Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

xxposts remember the anti-hand sanitizer "you don't need that shit, just use soap" folks?

?? I don't remember these folks but this is true? I've carried a little dispenser for a year, and was using it after touching any public surfaces for the first few months (when surface transmission hadn't been ruled so unlikely, and I was still more apt to touch my mask). I still use public countertop dispensers when they're around, as much as a signal of consideration toward retail staff as anything. but hand sanitiser when you re-enter a domicile is not necessary if you wash your hands properly.

(the last time we had humans visit, when it looked like socialising would be happening in people's homes for 3 months instead of not at all for a year, I put out multiple dispensers and little takeaway ones. this weekend, my vaccinated household is having a vaccinated couple and their new kittens over, arriving by car, and I'll still put out one hand sanitiser out for general use. but soap works!)

I thought soap was more effective than hand sanitizer, which you're mainly supposed to use when soap isn't readily available?

I never use sanitizer at home. That's what soap is for -- to help us through it.

I use sanitizer at the office and in the car.

I mean "you don't NEED sanitizer" is true, but a lot of people were essentially suggesting it was useless because it's antibacterial and COVID-19 is a virus, but in lieu of soap and water, any hand sanitizer at least 60% alcohol can likely help clean your hands of virus.

I personally don't use it much because I prefer soap anyway and there aren't many moments where I don't have it handy or available. but I use it when it's my only option.

i had a few friends telling other friends "don't buy hand sanitizer, it won't work" as opposed to "hand sanitizer shouldn't be your primary, use it only when you don't have soap".

Great New Yorker article from 2013 worth a read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/04/hands-across-america

One reason that hand-washing-compliance rates among doctors and nurses have been scandalously low—in some cases, just twenty per cent of the recommended frequency—is that repeated washing with soap and water can be very hard on hands. A study in the nineteen-nineties showed that, after a group of nurses who washed primarily with soap and water began using Purell, their skin condition improved. Gojo recently conducted a test with nurses who used Purell Advanced a hundred times a day for a month. At the end of that period, their skin was in better condition than it had been at the start, and had high moisture content and less visible irritation. Arbogast said that hand rubs are also more efficient. “With soap and water, you lose time going to the sink, and you lose time drying and walking back from the sink,” he said. “But with a hand rub doctors and nurses can get some and then perform hand hygiene while they’re walking to the next patient.”

Gojo has never marketed Purell as an anti-soap; indeed, the company also sells some of the most widely used soaps in health care, food service, and other industries. But, starting in the nineteen-nineties, a number of studies demonstrated that alcohol hand rubs could be more effective than ordinary washing. In 2002, the C.D.C., after reviewing the accumulating science, rewrote its “Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings.” The C.D.C.’s report concluded that alcohol-based products were “more effective for standard handwashing or hand antisepsis . . . than soap or antimicrobial soaps,” and that alcohol-based products were better at killing drug-resistant pathogens than even soaps and detergents containing powerful antibacterial agents. Seven years later, the World Health Organization issued similar guidelines, and said that alcohol rubs should now be considered the preferred cleaning agent for all medical workers, including surgeons, whose hands are not visibly soiled.

In 2005, the Army, in conjunction with Gojo, conducted a study of the efficacy of Purell outside health care. (The military is a rich source of subjects for such studies, because it consists of large cohorts of closely matched individuals who do what they’re told.) Historically, illness and infection have felled more soldiers than weapons have. The Army had already imposed a stringent hygiene protocol for new recruits, but illness-related absenteeism during boot camp remained high and was costly. Arbogast, who worked on the study, told me that the Army “didn’t want soldiers to get partway through the training and then get knocked out due to illness.” Gojo installed Purell wall dispensers in mess halls and other strategic locations, and designed a bottle that would fit in a uniform pocket, survive a parachute jump, blend in with camouflage, and not stand out when viewed with a night-vision scope. (It looks like a small green hand grenade.) After thirteen weeks, the Army found that two test battalions had experienced forty per cent less respiratory illness than the control group, forty-eight per cent less gastrointestinal illness, and forty-four per cent less lost training time. The military is now a significant Gojo customer. Michael Dolan, who is the company’s vice-president for science and technology, said, “It’s hard to go through boot camp today without being exposed to Purell.”

Of course, it's possible this is all outdated, especially in the context of covid.

I read that article with much interest at the time. I wash and sanitize pretty fastidiously, have since I was teaching in person while undergoing chemo and there was a mumps outbreak at my institution (2019).

I use antibiotics very sparingly because of the whole "creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs" thing, but I don't get judgy about individuals using sanitizers here and there.

I too don't get judgy about individuals doing something completely unrelated to antibiotics because of my opinions about antibiotics.

Sanitizer is effective against covid because the alcohol kills it, not because of any specifically antibacterial properties

Well of course, COVID's a virus

Pssh, there are a lot of people who make a good living going viral. I mean, come on, Tik Tok.

Got my injection yesterday, all good

So one of my closest friends, her brother and sister-in-law, and the sis-in-law's mom tested positive. Mild symptoms: lowgrade fever, slight cough, loss of taste.

Here's the rub: they suspect the sis-in-law's mom brought it -- and she got her second vaccine in late February. So even vaccinated ya gotta be careful.

This is atrociously bad. Maybe don’t take this advice from an economist. https://t.co/QaS9vXwL5v

— Ed MD (@notdred) March 19, 2021

xp Also possible she got the virus during that three-week period where it's not fully effective

Isn't it two weeks?

But you're right.

it's two based on everything i've ever read

Yeah, supposedly two weeks for immunity to kick in, which starting in late February more or less takes us to about ... now. Give or take.

mb, you're all right - 2 weeks

tf with that tweet

"naturally protected", yeeeeeeaaa that's not based in science at all. there have been plenty of kids who have gotten hospitalized for COVID, some have even died. sure, it's unlikely the latter will happen, but over 2 million children have had it, that's not "natural protection".

This was useful perspective:

https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/

Imo, I think Oster has been relatively level-headed about this kind of acceptable risk management from the start of this. There may be no clinical basis to "naturally protected," but as she observes, "Being a child aged 5 to 17 is 99.9 percent protective against the risk of death and 98 percent .. against hospitalization." Which is on par with or better than the protections accorded by any vaccine. The question no one knows the answer to yet is why.

What about asymptomatic infection and transmission, though? There's evidence coming in that at least some of the vaccines protect against asymptomatic infections as well as symptomatic ones; do we have similar evidence about kids?

just to be clear 98% “protection” against hospitalisation means 1 in 50 kids will be hospitalised after becoming symptomatic? have i got that right? ya feelin lucky??

isn't the real concern less that kids will die from the Vid and more that "only 12% of the country is fully vaccinated, and they could get other adults sick if you take them on a trip"?

idk that I would like, blanket condemn a trip depending on what precautions were taken and how the travel was done, but.....y'know. I feel like saying "natural protection" suggests a settled science that I don't really think IS actually settled.

to wit: https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/30/archdischild-2020-320338

Whether children are also less often infected by SARS-CoV-2 is an ongoing debate. Large epidemiological studies suggest that children comprise only 1 to 2% of all SARS-CoV-2 cases.6–8 However, these numbers heavily depend on testing criteria and, in many reports, testing was done only in individuals who were symptomatic or required hospitalisation, which is less often the case for children. Some studies suggest that children are just as likely as adults to become infected with SARS-CoV-2.9 However, more recent studies report that children are less likely to get infected after contact with a SARS-CoV-2-positive individual.10–14 It has been suggested that children and adolescents have similar viral loads15 16 and may therefore be as likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 as adults.17 18 In addition, the viral load may be similar in asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals.19–21 However, reassuringly, transmission in schools from children either to other children or to adults has been rare.22–24

I don’t weigh in much on the school reopening issue, because others are better suited to do it than I am. But this is pretty much where I stand too. https://t.co/G1KtSthPnD

— Ed MD (@notdred) March 19, 2021

ya feelin lucky??

Yes? No? I don't know? As I just read re: covid that "the rates of hospitalization, ICU admission and need for mechanical ventilation were not statistically worse than for young people with the flu." That is, around the same number of kids go to the hospital for covid as for the flu in a typical year, and the annual mortality rate (in a typical year) is iirc pretty similar as well. Now, adults, older teens and up? The covid stats are *much* worse and get worse the older you get. But younger kids don't appear to be in any more danger from covid than they are from a typical flu year. No idea why this is, and for sure "natural immunity" is not the answer, even if the trends are akin. I mean, I have kids, and I don't want them to get sick, so if any of you have seen different numbers, please let me know.

As for asymptotic transmission from kids to adults, that definitely seems much more unsettled. I wouldn't do any real travel with kids right now, I didn't even make it that for in that article/thread/debate. I was just talking about kids and covid generally.

I am realizing, though, that I have a lot of residual anger from the very early days - February and March - when it felt like I was constantly trying desperately to tell people that this was A Thing and was getting nowhere.

I remember your posts a year ago convincing me (gradually!) that this was going to affect everyone's lives and that we would all have to take it seriously

yeah that oster piece is deranged. and i like her work!

Strongly disagree with this article. Kids are definitely not "like your vaccinated grandparent." Here's why: a ragey thread. https://t.co/BBgof7jJxA

— Dr. Tara C. Smith (@aetiology) March 19, 2021

Plenty of people have talked about how problematic this article can be, but I would also like to point out two examples in the article where data and information was distorted in a completely disingenuous way to support the author's conclusionhttps://t.co/4JafjCV9WO

— Quang Nguyen (@quangpmnguyen) March 19, 2021

second of those tweets starts a thread that might answer your question about the probabilities oster cites tracer

suggest ban anyone using "ragey"

xpost Yeah, I usually like Oster, too. Still, thanks for linking, all interesting stuff. I'll be first in line to get my kids vaccinated when I can; them being unlikely to get seriously ill is no substitute for inoculation backed up by clinical studies (even if them unlikely to get seriously ill does provide some comfort). I don't know what the target for acceptable risk of transmission or infection is, though. Zero?

Oster almost certainly didn't write that headline, which I think is the thing about the piece that's really sticking in peoples' craw

I read anecdotally about a person who tested for COVID a day before his second vaccine, got the vaccine the next day, and the results of the COVID test: positive. What are the chances of this?

Probably about as good as catching covid, right?

sincere apologies for my tantrum the other night. it’s no excuse but I’ve been having a rough go on multiple fronts irl (as we all are, like I said, no excuse). There’s just so much stuff that fills me with atomic rage these days and I’m being knocked around from all directions irl but it’s absolutely no excuse for being a fucking shithead to people online and I’m extremely sorry especially to Dan S and table, both who (whom?) I honestly have nothing against.

Probably about as good as catching covid, right?

― Josh in Chicago,

Well, I also read you should put off getting the second vaccine if you test positive.

Oster almost certainly didn't write that headline, which I think is the thing about the piece that's really sticking in peoples' craw

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, March 19, 2021 2:08 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yup, she said in her newsletter this morning "Read the whole article before you yell at me, please!"

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that children are at low risk of hospitalization and death from COVID. Oster's analogy to a vaccinated adult was kind of clumsy and unhelpful, but her percentages are likely accurate. It's bizarre for that person to act like it's hard to find data to back this claim up just because he couldn't find the underlying data the CDC page used to calculate relative risk. For example:

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html -- data from ten states, weekly hospitalizations per 100k by age. Data consists of "laboratory-confirmed COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in children (less than 18 years of age) and adults" from "nearly 100 counties in the 10 Emerging Infections Program (EIP) states (CA, CO, CT, GA, MD, MN, NM, NY, OR, TN) and four Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Project (IHSP) states (IA, MI, OH, and UT)." Although the caption notes that the data are "likely to be underestimated" because it's hard to capture every single hospitalization, the hospitalization rate for the 5-17 age group has pretty consistently been around 1 per 100k, even at the peaks of the pandemic. In fact, it's pretty remarkable that, even when there were massive spikes in hospitalizations of other age groups, child hospitalizations remained very low.

Also, this is a ridiculous statement:

As an aside, just because your relative risk might be low, doesn't mean that NO ONE is being hospitalized/facing death. The latest data from the COVKID project indicates that at least 4.6 kids per 1,000 reported cases are hospitalized, and this is AN UNDERCOUNT

— Quang Nguyen (@quangpmnguyen) March 19, 2021

Of course it's not "impossible" for a child to be hospitalized for COVID. So what? It's not impossible for a child to drown in a swimming pool either (in fact it's as least as likely as dying from COVID) - should kids never swim again?

Guilty feet have got no fins.

That's one tweak away from an a+ pun.

I mean, my god, even if it's double that, say 10 hospitalizations per reported cases, that's 1/100 reported cases. And hospitalized =/= critical care or ICU, in fact most of the time it doesn't. My daughter was hospitalized with pneumonia once. It sucked, but she was never on oxygen or in critical care, it was over in two days, and I wouldn't make dramatic changes to our lifestyle to prevent any outside chance that it happens again.

Also, I don't want to get hugely into this, but before someone says "child long covid," I have spent a lot of time trying to find credible evidence that it's widespread, and there just isn't much.

*10 hospitalizations per 1000 reported cases.

That's why I asked what the goal is, because if the goal is zero cases, zero transmission, who knows when we're going to get to that.

we're not. the question is how much risk is enough risk for educators/janitors/children and who gets to decide that.

we're not. the question is how much risk is enough risk for educators/janitors/children and who gets to decide that.

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Friday, March 19, 2021 1:47 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In this case the discussion was about vacations rather than schools. However, once every educator and janitor who wants the vaccine has the opportunity to get it, the risk for kids is low enough that it seems absurd not to have full time school.

As far as vacations, while I'm not planning one anytime soon, I don't think there are a lot of likely high risk scenarios created by vaccinated parents traveling with kids. I mean maybe if you want to be extra careful avoid crowded restaurants and try to eat outside/plan mostly outdoor activities?