Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Syt]

Macaulay Culkin clearly has the best facemask.

[DontSayBanana]

So... a coworker tested positive for COVID-19. At this point, a statistical certainty and not a huge cause for concern, right?

Wrong. HR wouldn't confirm who it was, but with under 15 out of 300 people in the office, it wasn't hard to count heads and notice who was missing. It's the guy who shares the otherwise empty floor with me. Whose desk is four seats away from mine. Who stayed home with negative COVID tests for four days before getting a positive on the 5th day.

[Iormlund]

Four seats is quite a bit. How is the ventilation in your floor?

[Zanza]

Germany enacted restrictions regarding hotel usage for persons coming from the German risk areas, e.g. Berlin and Frankfurt. My father falls under these. As he has an appointment near me next week, he will sleep at my place. Which is still allowed. Strange rules...

[HVC]

We have to fill out a checklist every morning before coming into the office. and have to wear a mask in the building. If you have your own office you can take it off, but if you leave to go out into the common area you need a mask.

[DontSayBanana]

Four seats is quite a bit. How is the ventilation in your floor?

Good, luckily- we actually have the newest/strongest HEPA filters out of all the offices (all the others in our company are being replaced because they're not up to COVID standards).

And four seats for us is only about 20 feet/6 meters- we have serpentine desks with no sides instead of cubicles. In the officially "occupied" area where we've had a small number of people working, we covered all but every third desk with tarps to block them off and maintain minimum distance.

I've settled down a bit, though. It was finally pointed out that he was home four days before a positive test, so he probably self-quarantined after suspecting he was exposed via somebody else. Still, the guy in question... is our facilities guy. I panicked more because both of us have to circulate around the office a LOT more than anyone else, and the scenario where we both catch COVID would pretty much undo all we're doing to bring people back into the office, not to mention close our office down again with anyone who's been here having to quarantine.

[Iormlund]

From our own experience during the last 4 months it seems contagion is rather unlikely unless you are literally spitting on each other.

I cross paths with hundreds of people every day at the plant (I walk at least 5km a day at work). Statistically several dozen have had the virus by now. Perhaps even a hundred. If airborne transmission was widespread we'd all be infected by now. I suspect it is rare outside of prolonged exposure or super-spreader events.

[viper37]

Germany enacted restrictions regarding hotel usage for persons coming from the German risk areas, e.g. Berlin and Frankfurt. My father falls under these. As he has an appointment near me next week, he will sleep at my place. Which is still allowed. Strange rules...

sleeps at your place: easily identifiable and traceable people (likely, not 100 people) in case of infection.sleeps at the hotel: retracing all clients&all staff who may have been in contact with him = a lot more work.

Hence these kind of rules/restrictions about public places.

[viper37]

From our own experience during the last 4 months it seems contagion is rather unlikely unless you are literally spitting on each other.

I cross paths with hundreds of people every day at the plant (I walk at least 5km a day at work). Statistically several dozen have had the virus by now. Perhaps even a hundred. If airborne transmission was widespread we'd all be infected by now. I suspect it is rare outside of prolonged exposure or super-spreader events.

Below 15 minutes of exposure, the risk is near zero.  Not totally 0, but very near.  After 15 minutes of contact in the same room, the closer you are, the more at risk you become as it increases exponentially.  Just crossing someone infected, if you're at 2m of each another, the risk of catching the disease is near zero.  But apparently, some people here were infected (last spring though) by exchanging paper documents.  Everyone who touched the documents got infected.  I figure that most likely, these people used their saliva to turn the pages... 

Anyway.  Like you said, the main vector of infections is still close contacts.

[viper37]

Four seats is quite a bit. How is the ventilation in your floor?

Good, luckily- we actually have the newest/strongest HEPA filters out of all the offices (all the others in our company are being replaced because they're not up to COVID standards).

HEPA filters works if the virus gets through the ventilation system.

With theoretical airborne transmission, what is actually happening is the virus is "spinning" in the air like a leaf in the wind and then deposits itself on another person.  Cases where the virus is "aspired" by the ventilation system and shuffled to another room via the ventilation ducts is extremely rare.  I don't think we've been able to prove that so far.  Only thing they could prove is that, under ideal conditions, the virus can stay up in the air.
Anyway. Nobody needs to stress about this.  If you are stuck in a room where the ventilation is simply fans that don't bring outside air like in that Chinese restaurant, yes, you are at risk of airborne transmission.  Otherwise, everything is fine.

EDIT: A nice text about the effect of ventilation on the coronavirus:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/8/19/21364031/coronavirus-air-purifiers-filter-hepa-merv-ventilation

[Tamas]

From our own experience during the last 4 months it seems contagion is rather unlikely unless you are literally spitting on each other.

I cross paths with hundreds of people every day at the plant (I walk at least 5km a day at work). Statistically several dozen have had the virus by now. Perhaps even a hundred. If airborne transmission was widespread we'd all be infected by now. I suspect it is rare outside of prolonged exposure or super-spreader events.

Why is it spreading so quickly again then?

[The Brain]

From our own experience during the last 4 months it seems contagion is rather unlikely unless you are literally spitting on each other.

I cross paths with hundreds of people every day at the plant (I walk at least 5km a day at work). Statistically several dozen have had the virus by now. Perhaps even a hundred. If airborne transmission was widespread we'd all be infected by now. I suspect it is rare outside of prolonged exposure or super-spreader events.

Why is it spreading so quickly again then?

Probably the current Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls revival.

[Josquius]

Not one to let the poly get all the credit. This week Newcastle University has 1000 cases.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-more-than-1-000-students-at-newcastle-university-have-tested-positive-over-the-past-week-12099193

I'm glad in hindsight I couldn't afford a place in the more fashionable studenty parts of town.

[Maladict]

these people used their saliva to turn the pages... 

That habit needs to die 

[DontSayBanana]

That habit needs to die 

Seriously. That's disgusting, not to mention incredibly harmful from a document preservation standpoint.