There are insanely high amount of speculation in there.
To my knowledge no significant amount of non droplet or hand-to-face contamination as been demonstrated out of medical contexts where aerosolization is more a problem, because of technical gestures and cares.
Even the linked page supposed to serve as a reference is completely speculative on the subject of the potential for the virus to be airborne: "In addition, it is possible that SARS-CoV might be spread more broadly through the air (airborne spread) or by other ways that are not now known."
So yeah, it also has not been proven that airborne transmission does not happen. But there are no strong signs showing we should highly worry about that highly speculative subject. The main contamination paths are well-known: droplets, and hand-to-face. If you want to strongly reduce the rate, you must focus on that.
> Even if we don’t avoid the virus 100%, reducing it by 80% could be the difference between something mild and something life-threatening. This could be a reason why so many otherwise young and healthy doctors and nurses have been killed by this virus.
Yeah, no. This is also completely speculative at this point. There is no strong technical reason for why it should be the case, given how viruses work... So not completely impossible, but short of real reasoning and evidences and studies, this is not a theory to particularly to focus on... ANYWAY, it is a good idea to avoid spreading the virus on all surfaces, but simply because this will statistically reduce the contamination rate (maybe without any impact on the severity for those who will be contaminated)
More generally, I'd like essays on that subject from people working in the medical field. And I'd probably not like essays on CS from virologists and epidemiologists...
I've heard from virologists that the amount of virus you're exposed to does matter. A gallonful of virus can quickly overwhelm the immune system, a small amount can take long enough to grow that your immune system can ramp up to deal with it before it overwhelms. It's like someone releasing one breeding pair of rats in your attic vs 100.
I don't have a cite, it was from the "This Week in Virology" podcast.
I also heard a number going around suggesting that an early group of people hospitalized and killed were Ear, Nose and Throat doctors, who obviously would have been exposed to an almost comically large amount of the virus.
Giving someone a little bit of smallpox was a known immunization method before modern methods were invented. You'd still get sick, but less sick, and you'd wind up immune.
Can you please make your substantive points without swipes? Controversial threads tend to devolve into people swiping at each other, and emotions run especially high in a crisis.
I don't think there's any reason to exclude an article on the basis of who wrote it. Articles should be excluded because they're off topic, bad, or uninteresting. Essays on CS from virologists would likely be of high interest to this community.
Besides that generic argument, which has become a bit of a shallow dismissal lately, there's the fact that pb is writing about a project he's personally involved in and which hasn't been discussed here before. It's understandable if there's interest in that.
> Yeah, no. This is also completely speculative at this point. There is no strong technical reason for why it should be the case, given how viruses work...
Yes it is. If the initial amount of virus exposure is low, the immune system has more time to react.
To my knowledge no significant amount of non droplet or hand-to-face contamination as been demonstrated out of medical contexts where aerosolization is more a problem, because of technical gestures and cares.
Even the linked page supposed to serve as a reference is completely speculative on the subject of the potential for the virus to be airborne: "In addition, it is possible that SARS-CoV might be spread more broadly through the air (airborne spread) or by other ways that are not now known."
So yeah, it also has not been proven that airborne transmission does not happen. But there are no strong signs showing we should highly worry about that highly speculative subject. The main contamination paths are well-known: droplets, and hand-to-face. If you want to strongly reduce the rate, you must focus on that.
> Even if we don’t avoid the virus 100%, reducing it by 80% could be the difference between something mild and something life-threatening. This could be a reason why so many otherwise young and healthy doctors and nurses have been killed by this virus.
Yeah, no. This is also completely speculative at this point. There is no strong technical reason for why it should be the case, given how viruses work... So not completely impossible, but short of real reasoning and evidences and studies, this is not a theory to particularly to focus on... ANYWAY, it is a good idea to avoid spreading the virus on all surfaces, but simply because this will statistically reduce the contamination rate (maybe without any impact on the severity for those who will be contaminated)
More generally, I'd like essays on that subject from people working in the medical field. And I'd probably not like essays on CS from virologists and epidemiologists...