FabioPorkpie
Well-known member
It’s a good thread this. Lots of polite, respectful debate and good ideas, from people with different points of view. How refreshing, compared to the old board. Well done chaps
I think that's aerosol rather than airborne. There was a myth in India that it was airborne that caused major panic.As I understand it, it is airborne in the " mist" of breath. Hence the 2 m rule.
But Cuthbert that would mean 2 things... It's no where near as contagious as we believe and it would go against what's been found in Iceland and the cruise ships.
So whilst you could be right there's reason for optimism. Have a thorough read of the article BL posted in the OP it might help you revise your thoughts.
An alternative view from a Harvard Professor in evolution and epidemiology of infectious diseases.
Link
Some of his assumptions are reasonable, but I agree with that. Particularly where he dismisses the claims regarding a large proportion of the population having had the virus with no supporting evidence. But his thinking is the basis for how a large proportion of the world are acting. The major issue is testing, both in terms of quality and quantity. Early on it was said our lab tests were 90% correct, but that seems to have fallen to 70% (the daily tests versus people tested seems to support that). The possibility of antibody testing must be way down the line of we're struggling to test for the virus itself.Bear he's making more assumptions than the data scientist ironically and making numbers up completely
As far as I know, it's always been said from the very outset that it spreads primarily in droplets expelled by an infected person. Picking it up off surfaces seems to be a potential secondary route, from everything I've readThere was a study carried out by a German institute (the one looking at and mass testing in the German hotspot) that swabbed every surface in a house where two Covid-19 positive people were living. They found no evidence of the virus anywhere in the house. This begs the question, how is it transmitting?
But the expectation was that those droplets end up on surfaces.As far as I know, it's always been said from the very outset that it spreads primarily in droplets expelled by an infected person. Picking it up off surfaces seems to be a potential secondary route, from everything I've read
An alternative view from a Harvard Professor in evolution and epidemiology of infectious diseases.
Link
Good points there and supported by a few pointers from a minister today (Dorries) and also Ferguson on R4. This is going to be a long haul, but we need sufficient testing of those with symptoms and those they've contacted and an army of people doing it.Regarding testing, I was watching Brian Williams on MSNBC and he quoted the number of Americans who had been tested then went on to say that with one million tests per day it would take one calendar year to test every American once.
That should be a sobering thought for everyone here when the government says they want 100,000 tests per day. That's approximately 660 days to test everyone.
Normal is a long way off just on those metrics alone and you'll need to have a robust strategy of contact tracing to back that up so anyone thinking that we won't need to adopt some sort of virus alert app should expect restrictions for a long time.
I'm on record as being worried about the erosion of our privacy so I would suggest the government would need to be completely transparent about how any app will work and have it subject to an independent oversight process if they want it to become a ubiquitous tool going forward.