Watch: an experiment that shows how coronavirus might spread at a buffet

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/watch-an-experiment-that-show.html

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Years later I still can’t unsee the Mythbusters episode where they hooked up a drip of this stuff to Adam’s nose and shared a family-style meal. Though we really don’t know how much this coronavirus is spread by touch this way-- you might be in a lot more danger sitting at a table in the air conditioning draft as an infected person is speaking rather than from shared utensils at a buffet.

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This also gives an idea why norovirus is such a problem on cruise ships.

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In the first few weeks we were all stumbling on the difference between Covid-19 and a truly airborn contagion like measles.

The surface contact vector was the main thing to avoid back then, because there werent enough masks to make it matter.

But now that droplets are all the rage, it kind of amazes me that we don’t seem to have worked out the physics of this disease vector to a high degree already! When it was just the boring old flu, was this really so trivial? Flourescent paint on sticky hands seems so… 20th century somehow.

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There is an analysis of an actual cluster of infection from one person eating at a restaurant. The people away from the draft didn’t get sick, the ones in the area covered by the vent did.

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I came here ready to be mad about calling this an “experiment.” But the author did an excellent job qualifying why this isn’t really an experiment in the scientific sense. Wish more media would do that sort of thing, because not a lot of people have a good basic understanding of the scientific method.

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Shit, I’m never going to eat at a buffet again, am I?

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I am sort of expecting the building codes to get revised in response to this. Something about reducing the capacity to allow social distancing under certain emergency circumstances, and something else about changing airflow patterns and flow rates to minimize contagion.

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Just to be pedantic, the OP actually does not explain why this isn’t science – which here would be almost like explaining why a rock is not an emotion – but for the sake of thoroughness:

  1. The defining, foundational feature of an experiment is that it tests a hypothesis, and no clear hypothesis was proposed. “Let’s see what happens” is not a hypothesis.
  2. To be scientific, an experiment must define, in advance, exactly what outcomes will or will not support the hypothesis. (The word “science” shares a root with “scissors” and literally refers to cutting what is factual from what is not). Open-ended investigation may help suggest avenues of enquiry but it is not, in itself, science. Science is specifically about finding ways to prove yourself wrong.
  3. There are a mountain of practical ramifications arising from the above, but a short version is that to have value, experiments must be measurable and repeatable and nothing remotely like that is going on here.

My personal view is that stunts like this are anti- scientific, because they’re appropriating the tools and trappings of science in such a selective way that it intentionally obscures more than it reveals. I mean, if rona carriers were coughing out pints of high-yield fluorescent dye every day, then you’d see literally every surface in the world covered in a thin glowing schmear, which would simply tell us it means nothing unless you can attach some numbers to it. And that resistance to quantifying anything is the exact heart of why the media are so terrible at reporting on science.

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the salad bar is dead

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My heart is breaking for my favorite Indian buffets.

Another favorite buffet in my city is Ethiopian, and at this place a server stands behind the the buffet and fixes plates for the dirty masses while they stand and point from behind a sneeze guard. Kind of weird being served at a buffet but it is kind of nice after a while. Hoping my Indian buffets can follow the same formula!

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Yes, here’s that restaurant air conditioning write up: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article
Also the horrifying choir practice superspreading event where 87% of those present got sick https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm
Looks like singing in particular is very risky due to the way people breathe deeply and project lots of particles. That’s why the CDC guidelines Trump’s folks are trying to quash recommended churches avoid choirs and singing.

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From what I’ve gathered, the main transmission path of SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, and spread via touching objects (fomites) appears to be secondary. Eating objects, though… :thinking:

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Got that right!

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Even with droplets, people make a lot of assumptions. There was that Belgian aerodynamics study that was initially jumped on by people trying to claim that any form of outdoor exercise, particularly cycling, is dangerous- when actually it didn’t look at the risks of infection, purely at airflow and droplet behaviour around runners and cyclists.

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This is the way all started…
More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2VWJNPjvjQ

"The banquet was held in the Baibuting district of Wuhan on Jan. 18, to celebrate the Lunar Chinese New Year.

The neighborhood committee staff asked district officials if they could cancel the banquet three days before the set date. But district officials denied the request. Local media reported that over 40,000 families joined the banquet."

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As a former Wendy’s employee, I say good riddance!

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Quite a lot of science does not work that way, particularly in the biological sciences. Popper-style hypothesis testing is much more common in physics than elsewhere.

Most of the research I did was along the lines of “we have no fucking idea how this drug works; let’s dose up some critters and see what happens to their brains and behaviour”.

Observational science is still science.

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Yep. That’s exactly what I wast thinking of, too.

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