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Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus
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DrG:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 27, 2020, 09:21:17 am ---One really interesting thing is that the WHO are supposedly now saying that transmission via surfaces is uncommon, as is transmission from asymptomatic people. If so then that should make it pretty easy to contain in places that have already contained it through whatever mechanism.
Although again, there seems to great differences between counties that doesn't seem correlate with that, so it's still puzzling. I don't get the US stats at all, they seem crazy high, and from what I gather everyone over there is wearing masks like crazy.
I think there is likely to be a whole lot more going on with how this whole mechanism works that we don't know about yet, and why countries like Australia have been hardly hit at all. It's not like we have small cities and are ultra-paranoid about it, quite the opposite.
It's fascinating stuff, an analytical statisticians wet dream.

--- End quote ---

The WHO backed off, or reinterpreted, their statements on the asymptomatic issue https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/09/who-comments-asymptomatic-spread-covid-19/

They have done these re-interpretations several times, most notably with face coverings https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks I am still steamed about that issue because we were initially told NOT to wear masks beacuse they wouldn't do any good and would make things worse because you would touch your face. The truth was, there were not enough medical masks and the fear was that those needing them the most, would not be able to have them. That situation was NOT unique to the WHO. Also, I expect guidance to be evidence-based and with more evidence, guidance can certainly change.

One problem with the asymptomatic issue is, as usual, a lack of operational definition.

Take an infected individual who will show symptoms. We know that there will be some period of time (an incubation period, if you will) where they have not yet shown symptoms. They *should* be capable of spreading the infection by virtue of their viral load, but they are not sneezing and snorting and coughing, so there spreading ability is different than the symptomatic infector.

Then there are those individuals who stay asymptomatic for the duration of the infection. Same questions can be asked about their ability to infect. I do remember that several cases have been shown to have viral loads equivalent to symptomatic individuals. Then also, one can safely assume that some asymptomatic cases (of all kinds) have, at least at some point, some very mild symptoms.

It does seem like the estimated proportion of asymptomatic individuals that have a significant role in spreading the infection, differs between the USA team and the WHO. The former saying as high as 20% and the latter much lower (by my recollection).
Zero999:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 27, 2020, 03:59:54 am ---
--- Quote from: maginnovision on June 27, 2020, 03:34:07 am ---I thought we were still working under the assumption that everyone will catch it and we just want hospitals available for when people need them? If that's still the modus operandi then I don't see how new cases matter. We can have a million cases a day if they don't overwhelm the hospitals.
--- End quote ---

Because it's a boogeyman, and people from all walks of life and the media and especially politicians have realised that fear gives them various powers, and people like power and being seen to "do things". And of course it can kill the elderly and other vulnerable people (just like the flu), so if you don't support all draconian measures to stop it then you must like people dying, obviously.
No one was thinking that when millions died of the flu every year, because, reasons...

My state NSW has single digit cases a day (and many zero days recently), yet it's still managed as if it's a crisis that will spiral out of control and infect everyone and kill X percent of those if it's not micro managed. This could go on for years. Open your borders and you are guaranteed a little spike again and the cycle repeats.

Most of the stuff was justified at the start because we knew very little about it, but as time goes on and we learn more, at some point we are just going to have to start treating this as just yet another seasonal flu type thing, otherwise we require that "new normal" society were no one shakes hands or hugs any more etc, and that's depressing. I don't see that happening in practice though, eventually people are just going to say "bugger it" and life will return to relative normality.
But yes, realistically it seems that everyone will eventually catch it whether they know it or not.
Quite some time back I tweeted about those "social distancing" floor stickers in shopping centres etc and pondered what we'll think in 20-30 years time if you find one in an old abandoned shopping mall and you think, "wow, remember back when social distancing was a thing!"

Of course, YMMV. Easy to say in a country that has had little impact from this of course.
I'm not sure about overseas, but here practically zero resources have been spent on protecting the vulnerable. All the effort seems to go into stopping Joe Average getting it. Seems arse backwards to me  :-//

--- End quote ---
Australia has done a very good job of containing the disease, so it's understandable many who live there won't be able to see what all the fuss is about and think it's all been a big overreaction.

This is still a new illness. One of the concerning potential issues is the long term effects and whether this virus can later on bite you on the bum, like polio, which is also a mild illness for most people. There have been reports of lung scaring, damage to the kidneys, heart and brain and very delayed effect on children, who originally had an asymptomatic or very mild illness, only later going on to develop paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome several weeks later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paediatric_multisystem_inflammatory_syndrome

I understand your concern about governments having too much power, but even the most authoritarian regime isn't going to close off a large proportion of the economy, it costs enormous amounts in lost tax revenues.

I agree with you about protecting the most vulnerable, but older people catch it from the young, so we need to limit community spread to protect them. I'm moderately worried about catching COVID-19. Although I'm in a relatively low risk group, no underlying conditions, fix, active and in the healthy weight range, I worry about spreading it to others and there's still a risk I could die from it. As I mentioned in another post, I know of a 20 year old woman, with no co-morbidities nearly dying of COVID-19 and she still might have long term health problems: it's far too soon to know.

I don't know what we should do. Clearly we can't all lock ourselves away forever, but letting the disease run riot is also not an option either. We need a happy medium between keeping the number of infections down and being able to go about our daily lives.
DrG:
I think that localities, including as large as countries, can be meaningfully compared by the measure of positive rate, toward understanding how the infection can be controlled in one place and yet be so out of control in another.

The strategy of identification by testing and quarantine, contact tracing (and testing) is a sound one. Add to that social distancing, sanitary practices, and yes, face coverings, and we (everybody) have the means to control the infection until more effective treatments, including effective vaccines become available. We WILL have effective treatments like plasma-based and monoclonal antibodies and we WILL have vaccines.

Positive rate is simply the number of positive tests as a percentage of total tests administered. Look here, for this measure in each US state https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/usa



Here is the state of Maryland. New cases rose, positive rates increased to well over 10%, they installed NPI, then testing dramatically increased and stayed increased. positive rate dropped to ~5% and new cases to 300-400. They still have a ways to go, but it is under some level of control and a slow and cautious reopening is in progress.

Here is the state of Florida. Clearly it became untethered and they have an unacceptably high positive rate and daily new case rate.



I have a pretty good idea of what happened - lapsing or otherwise insufficient NPI. Whether I am right or not about that is not the most relevant issue. The critical issue is that they are not doing enough testing.

Wherever it is, if the positive rate is high, not enough testing is being done to allow the strategy of identification (by testing) and quarantine, contact tracing (and testing), social distancing, sanitary practices, and yes, face coverings, to be successful. THAT is what we are seeing in the US. The most powerful country in the world (IMO) and we can't master testing four months into the greatest pandemic the country has seen in 100 years.

I don't give a rat's ass that the US has done more testing than anyone else in the world, it is distinctly irrelevant.

In Wyoming, maybe the infections are under control and their testing is sufficient - and you don't see 10% positive rates. In Australia positive rates are less than 1%. Good for them, I am happy for the folks in all of those areas.

It is not that everybody has to do the same amount of testing, it is that if the positive rate in a locale is too high, you need to do MUCH more testing. Period, beginning, middle and end of issue. I ulcerate hearing all the subterfuge and obfuscation around some very simple and basic concepts.

If you do not do enough testing, you can't control the spread. It is not rocket science. The virus is not alive, it is a hunk of crap that does exactly what it does without fail (except for some mutating).

Yet, in the US we tolerate BS at the highest levels that say we should slow down testing or that testing will produce more cases so we shouldn't be concerned about a rise in cases. Or that it is our constitutional right of assembly, so we are supposed to be fine having political rallys in hot spots.

Pure unadulterated bullshit. Bullshit that smells so bad, you would never accept something like that in the EE world, yet it is met with far too much acceptance. Let's just wait for herd immunity and resign ourselves to the idea that everybody will get infected....while the economy and healthcare get flushed down the toilet...and it really doesn't have to be that way.

coppice:

--- Quote from: nctnico on June 27, 2020, 02:24:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on June 27, 2020, 11:05:07 am ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on June 27, 2020, 09:29:28 am ---You have to realise that a mask only helps against transmitting Covid-19; it doesn't help against receiving it because a mask doesn't cover your eyes. Eyes are (internally) directly connected to the nose. In theory one infected person without a mask can infect several people wearing a mask. For example if they travel together in a bus or visit a crowded place. I suspect that a large number of people are still attending large gatherings like churches in the US. Ofcourse the total lack of leadership in the US doesn't help either to make people understand what they should or shouldn't do.

--- End quote ---
If a mask doesn't give 100% protection its useless is really dumb thinking.

--- End quote ---
You are mistaken. Just read up on the how and why of masks and what kind of protection they offer. The key reasons to make masks mandatory is to prevent infected persons to spray the virus around. But since you don't know who is infected or not everyone should wear them. The non-medical / surgical masks are not designed / intended to keep stuff out. Try and use one while drilling in or grinding concrete and check your nose afterwards. You'll see it will do very little for keeping the dust out. Now imagine how well it works to keep a virus out.

--- End quote ---
Virus laden aerosol isn't dry dust. Estimates vary, not least because mask quality varies. Much of the garbage out there is governments trying to make masks look useless because they have a shortage of them. If you look for studies quoting real data a typical properly manufactured and worn mask seems to reduce the risk of causing infection to about 3% to 5% of the risk without a mask. The same mask reduces the risk of getting an infection to about 50% to 70% of the risk without a mask. So, the mask is not super effective for the person trying not to get infected, but combine that modest reduction with a spacing and other precautions, and the benefits really add up. Where things get more problematic is people thinking any of piece of cloth vaguely covering their mouth constitutes a meaningful medical mask.
nctnico:
50% to 70% is still worse than a 1 in 4 chance. Besides that I wonder if those studies only looked at the mask and not the combination where the eyes are left unprotected. And then there is the matter of wearing it correctly. It seems you are ending up with the exact same conclusion as I wrote a few posts earlier.
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