The great old Ducktales Theater character is now on YouTube! Who knew?
As a parting gift for readers this year, I’d like to refer people to this NPR story on how the SARS-2 coronavirus is transmitted — and how it took a new scientific view of virus transmission to understand it to get our scientific response to the virus on track.
In other words, it shows how Science (capitalized here because I refer to the institution of scientific inquiry) originally got SARS-2 wrong — and then swallowed hard, listened to some dissident voices, and used the scientific method to get it right.
It will allow you to answer the question of why Dr. Fauci got some things wrong in the earliest days of Covid, and why he now gets them right.
While the vaccines may get most of the glory — even though we still don’t know for whom and for how long they will be effective because of the rushed testing — this story shows how everyday practice of science, especially by those with minority viewpoints, can get it right. It shows scientific knowledge changing with extreme speed earlier this year in the face of a crisis. It’s truly inspiring.
This story covers what I think people understand least about the danger of SARS-2-CoV (aka “the coronavirus”) in our lives, which has become even more important to understand given the revelation that the new mutation of the virus identified in Great Britain — 70% more easily transmitted than what we’re used to — has reached Los Angeles County.
Except for a relatively few scientists who weren’t being listened to, the scientific consensus a year ago — in fact, 8-9 months ago — was that there were only two types of airborne virus transmission: the measles virus, which just floated in air until it died or was breathed in — or viruses that defended on physical contact, like someone sneezing in your face.
SARS-Cov-2, which causes Covid-19, spread through an intermediate method — or, more accurately, a range of them. It couldn’t survive naked in the air like measles, but it *could* survive suspended in floating droplets of water: for example, from a sneeze or a cough, or even extensive expression of air, as in singing, loud talking, or even regular talking over an extended time.
That is why small indoor gatherings over the holidays with people outside of one’s normal household are such a major vector of the virus. Singing in a large hall, loud talking in a bar, or even hours of normal talk in a much smaller living room can saturate the air with enough virus to transmit it. Being outside is not always a sufficient alternative, because direct contact (blowing your virus-containing breath up someone’s nose) and close contact (allowing too much air that you’ve breathed up someone’s nose) are still vectors. They’re just not the main ones.
It’s too late to get to people before tonight’s festivities, but read this and keep it in mind before you next gather in 2021. Wear your mask correctly — covering both mouth and nose, with small breaks only to insert food or drink into your mouth, replacing it before you inhale or exhale — and have a safe and happy 2021!
I’m including as much fair use quotation as I can below to get you started:
For Scientists Who Study Virus Transmission, 2020 Was A Watershed Year
“In the past year, we’ve come farther in understanding airborne transmission, or at least kind of beyond just the few experts who study it, than we have in decades,” says [Virginia Tech virologist studying viral transmission Linsey] Marr. “Frankly, I thought it would take us another 30 years to get to where we are now.”
. . .
At the start of this coronavirus outbreak, the prevailing assumption among many medical experts was that respiratory viruses primarily spread through droplets of saliva and mucus that fly into the air after a cough or a sneeze. These were thought to travel only a short distance before falling to a surface. Public health messages consequently urged people to wash their hands and avoid touching their faces.
The coronavirus wasn’t thought to be “airborne,” a word associated with viruses like the one that causes measles. An airborne virus was widely considered to be a germ that could travel in tiny particles called aerosols that hang suspended in the air and linger for quite a while, potentially traveling long distances.
But, in reality, there’s no clear cutoff between a virus that travels in aerosols and one that travels in larger droplets, says [Virginia Tech scientist studying viral transmission Linsey] Marr. Infected people can give off respiratory viruses in particles of all different sizes that can travel a variety of distances, and big droplets can evaporate away into smaller ones. Very close to an infected person, the concentration of airborne virus could be high, and others could simply inhale it.
As the new coronavirus began to spread, it sure seemed like airborne spread — at short range — might be critical.
Read the rest — PLEASE read the rest! — at the link in the article title.
By the way, scientists say that the SARS-2-CoV will probably be with us for the foreseeable future, especially if vaccinations don’t last as long as hoped or if their mutations proceed beyond the vaccines’ efficacy.
If that’s why happens, we really need a new name for the main disease it causes, as while “Covid-19” was clunky but functional for 2020’s purposes, it’s clearly way too clunky for the long term.
We need a short, catchy, ideally one-word-not-containing-a-number name for is, like “polio,” “measles,” “HIV,” “herpes,” “shingles,” “diptheria,” “lockjaw,” and “mumps.”
I suggest “the Trumps.”
Yes, this gives the egomaniac the recognition he craves, but he’ll be dead within 25 years — and the disease won’t be.
Decades, even a half-century now, when children ask why they are being vaccinated, we’ll need to be able to explain to them that it’s so that they won’t get the trumps.
As the number of deaths in the U.S. climbs to one million (and that’s if there aren’t reinfections), spurred on worldwide by the science denial and conspiracy-fueling rhetoric of our too-popular President, naming the disease that he strove to downplay because he thought that it got in the way of his re-election (and immunity from prosecution) seems immensely appropriate. Future Americans will fear the trumps, and when they do they will think back to the original Trump who put them in such danger.
I like it! I will start today – New Years Resolution. I am glad that Donna and I are both over the trumps, but it’s spreading around our neighborhood a lot.
When did you guys get the trumps? You probably told me and I forgot about it. Have you checked into donating blood with antibodies, if you’ve got them?
Sounds like you get to cover the HB krazy rally beat! I’m not going near them until my second vaccination!
The 2020 Covid-19 retrospectives keep on coming, helping to shed light on how we got to this point in what we
have gone throughcontinue to endure.This time, it’s a strong piece in Vox examining how, after initially succeeding in our attempts to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19 cases, we in the U.S. flat-out dropped the ball. The answer is that it became politicized — mostly by a President who rightly saw the plague as a threat to his re-election, and therefore decided to get us all to pretend that the plague didn’t exist.