corporate-wage-slave

Sanitising grocieries is a waste of time as far as COVID is concerned. It's very rarely spread by formite transmission, though it's a technical possibility. In any case, if you just left your groceries out in a well ventilated spot or garage for 30 minutes that is an imperfect but adequate and easy way forward. If you have the back windows of your car open on the way home from the shops that may be another idea. Noro virus is a bigger risk generally here, and that is a much more robust virus than the Corona series of viruses. as well as being formite transmitted. But washing your hands before preparing and also eating food is a good general health idea and probably better than swabbing down the tins of beans.

Social distancing - always good, we should have been doing that more for years. All sorts of colds and flus get around with that.

We don't know a lot about repeat infections with COVID. From what we suspect - and this could change - you will now have a very strong protection against further infection, and with even stronger confidence that further infection - if it happens at all - will be very mild. And this lack of hard data in the area then puts us to a space of caution, perhaps for a few more months. So mask wearing protects you and others, and is particularly important when and where there are high levels of infection. I'm hoping we can be more definitive about it. but let me say what I'm doing (three jabs, never had COVID): I wear masks in all clinical settings, in supermarkets, in small shops, in group meetings, on public transport, on aircraft, inside gas stations. Over the next year I would cautiously predict that will whittle down so that in the UK summer (viral diseases here are very much winter driven) then I would only expect to wear a mask in some clinical settings. Aircraft probably would be the last to go too, but that's not entirely logical. Gas stations then supermarkets are the most borderline cases here.

Your story is going to become more typical with time, so I'm confident that in a few months we will have the data to give better advice than today. Be very wary of data from limited scale trials, you need to keep an eye out on studies involving more than 100,000 people.

nk15

And then there is this:

AstraZeneca Submits Preventive Covid-19 Treatment to FDA (msn.com)

[originally WSJ]

lobo411

No mention of the cost. I wonder if it's on par with the Merck pill, at $1000 per course.

Robl

Perhaps Medicare should be able to negotiate drug costs with Big Pharma. Just a thought.

invisible

Wonder how much Singapore and Australia paid for their reservations...

fransknorge

After more than a year of research and tracking, a real case of propagation during flight is documented.
21 cases occurred during the 2h flight
Patient zéro was not wearing a mask
Reduced odd of infection by mask wearing passengers.
Airborne transmission was the only route of infection.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/irv.12913

[Source journal: Influenza and other respiratory viruses]

hurnik

Thanks! Unfortunately pre-Delta (although I can only surmise Delta may make things worse, but it'd be tricky to probably find out who got vaccinated, if any, and how far along the vaccination route are they, and if they had prior infection).

GadgetFreak

The flight was in March 2020. It wasn’t Delta and no one was vaccinated.

tauphi

There have been multiple documented instances of transmission during flight between passengers as well as between crew and passengers in Australia and NZ.

FlitBen

People who wish to minimize in-flight exposure should always keep their mask on and stay in more spacious cabins, based on new modeling.
[Journal of Travel Medicine, Volume 28, Issue 4, May 2021]

nk15

This supports the importance of flying J, it is not even a luxury any more but rather a health precaution.

Good thing the US kept the international ban for a while and the reopening is with vaccine requirements. Domestic medium haul flights and especially trans cons must be the riskier ones, with no vaccine or testing requirements.

invisible

Meanwhile in Singapore

PanAmWT

UCSF Medical Ground October 7, 2021

An Evolutionary Biologist Looks at Variants, and the Role of Rapid Testing in Covid


This week, we cover two crucial issues in Covid: variants and testing. The highly infectious Delta variant has been responsible for changing the trajectory of Covid over the past six months. In the first segment, evolutionary biologist Paul Turner of Yale will describe how and why variants happen, whether Delta was a surprise, and what the future may hold in terms of additional variants. In the second segment, Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina returns to Medical Grand Rounds. Mina is the nation’s most prominent advocate for focusing on testing as a key prevention and mitigation strategy. In the past few months, his calls have generated significant traction in the Biden administration. We’ll discuss the role of testing – particularly rapid testing – in creating safe spaces in businesses and schools, and where testing fits into our overall Covid strategy. The session is moderated by UCSF Department of Medicine Chair Bob Wachter.

The sayings that viruses will not be so deadly to kill its hosts because it threatens its survival is not true.
The convergence of mutations at different locations around the world is encouraging, it means there may be a boundary for evolution of new variants.
Many other interesting discussions on evolution pressures, whether and how new variants will pressure delta, .. but it is too late here in San Francisco.
I will have to watch second part (unlocking high-quality tests, other countries are doing better than US) again tomorrow.

invisible

Update about Singapore policy:

hurnik

So one of the "hot topics" in other areas/forums that I'm on (or read in the news) is that:
"We don't know how long/durable natural immunity lasts for COVID".
We seem to "know" how durable vaccine immunity is for (6 months?)

Is anyone aware of any studies (other than antibody titres) of people who had COVID (PCR confirmed) and haven't been vaccinated from say, March of 2020? I mean I'd think we'd be able to tell at this point if the "natural" immunity is 12 month at this point (which would certainly be longer than the vaccines so far?)

But I don't know how easy it would be to find all those people given the push for vaccines (although perhaps in countries/areas with lower percentage of vaccinated individuals)?