Advancing Scientific Knowledge and COVID19
ICYMI Fred and I discuss the advancing scientific knowledge and how this has impacted both the understanding but also the mitigation of COVID19. We highlight the key changes to the guidance that has taken place over the last year or more that includes
💦Transmission path – droplet vs aerosol
🚿Surfaces and cleaning guidance with a focus on hand washing
⚠️Learning from History and the 1918 Pandemic
If you need additional help or support getting back to work and school safely reach out via the website https:// www.AccountableHealthLLC.com
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein with accountable health here working with employers to help improve their employee programs around health and benefits. And Nick, a lot of changes in COVID over the past year plus that we’ve been doing this, and particularly around what we’ve learned with mitigation strategies. So what’s up with all that now?
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, so I, science is a continually developing activity, we continue to add knowledge, we change our thinking, as we learn more about the world around us, we start to change the way that we understand things, you know, just think of atoms. Prior to the discovery of the atoms, people didn’t think that there were these small things. And even when we got to the atom, they said, right, that’s the most indivisible thing on the planet. Well, actually, it turns out, it’s not because it’s made up of, you know, some smaller particles. And potentially, it’s made up of strings, depending on whether you believe string theory on what I believe but you know, the concept of string theory. And this is true in the pandemic, we’ve continued to learn, but what are the key things that we’ve learned and, you know, the changes in terms of the way that we understand and I would say the biggest thing has been the change to the aerosol versus droplets. And everybody gets tripped up, you know, what does this all mean? Why do I care isn’t a droplet and aerosol and, you know, so let’s try and break this down, it’s really a function of the size and droplets are bigger, and what happens to droplets, they go blue, and fall to the ground very quickly, so they don’t spread, aerosols light float on the wind, just like you see in the fall with a leaf fluttering by, and it continues to sort of catch, and that spreads the disease, we have changed the way that we think about it, when we started, we didn’t believe that that was the spread. And that’s cause differences in the way that we sort of address how we mitigate this disease.
Fred Goldstein
Absolutely, and moved us to why we need to be wearing masks indoors. I think, you know, one of the things is we’ve looked at this, and it’s been fascinating, I know, you’re interested in a lot of different areas of science, you just talked about some physics, etc. I know, we’re interested in space, and all these things, and you’re a physician. So you’ve got that whole biological component to, it’s been fascinating to watch all the different scientists get involved in this. And we see that expertise, you know, an article comes out from a physics professor or an engineering person or a physician or an epidemiologist. And they and that’s really allowed us to advance this. And that whole issue of aerosols is important to understand. Because it really is clear now that these indoor spaces are the difficult ones. And it’s not necessarily always a six foot distance that’s critical. These have shown in this one study up to 60 feet, but it makes sense if you think about it, if it’s that leaf floating around in the air, or something even lighter, and you have a number of people indoors, you may walk through some cloud of leaves, you know, that get blown by and be exposed. And that’s why indoors at this point is still important to be wearing a mask. Yeah, I
Nick van Terheyden
think great point. And it also brings up one of the other changes that we’ve seen, it took a while for the guidance to take off. And that’s because of the conservative nature, appropriately. So for the CDC and other groups that are now saying, you know, what, this surface cleaning, not quite as important as we thought it was. And you know, I look back at my own experience, I’m pretty sure I had some gloves. I don’t know that I was really rigorous about wearing them. But maybe it was in the early days. I think I quickly realized as we moved from this different transmission, I saw some of the studies. In fact, in our course that we developed together, Fred, we’ve been talking about how long things last. The reality is it doesn’t last long. And you know, just regular hand washing is actually more than sufficient is wiping down. But we’re still doing it. The question is, are we going to see that continue? Does it need to continue? I think the science says not. But you know, there’s even technology driving?
Fred Goldstein
Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking, you know, you point out with this technology, my Apple Watch, which now has this feature or function that checks when you’re washing your hands for 20 seconds, as that was the recommendation early on, Apple said Well, let’s jump in and drop that into the watch. Now, it may be a good idea just in general to be washing your hands for 20 seconds, but it’s not necessarily a COVID related issue at this point like it was before.
Nick van Terheyden
And you know, importantly there is a gender difference in the watches they issue because we added many more prompting for this based on the studies in the men’s restroom, which shockingly you number of people that walk out less than 30%. Whereas in the female restrooms, we’re talking over 70%.
Fred Goldstein
You had to go there, Nick. So maybe we need a little better incentive on this one that not only should my watch, ask me a question at the end, were you washing your hands because you didn’t hit 20 seconds? Perhaps it you just zapped me and get me going? As a behavior modification approach.
Nick van Terheyden
So you’re recommending the apple introduces tapping watch. I like it. Fred. I’m so they’re going to take that up, that will be ideal. I’m pretty sure there’s a bunch of women out there that are saying, Yeah, please do that. must be clear. I see.
Fred Goldstein
Absolutely. You know what, as part of this, Nick, one of the things that’s fascinating, too, is what we’ve seen these mitigation strategies do around other respiratory diseases.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah. So in fact, what’s happened is with all of this intervention, what do we see with the flu rates in the southern hemisphere, almost I, I want to say I heard one or two cases, I’m sure it was more than that, but you know, completely disappeared, and the same year. And that’s because of all of this introduction of this, you know, better cleanliness. And that’s the thing I would take out of the 1980s and pandemic, that inflammation got dissipated, but much slower than it is now, because it didn’t have the communication, people brought it back to where they were living, working. And they introduced all these public health measures. So if we learn one thing is don’t drop the ball in terms of doing this, pick the science, pick what’s right, and continue to do that, because it’s good. All around. This is not going to be the last infection that sweeps around.
Fred Goldstein
Absolutely. Hopefully, many of these practices will continue, obviously allowing people to do things in a more normal manner. It’s not about controlling things, but certain practices would make some sense to keep these illnesses down in the future, and help the next pandemic from just blowing up like this one did. So with that, this is Fred Goldstein with accountable health. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like more information, please go to accountable health LLC COMM
Nick van Terheyden
And this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
