Covid-19 #16: Not Waving, Loop-de-Looping

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

some, after receiving an initial positive, have since tested negative — but still feel sick.

Post-viral syndrome / cough syndrome possibly. If so it's not so much a COVID thing but an immune system glitch that happened to be triggered by COVID. This sort of thing can happen after a common cold or some other garden variety virus infection.

Read a literature review looking at transmission by contamination on goods of Sars-Cov-2 transmission, some key points on the FAQ-type part of the review:

Quote

Q: What is the latest information on the routes of transmission for COVID-19 (including anything that implicates food as a vector)?

Key finding: The primary transmission route for human infection with SARS-CoV-2 is via respiratory droplets. It may be possible that a person can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. Infectious virus has been found in faeces of some infected people, raising the possibility of faecal-oral transmission via contaminated vehicles such as food, but there is no evidence for this having occurred.

Q: What is the international consensus on survival rates of SARS-CoV-2 in food products?

Key finding: No published studies of SARS-CoV-2 survival in or on food products were located. A study of MERS-CoV in various types of unpasteurised milk showed survival of the virus for up to 72 hours. Pasteurisation inactivated the virus.

Q: What is the international consensus on survival rates of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces of fresh food especially if the food is consumed fresh and not cooked?

Key finding: No published studies of SARS-CoV-2 survival on fresh food were located. A study of another coronavirus showed survival on lettuce for up to two days. This coronavirus could not be recovered after inoculation onto strawberries. [my take, acidic food environments are bad for virus, lettuce is pretty neutral]

Q: What is the likelihood of a person becoming infected with coronavirus from consuming the virus?

Key finding: No information was located on the likelihood of infection from consuming SARS-CoV-2 through food. Normal intestinal conditions (stomach acid and bile salts) are thought to inactivate SARS-CoV-2, but more research is needed.

 

Our election is due in September and there's been chatter about a delay with this new wave (not a wave yet, but it'll looking like becoming one). The thing is, because the govt it very popular right now it's actually the opposition calling for a delay. The cynic would say that's because the opposition thinks if the govt manages to display competence at dealing with this new situation the opposition parties will be decimated at the election if it happens in September. But if it gets pushed to November there is more chance for opposition parties to start sniping at the govt again and claw back votes.

It is far too early to be calling for a delay. If this new cluster can be crushed quickly and Auckland can come off lockdown in 2 weeks there is no need to delay the election. If the lock down bleeds into September then delaying the election makes sense. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Further investigation suggests that the outbreak in Auckland is connected to refrigerated goods:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300081452/coronavirus-more-positive-cases-of-covid19-linked-to-americold-in-auckland 

(Which rather changes the ballgame).

[The Anti-Targ]

11 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Further investigation suggests that the outbreak in Auckland is connected to refrigerated goods:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300081452/coronavirus-more-positive-cases-of-covid19-linked-to-americold-in-auckland 

(Which rather changes the ballgame).

With other people at Americold (the irony of the name of the company) testing positive the entry point being imported goods is looking pretty strong. It's possible the Dad brought the disease to work, not the other way around, but  the presence of virus on surfaces is a known transmission risk, just not a very high risk. The fact that we've had thousands of imports from countries with high rates of COVID-19 and this is the first time anyone is recorded to have been possibly infected demonstrates that this route of infection is low risk. And the mitigation is very simple, wash your hands. Virus being present on surfaces are not going to suddenly aerosol up your nose, so hand hygiene is the only measure you need to take.

[ithanos]

51 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Further investigation suggests that the outbreak in Auckland is connected to refrigerated goods:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300081452/coronavirus-more-positive-cases-of-covid19-linked-to-americold-in-auckland 

(Which rather changes the ballgame).

I think the odds of the virus arriving via imported frozen goods is still low. However, the fact Amerigold now has confirmed cases in facilities in NZ and AUS is worrying - especially if any of these cases can be shown to be index cases for their clusters. Game changing indeed if it can be proven.

On a wider healthcare concern, its worrying that 15 of the 18 new cases in the past 3 days appear to come from the Maori & Pacific Islands community - who as a sub-population have above average rates of metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes) and comorbidities. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, ithanos said:

On a wider healthcare concern, its worrying that 15 of the 18 new cases in the past 3 days appear to come from the Maori & Pacific Islands community - who as a sub-population have above average rates of metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes) and comorbidities. 

That was one of the great achievements of the First Lockdown - it was highly effective at keeping the virus away from Maori and Pasifika areas. Here... I still think it can be flushed out, but Auckland will now need a good month or so.

[rotting sea cow]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

With other people at Americold (the irony of the name of the company) testing positive the entry point being imported goods is looking pretty strong. It's possible the Dad brought the disease to work, not the other way around, but  the presence of virus on surfaces is a known transmission risk, just not a very high risk. The fact that we've had thousands of imports from countries with high rates of COVID-19 and this is the first time anyone is recorded to have been possibly infected demonstrates that this route of infection is low risk. And the mitigation is very simple, wash your hands. Virus being present on surfaces are not going to suddenly aerosol up your nose, so hand hygiene is the only measure you need to take.

Well, contaminated frozen food/packaging was also my working hypothesis for that strange outbreak at the Argentinian ship.

I tend to believe that the probabilities are still low, but I wouldn't dismiss it completely. Here, as with the other samples detected frozen food markets, we urgently need studies about the virus viability. That's they aren't just detecting RNA pieces. If they do it in NZ, please keep us updated. It's the only way to be sure.

As for tracing back to contaminated food. I think, it's generally hard to prove amid a bigger outbreak, when chances from other ways seem higher.

It might even be that the Wuhan market outbreak started in a similar way?

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Well, contaminated frozen food/packaging was also my working hypothesis for that strange outbreak at the Argentinian ship.

I tend to believe that the probabilities are still low, but I wouldn't dismiss it completely. Here, as with the other samples detected frozen food markets, we urgently need studies about the virus viability. That's they aren't just detecting RNA pieces. If they do it in NZ, please keep us updated. It's the only way to be sure.

As for tracing back to contaminated food. I think, it's generally hard to prove amid a bigger outbreak, when chances from other ways seem higher.

It might even be that the Wuhan market outbreak started in a similar way?

Food itself is an unlikely risk pathway, packaging and equipment will be the greater risk I think. But still a miniscule risk when direct human to human spread is happening. But it's a risk pathway we didn't manage because it was seen as low risk inherently, and because of shipping times the risk is reduced even more. I give this reappearance about 75% probability of being a fomite contamination at the Americold coolstore. But there may yet still be some link back to an overseas passenger arrival.

If the inanimate object contamination pathway proves to be the mode of entry then it is a risk we won't be neglecting to manage from here on.

We do have one, maybe two new cases in Auckland that do not have an apparent link to the Americold cluster. There is a claim by a senior govt politician that this is due to a quarantine breach.

[Zorral]

What the Great Influenza (1917-1920) looked like in NYC back in 1918 -- just like it looked here in April, 2020.  Except we had refrigerator trucks now.  Which I, for one, have thought about a lot in these last months, particularly in April and May, with reports everywhere, every day, about no room for the bodies -- and even before that with the reports of out Italy, and then later in South America.  No one could keep up with the bodies, and like with the Bubonic Plague, bodies lay in housing along side the living.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/health/coronavirus-flu-new-york.html?

Quote

 

[....]The parallels between the two pandemics reinforce concerns that the fall and winter this year could bring a second wave worse than the first, as happened in 1918.

The similarities also raise uncomfortable questions about the how much deadlier the coronavirus may be than the 1918 flu virus.

If you could pluck the two viruses out of time and compare them, Dr. Faust said, it’s not clear which would be inherently more deadly: “It could be that this thing is much closer to 1918," he said, referring to the coronavirus. “Or it could be worse.

 

 

It was even WORSE in Philadelphia in 1918.  In both NYC and Philly (and other locations things were even more terrible the inevitable terrible due to the horrific political corruption and dysfunction -- such as the NYC mayor firing one of the very best public health crisis managers and replacing him with a crony who hadn't even gone to high school:

John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic In History.

[The Anti-Targ]

Attended an online seminar about pandemic controls in humans and animals last night that included some discussion on COVID-19. One interesting bit of amended information is that the base R0 figure has been revised to 2-6, so the R0 is higher than initially stated. Probably the upper figure of 6 is due to there being super-spreader situations.

Also one of our microbiologists who is on the COVID-19 response group said the speculation about contaminated freight being the entry point for our new cases is a "Stupid idea from a naïve non-expert." I trust his judgement. He might be wrong but he usually isn't.  

[Clueless Northman]

It's possible that the R0 in most cases isn't that high, lower than the flu for instance, but can skyrocket with some people and in some specific situations - so the average could easily sit at 3-4 in some places, if no measures are in place.

That said, I don't think the 2nd wave would be that much worse than the 1st - definitely not 4 times worse, as it might have been with the Spanish Flu -, at least not in places were it was nearly or already out of control. It's clear all demographics were hit in NYC, Spain and the like, when the Spanish Flu disproportionately hit young troopers in the 1st wave. All at-risk groups have already been hit in places like Italy or Sweden. Not that they have herd immunity and won't have much deaths, but when vulnerable people have already been hit, they won't be hit much harder 5 months later.

Of course, a 2nd wave that would be as deadly for Spain, Italy or US as the 1st one would already be a nightmare and a massacre. Hopefully, it'll be less deadly.

[Zorral]

Um -- it was the 1918 SECOND WAVE of the Great Influenza that was the deadliest, not the first, in 1917.

~~~~~~~~~~

NYC Teachers and their union are challenging the mayor:

"Bill de Blasio Is Picking a Fight He Might Not Be Able to Win"

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/bill-de-blasio-is-asking-for-teacher-protests.html

This is the sort of death trap that NYC teachers are expected to work in 10+ hours a day for at least 5 days a week.  See the photo of this o so modern in 1970's we won't even put indows into the the building.  What the hell is de Blasio thinking??????  He is going to hell.

https://gothamist.com/news/death-trap-windowless-schools-ventilation-nyc-reopening

Quote

 

.... he felt that windows would be distracting in an instructional setting. His solution was to give each classroom a skylight "created by offsetting each floor from the one below." There were side windows in each classroom, but he kept the main facade windowless.

Lundy would later call it "a piece of sculpture."

On Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza visited Lundy's masterpiece, M.S. 53 Brian Piccolo School, which also houses Success Academy and Village Academy.

It was a puzzling choice. Teachers, students, and parents are now relying on a good ventilation system to get back into the classroom, with Michael Mulgrew, the teacher's union president, citing ventilation as one of the biggest hurdles in safely reopening schools. But as a budget-starved Department of Education struggles with HVAC upgrades, schools are being told that they will largely need to rely on opening windows.

"Of all the buildings to go to, they decide to go to a building that was built in 1973 by a modernist architect, and his intent was to have no windows that would distract [students]," one teacher there, who asked not to be named, told Gothamist. "That building is a death trap, as far as ventilation. There's no supply fan, no ventilation unit. No intake or outtake for fresh air. We don't have any air conditioners."

Over the years, some of the windows at the school have been bricked over, leaving even fewer openings than Lundy's spare design intended.

Experts have increasingly recommended that schools open their windows during classroom instruction. Dr. Jack Caravanos, an environmental health specialist at NYU’s School of Global Public Health, said he believes open windows are the best way to keep air moving.

“When you open a window, there's dilution of that interior space,” he said. “And the dilution is good because the virus particles will go down and there’s less chance of being infected.”

He said schools should open all of their windows in addition to keeping their HVACs running throughout the day.[....]

 

This is the mayor who wouldn't close the schools even after the governor declared a state-wide emergency and said CLOSE.  This is the mayor that was literally forced to cancel the St. Patrick's Day parade and all the indioor accompanying swilling close-up-and-personal backslapping and electioneering and politicing events that go with it every year.

BTW, I have recently learned the reason the steam heat is so overpowering in the winter in these older residential buildings is that the systems were put in during the Great Influenza.  The windows had to be open for ventilation instructed the public health officials, so the system was created to keep the rooms warm enough with the windows open in winter.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

WHO advice on food and food packaging

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/people-should-not-fear-spread-of-covid-19-in-food-packaging-who-idUSKCN2592D5

It's a negligible risk in their analysis.

[The Anti-Targ]

Briefing today confirmed all cases so far are still epidemiologically linked to the original family. This is good news and suggests, so far, a single point source very close to the original family. Still be a week or two before we can be confident that we have a single point source, but so far so good.

[The Marquis de Leech]

All current COVID settings to be extended for another twelve days. That's good news, to be honest.

(Also, National aren't helping themselves with the calls to delay the election. It's blatantly self-serving, and everyone knows it).

[The Marquis de Leech]

13 hours ago, Zorral said:

What the Great Influenza (1917-1920) looked like in NYC back in 1918 -- just like it looked here in April, 2020.  Except we had refrigerator trucks now.  Which I, for one, have thought about a lot in these last months, particularly in April and May, with reports everywhere, every day, about no room for the bodies -- and even before that with the reports of out Italy, and then later in South America.  No one could keep up with the bodies, and like with the Bubonic Plague, bodies lay in housing along side the living.

Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year notes that one of the great achievements of the authorities during the massive London Plague of 1665 was that there were no bodies left on the streets during the daytime. They sorted all the corpse disposal at night.

(The other achievement was that London never ran out of food).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So there was no clear place to put this, but it's important none the less. The president of U.S. college athletics, the NCAA, has just canceled all Fall championships over the virus. As someone who graduated from a Power Five university, I must say this is quite the development. 
 

Quote

NCAA president Mark Emmert said Thursday there won't be fall NCAA championships because there are not enough schools participating due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic -- a decision that affects 22 championships, including FCS football.

"The board of governors also established if you don't have half of the schools playing a sport, you can't have a legitimate championship," Emmert said in a video posted on the NCAA's Twitter feed. "We can't in any Division I NCAA championship sport now -- which is everything other than FBS football that goes on in the fall. Sadly, tragically, that's going to be the case this fall, full stop."The number of schools fell below 50% on Wednesday when the Big East announced its fall sports wouldn't be played.

"I'm not sure now that it impacts what we're doing in football that we've continued to move forward," said West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, chair of the NCAA's Football Oversight Committee. "Just because there's no championship at the end doesn't mean the whole fall is ruined for those student-athletes."

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/29656816/no-ncaa-championships-fall-due-coronavirus-pandemic

It deeply saddens me that this pandemic is going to shutter so many universities. 

[Fragile Bird]

But but, you have such low taxes! What a great trade-off, monetize sports at universities so tax dollars don’t have to go there! There’s going to be a vaccine by October! Experiment on healthy athletes, start up those seasons!

[Zorral]

How to do something right in terms of entertainment?  I dunno -- wasn't there, but this was an interesting read of an outdoor concert in the UK, and how / why it worked.

https://www.stereogum.com/2094792/socially-distanced-sam-fender-uk-concert-review/franchises/reviews/concert-review/

 

[The Anti-Targ]

22 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

All current COVID settings to be extended for another twelve days. That's good news, to be honest.

(Also, National aren't helping themselves with the calls to delay the election. It's blatantly self-serving, and everyone knows it).

Everyone and their dog knew it would be extended, and most people with basic knowledge of COVID knew on the day the first cases were announced. It was foolish IMO for the govt to go with only 3 days initially, and probably significantly motivated by not wanting to cancel the rugby so soon.

There is no reason to delay the election if AKL can go back to level 2 before the end of August. But I think the govt should consider delay if there is a strong indication the level 3 will continue in September.

I see in today's briefing there is ongoing investigation of the imported goods potential with workers at Americold Melbourne having tested positive and Americold Akl having received goods from the Melbourne store.

Genomic testing has failed to connect the Akl Americold cluster virus to any known virus present in NZ either during the original lockdown or in people who have been through quarantine and tested positive.

The media is banging on about border staff / quarantine staff not being tested as if this lack of testing is the cause of the current outbreak. I think it is fair to say there wasn't enough testing of border / quarantine staff, but belabouring this issue further is a distraction at the moment. The Americold cluster has no link to anyone working at the border or in quarantine facilities. So it was a risk worth identifying and addressing, but it's not something to keep harping on about.

[Fragile Bird]

The US went from 150,000 dead to 170,000 dead in 17 days.