And here are two examples why the latest CDC guidelines suck.
I totally wrecked my big toe several days ago, today I went to my foot doctor (he’s awesome) to have the toe nail removed.
He’s the only doctor with 3 nurses and a receptionist, not a single mask on them ot their patients.
I was double masked. It’s a doctor’s office for gosh sake.
The other example. The head cheese at my biggest customer is home not doing well with covid. I was talking to him outside a few days ago, he was coughing without covering his mouth. I walked away.
I talked with someone in the small office area where he spends most of the day. Half are unvaccinated.
The new study, posted as a preprint last week, was modest in size, examining just 99 people with Long Covid. “But it went very deep, it went into granular aspects of the T cells, the antibody response,” says Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who was not involved in the work. “This is exploratory, but it’s the foundation for much bigger studies.”
The Long Covid patients, most of them struggling with intense fatigue, brain fog, and other symptoms, had low levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that helps the body control inflammation, glucose, sleep cycles, and more. Features of their T cells indicated their immune system was battling unidentified invaders, perhaps a reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 or a reactivated pathogen such as Epstein-Barr virus. …
This really doesn’t seem ideal. They’ve got folks on the FDA’s own advisory committee speaking out against relying solely on mouse data. Plenty of examples where things didn’t work in humans the same way as in mice.
The UV treatment is effective, but far less cost effective than the filtration and ventilation (and masking).
A lot of people are installing them in HVAC ducts, but that air is already filtered, so though having the lights there is doing something, by that point, according to the experts, it’s not doing much.
Ideally, you’d commission the space you’re working on and identify the “dead” spots - where air isn’t circulating much, and put the UV lights there. Having them in front of HVAC return vents is not bad, either, but addressing the dead spots is priority. There are all kinds of IAQ sensors to help do this, if you’re into gadgets, but you can do a layman’s version with smoke of some kind. A sage smudge will tell you a lot about air circulation in a space.
The UV lights are best suited for spaces with high ceilings, and aimed upwards, or sideways, since you don’t want the light hitting occupants.
One last thing I forgot to mention before, if improving HVAC filtration is part of the strategy, you want to set it so the fan is running constantly (while area is occupied) and not just triggered by the thermostat, which is the default setting.
This. There are two main factors in UV disinfection: time and intensity, which combine to determine dose. Short wavelength UV attenuates very quickly in air, so proximity to the source matters. We’re talking mm, not meters. The second is dwell time, which is why UV tends to be better suited for surfaces.
Just pointing a deep UV source at a room and thinking it is doing anything at all is a mistake. The upper-air units used in some hospital rooms move air continuously very close to the UV light source so that the treated volume gets hit with high-intensity UV light. Even then, thise systems count on multiple passes to reach HLD (high-level disinfection) inactivation of 10^5 reduction of the target pathogen.
“For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an email to CDC’s 11,000-person staff Wednesday, which was seen by The New York Times and Stat News. “My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness.”
While I appreciate the willingness to take the blame, the fact that the CDC was actively hampered throughout the Il Douche years and is still trying to find it’s way back to relevance should be noted as mitigating factors in their failure in their critical moment. But it was unquestionably a failure. One that will reverberate for a very long time.
Trump crippled the CDC, true, but I expect that this will be noted and addressed as part of the proposed restructuring - placing itself where it can be independent of political motivations and meddling. Lofty goal I know.
Many many times I have had parents tell me, “I just tested positive for Covid, so I thought I should get the kids checked.” Frequently while either not wearing masks or, at best, dick nosing it. The “Just let it run rampant, if they die, they die” camp has won. We are doing the best we can, but I feel like it is trying to stop the tide with a sponge.
“This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where Covid-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives,” CDC epidemiologist Greta Massetti said in a statement.
And by saying “our daily lives” we mean capitalism.
I was hoping improved ventilation and filtering would be priority #1 for buildings, cruise ships, hotels, airplanes, etc. I’d choose hotel that followed best practices over one doesn’t. But I fear it’s a cost many won’t spend.
Any idea how much spending is happening in this regard?
Also, seems to me waste water testing is a tool every municipality should be doing. My SWAG is it’s a sensitive, anonymous, and cost effective way to watch for the next pandemic. But I know nothing about the field; maybe it’s super expensive? Maybe everyone’s already doing so?
I’m not up on that, currently. Locally there was a big push in schools, which needed the HVAC upgrades anyway.
For hotels, the best I’ve been able to do is find rooms with openable windows and open them, and leave whatever exhaust ventilation they have (typically connected to the bathroom light, so kind of annoying) running the whole time.
Lots of hotels tout their “cleaning of surfaces” policies, which kind of blows my mind when they have no masking policy, allow indoor dining, and there have been, iirc, exactly one instance of transmission from touching a surface and that was the disgusting snot/elevator button thing.
