The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) published a non-peer reviewed article assessing COVID viability on skin, money, and clothing. Struck me as changing some situations of my personal dynamics on how to reduce exposure.
Summarized:
- Virus remained stable on the $1 bill and clothing (at 4C or 39F) for 96 hours but not on the $20 bill.
- Virus remained stable on skin (at body temp) for at least 8 hours, (room temp) for at least 96 hours, and (refrigerated temp) for 14 days.
- Study confirmed inverse relationship between virus stability and temperature.
- Virus stability on skin demonstrates need for continued hand hygiene to minimize transmission.
Link to the pre-published, non-peer reviewed paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....01.20144253v1
Certainly there is a lot of examination underway. From an educated layman’s viewpoint (EMT/past epi response work), here are a few elements that have been cited:
1) Interfacility transfers of COVID positive patients between skilled nursing facilities - likely to be the biggest element of driving up avoidable deaths, as they effectively slimed clean/mostly clean nursing homes with sick patients
2) NYC had early exposure to COVID - the evidence is sparse, but likely COVID was circulating between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the City undetected; by early February COVID was widespread but limited testing could not define the endemic scope masked by seasonal flu
3) Lack of refined treatment protocols for hospitalized patients - taking nothing away from the frontline practitioners, they were writing the script as treating the patients (happy hypoxics, steroids, etc.) and we have amazing survival rates because of their efforts
4) NYC is a Petri dish for infectious disease - On top of being a global crossroads, the sheer density of urban life almost certainly lays a major part; while we don’t know the magic amount of virus needed to sicken people (~LD50) a pre-COVID New Yorker riding the train for 60 minutes a day, in an elevator 20 minutes a day, in a Uber 40 minutes a week, etc. was getting huge doses of other folks’ swampy air
The Wall Street Journal did a series of paywalled stories on the New York failures. Being a New York-based news outlet, they might have pulled some punches, but did callout some bad decisions by Gov. Cuomo and the general fecklessness of Mayor DeBlasio. I don’t care for the City nor their odious politics, but the community and Cuomo did a pretty good job playing a lousy hand.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-new...se-11591908426
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...or-11589470773
Even hyper left wing ProPublica criticized the New York dysfunction to pump up California - https://www.propublica.org/article/t...-as-california
With matching population densities why have countries like Japan and Taiwan fared so much better? What are they doing that we are not? Philippines as well.
Japan total cases at just over 20k and deaths at less than 1k
Taiwan total cases at just over 450 cases and 7 deaths
Philippines total cases just over 50k and less than 1,400 deaths.
Whiskey
May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one
Approaching herd immunity levels in some of the hardest hit areas of New York.
Excerpts: July 10 NYT
At a clinic in Corona, a working-class neighborhood in Queens, more than 68 percent of people tested positive for antibodies to the new coronavirus. At another clinic in Jackson Heights, Queens, that number was 56 percent. But at a clinic in Cobble Hill, a mostly white and wealthy neighborhood in Brooklyn, only 13 percent of people tested positive for antibodies.
According to antibody test results from CityMD that were shared with The New York Times, some neighborhoods were so exposed to the virus during the peak of the epidemic in March and April that they might have some protection during a second wave.
“Some communities might have herd immunity,” said Dr. Daniel Frogel, a senior vice president for operations at CityMD, which plays a key role in the city’s testing program.
As of June 26, CityMD had administered about 314,000 antibody tests in New York City. Citywide, 26 percent of the tests came back positive.
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The more I read about this the more I believe this virus has spread well beyond conventional wisdom, particularly when considering that COVID is supposed to be far easier to spread (asymptomatic spread and for longer periods) than the flu. CDC estimates the 2018 flu season at 45 million infections. COVID outbreak has been going for about the same number of months as a flu season. Stands to reason that there are far more COVID infections if it spreads so easily.
Asian countries are more used to this sort of thing as a part of daily life and do things like wear masks without acting like it’s the end of the world. They also had much better testing availability early on. The combination helped them get it under control fast unlike here where we still have pathetic testing and people don’t want to wear masks in public.
With the density I don't think just "wearing a mask" is what did it. I have spent time in Tokyo and Osaka. You are on top of people just walking to the store in certain areas. It is impossible to socially distance. And while some wear mask, the majority do not.
I am also speaking to death rate. Japan had 8 deaths per million whereas New York had over 1,600 per million and the US is at around 450 per million.
Whiskey
May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one
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