There a couple of important articles today on where we’re
headed.
The Washington Post, in a detailed article by Arianna
Eunjung Cha, discusses the issue of superspreaders, especially in conjunction
with the more recent concerns over aerosolized transmission.
Many buildings, including condos and apartments, might
have to take a hard look at their ventilation systems (especially central air). Perhaps businesses could install new
ultraviolet devices to kill aerosolized virus.
There could also be a concern that we develop evidence
that some asymptomatic people have trouble completely eliminating virus that
can be transmitted, and put them in legal danger of permanent quarantine, like “Typhoid
Mary”. It would be very important to
develop antivirals that can be given early.
There are some disturbing, although inconclusive, reports that reducing
testosterone in men may make them less likely to become infected or to
eliminate infection (GLBT blog July 15), something I would want no part of.
(Video, Ted Talk, How the pandemic will shape the near future, Bill Gates.)
Helen Branswell writes in Stat (and Apple News) “How to fix the COVID Dumpster Fire in the U.S." Yes, a total lockdown is untenable. She wisely focuses on keeping people
from congregating in enclosed indoor spaces.
That might cut retail back to just grocery and pharmacy everywhere for some
weeks. But what about all the workplaces
that support the power grid, and Internet. Much of this is now work-from-home,
which makes it more vulnerable to hacks. We could argue that you even shut a
lot of that down to a bare minimum if you don’t want people in enclosed spaces
at all, but then do sites and everything else come back, or are some of them not
allowed to if they aren’t commercial or essential enough? We seem to be headed
to an almost Marxist view of what activities in society should carry on, given
that the future could be much more challenging from the viewpoint of controlling
disease than it ever has been, for some years.
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