New study on Covid: Surfaces vs Airborne

[BigmanPigman]

https://elemental.medium.com/amp/p/30430384e5a5?__twitter_impression=true

Instead of obsessing over objects and surfaces, scientists now say the biggest infection risk comes from inhaling what someone else is exhaling, whether it’s a tiny aerosol or a larger droplet. And while a virus traveling through the air sounds terrifying, the good news is there is a safe, cheap, and effective way to stop the spread: wearing a mask. Here are the three primary pathways of transmission, and what experts know about them six months in. It turns out that despite the catastrophic harm it’s caused, the novel coronavirus is actually quite fragile, and it doesn’t like being out in the open where it can dry up. According to the NEJM paper, the virus’s half-life is a relatively short six hours, meaning that every six hours 50% of the virus shrivels up and becomes inactive or noninfectious.

Aerosol transmission does increase the importance of one additional protective step, which is proper ventilation and air filtration. Airflow, either introducing new air into a room or filtering the existing air, can disperse and dilute any infectious aerosol particles, reducing a person’s potential exposure. Being outdoors is the ultimate ventilation, and for months public health officials have recommended that people socialize outside rather than in. However, with winter and colder temperatures coming, indoor air filtration and adherence to masks will become even more important.

Armed with this knowledge, think about how you can make fall and winter safer, both physically and mentally. Instead of buying another can of Lysol, maybe invest in an air purifier, more comfortable two-ply cloth masks, or even an outdoor fire pit or space heater. Be prepared to meet friends outside in colder temperatures or insist upon masks, even in your home. We’ve still got a long way to go before we can declare victory over the novel coronavirus, but at least we know more now than we did six months ago. And you don’t have to sanitize your apples anymore.

[iemitsu]

1. Informative article with good info on the transmission of Covid.

Thanks for posting.

[yankeepants]

2. Thanks for posting!

[SunSeeker]

3. Yet another study confirming masks are our best bet to beat this thing. nt

[SheltieLover]

4. K&R!

Ty!

[C Moon]

5. California realized that after the first reopening.

Things have been improving since. Slowly.
I’m glad to say (in SoCal) it appears mask wearing has become the dominant attitude.

[yuiyoshida]

6. K AND R and

Tweeted!

[crimycarny]

7. I suspected so early on...

That was my suspicion months ago when the news reported on a church choir group that got COVID after a choir practice. I think this was back when Fauci and WHO were still downplaying the airborne risk of transmission and people were hoarding hand sanitizer I remember thinking “wait, so almost 100% were infected after a 1 hour choir practice? No way is that due to touching surfaces, this sucker is airborne.”

The additional research on how long the virus can live (half-life) is very useful as is the information about air purifiers. We bought two air purifiers when my son thought he had contracted COVID at work. He turned out negative but I’m glad to see the air purifiers were a good purchase anyway.

Thanks for posting, very good info to have!

[DeminPennswoods]

8. HVAC upgrades were an easy fix

but we spent the last 6 months diddling around worried about masks.

When businesses and office buildings were closed was the perfect time for owners to invest in updating and upgrading their HVAC systems.

Congress should have addressed this in the stimulus bill they passed. It would have been easy to include funds for upgrading air filtration systems as well as simultaneously updating the national building code to reflect new standards for air filters and HVAC systems. The Army Corps of Engineers could certainly have been asked to develop plans for how to upgrade air filtration systems in the easiest and most cost effective way. Better HVAC would also help prevent flu and other airborne diseases.

It's been penny-wise (masks) and pound-foolish (hvac).

[certainot]

9. thank the fucking republicans

[DeminPennswoods]

13. Dems control the House,

they could have included it in the CARES act. There was certainly money for everything else.

The problem is few people have even mentioned the role HVAC plays in preventing disease. Undoubtedly we'd be far better off if Trump/Rs had taken covid19 seriously from the start and leveled with the public. But Fauci, Birx, Adams or any of the briefers during the public covid-19 briefers could have talked about the need for better indoor air filtration. Or they could have mentioned it during their testimony to Congress or in their special covid-19 House committee testimony. If they said anything about it, I didn't hear it. Everyone was too worried about mask-wearing or vaccines or theraputics when a relatively easy fix for indoor safety was right in front of them. This is what makes me angry.

[Igel]

21. It was mentioned.

Back in April and May.

Here are the problems, though.

1. Most transmission happens at home. You'd need to upgrade millions of residential units.

You'd also have to upgrade every plant and factory and office.

That would take a lot of money--and *most* would go to the non-poor, non-private citizens. Meaning companies, businesses, and middle-classers. *Loans* to businesses were considered corruption. Grants?

2. Having established that we'd need to upgrade millions of units of different makes and models, this was during a shut down. Where are you getting them from? Building them in the US? I know, let's import a lot more stuff from China, so they can convert $ into surveillance technology and weapons for helping to take over Taiwan and threaten their neighbors--a return to good old Eastern imperialist days and Han colonialism.

[Kaleva]

11. Not that easy when there's a severe shortage of qualified workers in the HVAC field

While the gist of your idea is a good one, there would be a several year delay in implementing it while the work force is increased.

[DeminPennswoods]

14. The change to the building code and

replacing entire systems would take awhile, but there are already filters available that trap more than HEPA filters. Those could be installed without a lot of extra work, imho, in the interim.

[Kaleva]

17. What filters are those?

I'm familiar with medical grade HEPA filters but not aware of anything that's supposedly better than that.

[Igel]

22. It's not the filters.

It's the airflow and circulation patterns.

[Kaleva]

27. Ok. Not a easy fix and given the labor shortage, probably not doable for awhile

[lagomorph777]

28. Wow, completely rip apart the home and re-do the duct arrangements?

That will be extremely rare, except among the ultra-rich.

For now, smartest option is rigidly masking up any time we leave the house.

[certainot]

10. this is a generalized assessment again. we can STILL get it from contact through groceries or

the door handle if unlucky. all it takes is some idiot who rubbed their nose before you got to the checkout counter, for instance

and a lot of people don't have ventilation systems so will have to use masks

[Kaleva]

12. IMO, it's best to cover all bases.

[certainot]

15. yes. it's just a matter of being unlucky

[Grokenstein]

18. I almost busted out laughing when I saw a coworker last week

...loading luggage into containers, he stopped to pull down his mask and rub his nose with his gloved hand.

He doesn't "get" it, but boy, is he gonna GET it.

[certainot]

26. i was leaving a lliquor store in college town and saw 6 20 somethings get out of SUV and

then pull their masks on to walk to store.... maybe if they were all in the same quarantined house...

[JI7]

19. The article didn't say you can't get it that way but just that there are

other ways more likely and that the usual recommended hygiene even before covid can help in avoiding infection from surface.

The article also talks about the importance of masks.

[Igel]

24. Proving a negative is hard.

And nobody wants to make a claim that might be false, even marginally.

So the equivalent is showing that the rate of transmission by surfaces is vanishingly small.

You get that incidence rate down to the margin of error and poof! that transmission means isn't disproven but it's off the radar again.

Much was made of a case where a person (*a* person) caught COVID from an elevator button, supposedly. Except they couldn't rule out alternative means of transmission, since it was a residential building where they shared the elevator and presumably a lot of other things. Like air in the corridors, in the elevator, in the lobby.

Less was made of a large call center where scores of employees were in each of two rooms on either side of a central hall, with staggered lunches. They shared the hall, the elevators, the lunch room. They didn't share air or space, except in the elevators and hallway when reporting to work. One side had a large outbreak of COVID. The other side had no reported cases. If there was ever a controlled experiment for surface transmission, or short-term contact resulting in transmission, there you go.


The same sort of reasoning--hard to prove a negative, and it's unpleasant to say something's impossible just to find out it happens on rare occasion (which means it's possible)--is responsible for a lot of media confusion and a lot of what comes from the CDC.

[LisaL]

25. Surface transmission is certainly possible.

"An outbreak associated with a shopping mall in Wenzhou, China, may have been fueled by fomite transmission. In January, seven workers who shared an office in a shopping mall became ill when one of their co-workers returned from Wuhan. The mall was closed, and public health officials tracked two dozen more sick people, including several women who had shopped at the mall, as well as their friends. None of them had come into contact with the original sick office workers. The researchers speculated that a women’s restroom or the mall elevators had been the source of transmission."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/well/live/whats-the-risk-of-catching-coronavirus-from-a-surface.html

[Grokenstein]

16. Well, I feel a little better about the "street patios" popping up all over the place now.

Even saw a dude getting a curbside haircut the other day. I'm just worried about what happens when traffic picks up.

I stopped using hand sanitizer when I started getting wart-like blisters and just upped my handwashing game while avoiding touching stuff as much as possible (elbows and house keys for buttons and handles, you know the drill). I have no idea what actually goes into the hand-san provided at the airport where I work, and it turns out some of the stuff I've bought at Walgreens or Safeway is naff garbage subjected to recall.

As for masks, I continue to double up: beneath a standard trifold mask I initially smooshed my nose under a face-and-neck gaiter made from the sleeve of an old black T-shirt that was headed for the rag-bag anyway. Now I have four colorfast commercial gaiters with ear-loops that are much more comfortable. They might not suffice on their own, but with a standard mask on top they're comfortable and pretty much bulletproof; the top mask--secured by one of those plastic connectors to keep the irritating loops off my ears--presses the gaiter in place and the gaiter covers any gaps. (Also, I can take the top mask down for my daily workplace temperature check and still have some coverage; on a hot day I can soak the gaiter and slap it on wet to keep me alive at work.) I don't think I'll need to go THIS far though:

Link to tweet

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2020/09/18/these-next-level-face-masks-had-the-entire-internet-shaking-head/

[JI7]

20. Get hand sanitizer with aloe . I use hand creme also after sanitizer

[lagomorph777]

29. That helmet would fog up horribly.

I wear a mask impregnated with copper and zinc; NIOSH rated to kill viruses.
Over that I wear a face shield. Even that arrangement fogs up sometimes.

[Squinch]

23. Excellent!