Thanks for the new thread.
I'd like to repeat and even excerpt a link from the previous one, because it's important, but it was not very visible and may easily have been overlooked. (In future, maybe we could just copy all links in full, not disguise them as text.) I know some of this has been posted before, but not everyone has read every post, much less every link.
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Corona 22., Nica #295:
>>Nochmal zu Innenräumen, Restaurants etc:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/202...
Social Distancing Is Not Enough
Many of the largest super-spreader events took place inside—at a church in South Korea, an auditorium in France, a conference in Massachusetts. The danger of the indoors is more than anecdotal. A Hong Kong paper awaiting peer review found that of 7,324 documented cases in China, only one outbreak occurred outside—during a conversation among several men in a small village. The risk of infection indoors is almost 19 times higher than in open-air environments, according to another study from researchers in Japan. ...
1. Covid-proof the office
On March 8, South Korean public-health officials learned of a COVID-19-positive patient working in a call center in downtown Seoul. The office was located in one of the densest parts of the city, on the 11th floor of a 19-story mixed-use building ...
But investigators found that the outbreak was surprisingly concentrated. Of the 97 people in the building who tested positive for the disease, 94 worked on one floor—in the call center. ...
This would suggest that the main facilitator wasn’t common touch points, such as doors and elevator buttons, but rather common airspace. When people talk—or sneeze or cough—they produce respiratory droplets ... Talking for hours in close quarters, in an unventilated space, can create an ideal petri dish for COVID-19 transmission. ...
Masks are recommended for all employees. Desks and chairs are to be spread out or arranged in a “chess” or zigzag pattern so that no two individuals are sitting directly across from each other. Cubicles stage a triumphant return ...
... recommendations can be boiled down to three words that will make meeting-haters rejoice: fewer, smaller, shorter. ... Ventilation, in general, will become a watchword. ...
2. Covid-proof the restaurants
On January 24, a Chinese family of five sat down to lunch in a crowded restaurant in Guangzhou, the most populous city in southern China. ... the restaurant on the third floor of a five-story building was buzzing with more than 80 patrons and no windows. The family gathered around a table along the back wall, between two local families, as an air conditioner pumped cool air across the three tables. ...
Within two weeks, multiple people from each of the three tables—and 10 lunch patrons from the Guangzhou restaurant in total—had been diagnosed with the disease. ...
One asymptomatic person in a restaurant had infected nine others in the direct path of the air conditioner. None of the dozens of other patrons or servers got sick. ...
Masks may become commonplace on servers, as might barriers between tables. ... reducing interactions between patrons and waiters by asking diners to order their meals online before they arrive ... Social distancing in the kitchen might mean fewer chefs ...
Another idea: Put everything outside. Some American cities, including Berkeley, California, and Cincinnati, have done just that, by announcing the closure of streets to free up outdoor dining space for restaurants. But for many cities, wide-scale al fresco dining is unrealistic ...
3. Covid-proof public [gatherings]
On the evening of Tuesday, March 10, 61 singers gathered for choir practice just north of Seattle. It was a standard rehearsal, as members sang in close quarters, shared snacks, and stacked chairs together at the end of the two-and-a-half-hour session. ...
Fifty-three of the 61 singers became ill, making for an “attack rate” of 87 percent. Three members of the choir were hospitalized. Two died.
The Washington choir represents the most aggressive outbreak I have come across, with an attack rate almost twice as high as the Korean call center. It had many features we’ve already established to be dangerous: an intimate crowd gathered in a small room, sharing air, food, and surfaces. But what if singing accelerated the transmission of the disease? ...
Many super-spreader events have been ceremonies that involve group prayers and exclamations, such as religious gatherings. On February 16, a 61-year-old Korean woman with COVID-19 triggered hundreds of infections when she prayed with 1,000 worshippers in a large windowless church in Daegu, South Korea. (To this day, more than 60 percent of Korea’s COVID-19 cases are in Daegu.) Two days later, in France, several hundred Christian worshippers from around the world packed into a dark auditorium in the small town of Mulhouse for an annual festival. French authorities have since linked more than 2,000 global cases to this one meeting, including cases in French Guyana, Corsica, Burkina Faso, and Switzerland. ...
We need saliva control too. Other countries are doing so, already. Germany has reportedly banned singing at religious services ...
“When we go back to sports stadiums and theaters, people are going to have to adjust their expectations,” says Joseph Allen, an assistant professor of exposure-assessment science at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
First, he told me, full-capacity stadiums will be impossible in the social-distancing age, and most attendees will be advised to wear masks. Second, everything that can be made touchless should be, including ticketing and concessions. ... Third, public-entertainment venues will have to reimagine queuing. ... “It’ll be very important to reduce crowding at the entrance[s] of stadiums and theaters by adding additional entrance points or staggering admissions by time ...”
For memory’s sake, let’s reduce the major takeaways to a convenient acronym: SAFE.
- Social distancing ...
- Airflow awareness: ...
... the odds of transmission in a closed, indoor space are several orders of magnitude higher than in open-air environments.
- Face masks: Wear them. ...
- Expectoration (sorry for using a fancy word for spit to make the acronym work): ... Beware especially of indoor environments and activities that naturally include lots of gabbing (such as a long office meeting), singing (such as a choir practice), shouting (such as a high-school gym), or heavy breathing (such as an intense indoor workout class).