Hmm, I don’t have the source handy (maybe NYT “The Morning” emails I get 6x a week, but I’m not positive) but I recall reading that yes, Covid-19 cells are all over the place. But on surfaces they’re so damaged they have basically no “viral load” at all and are extremely unlikely to be capable of making you sick, even in high concentrations.
For what it’s worth, I chuckled. 
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Thanks, twig!
Pretty much what I was going for, and this is a tough crowd.
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Eh, he put offensive words in my mouth. I’m going to call him out for that.
Viruses aren’t “cells”, but I understand your point. And that’s often the case – a PCR test can identify viral fragments but can’t tell whether they are viable or not.
That being said, there are a handful of documented cases of fomite transmission. It is not common, but it’s possible. And it’s not as if every case is traced to its source (except maybe in NZ, which is where one of the documented fomite transmissions comes from).
That is not what I did, and you know it.
I simply noted a malapropism, and asked for clarification, in the most obvious “I know you didn’t mean this” fashion. Even twig understood!!! (See, three exclamation points, denoting some level of feigned disbelief.)
You can take it the wrongest way possible. I can’t stop you.
But, I’ve learned a valuable lesson today. Thank you.
Other than adding more filtration on HVAC systems, I’m struggling to understand how any of those are helpful:
- increased cleaning of common areas – as you say, fomite transmission isn’t a major contribution to spreading covid
- directional arrows in hallways directing traffic – they do that in some of the supermarkets here, but I haven’t figured out how it helps. You are still breathing the air of the people right in front of you. I think it’s cleanliness-theater. Open to learning otherwise, but dubious. (when they believed the virus was only carried by large droplets that quickly fell to the ground, it made some sense. But now that they understand a lot of the viral load is aerosol… not so much.)
- no use of lockers at all – ??? I can’t even guess what this is supposed to help with. To move the kids through the hallway faster?
- staggered class changes – yeah, this one makes sense, sorry, missed it. (and of course you should keep the elementary kids in their rooms)
And as for that HVAC… older schools in the NE have radiators, and maybe a fan in the room over the unit to transmit the heat a little faster. (My high school did have a window AC unit in the computer room.) Even if there’s a fan in the room, there’s no place to PUT a filter. Yeah, a lot of school buildings don’t have air vents. Or worse, they do but they aren’t configured to make it possible to add filters.
Cheaper and more efficient to just buy a stand-alone HEPA air purifier for each room, if the rooms have the electrical capacity to handle that.
I have a friend who teaches in Chicago and was required to stand in his classroom as the “stage” for his zoom classes for a while. The air duct in the room pumped in unfiltered air from the administrative offices. He wore and N95 mask and left the windows open until they let him teach from home.
It’s basically the same as a couple weeks ago when she said she wanted to roast a duck in the freezer and I made a joke out of it. I enjoyed your comment too, FWIW.
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Eh, you asked if I was going to cook a duck in the freezer, which is just silly, and completely inoffensive. You didn’t suggest that I used the name of an ethnic group as shorthand for cleaners.
The intent was pretty obviously the same in both cases. Nobody thought you actually did want to roast a duck in the freezer or that you were specifically looking for a certain ethnic group for cleaners. Pointing out the funny alternate readings was all either of us did. Nothing malicious at all in either case.
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That’s… a stretch.
Kind of like when I ask my husband if he has any whites for the laundry and he calls me racist. It’s obviously a joke that no person in their right mind would take seriously.
I suspect the major benefit there is that it cuts down on germs/viruses that DO transmit that way, like the common cold. If you have a cold your immune system has diminished capacity for fighting off any Covid virus that it was exposed to. So fewer teachers/staff/kids with colds means fewer who will catch Covid in the event they are exposed to it. And cleaner surfaces might mean fewer teachers/staff/kids with colds.
And of course not just colds, also flu and other crud, but colds are a big one where people go to work/school when they have one.
I don’t know about your high school but the hallways in my high school were an absolute madhouse between periods. Serious congestion and gridlock and no possible way to come even remotely close to maintaining even the 3’ distance that the school was basically promising. So yeah, both of those seem designed to keep traffic flowing through the hallways to cut down on crowding.
Yeah, and that’s probably a good solution. So maybe what’s needed in some buildings is a wiring upgrade rather than a ventilation upgrade.
We got a cat during Covid and hubby is allergic and we needed a HEPA filter. I thought they’d be hard to find during a pandemic, but Costco had stacks and stacks and stacks of them. Like 4 different models to choose from too. I was pleasantly surprised.
That’s insane. If the kids are home, I can’t see how it matters where the teacher is teaching, unless it’s something wildly inappropriate like a strip club. If you must, demand a solid colored backdrop if your teachers can’t be trusted to find a suitable backdrop on their own.
I don’t think that’s what DTNF did either. I think he (in a way that was VERY obviously joking) suggested that you were hoping to pick up Chinese cleaners (as opposed to Chinese food).
And the way you wrote YOUR post, when taken excessively literally, did suggest exactly that.
It was obvious that wasn’t what you actually meant.
It was similarly obvious that DTNF was joking.
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Not obvious enough, I guess. Red font would have helped, but that’s too much work (for me) in this message board format.
Thank you for the support.
I mean, we know how much power she has here.
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Don’t you dare be punny anymore.
This isn’t true. It could very likely result from people no longer getting together in large gathering for holiday parties. The drop has seemed to halt as well. The last 2 days have seen increases in the 7 day rolling average of new infections. We are still seeing very high numbers in the range of 65k per day. These are worse numbers than we saw at any point during the first 3/4th of 2020.
Based on what metric(s)? I’m curious what your trigger statistics are.
With vaccine rollouts we have a chance to completely squash this outbreak and prevent the spread and development of mutated versions of the virus. Why are we pushing so hard to fumble the ball on the 1 yard line. We have gone through so much already why wouldn’t want want to make that worthwhile and crush the virus while we can. I don’t want us to have this lingering problem that could become an even worse problem for years to come.
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uh, “quash,” I think?
Nick_P believes that children, their education, social interactions, sports, etc., are far more important than old people’s health and lives. That’s his trade-off.
Some people (older people) think differently.
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