Chris Turnbull

Good work - carry on.

I used to have a virus basically every week from September through to May before I started making for Covid - through doing this I've driven it near zero and that's in a country where we've also had years of unbridled Covid (and everything else) spread.

Typically these studies vastly underestimate the effectiveness - but from my own experience (and likely many others in Covid aware world) I have to say that for me N95 masking has cut my own virial infections to near zero over the years we've been doing this thing.

And by actually endemic I mean that the virus flares up occasionally but is quickly stopped as there's just not enough infections and opportunities to keep it spreading.

Basically the more N95s the less virus there is around and so the chances of getting infected keep dropping and could be driven to near zero levels - or what we could call actually endemic.

bsky.app/profile/enem...

Of course, this study is looking at population level effects - rather than individual ones.

On the individual level we know that N95 masks are 'near perfect' at stopping infection:

bsky.app/profile/enem...

The paper is about how to significantly reduce Covid transmission and shows how it can be done NOW with N95 masks.

Study link: journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

I have focused on one NPI for airborne transmission: masks/respirators. Another NPI is improving indoor air quality, as Morawska et al. [31] have recently called for. My model suggests that, for example, doubling the rate of turnover of air should reduce transmission by approximately 1 − 1/√2 ∼ 30%. This estimate is highly approximate but as obtaining population-level data on the effect of NPIs is so hard to do, this estimate may still be useful. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

'I have focused on one NPI for airborne transmission: masks/respirators.Another NPI is improving indoor air quality,as Morawska et al.[31] have recently called for. My model suggests that,for example, doubling the rate of turnover of air should reduce transmission by approximately 1 − 1/√2 ∼ 30%.'

'Mask use reduces the inhaled doses and so scales up the time needed for transmission, such that a smaller fraction of contacts are long enough for transmission.'

Essentially this is telling us how the virus could - combined with clean air, testing, isolation etc, drive the virus down to near-zero levels:

5 / 8 PHYSICAL REVIEW E 110, 064302 (2024) Estimating the population-level effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions when transmission rates of COVID-19 vary by orders of magnitude from one contact to another Richard P. Sear *,† School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom (Received 6 June 2024; accepted 7 October 2024; published 3 December 2024) Statistical physicists have long studied systems where the variable of interest spans many orders of magnitude, the classic example is the relaxation times of glassy materials, which are often found to follow power laws. A power-law dependence has been found for the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of length of time a susceptible person is in contact with an infected person. This is in data from the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 app. The amount of virus in infected people spans many orders of magnitude. Inspired by this, I assume that the power-law behavior found in COVID-19 tran

As the author themselves who is a computational physicist says in their conclusion:

'I have predicted that for a population like that of the UK, wearing FFP2/N95-type masks should reduce the effective reproduction number R by a factor of nine'

..Also shown are predictions for PT when one susceptible person wears a surgical mask (green dashed), one person wears an FFP2/N95 (orange dashed), when the whole population wears surgical masks (solid green), and when the population wears FFP2/N95s (solid orange)'

...also fitted a power law to data and found the same value for the exponent β. Data has dynamic range of three decades in time (minutes to tens of hours)....

...[22], using data from UK’s COVID-19 app [21]. Fit (blue) is obtained by fitting a straight line to logs of the data, and fit parameters are slope (exponent) 0.47 ± 0.01 and intercept −3.6. R2 = 0.996. Ferretti et al. [22]...

Chart from the study showing the effects of various interventions of reducing spread of the virus:

'Plot of the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of the length of contact time [23]. The blue points are data from the work of Ferretti et al...

......person with high genetic susceptibility to infection. In panel (b) the transmission rate r is much lower. There the infected person has much less virus (lower viral load) and the susceptible person is across a well ventilated room from the infected person.'

...The droplets are then carried by air currents toward a susceptible person, who inhales them and becomes infected [3–5,8]. In panel (a) the rate of transmission r is high because an infected person with a high viral load is close to and talking with a susceptible...

...The evidence is that the transmission of COVID-19 is at least predominantly across the air [3–9]: an infected person breathes out the SARS-CoV-2 virus in an aerosol of droplets of mucus that contain the virus...

Or to be more precise: Study shows that N95 masks reduce Covid transmission by at least 9x.

Anyway: from the study:

'Pair of schematics showing two possible contacts between an infected person (I, left) and a susceptible person (S, right)...

The study has recently been featured by Nature journal which has given it the headline:

'What if everyone had masked up?'

Setting it in the past tense, when of course it should be in present tense because the pandemic is STILL RAGING.

'What if everyone masked up now?'

HYSICAL REVIEW E 110, 064302 (2024) Estimating the population-level effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions when transmission rates of COVID-19 vary by orders of magnitude from one contact to another Richard P. Searo*,+ School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom (Received 6 June 2024; accepted 7 October 2024; published 3 December 2024) Statistical physicists have long studied systems where the variable of interest spans many orders of magnitude, the classic example is the relaxation times of glassy materials, which are often found to follow power laws. A power-law dependence has been found for the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of length of time a susceptible person is in contact with an infected person. This is in data from the United Kingdom's COVID-19 app. The amount of virus in infected people spans many orders of magnitude. Inspired by this, I assume that the power-law behavior found in COVID-19 transm

The present study used data from the UK's Covid App to find out that using FFP2/N95 masks reduces transmission of the virus by nearly 10x:

ature Explore content v About the journal v nature > research highlights > article View all journals Publish with us v Subscribe Q Search Sign up for alerts Log in RSS feed RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT | 05 December 2024 What if everyone had masked up? Analysis of app data has an answer Modelling study based on almost 250,000 positive COVID-19 tests in the United Kingdom shows that universal masking could have cut transmission markedly. f K N95

(ANOTHER) New Study Shows That Using N95/FFP2 Masks Reduce Covid Transmission By A Whopping 9X.

Masks work.

EXACTLY

High intelligence may exacerbate paediatric inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection - PubMed The body's innate and acquiredimmunesystems are critical in responses to a wide spectrum of assaults, including SARS-CoV-2 infection. We identify studies of autoimmunity to support our hypothesis that...

2/ And yes it is from 2021. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34560443/

I think given the nature of it and the fact it violates many dogmas the research has not been followed up.

The study forms their hypothesis using relevant data and sources etc: I wouldn't call it meta level though.

It seems like it's been going on for long enough for them to do sampling and sequencing and work out exactly what it is - the fact is being called a 'mystery' again implies to me is likely a new Covid/Sars Cov virus.

Main symptoms reported so far:

Fever • Headache • Nasal discharge and cough • Difficulty breathing • Anemia

Are they getting pneumonia?

Antonio Vargas B @Anto731 There are many Covid symptoms in people from Congo, probability of a new variant? 11:05 am . 4 Dec 2024 . 254 Views ...

I have to say that given the symptoms: this was also my first thoughts on this outbreak and until such time as more information is given - it does seem the most likely given the symptom list.

Anemia is not really something you see in many viruses - Covid is one of the few where it's well-known to cause anemia (among many other weird blood things it does)...

Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing 2) The reported symptoms in patients include: . Fever . Headache . Nasal discharge and cough . Difficulty breathing · Anemia 9:16 am . 4 Dec 2024 . 10.9K Views ... 4 t7 38 165 4

This virus is very odd: they list anemia as one of the main symptoms: but there's no explanation as to why: is it through blood loss?