An idiotic definition of COVID "close contact exposure" — bites us in the behind — and we're surprised?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

22 October 2020

 

 

You mean infectious respiratory disease is easily transmitted — who knew?

 

The five-second floor rule (about dropped food) has no COVID analogue in the real world:

 

 

Researchers detail the case of a Vermont corrections officer who had 22 brief encounters with six asymptomatic inmates who were awaiting COVID-19 test results in a quarantine unit and turned out to be positive.

 

A review of video footage found that each encounter was 1 minute or less, for a total of 17 nonconsecutive minutes.

 

During some of the encounters, the inmates weren't wearing masks, but the officer always wore a [cloth] mask and other protective gear.

 

The officer tested positive 8 days later. He did not meet the state's definition for close contact, within 6 feet of an infectious person for at least 15 consecutive minutes.

 

© 2020 By Kelly Young, Susan Sadoughi and Richard Saitz, Brief, Frequent Exposures May Have Led to COVID-19 in Corrections Officer, NEJM Journal Watch (21 October 2020)

 

 

You can read the original (typically obtusely written) source for the above summary, here:

 

 

Julia C. Pringle, Jillian Leikauskas, Sue Ransom-Kelley, Benjamin Webster, Samuel Santos, Heidi Fox, Shannon Marcoux, Patsy Kelso and Natalie Kwit, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: COVID-19 in a Correctional Facility Employee Following Multiple Brief Exposures to Persons with COVID-19 — Vermont, July–August 2020, CDC.gov (21 October 2020)

 

 

The take-away

 

Magical thinking in the United States really needs to go away:

 

 

First, cloth masks are not N95s. Wearing them reduces the mask-wearer's droplet transmissions to others. They do not suppress viral transmission from infected people to the wearer.

 

Consequently, Vermont's rule about the jailor wearing a non-N95 mask and the sick person not wearing anything at all, makes no sense.

 

Second, COVID aerosolizes under some (probably many) conditions. Six feet are not a magical prevention.

 

Third, dose responses almost certainly exist with SARS-CoV-2. But the necessary magnitudes for individually falling ill probably correlate better with the health and effectiveness of the receiving person's immune system — rather than with a combination of interpersonal distance and unmeasureable accumulated exposure. This should be evident, based on volumes of medical data regarding other infectious diseases.

 

 

Yet, here we are in Vermont — and, according to the CDC, lots of other places — where none of these obviousnesses seem to have been contemplated in coming up with occupational rules.

 

 

The moral? — I return to my complaint that the US is intentionally not doing any real epidemiological investigations regarding COVID

 

We are still flying blind.

 

Apparently so, for Big Pharma's anticipated profits' sake.