Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

WHO exhibited their usual shocking attitude about this issue, right up until they were publicly criticised by many.

I am very confused by this. South Korean doctors have been talking about this since at least March. I thought it was just common knowledge. :confused:
 
Even the very liberal gf (who tells me off for mentioning lampposts and tories etc.) says she hopes Bolsanaro ‘fucking dies’. I wish I had more faith in poetic justice. Covid is shit at killing cunts.
it doesn't need to kill him

just to ravage his body enough so his legs get chopped off. and his fingers. and his lung function reduced to a mere fraction of its previous ability.
 
I am very confused by this. South Korean doctors have been talking about this since at least March. I thought it was just common knowledge. :confused:

Yeah me too. We've been talking about it a lot as well. It seemed fairly obvious that the fact transmission is much higher indoors was not just down to people spitting at each other and not washing hands.
 
And its only a month since the WHO had to backtrack over dangerous and stupid comments about the role of asymptomatic transmission.

WHO not fit for purpose, sadly. Another compromised UN agency, basically, caught between a rock, a hard place, diplomacy and their own dogma.
 
WHO exhibited their usual shocking attitude about this issue, right up until they were publicly criticised by many.



Yep. They seem to have wanted to bury their collective heads in the sand. Looks like they felt that acknowledging this would mean massive overhauls in how the virus is dealt with and how much PPE people will need.

It's looking like all indoor spaces will need to be very well ventilated and people working indoors will require masks. Also all health personel should be wearing N95 masks regardless of their role.
And there will be greater requirements to sanitize areas where people gather or meet. Even spraying the air.

Thinking back to China after the initial stages...they were very comprehensively spraying and sanitising indoor and outdoor spaces. Taking no chances. And then seeing drs and nurses here told initially not to wear masks???
No fucking wonder 1/3 of covid 19 cases here in Ireland were amongst medical / health care staff.
 
Its the merry-go-round of wilful ingorance and dogma in the orthodoxy, that I went slightly mad ranting about some months back.

There is a bias against accepting inconvenient truths.

Yep - even members of the infection control committee have admitted that their recommendations are not based entirely on what they believe, but on the "availability, feasibility, compliance, resource implications" for all member states. Some dissenters spoke to the NYT:

But the infection prevention and control committee in particular, experts said, is bound by a rigid and overly medicalized view of scientific evidence, is slow and risk-averse in updating its guidance and allows a few conservative voices to shout down dissent.

“They’ll die defending their view,” said one longstanding W.H.O. consultant, who did not wish to be identified because of her continuing work for the organization.

 
Yep. They seem to have wanted to bury their collective heads in the sand. Looks like they felt that acknowledging this would mean massive overhauls in how the virus is dealt with and how much PPE people will need.

It's looking like all indoor spaces will need to be very well ventilated and people working indoors will require masks. Also all health personel should be wearing N95 masks regardless of their role.
And there will be greater requirements to sanitize areas where people gather or meet. Even spraying the air.

Thinking back to China after the initial stages...they were very comprehensively spraying and sanitising indoor and outdoor spaces. Taking no chances. And then seeing drs and nurses here told initially not to wear masks???
No fucking wonder 1/3 of covid 19 cases here in Ireland were amongst medical / health care staff.
This is why I'm confused. I had complacently assumed that public policy was being driven by a consideration of this means of transmission for months already.

The head of covid control in SK described how it happens with reference to the mass infection at the Christian rally - it is transmitted as an aerosol that spreads around an enclosed area and slowly builds up over time to potentially infectious levels. In an open area, that aerosol is quickly dispersed. From his description, it takes time to build up, and the more crowded and more enclosed the space, the more likely it is to happen. Hence, probably, so many bus drivers getting it here pre-lockdown, and also, probably, rush-hour trains being a major, perhaps the major, means of transmission in all the big cities that suffered big outbreaks.
 
This is why I'm confused. I had complacently assumed that public policy was being driven by a consideration of this means of transmission for months already.

The head of covid control in SK described how it happens with reference to the mass infection at the Christian rally - it is transmitted as an aerosol that spreads around an enclosed area and slowly builds up over time to potentially infectious levels. In an open area, that aerosol is quickly dispersed. From his description, it takes time to build up, and the more crowded and more enclosed the space, the more likely it is to happen. Hence, probably, so many bus drivers getting it here pre-lockdown, and also, probably, rush-hour trains being a major, perhaps the major, means of transmission in all the big cities that suffered big outbreaks.

They have a different definition for airborne compared to aerosol. Its to do with droplet size. Its not a subject I've studied in too much detail because I consider some of it to be biased hair-splitting.

Respiratory infections can be transmitted through droplets of different sizes: when the droplet particles are >5-10 μm in diameter they are referred to as respiratory droplets, and when then are <5μm in diameter, they are referred to as droplet nuclei.1 According to current evidence, COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes.2-7 In an analysis of 75,465 COVID-19 cases in China, airborne transmission was not reported

Airborne transmission is different from droplet transmission as it refers to the presence of microbes within droplet nuclei, which are generally considered to be particles <5μm in diameter, can remain in the air for long periods of time and be transmitted to others over distances greater than 1 m.

From a March WHO 'scientific briefing' Modes of transmission of virus causing COVID-19: implications for IPC precaution recommendations
 
And a somewhat simplified reason behind their resistance to accepting the possibility of significant airborne transmission much earlier, is that they dont want to change the distancing guidance to make it larger than 1 metre.

The politically/economically hard decisions, that we need them most for, is where they are most likely to fail :(
 
This is why I'm confused. I had complacently assumed that public policy was being driven by a consideration of this means of transmission for months already.

The head of covid control in SK described how it happens with reference to the mass infection at the Christian rally - it is transmitted as an aerosol that spreads around an enclosed area and slowly builds up over time to potentially infectious levels. In an open area, that aerosol is quickly dispersed. From his description, it takes time to build up, and the more crowded and more enclosed the space, the more likely it is to happen. Hence, probably, so many bus drivers getting it here pre-lockdown, and also, probably, rush-hour trains being a major, perhaps the major, means of transmission in all the big cities that suffered big outbreaks.

Iirc he did also point out that the intensity of that environment; specifically singing etc would be significant in building up sufficient amount of virus. Which is not necessarily analogous to public transport. And, indeed, SK never closed its transport system (though it did introduce masks and handwash very early).

Not that that should really let anyone off the hook, I mean the possibility was certainly discussed, more a question of degree.
 
Why the fuck would anyone ever assume that it wasn't transmitted by droplet? Every other cold virus is.

Droplet transmission has always been accepted. It’s airborne/aerosol that wasn’t... though, as elbows pointed out, the distinction has become political rather than scientific to an extent.
 
Droplet transmission has always been accepted. It’s airborne/aerosol that wasn’t... though, as elbows pointed out, the distinction has become political rather than scientific to an extent.
Quite. The WHO haven't really covered themselves in glory on this.

An aerosol is a small droplet after all.
 
Quite. The WHO haven't really covered themselves in glory on this.

An aerosol is a small droplet after all.
An aerosol is a suspension of very fine droplets where electrostatic and thermal/kinetic turbulent effects dominate over largely ballistic gravitational ones (in a 'spray' of larger sneezed droplets, say, or a cough). The dynamics of each process and resulting 'output' are significantly different and thus so are their capacity to distribute virions (this was highlighted months ago eg here).
 
An aerosol is a suspension of very fine droplets where electrostatic and thermal/kinetic turbulent effects dominate over largely ballistic gravitational ones (in a 'spray' of larger sneezed droplets, say, or a cough). The dynamics of each process and resulting 'output' are significantly different and thus so are their capacity to distribute virions (this was highlighted months ago eg here).

liked because you said - much more clearly - what I was about to type
 
Though, on second thoughts, I should have really written "propensity to distribute virions, for a given set of circumstances" instead of simply just "capacity to distribute virions".

I was going to say aerosols are lighter so float rather than drop. Think you have the science covered ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: LDC
I wonder if outlawing talking, singing and shouting on public transport would have more benefit than making masks compulsory.
 
A teacher of mine who is Israeli mentioned in our (zoom) class this morning that daily new cases in Israel have risen above 1000. I was really surprised and quite shocked to learn this as I thought Israel had a very good handle on the situation. Just had a look at the stats myself and possible reasons behind it. Looks like cases really have shot up from low-double digit numbers to 1000+. Found an article that stated three main reasons: Large gatherings in indoor spaces had been allowed again, the test-trace-isolate system being too slow (that old chestnut; apparently there are decent numbers of tests, but a lag in results and subsequent notification of contacts), and schools were operating back at full class sizes.
 
Just seen that Australia is going to restrict the number of citizens allowed to return each week to 4000. This is similar to what China did back in March when they introduced the Five-One Policy which heavily restricted how many flights each airline could run into the country per week. China has been slightly increasing the flights in recently, but I think it must be so hard to deal with quarantining an endless and large number of returnees. So sad for the people who will struggle to get back now though.
 
Back
Top Bottom