If you haven't seen the useful data of the "MaskNerd", Aaron Collins, you should have.

Fairly recently, he did an interview with the 3M VP of Personal Safety Division.  There are some nuggets in there.


What's the difference between masks and respirators?
  Masks are designed to keep droplets from getting into or out of your nose and mouth.
  Respirators are designed to protect your respiration system (lungs).

What does "single-use" mean with regard to masks or respirators?
  It means they are not designed to be cleaned and re-used.  (ie, you can reuse them but don't try to clean them.)

When do you need to replace a respirator?

• When it becomes difficult to breath through
  
• When it becomes visibly dirty
  
• When it fails (strap breaks, nose piece breaks)
  
• When it becomes loose (no longer seals)
  

I had a co-worker notify me last night (Tuesday) that they tested positive for COVID.  I had actually seen him about 1.5 hours earlier.  I spent several hours in a suite of rooms he had been in earlier in the day.  I was in an hour long meeting 5 days before his test, and had seen him briefly four days before.

What bothers me is that, as of 24 hours later, my company has not notified me that I might have been exposed.

It struck me that the CDC's "close contact" dates from the early days of COVID -- when the CDC insisted that COVID was spread by droplets, not aerosols; when the CDC didn't even recommend masks, much less respirators.

By not notifying me, I believe the company is complicit in allowing the disease to spread.  And, I put the blame for that squarely on the stuck-in-the-mud CDC.  By sticking to, and allowing to persist in the public, early COVID misconceptions, the public is being harmed.

One can no longer trust the self-reported number of cases.  IMO, only two numbers can be trusted:
  1) The rate of COVID in any fully tested subset of the community.  Unfortunately, such numbers aren't published.  What is published, and is close, is the number of COVID cases in newly hospitalized patients.  I believe all newly hospitalized patients are tested.  If we knew the number hospitalized (which I don't), we could estimate the infection rate in the general population.

  2) Sewage levels.  There's no getting around it.  If someone has COVID, they will impact the amount of COVID found in sewage.
Unfortunately, there isn't a correlation that says "Level X in sewage corresponds to an infection level of Y%"   But you can compare sewage levels in June versus sewage levels in January.  In my community, sewage levels show the infection rate in the general population is as high as the peak of Omicron.
    Odd - Biobot's national levels don't show a current peak, but when you look at the communities they measure, at least a third show such a peak.  (They don't include my community's levels.)

An NIH study has a set of results.

• Obesity and high BMI increase risk of getting SARS-CoV-2  (as well as increased risk of a severe case for obese individuals).
  
• Asthma, eczema, and allergic rhinitis did not affect the risk of getting SARS-CoV-2.
  
• Having self-reported, physician-diagnosed food allergies is associated with a 50% decreased risk of getting SARS-CoV-2
  

Quote:children ages 12 years or younger are just as likely to become infected with the virus as teenagers and adults, but 75% of infections in children are asymptomatic. In addition, the study confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 transmission within households with children is high.
...
This surveillance took place in 12 U.S. cities between May 2020 and February 2021, before the widespread rollout of COVID-19 vaccines among non-healthcare workers in the United States and before the widespread emergence of variants of concern.
...
The HEROS researchers found that children, teenagers and adults in the study all had around a 14% chance of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the six-month surveillance period.  Infections were asymptomatic in 75% of children, 59% of teenagers and 38% of adults. In 58% of participating households where one person became infected, SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted to multiple household members.
...
The viral load range among infected children was comparable to that of teenagers and adults.
...
The HEROS investigators concluded that young children may be very efficient SARS-CoV-2 transmitters within the household due to their high rate of asymptomatic infection, their potentially high viral loads, and their close physical interactions with family members.

(I had to quote "Mean" in the subject.  Otherwise to easy to read it as wearing mean masks!)

Mask wearing in community settings reduces SARS-CoV-2 transmission

Quote:We resolve conflicting results regarding mask wearing against COVID-19. Most previous work focused on mask mandates; we study the effect of mask wearing directly. We find that population mask wearing notably reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission (mean [across regions of the world] mask-wearing levels corresponding to a 19% decrease in R). We use the largest wearing survey (n = 20 million) and obtain our estimates from regions across six continents. We account for nonpharmaceutical interventions and time spent in public, and quantify our uncertainty. Factors additional to mask mandates influenced the worldwide early uptake of mask wearing. Our analysis goes further than past work in the quality of wearing data–100 times the size with random sampling–geographical scope, a semimechanistic infection model, and the validation of our results.

One of the music venues that I've attended in the past is in Santa Cruz, CA.  I still get their weekly mailings but haven't been there since before COVID.  I note that they say they follow their county's orders and that masks are NOT required.

This past week, I evaluated going to a concert in an indoor venue in Berkeley, CA. An artist I have followed for decades was playing there.  The venue said all the right things:  MERV-13 filters, 7 air exchanges per hour of fresh air, no food in the auditorium, vaccinations of all guests (5+; no under 5 allowed) checked before entry, masks (no bandanas/gaiters) required of all guests, performers&staff vaccinated, cleaning of surfaces, etc.  Refunds given if you feel sick & can't attend.  I called 1.5 hours before the show and was told that about 30% of the seats were sold.

I decided to go, knowing that I could leave at any time if I felt uncomfortable.  I took a new N95 mask (plus 2 spares).  I wear glasses and wore a baseball cap as I have when I've had to go into stores and such (it is close to a full face mask).

Everything went as indicated.  Vaccination checked before they'd let me in.  During the entire show and after, I saw only one guest not wearing their mask properly (over their mouth but not their nose).   The crowd was mostly 50+.   The main floor had 3 sections.  The middle section was 60-70% occupied when I got there (10 minutes before the show).  The side section I chose had no more than 2 people on any row, all on the aisle.  I wound up seating maybe 7 seats in from the aisle, with one person on the aisle on my row, and two people on the aisle on the adjacent rows.  

So, if you're in the Bay Area and looking for a music venue that is serious about protecting their patrons, I would recommend The Freight & Salvage in Berkeley.  I can't promise that other audiences will be as good about wearing masks.


I'd think just about everyone in the US, vaccinated or not, has some immunity, and anyone, vaccinated or not, might have COVID at any time.  I don't think vaccination proof is much good as a predictor as to whether someone has COVID today.  Recent vaccination/booster is presumably a predictor.  (If someone has never been vaccinated and has never had COVID, they probably have been and will continue to be very careful to avoid exposure.)

In Long COVID, Blood Markers Are Linked to Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (medical news article about a report from March)

UCSF scientists correlated certain blood markers with the presence of particular symptoms in some Long COVID sufferers.  Note that this is not predictive of getting the symptoms, but may allow a test to confirm (or maybe quantify) the issue.

Quote:Goetzl said that SARS-CoV-2, like several other viruses, targets structures called mitochondria within the cells it invades. The virus very likely interferes with normal mitochondrial tasks, he said, which include providing the cell with a usable form of energy and contributing to the immune system’s ability to respond to infection.

The researchers measured significant differences in levels of several mitochondrial proteins between long COVID patients with and without neuropsychiatric symptoms, pointing to alterations in mitochondrial function within neurons, according to Goetzl.

“I think the majority of scientists who have considered this might say it’s very unlikely that the virus particles remain infectious at this stage, but these viral proteins hanging around in the cell can still do bad things,” Goetzl said. He is optimistic about the development of small-molecule drugs that can enter infected cells and destroy specific viral proteins.

The CDC redefined "high" (etc) levels of community transmission to even higher levels by introducing "community levels" in March. What used to be high community transmission levels would most likely now be low community levels.


Ten months ago, CNN reported that the CDC definition was for "community transmission level"

Quote:Specifically, a "Low" transmission is considered no more than 10 cases per 100,000 people, or a test positivity rate of less than 5%. "Moderate" transmission is 10 to 50 cases per 100,000 people, or a positivity rate between 5% and 8%. "Substantial" transmission is 50 to 100 cases per 100,000, or a positivity rate between 8% and 10%, and "high" transmission is 100 or more cases per 100,000 people or a positivity rate of 10% or higher.

If a county has values in two different transmission levels, then the CDC uses the metric that is higher.

I didn't see this widely reported. "Following the Coachella Valley Music and Arts and Stagecoach country music festivals, which took place over three consecutive weekends in April, Riverside County is reporting a substantial jump in coronavirus infections. COVID-19 cases have increased 736% in the region around the Empire Polo Club in Indio, the venue where the festivals were held, since May 1, according to the Desert Sun. Hospitalizations are also on the rise, according to the report. There were 62 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the region as of Friday, up 12 from Tuesday."

Currently it seems the research reports getting into the news are scattered, and are getting interpreted according to the perspectives of the news organizations.

For instance, this research letter dated 13 May 2022
Neutralizing Antibodies Against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant (BA.1) 1 to 18 Weeks After the Second and Third Doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccine

Their main claim is "Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses of BNT162b2."  It appears that this was opportunistic and done without the knowledge of the subjects. "This study constitutes national infectious disease surveillance performed on excess biological material".  Accordingly, it was a small study (some results are based on less than 10 measurements (some with 3 or 4 at one end point) so outliers impact the results).

Some inconsistencies bug me about this study.  Sometimes the "50% Serum neutralization titer" values are presented as logarithms and sometimes as linear.  Sometimes their results are about the titer value (and they present results as multiplicative levels of the geometric mean titer), and sometimes their results are percentages about the ability to measure the titer value (minimum of 10).

I was put off by the use of the terms "rapid" and "only" in their main claim.  It presumes a particular rate which I don't see specified.

I would say that whatever this study found might be suggestive of something to measure, not a valid measurement itself.

My wife & I just came back from a (driving) trip to spend time with our children & our 2 grandchildren (younger is 5) in Southern California.

Both the grandkids & their parents have had COVID, and have had all available vaccines.  All have had trouble with smell & taste since being sick.

"Granddaddy, why are you still wearing a mask?"
  "Because I don't want to catch COVID as it could make me very sick."
"Grandma, why are you still wearing a mask?"
  "Because I don't want to catch your cold.  Remember last visit when I did, and I got so sick I had to go in the hospital"

After we left, they again asked their mother why we wore masks around them.  "I thought we didn't have to any more."  After her explanation (she's very patient with them and explains things very well) about the difference between being required to wear masks and choosing to wear masks, they both chose to wear masks to their music class.


I see Santa Clara County is recording infections at a higher rate than the peak of the Delta wave.  And that's with less testing.  Sigh...