What have you seen that supports that? I’ve seen tons of evidence that it CAN spread via air, and that’s obviously an important pathway. But I’ve yet to see any evidence whatsoever that it doesn’t spread via fomites, food, blood, etc.
In countries that have done thorough contact tracing, those methods of transmission have not been identified. At this point, if a covid positive chef hasn’t passed it on to someone through food, it’s a safe bet it’s not a real concern.
I thought a lot of transmission was “unknown”? are there places successfully tracing the source of almost all infections? If so, that makes me feel a lot better.
(Although, as someone who takes a lot of omeprazole to prevent my stomach from being acidic enough to kill stuff, I am probably at unusually high risk of getting it from food.)
Sure, a lot are unknown but if a cook was tested positive, you don’t think they’d have followed up with some of his customers? Or the reverse, an unknown ate at a restaurant that week, they’d check on the staff? At this point, absence of evidence is very conspicuous.
Thanks, you are making me feel better about my decision to start getting takeout food again. We’ve done that the last four weeks, after not doing so since early March, and it IS nice to have food someone else cooked.
I see reports both that COVID infects epithelial cells of lungs, respiratory tract, and intestines in the laboratory, and that it kills mostly through infection of blood vessel cells. I don’t know if the blood vessel cells it infects are epithelial.
In the laboratory, Influenza is also known to infect non-epithelial cells. From what I see, this whole area is at that really difficult interface between clinical and laboratory research, (just because a virus can infect a cell doesn’t mean it’s clinically important) and much is unknown.
Re: the bolded - Can a negative be proven? For my own personal assessment of risk … “highly - highly - unlikely to happen” = “doesn’t happen”. I’m not going to concern myself with edge cases and tenuous exceptions. And I say that as someone with multiple comorbidities, not as someone who can take fighting off COVID for granted.
Where “it ain’t fomites!” really hit me in the face was when the CDC did an about-face on non-medical mask use for the general public. Oddly, it was in a white paper titled " Cleaning and Disinfection for Households" that originally came out on March 26th (the link below has been updated to July 10th). Read below:
There is much to learn about the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Based on what is currently known about COVID-19, spread from person-to-person of this virus happens most frequently among close contacts (within about 6 feet). This type of transmission occurs via respiratory droplets. On the other hand, transmission of novel coronavirus to persons from surfaces contaminated with the virus has not been documented. Recent studies indicate that people who are infected but do not have symptoms likely also play a role in the spread of COVID-19. Transmission of coronavirus occurs much more commonly through respiratory droplets than through objects and surfaces, like doorknobs, countertops, keyboards, toys, etc. Current evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 may remain viable for hours to days on surfaces made from a variety of materials. Cleaning of visibly dirty surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for prevention of COVID-19 and other viral respiratory illnesses in households and community settings.
Now then. I know the two bolded sentences in the quote look like they are cancelled out by the two last sentences. But to me, the statement about lack of fomite transmission documentation was a winning point. And I’ve seen it corroborated from other sources since then.
Since that 3/26 guidance came out, I have noticed that there’s apparently no spread or outbreaks associated with grocery stores, retail outlets, and the like. Could have missed some news somewhere, but if not … something should have made the news by now about “the COVID dangers lurking on your grocer’s shelves!”.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cleaning-disinfection.html
What’s the best theory at the moment for what’s going on in New Zealand? Possible it was still lurking around for three months and just not making anyone sick enough to go to the doctor with enough symptoms to warrant a test? Or more likely that it snuck through the border quarantine somehow? Or – yikes – maybe it really did come in on that seafood shipment?
Still no confirmed source, but from the news survival on packaging for frozen seafood [not the food itself] is being investigated.
I think NZ is as close to a lab experiment as you can get. Packaging contamination may possibly be quite common but if it happened in the US how would you spot it in the much louder noise of so many people roaming around being sick and contagioning everything?
That’s possible but the most obvious guess is human failure. People come from outside NZ to deliver stuff. New Zealanders are there to recieve stuff. Someone probably fucked up protocols and went and had a cigarette with the delivery guys.
What made the CDC and the WHO think it wasn’t airborne but spread through contaminated surfaces back in January and February?
I went to Pax East the last two days of February (about a mile from where that notorious Biogen convention was being held the same days. yikes) and literally no one was talking about masks or social distancing yet - though both were being widely discussed the next week - at that point it was use hand sanitizer 11ty-7 times a day and for the love of God don’t touch your face.
Since it clearly had a respiratory component it seemed strange that coughing and sneezing weren’t the first theory of transmission.
I know it seems weird now, but in early March, masking and social distancing were radical, uncomfortable ideas. Washing and sanitizing were normal, and the advice to ramp them up was easy to give and easy to take. Telling people to treat each other likes lepers was a sea-change.
Well… In early March my square dance club stopped meeting, because we decided it wasn’t safe. That’s a form of social distancing.
Yes, but even that seemed extreme then. And a club deciding not to meet is different than official guidance not to get within 6 ft of anyone outside your household. We needed that advice, don’t get me wrong, but it was a big leap.
Airborne-spread viruses (e.g. rubella/measles) often have a transmission rate (R0) in the teens. COVID-19’s transmission rate (estimated at ~2.5 - 4.0 early on) seemed to be higher than ordinary respiratory illnesses, but substantially lower than most airborne viruses.
Measles spread and COVID-19 spread aren’t perfectly alike, of course. The measles virion seems more immediately infectious somehow (I confess to not understanding this aspect). COVID-19 infection, conversely, seems to require a considerable time element. It’s not quick chance encounters with a COVID carrier that cause infections – rather it’s sustained sharing of stale (usually indoor*) air. That suggests (to me) that the viral load of COVID-19 has to get fairly high before causing a clinically-significant infection.
’ * not to suggest that HVAC indoor air is in itself a problem. I don’t believe that it is.