This is actually fine.
It seems like almost all, or all, of the major “superspreader” events have occurred indoors. E.g., in South Korea, the first and second waves were launched through a cult’s churches and gay bars, respectively.
A month ago, a Chinese study reported that in 318 analyzed outbreaks in China, just two out of 318 occurred outdoors:
Qian, Hua, Te Miao, L. I. U. Li, Xiaohong Zheng, Danting Luo, and Yuguo Li. 2020. “Indoor Transmission of SARS-CoV-2.” medRxiv, April, 2020.04.04.20053058.
Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%), followed by transport (108; 34.0%; note that many outbreaks involved more than one venue category). Most home outbreaks involved three to five cases. We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases.
Two conclusions would seem to follow from this:
- We can take it easy outdoors – don’t arrest the people at the parks and beaches.
- Centralized quarantine!
This study has, more recently, been supplemented by a second one that seems to confirm its conclusions:
Leclerc, Quentin J., Naomi M. Fuller, Lisa E. Knight, CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, Sebastian Funk, and Gwenan M. Knight. 2020. “What Settings Have Been Linked to SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Clusters?” Wellcome Open Research 5 (May): 83.
We found many examples of SARS-CoV-2 clusters linked to a wide range of mostly indoor settings. Few reports came from schools, many from households, and an increasing number were reported in hospitals and elderly care settings across Europe.
Spreadsheet with all the data here.
According to my tally, 95% of total cases accrued indoors, with the rest split between “outdoors” and “indoor/outdoor” category.
I have argued against arresting people at the parks and beaches because our “quarantine capital” (amount of stress people in democratic polities are prepared to put up with) is limited. It is becoming ever clearer that it is better expended elsewhere.
As the summer draws near, it is time to usher in a new age… of sun and steel!
- Children enjoy the outdoors anyway – move school classes outside.
- Order restaurants to serve food on the streets outside.
- Outdoor food markets and bazaars instead of supermarkets and box stores.
- Gyms need to “return to tradition”.
- Not much of an issue for most office businesses, as most can remain work from home.
- Otherwise, universal masking in places that can’t be feasibly moved outside, such as factories.
I don’t even know why the right-wingers are so obsessed with Corona conspiracies, this is their single best chance to push for national BAPism for at least a generation.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
That was my problem with the “experts”. They banned walks in the park and the beach, etc. But they allowed the subways, trams, and buses to run crowded with people in cold, damp, enclosed conditions in NYC, London, and Chicago… all epicenters. In Wuhan, they knew “patient 1” infected the next set of people when he got on a bus and infected 7 others. The Chinese closed public local transportation in Wuhan first thing. Yes, virus doesn’t like dry air, warm temperatures, and sunshine. The virus is rather delicate and drys out quickly if you don’t have cool, damp, enclosed conditions. This was all learned during the Spanish flu era, when they discovered the best tonic was to put patients outside in the warm sun and fresh air.
Now I’m not a PhD. I’m not even the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I knew from day 1 NYC and London should shut down the subways if they were serious about “flattening the curve”. If you ask me, the politicians and “experts” in NYC, London, and Chicago must have intentionally allowed the public transportation to run to spread the virus. They couldn’t have missed it. At best, they are guilty of criminal neglect. At worst, mass murder.
I dunno, most people’s alarm bells should go off when officials are releasing hardened criminals from jail to spare them from the bug, and then filling the empty cells with beach- and park-goers, hairdressers, etc., and using drones to harass couples walking their dog in an otherwise empty national park.
Great news, Anatoly! Keep ’em coming!
https://youtu.be/KQetemT1sWc
I don’t remember China mass releasing prisoners? Huh?
In light of these wonderful news, I humbly propose we mandate bikinis to be worn outdoors (weather permitting) for the less obese portion of female population. Anyone caught violating said mandate shall be sprayed with the water hose. To wash off potential virus of course, can’t be too careful. The science demands it!
These all seem like good ideas. Indianapolis, where I live, is allowing restaurants this weekend with outdoor seating to open and serve customers. To increase space, they have even taken the couple of areas of town with the largest numbers of restaurants and temporarily closed off the streets so the restaurants can set up tables out in the street. I just came back from walking through one and there was a nice street festival atmosphere going on. When restaurants can fully open, the streets should reopen again. Going forward after that, designing things in a way in the future so that people can be outside more seems to be a good idea.
The one thing that was brought up by local restaurant owners here as a potential problem was that just letting restaurants with outdoor seating open might concentrate large numbers of people into a small space since a lot of restaurants with no outdoor seating would still be closed. That might increase disease transmission. That seemed to me to be a problem with the lockdowns as a whole. When they closed the restaurants, people still had to eat so they all suddenly started going to the grocery stores more. This concentrated large numbers of people into a few places like Walmart.
Since the shops were closed too that also meant more people going to Walmart, for example, to buy shoes since the shoe stores were closed and so on. All these people caused shortages, which then caused stores to limit purchases, which then caused people to go to the store more rather than less. I felt during the lockdown like I was going to a lot fewer places but was not really coming into contact with a lot fewer people since when I went out I was going to places with swarms of people.
Question for Anatoly:
Are you part of a Kukuruyo Corona-chan subscription syndicate, or are you commissioning all these Corona-chans individually? Or maybe it’s all public domain?
Also, do Russians share the Spanish taste for exaggerated hips?
And yes, the sooner Nietzschean BAP Nationalism takes over, the better.
AK: E.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/coronachan/
Nominal Russian , Anatoly Karlin (clever twist on this disgusting “nominal democracy” BS) should change strategy to replace his constant idolisation and ridiculous “neutral” stance on western/Liberast scum lies that try to discredit Russia, like “excess deaths”, Dagestan, “killing medics” and ridiculously thinking anything other than that Russia has done a great job against the coronavirus ….. by praising Putin for either showing genius judgement or perfect luck in choosing to end non-working week, and therefore the start of removal of restrictions on the exact SAME DAY as the daily infections reached it’s peak.
A confident move given that the rate accelerating for even a few days would have made him look bad.
That is perfect timing… and it saves lives related to self-isolation deaths that are not at the expense of those from the virus
It’s worth reemphasizing that during the Spanish Flu patients treated outdoors had lower mortality and recovered faster.
https://medium.com/@ra.hobday/coronavirus-and-the-sun-a-lesson-from-the-1918-influenza-pandemic-509151dc8065
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504358/
And it is of course well known that influenza exhibits seasonality.
I don’t have the information in front of me, but I recall reading numerous times that vitamin D deficiency is the most common comorbidity in under-75 COVID-19 fatalities. Bear in mind that the mechanism here may not be vitamin D deficiency per se, but rather lack of sun exposure. The sun does quite a lot of things for the human body beyond vitamin D.
I don’t doubt you for a moment, and have personally increased my exposure to the sun to about an hour in the morning, 3-4 times a week. Why is it that so many people contract melanoma – is it just a matter of too much sun in the mid-day, or are there other factors in your opinion?
Coronamaniacs characterize coronaskeptics as heartless capitalist sociopaths out to sacrifice old, sick, and fat people
Coronaskeptics characterize coronamaniacs as gutless, lying, hyper-moralistic believers who seem to enjoy staying at home all the time and preaching to others about this new, definitely under five percent, but likely closer to, and probably under one percent apocalypse
It’s pretty obvious we all just need to form two huge new super-parties and eventually go to war. Who do you think would win – the masked masses in their chalk circles led by sententious geezers, or the rest of us?
This question of yours has traces of “a child’s question” (poet Gottfried Benn) in it. It is thus deeply rooted in the fairy tale world of the neatly separated good here and bad there (a pre-Christian dichotomy which is nice and has its virtues but which is also misleading. That’s why Christianity took over once, and why Hegel’s dialectical thinking took off etc. … (see Geothe’s Faust for the maybe most encompassing (and witty) perspective on this problem)).
Yes, I’d bet on China too.
Once you get nerved gassed or mustard gassed it’s an equalizer right?
I suspect for the same reason that every other type of cancer has dramatically increased in the past century–while at the same down sun exposure has continuously declined.
You need to eat to live and thrive, but you wouldn’t blame obesity on spoons. Also noteworthy that acute sun exposure is harmful (hence the painful burns!), just as moderate drinking is healthy but binge drinking is not.
As for a plausible mechanism at work in melanoma itself, the massive dietary shift to industrial seed oils means that the typical adult’s adipose tissue is now primarily polyunsaturated. This is highly vulnerable to peroxidation by UV light.
Here’s a study showing the inclusion of cholesterol in moisturizers reduces UV tissue damage, while the incorporation of linoleic acid increases it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22209282/
Meanwhile all-cause mortality shows an inverse relationship with total sun exposure. This was known as early as the 1930s from studies conducted by the United States Navy and has held up since that time.
Like quite a lot of people here I fly a desk for a living, so I make sure to get outside for 30 minutes at mid day for a walk. During appropriate weather I take my shirt off too.
Yes, sun and outdoors. See also this:
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc8931
Cold, closed places with people shouting and singing are optimum for SARS-CoV-2 spread.
Now, I have agreed from the start that getting lots of sunlight, fresh, air and outdoor exercise is essential during this coronavirus outbreak, including for pensioners…….. however your connection between studies done during the time of the Spanish flu and results now is very tenuous.
Including the advanced countries, the world is incomparably more urbanised now, than 100 years ago.
You simply cant make the links of causality from those insufficient studies done 100 years ago and apply them now with metropolisis, high-rise buildings, mass public transport and so on ( even if I agree with you that it’s probably true!)
I can understand, though not agree with, city parks being banned/closed….. but banning people from going to national parks even for day trips(provided they bring own food etc. so can’t infect locals working in the shops or whatever) is ridiculous, as some countries have been doing.
And surely diabetes, very much a modern disease, is the biggest co-morbidity in under-75’s? Particularly with America, of course with so many fat people, being the leader in deaths, I haven’t read anybody linking it to this feature of american society.
Most areas with hub airports seem to have had large number of infections ( Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Moscow, New York and so on)….. a big outlier seems to be Georgia (US) – Atlanta Airport is one of the busiest in the world (as a non-American could never understand why) but not very high numbers of infections
Since obesity and other comorbidities associated with being out of shape are the greatest correlates with COVID-19, we could get Bill Gates and ilk to stop obsessing over vaccines and instead finance and push to build large numbers of fitness gyms all over the country and mandate that people do both muscle building as well as aerobic exercise.
Given that I am a libertarian and thus generally dislike mandates, I would have to say I rather like this mandate since I already do it and it would certainly make people more attractive physically. I prefer working out to any vaccine (which I will not get anyways). Of course, our silly state governments have gone the opposite way and actually closed the gyms instead! Boneheads they are.
You’ve got to be kidding? You’ve read that much into my simple question? 🙂
I’m no Einstein, but his observation here is universal:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0066/0842/0979/files/albert-einstein-quotes_grande.png?v=1580127154
Your admonition about moderation is applicable to most activities and dietary habits. If you know that a certain vitamin or supplement is beneficial for your good health, you wouldn’t expect to get more of a positive benefit by downing a whole bottle of it at once, rather than the recommended dosage printed on the bottle?
I looked at the article regarding topical moisturizers and found it to be interesting. Personally, I don’t use such moisturizers very often, except for any rare flair ups for eczema (it’s been a couple of years now). Many people say that I look much younger than my actual years, so I must be doing something right (or just have good genes in this respect). A good friend of mine is a biology professor and is around 50 years old. She has very fair skin and looks like she’s about 35. I once asked her what she uses for skin cream, and her answer surprised me, she said that she didn’t use anything at all! She said that the “secret” to good skin is to drink plenty of water (which she does) and that true moisturization appears from the inside out.
I’ve converted almost entirely to using olive oil, but still use sunflower seed oil on occasion. It’s known to be an excellent source of vitamin E, however it is one of those pesky “seed oils” that you mention?…
The super spreadersare the type that covidtheir neighbour sars with the full knowledge of the deep state pedocracy
The super spreaders are the type that covid their neighbour sars with the full knowledge of the deep state pedocracy
If there’s evidence the virus isn’t well transmitted in outdoor environments, I see no reason not to allow walks in the park and on the beach, specially because I like them, but note that Chinese and Brazilians might be used to do things Singaporeans and Norwegians rarely do, like spitting, that likely increase the risk of being infected. I don’t know about Americans’, Russians’, or Zimbabweans’ phlegm spitting habits. So, in any case, it might be better, for the purpose of containing the spread, if mask wearing in open public spaces (not in just factories or warehouses) was enforced until the number of daily new cases goes down very much, accompanied by regular sanitizing of common areas. In the less enforceable personal realm there could be increased hand washing and reduced nose picking and oral sex with strangers (at least for the time being!).
Better still is riding a bike, where no one can get in your face, where it’s virtually impossible to touch anything infectious, and you get fresh air and sunshine in the bargain.
Speaking of that, the forecast for today here is high around 100° F with full sun, 10% humidity, and 4 mph breeze, and so I’m soon to be off and up on two wheels.
Is there anything more enjoyable than a bike ride on a such a sunny day? Not for me there isn’t.
Why do people think they need a gym to work out?
Psst: Maybe it’s for the same reason many people think they need a repulsive parasite like a dog to be happy.
Gym, or home gym, is necessary for muscle-building work outs, not just aerobics. You need both kinds of exercise for well-being. In the long run, muscle-building is the only current method to prevent sarcopenia. That the medical establishment does not recognize sarcopenia like they do bone loss is pure ideology.
Thanks Mr. Hack. I love him. – Not least because he knew good reasons to admire – – – – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, hehe.
Your Einstein-quote is an almost exact paraphrase of Goethe in Maxim’s and Reflections (one of the best books ever).