Competency
Competency
by Ken Melvin
What is the first criteria when a Board of Directors goes looking for a new CEO? When the construction firm goes looking for a project manager?
Of late, too often, US Politics seems to have a new standard for selecting officeholders. We have been, are, watching this horror of a Pandemic being mismanaged by elected incompetents. Incompetents who might have been promoted to yet higher positions if their incompetence hadn’t been exposed by the course of events. This isn’t about The Peter Principle at play. This is about a large group of US Politicians who were elected to high-level Executive positions based on their perceived allegiance to a specific ideology or dogma.
It is to be expected that Political Appointees, chits come due, are most often incompetent. But, here, we are talking about some Mayors and Governors, people elected to Executive Roles; that simply could not step up to the task at hand. Noted: There were, indeed, those who did step up; did so handsomely.
For weeks, we had been witness to some of these Governors’ media paean to: Markets, Capitalism, The Confederacy, Christian Values, Western Heroes, American Independence, … only too soon to be followed by record rates of Covid Infections in their states. Why follow the advice of Science and the Scientists? Why heed the guidelines of the CDC? What does Science know?
Appears that they still don’t understand the math, the doubling, science stuff like that. Easily influenced, these Governors followed the lead of an incompetent President who, too, didn’t understand the Science, nor the math; who couldn’t be bothered to read his briefings.
The Frontline Documentary on the Pandemic ( https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-virus/ ), quotes experts who say that 83% of the deaths were due to delays in taking action in the early weeks; delays that were due to the incompetence of the Trump Administration. Once upon a time, in earlier days, in Grade Schools in rural America, they didn’t really teach exponents, let alone logarithms. But a teacher might pose a question to their 7th and 8th graders something akin to: The Farrier offers to shoe your horse for the price of one penny for the first nail, two for the second, four for the third, …; is it a good deal? Since there are 32 nails, the total comes to 231 or 2,147,483,648 cents, or $21,474,836.48. Starts out small, then goes higher and higher faster and faster. One couldn’t be faulted for thinking that some of our elected Executives still haven’t figured out what it all means; how pandemics work. But their Management skills and their knowledge of Science, unfortunately, were not the reasons they were chosen. More likely, they were chosen on the basis of a professed belief in an ideology or dogma.
In the 2016 US Presidential Election, some were convinced that above all the country needed to pick someone of this or that ideology; that ideology itself was what was most important; or that we needed radical change; a shakeup. We wound up with an incompetent President who panders to Autocrats and certain ideologies. First and foremost, we needed someone competent; some who was up to the task. First and foremost, the Boards of Directors were looking for someone who could competently run the Corporation. Being brilliant, idealistic, clairvoyant, … even entrepreneurial, would be a super nice bonus, but first and foremost, at the very minimum; they must be competent.
I think you have too high an opinion of jow managers are chosen. Managers today are basically salesmen. They are good at selling themselves. Competence sees you being kept in place on the heirachy, not promoted.
I’m troubled by this: “Why follow the advice of Science and the Scientists?”
I’ll try to answer this. Science is not the same thing as what Scientists say, and that can be particularly true at certain times and in certain fields. A hindsight is 20-20 look at our COVID response would suggest COVID could/should have been nipped in the bud with some tried and true classic approaches:
1. Seal the borders and/or quarantine anyone arriving from abroad the moment China started welding people into their apartments in Wuhan. The Venetians pulled it off in 1350 AD (it”s where the word “quarantine” comes from).
2. Have everyone wear a mask, even if they have to make it themselves. This one goes back at least to the Spanish flu in 1918, but we have plenty of examples of Asian countries doing it this year.
Interestingly enough, our public health community on the whole was not onboard with this tried and true wisdom. In fact, the only thing Trump did more or less directionally right-ish was his travel ban on 1/31 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose-risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/). That was immediately called “stigmatizing” by the WHO and racist by others. I read an interview with a Professor of Public Health who warned darkly that there should be consequences and accountability to the administration for going against the WHO’s advice.
I note the WHO didn’t seem to have a problem with countries like Thailand banning cruise ships from their ports , the present ban on US travelers or Mexico’s partial closing of its border with the US. IIRC Thailand’s cruise ship ban came the week we tried to send our 9 year old to school wearing a mask. My kid learned the term “crackpot” that day. I tried explaining the whole concept of timing and being right when others are wrong, but it would be a few weeks before events helped that lesson sink in.
The WHO, the CDC, etc., also spent Q1 telling us that a respiratory pandemic couldn’t be helped by the public wearing masks. In fact, the Surgeon General came out and said wearing a mask could increase a person’s chance of getting COVID in early March (just a few days before Anthony Fauci said it was OK for a healthy person to take a cruise).
Should people be practicing social distancing and wearing masks right now? Of course. But the reason for doing it should not be because people who were wrong for so long are telling you to do it.
There is one absolutely huge difference between scientists and politicians which got lost at the beginning of the pandemic but is becoming increasingly obvious—politicians make decisions based on their perception of how it will affect their popular support while scientists attempt to discern reality. To be sure politicians influenced some of the “scientific” pronouncements early in the pandemic and scientists want to be liked as much as anybody. Over time however most scientists come around to reality and are willing to change course to reflect that reality. Politicians almost never do and as demonstrated by the moron in chief even double down on their mistakes rather than admit they were wrong. I know of no scientist doubling down on the proposition that the virus will “ magically disappear” at least at this late date. Indeed, the incoherence of the moron in chief claiming again that the virus will just disappear with the new “ we have to learn to live with it” is staggering
I refer to Trump’s approval rating as “The White Supremacy Meter” since he has made such an obvious and blatant appeal for that demographic I believe that this is what it is. That is why it is so inelastic. It doesn’t matter what he says or does or what happens. It is a measure of historically as a nation where we are. It is depressing. Yet there is hope. Statisticians tell us that around 2045 the white population will no longer be the majority. It seems the Republican Party has based its policies on the notion that they have around twenty to twenty five years to enact non democratic measures to effectively turn the country into a 1980’s style South Africa. But the great error in their calculation is that the white population is not monolithic and will not choose uniformity to rally in the cause of racism. For a large fraction of the white population Justice is more important than race. This infuriates the racists. They can’t understand this choice. This is why the cross over point, the change is happening much sooner than they expected. This is why it is happening now.
Hi Mike, thanks for the comments.
Interesting times, these. First couple of months, like many another, I found myself consumed with wanting to get some sort of handle on the pandemic; have come to think it may take awhile and more to unravel.
Some of my take:
Given the current state of globalization, Wuhan’s population and airports, … the time it took for the virus to spread around the world — 18 hrs.
My understanding is that Trump’s 1/31 was handily circumvented by flying to Europe then to the US.
Agree in re masks. The empirical evidence for wearing a mask is overwhelming. In fact, that they, along with hand sanitizer, weren’t being handed out free on street corners in Feb. is no less than criminal negligence. To date, still not being up to speed producing N95 is criminal negligence.
Bolton’s on the Pandemic Response Unit was stupid.
CDC is in need of a shakeup and more funding, …
In re timing: All around, at the Federal Level an, heretofore unseen, extreme lack of leadership. Trump could hardly have more effective in impeding productive efforts.
The big shoe to drop this month: People running out of money/credit and the ensuing hunger.
I apologize for posting the above comment in the wrong place. It is obviously about Trump’s approval rating. Read them all and clicked the wrong button. Oh well. The subject at hand.
I too, as a scientist was troubled by the tenor of a lot of the early pronouncements coming from the scientific community regarding this disease. It was and remains “Novel”. Particularly early on it seemed to me that a caveat should have been added to all the advise. “We don’t know much about this damn thing. Our current understanding is…As our information improves we will update you”
At the time, I thought that maybe a lot of this was caused by a sort of game of telephone that was going on. Scientists do preliminary research. They publish the results of a study and then the press gets ahold of it and all of a sudden it becomes “scientists say…” when it is just the results of one study. We know science doesn’t work that way. It is the cumulative results of many studies that moves sciences forward and everyone was clamoring for answers. Well, the answers don’t lie in the results of a single study. Then there was the problem of the scientists in management positions. Most of those guys, the ones on the TVs aren’t doing science anymore. Haven’t for years. They are managing people and money. They can do a credible job of relating known facts. But in a fast moving situation when things are changing on a daily basis, they are lost. So, yes, the science is the key but you need an understanding of how the science evolves and how it works. It needs to be leavened with common sense. And in the case of a highly infectious potentially deadly disease erring on the side of caution has always seemed like the better course.
Regarding masks I was and remain mystified as to why the establishment took such a dismissive attitude towards them initially. We had the Asian example. They had suffered through recent outbreaks of respiratory infections, billions of people, multiple countries and found that masks were essential to getting control of them. We watched them do that on TV for god’s sake. For years. I can’t help but think there was a certain level of racism involved in our dismissal of their experience. What was the thinking there? That they were just stupid? Doing it all for show? My god, the arrogance is really breathtaking, excuse the pun.
It’s not just trump and his gang of incompetents that have caused this disaster. It is the fen people that voted for him. Also the Susan Sarandons of the world. They should be shunned.
For the second time since April I had to drive from Chicago to Philly to attend a funeral. Drove straight through on the way there to make the funeral the next morning. My wife’s family cemetery plot is on the border between Philly and Montgomery County, and the Phila side is not really nice anymore.
While there my wife needed to hit Wahlgreen’s for some needs. It was the busiest Wahlgreen’s I had ever seen, they were limiting the number of people in the store and there were 30 or 40 people waiting in line. I must have seen 20 people come out of the store before we finally gave it up. Not one single person in line or that came out of that store failed to have a mask.
Drove to the middle of Ohio and stopped at a Holiday Inn Express halfway home that day. Noticed immediately that half the people were not wearing masks. The next morning they were serving a continental breakfast(which we were not going anywhere near) and none of the 30 to 40 people were wearing masks (and not just when they were eating).
Thinking it was easy to figure out the voting patterns of both places by mask usage.
Ken,
The 1/31 proclamation was extremely imperfect and it came late. Hence, as I said, directionally right-ish. But its interesting that the thing he got directionally right-ish was opposed by the health establishment… at least until enacted by other countries.
Terry,
The problem is that the Scientists who got it wrong are proceeding along as if they got it right all along. On masks the CDC changed direction the last week of March, the WHO a few days later, and there wasn’t so much as an “oops, my bad” out of anyone. It’s like we’d always been at war with Eurasia, or was it Eastasia? How many of the folks who spent Q1 telling us it would be a bad thing if someone without the benefit of medical or nursing school wore a mask were among the tens of millions who lost their jobs? My guess is approximately none.
SW,
My view: Lysenkoism. Lysenko abandoned a perfectly functional model of the world with good predictive power in favor of a fairly useless model of the world because the latter was aligned with what he wanted to believe. Why they wanted to believe the nonsense on travel bans I get. The masks are harder. My guess is that it was some visceral need within the WHO to prove the Taiwanese wrong and the rest of the medical establishment in the West just went along because we live in partisan times.
Ken, regarding your comment about how easily the disease could spread from Wuhan and how the travel bans could be circumvented, all I can offer is my experience with a similar circumstance — 45 years ago. My job then took me all over the world, typically developing countries but developed economies too. In that instance in the late 1970s, I had traveled to west Africa during an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever followed within about two weeks with a trip to Australia. Upon my arrival in Sydney, I got pulled out of line and placed in quiet room off to the side, with no explanation of why my entry was being delayed. That got answered when an Australian health official came in, told me they had noticed my passport travel stamps, and wanted to speak with me about my health. After a few quick questions, they allowed me to proceed, but they also gave me a card with the phone numbers for the health officials in Australia for me to call the instant I might begin to feel sick or ill. So, US officials could have helped control the spread even if travelers were circumventing the travel bans, but US officials would have had to really care about doing their jobs. Lack of competency kills, as we’re seeing.
My memory of the information that reached me early on was that medical professionals believed that infected people would not shed the virus unless they were showing symptoms. Because of that, the poor training of the general public on keeping hands away from masks made the recommendation of not wearing masks make sense on balance.
This week, I heard Fauci claim that the reason for not buying masks was they were needed for front-line medical workers. Either my memory is faulty, I did not hear what was said properly, or history is being revised.
In re: face masks
The problem is that this term covers a very broad variety of face coverings, from handkerchiefs and unfitted cloth masks to fitted N95 masks. They are not all equal. Far from it.
Even cloth masks, which provide next to no protection if you are social distancing and not coughing or sneezing, still prevent you from touching your face near your nose and eyes, which are major routes of viral infection.
Front-line medical workers will only wear an unfitted cloth mask as a last resort. What was needed was N95 masks that, when properly fitted, can actually provide significant protection from aerosolized virus.
Thoughts on how fine an aerosol? Could the virus be ‘in the air’ in a classroom?
Cloth masks work surprisingly well. If nothing else, they slow the air leaving your mouth and nose. That’s why they steam up your glasses. Making aerosols move more slowly gives more time for smaller particles to coalesce or evaporate and larger particles time to drop out. They also absorb particles when you inhale, at least if one believes the various published tests.
Still, it’s a sad commentary on the end of the USA as a can-do manufacturing nation. 50,000 planes a year? We’d be lucky to be able to make up a squadron. Even now, thanks to our political ideology, civilians STILL can’t just buy a batch of N95 masks the way they can in developed countries.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1874269/thailand-and-malaysia-bar-cruise-ship-over-virus-fears
March 8, 2020
Thailand and Malaysia bar cruise ship over virus fears
Thailand and Malaysia have barred a cruise ship carrying about 2,000 people, including dozens of Italians, from docking due to fears about the new coronavirus, an official said Sunday.
The Costa Fortuna was first turned away from the popular Thai holiday island of Phuket Friday, despite there being no suspected virus cases aboard, according to its operator.
Thai authorities had imposed restrictions “on Italians that have transited in Italy in the last 14 days”, Costa Cruises said on Twitter.
The ship is carrying 64 Italians, according to Malaysian officials….
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/13-01-2020-who-statement-on-novel-coronavirus-in-thailand
January 13, 2020
WHO statement on novel coronavirus in Thailand
The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with officials in Thailand and China following reports of confirmation of the novel coronavirus in a person in Thailand.
The person was a traveler from Wuhan, China, and was identified by Thai officials on 8 January, and hospitalized that day. The person is recovering from the illness according to Thai officials.
The possibility of cases being identified in other countries was not unexpected, and reinforces why WHO calls for on-going active monitoring and preparedness in other countries. WHO has issued guidance on how to detect and treat persons ill with the new virus.
The genetic sequencing shared by China enables more countries to rapidly diagnose patients….
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19
April 12, 2020
WHO Timeline – COVID-19
This statement is updated on an ongoing basis, in response to evolving events and common media queries.
31 Dec 2019
China reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified….
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951662.htm
April 6, 2020
China publishes timeline on COVID-19 information sharing, int’l cooperation
Late December 2019
— The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in central China’s Hubei Province detected cases of pneumonia of unknown cause.
Dec. 30, 2019
— The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with pneumonia of unknown cause.
Dec. 31, 2019
— The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site investigations.
— The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out….
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-pneumonia/chinese-officials-investigate-cause-of-pneumonia-outbreak-in-wuhan-idUSKBN1YZ0GP
December 31, 2019
Chinese officials investigate cause of pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan
By Reuters
https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/
January 5, 2020
Pneumonia of unknown cause – China
Disease outbreak news
On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. As of 3 January 2020, a total of 44 patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology have been reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. Of the 44 cases reported, 11 are severely ill, while the remaining 33 patients are in stable condition….
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951662.htm
Jan. 3
— Starting Jan. 3, China has been regularly informing the WHO, relevant countries and regions and China’s Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan about the pneumonia outbreak.
— China began to inform the United States of the pneumonia outbreak and response measures on a regular basis….
Chinese health authorities were suggesting masks be worn in Wuhan from December 31. The suggestion would soon become a requirement and extend all through China. The point was always as a proper precaution as is perfectly described:
https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7
June 14, 2020
The Masks Masquerade
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Incompetence and Errors in Reasoning Around Face Covering
SIX ERRORS: 1) missing the compounding effects of masks, 2) missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures, 3) missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing), 4) missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own, 5) missing the compounding effects of statistical signals, 6) ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you; it’s a multiplicative process: every person you infect will infect others).
In fact masks (and faceshields) supplemented with constraints of superspreader events can save us trillions of dollars in future lockdowns (and lawsuits) and be potentially sufficient (under adequate compliance) to stem the pandemic. Bureaucrats do not like simple solutions….
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/239-experts-with-1-big-claim-the-coronavirus-is-airborne.html
July 4, 2020
239 Experts With 1 Big Claim: The Coronavirus Is Airborne
The W.H.O. has resisted mounting evidence that viral particles floating indoors are infectious, some scientists say. The agency maintains the research is still inconclusive.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby.
If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant. Masks may be needed indoors, even in socially-distant settings. Health care workers may need N95 masks that filter out even the smallest respiratory droplets as they care for coronavirus patients.
Ventilation systems in schools, nursing homes, residences and businesses may need to minimize recirculating air and add powerful new filters. Ultraviolet lights may be needed to kill viral particles floating in tiny droplets indoors.
The World Health Organization has long held that the coronavirus is spread primarily by large respiratory droplets that, once expelled by infected people in coughs and sneezes, fall quickly to the floor.
But in an open letter to the W.H.O., 239 scientists in 32 countries have outlined the evidence showing that smaller particles can infect people, and are calling for the agency to revise its recommendations. The researchers plan to publish their letter in a scientific journal next week….
Hi:
I wrote this a while back. Turn Up the Humidity in Your House There are other factors in play such as social distancing and wearing masks. Fomites: microbiology definition: A fomites (pronounced /ˈfoʊmiːz/) or fomite (/ˈfoʊmaɪt/) is any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a new host.
One Medscape comment by David Kerr: “The mechanism of seasonal effect for seasonal respiratory virus spread is believed to be humidity, not temperature. In New York state which has 220 cases, fomites lose moisture where indoor humidity is low, allowing the lighter particles to stay longer in the aerosol. In Florida and Arizona, with 38 cases, fomites gain moisture and weight from the humid air and fall to the floor faster. Northern Italy, where people wear winter coats in the media reports has dry, heated indoor air, while Southern Italy has humid indoor air.”
Masks not only filter the air going into your lungs, they filter the air going out of your lungs also.
Thanks Anne
Anne – Thailand was turning back cruise ships well before March. First half of February. Here’s a story of a ship where the passengers had been cleared by WHO:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1855984/cruise-ship-has-not-applied-to-enter-thailand
“On Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said that while the vessel would not be allowed to dock, Thailand was ready to help the people on board.
The Public Health Ministry said it was ready to send medical staff to the port if requested, the head of the Department of Disease Control said.
The Cruise Ship Professionals Association on Tuesday called for all agencies to offer help to the passengers and crew of the cruise ship in line with humanitarian principles.
Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the ministry would be willing to provide humanitarian aid for the Westerdam.
Although the World Health Organisation confirmed there were no people infected with the coronavirus on board, the ministry had to double-check first, for the safety of people of Thailand.
On Monday, Mr Anutin posted a Facebook message, saying he had directed authorities not to allow the Westerdam to dock in Thailand.
Holland Line earlier told passengers the ship was heading for Laem Chabang, where the disrupted cruise would end, and they would disembark and be flown home from Bangkok.”
Mike Kimel:
Thailand was turning back cruise ships well before March. First half of February….
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1855984/cruise-ship-has-not-applied-to-enter-thailand
February 12, 2020
Cruise ship has not applied to enter Thailand
If allowed in, vessel would be quarantined
By APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
The Marine Department on Wednesday confirmed the cruise ship Westerdam had not yet sought permission to enter Thailand, having already been refused entry by three other countries due to fears of coronavirus infections on board.
The department’s statement did not rule out the possibility the Westerdam would be allowed to dock after completing quarantine requirements.
If the operator, Holland America Line, made an application the department would consult with the Disease Control Department, the Public Health Ministry, the Customs Department and the Immigration Bureau.
It was normal procedure to notify the Marine Safety and Environment Bureau, the Vessel Traffic Control and Maritime Security Office and a marine regional office where a foreign vessel would be docked, the statement said.
If allowed into Thailand, the ship would be moored in a quarantine area offshore pending checks by disease control and public health officials before being allowed to dock at a port.
The announcement followed unconfirmed reports on social media that the Westerdam, with 1,455 passengers and 802 crew, would dock at Laem Chabang on Thursday. It was earlier refused entry by the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan due to concerns passengers may be carrying to the deadly virus….
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html
July 5, 2020
The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus
By Richard A. Oppel Jr., Robert Gebeloff, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Will Wright and Mitch Smith
Teresa and Marvin Bradley can’t say for sure how they got the coronavirus. Maybe Ms. Bradley, a Michigan nurse, brought it from her hospital. Maybe it came from a visiting relative. Maybe it was something else entirely.
What is certain — according to new federal data that provides the most comprehensive look to date on nearly 1.5 million coronavirus patients in America — is that the Bradleys are not outliers.
Racial disparities in who contracts the virus have played out in big cities like Milwaukee and New York, but also in smaller metropolitan areas like Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Bradleys live. Those inequities became painfully apparent when Ms. Bradley, who is Black, was wheeled through the emergency room.
“Everybody in there was African-American,” she said. “Everybody was.”
Early numbers had shown that Black and Latino people were being harmed by the virus at higher rates. But the new federal data — made available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — reveals a clearer and more complete picture: Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups….
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-07-06-20-intl/h_f3005c39fdd5e19c7fd68148baef68e8
Coronavirus can float and transmit in air droplets, experts say
From CNN’s Maggie Fox
Coronavirus can float in air droplets and is likely transmitting that way, according to a group of international experts.
The group is planning to publish an open letter on Monday to the World Health Organization and other health agencies, asking them to be more forthright in explaining how the virus can transmit in the air.
The letter is signed by 239 scientists from around the world.
It’s not a secret; health experts and countries around the world, like Japan, have warned for months that the virus transmits in close contact in crowded spaces with poor ventilation due to how it travels through droplets.
But agencies seem to be afraid to talk about the airborne nature of the virus, said Donald Milton, one of the authors and a professor at the University of Maryland.
“The airborne transmission word seems to be loaded,” Milton told CNN on Sunday. “I guess we are hoping that WHO will come around and be more willing to acknowledge the important roles of aerosols, whether they want to call it airborne transmission or not.”
What airborne transmission means: The virus is carried on droplets that come out of people’s mouths and noses, and the sizes of those droplets vary.
Large droplets fall onto surfaces rapidly and can be picked up on fingers and carried to the eyes, nose, and mouth. Smaller droplets can stay in the air longer and can be inhaled more deeply into the lungs.
We still don’t clearly understand how important droplet size is to coronavirus transmission, Milton said — but studies show it’s a factor.
A loud bar, where people must shout to be heard, is a perfect storm of close contact, poor air circulation and people generating a lot of virus-carrying particles by talking, laughing and bellowing.
What we can do about it: Milton said the best way to protect against fine aerosols is to use an N-95 respirator or higher – something in scarce supply in many places.
But there are other ways, too, including improved ventilation, as well as distancing and mask use. That’s information the average person can use and act on.
“I am very much concerned about the general public and schools and ventilation in school buildings and in dorms on college campuses and in bars and in churches and where people sing and where people congregate,” he said.
Ken:
Airborne Covid is not new news. I wrote on this a while back.
I wrote this a while back. Turn Up the Humidity in Your House There are other factors in play such as social distancing and wearing masks. Fomites: microbiology definition: A fomites (pronounced /ˈfoʊmiːz/) or fomite (/ˈfoʊmaɪt/) is any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a new host.
One Medscape comment by David Kerr: “The mechanism of seasonal effect for seasonal respiratory virus spread is believed to be humidity, not temperature. In New York state which has 220 cases, fomites lose moisture where indoor humidity is low, allowing the lighter particles to stay longer in the aerosol. In Florida and Arizona, with 38 cases, fomites gain moisture and weight from the humid air and fall to the floor faster. Northern Italy, where people wear winter coats in the media reports has dry, heated indoor air, while Southern Italy has humid indoor air.”
Masks not only filter the air going into your lungs, they filter the air going out of your lungs also.
July 6, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,000,469)
Deaths ( 132,665)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-coronavirus-protests-quarantine.html
July 6, 2020
Are Protests Unsafe? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What
Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests last spring as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism.
By Michael Powell