Cleaning surfaces to prevent smear transmission of covid is probably not all that effective, but on the other hand, cleaning to prevent smear transmission of all manner of other shit is great and should be encouraged and continued.
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The one COVID thing that I hope is here to stay is in the restrooms at work. Not long ago, my university replaced all of the restroom paper towel dispensers with air dryers, with the goal of moving to a zero-waste campus or something like that. With COVID, paper towel dispensers were returned, and I hope itâs permanent; using less-than-elite (which these obviously are) hand dryers in a restroom is infuriating.
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I saw you posting the other day that me and skydiver frequently engaged in an argument and then disappeared in the face of your ferocious counterarguments, but from my perspective what happens is that itâs obvious to me that I wonât get anywhere so I give up.
In this case youâre only willing to argue under your own set of assumptions, namely that itâs way way less likely that smear transmission could happen in parcel delivery than it is that it could happen in public. Obviously there are reasons this might be the case, which youâve outlined, but also reasons it might be a situation with special risk of transmission (for example, that delivered packages can have been handled very recently by an infected person, leading to actual infected droplets on the packaging).
The fact is that we donât know how much less likely that sort of smear transmission is than getting it from a public surface, but I think itâs pretty reasonable to argue that it is not on the order of millions of times less likely. I wouldnât expect to see many of them, but with millions of people in isolation and billions of deliveries, if smear transmission was a realistic risk, weâd see a handful of them. This assumption of yours that public surfaces constitute a radically different risk than package surfaces is very obviously constructed to support this maximalist risk assessment. I know this because earlier in the pandemic you argued exactly the opposite in service of another maximalist risk assessment, i.e. that getting takeout for you constituted an unacceptable risk.
Basically you have a set of assumptions which amount to âsmear transmission is a thing which could only possibly happen in circumstances where it couldnât be distinguished from airborne transmissionâ and then you declare victory when we canât tell you how the two could be distinguished. Iâm like âwhat about these circumstances that there have been a billion plus ofâ and youâre like ânah probably wouldnât have been observed in any of those thoâ. Iâm not sure how Iâm supposed to argue under these circumstances or how you think Iâm the one doing unreasonable voodoo math here.
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Since thereâs been plenty of lol USA during the pandemic, you guys must be overdue for a little bit of LOL AUSTRALIA.
The government originally said everyone would be vaccinated by October, then that changed to the end of the year, and now the Prime Minister is straight up refusing to set any dates. Weâve had European countries refuse to send us shipments of vaccines we paid for using the Trump strategy of âno because fuck you thatâs whyâ, which honestly is pretty reasonable given the differential in case numbers.
Something this has highlighted which hopefully the government will have a think about is that having local manufacturing capacity, for vaccines and for many other things, is probably a good idea when youâre an island country which doesnât have any good comebacks to the âfuck you, noâ strategy. Like maybe offshoring everything isnât the brilliant idea it may appear.
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Leave It to ăăźăăź ?
Wtf is Chile doing right?
Itâs interesting that the US has been on a pretty solid biotech kick for the last 40 years, with europe lagging behind, but asian countries further behind.
Biotech is not a low hanging technology thatâs simple to replicate.
And the reproductive rate in the Czech Republic once again approaches 1 quite rapidly. I mean they literally announced the reductions a week ago when it was 0.7 and the day theyâre set to go into effect it goes up to almost 1.
Pricks need to get moving on more vaccines. Nurses apparently take weekends off from vaccinating people.
It appears that I have recovered from the vaccine side effects. Then again, I thought that yesterday but fell off a cliff midday before being back to full strength by night. So who the hell knows?
They really missed an opportunity to increase vaccination rates. They should have lied and claimed that the vaccine has a really odd side effect that occasionally enlarges the penis 2 inches.
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Itâs Herd Immunity Monday in the UK apparently - a UCL model says so so ITâS A FACT!
twitter makes me cry #herdimmunitymonday
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No masks in the UK anymore I guess!
Just had a half hour walk in the park, and a few masks worn around the neck in readiness but no one (apart from me) put one on.
Hope herd immunity is legit there. Iâm skeptical but who knows?!
Nowhere near that in the CR 
Yeah I donât believe it at all.
Mrs j did a STEM masters at UCL who are the uni claiming the herd immunity, and doesnât have much good to say about the place, and it seems wildly optimistic to me.
The latest figures that Iâve seen say that 47% of UK population has received one does. If we think the threshold for herd immunity is something like 75% of the population no longer susceptible, then that would mean over half of the non-vaccinated population for UK would have to be non-susceptible for other reasons (i.e., they were previously infected).
Yeah but the number likely assumes that everybody who was previously infected has retained all of their antibodies.
Interesting results from this, fairly even.
I suppose it doesnât matter, but the CDC is doing nothing of the sort.
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They are probably changing to three feet because our senile President gave an interview urging schools to open while he sat 20 feet away from the interviewer, both sitting under UV lamps lol
Three feet safe my ass, weâre just not capable of protecting students and teachers in this country so the standards have to change
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