Covid19mathblog.com
Better late than never? More confirmation that we went crazy for the wrong things e.g. hand sanitizer – https://www.eatthis.com/news-obsolete-things-covid-2021/
“4 things you can stop doing to avoid COVID now, according to Shirin Peters, MD, Founder of the Bethany Medical Clinic in New York.”
“now that we have more information about how the virus is primarily spread, disinfecting your groceries isn’t essential. "The rates of COVID transmission via fomite (viral particles sitting in tiny droplets of surface outside of a host and then being picked up via contact and transferred to another host) have been shown to be minimal with COVID-19," Dr. Peters points out. "Although it’s not impossible to get COVID from touching a surface, it’s highly unlikely."”
“sanitizing your hands "every two minutes" isn’t necessary now. "So long as you are washing your hands before and after handling your mask to put it on and take it off, and avoiding touching your face in general, there is no need for additional precautions," Dr. Peters says. "You cannot get COVID through the skin, so frequent sanitizing of your hands is an unnecessary precaution."”
“"For typical exposures outside your home, a 2-layer fabric mask has been shown to be as effective in preventing spread of COVID as an N95 mask," Dr. Peters explains. "In a medical setting where exposure risk is much higher, protective equipment including N95 masks are beneficial."”
“If you are still wearing gloves all the time outside the home, stop. "Although it’s not impossible to get COVID from touching a surface, it’s highly unlikely," says Dr. Peters.”
Found the study that perhaps indicate the reason why the variant is more transmissible. They conclude this by the low Ct for those that have the variant indicates that they have much higher viral load in the nasal area – thereby should be higher viral load when breathing and sneezing. – https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1.full.pdf
“(i) the population of S-gene dropout samples had significantly lower median Ct values of
ORF and N-gene targets compared to samples where S-gene was detected
(ii) on a population basis, S-gene dropout samples clustered around very low Ct values for
ORF and N targets
(iii) linked Ct values for individual samples showed that a low Ct for ORF and N were clearly
associated with an S-dropout characteristic
(iv) when conservatively inferring relative viral load from Ct values, approximately 35% of Sdropout samples had high viral loads between 10 and 10,000-fold greater than 1 x 106
compared to 10% of S-positive samples.”
Another sad reporting day US death 3456 – UK, Mexico, Germany above 1K. 283K confirmed in US! With so much confirmed the fatality rate in US now 1.7%
California leads in death and confirmation by a long shot
LA county leads by long shot
Map shows dispersion is limited to Southwest in general
Latest update shows LA deaths perhaps has not peaked.
