Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Oh.. Ok.. I thought i was being reassuring by speculating that it is part of the usual and that things might still be ok but it seems the facts are not gonna support that.

IS CORONAVIRUS DEATHS SURGING OR DECLINING?

It is common to hear that coronavirus deaths are declining in this region of the world while in others it is exploding. But do these so called unnamed experts on track. It is really hard to look at numbers because so many of them are unreliable. For example the family of 7 Amish who were washed away in a flood and drowned in my area had coronavirus listed as the cause of their death on their death certificates when none of them had the disease.

I think magz has the best approach. Instead of tracking coronavirus deaths, just look at the number of deaths against the last 10 year average by each week of the years. We are currently at the end of week 31 of the years. U.C. Berkeley has generated a website to track this for several countries.

Short-term Mortality Fluctuations

The latest update on this site was 7/30/20.

As of week 27, total deaths in the U.S. were around 7,000 less than normal.

The latest data on Italy showed they had fewer deaths than normal for this time of year.
Spain had slightly more deaths than normal for this time of year but not by much.
France just slightly below normal.
England and Wales are at normal levels.
Germany is close to normal.
Austria is higher than normal. Might be still a bit of a hot spot.
Belgium is below normal.
Sweden is below normal.

So in general, there is a lack of evidence for a major surge in coronavirus deaths at the country level in the U.S. and Europe.

One of the reasons why countries might show a negative mortality trend is because many of those that die each year are those in nursing homes. They are at death's door. The coronavirus ended their lives prematurely. But had they lived, their lives would still end, just a few weeks/months later. They had serious co-morbidities.

So if they died at week 15 (the peak of the death rate), those individuals would be missing in week 30 mortality figures and as a result drive the fluctuation negative.

MODELING CORONAVIRUS AEROSOL TRANSMISSION ABOARD THE DIAMOND PRINCESS

A computer model of the cruise-ship outbreak found that the virus spread most readily in microscopic droplets light enough to linger in the air.



On Jan. 20, one infected passenger boarded the cruise ship; a month later, more than 700 of the 3,711 passengers and crew members had tested positive, with many falling seriously ill. The invader moved as swiftly and invisibly as the perpetrators on Agatha Christie’s Orient Express, leaving doctors and health officials with only fragmentary evidence to sift through.

In the new analysis, a team led by Parham Azimi, an indoor-air researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, studied the outbreak on the Diamond Princess, where physical spaces and infections were well documented. It ran more than 20,000 simulations of how the virus might have spread throughout the ship. Each simulation made a variety of assumptions, about factors like patterns of social interaction — how much time people spent in their cabins, on deck or in the cafeteria, on average — and the amount of time the virus can live on surfaces. Each also factored in varying contributions of smaller, floating droplets, broadly defined as 10 microns or smaller; and larger droplets, which fall more quickly and infect surfaces or other people, by landing on their eyes, mouth or nose, say.

About 130 of those simulations reproduced, to some extent, what actually happened on the Diamond Princess as the outbreak progressed. By analyzing these most “realistic” scenarios, the research team calculated the most likely contributions of each route of transmission. The researchers concluded that the smaller droplets predominated, and accounted for about 60 percent of new infections over all, both at close range, within a few yards of an infectious person, and at greater distances.

The logic behind such transmission is straightforward, experts said. When a person is speaking, he or she emits a cloud of droplets, the vast majority of which are small enough to remain suspended in the air for a few minutes or longer. Through inhalation, that cloud of small droplets is more likely to reach a mucus membrane than larger ones soaring ballistically.

The smaller droplets are also more likely to penetrate deeply into the respiratory system, down to the lungs. It may take a much smaller viral load — fewer viruses — to cause infection in the lungs than higher up, such as in the throat. This, at least, is the case for other respiratory viruses, like the flu.

Brent Stephens, an engineering professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and a co-author on the paper, said the findings were important in shaping, for example, measures that should be taken as college students return to campus.

The first, he said, should be “really enforcing mask policies.” Another, he said, is to recognize that there is a “huge variability in mask quality,” and material that actually stops small aerosols when someone is breathing, speaking, coughing or sneezing is crucial. Surgical masks are good, he said, but single-ply fabrics often are not.

As various transmission routes come into clearer focus, they will provide specific guidelines on how to reopen schools, offices, restaurants and other businesses.

Dr. Allen said those environments ranged from restaurants to dentist offices. In each case, he said, there are low-cost solutions that sharply improve ventilation and filtration — most buildings fall well short of optimal levels — and in turn reduce the risks of airborne infection.

“To me, this is an all-in moment,” Dr. Allen said. “We need better ventilation and better filtration, across the board, in all our buildings.”

Source: Aboard the Diamond Princess, a Case Study in Aerosol Transmission

New research with potentially wide-ranging implications concludes aerosol inhalation was likely the dominant way COVID-19 spread aboard Diamond Princess.

Moreover, close-range and long-range transmission likely contributed similarly to disease progression aboard the ship, with fomite (surface) transmission playing a smaller role, researchers at Harvard and the Illinois Institute of Technology said.



The current prevailing position is that coronavirus is transmitted primarily through large respiratory droplets within close proximity of infected individuals. However, quantitative information on the relative importance of specific transmission pathways — droplets, aerosols and fomites across short- and long-range distances — remains limited.

Their paper — which has yet to be peer-reviewed — shows the long-range transmission of aerosols containing the virus was most likely the dominant mode of COVID-19 spread even though Diamond Princess had a very high ventilation rate and no recirculated air.

New research with potentially wide-ranging implications concludes aerosol inhalation was likely the dominant way COVID-19 spread aboard Diamond Princess.

Moreover, close-range and long-range transmission likely contributed similarly to disease progression aboard the ship, with fomite (surface) transmission playing a smaller role, researchers at Harvard and the Illinois Institute of Technology said.

Findings counter prevailing notions of transmission. The current prevailing position is that coronavirus is transmitted primarily through large respiratory droplets within close proximity of infected individuals. However, quantitative information on the relative importance of specific transmission pathways — droplets, aerosols and fomites across short- and long-range distances — remains limited.

So the researchers developed computer modeling to study the ways the virus was transmitted on the quarantined ship.

However, aerosol transmission across both short- and long-range distances accounted for more than 70% of disease transmission overall, which is contrary to the prevailing positions on how COVID-19 is spread.

The researchers conluded: 'Although cruise ships represent unique built environments with high ventilation rates and no air recirculation, these findings underscore the importance of implementing public health measures that target the control of inhalation of small aerosols in addition to ongoing measures targeting control of large droplet and fomite (touch) transmission.'

'So wearing good-quality masks — standard surgical masks, or cloth masks with multiple layers rather than just one — will most likely be needed as well, even in well-ventilated spaces where people are keeping their distance.'

Source: Study finds aerosol inhalation likely main way coronavirus spread on Diamond Princess

So if you want to avoid becoming infected in high density spaces (such as cruise ships, aircraft, subways, buses, trains, elevators) then wearing face mask is important but more so the quality of the face mask. N95 are an effective tool for surviving this pandemic.

It took 6 months for my city to take this virus seriously enough to close the schools and muzzle people. However, kids under 12 are not required to wear masks... Honestly, it's just prolonging everything because kids are the biggest spreaders of viruses. They haven't been socialised to cough into their hands and they can't keep their hands to themselves. They went about this the total opposite way, locking up the elderly and leaving the kids free to spread this virus like wildfire. They couldn't be more wrong about kids, by the way; children are the most compliant people in society if they are taught how, so why aren't they included in these measures? By the time our government wakes up, it will be too late for many people's lives and livelihoods. Stay safe everyone.

I, and many others who I know, think that all this is a conspiracy. I reckon that most of the leaders got together with China to release this virus so that they can save money by killing off the elderly and the physically vulnerable in the most humane way possible (because they are like a burden on health care), and covering it up by making it look like they are 'safeguarding' everybody (especially the elderly and the vulnerable) from the virus, when really all the 'free countries' are now becoming dictatorships.

If this is true, I think it's a ridiculous idea because really it is costing the government billions more by furloughing thousands if not millions of people and facing a world recession that will cost billions more and will have to pay millions of people unemployment benefits.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... r-find-out

Local lockdown tracker for UK.

Los Angeles Mayor Says City May Shut Off Water, Power At Houses Hosting Large Parties

The social distance element is a completely different matter and that's why the schools shut. But teaching kids to wear masks during a pandemic is no different to teaching them to put on seat belts in the car. A simple: "no mask, no outing" approach is all it takes. As an ex-schoolteacher, I know what I'm talking about. Parents often let kids down by pampering them unnecessarily and trying to be their friend instead of their parent.