Edited my post to compounds, over particulates. Still, the act of smelling is a physical process, where matter interacts with receptors (?). That was the main point of what I was getting at.
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Makes me look forward to my upcoming long flight even more /s
I guess it isnât surprising how many people from physical, not medical, sciences have been producing these studies. (I know from a family member that this has become the new in thing for people in his area of rocket science/fuel combustion to work on.) At this point I think it is pretty clear that the small C19 particles can travel quite far in aerosol form, and this is a big problem in places where it cannot be dispersed. What we really need now are not new dispersal studies by meterologists and fluid dynamicists, but studies by sociologists and psychologists that can give us insight in how to get people to agree to wear masks indoors.
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My first reaction was that they should file charges, maybe for assault, but odds are those would be dismissed and then the Republicans could say âsee, we didnât do anything, those Dems are just playing politicsâ. This way, by demanding answers in their own house, the Democrats can control the message more and maybe exact some due punishment.
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I think that the analogy in original article is inadequate, for example the stench of cigarettes will permeate even through a N100 filter, while droplets containing virus particles wonât.
In my opinion the easiest way is just to make mask wearing mandatory by law and fine everyone who doesnât comply. It was done this way in Poland and it worked. The only problem is that government wants to relax those restrictions now and allow not wearing masks at parties such as weddings with up to 150 people. Considering that singing causes high dispersion of respiratory droplets, these will be true coronavirus parties.
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Fuck that, I wish Iâd thought of it.
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Either way, donât mistake what I said as a knock against masks. Mask-wearing is essential to reduce the spread of the virus. I just wish more people would do it properly, and not half-ass it.
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Who? (2016 flashback)
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This would never pass in the UK, and never work in the US. (It would also never pass in Sweden or Norway either, but I think in both countries if the government advised wearing masks people would do it, at least indoors.)
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Worked in 1930.
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The country then was fresh from an event where everyone worked together for common societal purpose (the world war), and hadnât had decades of messages celebrating selfishness and disdain for science.
ETA: In the place where I usually live people easily took to wearing masks, but this is in part because it was normal even before the pandemic. My original point was that it might be useful to have some social scientists working on the problem of how to make it normative elsewhere through encouragement, rather than brute force.
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Iâm all in favor of âbrute forceâ (formal warnings, then fines: somehow our âindividualistâ society has accepted that for speeding).
As to the UK, they already have laws and penalties they would be applying to a lesser person if the pulled a Cummings.
Iâm fascinated to watch mask opposition here crumbling to just Trump, Pence and the contrail crowd. Even Sean Hannityâs become a mask-cuck.
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Kind of.
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Fuck. We have a massive twitter-driven press debacle in Germany.
BILD (yellow press supremo over here) pulled off some tweets of scientist which criticised a pre-print study by Jones et al. (senior author: Drosten) and attacked, of course, also the person.
The manuscript (reminder: that is a pre-print, so not peer reviewed yet) concluded that kids might be as infectious as adults and said, maybe unwisely, âBased on these results, we have to caution against an unlimited re-opening of schools and kindergartens in the present situation.â
Iâll spare you the details on how the tabloid made this even worse, but Drosten (again, maybe unwisely) shot back and now is in the crossfire. Other papers jumped on the bandwagon, made room for another virologist (KekulĂ©) who also attacked not only the study, but Drosten.
Further noise is on twitter, which Drosten (maybe unwisely? unsure about that) uses to defend (and attack himself).
Interestingly
The manuscript can be found here:
A critique can be found here, written by McConway and Spiegelhalter:
While I do not see why the hell the study should be, as they say, âwithdrawn from circulationâ (and hey, that is a preprint, not a paper, thank you very much for making that destinction!), they DO have valid statistical grievances.
The problem I see is: while there is apparently an indication in the data that virus load could, indeed, be statistically different between adults and kids, and while the authors chose pairwise Tukey, t-, and Dunn tests which weaken the statistical power to an extent that this difference is invisible in the result, the virus load detected in kids is high enough to be of practical importance.
The âshitstormâ (sorry, anglophones) around this damages the credibility of Drosten and his colleagues, and makes policy decisions less informed.
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On another issue: one of my bosses is ill. Fever. Called the appropriate point of care. Was advised to see if other symptoms develop, and get tested if so.
What the HELL? This is not the flu season. Anyone with a fever should be tested right away right now.
If this is the reaction to recent regulations to keep the numbers down (local infection > 50 cases means new shutdowns), I would not be surprised. Because I cannot think of another reason. There is no reason, at all, not to test people right now. We do have the capacities.
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IANAD, and wouldâve thought schools would be a concern because kids donât distance themselves. My entire life Iâve seen relatives infected by children because of illnesses they picked up at school. This makes me wonder if there are other any diseases where children donât infect others.
(Oops, edited to add âany.â I donât know if such a malady exists.
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Iâm with you. Why would anyone think kids are less likely to spread anything? Calling them cute little petri dishes isnât a regional thing here, is it?
Also Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children is a thing, right? A thing we donât actually know a whole lot about.
I donât really have a point, consider this a pointless scream into the void over all of the pointless shit we simply âmustâ do despite all we donât know.
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Donât have time to read the article right now, but I would point out based on your description that viral load is not the be-all and end-all of the contagion risk. Kids are extremely, um, âgenerousâ with their secretions, particularly younger kids. Even a lower viral load is a risk if the volume of exposure is sufficient. The data needed is epidemiological, and that will be a long time coming.
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