Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

Indoor dining can be done somewhat safely but indoor bars are a different story.

I can’t believe that you could think that any activity conducted indoors unmasked could be the least bit safe. I am not saying bars are better (they are worse, most likely!), but “somewhat safe” is not an accurate description of indoor dining. We know this, from multiple papers published, and contact tracing. The exact risk depends on local disease levels.

But, this is the problem we have. People do not understand the risk. Individual risk is relatively small (not so small these days) for a particular activity, but in aggregate, it is catastrophic, if the objective is to bring the case count to zero (which should be the goal!) - or even if the objective is to keep case numbers steady.

Who would have thought that taking off your mask as soon as you get to the table makes you no more safe than not wearing one at all?

Reopening the high risk venues was pure insanity and we’ve known that since April. I suppose the thinking was that we had to give people a break, so that they would have some fun before a tough for winter. And also it helped keep businesses solvent (since the feds were not helping out).

But it just resulted in complacency and bad habits, and increasing case numbers. Should have gone for zero cases as you said. It was always possible. We just had to make that the goal. Would have had to be a federal goal though. I don’t think California could have maintained zero cases in isolation - can’t control interstate travel adequately.

 

[SMAlset]

It could be a certain amount of herd immunity is kicking in in some places. My granddaughter and all her friends have had it(20-30 people. all say it was about like a mild flu) . That seemed to end it in our group.

Herd immunity isn't working in Sweden, which has been the international model for it, and their top epidemiologist has come out to say that. They are now taking a restrictive approach as things get worse there.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/sweden-says-it-sees-no-signs-herd-immunity-is-stopping-the-virus

Top epidemiologist says Sweden has no signs of herd immunity curbing coronavirus

 

[TEG]

But, this is the problem we have. People do not understand the risk...
...But it just resulted in complacency and bad habits, and increasing case numbers...

Just too many think this whole thing is a hoax, and they don't pay any attention to the numbers, and think the alarm bells are all "fake news"...
Fact check: COVID-19 is not a hoax to eliminate Trump

Russian disinformation bots trying to destabilize the west has caused too many to distrust reality...
Russian disinformation in the time of Covid-19
Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots
US Officials: Russia Behind Spread of Virus Disinformation
Bots account for nearly half of Twitter accounts spreading coronavirus misinformation, researchers say
Russia deploying coronavirus disinformation to sow panic in West, EU document says
Nearly half of Twitter accounts pushing to reopen America may be bots

View of What types of COVID-19 conspiracies are populated by Twitter bots?

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

...Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them...

Trolls and bots are flooding social media with disinformation encouraging states to end quarantine

An analysis from Bot Sentinel, a bot tracking platform, found that bots and trolls have been stoking sentiments online that have fueled the protests, using hashtags like #ReopenAmericaNow and #StopTheMadness.

Russian bots are exploiting the coronavirus crisis to run a dangerous disinformation campaign

Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate (pre-covid...)

Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.

Declassified intel says Russia is spreading coronavirus disinformation: reports

 

[wdolson]

Herd immunity isn't working in Sweden, which has been the international model for it, and their top epidemiologist has come out to say that. They are now taking a restrictive approach as things get worse there.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/sweden-says-it-sees-no-signs-herd-immunity-is-stopping-the-virus

Top epidemiologist says Sweden has no signs of herd immunity curbing coronavirus

There are few stories of documented reinfection. I think it's just that to get 70%+ of the population infected is a lot of people. It's also a lot of deaths and significantly more hospitalized.

 

[Dave EV]

My thinking now is I've only got to avoid COVID until spring. Hopefully we're about 2/3rds of the way through this debacle.

Latest I saw was that the general public isn't expected to get vaccines until April or so. So you probably have to avoid COVID until summer, but even then I expect it to be around in low numbers until we get enough of the population vaccinated and unfortunately, I am worried about all the anti-vaxxers out there or the people who simply don't trust a free vaccine.

Some worrisome data about COVID in San Diego:

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1331077909012836353

Unfortunately, it looks like COVID is starting to hit vulnerable age groups. One reason, besides better therapeutics, that the COVID death rate has been dropping is that mostly young and healthy people had been getting infected after the initial surge. But with high numbers of people 60+ picking it up, I would expect to see hospitalizations and deaths climb higher than it has been on a per-case basis.

 

[EVCollies]

Why don’t you have any doses for Moderna in December? They said 20 million are ready to go in the US before the end of the year, I thought. First doses only of course.

It is my prediction they will not have FDA approval until April, I hope I'm wrong though and it is earlier,

 

[EVCollies]

Doesn't make sense. AZ says 3B doses, but the table total for AZ is 82 mil. What am I missing?

3B doses=1.5B vaccinations. US is 4% world population. I sincerely hope there will be many other vaccines, particularly for China, which would change my WAGs.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It is my prediction they will not have FDA approval until April, I hope I'm wrong though and it is earlier,

Is there a reason you think their EUA they’ll probably submit this month will not be approved before the end of December?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Latest I saw was that the general public isn't expected to get vaccines until April or so. So you probably have to avoid COVID until summer, but even then I expect it to be around in low numbers until we get enough of the population vaccinated and unfortunately, I am worried about all the anti-vaxxers out there or the people who simply don't trust a free vaccine.

Some worrisome data about COVID in San Diego:

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1331077909012836353

Unfortunately, it looks like COVID is starting to hit vulnerable age groups. One reason, besides better therapeutics, that the COVID death rate has been dropping is that mostly young and healthy people had been getting infected after the initial surge. But with high numbers of people 60+ picking it up, I would expect to see hospitalizations and deaths climb higher than it has been on a per-case basis.

I think it will go away in the spring. The vaccine will be what prevents a (4th, 5th?) wave next fall. The mRNA vaccines looks so effective that I'm not really worried about anti-vaxxers (hopefully they'll allow me to get it earlier!).
Not looking like I'm going to be snowboarding this season though.

 

[alloverx]

Indoor dining relatively safely
-ideally dine with same small number of family/friends (who also take reasonable precautions)
-waiters, etc all wear masks correctly.
-one place I went also took our temperature on way in.
-sanitizer is easily available
-tables apart
-table size limited (say 6)
-wear mask to table
-wear mask when ordering
-wear mask to restroom
-place on mask once finished eating/drinking

A bonus would be good filtering and/or some external doors/windows open.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Anyway, SD deaths at 926/million are rising fast, but still well behind NYC's ~3000.

Yep. It’s going to be a close thing, I suspect. Really will depend on how rapidly the surge of infections tails off.

After looking at this and continuing to observe the steady case count, with no significant gov't countermeasures, I don't think there's much chance that ND and SD won't exceed 3k deaths per million now. They just need 2 more months of this death rate, and they'll be there, and there's no example that I'm aware of where the projected death curve would suggest a different outcome. And they're going to easily exceed NYC in terms of % of population infected, so not really any reason to think their deaths would be lower, in spite of treatment advances and small age differences.

Will likely be the worst in the US, with the notable exception of the Navajo Nation, which is at ~3600 deaths per million, and increasing steadily (a horrible outcome for them - probably 30-35% of the population has been infected).

 

[cusetownusa]

I disagree. If school were only 30 minutes or an hour per day, that might be true, but even if kids are only a tenth as likely to spread the virus as adults, having kids together for seven hours at a time still poses a higher risk of transmission than adults eating in a restaurant for half an hour, because the exposure is 14x as long.

IMO, K–5 schools should have capacity limits just like any other business. If businesses are running at 25% capacity indoors, then 25% of the class should meet on each day of the week, with the fifth day rotating between cohorts. And even that might not be cautious enough because of the duration involved.

Grades 6–12 should IMO be remote learning exclusively for the remainder of the 2020–2021 school year nationwide.

Do you have kids in K-5? If so, what do you do with your kids if your school is closed or hybrid schedule?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Indoor dining relatively safely
-ideally dine with same small number of family/friends (who also take reasonable precautions)
-waiters, etc all wear masks correctly.
-one place I went also took our temperature on way in.
-sanitizer is easily available
-tables apart
-table size limited (say 6)
-wear mask to table
-wear mask when ordering
-wear mask to restroom
-place on mask once finished eating/drinking

A bonus would be good filtering and/or some external doors/windows open.

I think you underestimate the risk (as do many). The last "bonus" thing you say is the most important - and dominates all the other factors that you mention.

Were they measuring the CO2 concentration? If the concentration exceeds 1000ppm, it's most likely an extremely hazardous situation (1200ppm means about 2% of the air in the room is being rebreathed).

I'd only dine in an establishment if the CO2 concentration were below ~600ppm. And probably not even then. Every business with any unmasked activity should be continuously monitoring CO2 levels and keeping them below ~600ppm. (Atmospheric CO2 is currently around 410ppm.)

Obviously, these CO2 levels are the most important when the CO2 concentration is driven up by UNMASKED breathing. But in a restaurant with even 25% capacity, most of an elevated CO2 concentration will be driven by unmasked breath. And obviously some risk remains, even if all of the breath is masked - masks are not a panacea.

 

[JRP3]

Not looking like I'm going to be snowboarding this season though.

Seems like a low risk activity, (assuming open chair lifts and not closed gondolas).

 

[Daniel in SD]

Seems like a low risk activity, (assuming open chair lifts and not closed gondolas).

It might be possible but there are still lift lines and restrooms. I think I'll stick to camping in the desert and hoping for a freak storm so I can go cross country skiing in the local mountains.

 

[Dave EV]

I'd only dine in an establishment if the CO2 concentration were below ~600ppm. And probably not even then. Every business with any unmasked activity should be continuously monitoring CO2 levels and keeping them below ~600ppm. (Atmospheric CO2 is currently around 410ppm.)

I like that method of using CO2 levels indoors to estimate how many air exchanges are being made. Though this wouldn't account for air that's being recirculated through a MERV13 filter or better...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I like that method of using CO2 levels indoors to estimate how many air exchanges are being made. Though this wouldn't account for air that's being recirculated through a MERV13 filter or better...

That's true. Unfortunately there are no standards or regulations (or measurements!) for this at the current time, so I have to assume the worst. It's unlikely that most restaurant establishments have medical grade air filtration, nor do they focus on "single breath" air usage before recirculation and filtration. In my experience most restaurant ventilation systems are abysmal, with cold spots, with blowing air all through the restaurant before recirculation.

People actually are using CO2 measurements as a proxy for exposure levels, though. Just not (for the most part) in this country. Because that's how we roll. FREE AMERICA NOW.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Useful word cloud from Alabama shows potential source of cases based on interviews with COVID-positive individuals over the last two week.

(Note that this diagram is clearly going to be biased by what people have been engaged in. It does not necessarily mean that church is the primary source of spread (though it could well be).)

I draw the conclusion from this that weddings and funerals are particularly bad. And probably church and school too, but there is a lot more exposure to those events presumably.

 

[DaveG_NJ]

..if the objective is to bring the case count to zero (which should be the goal!)

That's never been the threshold for ANYTHING. Not AIDS, not opioid deaths, not highway fatalities. If all of the quarantiners where in charge of highway safety, we'd all be driving 15 mph until there were no collisions.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

That's never been the threshold for ANYTHING. Not AIDS, not opioid deaths, not highway fatalities. If all of the quarantiners where in charge of highway safety, we'd all be driving 15 mph until there were no collisions.

Unlike these other things though, it is actually easily possible. And the main point is that this is the OBJECTIVE. The objective for these other things is also to minimize the number of events as well. You can’t score without goals.