I have seen very little attention paid to wiping surfaces over the past six months...a lot of early hysteria based on assertions that the virus could stay on surfaces for days...can't say I licked my groceries when I brought them in the house, but I haven't wiped them down since March of 2020...
I save the Clorox wipes for special occasions. Due to shortages, I ended up with these:
9971d6b42e5e7513f7321c854d705346.jpg
Wow, CDC is certainly starting to provide some sensible guidance finally...This has been a ridiculous thing throughout. Can we please STOP the schools being closed for a day a week for this? (Assuming they are even open.) My children still have to change from their "outdoor shoes" to "indoor shoes" every time they enter daycare, which seems so much worse given they then touch their shoes, take more time in more crowded entranceways and hallways, etc. Policy has not been changed at all...It's also not like the indoor shoes get cleaned anyways, it was just fear of "outdoor shoes" touching outdoor pavement and bringing it inside...
Based on that article, it's particularly silly that schools, for example, are sometimes closed on Monday given it would then be a full 72-hours since anybody was last in it, not 24 hours. Monday would theoretically be the LOWEST risk day of surface contamination, so having people come in to clean it and breathing all over it (although I guess they wear masks) could be marginally pointless at best, and even worse than doing nothing at worst.
Last edited by Bluedog; 04-05-2021 at 04:51 PM.
Obviously what the CDC actually said was greatly exaggerated by Yahoo News. I read through the CDC's real guidance. It was painfully overly long. Long story short, like I said very early in this thread, enveloped viruses don't survive that well outside the host. Having said that, there were a lot of studies that showed it lasted a lot longer than we normally think enveloped viruses last, which led to ever more disinfection/paranoia about the mail, etc., etc.
I think there is a lot of difficulty in ferreting out how people became infected. How does one EXCLUDE the possibility of transmission via surfaces? Isn't the person who is touching the surfaces also breathing the air?
I think they over-reached quite a bit with their conclusion that the risk is 1 in 10K for surface transmission. They can't possibly know that. It's like they just pulled a number out of the thin air that sounded really remote. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the room when that conversation took place. It probably went something like this:
Epidemiologist number 1: I think people are still focusing too much attention on surface decontamination! I mean, transmission is mostly via inhalation of droplets, right?
number 2: Yeah, of course it is. But people aren't going to stop doing all that stuff unless we tell them that the risk is really low...
number 1: Yeah. It's probably only about a 1% chance, don't you think?
number 2: Sure, but does that sound good enough? If we tell them "1%" won't they still be really afraid?
Doctor number 1: What if we turn the ratio around, and tell them there is a 99% chance they won't get it from a surface exposure?
E number 1: That does sound better...
E number 2: Agreed, but it still doesn't sound low enough. People have been doing this $%&* for over a year! We are going to have to make this sound even less ominous.
Doc number 2: What if we just said the chance was, like, 1 in a thousand or something?
Epi number 2: Now we are moving in the right direction...
Doc number 2: You really want to get people to stop disinfecting every surface on planet earth?
Everybody: Yeah, we do!
Doc number 2: Hell, just tell 'em one in 10K!
E number 1: One in 10K??!? That DOES sound good!
Doc number 1: Tell 'em one in 10K and Yahoo will print that we said to "stop the sanitation theater," lol...
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
It's been clear for awhile (to me) that surface transmission was unlikely at best, so there's nothing surprising here.
My concern is that this just further emboldens the anti-mask crowd who loves to say "WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE? FIRST YOU SAID X, THEN YOU SAID NOT X."
Which, of course, shows a blatant disregard for how the scientific method works, but please don't burden them with that line of thought.
You raise an excellent point about how they came up with the figure of 1 in 10,000. I would go a step further and ask what the statement "the chance of contracting the coronavirus through surface transmission is lower than 1 in 10,000" even means?
Does this mean ...
a) 1 out of every 10,000 COVID cases were caused by surface transmission?
b) 1 out of every 10,000 Americans will contract COVID via surface transmission?
c) a person has a 1 in 10,000 chance of contracting COVID if they touch a surface contaminated by the coronavirus?
d) a person has a 1 in 10,000 chance of contracting COVID by surface transmission if they spend time in a room recently inhabited (but now vacated) by a person with COVID?
e) something else entirely?
^I think the above are all really great points, but the message seems to me (now) to be that effort dedicated to spending money on major industrial strength cleaners and spending a ridiculous amount of time on deep cleaning all surfaces might be better spent doing other things that actually show more significant impact to reducing risk (upgrading HVAC systems, more airflow, masks, etc.). So, it's not that you can't get it from surfaces and the precision seems a little suspect, but more about how do we optimize the use of resources for the most "bang for your buck" in reducing risk.
I know Covid is NOT a funny topic but this IS very funny (and you may be right); I sometimes wonder about the CDC's pronouncements on Covid and the pandemic. Are they based solely on science (and how much does "science" really know about Covid) or are politics and other considerations entering into the equation?
Re the highlighted section above, I think a lot about how so many people are becoming infected, assuming the positive test numbers around the country are accurate. Once the pandemic passes, I hope the scientists can really figure out how it spread so far and so fast through out the population.
one glob of data locally was interesting...early in the pandemic our case count was very very low, so they were able to do very thorough contact tracing, and they quickly reached the conclusion that transmission seemed to be, overwhelmingly, by person to person transmission...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/u...-vaccines.html
Ouch. NY Time article saying that Emergent BioSolutions, the company that last week had to throw out 15 million doses of J&J vaccine (they bollixed the recipe) has thus far made 150 million doses of vaccine, but none has been authorized for use...it's been nothing short of a clown show, these guys are completely lost. Just horrific and fundament quality control issues. And it's hardly a new problem for them.
Good thing other manufacturers have been more competent.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56650125
"A third of those with a previous Covid infection went on to develop or have a relapse of a psychological or neurological condition.
But those admitted to hospital or in intensive care had an even higher risk."
New cases are holding steady at around 65,000 cases per day (Worldometers - seven-day average). These numbers are 20 percent above the averages of 55,000 per day that prevailed three weeks ago.
Deaths are declining. The seven-day average as of April 7 is 771, declining 19 percent week-over-week.This is the lowest total for deaths since the week ending October 19. We'll see if they continue to decline, hold steady, or increase reflecting the increase in new cases. But heck, at some time the large totals for vaccines of our vulnerable population should have a measurable effect in saving lives.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Well our monthly report for imports and exports is in at our port.
We handled 137,855 pier containers — which account for cargo boxes of any size — in March, which is a 31.3% increase year-over-year. 50% increase imports and 9% increase exports .auto manufacturers are ramping up. Boeing also .
Although i do not expect it to last. It means the economy is trying to get moving . Of course this is mostly the south east .
I do hear reports that this is the case nationally
At major ports .
Hopefully we can sustain a large portion of this.
On the flip side we have had labor shortage on the union side .but its a management issue within thier
Chapter . They are not required to work .
37 $ dollar a hour job .night time is overtime .
All can get thier second pfizer shot mext friday.maybe that will change thing's.
Pfizer requests EUA for ages 12-15.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...12-15-n1263649