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Showing posts with the label covid-19

Tolerating the Pandemic #4: The Ventilation Edition

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 This is #4 in the series of how we can tolerate the pandemic in a lot of slow, steady progress and hard work.  As a quick recap, the first post laid out a bit of a roadmap  (March 23, 2020); the second  (April 17, 2020) and third  (June 26, 2020) noted updates on the categories described in the first. In the two months since my previous post, one of the most exciting advances has been in improved understanding of the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2, particularly with respect to aerosol-like transmission.  An Aug 11 New York Times article has a good summary of some of the research in this area.  Tl;dr:  Ballistic (large droplet) transmission is probably still a big factor, and is helped quite a bit by masks.  Aerosol transmission is a big contributor particularly to superspreader events (and particularly indoors).  Cloth or surgical masks help but are not a silver bullet, particularly in crowded, confined spaces. Why is this excitin...

Tolerating the Pandemic #3

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In two previous posts, I discussed some ongoing processes that will help us tolerate the pandemic better , and an update 3 weeks after the first. It's been two months, which is enough time for more progress to have happened.  There hasn't been enough, and some things have had less progress than I've hoped for, but we've also seen a bit more progress in other areas.  Let's stick with the same framework from before:  Testing, PPE/Supplies, Treatments, and Societal changes to reduce contact. Testing In PCR testing , a picture is worth a thousand words, such as this one taken from Johns Hopkins: We've gone from 58k tests/day, through 145k tests/day, up to about 450k tests/day.  It took us about a month to triple and another two months to triple again.  That's good, but it's still not at the levels that the Harvard study recommend .  It is, however, about halfway there, and we can probably get to where we need to be in another five months if the federal and ...

Updates on factors that will ease living with a coronavirus pandemic

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Three weeks ago, I posted about  things that will help us loosen restrictions as we move forward through the coronavirus pandemic .  In this post, I'm following up on a few of those in the form of a progress tracker. Testing PCR viral tests March 23, 2020:  58,500 tests/day Apr 14, 2020:  145,000 tests/day. Source:   https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily Taken as the average of a 5 day window centered around the date of concern. SARS-CoV-2 tests per day As with all things, test availability is subject to multiple bottlenecks.  It takes swabs, PCR reagents, PPE for the people doing the tests, machines on which to run tests, trained personnel, etc.  The manufacturing and supply of all of these can take time to spin up. We're not yet to the point where we can test all likely cases, but we're running about 2.4x as many tests as we were three weeks ago. This is not enough.  Estimates vary widely, but one Harvard stud...

Tolerating two years of a pandemic in no easy (but some manageable) steps

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First off, a reminder:  Don't listen to random or not-so-random people like me when it comes to predictions about the spread and danger of COVID-19.  Listen to the epidemiologists.  I suggest starting with: The Imperial College London team , who've done groundbreaking work on previous coronaviruses including SARS and MERS.  It's an experienced, all-star team. Trevor Bedford's twitter feed is full of great stuff tracing the path of the coronavirus in Seattle. Adam Kucharski et al. at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; The work from Christian Althaus's group at the Institute for Social and Preventative Medicine Helen Branswell's reporting on the subject is accurate and lucid. My goal here is to lay out the case that:  (1)  It's worth doing our collective best at minimizing social contact for a while; and that (2)  It won't be as bad in the long run, due to a combination of social and technical factors.  In other words, w...