For airborne infections social distancing of 2m is not going to be enough. I presume the new London mutation of Covid-19 is particularly infectious because it is airborne. Face masks are not very helpful if the virus is airborne.
Airborne transmission is infection spread through exposure to those virus-containing respiratory droplets comprised of smaller droplets and particles that can remain suspended in the air over long distances (usually greater than 6 feet) and time (typically hours).
I take this to mean that to avoid infection you must avoid the space occupied by an infected person by 2m or by (say) 2 hours. Social distancing then has physical and temporal components.
But which also means that following in the footsteps of an infected person (for example in the supermarket checkout) does not have the necessary temporal distancing. Ventilation only shifts the virus further doing the time it stays “alive”/active. While ventilation to the the outside (on a plane, for example) will be helpful, airflow within an enclosed space only increases the distance needed in space to avoid infection.
Even without the dark, menacing shadow of Covid-19 the days are dark.
At our latitude of 58.7075° N, Winter solstice was yesterday Monday, 21 December 2020, at 11:02. The length of the day is down to just 6h 16 m. But at least the trend is now positive though Covid puts a dampener even on that. By the end of this month we will have all of another 9 minutes to play with. But it’s dark outside. I feel dark inside. It’s dark when I get up. It’s still dark long after breakfast. And its dark again when I doze off after lunch (albeit lunches are a bit late these days). Our outside lights, which are on light sensors, switch on before 3pm.
The sun does not rise in the East but 48 degrees South of East. When it sets, it is closer to the South than to the West (48 degrees South of West). Just a measly 84 degree journey across the sky from sunrise to sunset. The highest point the sun reaches is a miserly and a miserable 8 degrees above the horizon.
Dark days in a dark time
Dark days in a dark year. But it is not the length of the day which is the main cause of the blackness of mood.
The challenge for 2021 is whether the lengthening days will bring any light.
It’s Monday morning. All is not well. But I remain an optimist – just.
Viruses are not living, say scientists. Of course, there are other “experts” who say that viruses are alive – sort of. We are both old enough and with other health conditions to put us among the higher risk groups. The probability of not surviving if either of us is infected is now in percentages and no longer in parts per 100,000. We cannot afford to get infected. So we are quite careful. We isolate ourselves and exercise large social distancing. We have become asocial. We have been waiting for the vaccine in the belief that 2021 is going to be annus mirabilis after the annus horribilis that has been 2020. But I am beginning to realize that this is more delusion than belief. After 9 months of self-imposed isolation and asocial behaviour I am beginning to see the coronavirus as a living, evolving form of life which has the purpose of culling humans.
There is a new, mutated strain of the Covid-19 virus, said to be 70% more infectious than its predecessor, running rampant in the UK. It came, it is said, from Spain to the UK in September. It honed its skills in London and is not thought to be more deadly or more severe in its effects. It has already been found in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. It is not more deadly but is thought to be 70% more effective in transmitting itself from one host to another. More of the transmission is thought to be air-borne and from the asymptomatic. Air borne means that a safe social distance increases by a factor of about 5. Air-borne means that simple face masks can be penetrated. It is almost as if the mutation is specifically about countering lock-downs, social distancing and face masks. Its next survival step will be to mutate to counteract the vaccines.
The vaccines, they say, will still be effective against this mutation. Our best guess is that we could reach the top of the priority list sometime in March, perhaps as late as April. It takes a month for immunity to develop. That takes us into May before we can begin exercising lost social skills again. That assumes that there is not another wave in Spring and that another more deadly mutation has not appeared. But we are living in a dream world if we think the virus will not continue to mutate. A best case scenario suggests that vaccines will give immunity for about 6 months. The Spring wave is more likely to be of a mutated virus – perhaps this current London virus. But it will change again for the Autumn and the next time around it could be more deadly. And then there will have to be an Autumn wave again as vaccines catch up. Even flu vaccines have their compositions adjusted every year.
Flu viruses are constantly changing, so the vaccine composition is reviewed each year and updated as needed based on which influenza viruses are making people sick, the extent to which those viruses are spreading, and how well the previous season’s vaccine protects against those viruses. More than 100 national influenza centers in over 100 countries conduct year-round surveillance for influenza. This involves receiving and testing thousands of influenza virus samples from patients.
I am getting despondent this Monday morning. 2021 will be another bad year.
Even as vaccinations are due to begin, Europe is struggling with the second wave of the pandemic. The effectiveness of the vaccinations are a little jeopardized by reports that a new, more infectious strain of Covid-19 is sweeping across the UK and is on its way to Europe. Hopefully the vaccines developed in record time will cope even with the new strains of the virus if they are not too dissimilar.
While I welcome the vaccines and will take mine as soon it becomes available to me (probably late February) I am not so foolish, or gullible, as to believe that the science is settled. I have read many, but no convincing explanation, as to where the virus went during the summer of 2020.
image SvT
The peaks in late spring, followed by the trough during the summer and the new peaks in late autumn are a common feature across all countries. The same pattern appears in countries applying hard lockdowns as in those with less stringent restrictions. It was clearly not the lockdown regimes which restricted the pattern of deaths in the summer. Yes, of course, people spent more time outdoors in the summer. But when Spain and Sweden exhibit the same pattern, this can be no explanation for the reduction in infection rate over the summer.
There is a great deal of speculation but most of it is just speculation.
Seasonal trends in viral infection are driven by multiple factors, including people’s behaviour and the properties of the virus — some don’t like hot, humid conditions.
Laboratory experiments reveal that SARS-CoV-2 favours cold, dry conditions, particularly out of direct sunlight. For instance, artificial ultraviolet radiation can inactivate SARS-CoV-2 particles on surfaces and in aerosols, especially in temperatures of around 40 °C. Infectious virus also degrades faster on surfaces in warmer and more humid environments. ……… To assess whether infections with a particular virus rise and fall with the seasons, researchers typically study its spread in a specific location, multiple times a year, over many years. But without the benefit of time, they have tried to study the seasonal contribution to SARS-CoV-2 transmission by looking at infection rates in various places worldwide.
A study published on 13 October looked at the growth in SARS-CoV-2 infections in the first four months of the pandemic, before most countries introduced controls. It found that infections rose fastest in places with less UV light, and predicted that, without any interventions, cases would dip in summer and peak in winter. In winter, “the risk goes up, but you can still dramatically reduce your risk by good personal behaviour”, says Cory Merow, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and a co-author of the study. “The weather is a small drop in the pan.” But Francois Cohen, an environmental economist at the University of Barcelona in Spain, says that testing was also quite limited early in the pandemic, and continues to be unreliable, so it is impossible to determine the effect of weather on the spread of the virus so far. ………… If SARS-CoV-2 can survive better in cold conditions, it’s still difficult to disentangle that contribution from the effect of people’s behaviour …. .
The simple reality is that we don’t know where corona viruses go for vacation during European summers and where the Covid-19 virus went during the summer of 2020.
Numbers are abstract. They do not have any physical existence. That much, at least, is fairly obvious and uncontroversial.
Are numbers even real? The concept of numbers is real but reason flounders when considering the reality of any particular number. All “rational” numbers (positive or negative) are considered “real numbers”. But in this usage, “real” is a label not an adjective. “Rational” and “irrational” are also labels when attached to the word number and are not adjectives describing the abstractions involved. The phrase “imaginary numbers” is not a comment about reality. “Imaginary” is again a label for a particular class of the concept that is numbers. Linguistically we use the words for numbers both as nouns and as adjectives. When used as a noun, meaning is imparted to the word only because of an attached context – implied or explicit. “A ten” has no meaning unless the context tells us it is a “ten of something” or as a “count of some things” or as a “measurement in some units” or a “position on some scale”. As nouns, numbers are not very pliable nouns; they cannot be modified by adjectives. There is a mathematical abstraction for “three” but there is no conceptual, mathematical difference between a “fat three” and a “hungry three”. They are not very good as adjectives either. “Three apples” says nothing about the apple. “60” minutes or “3,600” seconds do not describe the minutes or the seconds.
The number of apples on a tree or the number of atoms in the universe are not dependent upon the observer. But number is dependent upon a brain in which the concept of number has some meaning. All of number theory, and therefore all of mathematics, builds on the concept and the definition of one. And one depends, existentially, on the concept of identity.
The properties of one are prescribed by the assumptions (the “grammar”) of the language. One (1,unity), by this “grammar” of mathematics is the first non-zero natural number. It is the integer which follows zero. It precedes the number two by the same “mathematical distance” by which it follows zero. It is the “purest” number. Any number multiplied by one or divided by one remains that number. It is its own factorial. It is its own square or square root; cube or cube root; ad infinitum. One is enabled by existence and identity but thereafter its properties are defined, not discovered.
The question of identity is a philosophical and a metaphysical quicksand. Identity is the relation everything has to itself and nothing else. But what does that mean? Identity confers uniqueness. (Identical implies sameness but identity requires uniqueness). The concept of one of anything requires that the concept of identity already be in place and emerges from it. It is the uniqueness of identity which enables the concept of a one.
Things exist. A class of similar things can be called apples. Every apple though is unique and has its own identity within that class of things. Now, and only now, can you count the apples. First comes existence, then comes identity along with uniqueness and from that emerges the concept of one. Only then can the concept of numbers appear; where a two is the distance of one away from one, and a three is a distance of one away from two. It is also only then that a negative can be defined as distance away in the other direction. Zero cannot exist without one being first defined. It only appears as a movement of one away from one in the opposite direction to that needed to reach two. Negative numbers were once thought to be unreal. But the concept of negative numbers is just as real as the concept for numbers themselves. The negative sign is merely a commentary about relative direction. Borrowing (+) and lending (-) are just a commentary about direction.
But identity comes first and numbers are a concept which emerges from identity.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy author died from pneumonia on Saturday night.
Jonny Geller described him as an “undisputed giant of English literature” who “defined the Cold War era and fearlessly spoke truth to power”. “We will not see his like again,” he said in a statement. Mr Geller said he represented the novelist, whose real name was David Cornwell, for almost 15 years and “his loss will be felt by every book lover, everyone interested in the human condition”. “We have lost a great figure of English literature, a man of great wit, kindness, humour and intelligence. I have lost a friend, a mentor and an inspiration.”
A statement shared on behalf of the author’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we must confirm that David Cornwell – John le Carré – passed away from pneumonia last Saturday night after a short battle with the illness. “David is survived by his beloved wife of almost 50 years, Jane, and his sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen and Simon. We all grieve deeply his passing. Our thanks go to the wonderful NHS team at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for the care and compassion that he was shown throughout his stay. We know they share our sadness.”
The statement said his death was not Covid-19 related.
George Smiley novels Call for the Dead (1961), A Murder of Quality (1962), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), Smiley’s People (1979), The Russia House (1989), The Secret Pilgrim (1990), A Legacy of Spies (2017)
I take skepticism to be the most important characteristic of any scientific inquiry. All “experts”, and especially media proclaimed experts, need to be met with a high degree of skepticism. “Experts” have a high level of knowledge, but only of what is knownand what is known may not be very much. The inherent paradox is that it is the “experts” who need to be challenged the most, but can only be challenged by other experts. But the very clear lesson that can be learnt is that little “experts” are dangerous.
In Sweden, the media made an epidemiologist from the Public Health Agency (Anders Tegnell of Folkhälsomyndigheten – FHM) into some kind of a superhero in March. The government abdicated its responsibilities and left the stage free for “experts”. The media hype converted FHM’s limited position that face-masks were of most use within health care into a belief that face-masks were counter-productive in general use. “Flattening the curve” was the slogan being touted by everyone (including me). But epidemiology is more art than science. We know a lot about viruses but we knew very little about how humans behave and how the coronavirus spreads. The WHO was an unmitigated disaster as they tried to hide any information that was critical of China. (Someday China will need to be held accountable and take some responsibility for having failed to contain, and allowing the spread of, the virus). The government (and the Public Health Agency) proved to be utterly incompetent in predicting the behaviour of the young (who were not at great risk) and the effects on the old (>80% of fatalities).
Of course, almost every country has failed to flatten the curve. The Swedish non-strategy has also failed.
The diagram below needs little comment. The top curves were what we were shown everyday in March and April by FHM about what the strategy (or non-strategy) would achieve. The bottom curve is the actual burden on the health services in terms of the number of admitted Covid-19 patients in hospital (excluding intensive care places which are 70% full).
“Flattening the curve” has become a nonsense slogan.
The k2p blog 