As I may have suggested in the past, a bear of very little brain needs simple instructions to help him to stay safe. The problem with simple instructions is that they often fail to provide the full picture. Sometimes, a change of advice can lead to mass befuddlement and chaos (and you get bigger r’s). So, how far apart do I need to be from people not in my household in order to stay safe?
Quick reminder of the rules in the UK. England and Northern Ireland say we should keep 1 metre distant from each other PLUS. Wales and Scotland say 2 metres.
If you look at the rules in England and Northern Ireland the PLUS bit means you need to take extra precautions, and the NHS recommendations still say 2 metres.
So what does the science say?
A quick search of Google in the UK will probably lead you to an article headlined ‘Rigid social distancing rules for covid-19 based on outdated science’. This is from the British Medical Journal. (https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/rigid-social-distancing-rules-for-covid-19-based-on-outdated-science/)
This might make you think that the strict restrictions we are under are not actually based on reliable, modern, science, so we shouldn’t worry about them. That’s what happens if you don’t click through and read the whole thing.
A quick history lesson (very). The 1 to 2 metre distancing rules come from expriments done in 1897 by Carl Flugge. He looked at how far droplets carry when you cough, sneeze or speak and worked out that pathogens could only travel a short distance (as far as could be seen using the science of 1897).
In the 1940s, high speed photography allowed scientists to look at this in more detail. A study in 1948 of haemolytic streptococci spread (why not something easier to say?) looked at coughs and sneezes (which spread diseases) and showed that 65% of people produced large droplets which only travelled 1.7 metres on average, though 10% managed 2.9 metres!
You wait, time passes… In more recent studies using more sensitive equipment droplets have been found to travel 6-8 metres.
So what about the spread of COVID-19? Recent COVID studies have found droplets will travel further than 2 metres, confirmed multiple times by multiple teams. It’s about the size of the droplets produced during sneezing, coughing and speaking. Smaller droplets travel further. It seems that people infected with COVID-19 produce smaller droplets.
Does this mean we are only safe if we are 8 metres from one another? Tell me what the safe distance is so that I can maintain it. I need simplicity.
Hold on a moment. I am sorry to tell you that it is just not that simple. There are other factors that can help or hinder the spread of the virus. These are the Environmental Factors. We need to consider number of people, air flow, time AND distance.
Stay with me. Let’s look at some examples. Outdoors, in an area of reasonably low concentrations of people, with good air flow, the risk factor is greatly reduced. 1 metre apart, wearing masks, outside, is probably (no guarantees) not going to put you at a huge risk. At 2 metres in the same setting your risks are even smaller.
Outdoors at a big event, with lots of people together, at least 1 metre apart, but with good air flow and for a short period (a maximum of 15 minutes has been suggested), if you are wearing a mask and washing your hands etc, the risk is still not that high. However, this only applies if everyone is silent, or talking quietly. Once you start to sing or shout the risk factor shoots up! So, coming to see me do a stadium comedy tour – probably safe, watching your favourite team play rugby – probably unsafe.
Indoors, in a well ventilated location, with all precautions taken (masks, keeping 2 metres apart and talking quietly) plus keeping social interaction outside your household very short it is still a low risk. Poor ventilation and longer interactions makes this much more risky.
What about without face coverings? Keep your interactions short, don’t sing or shout, keep at least a metre apart and it is still much riskier, but not as risky as being too close or in a poorly ventilated place.
So, it is more complicated than most people realise. Social Distancing only works if we also keep our hands (and faces) clean, make sure we are in well ventilated locations, keep occupancy low, don’t sing or shout (or cough or sneeze), wear masks and keep our interactions short. This starts to sound terrifying, but it doesn’t have to be. Hands – Face – Space as the UK Government has put it. Wash your hands, wear a mask on your face and keep 2 metres apart. It is still good advice, and simple enough to follow.
STOP PRESS: I wanted to add a little bit here that points out that this still seems to be too complicated for some people. To them I say ‘Stay at Home, Save Lives’. If you can’t handle nuanced advice, stick to the simple stuff.
It has come to the attention of this author, that there are a lot of simple minded people in the world. This is OK if those simple minded people keep their opinions to themselves, but may be a problem when they overload their poor brains with facts and figures and then start spouting drivel all over the place (like Facebook and Twitter).
In this short piece I would like to address some of the lies that are circulating about COVID-19, and put them on to a more sound scientific base. I would also like to add my drivel to Facebook and perhaps Twitter (me, me, look at me), but I hope I can do so in an informative way. This will be a very UK centric post, sorry about that. I happen to live here.
Before I start, please say hello to Darren Phillips BSc(hons) – not pictured above – well, at the top of the blog, yes, but not the guy sneezing. I mention this because many of the posts that I have read are by people who have no scientific background at all. I have a degree in Biochemistry. As little as I have used it, I still know a scientific fact when I see one. I would also like to point out that I am a data obsessed individual, who loves facts and figures and mathematical analysis. It is what I spend far too much time reading. Sad really…
So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my Top Lies of COVID.
An increase in testing is leading to a higher figure for infections.
When our scientific advisors tell us that the number of infections are increasing, they take in to account the changes in testing numbers. What they actually mean is that the PROPORTION of positive tests is escalating. So, if we reduced the number of tests, the proportion would still grow. This is a mathematical and scientific fact, not uninformed opinion.
We use the weighting of ‘number of positive results per 100,000 head of population’. The number of tests done gives us a better understanding of how quickly the virus is spreading and where, but we can say without doubts that it is spreading. On this date (21st September 2020) England is doubling its number of infections every 7 days, and, if unhalted, we could see up to 50,000 new infections per day, in England, by mid October. This is simple mathematics (although a little over simplified).
It is no worse than the seasonal flu.
Oh, for goodness sake, not this old chestnut again. OK, I will try to explain this using something I like to call FACTUAL INFORMATION. In a normal year we would expect to see about 7,000 deaths in the UK from flu, in a bad year we could see up to 20,000 deaths. COVID-19 deaths so far in the UK stand at 41,777 in 6 months. If we were to extrapolate, this might mean approximately 83,000 deaths in a year or four times a bad flu year, and we still would have the deaths from seasonal flu.
It only kills those who would have died anyway.
Well, true, after a fashion. Although I would like to live forever, I accept that we will all die eventually. To suggest that those dying from COVID would have died anyway is, quite frankly, weird and a little creepy. Yes, those with pre-existing conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes, Asthma etc may be more likely to die if they get COVID-19. Yes, the elderly are more at risk of death from COVID-19. It does seem rather heartless to say that this means they were going to die anyway. I am in the high-risk group and I would rather like to not drop dead from COVID-19. I would also like lots of our older generation to continue on in good health for years to come. Plus, the idea that fit, healthy and young people don’t die from COVID-19 is a falacy, although the figures are lower.
I have had it so I can’t get it again.
This is a common misconception. It has been proven in a number of scientific studies that this is untrue. Although the the scientific community is still out on just how much protection you get from being infected, and for how long, we already have proven cases of reinfection. This is a COVID virus, and just because you get a cold, does not mean you will never get a cold again (more’s the pity).
The virus is not as dangerous as it was in April, it has changed.
Here, I feel on quite confident ground. I know that viruses do mutate and change the longer they are in the wild, and yes, for obvious reasons, we would expect the most successful strains of the virus to be the ones that do not simply kill off their hosts. Unfortunately for us, current scientific data shows that mortality rates for COVID-19 are hardly changing at all, so we still have to face it, this is still a dangerous disease.
New treatments are now available, so mortality rates will fall.
This is a lie, buried in a half truth. We do have new treatments, which is great, but it is still only a very small number of those who get hospitalised who are recovering due to the new treatments. We are still in very early days. Oh, and hydroxychloroquine is still an ineffective treatment. Any American President who tells you otherwise has not checked the figures (and don’t drink bleach and don’t try to stick a UV light up your rectum).
We did our bit and the NHS can cope now.
No. Admissions to hospital due to COVID are rising. As admissions rise we put our NHS staff and infrastructure under more strain. The NHS may then end up unable to treat all of the normal illnesses that we see at this time of year, and other illnesses like cancer. This leads to greater risk of death from other causes as well as COVID. It is a vicious cycle, but we can help by being sensible. The NHS still needs us to do our bit.
We should be able to decide our own risk level.
Don’t kill granny! You may feel comfortable with the risk of catching COVID, but is your family? If you infect a co-worker, who then infects a family member are you happy to take responsibility for causing the death of others? These are very real questions we need to ask ourselves. If we all lived in our own little bubble and did not interact with anyone else, then this seems a reasonable thing to claim (like, perhaps, in a lockdown?). But we don’t, and we can’t, so it isn’t. We need to remember this mantra – NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU! We take precautions to keep others safe, not just ourselves.
Scientific studies in the US have proven that use of masks is ineffective against COVID.
Try Googling ‘effectiveness of masks for covid 19 study’ to see loads of scientific studies done in Universities around the globe that prove, beyond any doubt, that ‘Cloth face coverings, even homemade masks made of the correct material, are effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 – for the wearer and those around them’ (study from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science – find a report on this here: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-08-oxford-covid-19-study-face-masks-and-coverings-work-act-now)
There are some really great videos on this as well, if words confound you. Try this one https://youtu.be/lOLTSRa5CeI.
Fear is a bad decision maker. The press are just playing COVID up to create fear.
Two for the price of one! You know, I sort of understand this one. Yes, making a decision based on knee jerk fear reactions is not a good idea. However, we do have a fear reaction for a reason. Fight or Flight is part of our physiology and pschology as human beings. We fear what we cannot control, we fear what might hurt us, we fear what might hurt our loved ones. This is not unhealthy in all cases, and those who claim it is are almost always the ones who are fearful of ‘things that might hurt my pocket’.
So often the constant repetition of the supposition that we must generate economic activity is actually a greater fear driver than the virus is. Governments do not always do the right thing to help even when they know that COVID is causing tough financial times, but they are learning as they go along, just as we all are. We just need to keep pressure on them to look at the long term goals of our countries and not give in to short term pressures.
I notice, by the way, that there is a statistically relevant relationship between those who are telling us to stop being pussies, and those who stand to lose money if we lock down again. There is also a very high incidence of ‘we need to get on with things’ amongst those people who suffer from ‘no real scientific background’. (Quantified by reading headlines, I haven’t actually done the maths. I’ve let you down again!)
As for the press. They are doing what they have always done. Fear sells papers and TV news advertising and creates ratings. If this is a problem for you, stop buying papers, limit your TV news time etc. A sound idea is to put your trust in a multiplicity of sources – when someone tells you something, research it. The internet is a fantastic place if you are willing to move a bit further away from opinions and towards scientific results of research. Most scientific papers have a simple summary and more and more places are looking at ‘readability for all’ in their published results. As I have said many times, there is no replacement for a bit of Googling, and common sense.
Look To The Source
Finally, I want to add something that it pains me to say, and is a little bit personal. I have seen so many ‘Christian’ leaders who have decided to tell their congregations, and anyone who will listen, that it is not biblical for you to have fear, and that you need to put your faith in God and get out there, go to church, ignore the scientists. Forget COVID-19, God will take care of you. Now, I don’t want to diss God, but I don’t think COVID-19 asks what your beliefs are before infecting you (‘Hey, you’re a Christian. I’ll leave you alone then.’). I also don’t believe that God gave you a brain so that you can act like a sheep and ignore any facts that your leaders aren’t comfortable with.
Over the years I have met several God fearing, brilliant, scientists. They know that God gave us a brain so we could think. We are capable of working together to help each other. God gives us the tools, we use them. Science is a tool, but unfortunately it appears some people are even bigger tools.
The bible tells us “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6: 24). Sometimes we need to look at the motivation of people who are desperate for economic activity, even if it kills people. And, on that bombshell…
If you have any ‘hot potatos’ about COVID-19 that you would like me to address, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Send them to iamnotspam@averythingishthing.co.uk.
