Coronavirus

[jimbogumbo]

Should faculty over age 65 be teaching in-person at a university or public school this fall?  Over age 70?

I support their right to choose to do that, but think it's crucial that they have the choice to say no to f2f. I've opted (67, other issues as well) to convert to online.

I think it's a bad idea for anyone in the 65+ age range to teach f2f in most circumstances. A large lecture hall, with plenty of space between the instructor and the students would be fine. However, in my discipline that is not a good modality anyway.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

We have a petition going around which calls for faculty to be allowed to have the choice for either ftf or online.

[Treehugger]

I have a coronavirus question. We've all heard that transmission of the virus is much less likely outside than inside buildings. I had always assumed this was because there tends to be much more "ventilation" aka wind outside than inside and this natural ventilation quickly disperses the aerosolized particles containing the virus. But what if it is completely calm outside? Why would this be somehow better than being in some large indoor space?

I was wondering this this past weekend when I was outdoors with a bunch of people on a narrow hiking trail. There were all manner of signs insisting that people stay 6' apart, but how is this possible when the trail is 2' wide with drop-offs on either sides? Anyway, while noticing just how impossible it was to socially distance, I also noticed that there was absolutely zero wind. Total calm. The leaves on the trees were perfectly still. How is this not just as dangerous as having a large crowd in a spacious building?

By the way, we were wearing masks along with about 10% of the people on the trail. We have a mask ordinance in our county, but masks are only required indoors.

[jimbogumbo]

I have a coronavirus question. We've all heard that transmission of the virus is much less likely outside than inside buildings. I had always assumed this was because there tends to be much more "ventilation" aka wind outside than inside and this natural ventilation quickly disperses the aerosolized particles containing the virus. But what if it is completely calm outside? Why would this be somehow better than being in some large indoor space?

I was wondering this this past weekend when I was outdoors with a bunch of people on a narrow hiking trail. There were all manner of signs insisting that people stay 6' apart, but how is this possible when the trail is 2' wide with drop-offs on either sides? Anyway, while noticing just how impossible it was to socially distance, I also noticed that there was absolutely zero wind. Total calm. The leaves on the trees were perfectly still. How is this not just as dangerous as having a large crowd in a spacious building?

By the way, we were wearing masks along with about 10% of the people on the trail. We have a mask ordinance in our county, but masks are only required indoors.

Duration. Just don't stay near people. In an indoor space the duration of your exposure is typically a lot longer.

[secundem_artem]

I have a coronavirus question. We've all heard that transmission of the virus is much less likely outside than inside buildings. I had always assumed this was because there tends to be much more "ventilation" aka wind outside than inside and this natural ventilation quickly disperses the aerosolized particles containing the virus. But what if it is completely calm outside? Why would this be somehow better than being in some large indoor space?

I was wondering this this past weekend when I was outdoors with a bunch of people on a narrow hiking trail. There were all manner of signs insisting that people stay 6' apart, but how is this possible when the trail is 2' wide with drop-offs on either sides? Anyway, while noticing just how impossible it was to socially distance, I also noticed that there was absolutely zero wind. Total calm. The leaves on the trees were perfectly still. How is this not just as dangerous as having a large crowd in a spacious building?

By the way, we were wearing masks along with about 10% of the people on the trail. We have a mask ordinance in our county, but masks are only required indoors.

Duration. Just don't stay near people. In an indoor space the duration of your exposure is typically a lot longer.

+1  Depending on the research group doing the study, "significant exposure" is 10-30 minutes.  Walking past someone on a trail would be low risk assuming nobody sneezed into your face as you went by.

Fun facts - according to my state dept of public health. 

40% of Covid deaths in Artem State are in those 60-80 yrs of age and 47% are in those over age 80. 

53% of cases are in those below the age of 40, but they are only 3% of deaths. 

Only 13% of cases are asymptomatic. 

Conclusion - all those youngun's who insist they just GOTTA go for a beer with their friends or they'll just lose their minds are not not likely to die, but they are likely to get symptoms, and they pose a genuine risk to their families, co-workers, etc. who may be older or in poor health.  Jebus Crikey on a bike - Anne Frank spent 2 years in that freakin' attic.  Americans should just shut the frack up and do what's right. 

[Caracal]

[

Conclusion - all those youngun's who insist they just GOTTA go for a beer with their friends or they'll just lose their minds are not not likely to die, but they are likely to get symptoms, and they pose a genuine risk to their families, co-workers, etc. who may be older or in poor health.   

Yes, and especially when it is perfectly easy to go have a beer with friends in a relatively safe fashion. Go sit on your deck, or your stoop, stay six feet apart and it becomes a pretty low risk activity. That said, we shouldn't lose track of where the blame really lies. People shouldn't go to bars or sit inside at restaurants, so why are those places open for indoor seating?

[mamselle]

[

Conclusion - all those youngun's who insist they just GOTTA go for a beer with their friends or they'll just lose their minds are not not likely to die, but they are likely to get symptoms, and they pose a genuine risk to their families, co-workers, etc. who may be older or in poor health.   

Yes, and especially when it is perfectly easy to go have a beer with friends in a relatively safe fashion. Go sit on your deck, or your stoop, stay six feet apart and it becomes a pretty low risk activity. That said, we shouldn't lose track of where the blame really lies. People shouldn't go to bars or sit inside at restaurants, so why are those places open for indoor seating?

Becuz the eijit in the White House sez it's OK.....

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

[

Conclusion - all those youngun's who insist they just GOTTA go for a beer with their friends or they'll just lose their minds are not not likely to die, but they are likely to get symptoms, and they pose a genuine risk to their families, co-workers, etc. who may be older or in poor health.   

Yes, and especially when it is perfectly easy to go have a beer with friends in a relatively safe fashion. Go sit on your deck, or your stoop, stay six feet apart and it becomes a pretty low risk activity. That said, we shouldn't lose track of where the blame really lies. People shouldn't go to bars or sit inside at restaurants, so why are those places open for indoor seating?

Becuz the eijit in the White House sez it's OK.....

M.

Exactly. I am so tired of family telling me that 'it's just the flu' and that it should be gone in the fall. Frustrating. And, of course, none of them have a medical degree...

[Stockmann]

I have a coronavirus question. We've all heard that transmission of the virus is much less likely outside than inside buildings. I had always assumed this was because there tends to be much more "ventilation" aka wind outside than inside and this natural ventilation quickly disperses the aerosolized particles containing the virus. But what if it is completely calm outside? Why would this be somehow better than being in some large indoor space?

Outdoors, there's a vast volume of air to dilute the aerosol (even in a crowd, there's a lot of air above the crowd). Even assuming no air currents, diffusion dilutes it - but in an enclosed space, the aerosol has nowhere to go and just keeps building up (in practice there's always some ventilation, unless you're in a submarine, but diffusion is still going to be much slower than outdoors). In practice, because of convection and so on, there's always going to be some air current, even if it's too slow to be noticeable (and diffusion and air currents combined disperse aerosols faster than either alone would) - in an enclosed space all it does is move the aerosol droplets around in the same space, but outdoors it helps disperse the aerosol. Even opening a window helps. None of this helps much if someone coughs directly on your face as you inhale, but it does matter to transmission via aerosol.
incidentally all of this has been known for ages, in the context of transmission of other viruses causing respiratory illnesses, like the flu. That humans produce aerosol, that that aerosol contains live viruses, that this contaminated aerosol can remain in the air for hours, that the viruses in it can in turn infect others, and that filtering out part of the aerosol (as with a facemask) or cutting down its concentration in air (by opening a window, for example) can cut down the viral load, all of these are things that have long been known and have been reported in the peer reviewed literature for a long time.

[apl68]

I learned today that one of my neighbors is now confined to his house.  Not because he has anything, but because he's in charge of the local hospital and has been instructed to work from home and stay out of harm's way at all costs.  Evidently the people in charge are afraid of what might happen to the hospital if he were to be put out of action.  Given the extent to which he's turned the place around since he took over management of it several years back, I don't blame them.

[apl68]

[

Conclusion - all those youngun's who insist they just GOTTA go for a beer with their friends or they'll just lose their minds are not not likely to die, but they are likely to get symptoms, and they pose a genuine risk to their families, co-workers, etc. who may be older or in poor health.   

Yes, and especially when it is perfectly easy to go have a beer with friends in a relatively safe fashion. Go sit on your deck, or your stoop, stay six feet apart and it becomes a pretty low risk activity. That said, we shouldn't lose track of where the blame really lies. People shouldn't go to bars or sit inside at restaurants, so why are those places open for indoor seating?

Becuz the eijit in the White House sez it's OK.....

M.

Exactly. I am so tired of family telling me that 'it's just the flu' and that it should be gone in the fall. Frustrating. And, of course, none of them have a medical degree...

The man in the White House has a lot to answer for, but this goes so far beyond that.  The reopenings wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a great deal of public pressure for them to.  We've gone so many years without a truly terrible epidemic in our country that society as a whole just can't wrap their heads around what it takes to deal with one.

[mamselle]

And there's also a kind-of racist element in some peoples' thinking:

"That's something that happens to...take your pick....SE Asian places, African places, South American hotspots, etc...."

"THEY" get the Ebolas, the MERS's the SARS's (first time around: which taught 'them' how important it is to let your brain tell your feet and hands what to do...), etc....we don't. It goes away when it gets to us: we're special...must be that.

I.e., we're privileged, it's not something we in all our wonderfulness have to deal with, it's one of the perks of ending up in this partic'lar place at this partic'lar time in the history of the world....it's not realllllly our problem, because those people in all those other places don't have whatever it is that make us special.

But that's just not true. As we're (maybe) seeing now....

Or--as in the refrain of a folk song learned at camp in the 1960s...."When will they ever learn?"

Maybe next March, when it's still with us.

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

And there's also a kind-of racist element in some peoples' thinking:

"That's something that happens to...take your pick....SE Asian places, African places, South American hotspots, etc...."

"THEY" get the Ebolas, the MERS's the SARS's (first time around: which taught 'them' how important it is to let your brain tell your feet and hands what to do...), etc....we don't. It goes away when it gets to us: we're special...must be that.

I.e., we're privileged, it's not something we in all our wonderfulness have to deal with, it's one of the perks of ending up in this partic'lar place at this partic'lar time in the history of the world....it's not realllllly our problem, because those people in all those other places don't have whatever it is that make us special.

But that's just not true. As we're (maybe) seeing now....

Or--as in the refrain of a folk song learned at camp in the 1960s...."When will they ever learn?"

Maybe next March, when it's still with us.

M.

I doubt some of them will learn by then. The way some people around here think, you'd think they were still subscribing to medieval medicine. I'm waiting for the four humors to pop up.

[Cheerful]

Outdoors, there's a vast volume of air to dilute the aerosol (even in a crowd, there's a lot of air above the crowd). Even assuming no air currents, diffusion dilutes it - but in an enclosed space, the aerosol has nowhere to go and just keeps building up (in practice there's always some ventilation, unless you're in a submarine, but diffusion is still going to be much slower than outdoors). In practice, because of convection and so on, there's always going to be some air current, even if it's too slow to be noticeable (and diffusion and air currents combined disperse aerosols faster than either alone would) - in an enclosed space all it does is move the aerosol droplets around in the same space, but outdoors it helps disperse the aerosol. Even opening a window helps. None of this helps much if someone coughs directly on your face as you inhale, but it does matter to transmission via aerosol.
incidentally all of this has been known for ages, in the context of transmission of other viruses causing respiratory illnesses, like the flu. That humans produce aerosol, that that aerosol contains live viruses, that this contaminated aerosol can remain in the air for hours, that the viruses in it can in turn infect others, and that filtering out part of the aerosol (as with a facemask) or cutting down its concentration in air (by opening a window, for example) can cut down the viral load, all of these are things that have long been known and have been reported in the peer reviewed literature for a long time.

Thanks, Stockmann.  This post came at a good time for some related questions I had about airflow, aersol, outdoor air, and viral load.

The reopenings wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a great deal of public pressure for them to.  We've gone so many years without a truly terrible epidemic in our country that society as a whole just can't wrap their heads around what it takes to deal with one.

I am hugely in favor of the cautious, data-based, phased approach to re-opening, closing, re-opening.
That said, I am trying to understand how others feel.  Many people are really struggling economically and mentally at this point.  I don't want to think about what it's like to see your own business that you spent a lifetime building have to close, for good, and desperately wondering how you will support yourself/family going forward.

[pgher]

The reopenings wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a great deal of public pressure for them to.  We've gone so many years without a truly terrible epidemic in our country that society as a whole just can't wrap their heads around what it takes to deal with one.

I am hugely in favor of the cautious, data-based, phased approach to re-opening, closing, re-opening.
That said, I am trying to understand how others feel.  Many people are really struggling economically and mentally at this point.  I don't want to think about what it's like to see your own business that you spent a lifetime building have to close, for good, and desperately wondering how you will support yourself/family going forward.

I think what we're seeing is the dark side of individualism. The healthy way to view individualism is that we are part of a society that enables us to be free, so long as we do the minimum to maintain that society. Instead what we're seeing is "freedom" used as a code word for devolving responsibility. Various federal agencies give guidance, which is then undercut by the White House, but neither resources nor firm rules. States then are left to do what they think is appropriate. In many cases, that means "empowering" local entities to fix the problem with limited guidance and no resources. Many universities and schools are "empowering" faculty to fix the problem. That is, the language of freedom and autonomy is being used to abdicate responsibility. I don't know if it's because the higher levels don't want to assume responsibility, or that they don't have the language or political theory to do more.