Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Rider]

We're wasting time talking about herd immunity | CNN

William Haseltine writes that we should not waste time trying to build herd immunity against Covid-19, because it's unlikely we will ever be able to achieve it. New research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole...

www.cnn.com

But we waste critical time with this pointless discussion, because the facts are already quite clear: herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus. We know this thanks to new research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and from a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole.
While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people -- over and over again.
One New York City study, conducted between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2018, showed that people could test positive multiple times for infection by the same strain of coronavirus, within the same year.
Antibodies to the virus would increase sharply after infection and peak after about two weeks. But then their presence would decline, generally disappearing entirely somewhere between four months and one year. In one case, a person was reinfected with the same strain of coronavirus after just four weeks from first infection.
Earlier studies showed that the very same strain of a coronavirus that causes a cold one year can do so again the following year. Unlike with flu viruses, which mutate frequently and often infect us with new strains each year, the coronavirus need not change to reinfect. Recent data suggests that SARS-CoV-2 follows the same pattern. Following infection and recovery, all antibodies to the virus begin to fade quickly, including those which may be protective.
Over the past weekend, researchers from the United Kingdom published new research which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 does indeed act like its more common cousins. They studied the presence of neutralizing antibodies -- the specific antibodies needed to fight off reinfection -- and found that a transient neutralizing antibody response was "a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds."

 

[GoofGoof]

The reason why bars and restaurants are being told to close or being thought of as the issue to stop the spread is because mask cannot be worn while you are eating. The partitions and the 6 feet space needed per most health departments between tables is not working as the AC units in these facilities is spreading the virus even further.

Florida Texas Arizona are all seeing a higher spread rate right now not because people are outside enjoying the weather it is because they then go inside and enjoy these facilities with AC.

The national restaurant association has been worried about this for months when we reopened. I have been on plenty of calls trying to figure out how we prepare for opening with it in my units and nothing we can do can protect everyone.

It is a mess as at the same time we need to be open to survive.... And the gov is not bailing us out so it is not possible to keep the business closed for ever....

It may come to having to do health screening of everyone that comes into places but does not help those with no symptoms.... It is a mess and really sucks for every restaurant in the world right now.

Well said. This is a huge problem nationwide. It gets worse when we hit the fall and its too cold for a large portion of restaurants to have outdoor dining open. Most restaurants can’t survive on outdoor dining alone anyway, but some are getting by with takeout and outdoor seating but that stops when it gets cold. I agree the government needs to do more to specifically help out restaurants and bars, especially as more and more states start pulling back on indoor dining.

I also worry about schools for the same reasons. Indoor locations with people in relatively close proximity for long periods of time. They may end up with students and teachers in masks but kids still need to eat lunch every day so it poses a similar problem to restaurants.

 

[mickeymiss]

We're wasting time talking about herd immunity | CNN

William Haseltine writes that we should not waste time trying to build herd immunity against Covid-19, because it's unlikely we will ever be able to achieve it. New research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole...

www.cnn.com

But we waste critical time with this pointless discussion, because the facts are already quite clear: herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus. We know this thanks to new research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and from a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole.
While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people -- over and over again.
One New York City study, conducted between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2018, showed that people could test positive multiple times for infection by the same strain of coronavirus, within the same year.
Antibodies to the virus would increase sharply after infection and peak after about two weeks. But then their presence would decline, generally disappearing entirely somewhere between four months and one year. In one case, a person was reinfected with the same strain of coronavirus after just four weeks from first infection.
Earlier studies showed that the very same strain of a coronavirus that causes a cold one year can do so again the following year. Unlike with flu viruses, which mutate frequently and often infect us with new strains each year, the coronavirus need not change to reinfect. Recent data suggests that SARS-CoV-2 follows the same pattern. Following infection and recovery, all antibodies to the virus begin to fade quickly, including those which may be protective.
Over the past weekend, researchers from the United Kingdom published new research which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 does indeed act like its more common cousins. They studied the presence of neutralizing antibodies -- the specific antibodies needed to fight off reinfection -- and found that a transient neutralizing antibody response was "a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds."

What hope is there for a vaccine then?

 

[Lilofan]

Well said. This is a huge problem nationwide. It gets worse when we hit the fall and its too cold for a large portion of restaurants to have outdoor dining open. Most restaurants can’t survive on outdoor dining alone anyway, but some are getting by with takeout and outdoor seating but that stops when it gets cold. I agree the government needs to do more to specifically help out restaurants and bars, especially as more and more states start pulling back on indoor dining.

I also worry about schools for the same reasons. Indoor locations with people in relatively close proximity for long periods of time. They may end up with students and teachers in masks but kids still need to eat lunch every day so it poses a similar problem to restaurants.

When I was a kid, washing hands in the school bathroom was just in theory but now more than ever it needs to happen.

 

[gmajew]

I wonder if businesses can install appropriate filters and raise the percentage of 'fresh' air that gets put into an AC system to ameliorate the 'indoor effect'?

Cost is prohibited I have found especially if still cannot be open.

 

[Rider]

What hope is there for a vaccine then?

Vaccines are different than natural and permanent immunity. For example the flu vaccine may not be 100% effective in blocking the flu but it can also help reduce the severity if you catch it. You also need a new one every year because it doesn't last.

But yes it is entirely possible that a vaccine will never work. Coronavirus vaccines haven't been very successful in the past.

 

[gmajew]

Well said. This is a huge problem nationwide. It gets worse when we hit the fall and its too cold for a large portion of restaurants to have outdoor dining open. Most restaurants can’t survive on outdoor dining alone anyway, but some are getting by with takeout and outdoor seating but that stops when it gets cold. I agree the government needs to do more to specifically help out restaurants and bars, especially as more and more states start pulling back on indoor dining.

I also worry about schools for the same reasons. Indoor locations with people in relatively close proximity for long periods of time. They may end up with students and teachers in masks but kids still need to eat lunch every day so it poses a similar problem to restaurants.

The schools have to be open as we are holding back the future generation. Online at home learning did not work in the spring... I am in one of the best school districts in Illinois and US based on ratings every year and the online learning my kids did was horrible.... They both got dumber. A lot was teachers being lazy but still not good....

But that is a huge problem schools will have is that kids will not wear the mask all the time and the germs will spread.... they may be able to have it with little to know issues but they will spread it to parents etc.... Which is a big concern... Now some studies are saying the kids spreading it is min but I dont know if I believe that.

 

[gmajew]

Sincere question. Is outdoor dining proven to be safe? I mean, distance either works or it doesn't. Fresh air filters some of it but how much really if a sick person is out there and if covid is unavoidably that infectious? If covid is too risky for almost entirely outdoor events with safety measures then eating in close proximity outdoors is still risky too. By that logic.

We tried outdoor dining. It was great, I support it totally. I'll do it again. But...we had to go inside to be seated outside. Then the 6 feet apart tables outside felt close enough that I'd imagine that any sickness *could* still do its thing. Meanwhile, they had partitions at every table for indoor dining. That seemed safer than outside lol. How does AC air "blowing virus around" differ from regular air blowing around outside?

There's also a restaurant near me with an indoor tent as outdoor dining. It just felt a little silly to me as that's likely worse than indoor..

I just wish we could make decsions that seem consistent and are based on these months of studying transmission. My feeling is that most indoor businsses with rules are safe to open because viruses favor close and prolonged contact.

No data to say it is actually working... Just like no data showing protest did not spread it.... No body knows.... Which is so darn frustrating.

 

[DisneyDebRob]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I’m not sure why there’s so much gymnastics being done around the statistics. There’s no need to move goal posts, there isn’t even really a need for goal posts anymore. I’m not sure why people are so concerned about “justifying” what they want to do. WDW is open. If you want to go, then go. If you don’t, then stay home. There’s no need to massage numbers or seek out conspiracy theories to disprove any of the stats that look bad, do what you want to do and don’t worry about it. On the flip side if you don’t want to go then sit it out and don’t worry about the people who do go. There’s nothing we are going to say here that will change whether WDW is open or not and certainly nobody is changing anyone’s mind on whether it should be open. Unless you are a CM or live locally to the parks does it really impact you if people visit WDW or not? I get the desire to have good information, but it’s abundantly clear that no matter what information or data comes out someone is not going to believe it. Let’s just all agree to disagree up front instead of having the same back and forth each day when the FL numbers are released.

Did you just end the thread?

 

[GoofGoof]

No data to say it is actually working... Just like no data showing protest did not spread it.... No body knows.... Which is so darn frustrating.

What we do have is a good basic understanding of how viral respiratory infections spread. We know that indoor air is recycled and there’s a much higher chance of breathing contaminated air than outdoors. There’s no study giving us the exact percent worse and we never will have one. In the medical field the vast majority of things we “know” are really based on the best guess using the firm information we have.

 

[Kevin_W]

I wonder if businesses can install appropriate filters and raise the percentage of 'fresh' air that gets put into an AC system to ameliorate the 'indoor effect'?

You could increase circulation rate, install HEPA filters, and mix in outdoor air (like an airplane does), but that is quite expensive.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

I agree...my point was that the nursing home deaths significantly impacted the counts. I consider 25% pretty significant.

I agree. Nursing homes were handled terribly in NY and NJ. NY still has a high death count without them, but to have 25% of the deaths be in nursing homes shows that the policy put in place in both states requiring the homes to accept patients with the virus was undoubtedly stupid.

 

[GoofGoof]

Did you just end the thread?

Not really. I’m just talking about the daily back and forth on whether the stats are terrible or fake news. We all know where people stand on that. There’s plenty of other things to talk about. I have no control over what people talk about. Just a suggestion to try to tone down some of the more hostile back and forth.

 

[mickeymiss]

I keep reading this fox 35 article trying to understand what it's actually saying though.
Looking for some objective analysis. If anything, doesn't this indicate a need for further investigation? What is comforting about any lab saying that they had 98% positive rate when they had 9%? Then another lab saying that they had a 76% rate when it was 6%? What kind of "error" was this? Shouldn't we be asking that question?

 

[mickeymiss]

The schools have to be open as we are holding back the future generation. Online at home learning did not work in the spring... I am in one of the best school districts in Illinois and US based on ratings every year and the online learning my kids did was horrible.... They both got dumber. A lot was teachers being lazy but still not good....

But that is a huge problem schools will have is that kids will not wear the mask all the time and the germs will spread.... they may be able to have it with little to know issues but they will spread it to parents etc.... Which is a big concern... Now some studies are saying the kids spreading it is min but I dont know if I believe that.

I think it's shocking in general that covid is the one virus that doesn't affect kids as much? It's been the opposite of what we know about child vulnerability to everything else under the sun. I've yet to hear any logical explanations for how a young child would be more resistent to it.

 

[chrisvee]

I've never had the flu and never gotten a flu shot.

But you are still benefiting from herd immunity.

 

[lazyboy97o]

You could increase circulation rate, install HEPA filters, and mix in outdoor air (like an airplane does), but that is quite expensive.

Outdoor air is already mixed in. Maybe this along with concerns about the environment will convince more people to stop building the same cheap box with a mechanical system everywhere instead of something appropriate to the local environment.

 

[hopemax]

I think it's shocking in general that covid is the one virus that doesn't affect kids as much? It's been the opposite of what we know about child vulnerability to everything else under the sun. I've yet to hear any logical explanations for how a young child would be more resistent to it.

The tweet I was just reading, says, basically: The virus likes to latch onto ACE2 enzymes in people's noses. Children have way, way less of those than adults do.

So imagine trying to climb a tree, then imagine trying to climb the same tree with all the branches cut off. Which one is harder to climb?

 

[DisneyDebRob]

Our governor is serious up here.

Philly Cancels All Large Events Until Feb. 2021 Due To COVID-19

All large public events in Philadelphia have been canceled until Feb. 28, 2021, according to city officials.

patch.com

 

[mickey0825]

I agree. Nursing homes were handled terribly in NY and NJ. NY still has a high death count without them, but to have 25% of the deaths be in nursing homes shows that the policy put in place in both states requiring the homes to accept patients with the virus was undoubtedly stupid.

Spot on agree....it was disgraceful