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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Airborne Virus Basics

Artist's Concept of a Viruses Contained in Water Droplets
Cute picture, but it is very inaccurate. Water droplets are actually about a zillion times bigger than a virus particle. The link goes to a cute article that doesn't really clarify anything.

The Scratching Post has a post about airborne viruses, which prompted me to comment, and since I made so much sense I thought I better post it here as well. 

I think the idea about the masks is that virions often travel in water droplets, water droplets that are expelled when you talk or blow your nose or maybe even breath. So while a mask won't stop a free floating virion, it will stop a water droplet. Anyway, I think that's the theory.

The other rumor I've heard is that these virions won't survive in places with a temperature different than human body temperature for very long, which is why you don't really need to worry about free floating virions. Should any escape from you, by the time they travel 6 feet in 72 degree air, they will have expired.

But all that's irrelevant. The masks are stupid and the lockdowns are ridiculous and awful. If Congress wanted to give Pfizer a zillion dollars, they should have just given it to them and not bothered the rest of us with this panic driven stupidity.

 

6 comments:

xoxoxoBruce said...

If that's true traveling 6 feet in 72° air would kill them IF they were not encased in water. Water won't change temperature that fast.
Shame about those 5,795,899 dead people.

Chuck Pergiel said...

3 million people die every year in US, pandemic or not.

Joseph Moore said...

Hey. wow. math! I'm good at math! Let's see:

About 7.5 billion people on earth, with about a 1% annual mortality rate. So, two years would 2%, which is about 150 million deaths expected in the normal course of things. The claim is that the dreaded virus has killed 5.8 million so far. that would be 3.9% of the total, or an increase in the annual death date from 1% to 1.02%. For comparison, the 1918 flu killed an estimated 50M people, which, when adjusted for population, would be about 400M people today - two orders of magnitude worse than what we're seeing today.

Those death totals are the result of a methodology that produces systematic overstatements, BTW, and have been criticized as such by scientifically literate people from Day 1. About an order of magnitude off. And there's no free lunch - the steps taken to combat the virus do have some unknown costs - body count - but this inevitable fact seems to never be discussed.

HTH

Chuck Pergiel said...

HTH? Hospice Termination Hopefuls? Hermetric Tangential Hoops? Hyper Tedious Halflings?

xoxoxoBruce said...

I heard a very good case made for undercount but either way.
Dad died but he was only 1.02% over the normal so don't feel bad. Besides he was old, retired from his 50 year working contribution to society so no big loss.

Chuck Pergiel said...

I am sorry to hear about your dad, Bruce. How old was he?