Coronavirus and Pandemics

It's a 6-minute story from NPR, fascinating: Planet Money: The Parable Of The Piston : NPRTried to embed, didn't work.--Percy

This has several stories, click on play and go to time 15:35 for the story on masks: This report still includes the nonsense that a mask only prevents virus from leaving someone's mouth and nose, not from entering someone else's mouth and nose. "The cloth mask does not protect the wearer," says the interviewee. This is false, strikingly obviously false. The fallacy is so obvious and so simple it's almost difficult to explain.Let's say an infected person isn't wearing a mask and breathes or coughs or sneezes virus into the air. You *are* wearing a mask, but the interviewee is saying it doesn't prevent the virus from getting through, even though if the infected person had instead been wearing the mask it *would* have prevented the virus from getting through. That's contradictory and so must be false.I can't believe it takes so many words to explain something so simple. Can someone explain this in a brief ten words or so? Or if I'm wrong explain why I'm wrong?The interviewee is incredibly evasive at the end. The interviewer asks if she should wear a mask when she goes to the grocery store or takes out the trash, and whether the interviewee wears a mask. The interviewee answers a completely different question.--Percy

Omigod, of course. I have about 10 square feet of furnace microfilter material in the basement. Can you find out what kind they're using?--Percy

It's come to this: Liberal San Francisco Bay Area bans reusable grocery bags - POLITICO, reports Politico. This is a mistake.The reasoning for why it's a mistake goes like this. When you visit a grocery store it is safe to assume you are entering a building that infected people have visited. Grocery stores should be assumed to be hotbeds of coronavirus because they are visited by hundreds of people a day, some percentage of which are infected.All surfaces in the grocery store will have coronavirus on them, including the plastic bags they provide. They sit there 24 hours a day every single day. When you bring one home you are bringing home plastic upon which coronavirus have been depositing for days and days. It has been widely reported that virus can live for up to 72 hours on polypropylene plastic. Grocery bags are made from polyethylene plastic, but it's not too chemically dissimilar from polypropylene. The backbone of polypropylene bonds alternately to H and CH₃, while the backbone of polyethylene bonds only to H.When you bring home a grocery store bag you are bringing into your home a bag steeped in coronavirus for days. When you bring your reuseable bag into the grocery store it is only there an hour.If the grocery store allows reuseable bags into the store then they risk allowing in ones that were in an infected environment, but the person carrying those bags was also in the infected environment and may even be infected themselves, so the increase in risk is nil.Grocery stores are only making things worse by banning reuseable bags.The grocery stores in our area have banned reuseable bags. They've also instituted maximum occupancy limitations, which makes sense.--Percy

Thanks for the info. Oddly, Home Depot is out of stock of all highly rated furnace filters while Lowe's has plenty in stock.--Percy

I've never worn a standard surgical mask so I don't know what they're like. If they're cloth then they should survive ethanol fine. If they're more a paper product then I don't think they'd hold up very well.But you might not need ethanol if it's true that the virus dies by itself outside the body, depending upon type of surface, 24 hours for cardboard, up to 72 hours for polypropylene plastic and stainless steel. We've been cycling our masks, using one and then letting it sit untouched for three days in the garage. Wear and tear on our masks is not great because we never wear them for more than a couple hours.What I've read about mask reuse was specific to N95. I think I posted this before, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it. A significant portion of N95's effectiveness against actual virus (rather than virus contained in droplets) is an electrostatic property. Isopropyl alcohol greatly diminishes the electrostatic quality, and getting wet also significantly degrades the masks physical stiffness. I think the article I read said about 5 treatments with alcohol was the limit.About the aerosol qualities of exhalations, coughs and sneezes, my own opinion is that they all include droplets and air that vary from large droplets containing entire flora all the way down to mere individual molecules, bacteria and virus. I haven't seen my view shared by anyone else, either here or in the press, but if we don't breath out a wide range of sizes of "stuff" then I'd need it explained to me by someone knowledgable why that doesn't happen, and even then I might not believe it. Also, one investigation I read about found detectable levels of coronavirus persisting in the air for up to 30 minutes after aerosolizing.AbE: From This is How Long Coronavirus Can Survive on Plastic, Cardboard and in the Air:

quote:

---

As well as looking at the virus' viability on certain substances, the team looked at how long the virus can remain active in the air. Tests suggest it can remain airborne for up to three hours after aerosolization, explaining how mass gatherings can lead to multiple infections. Take for example, the dozens of people in Boston who are believed to have been infected at a Biogens conference.

---

--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

This might be a very useful suggestion. Coronavirus survives for less than 15 minutes when exposed to a temperature of 132°F. It seems like masks should survive that just fine, though I'm not sure about the elastics. If someone tries this please let us know how it goes. If you don't use your oven often be very cautious about the temperature setting. Kitchen oven temperature settings are often very inaccurate. A 50 degree discrepancy is not uncommon.--Percy

From Commander of confusion: Trump sows uncertainty and seeks to cast blame in coronavirus crisis in today's Washington Post:

quote:

---

In the three weeks since declaring the novel coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, President Trump has delivered a dizzying array of rhetorical contortions, sowed confusion and repeatedly sought to cast blame on others.

​

History has never known a crisis response as strong as his own, Trump says yet the self-described wartime president claims he is merely backup. He has faulted governors for acting too slowly and, as he did Thursday, has accused overwhelmed state and hospital officials of complaining too much and of hoarding supplies.

​

America is winning its war with the coronavirus, the president says yet the death toll rises still, and in the best-case scenario more Americans will die than in the wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

​

The economy is the strongest ever and will rebound in no time, he says yet stock markets have cratered and in the past two weeks a record 10 million people filed for unemployment insurance.

​

As Trump has sought to remake his public image from that of a skeptic of the pandemic’s danger to a savior forestalling catastrophe and protecting hundreds of thousands of people from a vicious contagion, he also has distorted the truth, making edits and creating illusions at many turns.

​

Trump’s machinations have a dogged showman’s quality, using his omnipresence at daily White House news conferences which sometimes stretch two hours or more and are broadcast to millions to try to erase memories from his two months of playing down the crisis. He sometimes scolds reporters who question his version of events.
...
The result is chaotic...

---

This long opinion piece summarizes what many have been saying all along: Trump downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic from when it first appeared until just a couple weeks ago, accepts no responsibility and assigns all blame to others, and he refuses to let the federal government lead a centralized and coordinated effort to acquire PPE, ventilators and other hospital equipment and allocate them and associated manpower to the states as needed. That the hospital ship in New York has only 15 patients speaks volumes - all potential hospital ship patients must first go to the hospital and be certified free of coronavirus infection.It is very difficult to make Trump move to take positive action, and he seems to be trying to position himself for minimum blame. His story during the election will be, "The states were responsible for that and they did very poor job, except for the red states, whose support I need."--Percy

What to know about the risks of restaurant takeout and delivery and how to minimize them is a mostly excellent article about the safety of takeout and delivered food.I only fault the article in one place, and that's where it cites the CDC in deeming food itself safe. Anyone who remembers past E. coli epidemics where bacteria is transmitted on food like lettuce and meat will also doubt this contention. If virus somehow dies or becomes inactive when it comes in contact with food then someone is going to have to prove it to me. Until then it is my firm belief that if an infected person coughs on your salad that you have a good chance of becoming infected yourself.My advice is to order no cold takeout or delivered food. Order hot food then heat it again in the microwave or oven after it arrives.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.Edited by Percy, : Typo in title.

Apologies for no post of the graph yesterday. I did create the graph image but must have gotten distracted before I had a chance to post it. Here are yesterday's and today's graphs: And here's my projections with those figures for comparison. My projections are falling further and further behind: But I'm going to change tack going forward and use the death projections for the US from COVID-19. Here's the projection graph as of three days ago. The graph is active at the webpage. If you hover over it you'll see figures. And I've created a new table of US deaths that begins on April 1 to see how well the projections hold up. These are the projection figures from their 4/1/2020 graph: By the way, if you're wondering if Jared Kushner's declaration that the states don't really need all those ventilators, the vast majority of people who die will do so while connected to a ventilator. Look at those numbers and tell me the states don't need tens and tens of thousands of ventilators.It's important to remember why I'm doing this. A while back Faith declared that no one knows what's gong to happen, that it's all just hypothetical speculation trying to make Trump bad. Trump's estimates of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths has been questioned not because his underlying data is wrong but because he won't make his underlying data available. The scientists on his team, particularly Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, should be resigning in protest. They probably believe it important that they remain on his team in order to minimize the damage he does, but everyone around Trump has had that plan, and it hasn't worked for any of them. He lines experts up behind him as if they support what he says, and if they contradict in too overt a way then they disappear. Anyone here want to bet that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx will still be making podium appearances by the end of April?Or will even Trump be giving daily coronavirus briefings? He's done a number of consecutive daily briefings now, but only because he can treat them like campaign appearances. If and when their campaign aspect diminishes he will lose interest and stop attending, or these White House "briefings" will cease altogether.But that's why I post these data and projections, to show that we do know plenty, and that we make reliable projections that hold up pretty well. Dr Fauci is correct when he says we can't know with any certainty, that it is the virus driving the data and we can only follow it, but our projections are still pretty accurate and very useful.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

From Turbulent Gas Clouds and Respiratory Pathogen Emissions: Potential Implications for Reducing Transmission of COVID-19 | Infectious Diseases | JAMA | JAMA Network:

quote:

---

Recent work has demonstrated that exhalations, sneezes, and coughs not only consist of mucosalivary droplets following short-range semiballistic emission trajectories but, importantly, are primarily made of a multiphase turbulent gas (a puff) cloud that entrains ambient air and traps and carries within it clusters of droplets with a continuum of droplet sizes.

---

Oh, geez, like where did I see that in like five or six messages in this thread? Messages from me, maybe?This isn't rocket science. You don't need a scientific study to tell you that droplet sizes have to range all over the map. It's just common sense, because our mouths are not some kind of super-precise atomizer dispensing precisely sized droplets.The news is still advising that everyone should wear masks because anyone could be the person who's infected, including you. But as I keep saying, if a mask can prevent a droplet from exiting a mouth it can also prevent one from entering. Everyone should wear masks to prevent infection in both directions.New news from To help stop coronavirus, everyone should be wearing face masks. The science is clear | Jeremy Howard | The Guardian: There is now no doubt that people are most contagious during the period when they're without symptoms or have minimal symptoms.If I haven't mentioned footwear before I should have. Large droplets do sink quickly to the floor, like in grocery stores and such. This means that after a visit to the grocery store your footwear could be a veritable nation of virus. When you get home set the shoes aside somewhere outside (the garage, under an awning, a rarely used spare room, but not in living spaces) for three days before wearing again. Alternatively, if you have it, spray them with isopropyl alcohol and rub it in. It they're washable, like flip-flops, wash them.The USTA is advising people to cease playing tennis until the critical period has passed. I think this is way overkill, but you do have to take precautions. I've described these before, but anyway, upon entering spray everyone's hands with isopropyl alcohol and then provide moisturizing lotion. Alternatively use hand sanitizer, but that is very difficult to come by these days. I avoid playing doubles, I don't want anyone on the same side as me, too much potential for close approaches to someone who might be breathing heavily. But today we've decided to hit threes (two on one side, one on the other), but we're only hitting, not playing, and people on the doubles side will position themselves in the alleys about 20 feet apart. This is sort of an experiment, if it doesn't work well (too many close approaches) I won't try it again.--Percy

Trump Says He Wants to Keep People Off Ventilators in Favor of Unproven Drug Combination, reports Newsweek. At yesterday's coronavirus press briefing, just minutes after Fauci described the process of approving drugs for new uses, Trump said:

quote:

---

One of the reasons that I keep talking about hydroxychloroquine is that the question that nobody ever asks, and the question that I most hate the answer to, is what happens if you do have a ventilator.

​

But when you have a ventilator... and it's working beautifully, I don't like the answer because it's not a very high percentage.

​

So I want to keep them out of ventilators, I want to keep them -- if this drug works, it will be not a game changer because that's not a nice enough term. It will be wonderful, it'll be so beautiful, it'll be a gift from heaven if it works, because when people go into those ventilators, you know the answers, and I'm glad you don't write about it.

---

The president was completely confusing about ventilators, but he was very clear about hydroxychloroquine. He describes it as "wonderful," "beautiful," "a gift from heaven."We need a president who understands what the scientists are saying, who helps project that message, and who sees the federal government as playing a central role in disasters.We do not need a president who can't construct logically consistent sentences, who contradicts his own scientists, who squabbles with and insults governors, and who thinks the states run the country when things go bad but that the federal government runs the country when things go well.--Percy

All news outlets reported Trump silencing truth: Trump blocks Fauci from answering question about drug Trump is touting.Just after Trump again promoted hydroxychloroquine Fauci was asked about the medical evidence for it. Trump interrupted and prevented Fauci from answering the question. Trump is muzzling truth.--Percy

Here's today's graph: The website with the mortality projections has been updated to April 5, here's their graph: Note that the number of projected deaths by August 4 has dropped from 93,531 to 81,766. Here's the table updated with their latest data so it can be seen how accurate their original projections were: The error should increase as we get further from April 1, the date of the original projection, but the error so far ranges from 1.7% to 4.4%. We do know a lot more than nothing. It isn't just hypothetical speculation. Notice that their projection substantially undercuts the Trump administration's projections of 100,000-240,000. By the end of May we will see how well a two month old projection held up over time.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Widen images.Edited by Percy, : Typo.Edited by Percy, : Change mortality graph URL.

In all likelihood a coronavirus vaccine will not be available until next summer over a year from now. How do we reopen the country soon (around May or so) while making certain that as few people as possible become infected?The answer is masks. We must become a country of masks. Everyone everywhere must wear a mask when out and about among people. People can work in offices with their masks. People can work on construction sites and loading docks and drive buses and so forth while wearing masks. Professional sports can resume when the rapid test becomes available to them. Players could take the floor without a mask if they test negative that day. All fans must wear masks. Eating and drinking would not be allowed.This solution means that the government's top priority must be production of high quality masks, preferably N95, but anything is far better than nothing. There must be enough masks for everyone to have a clean new mask every day. That's 325 million masks per day.Can we do this? You would think that the country that within months of Pearl Harbor found a way to bomb Tokyo and within a year was churning out tanks, ships and planes could rapidly ramp up production of something so simple as a mask, but this is beyond the Trump administration's ability to conceive or achieve.To reopen the country we will have to rely on homemade masks, which when made from cloth can be washed. Here at our house we've been making and supplying masks to friends and the local hospital (full disclosure: my wife is the sewing talent, my contribution of finding and inserting the filter material is minor). It shouldn't be hard to get a decent mask.When you vote this fall, if you understand that the country's safety and security is not in competent hands, if you realize that Trump is only the president of those who give him fealty (something he not only makes no attempt to hide but shouts from the rooftops), then you must vote in a way that insures Trump is turned out of office. We need someone who is president of all the country, not just the portion that voted for him. Turning Trump out of office doesn't mean voting for the green candidate or casting a protest vote for Bernie.--PercyPS: Restaurants and bars remain an issue because it's not possible to eat or drink while wearing a mask. Perhaps they can be opened to people bearing an electronic card that indicates that they've tested negative that day.