COVID-19: Chapter 4 - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

The bit where they explain what the route of infection for coronaviruses is? Calm down and give it another read:

@Jalfrezi was calling for quick shutdowns on January 25th. What’s actually happened is he hasn’t moved his position much while people who said it was going to cause the end of Western Civilization and Nuclear War have moved more towards his position.

ChrisV, otoh, I believe was mathematically proving that the IFR could not possibly be less than X, where X is higher than anyone currently thinks it is.

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Having lost a son in a car, having my younger kids start driving was nerve racking as hell.

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I was surprised by how fast people drive in England. It could be that driving on the left, in constant rain and fog, with a stick shift on the wrong side of the car, and having a roundabout at every intersection, and my brother relentlessly back seat driving, had me wishing people would slow down a little.

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This article seems to agree with JT. “As long as all food safety regulations are followed and you remove food from containers and wash your hands before eating it, it should be fine.” How many restaurants actually follow all those regulations? How many people are plating their takeout and throwing away all containers before washing their hands and eating.

It’s just a combination of quotes from experts saying different versions of “it should be fine” as long as a bunch of other conditions are met, but like, we know they’re not being met.

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Cuts like a knife

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In a sample of ~300 Dallas area restaurants, the number following protocols was 4%.

No, it’s people who have studied coronaviruses for decades, understand the transmission routes, have never seen any evidence of foodborne transmission, and people characterize it as though they’re just handwaving and saying “eh, I think it’s fine.”

I mean…

These two things are contradictory. It transmits if you touch something with a droplet and then touch your mouth, but in the SO unlikely event that someone coughs or sneezes on your salad (remember two paragraphs ago the article points out droplets are expelled during normal conversation or exhalation), no big deal because it only comes into contact with your throat.

This is also not true, IIRC. Wasn’t there an article published in a journal last month pointing out that unlike other coronaviruses, this one seems to replicate in the throat rather than the nose?

But this article seems to be exactly what JT is talking about: experts telling us that touching an infected surface and then touching our mouths is dangerous, but somehow eating a salad someone sneezed on is totally fine. That’s moronic. One of those two things is not true.

“Unattributed”

First damn paragraph:

Don Schaffner had Thai takeout for dinner a few nights ago, just as he did occasionally in the weeks and months before the current COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s worth knowing. Schaffner is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey whose expertise includes quantitative microbial risk assessment, predictive food microbiology, hand-washing and cross-contamination.

I suppose there’s a lot of relevant info here: http://foodsafetytalk.com/ (Don’s food safety website/blog)

I’m not sure about that. Motorway speed limit here is 70mph, dual carriageway is 60mph. Cities in both countries have horrendous congestion.

Done correctly, this is not dangerous at all. They wash leafy greens like this all the time for those bagged salad products. And other foods too.

Yeah but I guess morons who can’t follow simple instructions could screw up and end up ingesting bleach at harmful levels.

Thank you for noticing. :smile:

I was getting so much stick from one particular person I ended up putting him into the bin alongside anachronistic lol.

People conflate the lack of urgent and decisive government action with the urge to run around panicking like headless chickens. I think they need to get out into the big wide world a bit more.

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Yes, the article really makes it seem like they only talked to one expert.

“There are no published reports of linkage to food [of the novel coronavirus],” says Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio, an associate professor of allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington School of Medicine. In February, the World Health Organization said the same thing

Cooking at high-enough temperatures kills viruses, says Elizabeth Mills, a registered dietitian at the Villanova University College of Nursing, in Villanova, Pa.

The FDA has produced guidance on food safety and COVID-19. The only significant change from standing guidance before the pandemic is the recommendation from the FDA to maintain a 6-foot distance between food workers when possible, to reduce the risk of transmission among them.

“Commercial kitchens are required to follow FDA and USDA food safety rules, including the maintenance of clean and sanitized facilities and food contact surfaces,” says Olga Padilla-Zakour, director of the Cornell Food Venture Center at Cornell University.

Keep in mind that while you are limiting your risk by having the food delivered or by having someone meet you at the restaurant door for pickup, someone else is potentially increasing their risk in those transactions, says Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

“unsourced anecdote”

Yeah, bleach is standard. A bleach rinse is used in commercial kitchens for pots and pans and as you’ve pointed out, it is used to purify drinking water. You just have to dilute it enough.

Oh shit, botulism:

https://www.barfblog.com/2014/02/bacon-jam-recalled-in-alberta-due-to-clostridium-botulinum-risk/

Driving on the left is more logical: right handed majority. QED

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Well I’m with you in any case that all info I get about this is treated with extreme skepticism until proven to my satisfaction. If that makes me paranoid, so be it. But the amount of bad info we’ve received about this virus so far justifies it in my opinion.

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