• FluTrackers.com Inc. does not provide medical advice. Information on this web site is collected from various internet resources, and the FluTrackers board of directors makes no warranty to the safety, efficacy, correctness or completeness of the information posted on this site by any author or poster. The information collated here is for instructional and/or discussion purposes only and is NOT intended to diagnose or treat any disease, illness, or other medical condition. Every individual reader or poster should seek advice from their personal physician/healthcare practitioner before considering or using any interventions that are discussed on this website. By continuing to access this website you agree to consult your personal physican before using any interventions posted on this website, and you agree to hold harmless FluTrackers.com Inc., the board of directors, the members, and all authors and posters for any effects from use of any medication, supplement, vitamin or other substance, device, intervention, etc. mentioned in posts on this website, or other internet venues referenced in posts on this website.
  • We are not asking for any donations. Do not donate to any entity who says they are raising funds for us.

Discussion thread IV - COVID-19 (new coronavirus)

mcphilbrick said:
Choir practice turns fatal. Airborne coronavirus strongly suspected

By RICHARD READSEATTLE BUREAU CHIEF
MARCH 29, 2020
7:34 PM
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. —


With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.

The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south.

But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and businesses remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.

On March 6, Adam Burdick, the choir’s conductor, informed the 121 members in an email that amid the “stress and strain of concerns about the virus,” practice would proceed as scheduled at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church.

Sixty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand sanitizer at the door, and members refrained from the usual hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places,” Burdick recalled. “We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other.”

After 2? hours, the singers parted ways at 9 p.m.

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.

The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

Los Angeles TImes - https://lat.ms/2JnJLK7
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/i/status/1243843226521534464

I think this speaks for itself.


https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/h...et/5091526002/

Is 6 feet enough for social distancing? An MIT researcher says droplets carrying coronavirus can travel up to 27 feet.

Jordan Culver USA TODAY
Published 12:57 AM EDT Mar 31, 2020

The novel coronavirus has prompted social distancing measures around the world. One researcher believes what's being done isn't enough.

Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor at MIT, has researched the dynamics of exhalations (coughs and sneezes, for instance) for years at The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory and found exhalations cause gaseous clouds that can travel up to 27 feet.
Click to expand...
 
mcphilbrick said:
Choir practice turns fatal. Airborne coronavirus strongly suspected

By RICHARD READSEATTLE BUREAU CHIEF
MARCH 29, 2020
7:34 PM
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. —


With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.

The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south.

But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and businesses remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.

On March 6, Adam Burdick, the choir’s conductor, informed the 121 members in an email that amid the “stress and strain of concerns about the virus,” practice would proceed as scheduled at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church.

Sixty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand sanitizer at the door, and members refrained from the usual hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places,” Burdick recalled. “We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other.”

After 2? hours, the singers parted ways at 9 p.m.

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.

The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

Los Angeles TImes - https://lat.ms/2JnJLK7
Click to expand...

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/211/9/1367/854038
Richard D. Turner, Graham H. Bothamley, Cough and the Transmission of Tuberculosis, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 211, Issue 9, 1 May 2015, Pages 1367–1372, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiu625

"Cough is a significant feature of pulmonary tuberculosis and results in the release of airborne particles into the environment. However, infectious particles may also be aerosolized during talking and breathing [4], and singing may also be important in some situations, such as tuberculosis outbreaks in choirs [16]."

Ref 16:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM196504082721403
April 8, 1965
N Engl J Med 1965; 272:714-717
DOI: 10.1056/NEJM196504082721403
Epidemiology of Primary Tuberculosis in an Industrial School

"The higher rate of infection among the choir members in the school suggests that singing may be very effective in producing a fine-particle infectious aerosol. Three other studies of epidemics of tuberculosis specifically mention that singing was involved. It may be that a vibrating vocal chord, bathed in a solution containing tubercle bacilli, functions as an excellent generator of fine particles. If a constant frequency of vibration is maintained for several seconds an aerosol containing many particles of approximately the same size could be produced. At this moment the mouth and tongue may be so positioned as to allow the particle exit with a minimum of interference. It seems quite possible that vigorous singing could be an effective generator of fine particles in large quantity."

So that is how you weaponize a respiratory pathogen the low-tech way. We'll have to write a movie script.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjCLKo-ib4I
 
The singing observation may explain why some mega clusters occured at weddings and religious gatherings....
 
so folks don't misunderstand (text is easy to read differently). a decade ago, the consensus was that above 40% RH, you could be fairly confident the flu would hit the floor in 6 ft. below 40%, nuclei might not hit the floor for several hours. the thought of someone coughing or sneezing in a dry room with dust floating about, was concerning for me regardless whether they were in the room when i was, or came and went 20 hrs before. if someone coughs nearby, i can hold my breath while walking by. and i'd assume fomite on clothing regardless. i've not seen anything on nuclei aspects for corona. i've seen folks reference aerosols - there is an issue at X distance... i've not seen anything on the differences that dry/humid air brings. we keep the humidity around 50% in the house in flu season, closer to 60% if folks are sick..
 
...but in the NEJM articles humidity is not reported, details about the 3 jet Collission nebulizer and Goldberg drum are not reported, and so the distance is not reported. Half life is 1.1 to 1.2 hours but the study ended at 3 hours. I don’t understand the concentrations info.

How this relates to the Po Valley - Italian - French study about attaching nuclei particle to dust, I don’t understand.

But is not this critical info? Do we have a separate thread on aerosol transmission?

In Canada it’s spring melt. Road salt and gravel are all over our roads from winter. Cars and trucks are blowing it around, and strong south winds are drying the air and causing dust storms. Street cleaning has not started and often has protocols that exacerbate airborne dust when it is performed without sufficient water or when there’s no rain.

So it may not be fomites, touching or coughing that causes huge transmission rates...but aerosol and urban climate.
 
re. methods of transmission. I think we may be over complicating things and it all boils down to relative probabilities. My assumption is most transmission is due to droplets and most of these fall to the ground within 2m of the host. A small number don't and could be expelled further by violent coughing and a small number happen to be in very small drops that stay aloft longer. Of those that fall to the ground they will start becoming less infectious over time until they have too small a viral load to realistically start a new infection. The further away you are in distance and time from the hosts release of virions the safer you are statistically. There is evidence that what you say matters for instance 'stay safe' is dangerous as the 's' sound is formed by pushing the tongue against the pallet and then releasing it causing a release of pressure. When filmed with suitable lighting you can see the effect on droplet transmission. Intubating patients is known to cause a different proportion of small drops and I can not see any reason why singing may not change the size and projection of droplets and may therefore warrant greater spacing. This may also be true for different languages listening to Chinese or Vietnamese speakers they use very different sounds, and ways of forming sounds, than we do in Latin based languages. Could be an interesting thesis subject for someone interested in phonetics and airborne disease transmission. I looked at the Goldberg drum which seemed to be a cylinder with complex air flow allowing you to simulate even deposition rates of different sizes on the inside of the cylinder. You could line the drum with hard plastic, cloth etc. and then study the infectious decay rate over time for the chosen lining.
 
In case you missed it..so far, HK has reported Covid-19 in two dogs and today, a cat. Belgium has also reported a case in a cat. In HK, they tested rectal samples and the virus was present. I presume that the virus is present in feces. So...can we expect it to spread among our domestic animal population? Dogs are notorious for eating stool. Never had a cat, so can't speak to that. What do you all think of this? So far there is no evidence that our pets can infect owners. The virus doesn't appear to make the animals ill.
 
Two points Shiloh. The first canine sequence has been deposited at GISAID and is identical to HK human sequences at that time so very likely human to dog transmission. The RT PCR test picks up RNA sequences in the stool, not live virus, so it is quite possible there is no active virus in the sample just RNA fragments from virions that have been degraded by the digestive system. The stomach adds hydrochloric acid (which causes heart burn if it gets into the esophagus) which is then neutralised in the duodenum. Not an easy journey for the virion to survive given that the digestive tract's function is to breakdown the fats and proteins the virus is made of. I have not seen any experimental data on attempts to culture live virus from feaces but suspect some one will try.
 
on the dust/nuclei thing.. break the evaporation, flip the charge on the particles, burn away the outer layers, do continuous air exchange.. identify the risk, vectors, controls and mitigation, know the gaps between.. then make an informed decision, even if its a quick one.. .a very long time ago, i used to start iv's.. folks didn't wear gloves then, and later they did.. now they do.. if i couldn't palpate the vein with the glove on, i took it off - it was an informed decision. hiv was new, no cure, no fix, and needles go through gloves as well as skin.. know the risk, decide. and if you're starting a line in the back of a truck, rolling down the road -- beware the bumps.
 
Hi to our psychiatrists.

Well....at the coronavirus task force meeting today there was again the mention of the potential death count of 85k link in the U.S. This is a stunning number.

Please think about what you can post on the site to give people some comfort and coping skills. Also - as you know, millions around the world are losing their incomes in addition to the loss of life.

Here is our psychological forum:

https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/...nd-development

Please let me know if you need anything.


To our viewers - we will be here every day. Again, so sorry this is happening to everyone. Us too.
 
Last edited:
I think I would hide my dog or cat if I lived in Hong Kong and felt ill. They've gone off the deep end insisting the animals be quarantined and certainly stressed that older dog to death. Worms & Germs even said it was likely stressed to death. Until they culture live virus I am not impressed. Even a positive antibody test is suspect for cross-reactivity and notoriously inaccurate at the low end of ranges. Read up on false positives for HIV and herpes - lots of psychological damage done. I'll admit the cat in Belgium did have a mild illness, but right now the scales weigh towards more harm from animal abuse and abandonment than viral danger to pets, (See https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-n...rona-liege-ghent-veterinary-virology/),though I agree with the general cleanliness, handwashing and not letting animals run free. As for danger to humans, I think immune compromised people get adequate advice from their doctors about animal contact. There are plenty of known concerns.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom