1608

The first interesting finding: Children are spreading the virus amongst themselves and also to adults. Second: The greatest risk for infection among the people studied in the two southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh is a long bus or train ride.

The attack rate — or the risk of transmission from a primary case to someone else — was 80% for passengers sitting next to an infected person on a bus or train for more than 6 hours without a mask. By comparison, there was only a 9% chance of an infected person giving the virus to another member of their household. The chances of a person passing on the virus in a hospital or clinic was 1.2% and the attack rate was just 2.6% for interactions in the general community.

In fact most people — 71%, according to this study — appear to have never passed the virus on to anyone. Given that the outbreak continues to grow, this means there are a small minority of patients responsible for the vast majority of spread.

1609

That’s how a lot of early vaccines were developed. Very low dose, or incapacitated (via heat) version of the virus. Just enough to prompt an immune response.

1610

Not sure which vaccines you are talking about that were not either killed or significantly “attenuated”. That’s different from low-dose live inoculation. In the 1940s there was smallpox + DPT as the available vaccines. Smallpox was a weird case where ‘variolation’ worked by skin scratches. Diptheria pertussis and tetanus are bacterial diseases, so a different beast altogether. The 1940s pertussis vaccine used formalin-killed cells, but I’m not sure about the others.

1611

Not sure if this has been posted before in this thread. It looks to be updated recently.

1612
1613

We really need to have a proper consensus on this stuff. One of the things mentioned that goers against the long-lived virus is that any virus shed by coughing won’t last long because of white blood cells and other anti-viral processes that would destroy the virus. But that is an incorrect assessment. As any asthmatic or Cystic patient can attest, you have tons of coughing that will produce virus minus sufficient mucosal elements, aka dry cough, that will shed virus but not enough “stuff” to have enough neutralizing elements within to render it inert. But it now makes me wonder if just throwing stuff in my dark basement for 3 days is enough to render it safe.

1614

Those conditions were basically only-in-the-lab. Low temperature, no light, in a special medium.

1615

Well I’m convinced to not keep my phone in the freezer anymore!

1616

Just saw this study. Sadly, I’ve yet to see any governments revisit their assumptions about the spread of this through kids (at least publicly).

1617

Had a local school system switch to all home due to students testing positive in a elementary school. At least they’re noticing on a micro level, I guess.

1618

Sure - we have that too here. Two of the kids in my eldest class were put in quarantine recently, because they played in a soccer match where one of their opponents tested positive.

My problem with the tack being taken right now is that we are very reactive in our measures, rather than proactive. We know that our behaviors are changing as the weather gets colder, but rather than being proactive about measures and adjusting the way the schools operate, for instance, we wait until people test positive and then we shut down bars, schools, etc. Fortunately, not as many are getting hospitalized and killed as earlier (at least in this region), but I have no doubt that will come back, and I just feel that at this point we should know how to handle this better.

1619

Oh, agreed; it’s a horrible cluster@#$% of mismanagement.

1620

The “problem” with acting proactively is your detractors will say:

“You shut down the bars and see, nobody got sick! You didn’t need to shut down the bars!”

1621

Yeah, I know. The people who argue this drive me absolutely crazy.

1622

This is where the lack of national leadership shows so clearly. Federal guidance to schools and businesses on the safest ways to re-open, led by science, would go a long way. Right now, every school district is just fumbling around in the dark trying to figure things out for themselves.

Plus money. We should be dumping money hand over fist into our schools for everything from protective barriers to robust testing and contact tracing, to distance learning initiatives.

1623

This is one of the major provisions in the HEROES Covid stimulus bill passed by the house.

1624

OMG I know. Dealing with stupid + ignorant people is just the worst.

1625

The first vaccine to be developed (circa 1800 as a systemic thing, though there were folk versions of it dating back centuries) was the smallpox vaccine, which was a live virus vaccine.

… and still is, I found out while searching for “smallpox vaccine.” Because, while smallpox has been declared eradicated as a disease, there are still stockpiles of the vaccine, and it’s still a live virus vaccine.

1626

Yes - that is true

It still does not lend any credence to the notion that low initial exposure to a virus will result in a mild case.

1627

Yes, but the live virus in question was not smallpox. Cowpox(*) was effectively a naturally occuring zoonotic relative of smallpox that served the same role as a modern artifically attenuated live vaccine.

(*: Due to poor record keeping noone knows for sure where the modern smallpox vaccine, vaccina, comes from, but it’s also a live attenuated variant of variola, possibly derived from horsepox).

Regarding variolation, my understanding is the significance was the location of the initial contact with the virus. Normally smallpox would spread through the air and initially infect the repiratory tract, where in variolation the initial infection would be in the skin. So I don’t think it’s anything to do with the size of the initial viral “load”. I’d be interested if anyone has anything authoratative on this.