outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

It really is.
I was expecting a more coherent and consistent testing system by now, back in the Spring.
This was initially spreading because we don't know who has it - it's now spreading partly because even if you think there might be a possibility of you having it there aren't many incentives in place to do the right thing if this inconveniences/impoverishes you.

Cases per million people in the Midwest have surpassed both the early peak in the Northeast and the summer surge in the South. pic.twitter.com/MiHF4GBu9o

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) October 24, 2020

Ohio has a set a daily record for new cases everyday this week.

Holy shit that's some very frightening stuff.

Epidemiology twitter is starting to make noise that if an infection gets wildly uncontrolled then vaccines aren't much use, which is a frightening scenario.

MEADOWS: We're not going to control the pandemic

TAPPER: Why not?

M: Because it's a contagious virus

T: Why not make efforts to contain it?

M: What we need to do is make sure we have the proper mitigation factors to make sure people don't die pic.twitter.com/0DYgk4rB3T

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2020

Ghouls.

If it was a bacterial infection, we'd be all over this shit like 99 clowns in a tiny car

Epidemiology twitter is starting to make noise that if an infection gets wildly uncontrolled then vaccines aren't much use, which is a frightening scenario.

where community spread is high and vaccination efficacy is low

If it is true that the FDA plans certify any vaccine where trials show it is more than 50% effective, then that could be exactly where we end up.

It is exactly where we’re going to end up.

At warp speed.

based on politics/distrust of science/jenny mccarthy, ~40% of the USA will probably not take any vaccine which will lead to a grim dystopia straight out of the late middle ages.

this seems good:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/magazine/covid-natural-experiments.html

Cool article!

✈️NEW flight report on corona transmission on flights:

13 people appear to have been infected on a 7-hr flight to Ireland this summer, leading to 59 cases as passengers visited friends & family. The plane was at 17% capacity & required masks.https://t.co/7XrxTz5DRe pic.twitter.com/GhyHV1nGWR

— Amy Maxmen (@amymaxmen) October 26, 2020

that's freaky because the conventional wisdom = teh HEPA filters would filter the air which would probably protect those far away from infected cases, and usually those in the immediate rows around the infected were at higher risk, particularly if someone sneezed or wasn't wearing a mask, but there's a great degree of separation between the cases in the seats.

wonder if transmission was due to people unmasking to drink/eat for long periods of time, or from visiting the lavatory (either from fomites or coming in contact with someone leaving lavatory, etc).

serves as a reminder that air travel has risk too. I will admit to having taken a flight this year (I wore KN95 masks while I flew) but I wouldn't take a flight longer than 2 hours. probably won't do it at all ongoing tbh.

Every airplane seat already has those drop-down masks. Could we just make them mandatory for the whole flight, every flight?

It may, of course, not be on the plane where transmission occurred.

A lot of standing in line at security, to board, immigration etc. The whole airport experience seems a recipe for transmission.

This study has been doing the rounds, seems to confirm that risk of airborne transmission from seated passengers is pretty unlikely, but it doesn’t account for the rest of the flying experience.

https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/docs/TRANSCOM%20Report%20Final.pdf

In other news, shops, bars and restaurants will open in Melbourne tomorrow for the first time in nearly 3 months.

Jesus. Doctors in Liege with Covid asked to keep working if they have no symptoms to stop the hospital system collapsing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54688846

OK I definitely don't want to catch Covid-19, I've decided:

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-brains/covids-cognitive-costs-some-patients-brains-may-age-10-years-idUSL8N2HI38G

Ugh, that's all I need. I already feel like Charlie in the back half of Flowers for Algernon.

^think about this quite often

One cognitive study isn't enough to establish very much, but it sure seems to indicate something.

The Aimless of ten years ago would have explained that better.

jibes with earlier anecdotal reportage of “brain fog”

yeah I thought the brain fog part went away once you'd recovered

The Aimless of ten years ago would have explained that better.

I'll cop to that. Aging is not really reversible.

Brad Pitt would like a word with u

Look upon Robert Redford and behold Brad's future!

I'll cop to that. Aging is not really reversible.

Sorry. Cheap shot. I'm not spring chicken myself.

I have been feeling brain fog for a good few months now but it’s been hard to know if it’s some combo of stress+wfh+too-little-exercise+getting old or post-Covid but Christ I wish it’d go.

i know this is about justin turner and the world series last night, but i've removed all the baseball stuff, so don't be afraid, non-baseballers. i think this captures a lot about the current moment

The players gathered on the field in various states of face-covering. The winning team was at home, but wasn’t; they gathered in the middle of a dark, huge, faraway stadium, with fans spread haphazardly in the stands, some gathered in jubilant, worrying clusters. And as the trophies were about to be presented, the broadcast was interrupted by an announcement: Justin Turner, one of the most important members of this team for the past eight years, had exited the game mysteriously in the eighth inning. The reason for that exit, the public was somberly told, was that he had received a positive COVID-19 test.

But then, all of a sudden, it cut back to the field, to the smiling, hugging, weeping players, the speeches and the trophies and the booing and the cheering, just as if it was a normal World Series. Even Turner got his on-field shot with the trophy, despite being removed from the game to be isolated and prevent the spread of infection; even Turner joined the team for their group photo.

The pandemic rages on, even within the confines of the diamond: a place that so often attempts to shelter itself from the realities of living in society, that had been fighting to keep their bubble — or, at the very least, its appearance — intact. Turner’s test results from yesterday were, apparently, known to be positive in the second inning of tonight’s game. His test results from today were confirmed positive later. And yet, they kept playing baseball, right to the very end, through Game 6 of the World Series, with over 11,000 fans in attendance. The Dodgers, appearing in their third Fall Classic over the last four seasons, beat the Rays 3-1. In this truncated, bedeviled, dubious season, in a world rife with uncertainty, and heading into a dark and fearful winter, it was the best team in baseball that emerged victorious. And now, with Turner’s positive test and the questions it raises, the best team in baseball leaves their celebration not to celebrate further, but to rapid testing and quarantining — a shadow hanging over the sublime joy of a championship a long time in the making.

...It should be so satisfying, this story. And it was! And then, at the same time, it wasn’t — as Turner, having been instructed to isolate himself for the health of the public in the biggest moment of his life, ran around the field, sometimes masked and sometimes not, posing with the trophy and joining the team photo. “I didn’t touch him,” said Dave Roberts, the second Black and first Asian-American manager to win a World Series, and a cancer survivor whose health could be severely jeopardized by COVID. There was the overwhelming joy, the history of it all, and there was the fear, and there was moment of realization, the memory of all those shots of maskless fans under a closed roof, the deep unknown in the days ahead: What are we doing? What are we doing? All of it, all at the same time, all over again — for one last time in this tragic, maddening year.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-are-world-series-champions/

(emphasis in original)

and this reply (downvoted to hell) also captures a lot about the current moment:

dodgerbleu
I felt terrible for, and would be all for an article about Justin Turner and his test and him not being able to celebrate with his teammates. A separate story. Considering it’s their first World Series in 32 years, the focus probably should have been on that, and not COVID. You have nice prose. Just wish you were a baseball writer.

a baseball man woulda known COVID's just the flu!

So here's a Covid chart showing deaths in London, which of course suffered the worst of the outbreak in wave 1. https://t.co/aep6BrhV8m pic.twitter.com/h0RUAUPmKV

— Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) October 28, 2020

Has this been posted yet? It's a pretty good visualization of how he virus can spread with/without various safeguards:

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html

I saw that, and I thought it was quite interesting as long as it is understood as an explanation of how people *can* become infected in those scenarios and not a predictor of how many *will* become infected (which is potentially exaggerated by the illustrations).

Yeah, I suppose there are odds on these things like there are on everything. It's certainly possible that in every one of the situations illustrated *nobody* is infected.

(1) the infected person may not be shedding as much virus as assumed there (especially if asymptomatic) (2) the infected person may in fact wear their mask properly (it sounded like they were assuming improper mask wearing) and (3) even if an infectious dose reaches your general vicinity I don't know if that means you necessarily become infected -- if you are also wearing a mask, you don't touch your face, and not enough of the virus reaches your eyes, IDK that it would happen.

that said, I'm gonna continue to stay out of bars and sticking to my plan of not hosting a thanksgiving dinner this year for extended family.

Iirc two of the biggest factors in their scenarios were duration of time spent in the same space together and air circulation.

supposedly the '15 minutes' of close contact that the CDC established puts you at risk if that person is infected is now 15 cumulative minutes, not consecutive

it's been that way for a bit. was relevant in my recent quarantine

in June we were training for tracing and i asked about the "15 minutes" thing. was told that the county i'm in considers *any* time in close contact with a case one is considered potentially exposed and should quarantine/test. which makes more sense to me

supposedly the '15 minutes' of close contact that the CDC established puts you at risk if that person is infected is now 15 cumulative minutes, not consecutive

I guess I don't understand this. Does this mean the virus, at whatever level, just hangs out in your system for some period of time? That is, say you need a 10/10 cootie level to catch Covid. If you get a 3/10 of cooties in your system, wait some time, and then later get an additional 4/10 cooties, then you'll have a cumulative 8/10 cootie exposure?

(7, I mean. Math is hard.)

that's kind of my understanding, you need a certain viral load to become infected, though idk when your levels "reset"...point is you won't become infected just walking by someone who's positive

Yeah, but the reset is the big question. If I get a little exposure, how long does that last in my system? And can that tiny exposure be not enough to give me Covid but enough to make me generate antibodies?