a plane without a parachute and dies of covid-19. You start to think: “Something’s really fishy here.”

... do you?

Wait until he hears the one about the priest, the rabbi and the horse that walk into a bar.

"The aristocrats!!"

man walks into a bar, catches covid from the virus surviving on surfaces

Lol m bison

It was a six-person family get-together, nobody had any symptoms when it started, and they even spent some of their time outside at a lake. That's exactly the kind of small-scale, one-time event that plenty of people who do take COVID seriously have been finding ways to justify.

Yes, but what people are unknowingly bringing to the table with them presumably varies widely, depending on whether they're going around maskless to stores and bars and church because they're covid deniers, or whether they've been home, distancing, wearing masks and washing their hands. Each person's ongoing precautions shrinks the risk to others--the whole point.

Also, it sounds like they were still hugging and I assume otherwise in close contact, plus sharing communal food. Those are two no-nos. On top of that it sounds like a lot of the guests travelled in and then travelled out. Lots of ways for it to spread even of they were otherwise cautious. But this is indicative of a particular strain of contemporary psychosis:

I got rid of my cable. It’s all opinion anyway, so I’d rather come up with my own. I find a little bit of truth here and a little there, and I pile it together to see what it makes.

Less “alternative facts” than “selective opinions “

tbf, cable is not a great place to get unadulterated facts, but "it's all opinion" is just stupid.

Cable anchor, looking serious: "In my opinion, it sure looks from the pictures like a plane crashed in Uruguay yesterday, killing all 62 people on board. I'm also of the opinion that, although authorities said the black box recorder was found near the site of the wreckage and is being evaluated for clues to the cause of the crash, this is pure hearsay and should be ignored. I'll report further opinions as this story develops"

I got rid of my cable. It’s all opinion anyway, so I’d rather come up with my own

if they've been watching fox, that's not wrong. the line between opinion and "news" has been porous for a long time there. a long-time fox viewer who somehow manages to catch onto that might think that all the other options must be like that too

I agree that this particular six-person get-together may have been higher risk than others, but I brought it up because it's something I can see happening a lot over the holidays. My house has been fairly careful, but most of us have been talking about finding ways to visit family at Christmas, and one of my housemates is talking about doing Thanksgiving with her parents and sister as well. Her parents take COVID seriously, but her sister's husband doesn't at all. And it just takes one COVID denier to bring it in.

Basically, I just meant: this guy sounds like an idiot, but I see this as a cautionary tale for everyone, not just COVID deniers. Let's not assume we're immune to making the same kind of bad decision out of pure COVID fatigue and the desire to see family.

Let's not assume we're immune to making the same kind of bad decision

By happenstance I ran into my sister's family last Friday while we were both at the same small town at the Oregon coast, so we arranged a flying visit, outdoors, on the deck of the house where they were staying. It took a lot of willpower to not exchange hugs with everyone, as we normally would.

I actually asked my mom if she was interested in visiting for Thanksgiving, and she flat out said no. She cited reports that the airports were getting more crowded, and said the one time she's had to fly was weird and disconcerting enough.

we're postponing return to daycare until the new year (at the earliest) on the basis that thanksgiving and christmas are going to result in a pretty big spike.

i don't blame anyone for trying to make plans, i guess, but i feel very much the same way that i felt in late february: i think making travel plans in the near future is bonkers

illinois as a whole is back to 4.3% 7-day positivity rate, which is only good when you compare it to the rest of the united states. anywhere else in the world, that is a very alarming number.

anywhere else in the world, that is a very alarming number.

Oh hi

Scottish numbers: 12 October 2020
Summary
961 new cases of COVID-19 reported; this is 17.1%* of newly tested individuals

wtf is going on in the UK?

London palladium last night hahahahahahaahha i cant be assed pic.twitter.com/FYHWRkU5aA

— Tony Carroll (@tonycarroll14) October 12, 2020

Oh hi

and yep, that's alarming, as it should be!

I can't find it now and I really wish I could, but I saw a couple people recently giving kudos to some film nerd's weird twitter rant insisting that, somehow, a movie theater is the absolute safest indoor environment to be in right now and how baffled they were that they are still mostly closed. Essentially I believe their argument came down to "social distancing is easy with lots of seats!" and "most theaters have really good HVAC systems!".

The onscreen faces, while quite large and unmasked, are highly unlikely to transmit the virus to audience members!

yeah here in France I think our 7-day positivity rate is now 9.7%, and that's nationwide, here in Paris it's higher though I'm not finding numbers at the moment. anyway fucked

ok it's 17% in the Île-de-France, fuck

& the national rate jumped to 11,8 % today

I'm gonna say it again

fuck

But how much of that is serious illness or hospitalization vs., say, young people with mild or no symptoms?

positivity rate is a leading metric because people take tests days or weeks before they go to hospital. so ... wait and see, but it's probably not good news.

hospitalization rates are rising too, yes, don't have the number at hand but I'll find it eventually over the next few days at least

This says it all. pic.twitter.com/q3KwGrZaPD

— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) October 12, 2020

.

it doesn't really say it all. yes red states have responded badly, but that's also a graph that shows blue states got it first.

that graph appears to show states in the south doing badly in the summer

https://cepr.net/waiting-for-a-vaccine-killing-for-inequality/

Another week goes by where excess deaths at home are up again, as they have been in every single week of the pandemic. It’s a terrible silent crisis. pic.twitter.com/aHp45OSWRw

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) October 13, 2020

This morning it was reported in a few UK outlets, including the Today programme, that a Nevada man was reinfected, and the second time was more severe. What I don’t understand is why this is being reported now, when this news is several weeks old?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/nevada-reinfection-case-highlights-mysteries-covid-19

Maybe because various respectable clowns are getting air time with herd immunity bollocks again.

Rude way to describe Dr Bananas imo

Yeah, I saw that Nevada report. It's still super weird and I'm not sure how important it is that there have been five confirmed reinfections out of close to 40 million cases worldwide. You'd think anyone that had it once would be aware enough to recognize if they got it a second time, so it's not like there are thousands of reinfections that have likely fallen through the cracks. Just these ... five.

Heard another report on the radio that indeed, hospitalizations are creeping up in Indiana, surely no coincidence a few weeks after their stupid governor pressed to open everything up again. In less stupid governor news, did we mention that the Wisconsin governor won his latest round against the crazies, with a court backing him (again?) when it comes to mask mandates? Either way, between WI's woes and Indiana's idiocy, things don't bode well for Illinois even if we were being as careful as we could be as long as the neighbors are nuts. Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right ...