Covid19

[Too Tall]

One meeting in Boston spread the virus to 20,000 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/h...e=articleShare

Researchers identified the Boston mutation in samples collected later in Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan. Overseas, it turned up in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Chaos theory hello.

[ides1056]

I dropped a load of wood off at the house of some old friends yesterday. Both had Covid in March, and have the antibodies to prove it. Arnie is 94, and Andrea a bit younger.

It's a genetic crap-shoot.

[Too Tall]

I dropped a load of wood off at the house of some old friends yesterday. Both had Covid in March, and have the antibodies to prove it. Arnie is 94, and Andrea a bit younger.

It's a genetic crap-shoot.

Go to heaven three times.

[davids]

One meeting in Boston spread the virus to 20,000 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/h...e=articleShare

Researchers identified the Boston mutation in samples collected later in Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan. Overseas, it turned up in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Ten days later I ate dinner with a friend at a local pub and ran into another friend, a VSalonista. I gave that guy a big hug, maybe right before he told me he'd had drinks with some of those attendees.

As far as I know, neither of us got COVID. But both sons of another friend got it, after sharing a car with another attendee.

That evening was also the last time I've been in a restaurant. The world caught fire that Friday.

[ides1056]

Go to heaven three times.

Arnie's family left Germany in 1938. I was reading Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone, and learned for the first time the Nazis named all male Jews Isaac, and female Sarah. When I mentioned this to him he confirmed his name had been Isaac Arnold Simmel.

Luck counts.

[Too Tall]

Arnie's family left Germany in 1938. I was reading Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone, and learned for the first time the Nazis named all male Jews Isaac, and female Sarah. When I mentioned this to him he confirmed his name had been Isaac Arnold Simmel.

Luck counts.

Israel and Sara but yeah good grief.
You are a good man.

[beeatnik]

The first child to be infected in France had contact with over 200 individuals and didn't infect anyone, including his siblings. IRC, the siblings and the child with Covid-19 also tested positive for flu. Life's a trip que no?

[bigbill]

We took a week-long vacation last week through Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Montana was very strict about face coverings, Wyoming somewhat, and South Dakota, not at all. I found it interesting that post-Sturgis, which attracted 400K people, only 100 cases nationwide have been attributed to the event. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronav...ases-8-states/ In the Karma world, my girlfriend had some friends in Deadwood that were on social media making fun of people wearing masks but were both home with Covid when we were in town.

Where I live in NW Arizona, the rates have dropped off dramatically. https://covid-19-mohave.hub.arcgis.com/

[beeatnik]

Fake news aka can rags report good news?

I keed.

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ronavirus-data

The infection starts with a sniffle. Next comes a barking cough. Soon, there’s a fever, maybe vomiting and diarrhea, possibly an ear infection or tonsillitis or pink eye.

These are common symptoms in preschool, where viral outbreaks are as ubiquitous as finger paints and apple juice. In a typical year, an otherwise healthy preschooler will bring home 12 to 18 upper respiratory infections — at least six to eight colds, two cases of croup and, more often than not, a bout of the flu, among others.

But 2020 is not a typical year, and SARS-CoV-2 — the technical term for the novel coronavirus — is no day-care germ. Now, with hundreds of large centers reopening across California, many families are asking: Is preschool safe?

“That’s the big question,” said Dr. Nava Yeganeh, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA and a preschool mom. “We can’t mitigate risk down to zero, but it seems like in general preschools have done very well.”

Though scientists can still only guess at why, a growing body of evidence suggests preschoolers are uniquely resilient to the novel coronavirus. Recent studies from the U.S., U.K., Singapore and Australia, among others, suggest they are far less likely to contract and spread the illness than older children, and dramatically less likely to get sick from it than children even slightly older or younger.

“This is the most bizarre virus,” said Dr. Naomi Bardach, a professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco. “Normally we think about kids getting coughs and colds all the time and giving it to each other all the time, and [giving] it to their teachers. In this disease, it’s a totally different model.”

Los Angeles County recorded half the number of infections in children under 5 compared with those aged 5 to 11. Nationally, just 8.7% of children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. were between 2 and 4, while more than 40% were between 12 and 17 and almost 20% were newborns aged less than 3 months, an Aug. 7 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated.

Children 18 and under make up about 0.01% of patients hospitalized with the virus, and 0.0005% of associated mortalities, data show. About one and a half times as many children died of the 2018-2019 flu, though that flu killed 80% fewer people overall.

Those statistics are even more striking because unlike infants and older children, hundreds of thousands of preschoolers have been in their classrooms since March. In California alone, 33,773 preschools and day cares are open — almost 80% of the pre-pandemic total — yet state data show that only about 450 students have tested positive for the virus in the past six months. Even when caregivers and parents are counted, the overwhelming majority of preschools and day-care centers have not reported a single case.

“California has been really very cautious and very thoughtful,” Yeganeh said. “We are being very strict and trying to mitigate risk as much as possible.”

In fact, California has instituted some of the most stringent viral containment measures in the country, which is why experts believe many fewer preschoolers have fallen sick here than in Texas or Florida, despite those states’ smaller populations and fewer open child-care centers.

Here, parents are barred from the classroom, rugs and soft toys are frowned upon, and children 2 and up are expected to wear masks at all times.

“We had them practice at home so it wasn’t their first experience with wearing a mask,” said Paola Cervantes, executive director of Voyages Preschool in Mar Vista, who reconfigured her classrooms so that children could spend the whole day outside. “They tell us at this point, ‘I touched my mask, can I have hand sanitizer?’ [or] ‘I licked it, can I have a clean one?’”

The toddlers playing in Voyages’ outdoor “mud kitchen” on a recent sunny morning seemed to have no trouble keeping their masks on or sharing their excitement from six feet apart — to them, Cervantes explained, masks have become like helmets or seat belts, beyond reproach. Students quickly learned to “blow hugs” to one another and stand in distanced chalk hearts while they wait to wash for lunch. Few seem to notice that the bathroom is sanitized each time they use it, or that toys disappear the moment they drop them.

“We have a lot of the same materials, so we split them,” Cervantes said. “It’s kind of like TV magic — while these are disinfecting, I bring the other ones out.”

Le Petit Gan in Beverly Hills has taken this practice one step further since reopening in May. Toddlers rush to deposit their Magna-Tiles and plastic dinosaurs into the “dirty box” the moment they’ve finished playing with them.


“They go in the oven,” 3-year-old Henry explained as he tossed plastic vegetables into a pot at the preschool’s play kitchen. “And then they go in the washing machine.”

So far, the precautions appear to be working. In L.A. County, more than 7,000 child-care facilities are open and fewer than 100 students have tested positive for the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. Among staff, that number is closer to 150.

The ratio is similar statewide. Only a fraction of a percent of the child-care workforce has contracted the virus, yet infected teachers far outnumber infected students, although students are many times more numerous.

“What we don’t know from the data is whether, or the extent to which, cases have been transmitted among adults in child-care settings, or whether the adults have been exposed elsewhere,” said Lea Austin, director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. (Experts say child-to-adult transmission appears rare.)

Still, many parents wavered. Unlike in some other states, California’s preschools and day cares are open to all families, not just those of front-line workers. Statewide, 6% of open programs serve no essential workers at all, and many parents who can work from home have debated keeping their preschoolers home with them, especially after large school districts across the country announced they would not return to classrooms in the fall.

“When LAUSD said they were not going to open, that was a huge trigger for parents,” said Luisa Donati, executive director of Cassidy Preschool in Santa Monica and head of the Los Angeles Preschool Partnership, a consortium of 150 local preschools. “I had to explain to them, when state officials say ‘schools,’ you think they’re talking about your preschooler, but to the government, ‘school’ is K-12.”

About 10% of Donati’s former students will be learning remotely this fall. Le Petit Gan and Voyages also offer remote programming to children whose parents say they will not go back until they are vaccinated.

While rare, preschool outbreaks do happen. In the Singapore study, 16 teachers were infected at a single preschool, yet 77 children in their care all tested negative for the virus. (Eight of those children were symptomatic, meaning they probably had one of the 12 to 18 upper respiratory infections that preschoolers typically cycle through.)

Some experts think the answer may lie in ACE-2, an enzyme sometimes likened to a “keyhole” through which the coronavirus enters the body. Children under 10 have less of the enzyme in their nasal passages, which could be a source of their resistance.

Others think the virus may be more prevalent in small children than we realize, but that they may not be big enough to spread it through droplets or strong enough to aerosolize it when they cough and sneeze.

While the cause may still be a mystery, the effect is increasingly clear, experts say. There is a growing consensus among researchers that young children aren’t coronavirus “superspreaders,” and that their return to classrooms is unlikely to change the course of the pandemic, even in places where overall transmission is high.

“The real question is, if we let preschools stay open, are we increasing the risk of transmission beyond what would normally happen,” Bardach said. “And the data does not suggest that.”

Scientists know young children can catch SARS-CoV-2, and there’s evidence that those who show symptoms may have the same viral load as adults. So why don’t more of them get sick? And why don’t they spread it — either to each other or to caregivers — the way they spread colds and flus?

Still, many parents fear the worst, especially since the emergence of the terrifying Kawasaki-like multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C.

“There was a lot of concern around that,” Donati said.

But here, too, experts say fears may be inflated.

"[MIS-C] got reported a lot because it was new and it was scary, but it’s very, very, very rare,” Bardach said. “There are kids that get into the ICU with MIS-C, but our therapies are good enough that it doesn’t lead to death.”

So far, just 94 of the more than 180,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 have been minors. As with hospitalizations, the majority have been in older children, though national mortality data do not distinguish between kindergarten children and teenagers.

[Too Tall]

From Today's WaPo: Coronavirus update: Infections rise to more than 1,000 on University of Alabama campus.

Are there similar reports from other Nations?

[sk_tle]

In europe infections are raising again but for the most part it is still attributed to the turism and the fact that most people (including me) are ending up fed up with all the measures after more than 6 months of this shit and are becoming more and more indiferent to the potential risk and lift a bit our own guard.

School have started in most germanic influenced countries. Will start in 7 days in most other countries.

[gregl]

From Today's WaPo: Coronavirus update: Infections rise to more than 1,000 on University of Alabama campus.

Are there similar reports from other Nations?

Sort of from another nation... Here in CNY, the State University College in Oneonta had a significant (100+ cases) outbreak. Local and state officials stepped in very quickly with a united approach. Campus shut down for two weeks, medical 'SWAT team' sent in for testing and contact tracing, college and local government working together, students who led the social activities that caused the outbreak suspended. It will be interesting to see how the college-COVID experiment goes throughout the fall semester.

Greg

[sine]

From Today's WaPo: Coronavirus update: Infections rise to more than 1,000 on University of Alabama campus.

Are there similar reports from other Nations?

Universities in NC. Students are back home after just one week. All are under quarantine for two weeks......maybe.

[bcm119]

What is the latest on flying? I need to make a trip to New York next week. In true 2020 fashion, I'm faced with a cross country flight in order to help my brother after our mom went into a memory care home. It's a really tough decision because my brother has had a rough time, and my mom will be having a rough time in a care facility now, and they'd both benefit from seeing me. Of course I have to be there 14 days before I can even visit. And then there's the virus risk. We thought about driving, but the sum of all the little interactions driving cross country seem to be equal or greater than one 6 hour flight. I've read encouraging studies of air circulation in planes, but there's the jetway, the airport bathrooms, the airTrain (Newark is the worst)... not looking forward to it. Any recent experiences or tips?

[Tom]

Complacency is setting in. I don't go into public except to the grocery store, this weekend I saw way more people than in recent memory walking around with masks on their necks in the store. Five day rolling average for the county is climbing lately.

[gregl]

Complacency is setting in. I don't go into public except to the grocery store, this weekend I saw way more people than in recent memory walking around with masks on their necks in the store. Five day rolling average for the county is climbing lately.

Agreed on the complacency. I went into my favorite auto parts store over the weekend. Of the three staff members there, one was wearing his mask incorrectly (nose over the top of the mask) and two weren't wearing them at all. I e-mailed the store's regional manager asking her to please chat with her staff. I noted that if I felt uncomfortable in that store, likely others were uncomfortable as well. Better to give the staff a course correction than risk illness, bad publicity, and worst of all lost revenue... We've had similar issues at my workplace. Fortunately, we're a science-based company and all offenses were met with strict warnings. Employees are welcome to not wear masks - as soon as they leave the premises. This is going to be a rocky winter ahead...

Greg

[Saab2000]

What is the latest on flying? I need to make a trip to New York next week. In true 2020 fashion, I'm faced with a cross country flight in order to help my brother after our mom went into a memory care home. It's a really tough decision because my brother has had a rough time, and my mom will be having a rough time in a care facility now, and they'd both benefit from seeing me. Of course I have to be there 14 days before I can even visit. And then there's the virus risk. We thought about driving, but the sum of all the little interactions driving cross country seem to be equal or greater than one 6 hour flight. I've read encouraging studies of air circulation in planes, but there's the jetway, the airport bathrooms, the airTrain (Newark is the worst)... not looking forward to it. Any recent experiences or tips?

My carrier is not selling a full cabin, allowing a middle seat open between all passengers. Minimal in-flight service, staggered boarding in small groups to prevent a huge crowd forming in the jetway, mandatory masks at virtually all times, etc.

Check your favorite airline’s website for their current policies and practices. They’re not all following the same practices.

[thollandpe]

I've read encouraging studies of air circulation in planes, but there's the jetway, the airport bathrooms, the airTrain (Newark is the worst)...

What are those studies, and what is the air circulation on planes? There are objective criteria for this (airflow in air changes per hour, ACH, and filtration rating, MERV). And whether the space is flushed pre- or post-occupancy, or if the air is cleaned with UV or bipolar ionization.

There is guidance on this, specifically in regards to the airborne transmission of infectious aerosols from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), and I’m curious what’s being offered in this application//.

[sk_tle]

What I've read is that every 2 minutes the air in the cabin has been totally replaced by air from the outside which would mean less patogen stagnation ?? But what do I know I read this on twitter and I am not an expert.

[vertical_doug]

Just be paranoid. Wear a N95 mask and your glasses, bring wipes and hand sanitizer. Wipe everything down when you sit. If you hit the bathroom, just use the handsanitizer after and bring a wipe to open the door and stuff for inside the bathroom. Get a bottle of water at the airport.

I'm not sure if you want to fly over night red eye or during the day. I can't decide on which flight people will be better behaved. Overnight they may sleep, but you may also have a drunk covidiot. The only worse than a covidiot is a drunk covidiot. I am doing the same math about returning to London. I figure if you do all of this and it still gets you, it is eventually going to get everyone anyway.

When I flew back from London to NYC in March, I hung out with the Asian students. They knew how to behave and act in the airport. I avoided the MAGA hats, or in this case, the guys in the Irish Rugby jereys sans any PPE.