Tag Archives: does Covid spread on surfaces

How kids learned to fake positive Covid tests–and why

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TikTok videos have taught kids that they can get out of school by faking positive Covid tests. All they have to do is pour lemon juice or Coke on them. Or apple sauce, or vinegar, or hand sanitiser, or assorted other acidic liquids. Or they can rub a kiwi across them.

And here I thought TikTok was about dancing.

In Britain, at least, if they do that it means other kids in their imaginary school bubbles get sent home for ten days along with them. And their families have to stay home. But hey, if you’ve got a math test coming up–

It’s a short-term strategy, because in Britain a positive lateral flow test has to be followed up with a PCR test, which you can’t take home and use as a stir-stick for your Coke. Still, it’s a strange enough story to earn its word count here.

Irrelevant photo: Another wildflower I can’t identify. [It’s an elderflower. Thanks to DinahMow for identifying it. Somewhere in this strange thing I call my brain, I knew that.]

A spokesperson for the National Education Union suggested that Covid tests be taken in school. But that wasn’t about lemon juice and Coke. Many kids have simply stopped using the ones they’re sent home with. 

A determined spoilsport, it turns out, can override a faked positive. You can pursue that one on your own if you’re interested. The link is here.

But the story doesn’t end there. A claim’s making the rounds that lateral flow tests are useless because if you test a glass or Coke and a kiwi it will register as having Covid. And since any reasonable person knows Coke and kiwis are immune, there must be something wrong with the tests.

Shout, “Conspiracy,” here if you would.

Thank you.

A fact-checking site called, factually enough, Fact Check points to the directions from one test, which say, “This kit has been evaluated for use with human specimen material only.” This goes to the root of the problem, which is that neither the kiwi nor the Coke is human.

You can shout, “Conspiracy,” again if you want, but I won’t orchestrate it this time. I don’t think it takes a conspiracy to prove that claim. 

Alexander Edwards, associate professor in Biomedical Technology and professional spoilsport, puts it another way: “If you completely ignore the manufacturer’s instructions or in fact use the test for something completely different, then you shouldn’t really be surprised if you get a silly result.” 

 

At last: a way that Covid doesn’t spread

A study of Covid samples from hospital surfaces found that they weren’t likely to infect anyone. That lends support to the belief that contaminated surfaces aren’t a major way to spread Covid. I’d love to explain that to you in more depth but the explanation went over my head. You’ll have to follow the link and see where your head is in relation to the information.

Even without understanding the explanation, though, it reassured  me to know that the damn virus has found a way not to spread. 

 

High fashion in the Covid era

With British kids back in school (when they can’t talk their parents into parting with a lemon) and Covid restrictions easing (in spite of a more aggressive form of the virus), colds are coming back into fashion. 

I’m not basing this on personal experience. I haven’t seen anyone with a cold in a year and a half, but then I’ve never been in the front ranks of fashion. When a style starts making sense to me, that’s a signal that it’s on its way out. But I read this in multiple publications, and those of you who care about trends need to go out and get yourselves a cold. 

Parents haven’t quite caught onto this, so they’re dragging their kids into Britain’s A&E departments. (A&E stands for accident and emergency and it’s the equivalent of US emergency room.) They–that’s the panicky parents–have forgotten what it is to have a kid with a fever, a cough, and a runny nose. 

In fairness to everyone, those are also Covid symptoms and I might panic myself.

Britain’s hospitals are already overwhelmed and have been for the past year and a half. Or for the past decade or so–ever since the government started cutting funds and saying, cheerily, “We’ve never given the NHS so much money.” So they’re not in shape to add kids with minor problems to the major-problem mix. Last month, fewer than 1% of children under 15 who went to A&E needed immediate attention and more than 72% weren’t seriously ill.

And 4.36% asked their parents if they couldn’t get a Coke from the vending machine, please.

The US is also seeing a rise in the number of colds as face masks come off. 

 

A petri dish for the world

The British government’s gone sports mad lately. We’re in the midst of the Euro tournament where they play–oh, I don’t know. Some damn thing involving a ball. The game’s not the point; the crowds are, because fans travel here and there to watch the games. They eat out. They drink. For all I know, they get happy and hug.

Then they go home, and so does Covid.

In Scotland, nearly 2,000 cases have now been linked to people gathering in public fanzones, pubs, and house parties to watch the games–not to mention stadiums. Some two-thirds of those are among the 1,300 people who went to London to watch the Scottish team play there. 

For a semifinal game in Wembley, the British government plans to allow the stadium to reach 75% of its capacity–the largest crowd at a sports event in over a year. 

The World Health Organization has warned that tournament crowds (in general, not specifically this one) can act as Covid amplifiers. And the European parliament’s committee on public health warned that such a large crowd at Wembley would be “a recipe for disaster.” But Britain’s left the European Union, so we don’t have to listen to them. The reason we left the EU was so we’d be free to spread our own germs in any way we want.

If the EU passes the law of gravity, we don’t have to follow that either.

The government’s making noises about lifting most of the remaining Covid restrictions in mid-July. When it isn’t saying that we may have to take some precautions. It’s hard to know which Boris Johnson to believe, but my money’s on him lifting most restrictions. I’m basing that on how many decibels are devoted to each side.

It’s not a prospect that makes me happy. As Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, said, “The UK is in a unique position. We’ve the biggest Delta outbreak in a well-vaccinated country. We are a petri dish for the world.”

The question is whether vaccination breaks the link between infection on the one hand and hospitalization and death on the other. The government seems to be betting that it will. My best guess is that vaccination will weaken the link but that without other controls–masks; an effective contact tracing system; reasonable sick pay for people who are supposed to stay off work–it won’t be enough.

 

Updating the list of Covid symptoms

Assorted experts are calling for the UK to expand its list of Covid symptoms. It currently lists only the Big Three: cough, loss of the senses of smell and taste, and a high fever. 

Europe’s list includes headache, weakness, tiredness, muscle aches, runny nose, loss of appetite, and sore throat–symptoms that often begin before the Big Three and are more common in young, unvaccinated people. 

But hey, we left Europe. We get to enact our own symptoms.

 

Your small dose of hopeful news

A small study showed the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine to be effective against the Delta variant.

Fighting Covid: the useless gestures and the useful ones

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An article in a Canadian medical journal notes that the country’s Covid prevention advice hasn’t caught up with the current knowledge about how the disease spreads. It’s airborne, so the advice, the article says, should focus on ventilation, filtration, and better masks. 

Having recently been at a meeting where before going home we dutifully sprayed and wiped the furniture, even though it’s pointless–

Yeah. How many other people are ending meetings that way? It’s like sanitizing our hands when we walk into a shop. It’s not a useful way to keep Covid from spreading, but it’s basic politeness these days–one of those many meaningless gestures that you do to keep from scaring people.

Irrelevant photo: I wish I could tell you what this is. It’s one of a whole set of large white wildflowers that I’ve never been able to tell apart. They don’t look all that much alike, but somehow I just can’t sort out large white flowers.

A fair number of people seem to think of masks the same way, putting on masks only when other people come in, even though if they have any virus to share the breathing they did when they were alone in the room would go a long way toward sharing it.

At the meeting, we did at least open the windows, keep a decent distance, and wear masks, although not all the masks covered all the relevant body parts. You have to hope people do better with the placement of their underwear. 

As far as I know, Britain’s advice hasn’t caught up with what’s now known any better than Canada’s has.

*

Someone I know likes to tell me, with great confidence, that face masks funnel air–along with whatever germs the wearer’s sporting–off to the sides and from there to whoever’s behind the wearer. 

Okay, when I say “likes,” what I mean is “seems to like,” basing that on how often she talks about it. Maybe it’s just that my caution annoys her. I have that effect on some people.

So allow me to smugly report on a new study that measured the leakage from the sides of everyday masks. These weren’t the surgical masks that are made to have a tight fit but the ones civilians buy and, with luck, wear. They reduced the escape of particles–and that would include the Covid virus if it’s present–by an average of 93% They reduce escape from the bottom by 91%, from the sides by 85%, and from the top by 47%.

The moral of this story is that if you’re worried about masks funneling the virus toward you, do not lie on top of a mask-wearer’s head. 

You’re welcome.

The protection’s best when both people are wearing masks.

Covid and kids

During the first half of 2020, no one had reliable information about Covid’s effect on kids. Early reports on the hospitalization rate among kids spanned a jaw-dropping range from 5.7% to 63%. Estimates of its impact ranged from “it’s no worse than the flu” to fears that kids’ immature immune systems would be overwhelmed.

What can I tell you? It was new on the scene and they were working with limited information. 

So now there’s a study of 242,000 kids and adolescents from five countries who’ve been diagnosed with Covid. It compares them with 2 million who’ve been diagnosed with the flu.

What do we now know?

Epidemiologist Talita Duarte-Salles said, “It was a relief to see that fatality was rare, but clearly both complications and symptoms showed the COVID-19 was no flu in children and adolescents.” To translate that (forgive me: I just have to), kids aren’t likely to die of it, but the symptoms and complications can be serious.

We’re switching sources here, so bear with me. I had a very useful article on this that I accidentally deleted and now can’t find, so I’ll slip backwards to a somewhat less useful one that came out in April. It has estimates for the number of kids who had Covid symptoms five weeks after they were diagnosed. 

The percentages clearly aren’t of all kids, and I’m reasonably sure it’s not of all kids diagnosed with Covid. Let’s put our chips on the number of kids who got symptomatic Covid. Five weeks after they were diagnosed, 12.9% of kids between 2 and 11 still had symptoms, as did 14.5% of kids between 12 and 15 and 17.!% of teenagers and young adults. That’s a bizarre set of age categories, since the last one includes one of the earlier ones plus a few other random folks. 

Don’t worry about it. Any statisticians who accidentally read Notes have long since fled.

Another study followed 129 children who’d had Covid and found that 52.7% had at least one symptom four months later.

Some of the individual stories are frightening. They’re typical–they’re rare–but they do happen and it’s important to know that. One nine-year-old developed long Covid that included severe fatigue, sensitive skin, painful rashes, headaches, and indigestion. She lost her senses of taste and smell. Another–also a nine-year-old–had slurred speech, tremors, and brain fog. He became so weak that he had to use first a walker and then a wheelchair.

Again, none of that is typical, but as the epidemiologist said, this is not the flu.