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WHO Says No Change To COVID-19 Transmission Guidance After US Draft Change (reuters.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the where-things-stand dept.
The World Health Organization has not changed its policy on aerosol transmission of the coronavirus, it said on Monday after U.S. health officials published draft new guidance by mistake warning that it can spread through airborne particles. From a report: Mike Ryan, executive director of the UN agency's emergencies programme, said he would follow up with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the next 24 hours after it said COVID-19 could spread through airborne particles that can remain suspended in the air and travel beyond six feet. "Certainly we haven't seen any new evidence and our position on this remains the same," he said in a briefing. The CDC said a draft version of changes to its recommendations were posted in error on its website while it was in the process of updating its guidance.
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WHO Says No Change To COVID-19 Transmission Guidance After US Draft Change More

WHO Says No Change To COVID-19 Transmission Guidance After US Draft Change

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  • Why not both? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:56PM (#60528762)

    It seems logical that Covid can spread both by droplets and aerosols. The only difference between the two is one of size, and the virus can easily hitch a ride on either one.
    However, the CDC is obviously in complete disarray, caught between politics and science, which unfortunately are in direct conflict in the US right now. And WHO is arguably susceptible to political influence as well.
    If the virus were watching all this, it would be rubbing its hands in glee. Was it Lao Tzu who said, "Never stop the enemy from makiing mistakes?"

    • the political meddlers are mostly interested in downplaying or minimizing the virus. If the disease spreads by aerosols it's a big "upplay".

      In effect it means you can get it from people breathing near you, that the particles can stay in the air for a long time and that they can travel long distances.

      What I don't get is why this isn't settled already. It's been 9 months. I would think it's cut & dry. Get a bunch of people with the virus and take samples of their breath. But then I'm also complete

      • Re:This one doesn't make sense from that perspecti (Score:5, Informative)

        by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:32PM (#60528898)

        What I don't get is why this isn't settled already. It's been 9 months. I would think it's cut & dry. Get a bunch of people with the virus and take samples of their breath. But then I'm also completely ignorant on this subject beyond what I read online.

        In a sense this is cut and dried. The virus can spread by aerosols and so it is airborne. However, when you look at the detail, it isn't so clear. SARS-COV-2 needs hundreds of viral particles to infect a person where diseases like measles that are normally considered "airborne" need only one or two. This means that the coronavirus spreads airborne with difficulty. There's a good theory that this is a cultural problem with doctors who are afraid of being accused of believing in miasma theory [independent.co.uk] rather than a political problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The first model was utter bullshit anyhow. The flow patterns were all based on still air and still people, utter crap science. When you do it properly, that 1.5m distance shoots out to over 20m because the air and people are all in motion, through in a 10km per hour wind and those seconds they used allows those particles to go much further than 1.5 metres and then you have people walking into that cloud of particles as the person breathing moves on, all of that helps to produce that 20m spacing required. Al

    • Re:Why not both? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:27PM (#60528868) Homepage Journal

      It *can* spread both ways. Nobody disputes that aerosol transmission is possible; the question is whether it should be a practical concern for most people.

      The dispute isn't about the behavior of the virus; it's more about the uncertainties of human behavior. Should people be taking the extra precautions you need to protect from aerosol transmission, and if you asked them to, would they? Right now compliance with the less stringent droplet precautions isn't what it should be, and you could well ask for more and get less.

      • Re:Why not both? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @04:18PM (#60529072) Journal
        COVID-19 is a disease with very long statistical tails. The news media tends to focus on rare events, because that's interesting. However, that makes it difficult to determine what's most probable, and what is possible, but improbable.

        For example, most people develop symptoms 3-5 days after exposure. However, one case in New Zealand appears to have developed symptoms after 3 weeks. [stuff.co.nz]

        Another example are the reports about the virus remaining on surfaces for ~72hours etc. Yet, I don't see much evidence that contaminated surfaces are a common vector. (My personal conclusion is 10 minutes is too short [nzherald.co.nz], but 72 hours is too long)

        I would like to see a document capturing 3-4 levels of probability in terms of transmission mechanisms, symptoms, duration, and severity. That way the public can be better informed about what is most likely, and what is rare.

        • Agree with everything you said here.

          Another example are the reports about the virus remaining on surfaces for ~72hours etc.

          Yes... but... Those numbers are about how long it takes before detectable levels of virus drop below detection limits. When you read the actual reports, the time it takes for the virus load to drop by a factor of two is 2 hours on a permeable surface (like cardboard), and on an impermeable surface 4 hours (on plastic) to 7 hours (stainless steel)

          (source: bottow row of figure 1, here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov] )

          Dose matters. "Detectable level" isn't really releva

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cameldrv ( 53081 )

          The sibling comment made a great point about no huge outbreaks in package/mail sorting facilities, but the article you linked to from NZ about the two people who used the elevator is begging the question.

          What we know is that a worker got in the same elevator as an infected person "only a matter of minutes" after the infected person used it. They say that it most likely would have been from a contaminated surface, but the only reason they are saying that is because the WHO guidance doesn't acknowledge aeros

          • If you look at this one datapoint, it is very interesting that the one place where they're getting "fomite" transmission is about the smallest enclosed space that exists in a building. Fomite transmission could happen on any number of shared surfaces, but it just so happens to occur in an elevator for some reason, not the people washing dishes in the basement.

            I agree. I have a relative that's a supervisor for a major delivery company. After the initial wave of infections, they haven't seen much transmission through the industry. Seems that surfaces transmission is rare.

            The elevator case is quite interesting, as is the person who developed COVID-19 after 2 weeks in isolation, and 2 negative tests. Evidence is trickling in.

            I've been following the New Zealand health ministry quite closely, as they seem to be one of the few places with the resources to stud

        • For example, most people develop symptoms 3-5 days after exposure. However, one case in New Zealand appears to have developed symptoms after 3 weeks.

          Yeah but that was a sheep so it doesn't really count.

      • This issue really seems like a test- and quarantine-rationing strategy rationalized by denying evidence instead of actually weighing risk-benefit or developing improved strategies. The pertinent question is: if people are in a room with masks and 6 ft distanced, when do they all need to be quarantined and tested? after 1 hour? 2 hours? can the ventilation level be tested? We know if they are in a "poorly ventilated room without masks" they would all need to be quarantined and tested. Aerosol trasmission

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gosso920 ( 6330142 )
      Covid won't be done until Biden has won.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by anonymouscoward52236 ( 6163996 )
        Biden won't win. There are too many idiots in this country who want to see the world burn.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spun ( 1352 )

        Are you saying that:

        A) a worldwide pandemic was all manufactured to hurt Trump?

        B) the current administration is mishandling the response?

        C) a vaccine won't be ready until after the election?

        The first of these means you are a fucking loon. The second two are simply obvious. In any case, you couldn't be less clear if you tried, and I think whoever is modding you up is just assuming their preferred interpretation.

        • Correct. For a virus that even in countries that didn't embrace lockdown still killed less than 1% of the total population and has yet to reach even a 1% death toll worldwide, the way that Trump and the Governors have handled this is downright ridiculous.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spun ( 1352 )

            You trying to say there should not have been any shut down? Seriously?

            What countries did not embrace lockdown, and had few deaths? I'll need proof. No, Sweden is not an example.

            • More that I'm trying to say that on a cost/benefit analysis, the cure is significantly worse than the disease. Remember, a shut down affects 100% of the population. At worst, so far, maybe 20% of your population will actually experience symptoms from coronavirus, and a very small percentage of those will either be hospitalized or die.

              South Korea, Sweden, and Tajikistan are the three commonly quoted "did not lockdown" countries. None of them- OR ANYWHERE ELSE- has yet to exceed 1% of the population dying

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by spun ( 1352 )

                You are so wrong about this. The quarantine is the cure for the economic slowdown, not the cause. Look at any pandemic in history, you will find the places that quarantined first and best were the first economies to recover. https://news.mit.edu/2020/pand... [mit.edu]

                Even close to .1% of your population dying is huge, a massive burden on the economy. The knock on effects of fear, breakdown of supply chains, and business closures due to outbreaks rather than controlled closures due to quarantine are bigger than you im

                • And you have. So I have a challenge for you.

                  Name one country that has a lower ratio than 100 jobs lost per death. Got any? If we hadn't have locked down at all, the ratio would have been 0 jobs lost per death, but I can't find a single country that low.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by spun ( 1352 )

                    I laid out the argument: quarantines protect the economy. I provided references to back up my claim.
                    Here's more.

                    https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
                    https://qz.com/1827879/coronav... [qz.com]
                    https://www.atlanticcouncil.or... [atlanticcouncil.org]
                    https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/m... [stlouisfed.org]
                    https://www.lovemoney.com/gall... [lovemoney.com]

                    You can answer that argument or fuck off, I'm not gonna play with the straw man you made. I've already given your deranged ass more attention than you deserve. So put up or shut up, sweetheart.

                    • So your basic argument is that the "creative destruction" of the quarantine, closing millions of small businesses permanently, is what we need to provide the space to rollout 5G and fuel the recovery? It's an interesting theory, and I'll admit to my earlier hyperfocus on the present. But I'm not real sure that 5G will provide the solution to the United States becoming Solaria from Isaac Asimov's Robots and Empire series.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by spun ( 1352 )

                      My argument is called science, and history. This isn't a mystery, we have records of past pandemics, and accurate scientific models of the present. You are just making shit up to suit your prejudices, and I am done wasting my time on a closed minded, ignorant fool who is too set in their ways to learn anything new.

                      Expect no further responses from me on any subject, I'm permanently ignoring your childish, self centered, solipsistic twaddle. The shit you spout is designed for one purpose only: to stroke your

                    • Good idea. Ignore anything that doesn't fit your worldview, that's a great way to do science!

                • PS- as a rule, deaths from all causes cost the United States 3.7% of its population *EACH AND EVERY YEAR* .1% means we'll lose 3.8%.

                  Which means you, personally, even with COVID, have a 96.2% chance of seeing January 1, 2021. Not much different than the 96.3% chance you had last year.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by spun ( 1352 )

                    Prove that any of that straw man nonsense matters in terms of economic recovery. Show why you think this bullshit statistic supports your argument. I'll wait, but I want sources.

                    • I'm not talking about economic recovery. I'm talking about the handling of the crisis in the first place.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by spun ( 1352 )

                      Then you are even more of an ignorant ass than I thought. You are not actually citing any useful numbers, just your own made up metrics. And you are not taking into account what WOULD have happened, had we not taken the precautions we had.

                      We're done here, because I'm done wasting time on you. Expect no further responses.

                    • I am taking into account what *DID* happen, not what some academic claims what *would have* happened. This pandemic simply wasn't the plauge that was predicted back in February, when we were expecting 50% fatalities over a population.

        • The pandemic was engineered to kill off "all the old folks" in order to save money on warehousing them. That is, the purpose is to return the retirement age to the retirement age (which was set because no one is supposed to live that long).

          This is what the West paid for when they financed the Wuhan Virus Institute to develop SARS-nCov-2.

    • Update, CDC pulled the draft and returned to the master branch of the source code.

    • It's kinda scary that initially people criticised the WHO for Chinese influence while now it's the CDC that's a hotbed of political meddling and interference. At the moment I wouldn't trust anything coming from the CDC as far as I could throw it, although I would still trust qualified individuals in the CDC who are able to speak independently of the politically-imposed party line.
    • There is a reason why nobody agree on this : airborne transmission is rarer than you think. On big droplet, those the mask is supposed to catch the transmission is a known factor. On very small one, which stays airborne longer, this is not a given pretty much to the point of only tuberculosis being known with certainty to do it. See while micro droplet stays longer and may travel longer, the quantity of virus may be much smaller and thus may fall below the threshold for the virus to contaminate/find a rece

  • Restaurant evidence speaks to the contrary (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:58PM (#60528766) Homepage

    There's been a few cases recently where clusters of Covid-19 cases have turned up where people were all eating/drinking at the same establishment. It happened at a Starbucks [bloomberg.com], and surprisingly, the mask-wearing employees were spared from being infected.

    Some restaurants around here are still doing take-away only dining, at their own discretion. Being that it's Florida, our moronic governor has reopened everything and if you want to play the Covid-19 hunger games by breathing possibly infectious recirculated indoor air, you're more than welcome to do so. May the odds be ever in your favor.

    • Re:Restaurant evidence speaks to the contrary (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:59PM (#60528996)

      Exactly this. There have been a large number of so-called "super spreader" events reported that cannot be explained via surface contamination or our current understanding of droplet behavior. The Starbucks one is a great example, where there's no way that everyone in there was within droplet-reaching distance of the infected person, yet they still became infected themselves, with the exception of the employees wearing masks. There was a case early on of an infected person in a restaurant in New York infecting a number of people at their own and neighboring tables, including some waitstaff, yet many of those people were more than 2m/6' away from the infected person at all times. The thing that nearly all of them had in common was that they were downwind from the infected person on the basis of where the A/C vents were or the paths that waitstaff were walking as they went in and out of a nearby kitchen door.

      The only reasonable explanations for these and many other statistics and incidents—e.g. statistically, you're 20x less likely to get infected outdoors than indoors—are that either our understanding of how droplets work is incorrect (i.e. they can go a LOT further than people think) or else that the virus is able to spread via some other means (e.g. aerosolized).

  • Sigh... (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:05PM (#60528786)
    I'm sure the science is better than this but so much of the coverage that is reaching me is a debate over whether the droplets "can" or "cannot" "stay in the air" or go "over 6 feet." I mean obviously these are false dichotomies that cannot be discussed in any reasonable manner without specifying probabilities.

    • "can" or "cannot" "stay in the air" or go "over 6 feet."

      Sounds like the makings of a bad Clash spoof.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      People need guidelines that are simple and easy to comply with. It's not that 5.9 feet is dangerous but 6.1 feet is perfectly safe. It's that 6 feet is a round number, and marginal benefits to further distancing add up slowly after that.

      Sure, it'd be better for preventing transmission people stayed 20 feet apart, but people would routinely violate that. In absence of a guideline they could live with they wouldn't know how far to stay apart.

      But this level of complexity is beyond the capacity of the news m

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mckwant ( 65143 )

        "Wear a mask" seems pretty simple and easy to comply with. As does "Large groups are a bad idea."

        The complexity of the rule is irrelevant.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          The mask isn't a panacea, it helps a lot, especially in situations where you can't social distance but just because you have a mask doesn't mean its perfectly safe to stand 6 inches apart yelling over loud music or such.

          • The goal isn't to have a panacea. Masks can play a big role but by themselves won't get R0 low enough (though I suspect that 100% usage of masks outside the home would go a long ways towards that). Socially distancing is of course another method. The goal is to have a set of policies that limit the virus spread such that R0 is less than 1 so that the virus peters out. Unfortunately it seems that the moment that the virus goes down somewhat, people's behavior immediately reverts such that R0 goes right back

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              One of the problems is people who do think that a mask is a panacea, so why bother social distancing. And with the way the conspiracy theories are growing, even an effective vaccine won't help. There's too many people now who think the virus is fake, so why follow guidelines, or that it is a minor problem for the vast majority of the population, so why follow guidelines, not to mention the part of the population that are freaking out about businesses starting to enforce mask wearing to enter their business.

      • Here's my guideline: If you shoot yourself in the head you will be permanently immune from SARS-nCov-2 infection. The virus does not infect dead people.

  • Nobody said 6+ feet alone was a 100% guarantee. The real issue is how strong the risk is, not its existence. If the risk is small enough, then many will judge yet more restrictions "not worth it".

  • Mike Ryan is the same guy who was lecturing us back in March that there was no evidence that mask use was effective in healthy populations. Of course that was disastrously bad advice, and most smarter people realised that, even back then. And of course aerosols can travel long distances. That's known. And there's lots of evidence or corona spreading long distances. There is no evidence that 6 foot means anything as a metric. In fact in Europe it's 2 metres, and they just chose the number as it would be ea

    • "there's no evidence"

      What most people don't seem to realize, is that there is very little science actually done to address most specific questions. Broad science is generally the order of the day. Worse still, once a question is deemed "answered" by dogma, it's almost never revisited. One of the things that frustrates me the most is much of the frequently parroted/"reported" dogma of what "science says", turns out to be one study from 25 years ago with way too small of a sample size and lack of sensible con

    • There is no evidence that 6 foot means anything as a metric. In fact in Europe it's 2 metres, and they just chose the number as it would be easy to remember.

      In Europe, it varies by country; the usual values are 1, 1.5, and 2 meters, depending on feasiblity and - ideally - on whether other behavior (cultural and by guidelines) balances the shorter or longer prescribed minimum distance. For example "no bars, closed schools, keep 1 m" could be equivalent to "open schools, open bars, keep 2 m" in terms of the R number.

      *Ideally, but politics and general reduced willingness of the people to make sn effort are currently leading to what looks like the start of a second

  • Does anyone still care what a corrupt UN agency led by a third-world communist who is not even a doctor has to say?

    • Does anyone still care what a corrupt UN agency led by a third-world communist who is not even a doctor has to say?

      Insofar as the countries listening to them are doing waaaaay better than those that are not, yes.

  • ...but you expect us to trust your medical advice, and vaccine safety, and time-tables, and life-style guidance.

    So either you wrote something that wasn't at all true, as an exercise in fake-medical advice, and accidentally published it for the world to see -- and therefore you're stupid and can't be trusted -- or you wrote something that is true, meant to keep it a secret, and accidentally published it for the world to see -- and therefore you're stupid and can't be trusted.

    I'm itching to ask: "which is it?

  • When the US withdraws from the WHO, it shouldn't be surprised that the WHO no longer follows US recommendations. Much less unpublished recommendations.

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