I don’t know, man. You’re telling me that if something can be transmitted by sex it is wrong to say that it is sexually transmitted in that instance.
Maybe you wouldn’t put it on a list of STIs, but I don’t think there is something wrong with saying that if something was transmitted through sex, then it was, in that case, sexually transmitted.
This is a really ridiculous thing to have a argument about.
Agreed. There are a few things going on, but I think we’re all on the same page.
Infections that can be transmitted while having sex, but not because of the sexual contact per se
Infections that are typically transmitted through sexual contact
Infections that are not typically transmitted through sexual contact but can be sometimes
I think that there is a way to use the words “sexually” and “transmitted” in a sentence to describe any of these that would not be wrong. #1 would be the most questionable, I suppose, but as mentioned above it’s not a distinction with much practical value (absent glory holes and gas masks).
I think the wet market vs. lab argument is even more pointless.
You’re forgetting the gas masks and glory holes exception.
I basically filed your concern under #1. It’s a distinction without practical utility.
No, I mean, with smear you can get it without any human contact. That is not hte case with sexual transmission.
Glory holes you say?
It’s a new day, a brand new day.
Person A orders food from a place where a person B is infected. They never come into direct contact but person B handled the pizza box. Then person A who had no other contacts tests positive for the same strain that person B has.
The case for relaxing our guard against smear transmission is always going to rely on inductive reasoning.
How long should we have to go without a documented case of smear transmission in order to relax our vigilance about wiping things down?
We can come up with other scenarios. Infected person A touches a surface and leaves.8 hours later person B touches that same surface and becomes infected.
People will only invest limited time and energy to protect themselves. Any time and energy invested to protect against unlikely vectors is taken away from more important measures.
I’ve completely lost the plot of this argument. CDC says odds of smear transmission is low ( <1 in 10,000) CDC also recommends regular cleaning of high touch surfaces and regularly washing hands. What exactly is the disagreement?
Opportunity cost.
So you just don’t believe the estimates? Ok then. Umm, some people don’t believe smear transmission is possible at all, I don’t really care what they think either. But regardless, say it’s 1 in a thousand. I still don’t get the argument. Is your issue with cleaning high touch surfaces regularly or washing your hands regularly?
Yeah, my post was not intended to address the point you are making.
I don’t really disagree with that point. The only thing that I’ll say is that it would be easier to tease out fomites vs droplet than it is to tease out sex vs droplet. But both are quite hard.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/vaccine-distribution-delays/
http://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1380630728023683073?s=19
I get your concern, and appreciate it honestly, but I think it’s overblown.
So you don’t have any issue other than science is hard? That was a lot of posts and a lot of words to get to that. There have been case reports where the most likely cause of infection is smear transmission. So it’s obviously not some impossible thing to do, and no I’m not doing a deep dive into this to find them. There have also been studies showing households that are diligent about disinfecting surfaces when one member of the house has covid lowers the risk of of spreading covid. Again, hardly an rct, but some evidence that smear transmission is possible. So the totality of the evidence shows that a virus that can be spread via airborne transmission is most likely to be spread via airborne transmission, but other vectors may play some smaller role.
I generally agree with your posts here today, but I think the food delivery case is pretty good evidence. There must have been millions of Door Dashes to people like me who have had literally zero contact with humans for months at a time. We should see plenty of smear transmissions if they were at all common.
If the threat of smear transmission is less than what was worried about, then we can consider reducing any effort that costs significant time or money. If you’re paying for special chemicals to sanitize, maybe you don’t need to do that. Maybe you get a few hours of your life back each week. Maybe employees get back some down time where they aren’t officially on break but normally do something less strenuous than cleaning.
The use of the term “theater” draws clear analogies to increased security measures after 9/11. For better or worse, that’s the mindset that you are arguing against.
Where should the burden of proof lie? Should we assume smear transmission is a great risk until proven otherwise or should we assume it is a mild risk until proven otherwise? Should we have a consistent attitude towards COVID as we do for other potential risks?