No it didn’t. It’s more likely a coincidence. Cause and effect aren’t obviously related here. This is just speculative. There may have been a positive influence “in part” from the restaurant ban, but there are other factors playing in that had nothing to do with them. The long holiday season with a great many unwise in-house gatherings and a great deal of unwise travel, which is now over, for instance.
Yes. Definitely needed.
Losing the ability to smell, or having scents distorted … another aspect of Covid-19:
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We were in Little Italy (SD) today and almost every restaurant on India St. from Beech to Juniper was open and “packed” (pandemic-style, outdoors) with people. It was a pleasant and uplifting scene, and very safe. With just a couple of exceptions among the dozens of outdoor “corrals”, the setups were intelligently constructed for excellent ventilation, and the heaters were intelligently placed so that in no way would they create any kind of dangerous recirculation of trapped virus. It was clear that a lot of thought had gone into keeping patrons safe, particularly in terms of ventilation. There is no way that these places represent a hazard, and it was great to see life on the streets. With the caveat of lost parking spaces, I frankly hope that these outdoor seating areas become permanent.
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Unless the new variants are more contagious outdoors.
Well, indoors or out. But if the reason that the new variants are more contagious is due to fewer numbers of individual virus entities being needed to infect, then it’s still a big plus to be outdoors in a diluting, convective breeze. Dose is what counts, and with abundant, plentiful ventilation and good heater placement (one that induces buoyant hot air to flow up and out of the “corral”), the miniscule dose acquired during the entire time dining in the general vicinity of an infected person should be completely harmless relative to the dose needed for infection by the “original” as well as one of the recent variants.
That is based on what scientific data…
It’s based on well-established fluid mechanics principles, but no, there’s no specific data, which is why I said “should be”. Data doesn’t and isn’t going to exist for every imaginable configuration.
Is not any place that one is, with one’s mask off and around others with their masks off, somewhat of a hazardous situation?
Nothing is “completely harmless,” though risk can be somewhat mitigated … that said, there is absolutely no way to determine what variant of the virus one is potentially exposing one’s self to or that one is exposing others to (whether one is asymptomatic, chalking up feeling a bit under the weather to stress/allergies/etc., or symptomatic and not giving a damn about exposing others). As the more virulent mutations become predominant, the easier to become//spread infection.
We - all of us - are making decisions that impact the lives of others. Being blithe about the risks and speaking or thinking in absolutes does not bode well for any of us.
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We don’t know yet why the new variants are more contagious. Go ahead and bet your life on a guess. I’m not doing anything I don’t have to until I’m fully vaccinated.
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But you are guessing on a lot of things without any (biology) data to back it up, especially wrt the new different variants. And saying something should be “completely harmless” when we know so little about the new variants is quite irresponsible.
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I’ll retract “completely harmless” and replace it with “relatively safe”. But please don’t forget the “should be” part of what I said. I wasn’t expressing certainty.
New variants being more contagious and becoming dominant variants is perfectly normal when a virus jumps from animals to humans. As a virus spreads, it replicates and the genetic configuration of the replica is not always a perfect copy of the original. That’s how mutations arise. And those mutations are subject to Darwin’s natural selection. Most of them won’t be viable and won’t go anywhere. But out of a gazillion mutations some might be viable and have somewhat different characteristics from the original. One possible different charateristic is that the mutation might be more contagious than the original. If so, that mutation will likely become the dominant variant since it’s likely to spread faster than the original. Again, just natural selection. What would be really bad is a mutation against which the current first generation of vaccines are ineffective. As more and more people get vaccinated and protected against the original variant of the virus, the spread of that variant will slow. That means that the new mutation would quickly become the dominant variant since its spread wouldn’t be prevented by the current generation of vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies started working on the first generation vaccines last spring and by December they had gotten approvals for public use. Authorities in San Francisco have the goal that all residents should be vaccinated by midyear, which is more than a year after the work on vaccines started. Imagine the setback if a new mutation forced everyone to start from scratch with vaccine development, testing, approvals, manufacturing, and distribution. Even if things would likely go faster the second time, it would still likely take quite a bit of time and who knows how many nasty, new mutations could emerge during that period.
Just read the latest numbers for the AstraZeneca vaccine efficacy against the South African variant B.1.351. Either 10 or 22 percent efficacy against mild-to-moderate COVID-19, depending on what you count, although the sample size is too small for any firm conclusions. (That’s compared to a 70 percent efficacy prior to B.1.135 emerging.) Given that the efficacy against the B.1.351 variant when it comes to severe disease and death is still up in the air, South Africa has paused the AstraZeneca rollout since they don’t want to vaccinate millions of people with a vaccine that might not be very effective against the latest mutations.
According to the current recommendations, even when vaccinated, you should still follow the current rules for wearing masks, social distancing, and avoiding traveling. In between that and mutating viruses, I’m not too optimistic that getting vaccinated would change my life much other than making me feel a bit more at ease. If I were in a high-risk group, I’d probably feel more strongly about the “at ease” aspect.
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Even relatively safe isn’t based on any data - if you look on the locations of the mutations it is possible that due to the much higher infection rate the required viral load might be much lower than with the “older” variants - and what was safe before isn’t any longer.
AZ screwed up their vaccine efforts I wouldn’t put any weight in their numbers at this point - new variants or old one. Normally a very reliable company but somehow too many mistakes on this effort
Well, on this we agree. I read somewhere (don’t ask, I don’t recall) that the reason at least one of the new variants (UK?) is more contagious is due to the fact that it’s able to bind more firmly to cells. Meaning that a lower dose will lead to an infection.
WRT nocharg’s comments, I also read somewhere (don’t ask) that modifications/additions to the original Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are straightforward for the variants, and also that they would not have to go through the lengthy three-phase process for approval, since they would be based on the same tested principle. The estimated timeframe for getting them out was really very short.
And finally I read that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines seem to provide some protection against the variants. Not as good as against the “original” covid-19, but somewhere between somewhat and pretty good.
More infectious variants become more common due to natural selection, right. Any pandemic coronavirus is thus likely to become more infectious over time.
But it’s anybody’s guess whether the risk of dining outside with tables set apart the same as it was for the older variants. Could be riskier. We don’t know.
Well, yes, riskier of course. Everything in every setting is riskier with a more contagious virus. But the question is, on a ten-point scale of risk, wrt outdoor dining, are we talking about going from 1.1 to 1.2 risk or from 5 to 9?
And on that I agree with the second sentence in the quote. We don’t know. But I have an opinion about it, which I’ve shared.
Not necessarily. If there’s enough of a breeze that you might inhale 5 virus particles during a meal, it doesn’t matter if the number of particles required to get sick drops from 100 to 50 due to a more infectious variant. Not that we know any of those numbers.
That gets us back to the configuration of the outdoor space. I won’t dine in a semi-confined, covered, tent-like structure, even if there are little windows open. The more unconfined the better, with the best being real al fresco types, with just small tables and umbrellas. And I’d pay attention to the type and location of space heaters, trying to visualize how the buoyant warm airflow induced upward by them, in combination with the structure, especially a covering, might create localized recirculation zones near my table (or, hopefully, not create them).
I personally feel at very low risk dining in a well-configured outdoor space. And your point about “100 to 50” is well taken.
Space heaters, by the way, can potentially help remove and/or destroy virus particles in an open area. When I was a homebrewer I used to start from yeast slants. That part of the process had to be sterile, not just sanitized. One of the many things I did to have a sterile environment while scraping the yeast off the slant was to have a very small wick oil burner right next to it. Airborne bacteria (which are always present and will spoil beer), would be drawn upward by the warm air around the flame, and away from the slant. Some would get close enough to the flame to be neutralized.