Links: COVID-19

[sonia]

COVID Underdogs: Mongolia by Indi Samarajiva.

Starting in January, Mongolia executed a perfect public health response, and they have never let up the pressure since. COVID-19 did not just leave Mongolia alone. Mongolia kicked its ass. [...]
If I could tell you the one secret to Mongolia’s success it’s this:
JANUARY!! JANUARY!!!! JANUARY!!!!!
Mongolia was putting its big person pants on in January. That made all the difference.

6 feet away isn’t enough. Covid-19 risk involves other dimensions, too. by Brian Resnick.

The main way people are getting sick with SARS-CoV-2 is from respiratory droplets spreading between people in close quarters. The risk of catching the coronavirus, simply put, “is breathing in everybody’s breath,” says Charles Haas, an environmental engineer at Drexel University. Droplets fly from people’s mouths and noses when they breathe, talk, or sneeze. Other people can breathe them in. That’s the main risk, and that’s why face masks are an essential precaution (they help stop the droplets from spewing far from a person’s mouth or nose).

Infected with the coronavirus but not showing symptoms? A physician answers 5 questions about asymptomatic COVID-19 by William Petri, Professor of Medicine, University of Virginia.

Masks help stop the spread of coronavirus – the science is simple and I’m one of 100 experts urging governors to require public mask-wearing by Jeremy Howard, Distinguished Research Scientist, University of San Francisco.

Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything by Dana G Smith.

What False Negatives Can Tell Us About Oregon's COVID-19 Numbers by Erin Ross.

COVID and the Deadly Logic of Efficiency in Meatpacking and Elder Care by Jeff Kolnick.

As we transformed ourselves into an urban nation, we began to confine our impoverished elders, our livestock, and our poultry in strikingly similar ways. In both settings, the low-wage workers that care for the old and cut up animals and birds are often poor people of color and immigrants.

Comments

[cynthia1960]

That article about Mongolia was mindblowing.

[sonia]

Yeah. I wish *I* lived in a country where the leaders listen to scientists and care about the people who live there. Heartbreaking, how unnecessary the deaths are here in the US.

(And I'm all the time aware that Black and brown people in the US have been living with this kind of carnage all along.)

[cynthia1960]

Exactly. So unnecessary, and a salutary reminder to remember that we Americans collectively are too arrogant and assume that we know the best path. If I hadn't already known this, 2020 and its clue by four would have forcibly enlightened me.