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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

While I think this is most likely due to masking, distancing and staying home when sick, which were all far more effective against the flu than against SARS-CoV-2, I wonder how much this was affected by some of the deep cleans that cities were doing at the beginning of the pandemic where they basically sprayed entire cities with disinfectant trucks. Does anyone with more expertise have any thoughts about that?

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You realize those « deep cleans » are mostly comms operations for governments to look like they are doing stuff, right? Virus live (mostly) in people, not on sidewalks.

One of the most ridiculous example: the Thai government went to the extent of spraying disinfectant in the forest next to the Burmese border, and got pictures published in newspaper to show their great work. Comical! [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/thainewsreports/status/13819185863488225...

> You realize those « deep cleans » are mostly comms operations for governments to look like they are doing stuff, right?

Yes, but it must have had some effect on fomite transmission of some viruses, right?

AFAIK fomite transmission on public streets and other places sprayed by such "deep cleans" isn't a common spread vector for any widespread disease, so eliminating it can't make a meaningful difference.

Even fairly small changes can be significant with exponential feedback loops. That’s not to say they actually had any impact, just that you can’t always tell what was important.

For example it’s possible but unlikely that some other pandemic was accidentally prevented.

The flu is global, yes? How many cities did your "deep cleaning" (I've heard it for the first time)? Out of a total of how many cities? I decline your notion on those grounds alone.

Ehh... most viruses really don't live on surfaces very long. Unless they were continuously spraying the whole pandemic on a weekly basis I don't see how it could do much at all. And even if they were doing it every week... most of us get viruses from handled (by humans) surfaces.

Virus exist everywhere and is the most common entity on earth. In a tablespoon of seawater there can be ten million of them. Most are not dangerous to man, about 600 is known. They are also very good to survive on their own without a host and can live in most hostile environments.

Viruses aren't alive, and they certainly can't reproduce without host cells, so saying that they survive on their own doesn't seem like a terribly accurate statement. Trying to extend the metaphors of life "alive or dead, surviving" to viruses only generates misconceptions, instead "viable or inactivated" is a better way of looking at it.

Assuming what you're saying is correct (I don't know), what other effects does spraying disinfectants everywhere have?

I would be very surprised if doing this is a good idea, even if it kills covid and/or flu.

sunlight already good at kill virus, this have been knowen for many year. study find corona is dead from twenty minute sunlight alone: https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/inf...

so maybe not so efective.

My guess is it had an effect for a few hours that day.

Probably not.

Some more of these fun photo ops: https://twitter.com/thainewsreports/status/13886984576579051...

Sanitation theater is helpful in the sense that it calms certain people's anxieties, much like a placebo pill does.

In this 2018 paper[1] transmission from surfaces accounted for ~4% of flu infections. So it probably made very little impact.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121424/

Thanks! This is good information. I would imagine that ~4% less flu infections at the start of a flu season would be enough to slow down the season a bit, in theory, but not to the point flu has been slowed down now.

They didn't do that in Germany, but the flu disappeared here, too.

probably the school closings were the largest contributor

Since this has varied so much by region, I wonder if there's any good evidence.

This makes a lot of sense. Schools have been surprisingly rare causes of COVID outbreaks, but are constant epicenters for flu outbreaks.

> Schools have been surprisingly rare causes of COVID outbreaks

I can clearly remember that multiple countries closed schools within weeks of the first reopening because the virus was spreading there like wildfire, in the age group with the highest rate of asymptomatic(aka invisible until it's too late) cases.

The CDC reports at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... that "in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission"

The low symptom rate corresponds to a low transmission rate. The worse your case of COVID, the more likely you will transmit it to others in the same situation. This is the obvious mechanism of the fact that kids, who very seldom have bad cases of COVID and so frequently do not show symptoms, are not usually major spreaders of the virus.

This all is one of the really unusual things about COVID compared to other communicable diseases.

Aka the group that has to suffer the most from lockdowns while benefitting the least.

Odd that you don't mention closed schools. My model has those far higher in this than anything I personally do.

That is, as a parent, I was far less prone to sickness before I had kids of school age. From all I have ever heard, I am far from unique in that.

> While I think this is most likely due to masking, distancing

I give it 5 years from now when it is no longer politically intolerable that studies will come out and admit that masks and social distancing did absolutely nothing to slow or prevent infection.

Considering that one year ago the general advice was not to bother with masks, this would be a surprising 360.

That advice was intentionally deceptive. It was based on not having a mass run on PPE needed by healthcare workers, not medical science or safety.

It also likely led to more deaths due to the revelation that it was a lie, and people treating any further advice (which was actually medically sound) with the same kind of cynical skepticism used for liars. Rejection of masks wasn't much of a thing before this happened.

Or -- I bet a lot more likely -- the handwashing etc. prescriptions that turned out to be pretty meaningless for COVID but that are important to the transmission of flu and many other diseases.

Obviously personal action is harder to reproduce than government-sponsored trucks, so it's less useful if it was a main cause.

Most likely due to people staying at home. I don't believe a mask can in any way protect one from catching a virus [1].

Edit: if you downvote, please, comment why. I could be wrong, so would love to know your arguments.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/

Find a more credible source.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-stanford-masks/fac...

The author lied about his affiliation with Stanford, and the paper was retracted.

> Jonathan Davis, a spokesperson for Elsevier, told Reuters via email that Medical Hypotheses has since retracted the article after concluding it was misleading due to “a broader review of existing scientific evidence” showing that masks “are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission” and said that the article contained several misquotes and unverified data. Davis said that the author himself had submitted the affiliation with Stanford Medicine.

> As reported here by Forbes, Medical Hypotheses has previously published articles such as “Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia” (here) and “Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males” (here).

There's a reason it's titled "Medical Hypotheses".

I didn't know the article was retracted. Are there credible papers confirming that masks do help?

Edit: also, quoting Reuters is fine. However, quoting Forbes is not. Forbes is a trash publication, getting published there costs a few hundred bucks.

The Forbes assertions are trivially confirmed.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15325026/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18434036/

Studies demonstrating mask efficacy are just as easily Googleable.

You might not want to be throwing around "trash publication" slams here, given your cite.

I'm confused. Those are all different authors.

I'm saying "trash publication" because I had experience working with Forbes. Once again, one can publish at Forbes whatever the hell they want. It costs a few hundred bucks.

> I'm confused. Those are all different authors.

From the "Medical Hypotheses" journal the Forbes article is criticizing for poor editorial control, and citing those as examples. At least read the claim you're attempting to debunk.

> Once again, one can publish at Forbes whatever the hell they want. It costs a few hundred bucks.

Apparently that's also true for the "Medical Hypotheses" journal.

I read the Reuters fact-check article. In fact, there are no facts. It says that the publication has been retracted, but from what I can see, that's not true. CDC's current response on masks is positive, however their initial response was negative. Same for WHO. All in all, Reuters rely on a single source – Nature. Nature.com is indeed a legitimate source, however the article is massive, so I can't say for sure if relying on that single source is good enough to make a conclusion.

Edit: also, _nobody_ gives a crap about masks in Florida. However, death rates are the same as in California: https://apnews.com/article/public-health-health-florida-coro...

> It says that the publication has been retracted, but from what I can see, that's not true.

I'm sorry, you'll base your beliefs on an article in "Medical Hypotheses", but conclude that Reuters is making up an Elsevier spokesperson?

I thought "quoting Reuters is fine"; now they're fake news?

Nope. Reuters is still a great source of truth. In fact, Reuters is my favorite publication agency. But, it doesn't mean they are saint and won't ever bullshit.

> I'm sorry, you'll base your beliefs on an article in "Medical Hypotheses".

I haven't made any conclusions yet. I'm still analyzing. Both you and Reuters try to belittle the significance of an entity based on its name or the titles of their publications. While it's possible that the publication is pure crap, "belittling" is one of those crappy techniques one can rely on to defend their arguments.

That source is awful, just an opinion piece, largely. "Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects. " It's literally the opposite. Pure garbage, that link.

Here's some quality sources:

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118?fbclid=IwAR0j...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666142X2...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.12.20173047v...

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