Here we go again. Science that doesn't make sense.
Three months ago, most of us had never heard of coronavirus, far less imagined how it would change our lives. So, what have we learnt about it and how might that help us defeat it?
www.dailymail.co.uk
WHY THE TWO-METRE RULE MAY NOT BE ENOUGH
Social distancing guidance is to keep two metres away from people we don't live with. This rule is thought to be based on experiments from the 1930s that suggested droplets released from coughs and sneezes can travel between one and two metres.
But this understanding may be outdated. In an experiment to be shown this week, led by the Health and Safety Executive, a cough from a medical manikin called Violet provides a graphic illustration of just how easily and how far coronavirus particles can spread.
In the demonstration, Violet coughs up a liquid laced with a dye that shows up under ultraviolet light. The dye is meant to reveal how droplets containing coronavirus particles are propelled through the air when we cough
This is total BS. In 1999 at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto there was an interactive exhibit that was demonstrating how far particles fly when someone sneezes, and it was explaining how when you sneeze particles travel as far as 6 metres, and when you cough as far as 8 metres.
Here's also an article from 2007 which goes into very deep detail, getting to the same conclusion:
Expelled large droplets were carried more than 6 m away by exhaled air at a velocity of 50 m/s (sneezing)
So the fact that they only now discover this through sophisticated UV filming is total crap. Only that and it should invalidate the rest of the study / story, but for a population which needs a guide in order to be able to estimate two meters, that might make sense:
But let's continue.
HOW LONG DOES THE VIRUS SURVIVE?
Whether you have symptoms or not, the virus will be released from your respiratory system into the air and the droplets can 'last for many hours on different surfaces which we may then touch', says Dr Singh.
'A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed the virus can survive suspended in the air for up to three hours. It can stay on cardboard for 24 hours and plastic for 72 hours.'
I propose that everybody that gets food delivered to their door puts it in quarantine for 73 hours, then they eat it, after washing hands and box vigorously, for a minimum 20 seconds, with warm water and soap.
So if the virus can survive suspended in the air for three hours (still not sure I understand why the cardboard or plastic are not in the air), how does social distancing work?
When I go shopping for food, someone that
is practicing social distancing, but is an asymptomatic, unaware carrier, sneezes
while observing the rule to sneeze in your elbow, there is still a chance of the virus to be released in the air around said person, and it can linger in place or be taken by air currents and I can walk by and get it, even though all rules have been followed. And hey, there might be a lot of people going around in said grocery store in those three hours, no?