The problems continue on a global basis, but today I’m restricting my aggregation to domestic / informational coverage…
How the world slept-walked into a pandemic: As America was focused on impeachment, the Super Bowl, & Kobe Bryant's tragic death, warnings of the mounting danger of #Covid19 were ignored. A tick tock from @RaineyTime & @kierafeldman. https://t.co/i6UDntyW59
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) April 12, 2020
Instructional thread:
As we all grow weary of lockdowns & restrictions, & some case-counts seem to plateau, there's restlessness towards ending these to limit economic harm & 'get back to normal'
Let me be very, very clear:
There is no cheap or easy way out of this pandemic.#COVID19 #SARSCoV21/n
— Dr Emma Hodcroft (@firefoxx66) April 11, 2020
Everyone with a hot take on the (still uncertain) numbers of asymptomatic infections and population immunity should reflect on this before talking about going back to ‘normal’ https://t.co/wajj5FyWnl
— Bill Hanage (@BillHanage) April 12, 2020
Excellent, informative threads about what’s happening on the front lines in NYC (from a doctor who survived Ebola infection!):
Bonjour, please find the unroll here: @Craig_A_Spencer: So what's really going on here in NYC? You're hearing conflicting information on who is tested, who… https://t.co/DrI4pdfGBy See you soon. ?
— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) April 11, 2020
I wrote? post about the difference between a #COVID19 “peak” and “plateau” a few days ago. If you didn’t read it, please do.
We are NOT out of the woods people!
It’s STILL bad.
Pleateauing at ‘critical’ is NOT a reason to celebrate or let up.
It’s the time to double down! https://t.co/5X85IUOQ5W
— Craig Spencer MD MPH (@Craig_A_Spencer) April 13, 2020
I really like this website evaluating transmission trends in every state. The goal is for the line to drop below 1. We've made progress but aren't there yet. 1/https://t.co/LxEp2FzzwT pic.twitter.com/34M2E4HCHX
— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) April 12, 2020
But they aren't a live transmission ticker. Any changes we make will not show up in these data for a few weeks. It's another tool in our toolbox, but expert assessment and caution will still be important. 3/3
— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) April 12, 2020
Another thread, from an environmental immunologist, bursting the hopeful rumor-bubble that ‘maybe a lot of Americans already survived coronavirus last fall, so we might as well end all the lockdowns’ — despite Victor Davis Hanson’s Sinophobia:
There is a lot of Twitter chatter surrounding a rumor that circulation of #COVID19 in California in fall 2019 has resulted in herd immunity. This is empirically not the case. COVID-19 was first introduced into the USA in Jan/Feb 2020. 1/18
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) April 12, 2020
Smart look at what antibody tests for #Covid19 can & can't tell us, from @apoorva_nyc & @katie_thomas in @nytimes.
Sad truth is that some answers are just going to take time, folks. https://t.co/uCBnuHG2YR— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) April 11, 2020
Coronavirus world map: which countries have the most cases and deaths? https://t.co/fCAEW5slSS
— The Guardian (@guardian) April 13, 2020
There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, according to the WHO. The furthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine developed by Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology https://t.co/5eQmfLwVdg
— TIME (@TIME) April 13, 2020
Doctors say false-negative results from coronavirus tests are becoming an increasing concern https://t.co/jn9pAK0Dfh
— Bloomberg (@business) April 13, 2020
Further to my ‘Trouble in the Fields’ post: Pork processing plant, in South Dakota. Obviously nobody is gonna die if pork products stop shipping, but as people switch to other protein sources, it’ll stress the food supply chain elsewhere. And you can bet (wholly Chinese-owned) Smithfield Foods intends to be an early beneficiary of any emergency-related bailouts:
"238 Smithfield employees had active cases of the new coronavirus, accounting for 55% of the state's total." –And I'd bet that a good chunk of these workers are immigrants, possibly undocumented, and there are more cases in their communities than we know of. https://t.co/6G8e3sZnJU
— Dr. Tara C. Smith (@aetiology) April 13, 2020
Even Antarctica isn’t safe!
Another one. (Note they left March 15, but even that was well after the Diamond Princess fiasco). https://t.co/8fm728KR3W
— Dr. Tara C. Smith (@aetiology) April 13, 2020
… The Greg Mortimer, a cruise ship operated by Australia-based travel company Aurora Expeditions, is currently off the coast of Uruguay. Of the 217 total passengers and crew from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Europe, at least 128 had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Tuesday night, CNN reported…
rikyrah
Not the only plant shut down???
As for the cruise ship???
Those numbers
False negatives????
The only way out of this is through massive testing.
NotMax
Weird. Even though this post is time stamped before On the Road it did not appear on the front page until after that one had been up for almost ten minutes.
OzarkHillbilly
US’s global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump’s coronavirus response
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: I see that a lot.
ThresherK
Hot Time in the Old Town is a book about the heat wave of 1896.
From it I learned way more than I cared about the suffering and death of multitudes in urban areas such as NYC.
The Mayor of NYC dithered. One of the leading figures to act when action was called for was the Police Commissioner, who followed, or even invented, whatever vaguely allowed steps were needed to distribute tons upon tons of free ice to the poor, especially those living in the tenements. (Those Jacob Riis photos? Yep, that’s what we’re talking about.)
But, you ask, what does a Police Commissioner have to do with procuring and distributing ice to poor people who can’t afford it? Really, it doesn’t matter. Four years later, Teddy Roosevelt is on his party’s ticket as VP nom. You know the rest.
Public health crises reveal the good leaders.
Donald Trump is doing what TR did, except exactly backwards.
WereBear
Soon, getting suited up to get groceries. Mask, gloves, outside glasses to keep mask in place and protect eyes. Procedure in place. One store, as soon as they open, bringing my own bags.
Playing “Eye of the Tiger.”
ThresherK
@WereBear: Sounds more like a Covid-19 version of an anime Magical Girl transformation sequence.
MagdaInBlack
@WereBear:
Ive been thinking about you. Have you seen your unemployment yet? I filed Saturday.
Suit up! Hang in there ☺
gkoutnik
I thought Dr. Spencer’s thread was contradictory re: testing, until I re-read it and notice that he distinguishes between “evaluated” (everyone) and tested (actually not that many). So even many people who show up at the ER are not getting tested.
Local (rural) hospital is walking distance from home, so we walked over to main entrance to drop off 20 masks we had sewn. No one in reception hall, sign says if you’re sick, do not come in, call this number.
WereBear
@MagdaInBlack: Hello! Yes, that big reboot of the site must have kicked a few slats back into place, since the check showed up late last week. Plus what we are calling our “Nancy Pelosi money,” which is the extra unemployment?
Because I hear the check through the federal government has been held up. Way to send the helicopter after the sharks ate the rescue raft, Fox and Friends. /s
This makes me hopeful for you, too :) All my friends were, “You got in? IT ninja!”
WereBear
@ThresherK: I take what I can get, always.
NotMax
For reasons which aren’t important had to shift a bunch of boxes of miscellany in landlady’s garage yesterday to take care of a sudden immediate problem for her. Lo and behold, sitting in the bottom box was a blister pack of face masks. Her husband died over a decade ago so they must have been there at least that long as the other stuff was all his. Not brittle, not cracked, bands still stretchy. Showed them to her and she agreed to split them between us.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s daily worldometer numbers. 134 new cases, total 4,817; one death, total 77. TAt te Health Ministry’s daily media conference, DG of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah explained the rationale for the tightly focused coronavirus testing, something I brought up in comments here yesterday.
He said the Ministry tested everyone in a small number of zones subject to enhanced movement control orders, e.g. certain apartment buildings in KL with an infection cluster. But it found that of those not in contact with known cases, only five in a thousand tested positive, and outside such zones positive cases would be very rare. So mass testing would not be the best use of limited testing resources. I’m not qualified to critique that approach, but so far I think we’ve been lucky that things aren’t worse.
Baud
@WereBear: Heh.
@NotMax: Like finding buried treasure.
Mike J
They allow that? Here in King county, WA, you’re no longer allowed to bring your own bags.
I have three plastic storage tubs I use. Empty the bags into the tubs at the car. Freezer stuff into one, fridge into the second, dry goods in the third. Bags go in another bag.
When I get home I put the lid with the UV-C light attached on for 10-15 minutes, in order freezer, fridge, dry.
MagdaInBlack
@WereBear:
I have been thanking Nancy Pelosi as well as Gov Pritzker.
I will be ok financially. Good to hear your an IT ninja ?
NotMax
Believe it or not, visitors to the state not zero.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I shared that article on the book of faces and one of my RWNJ stalkers immediately called it “fake news”. They really don’t grasp reality at all, or the fairly obvious fact that the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the developed world for years.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: FOX news tells them all they need to know.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I think this one is deep in OANN territory. Karma is starting to piss me off for taking her sweet time with some people.
NotMax
@satby
“Tide comes in, tide goes out. No one can explain it.” Same wallowing in abject ignorance by your exemplar of cerebral atrophy.
The scales over their eyes are thicker than a bank vault’s walls.
Baud
NotMax
@NotMax
To be more clear, make that “your encountered exemplar.”
Certainly wouldn’t want it misinterpreted I was referring to satby.
Anne Laurie
I cheat. Since I think the daily On the Road post deserves to be top-of-page as it happens, if I don’t finish my coronavirus update in time, I manually reset the ‘schedule’ so that my post will show up below the pretty photos.
OzarkHillbilly
ETA: from the same article: <blockquote>“A lot of very smart people, a lot of professionals, doctors and business leaders are a lot of things that go into a decision like that,” he said. “And it’s going to be based on a lot of facts and a lot of instinct also. Whether we like it or not, there is a certain instinct to it.”</blockquote> WASF
Hate to break it to you donny, but there are 328,199,999 other Americans who have something to say about it too.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: YES – a right winger on the Book of Faces said that to me yesterday…i.e. “you need to watch Fox News! That’s the only place you hear the truth!11!!!” OMG
raven
@WereBear: They are not allowing bring in bags at Traders. YMMV
YY_Sima Qian
China continues to see an upsurge of imported cases from Russia, 93 out of 98 confirmed imported cases yesterday. 108 new confirmed total. Fortunately, the majority of the confirmed cases appear to be reclassified from asymptomatic or suspect cases, as people either start to test positive or develop symptoms. To date, there have 432 imported confirmed cases from Russia, well ahead of second place UK (285 cases) or third place US (153 cases), despite the latter two having many more Chinese expatriates and students and returnees.
For domestic cases, the cluster at Harbin in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China is expanding, with seven more confirmed domestic cases (plus three more asymptomatic ones) yesterday. One elderly gentleman from the first cluster I mentioned yesterday (a chain started by a returnee from the US) inflected an even older gentle at a banquet, as well as the latter gentleman’s son. The older gentlemen’s cerebral apoplexy worsened in the following days, and went to a non-COVID hospital for treatment. He developed a fever a couple of days later and was transferred to a COVID-19 hospital, where he was confirmed. This older gentleman caused chains of transmission among his own family and friends, the patients in the same ward at the non-COVID hospital, as well as their caretakers and family members, accounting for all ten of the confirmed and asymptomatic cases yesterday. Given the nosocomial setting of the latest cluster, there is concern for a larger outbreak, and more close contacts have been chased down and quarantined.
I have related before my hospital stay experience at Wuhan last month due to internal bleeding, where non-COVID patients at non-COVID hospitals still had to pass two thorough screenings (two PCR swabs, two serological tests for antibodies, and one chest CT scan), plus a three day stay at a buffer ward, before we were cleared for transfer to standard in-patient ward; where all medical staff were wore same multi-layer PPEs as those at COVID-19 wards. I expect such protocols will be copied to all hospitals in China, regardless of location and whether there has been an significant outbreak. Depending on whether the authorities at Harbin could nip this outbreak in the bud, one could potentially see the city go into some form of lock down, like Jia county in Henan Province last week.
There is also a small (to date) cluster in Guangzhou connected to a few immigrants from Nigeria. No new confirmed cases from that cluster yesterday. However, news of the cluster, as well as malicious rumors and outright fabrication have created tension between the native population and the African immigrant community there, with resulting discrimination and racism, even drawing the attention of the diplomats.
We should all expect this to be the new normal, wherever you are, on the other side of the peak, well into the down slope, any place tentatively returning to semi-normality as things appear to be well under control.
NotMax
@raven
As plastic grocery bags were 86’d here ages ago most stores don’t offer bags at all so they instead insist you pack your own bring in bags.
satby
@NotMax: I knew who you meant!
Honestly, I hate FB. But last night I chatted with my former exchange daughter from Japan, got a hello from one in Denmark, and said Happy Anniversary to friends in India. And that keeps me on it, along with fighting back against the misinformation bubble that people keep themselves in <– though I figure that the silent readers are who I’m actually informing, not the obvious assholes.
NotMax
Turns out the 96-year-old casual acquaintance in NYC who was found unconscious in his apartment may not have the virus after all. Second hand reports he’s still hospitalized but is answering his bedside phone and receiving physical therapy, so absent harder data those I’ve talked with suspect it was a stroke.
Geminid
A couple days ago the Wash.Post featured accounts by four Iranians. One had survived Covid-19 but was still debilitated, three had parents who had died or survived. One had a complaint that may sound familiar to Americans, referring to the Iranian governments recent efforts to combat the virus: “Everything that happened in the past week should have been done 40 days ago, two months ago. It has been too late.”
raven
@NotMax: Traders uses paper.
NotMax
@raven
No TJ’s here. Paper bags in bulk are damn heavy and cost quite a bit to have shipped in, so many stores understandably don’t go that route.
NotMax
@raven
Your yard survive the night unscathed?
Robert Sneddon
@Mike J: UV-C ultraviolet light is pretty much useless against virsuses. It’s a decent bactericide, that’s why it’s used in hospitals and other situations but you really need X-rays or gamma radiation to disrupt something as small (they’re about the same size as the wavelength of UV-C light, 250nm or so) as a virus.
Even the online cheap Chinese crap sellers aren’t claiming UV-C lamps are effective against viruses any more, just bacteria and germs.
satby
@NotMax: Good news of a sort. Hope he’s not exposed while at the hospital.
YY_Sima Qian
Looking at the discussions in North America and Europe concerning the eventual possibility reopening society, I feel some crucial elements are missing. Yes, mass testing is critical, but not remotely sufficient by itself. No country or even city can perform test their entire population in any sort of reasonable time, and testing for each person will have to be fairly high frequency, as the epidemic is highly dynamic.
As the Joint WHO-China Mission report emphasizes, the key to China’s containment strategy was the “Four Earlies”: early detection (testing), early reporting, early isolation, and early treatment. This was born of learning from the painful consequences of the fateful two weeks in mid-Jan. where the authorities in Wuhan city and Hubei Province did the opposite. The varying degrees of lock downs across China was to freeze a rapidly escalating situation, prevent it from exploding into unmanageable proportions, and then dial back the clock so the “Four Earlies” strategy is truly viable. The fundamentals of the containment strategy was the same across China, despite the local variations and customization to adapt to the state of the epidemic at each location. Indeed, one could say the strategies adopted by the other successful Asian nations (South Korea,Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Vietnam) and regions were essentially the same.
Early testing: which translates to mass testing. China does not routine publish testing figures, but here are some of the numbers I found via different media and academic reports: by Mar. 30 Wuhan alone was doing 35K PCR tests a day; province of Guangdong had tested > 400K patients visiting fever clinics by Feb. 20; something like 15M total screening tests have been done in Hubei from the start of the epidemic (PCR, antibodies, CT scans); the number of PCR tests alone is hundreds of thousands per day in China, even with the epidemic all but suppressed domestically. (Note: these are number of tests, not number of people tested). Anyone leaving Wuhan for rest of China needs a negative PCR test report within the past seven days to even travel, and is then tested again at the destination. Lead time for test results have reduced from 6 days to 4 hours, and average time from onset of symptoms to confirmation had shortened from nearly 10 days to 2 by late Feb. even in Wuhan. South Korea and Germany are also exemplary in this regards. While the US has significantly ramped up testing over the past several weeks, though seems to have hit a ceiling of 150K / day, lead time for getting results is still ridiculously long.
Early reporting: to me that is thorough contact tracing, closely tied to mass testing. All non-pharmaceutical intervention measures rely upon cutting the transmission chains to contain and suppress the epidemic, mass lock down is mere the bluntest and costliest instrument of last resort, when the situation is already desperate. Contact tracing is much less disruptive of society. At the height of the epidemic in Wuhan, more than 12K workers in more than 8K contact tracing teams were working here to chase down close contacts and map out the transmission chains. China did not just mobilize 42K medical workers to staff the hospitals in Wuhan, the government also mobilized thousands of workers from other municipal and provincial CDCs across the country to go to Wuhan to staff these teams. Thousands of idle workers from government bureaucracy and state owned enterprises were also retrained in contact tracing and filled out these teams, and to work on data compilation. Every city, county and township in China have been doing the same. That is why I am generally confident in the numbers coming out of China since late Feb., because the granular data from local reports align with the national statistics, and one can find the detailed case reports for each infected person from local daily reports. South Korea has also been exemplary here, and Singapore has always been acknowledged as the gold standard. In the US, I see a lot of discussion around testing, but not much around contact tracing. China has been working on massively expanding and strengthening contact tracing since the start of the epidemic. If the US is starting to consider how to re-open, then the state and local governments need to start standing up the contact tracing work force now, and establish the data reporting and analysis infrastructure now. Contact tracing is detective work. Ironically, Asian nations learned contact tracing and mapping from the US CDC after SARS in 2003.
Early isolation: Centralized quarantine of mild cases, suspect cases and close contacts is still controversial in the West. If the population is highly compliant, as in Singapore, than centralized quarantine is not strictly necessary. If some portion of the population cannot be relied upon to be responsible, then centralized quarantine has to be considered. I have read that human contacts have to be reduced by at least 85% to knock R0 to below 1. Self-quarantine at home was unsuccessful in Wuhan, infected people often proceeded to infect the rest of their family members. People in the US may be better positioned to self-isolate at home, with prevalence of townhouses and large individual houses. However, most people simply do not have the training, awareness and discipline to manage it for extended period of time. South Korea also sent every case, regardless of symptoms, to medical quarantine.
Early treatment: One of the key lessons from the the first month of the epidemic in China is that medical interventions need to start early to have any impact. There are no magic bullets for treating COVID-19, but starting therapeutic care early can help prevent the mild cases from progressing to severe, early implementation of oxygen support and ventilation/intubation can help prevent severe cases from progressing to critical. In China, early treatment is closely tied to early isolation, since the centralized quarantines are also medical quarantines. Mild cases collected in the makeshift hospitals were given pills to help alleviate the symptoms, and closely observed for progression of symptoms, can be quickly sent to hospitals if they become severe. Being surrounded by people in the same circumstances, with treatment by medical staff, also eased the patients’ anxiety, as opposed to fighting the disease alone at home. I do not agree with the strategy of asking mild cases to self-quarantine at home. For the elderly and those with co-morbidities, symptoms can progress from mild to severe or critical very quickly, without warning. At NYC, as was in Wuhan in the early days, the ambulance may be hours away. I suspect that is contributing to the surge of cardiac arrest and DOA in NYC. By the time any case gets to the hospital, in a region where the hospital system is severely stressed or collapsing, the doctors are forever behind the curve in treatment. Doctors in China are also willing to do whatever it took to keep the patient alive. I mentioned before that a COVID-19 hospital in Jiangsu Province performed two double lung transplant surgeries on patients with several co-morbidities, just to keep the count of the deceased in the province to zero. I just read about a 35 years old patient in Wuhan today, finally recovering after 25 days on the ECMO and 50 days on ventilator, having been treated in turn by doctors from Liaoning, Henan, Fujian provinces, and finally local doctors from Wuhan. I am flabbergasted by the claims of 60, 70, 80% mortality of patients on ventilators in the US. The numbers aren’t nearly that high in China.
Only when a city/state/country can effectively implement the “Four Earlies” strategy, can they start to loosen on the lock down measures. I am afraid significant social distancing will remain with us until vaccines are widely available.
WereBear
@Mike J: Beauty!
I got there and found new procedures in place: they give you the bags now.
This is Hannaford; the best organized with the most precautions. Still, I see stuff put into place a week or two behind Jackal reporting in the big metro areas. Which I am decidedly NOT.
Still, I drive to the next town to take advantage of the store which takes things the most seriously, is big enough for social distancing, and has the most stuff in stock.
Saw toilet paper! First time since the Panic.
Fair Economist
@Robert Sneddon: UV-C light is very effective against viruses. It kills flu virus in the air.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: Get a posse. Surround the area.
la caterina
@WereBear: You seem to be an expert! Any stores you would recommend in the Albany area?
Fair Economist
@YY_Sima Qian:
There is a doctor with a rather quacky theory (“it’s hypoxia, not pneumonia”, as if hypoxia isn’t how pneumonia kills) but his recommendation is less kooky; he thinks Western patients are being ventilated excessively. Ventilation can cause serious lung damage, so it’s possible the Western hospitals are ventilating too early and too hard.
ziggy
@YY_Sima Qian:As always, appreciate your observations and commentary. In the beginning, in Wuhan, the whole thing seemed very unreal and distant, but now it is like looking into a crystal ball and seeing our future.
So much agree with this! We should be trying to keep people off of ventilators if at all possible, and early intervention seems to be part of the solution. With the case load in most areas in the US, this is totally doable. I can see how testing with rapid results, combined with immediate quarantine and contact tracing, could really help keep things under control. Hopefully some state will be able to set up a good, workable system, and these will become role models for the others. Otherwise we will be in rolling lockdowns for the foreseeable future.
WereBear
@la caterina: I shop waaaaay upstate, so don’t know how much help I can be.
I shop the biggest store for distance and because it’s likely to have the most of what I need. The days of running errands in several different places is paused.
I go to the store which has the plastic shields up, changed their doors so entrance is at the opposite site of exit, I see employees in masks (half of them, this trip) and otherwise show signs of taking it seriously. I won’t go to Pricechopper, which has terrible management at the best of times.
I would go to Tops, but the only one nearby is downtown and terribly cramped. I get what I need at a higher price for safety.
We have an Aldis which is trying, but since people are being budget-minded it’s more crowded than I like, and half these people aren’t taking it seriously. Employees wiping down carts and otherwise trying, and they don’t touch the bags anyway, you have to bring your own.
Last I knew! Hope it helps. Rules seem to change every time I venture out, which is once a week for grocery.
mrmoshpotato
Gonna spam some threads.
YY_Sima Qian
@Fair Economist: I believe the national treatment and prevention guideline from the China National Health Commission recommends oxygen support as soon as blood oxygen drops below 92%, ventilate early to maintain oxygen intake. I have also read that Chinese doctors have concluded ventilating too hard is damaging. So, ventilate early, but not too hard.
ziggy
@Fair Economist: This makes no sense, as once a patient gets to that point, there are no other options (what does he propose?), or they will die. If you have ever seen someone who needed a ventilator, it is very distressing–you feel like you will suffocate and die.
chopper
@Mike J:
that’s weird, i brought my own bags to QFC the other day.
chopper
@OzarkHillbilly:
jesus, he’s trying to make it into a ‘cliffhanger episode’. he’s going to put his decision out on live teevee, shooting for the ‘greatest ratings ever, better than the superbowl’.
YY_Sima Qian
@ziggy: Starting from the West Coast, but testing need to be ramped up, and contact tracing need to be greatly expanded. It is very time consuming and labor intensive work, but there are also a lot of furloughed employees available.
L85NJGT
@YY_Sima Qian:
Re: cardiac arrests – I hope this isn’t an issue:
la caterina
@WereBear: Thanks! I am going to try Hannaford down here and avoid Aldi’s.
YY_Sima Qian
@L85NJGT: The surge in cardiac arrests in NYC are those found DOA at home, as the ambulance arrived on the scene. They never had a chance to see any medical treatment, kooky or otherwise, I do not believe self-medication has been a significant factor. Dosage of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine is highly controlled during treatment in China, due to the potentially strong side effects.
joel hanes
@Robert Sneddon:
I am willing to believe you that UV-C is ineffective against viruses, but the wavelength explanation bothers me.
I would have thought that photons interact with atoms depending on the energy levels of the outer electrons, not depending on the grain size of the compounds or structures into which those atoms are organized.
For example, infrared has a long wavelength, yet is absorbed and re-radiated by CO2 in the atmosphere.
Also, humans are much larger than viruses, but UV causes skin cancer.
lumpkin
@joel hanes: UV-C is widely used to kill both bacteria and viruses. I couldn’t find any articles specifically saying that it’s effective against coronavirus but it very likely is and in fact is being used in China to disinfect buses.
charon
@Fair Economist:
Hypoxia can originate elsewhere, not from lung function. Malfunctioning blood hemoglobin for example:
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/5
As for the “quack” doctor, is he someone like this?
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/
joel hanes
@lumpkin:
This was my understanding too, but I am a lowly engineer, not a scientist or medical doctor, and I thought maybe Robert Sneddon had some expertise that I do not.