At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[Now who’s the dean?]

At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

Sound logic there. You are guaranteed immunity as long you are only next to someone for 14 minutes or less.

Pretty sure if someone sneezes in your direction you are a goner within seconds.

Nope. It’s like a timebomb. Cut the red wire in time, no covid. It’s why anytime I’m out in public I take off on a dead run every 10 minutes. Safety first.

[Lost Student]

Sound logic there. You are guaranteed immunity as long you are only next to someone for 14 minutes or less.

Pretty sure if someone sneezes in your direction you are a goner within seconds.

Don't be a dunce. It's 14 minutes and 59 seconds. No less.

[Commando]

I heard on NPR that the threshold is fifteen minutes within 6 feet of someone infected. This casts doubt on your story that you caught Covid because you had to run inside the gas mart to pay because pay at the pump malfunctioned. You aren't accepting responsibility.

I told my wife that if Pete got fined 100k for not wearing a mask Cam Newton should be fined 200k for getting infected. She said, You can't fine someone for getting sick which they can't control! I felt like arguing with her but decided I'd better not.

lol 15 minutes to contract infected airborne particles? What if somebody coughed and I walked through that cloud unknowingly? Particles can sit in the air for hours at a time. Would I have to sit in that cloud of particles for 15 minutes? Did NPR have all the facts and circumstances surrounding my infection on the particular program you were listening to? I'm glad you're so invested in my well-being, but I don't really have a story-- that's best I can remember the most I was around unknown people around the time when I got infected. I was the first person I know who got covid. And I usually pay at the register so I can pick up a drink-- there was no 'pump malfunction.' I don't know what you'd like me to accept responsibility for doing, but maybe you need to take responsibility for not being even close to as clever as you pretend to be.

[Jarid in Cedar]

This was an interesting article that I have been sitting on for about a week trying to figure out how to interpret it. And how to best explain the implications of the results to what we have seen with the pandemic to date, and possibly what it may mean moving forward.

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abd7672

It is an article out of India where they made an ambitious evaluation of the results of contact tracing and disease transmission. They took 84,965 confirmed cases (Index cases) and reviewed the disease progression by following 575,071 of their contacts.

The gross findings were typical for what we have seen in smaller samples:
Overall contact infection rate (IR) was 7.5% (percent of contacts that ultimately tested positive). High risk contacts had a 10.7% IR, and low risk contacts had an IR of 4.7%. Household contacts had an IR of 9.0%. Community contacts 2.6% IR. None of this was groundbreaking information.

What I found extremely interesting was the results of some of their sub analysis. They notated how many infections each index case had transmitted to the contacts that were traced. What they found was 70.7% of the index cases did not pass the illness on to anyone else (of the known contacts). To put those number in perspective:

60,070 of the index cases passed zero infections on to 342,399 (59.5% of all the contacts tracked by the study).
The remaining 24,895 index cases resulted in 42,900 cases out of 232,672 contacts for an IR of 18%.

And even more boggling was that 5% of the index cases accounted for 80% of the eventual positive contacts in their sample. Meaning about 4200 of the index cases accounted for 34,000 of the positive contact cases. They didn’t break out the number of contacts traced for this subgroup to allow me to calculate an IR. But it is likely to be sky high.

We have talked about super spreader events. The narrative needs to change to super spreader people. People who infect multiple people around them, in one instance in their study, one person was responsible for 39 new cases. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more info to glean from their tables and data. They did not do an age breakdown of these super spreaders. But looking at their other tables, it would appear that they are most likely spread evenly across all ages as there didn’t appear to be one age group that spread a higher percentage of cases than they constituted. The percentage of each age group in the index population was similar to the percentage of test positive traced contacts for that age group.

So why could this happen and what does it mean moving forward. With the zero-transmission group, it may mean that the majority of humans are dead end hosts for the virus. They can get it but can’t easily transmit it. This is how the vast majority of zoonotic illnesses (diseases people catch from animals) behave. A good example is anthrax. People almost exclusively contract anthrax from the spores carried by certain animals or their hides. There is almost zero human to human transmission.

But the super spreader group must have the ability to transmit the virus to other humans, and possibly in copious amounts. What is the difference with them? Now that is a question worth finding an answer.
The other thing I think this cements is that I now firmly believe that the virus is airborne spread. There is no other way given the dynamics of some of these super spreader events that have occurred.

Prior to this study, I thought that the variances in spread had more to do with characteristics of the target host. Now, it is apparent that the variances observed are attributed to the person infected. A healthy majority of people infected do not spread the virus to others. But a percentage of people infected can spread it readily. This also means that given the number of ongoing infections, that humans are quite susceptible to being infected, IF they contact a person who can spread the virus from person to person.

Now, the good news out of this is that even a marginally effective vaccine should have a major impact on slowing and even stopping the outbreak. Let’s make a few assumptions. Assume that the odds of someone being a super spreader is 5% and they account for transmission to 80% of our ongoing cases. Assume a vaccine that is 50% effective and 40% of the people receive it. Assume randomness regarding the odds that a super spreader would be vaccinated. IF you were to take a group of 10,000 people here is how that would break down.
Of the 10,000:
500 would be potential super spreaders
4000 would be vaccinated, with 200 of them super spreaders.
Of vaccinated group, 2000 would be immune, with 100 of the super spreaders immune and unable to spread the virus.
That would mean that you would reduce to number of super spreaders by 20%, not a big number, but that would mean potentially a 36% reduction in cases from (from reduced number of spreaders and reduction in potential targets). The math on this is highly extrapolative, but shows how big of an impact these individuals have on the progression of the pandemic.

There are some factors that have to be addressed about the original data that I would like to point out. First, and they state this assumption, they assume that the positive contact was infected by the index case and not someone else. Second, I would like to see some info on if there was differences in quarantine for the zero transmission group and the super spreader group. Was one group more diligent or lax? Did one group live in higher density homes? But, the number is so large that even moderate variations would not explain the observed differences.

Some interesting stuff overall. I would like to see something similar to this in either the US or Europe before deciding how much weight to give this information. But their subgroup analysis does explain some of the things that we have observed with this virus that are not readily explained in ways that we typically view human respiratory infectious disease.

[Bo Diddley]

Was one group more diligent or lax?

Yeah, my question was whether there were any behavioral differences between the groups.

It's fascinating to watch the science work this thing out.

[Moliere]

Thanks Jarid. Very interesting and your thoughts are appreciated.


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[PaloAltoCougar]

Thanks for that, JIC a very useful summary of points that would have been lost on me had I tried to wade through the underlying article.

BTW, I assume the need to wipe down surfaces (e.g., boxes from Costco or the grocery store) no longer applies? I'm glad restaurants are careful to wipe down tables/counters/doorknobs, etc., but I assume fomite transmission isn't much of a worry, correct?

[Moliere]

One not interesting anecdote to support what JIC said is at our local high school. It’s been open for about five weeks and they’ve had around 4 cases during that time. They keep those kids home and the people that sat around them. However, this last week the entire volleyball team and some football players got it and the case count skyrocketed to about 30. Makes me wonder if it was a super spreader event or just the fact they don’t wear masks while playing...no idea but it jibes a bit with the article.


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[BlueK]

Seems kind of strange to say "It's known" and then say the current guess is 1-3 years but noone knows.

[CardiacCoug]

Breaking News: out of 7.7 million people in the US who have caught the corona a few people lost their hearing in 1 ear! Be careful out there!

Humans are so bad with big numbers.

[Jarid in Cedar]

Thanks for that, JIC a very useful summary of points that would have been lost on me had I tried to wade through the underlying article.

BTW, I assume the need to wipe down surfaces (e.g., boxes from Costco or the grocery store) no longer applies? I'm glad restaurants are careful to wipe down tables/counters/doorknobs, etc., but I assume fomite transmission isn't much of a worry, correct?

I think that fomite transmission is negligible, if not even nonexistent.

[Eddie]

Thanks JIC - interesting information.

I remember reading an article at least a couple of months ago that had that theory about there being super spreader people who shed the virus at much greater rates than others. For some reason, what stood out in my mind from the article was an example of one super spreader person riding the subway and infecting quite a few people along their ride.

[Solon]

Thanks JIC - interesting information.

I remember reading an article at least a couple of months ago that had that theory about there being super spreader people who shed the virus at much greater rates than others. For some reason, what stood out in my mind from the article was an example of one super spreader person riding the subway and infecting quite a few people along their ride.

This article from The Atlantic (dated about 2 weeks ago) says in effect the same thing. It gets into the weeds just a little bit with the math, but I followed the gist.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

Here's a sample of the good stuff:

Using genomic analysis, researchers in New Zealand looked at more than half the confirmed cases in the country and found a staggering 277 separate introductions in the early months, but also that only 19 percent of introductions led to more than one additional case. A recent review shows that this may even be true in congregate living spaces, such as nursing homes, and that multiple introductions may be necessary before an outbreak takes off. Meanwhile, in Daegu, South Korea, just one woman, dubbed Patient 31, generated more than 5,000 known cases in a megachurch cluster.

[UVACoug]

Need a ruling on this: Mask through the drive thru to pick up food or not? I hadn't been wearing a mask through the drive thru at first, but started to the last few weeks. Figured it couldn't hurt and might make the server at the window feel more comfortable. Maybe it's unnecessary though. Seems like most people I've seen don't wear them in that scenario.

Edit: Typo

[Bo Diddley]

Need a ruling on this: Mask through the drive thru to pick up food or not? I hadn't been wearing a mask through the drive thru at first, but started to the last few weeks. Figured it couldn't hurt and might make the server at the window feel more comfortable. Maybe it's unnecessary though. Seems like most people I've seen don't where them in that scenario.

Absolutely the right thing to do.