Another one reposted from the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
There is now powerful observational evidence that outdoor air is extraordinary safe regarding COVID-19, and the recent protests have helped provide it. The protests/riots began in Seattle and other cities on May 26th. Thousands gathered without social distancing and a good 10% had no masks. They participated in chanting, singing, screaming and other activities that ensured plenty of droplets were injected in the air, and that unhealthful environment was “enhanced” by coughing from tear gas and other agents.
Did this huge exposure result in increased spread of COVID-19? The answer is clearly no.
Consider Washington’s King County, a hotbed of protests starting 26 May (see below). Both hospitalizations and deaths showed no upward spike after the protests (the blue line shows May 26th). We should have seen a signal by now, since the average time to symptoms is approximately five days.
It is important to note that the number of COVID-19 cases is going up modestly in King County, but that is being driven by a near doubling of tests (note that the bottom graph starts earlier). Much of the media neglects to note the importance of increased testing in finding more cases.
This lack of a coronavirus spike has been noted in every major city in the U.S., something discussed in the Seattle Times today and in many media outlets.
These are huge number of independent experiments in varying environments and climates. A very good sample. And the obvious conclusion is that COVID-19 has a very difficult time spreading in outdoor air. There is no other explanation.
Some of you might argue that many of the protestors were young and so would not get very ill. True enough. But young people can get sick from it and they could certainly give it to their parents, neighbors, and folks in food stores and restaurants. There were plenty of teenagers and folks in their early 20s still living at home who were at the protests.
You want more evidence? No problem. About a month ago, there was a huge media commotion about “irresponsible” outdoor parties at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks (see picture below from the famous “party cove”. Several media outlets promised a huge uptick in COVID-19 cases.
What actually happened? Nothing. No spike of COVID-19 cases in the neighboring counties. Outdoor air is safe.
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The lack of outdoor transmission is consistent with the scientific literature. There is in fact no documentation of effective outdoor transmission of coronavirus (see my earlier blog for documentation). Some examples of scientific papers discussing the issue, include:
Qian et al., 2020: Examined 1245 confirmed cases in 120 cities in China and identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases.
Nishiura et al., 2020: Transmission of COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment (95% confidence interval).
The reasons for a lack of outdoor transmission are clear:
- Virus concentration are low outdoors because of the tremendous dispersion of the virus in the outside environment. This results in low viral concentration.
- Solar radiation rapidly kills the virus.
- Higher humidity in the outside air is bad for transmission.
- Social distancing is much easier outside.
We have folks going outside with great fear, even wearing masks when they are alone or distant from others.
The other day I was biking down the Burke Gilman trail and an older women saw me coming and fled off the trail, pushing her mask tight around her mouth as she turned to face away from me. There was profound fear in her eyes and it was completely unnecessary. Really bothered me.
And such fear is being stoked by local politicians and governments. The City of Seattle parks STILL has many of the parking lots closed and threatening signs everything.
Completely inconsistent with scientific evidence and even the Mayor’s Office’s own statement on the lack of transmission during the protests. Talk about being anti-science and irrational.
Take a look at the welcome provide by Seattle Parks and Recreation for Magnuson Park, one of the city’s jewels. Why does the Mayor allow this situation to continue? City parks should be completely opened.
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Additional Material
One commenter noted that percentage of positive test are increasing recently, indicating viral spread. This is true. But as shown by the plots of positive percentiles for Washington State (and daily tests), the rate of positives fell for WEEKS after the protests (which started at the time of the blue line). The minimum was in mid-June. The positive percentage is a very fast reacting measure of increase of COVID-19 transmission and there is NO hint of a surge with the advent of the protests. More recent rises, in WA and for most of the country, are associated with lessening of restrictions and lockdowns.
PS: Wearing masks is a very, very good thing if you are indoors. More than a good thing– necessary in all public indoor spaces.
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Lidia Morawska, a professor of atmospheric sciences and environmental engineering at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, has written a paper criticizing WHO for ignoring the risks from virus floating in the air as aerosols:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/scientists-say-who-ignores-the-risk-that-coronavirus-floats-in-air-as-aerosol/ar-BB16kGjC
I notice that Florida has a CV death rate/million about 40% of the national average and no surge in deaths.
My hypothesis is that southern states are a bit behind in the infection cycle and are also testing more healthy young people who will not die from this.
Many of the comments here are about masks. As pointless as masks are, as used now, I think this misses the real point.
The article makes some statements concerning an increase in the disease:
“One commenter noted that percentage of positive test are increasing recently, indicating viral spread. This is true.” …… “More recent rises, in WA and for most of the country, are associated with lessening of restrictions and lockdowns.”
Yes there has been an increase in testing. AND New Tests! A new test called an IGg trest has been in the news in the last 2 weeks. IGg is an immunoglobulin test. It shows whether you have antibodies to the virus. If so, you are immune.
These tests are being reported as COVID New Cases when positive (!!!!!)
This is giving the surge in cases. Look around you. It has been obvious the me that various powers that be have wanted a “Second Wave” since near the beginning. If a second wave does not occur, it will need to be created.
Here is a link to Tony Heller’s blog. He covers the story as published in The Atlantic, an has a link to the original article.
https://realclimatescience.com/2020/07/cdc-sabotaging-the-economy/
This is where the surge in cases is coming from, and nowhere else.
If antibodies are NOT present does NOT prove lack of infection. The presence of any of the symptoms without antibodies means that your innate immune system has handled the virus at the mucosa. Most people with a positive antibody test have been those worst affected, basically it means their innate immune system has failed to protect against the virus and the reactive immune system has been activated. The over activity of the reactive immune system can lead to a cytokine storm. The innate system is amplified by vitamin D whereas the reactive immune system is modulated by vitamin D. Therefore a lack of vitamin D reduces the innate immune system and allows the reactive immune system to be over stimulated.
Cases of covid19 per test should be a falling curve if covid cases are reducing. Cannot be a rising curve if covid is increasing because testing is increasing. USA are finding more cases per test. The rise in cases is not due to more testing!!!!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcLi-u5XsAAcqXm?format=png
You don’t “know” that since a lot of states are testing for antibodies and throwing the results in the same bin. Again we are being feed bad numbers, extrapolation from them is impossible. Do me a favor sort this mess out and report back to me when you “know” something.
Ghalfrunt
More asymptomatic people are being tested. A higher infection rate without illness is a good thing, not a cause for alarm.
I think we can agree, putting it politely, that we’re all fed up to the back teeth with the whole affair.
Wrote about All this before.
If Wuhan coronavirus was significantly aerosolized, then there would be two comsequences.
1. It would be highly seasonal, like flu. It is now obvious from Fl, Tx, Az that it is NOT highly aerosolized.
2. Masks would be useless, as shown by their not being recommended in winter flu season.
Wuhan is like other common cold corona viruses in terme of transmission. Close personal contact, including touching infected objects and then the face. But outdoors, sunlight is a good disinfectant, so the touch transmission route is an indoor issue. So masks are pretty insignificant. 1 meter distance, frequent indoor (grocery store) hand washing, not touching face until Hands washed suffice.
Masks do not protect the wearer, they protect you from the wearer. But if symptomatic, the wearer should not be out and about in the first place. What remains is the infectiousness of asymptomatics.
This has two subsets: not yet, and never.
We know the not yet CAN be infectious (the UK guy who caught it in Singapore, gave it to 9 others on a 4 day ski vacation in France before becoming symptomatic back in UK. But there was no social distancing and no handwashing on that vacation.
We don’t know if never symptomatics (CDC estimate is ~35% of positive infections) can spread infection. The Kimberly Guilfoyle/Don Jr experiment ( she tested positive, no symptoms yet, Don Jr tested negative) will provide one possible data point in that Cohort. CVN 71 provides another.
In my opinion, the whole mask thing is greatly overwrought, and common sense departed the Virus debate months ago. Treating mob rioters and church congregants differently underscores the last point.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/07/05/distorting-science-in-the-covid-pandemic/ may be of interest. Malcolm Kendrick is a physician working in general practice here in the U.K. and in my eyes a respectable, trusted and responsible source of information.
I would like to put a question to the whole blog for a vote. Should American professional baseball reopen complete with spectators in the stands.
I could really care less about any “professional” sport. These are extremely overpaid entertainment scripted performers. The performers completely lost my interest decades ago and have done nothing to regain it since then.
A bit of an aside here, but I find the reported case totals unreliable at best. The hand-wringing over the “record” number of cases in Arizona is an example. Take a look at the Johns Hopkins page for Arizona:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/arizona
Note the disclaimer: “Currently, states may not be distinguishing overall tests administered from the number of individuals who have been tested. This is an important limitation to the data that is available to track testing in the U.S., and states should work to address it.”
So, if someone tests positive for CV-19, it’s possible (likely?) that if they are tested again and again until they test negative, then those additional positives are included in the overall positive cases totals. But it’s the same person! SMH
Salute!
C’mon. Rud, the mask is for the guy with the bug that is coughing and wheezing and such.
The only masks that can protect the average person are the chem warfare ones. The ones we are all supposed to wear might be 10% effective if the guy with the bug is only breathing and not coughing in your face. Even that is optimistic. The point about the masks is to keep the infected ones from making more infected ones. The mask cuts down on the distance the critter can carry, huh?
I do not wear a mask unless there are others in the convenience store when I make my beer run. I do it so some yeahoo won’t confront me, not because I think the mask will protect me.
Gums sends…
PS: BS.
But then you knew I’d type that.
Indoor air is much more likely to be infused with infectious aerosols, and masks of the sort being pushed by supposed experts have no known controlled randomized study concluding that masks do anything to effectively prevent infectious aerosol emission from the wearer who contributes ample amounts of these. Cloth (with simple crossing threads) has spaces large enough for infectious aerosol particles to pass through significantly. Furthermore, the lack of a seal around facial contours, particularly around the nose, in addition to small irregularities in the material at the edges, create channels for focused air currents to escape carrying those infectious aerosols, on each exhale.
There are enough aerosol particles both getting through the spaces of the threads and leaking out the edges from lack of seal, to maintain a cloud of aerosols in the air of interior spaces. Everybody wearing masks, emitting those particles en mass maintains such a cloud. And since the particles can get out, they most certainly can get in, and, of course, a percentage of them (just as they can be kept out by the mask) can get back in through the mask, collect on the mask, build up a concentration over time on the mask, get breathed back in my the wearer, get slingshot off the mask, back into the air, and so the cycle continues.
And what about those larger spit balls that some studies make a big to do about? First, they are secondary, to begin with, as far as the most severe way the infection gets deep into the lungs (which is by aerosols, as mentioned earlier). Second, when those spit drops hit the threads of the fabric, are we supposed to think that they magically just sit there? Would they not hit the space, and then disperse into smaller droplets, upon each successive exhale, getting atomized and cast back into the air eventually?
And what about big spit drops that hit the floor? — Do THEY just sit there? — I’d say, “no”. People jostle them about, smash them up into smaller pieces, and air currents created by passing bodies whirl them back into the air as smaller drops.
We don’t know the micro-physics or micro-fluid dynamics of those spit balls. Many people are just dreaming that they know, hoping they know, ignoring the deeper levels of evidence needed to establish that we know what we think we know. THAT evidence does NOT exist. We do NOT know.
The masks, thus, are talismans, good luck charms, symbols of virtue, symbols of compliance with the hopes and dreams of the ignorant masses.
And don’t get me started on human behavior. Look at how people are actually trying to use masks. Then laugh, when you realize that basic compliance with even the simplest best handling practices is impossible. People are not willing to do even those basics consistently, rigidly, conscientiously, all day long, everyday, in their normal work day, with normal reflexive demands that they have conditioned themselves to do without a mask all their lives.
Stop the mask madness.
End rant.
Many people are extremely susceptible to fears about their health, often taking a zero-tolerance attitude to any risk. I used to smoke cigarettes. (I quit. Are you happy now?) People had been told that any exposure, no matter how brief, to cigarette smoke was harmful, and sometimes otherwise rational people would freak out if they saw me smoking in the same room. How anyone could possibly believe that the much diluted smoke I exhaled in a restaurant could possibly harm anyone who didn’t smoke is astonishing in it irrationality. If tobacco smoke were that dangerous, I would have collapsed in breathless agony when I inhaled the smoke from the cigarette. Did people think I was superhuman?
Or how many times have you met people who wouldn’t eat certain foods, under the impression that they were harmful? How do vegetarians explain the obvious fact that omnivores live past the age of 50?
What I’m getting at here is that the neurotic avoidance of risk of illness is common.
all these “mask experts” are just illogical and are not spouting scientific or even common sense theories about masks …
people out in public, when not speaking, do not breath thru their mouth … when you breathe thru your nose most of the virus in your exhale ends on your shirt not in the air … wearing a mask changes your breathing and forces you to breathe thru your mouth more often (not good) … and the mask everyone is currently wearing doesn’t protect you from infection if there is a viral load in the air … zero, nada protection …
there is a reason humans are designed to normally breathe thru the nose, ITS A FRICKIN FILTER for pathogens … if you encounter the virus breathing thru your mouth you are more likely to infect your lungs (not good) vs breathing thru your nose where any infection begins in the sinus passages …
everyone is just making assumptions, assumptions that aren’t even logical …
and none of the “experts” have a theory as to why children are not infectious but also explains their “assumption” that asymptomatic adults are infectious (if the kids aren’t, they obviously aren’t) …
Here’s another tid-bit to consider:
Atmosperic oxygen content here in Eugene Oregon is 20.9% at elevation 350+/- above MSL.
Using a combustible gas indicator (CGI or similar instrument) put an N95 mask on your face.
Measure the oxygen content just outside the mask. It may vary a little depending on your elevation.
Then slip the hose under the mask and up by your nose or mouth and measure the oxygen content there.
I get readings of 17.9% oxygen consistently.
OSHA Regulations stipulate that atmospheric oxygen content below 19.5% is IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life & Health). In the demolition industry (which I am) that17.9 % gets an OSHA Citation every time.
told you this back in Feb.
FFS
Pretty sure you said “lockdown” was best. So getting out and about is best, now?
One has to be careful getting statistics from a many parameter system.
You start with “Thousands gathered without social distancing and a good 10% had no masks. ”
and end with “Wearing masks is a very, very good thing if you are indoors” .
Maybe the numbers prove that it is also a very good thing to wear masks in public gatherings outdoors. Effectively the “thousands” become “hundreds” and social distancing is imposed by the numbers, if 90% wear masks, their exstance imposes effective social distancing.
Imagine how many morons would be discovered if all people were IQ tested.
Salute!
Great point DOUG !!!!!!
We need to do the IQ test for all folks at the two U.S. political party conventions this year.
Gums suggests….
Dr Richard North noted that Israel has seen an increase in cases 4 weeks after it eased lockdown restrictions. But as noted here, is that due to increased testing? Dr North did not comment on that. The issues that worry people are will I die from the virus? Will the virus cause lasting damage to the lungs and/or other organs? How long might I be ill if I do get it? That seemingly fit and healthy younger people have died causes concern. Near me a paramedic who was superfit died from it very quickly. Does being superfit weaken your immune system not strengthen it as you might think? Wouldn’t be the first time this has been suggested with viruses. He would also likely have made multiple contacts with the virus and this is certainly a fatal mode for the virus.
Several things occur to me:
– Maybe 10% were not wearing any mask at all, at any time, but I bet that a large number of the people did not wear them continuously and correctly and perfectly…IOW they touched their face, eyes, took it off when talking, or to scratch the itch on their nose, etc. Even trained professionals have a hard time not touching face.
– Mask does no good if a droplet lands on your eyeball, or you touch something with virus and then touch eyes or face or nose. You need some kind of good goggles, or sunglasses at least…the tight fitting kind.
And when you get home you have to remove all virus on your clothes, shoes, and body and everything else, without getting infected at that point.
– You can only get the virus from someone who has it, or give to to someone else IF you have it.
So rates of spread depend on how many of those people are infected and contagious, and also not using proper methods.
I think the people who are not careful can spread it to many people in short time…super spreader events.
And these are the people most likely to become infected too, because they are not careful.
So first the spreaders need to get infected, and then pass it along when they become contagious.
So it starts slow. Mostly people who are active, out and about. High chance of mild case or asymptomatic.
And these spreaders are not very likely to wind up in ER…that happens later when more vulnerable people start getting it from the spreaders in increasing frequency.
Some of them get very sick and do so quickly. By them the people with a slow burn case that gets suddenly worse…they show up in ERs on deaths door.
The slow burn becomes a steeping curve.
However, that was at the outset.
Maybe the most vulnerable protecting themselves now will alter the pattern substantially.
Maybe masks and many people taking at least some steps at protection will get a low initial viral dose, and so mild cases will stay high. Severe cases when people are not at all careful, or someone has multiple exposures over a short period of time, which happens when more than an occasional person is out and about and shedding virus.
And many have already had it, and I am not so sure we know exactly how many, but it is more all the time.
No way to be sure, but most commonly infection will confer some level of resistance or immunity, at least for a while. Maybe years. And it is less likely to be very bad, because your body has seen and fought it before.
In summary, it is hard to say, and a lot of factors come into play, and there are some things that have not happened before and so may be impossible to predict with any level of skill,
I am not seeing a ton of people making me think they must be Son of Kreskin up in here.
Predictions are hard, especially about the things that are unpredictable.
Wuhan Flu is not obeying the Marxist agenda any more than Klimate change has. They must be sooo disappointed and desperate to keep the fear going.