D&D and the rising pandemic

Ryujin · Nov 3, 2021

Zardnaar said:
Could also pass as S&M gimp

You're not the first to say that

Umbran · Nov 3, 2021

Dannyalcatraz said:
In both cases, “enlightened self-interest” would be a positive thing, but alas, it’s also a bit too rare.

Yeah. It comes down to how humans suck at risk assessment.

NotAYakk · Nov 3, 2021

Zardnaar said:
My theory is those countries volunteering to be a petri dish might end up doing the world a favour. Some delta variant hopefully mutate to something less deadly.

It has to be less deadly, more virulent, and confer immunity against other strains.

The reason why Delta is displacing other strains is not because they mutated into Delta. It is because Delta is out-competing them. The other strains are being beat back by NPI and vaccination and the people they try to infect already being infected by Delta.

Non-Delta level strains are completely crippled by the vaccine; almost nobody develops symptoms and they spread it really poorly. Delta is only slowed down by the vaccines.

---

Hockey league in province for elderly had a massive outbreak including at least one death. Everyone was vaccinated.

Heavy breathing in cold arena without external air exchange and filtering. It wasn't just people who played against each other, the entire league caught it.

There is currently a battle in the infection control branch of medicine.

On one hand, there is the droplet and fomite side. These are the people who say "stay 2 m apart", "use plexiglass barriers", "wash hands and surfaces frequently".

On the other, aerosol. These are the people who say "interact outdoors", "be well ventilated", "wear masks, n95 or medical grade ideally", "install air filters".

The fomite side has the advantage of being easier to do. Fixing ventilation problems is hard in legacy buildings. The problem is that it looks like they are wrong.

The belief that respiratory illness spreads via ballistic droplets and fomites, and only rarely via airborn transmission, looks like a 50+ year old error caused by the fact that TB requires 5 nm particles to reach the bottom of your lungs and infect people. Particles larger than 5 nm get caught in the upper respiratory tract.

And while the work showed that particles up to 100 nm where reasonably well airborn, that 5 nm limit -- which tells you what you need to filter out to stop TB from spreading -- got picked up in the literature, and it became dogma that "airborn transmission occurs with 5 nm and under particles", instead of "airborn transmission of TB occurs with 5 nm and under particles".

Covid 19 5 - 100 nm particles (of saliva) can stay airborn for quite a long time, and it appears that they are the primary method of transmission. To prevent transmission, you need to ventilate or filter the particles out of the air, and wear masks to keep them out of people's upper respiratory tract. Have a room without air exchange, and the infectious particles will float right around a plexiglass shield, and far further than 2 m.

Buy HEPA filter systems. Or make your own; there are some really cool custom builds that involve a box fan, some tubing, and cheap filter material.

Cadence · Nov 3, 2021

Zardnaar said:
That's kinda funny.

I've been thinking of a Mandalorian costume or the snake armor costume from Assassin's Creed Odyssey as you can wear a mask under them.

I think he did it because the Zorro mask covers the eyes but not the nostrils or mouth.

A theme mask that did cover the full face would definitely be amusing.

Rabulias · Nov 3, 2021

Zardnaar said:
I've been thinking of a Mandalorian costume or the snake armor costume from Assassin's Creed Odyssey as you can wear a mask under them.

Umbran · Nov 3, 2021

NotAYakk said:
It has to be less deadly, more virulent, and confer immunity against other strains.

The reason why Delta is displacing other strains is not because they mutated into Delta. It is because Delta is out-competing them. The other strains are being beat back by NPI and vaccination and the people they try to infect already being infected by Delta.

Non-Delta level strains are completely crippled by the vaccine; almost nobody develops symptoms and they spread it really poorly. Delta is only slowed down by the vaccines.

This is put in a way that may be misleading.

Delta wins because when other strains bring a squad, Delta brings a batallion. Delta simply out-breeds other strains, and your immune system gets swamped by sheer dose.

NotAYakk said:
On one hand, there is the droplet and fomite side. These are the people who say "stay 2 m apart", "use plexiglass barriers", "wash hands and surfaces frequently".

On the other, aerosol. These are the people who say "interact outdoors", "be well ventilated", "wear masks, n95 or medical grade ideally", "install air filters".

I don't believe these are accurate descriptions.

NotAYakk said:
The belief that respiratory illness spreads via ballistic droplets and fomites, and only rarely via airborn transmission, looks like a 50+ year old error caused by the fact that TB requires 5 nm particles to reach the bottom of your lungs and infect people. Particles larger than 5 nm get caught in the upper respiratory tract.

Okay, I'm sorry, but you seem to making a bit of a hash of terms.

"Droplet" is anything over about 5 micrometers. "Aerosol" is just a small droplet (under about 50 micrometers). The effective difference between "droplet" transmission and "aerosol" in this context is the length of time the drops stay in the air. Any droplet over 100 micrometers falls out of the air in seconds. From there, the smaller the drop, the longer the hang time.

The vast majority of SARS-COV-2 transmission is by droplet. The pattern of spread we see in Covid-19 in the population is not consistent with aerosol droplets that stay in the air for more than about a half an hour. And, the vast majority of cases are still from folks you were in close immediate contact with - you are both present and within about 6 feet of each other.

NotAYakk said:
Covid 19 5 - 100 nm particles (of saliva) can stay airborn for quite a long time

"Quite a long time," is relative, and too vague to be useful. The empirical relevant period for covid-19 seems to typically be seconds to half an hour. If Joe has covid, and you enter the space they were in two hours before, your chances of getting sick from Joe are miniscule.

One caveat - this does not hold for spaces that have been permeated with the stuff. If Joe's been in his living room coughing all day, you want to wait substantially longer before you treat that space as safe.

Cadence · Nov 3, 2021

Umbran said:
Okay, I'm sorry, but you seem to making a bit of a hash of terms.

"Droplet" is anything over about 5 micrometers. "Aerosol" is just a small droplet (under about 50 micrometers). The effective difference between "droplet" transmission and "aerosol" in this context is the length of time the drops stay in the air. Any droplet over 100 micrometers falls out of the air in seconds. From there, the smaller the drop, the longer the hang time.

The vast majority of SARS-COV-2 transmission is by droplet. The pattern of spread we see in Covid-19 in the population is not consistent with aerosol droplets that stay in the air for more than about a half an hour. And, the vast majority of cases are still from folks you were in close immediate contact with - you are both present and within about 6 feet of each other.

There was a show earlier this year (I thought on the BBC world service) about how artificial and unhelpful the hard cutoffs for droplet/aerosol/airborne/etc... are. I can't find the original though :-(

For Scientists Who Study Virus Transmission, 2020 Was A Watershed Year

When Linsey Marr looks back at the beginning of 2020, what strikes her is how few people in the world really understood how viruses can travel through the air.

www.kuow.org

Eltab · Nov 3, 2021

I just found a book at my local Public Library: Uncontrolled Spread by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA Commissioner.

Only a chapter in. So far his thesis is that bureaucratic inertia was at the root of the COVID failure. As to personalities, he is an equal-opportunity critic.