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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday / Saturday, June 5-6

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday / Saturday, June 5-6

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I find this oddly charming — and Murphy knows we could use some charm, after this week:

… To measure how people respond to masks, Marchiori created the world’s first “social distancing belt”: a $30 contraption that looked like a gray handbag but included a data card, rechargeable battery and sensors capable of measuring the proximity of oncoming objects, or, in this case, people.

He fastened the social distancing belt to his waist as he walked through the streets of Venice and nearby areas during the height of the pandemic. With the help of some friends also equipped with social distancing belts, Marchiori measured more than 12,000 encounters with other people on sidewalks and in stores, all with the goal of determining how they reacted to people wearing masks…

Unmasked — even during the height of a raging pandemic — the sensors deployed by Marchiori found that fellow pedestrians actually drew closer to him as he passed them on a sidewalk, typically within a foot.

But when he donned a mask, people drifted back — nearly twice as far as when he wasn’t wearing a mask — suggesting the mere sight of protective gear activated the underlying knowledge among fellow pedestrians that keeping their distance helped keep them safe.

In other words, masks appeared to make an extremely social species less social — and less vulnerable…

Basically, behind the cognizance curtain, we’re social primates who want to be in close proximity. Masks are a signal to that portion of our brain to ‘remind’ us that not every other human should be approached, so they’re a social-distancing tool as well as a droplet-containment system. (Insert Gary Larson cartoon here.)
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Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    we’re social primates who want to be in close proximity

    What’s this “we,” kemo sabe?

    /a proud exception

    ;)

  3. 3.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. 37 new cases: local infection 29, including 19 non-Malaysians, and eight imported cases. Total 8,304 cases. DG of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah notes that an anticipated post-Eid spike in new infections has not happened, so the Government will continue allowing more sectors to reopen subject to the relevant standard operating procedure. The Senior Minister for National Security announced today that open markets, night markets, and hairdressers will be allowed to reopen on these terms.

    25 more patients recovered, total 6,635 recovered or 79.9% of all cases. Of 1,552 active cases, five are in ICU and none is on a ventilator. One new death, total 117. Infection fatality rate 1.41%, case fatality rate 1.73%.

  4. 4.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Trump went to Main and demanded the state reopen, because he’s in such a position of power so of course.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    The mask experiment explains why advertising is of such importance to well-known and even monopolistic businesses. People need to be reminded more than they need to be persuaded.

  9. 9.

    WereBear

    @NotMax: Likewise, the “social primate thing” is easy for me when it comes to unwanted, unavoidable contacts.

    The dark side of that whole baboon troupe matrix is how people sign over their brains to their Dark Lords, as we see with the Trump Cult.

  10. 10.

    gkoutnik

    My Trupista sister-in-law said yesterday that doctors are offering patients who have respiratory illness but not COVID $1,000 to affirm in writing that they have the virus – so the hospital will get a $13,000 bonus from the Feds for treating a COVID patient. Or some such BS. The bottom line was that infection rates have been inflated by this process, and so the virus is much less an issue than we think it is.

    Typical. I found a good explainer for anyone who encounters this. Seems that Laura Ingraham and Facebook were among the usual suspects.

    Can’t make the link thingy work. Here’s the link:

    https://www.statesman.com/news/20200422/fact-check-do-hospitals-get-paid-more-to-list-patients-as-having-coronavirus

  11. 11.

    terben

    From the Australian Dept of Health:

    ‘As at 3:00pm on 6 June 2020, a total of 7,255 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 102 deaths and 6,693 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19.

    • Over the past week, there has been an average of 10 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.
    • Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 62% have recent international travel history, including over 1,300 cases associated with cruise ships.
    • The overall proportion of cases under investigation in each state and territory is relatively low, indicating that public health actions, including case identification and contact tracing, is occurring in a timely manner.
    • To date, over 1,590,500 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.5% have been positive.’

    Australia had 4 new cases today, 2 of them ‘historic’ ie from antibody testing. Zero cases in Victoria today, for the first time since April 27. There are 21 patients in hospital, 4 in ICU, 2 ventilated.

  12. 12.

    opiejeanne

    @Baud: I’ve noticed something different, probably because in this country wearing a mask and social distancing have become a political issue on the right. In an environment where 90% of people were masked, there is always that umasked person who won’t distance themselves, who walks down the middle of a store aisle so you can’t stay six feet away, or really even three feet away.

    They act like assholes. They are undoubtedly Trump voters.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @gkoutnik:

    Not that I care to debate Trumpian logic, but a lower infection means that the virus has a higher fatality rate than we think.

  17. 17.

    opiejeanne

    @Baud: There is that. There is also the probability that not only have there been more cases than confirmed, there have almost certainly been more deaths that were not seen as related, or in Florida’s case, not listed as related.

  19. 19.

    opiejeanne

    @opiejeanne: That’s been my thought. The large group of kids that walks past our house in nice weather accompanied by three adult women and not a mask among them are probably anti-vaxxers and think that never giving their children French fries will protect them from illness. They wave at us while we work in our garden. They are not aggressive assholes, they don’t come into our yard and deliberately breathe on us.

    Today King County Washington opened up a bit by allowing barbers and hair salons to resume limited business, and restaurants to open their indoor seating at every other table. Patrons have to use the hand sanitizer at the entrance before they can be seated.  I am going to continue to stay home and fight the slugs and bunnies for every last carrot and spinach plant, because the infection rate has risen here in the last two weeks, nearly double what it was. It’s too early; we haven’t met the criteria in this county for stage 1 reopening yet.  And I’m wide awake at 4am, waiting for the promised thunderstorm to start. Last Saturday we had a big one that rolled us and the cats out of bed at about 6. That was entertaining.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    close proximity

    Close closeness!  Oh, so close, so close!  Ahhhh sixth grade vocabulary as part of English class! :)

    P.S. Department of Redundancy Department

  23. 23.

    opiejeanne

    @rikyrah:  I have growled at a couple. Then I go home and quiver with rage, and take it out on the slugs in the garden.

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    For those of you were wondering how the White House would manage to f*ck up vaccine development in the United States…

    Oh! Oh!  By tens of millions of selfish shitstains using their votes to tell an extremely highly qualified woman to go fuck herself when she was running against a Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby con artist?

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    UK official Covid-19 death toll passes 40,000. We were told a ‘good outcome’ would be 20,000 deaths

    Kill it with mummified chicken fajitas?

  26. 26.

    Yutsano

    @mrmoshpotato: This is Great Britain. They can barely handle a spicy tikka masala. You want to wipe out a country?

    @opiejeanne: I am very very worried about the loosening of restrictions here. I am afraid of the second bounce, especially on the east side. There’s going to be more spreading and Inslee will have to lock us down again. It won’t be an opening for Tim Eyman (can that stupid flea just go away?) but it’s not going to go over well.

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    In the US we seem to have collectively decided that a confirmed rate of around 65 new COVID cases per 1,000,000 per day is what we can live with. It’s the national average and if you look at the state charts, they’re all starting to cluster around that value. States with more cases than that are coming down, states with fewer are going up or stagnating. Since they’re all testing at different rates, the real infection rate might not actually be clustering–the death rates are all over the place.

    There’s some overshoot–New York is actually doing better than that but given events there, I don’t imagine that will last long. Massachusetts is getting close to that level and I see people just itching to declare victory and loosen restrictions.

    At that rate, you get about 0.2% of the population getting confirmed COVID every month, so a few percent a year (which may well be an undercount by a factor of several). The steady-state death rate, who knows. Probably you get a new wave in the fall/winter, though, which brings all that up.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @opiejeanne:

    I have asthma, so I am prone to coughing. I’ve found a slight cough, even with my mask on, gets ’em moving pretty quickly.

  31. 31.

    WereBear

    One cheering element is how the protests take place outside, which I understand will drop the infection rate compared to inside. Even then, it’s the congregating inside, like moving from the beach to bars or bathrooms or other venues, that does the most spreading.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    …The George Floyd protests and the horrible behavior of cops, especially in enforcing curfews, adds a new dimension to this: it means we can’t actually lock down like the countries that have really smashed the curve, because not only will people chafe against that, the police will use the restrictions as an excuse to abuse people in ways that will actually spread the virus (mass arrests and kettling, tear gas, etc.)

    I mean, we’re seeing millions of people get so horrified by these goons that they’re advocating abolishing police, which probably means they’re not into putting some teeth in COVID shutdown orders either. And with some good reason.

  33. 33.

    Yutsano

    @mrmoshpotato: …

    Jeebus. No wonder my mom hated British food while she was there. I think when they go back I’ll suggest she does the French thing and get a hunk of bread, some meat and cheese, and picnic somewhere with my dad.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @WereBear: I keep thinking about my friend who points out that a lot of places were loosening social distancing before the protests, so we could probably expect a rise in new cases in any event, but it’s going to be blamed on the protests.

  35. 35.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Matt McIrvin: Of course, if the pattern I described above is true, if there’s some kind of social feedback that depends on the confirmed COVID rate, that means that in the steady state the more people get tested, the less real COVID there will be. The worst states will be the places where there’s the least knowledge of the actual rate.

  36. 36.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    “Russia reports 8,855 new coronavirus cases, 197 deaths in last 24 hours”

     

    How many of those are from the “fall from a hospital window” symptom, I wonder?

  37. 37.

    Gvg

    I think the reason the US has given up is that we know there will be no effective action until Trump and th MCConnel GOP is gone, and we need to earn money to live. Things may change after Biden is inaugurated, but of course he will have a bigger job at that point. Winter and everyone stuck indoors is going to be bad I think, especially because Trump will already know he lost.

    Trump is not smart but mostly he just doesn’t know how anything works except sort of advertising. He doesn’t even understand that ads need some reality behind them.  Moron. Stupid gullible republican voters.

  39. 39.

    Geoduck

    The relevant Far Side cartoon, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the classic “How Nature Says Do Not Touch”. Mr. Larson doesn’t like the strips being posted anywhere but the official FS side, but it’s still easy enough to find.

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