
After 100K Covid-19 cases, it’s clearer where Californians are getting infected - MilnerRoute
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2020/05/30/after-100000-coronavirus-cases-its-clearer-where-californians-are-getting-infected/
======
cperciva
In Canada, the vast majority of cases have been associated with long term care
facilities, hospitals, prisons, and meat packing facilities. The majority of
_deaths_ had been associated with long term care facilities -- because that's
where the old (and thus highly vulnerable) people are.

These all share in common the traits of having lots of people in close contact
for extended periods -- and in many cases, have a steady influx of new people
coming in.

The most important health measure taken in British Columbia -- aside from
providing workers with masks, of course -- has been to restrict long term care
workers to working in a single facility. In other places, workers routinely
work multiple part-time jobs and have spread the virus between facilities;
fortunately that was stopped very early in BC, and our death toll so far is
only around 150 (out of a population of over 5 million).

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
It's the same in Belgium. At some point half of the deaths came from care
homes. Here they even restrict workers to a certain floor or area in the care
homes.

~~~
Tepix
Why are there so many deaths in Belgium? It‘s terrible!

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
I can't answer this. But I heard that Belgium actually counts cases
differently from other countries. We also count the deaths of people that have
not been tested but who are strongly suspected to be Covid-19. Whereas other
countries only count those who actually tested positive.

[https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/belgium-
sa...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/belgium-says-
transparency-explains-high-virus-death-toll/)

~~~
1_player
I've heard "actually counts cases differently from other countries" for at
least 3 other European countries.

I don't think that phrase means very much.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Yes it does, since Belgium was the first one to do it like this.

It's possible that other countries now also count this way, but I'm not aware
of that/haven't heard it. So, I don't think that other countries count the
same way.

Our way of counting has an average of 2 * more deaths in statistics. Since we
count suspected cases as confirmed in the statistics.

It's a huge difference.

\--

What are the other countries + sources then? I have only seen it mentioned (
and mentioned it myselve) for Belgium.

~~~
1_player
I've heard it often in both British and Italian media to explain why their
figures are higher than neighbouring countries, using the same exact reason:
we (did) count suspected cases as confirmed.

Not saying you're wrong, just pointing out the fact that all these figures
have huge margins of errors and we'll know the true extend of it when we'll be
way past it.

~~~
NicoJuicy
I checked some resources and none mentions Britain or Italy counting suspected
cases.

I only did Belgium that does this. What is your source of information?

Not saying you are wrong, but according to me, Belgium is the only one that
does it like this.

Even after looking it up, I can't find something that says what you are
claiming

------
zmmmmm
The idea that it takes significant viral load to initiate infection makes it
quite interesting to try and form a mental model of how transmission takes
place. For example, you have a globule of viral particles that float through
the air and lodge in the respiratory system. According to the "viral load"
theory, this is unlikely to initiate infect by itself. We need repeated doses,
possibly over a period of time.

You could theorise that the inflation of risk is no more than that from the
linear sum of the doses, ie: any given "dose" has the same probability of
inducing infection. However the "viral load" idea suggests that multiple
exposure is worse than just the sum of independent random events. It suggests
there's some sort of interaction whereby multiple doses within a short period
of time are especially potent, as if the viral products from independently
replicating infections in the respiratory system are able in some way to
reinforce each other and make it more likely than two independent chances that
an overall infection will take hold.

Curious if there is any work in this regard that would elucidate the
underpinning process of infection.

~~~
roenxi
Maybe; but that theory is a little suspect since presumably this entire
pandemic started from a single viron and viruses grow so quickly that a single
infected cell can produce ~1,000 new virus particles (dunno how may a
coronavirus produces, that figure is something I Googled for HIV).

Starting dose does matter but surely people risk infection from even a tiny
dose.

~~~
lmm
I thought the theory was that the first infected human acquired it from an
infected animal? So it's quite possible that infecting humans requires
significant exposure.

------
m0zg
CA, NY and NJ were the states that forced their nursing homes to take C19
patients.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200430140410/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200430140410/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/nursing-
homes-coronavirus.html)

CA got off easy, relatively speaking. Probably fewer nursing homes. It's
amazing how idiotic government officials can be.

~~~
rdtsc
> “Whoever made this decision, whoever did this, I consider this a sentence of
> death for all the older patients, whoever is in a nursing home,” he said.

Wonder what the justification was. Hindsight 20/20 as they say, but wasn’t it
known the age and various conditions that older patients might have are risk
factors early on?

~~~
redis_mlc
> Hindsight 20/20 as they say

Sorry, but that excuse won't fly for several reasons:

1) We had sars-1 and mers earlier, both corona viruses

2) China was slow in providing info initially, but eventually they did.
There's a number of papers to read online. (Same as in sars-1, where world
notification was delayed from Nov. 2002 to about Mar. 2003.)

3) The CDC and other agencies are supposed to be on top of pandemics. The
White House has a pandemic playbook. These are paid professionals who are
supposed to have foresight, not blame hindsight.

(FYI: one of the US disease pros involved said that false alerts essentially
neutered pandemic response since 2010 in this country. I empathize with that.
All I can suggest is to point out that sars-1 killed thousands, and mers and
sars-2 are also coronas.)

~~~
hcknwscommenter
"The White House has a pandemic playbook."

The white house HAD a pandemic playbook. They didn't use it.

------
apatters
How are people able to read this? I get a screen that demands I disable my ad
blocker.

The exact same article is available without demands here (at least when I
accessed it through Google):
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/30/after-100000-coronavi...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/30/after-100000-coronavirus-
cases-its-clearer-where-californians-are-getting-infected/)

------
rv-de
> Why meat plants? The CDC said it’s hard for those workers to stay separated
> and wear masks on the job, and there are “sociocultural and economic
> challenges” with a diverse, low-wage workforce, including language barriers
> and employees living in crowded settings and sharing rides to work.

"An important factor could also be the ambient temperature at the workplace.
Cold temperatures prevailed in the rooms, some of which were the size of a
hall. "I have been asking myself more and more whether these high transmission
activities in slaughterhouses do not indicate something that we will otherwise
experience over a large area in winter, namely this temperature effect. In
other words: When it gets colder, the coronavirus will probably be better
transmitted."

Prof. Drosten

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[https://www.rnd.de/gesundheit/drosten-zu-corona-in-
schlachtb...](https://www.rnd.de/gesundheit/drosten-zu-corona-in-
schlachtbetrieben-moglicher-hinweis-auf-schnellere-ubertragung-bei-kalten-
temperaturen-ZKMI34M52VBFDM7EORCE5Y63GM.html)

~~~
oh-well-111
I was downvoted and criticized in a hilariously condescending manner for
suggesting that warmer temperatures are slowing down the spread a couple for
weeks ago.

But it seems that the infinite lockdown proponents are getting a littler
quieter now.

~~~
atomi
My theory is that it may not be the heat exactly, but the way in which heat
rises that may cause the viral particles to disperse away from people.

------
dehrmann
I've been waiting for some analysis like this. There have been pushes for
hazard pay for a lot of critical lobs, but there hasn't been much information
show what's actually risky.

A big takeaway from this is that the main part of the food supply that's at-
risk is meat production, so while people might have to eat rice and beans, the
food supply should otherwise hold up.

~~~
082349872349872
... and meat production is only at risk if you have working conditions of the
sort Upton Sinclair wrote about in "The Jungle" (1906). Meatpacking here is a
skilled trade that is done without conveyor belts, so our meat packers have
had no problem keeping 2m distance.

(Rice and beans are yummy, but the pastafarians have better comics:
[https://xkcd.com/2287/](https://xkcd.com/2287/) )

Edit: (please bear with me for replies, I hit the rate limit so it may be a
while)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Since meatpacking plants are trouble spot in the US that would imply that
meatpacking plants in the US have the same conditions as The Jungle but that
seems somewhat counterintuitive as The Jungle is often pointed to as having
changed the US meatpacking industry for the better.

~~~
Animats
Yes, it's back. US Immigration enforcement has been soft on the meat industry.
Part of this was the political backlash after there was an ICE raid on a meat
plant in Iowa in 2008, and a prominent Jew went to prison.[1] (Trump recently
pardoned him.) ICE enforcement against employers has never been strong, and
was even weaker after that. There hasn't been a big raid like that since.

In countries without cheap labor, much meat processing is automated. The
technology is available. Lamb: [2] Beef: [3] Chicken [4]. "Against Brazil, USA
and Asia, we're a high cost manufacturer" \- Australian plant manager putting
in automation. Right now, lamb deboning can be totally automated, chicken
deboning almost is, and beef is coming along. (This reflects the technology
coming from Australia, where the sheep industry is huge.)

Possible area for a startup.

(Videos not safe for vegetarians.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2dsB0qrMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2dsB0qrMg)

[3] [https://youtu.be/jqs2PWmbuus](https://youtu.be/jqs2PWmbuus)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isdKEo_qMqY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isdKEo_qMqY)

~~~
masonic

      (Trump recently pardoned him)
    

No,he wasn't pardoned. His sentence was commuted. He remains a convicted
felon.

~~~
Animats
Right, although some press reports say "pardon", it was just a commutation to
time served.[1] There's not that much difference in practice.

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/politics/kushner-rubashkin-
tr...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/politics/kushner-rubashkin-trump-
clemency/index.html)

------
chris_va
TLDR: The virus tends to get spread in confines spaces (presumably, though not
confirmed, airborne with a low infectivity per virion). The more people in a
confined space (meatpacking plant, prison, care facility, etc), the larger the
outbreak.

~~~
YZF
I thought the tl;dr was we don't know for sure and we need to collect more
data.

"But the question remains — beyond these known clusters, how did the tens of
thousands of Californians who aren’t accounted for in publicized major
outbreaks become infected?"

...

"“We don’t know if people just going to parks or beaches, just sort of casual
social gathering, contribute a whole lot to infections,” Riley said. Public
health officials “really need to identify the high-transmission settings and
then target those and not have these unfocused measures on social
distancing.”"

~~~
kangaroozach
Good point

------
gnicholas
Apparently 42% of the covid deaths in the US have been in nursing homes, which
house .62% of the population. In some states, the share is as high as 70% of
the deaths.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursin...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursing-
homes-assisted-living-facilities-0-6-of-the-u-s-population-43-of-u-s-
covid-19-deaths/#4adf6d2b74cd)

~~~
ReticentVole
Based on that, it doesn't really make sense to shutdown all of society.
Measures focused purely on the vulnerable would achieve the same result for
significantly less cost.

~~~
blueboo
Does it? If we'd had 330k deaths, and 70% were coming from nursing homes,
focusing on care homes would still be more efficient, but we'd be left with
100k that weren't.

I realize there is some (necessarily vague) policy threshold past which the
resultant damage to the economy is not "worth it", but the fact that there is
a particularly vulnerable segment doesn't obviate the need for less efficient
mitigation measures.

------
remote_phone
LA times has an excellent dashboard on coronavirus. The most stark thing that
I saw besides the overwhelming number of cases in health care facilities,
jails and Meat plants was the outsized infection rate of Latinos vs other
races. The rate was almost double the demographics if I remember correctly
which was shocking

~~~
s1artibartfast
My understanding is that there are a large number of Latinos working in meat
packing ad healthcare facilities, and also in jail

------
rmason
In Michigan they've been very stingy with data but this tracks well in our
state as well. However densely populated poor neighborhoods have created a lot
of cases as well, especially in Detroit.

In Detroit over a thousand police attended a pancake breakfast in mid-March
including the top brass. Nearly all the cases in the police department stem
from this single event. The police chief was infected and the chief of
homicide died.

------
Tepix
I heard about a study mentioned on the german NDR coronavirus podcast. You‘re
19 times as likely to get infected indoors. Go outside! If you are in a closed
room with others, open the windows! If you can‘t due to bad weather, cancel
the gathering/school lesson/restaurant visit/whatever if possible.

------
cardiffspaceman
Is this particular article the only possible vehicle for obtaining the
information? It has an ad-blocker screen and if you comply you get an auto-
playing video. And after apparently 24 hours no alternatives seem to have been
posted.

