This comes from the 2023 EIU global risk assessment. The trouble is, lifting China's #zeroCOVID policy is the very thing propelling the evolution of a “new, highly aggressive variant of COVID”🧵 mkto-ab220141.com/NzUzLVJJUS00Mz…
China is too dependent on the productivity of its factory workforce. Factories are ill-ventilated sardines cans ripe for COVID eruptions disrupting manufacturing. Mass death/injury means worker supply is less than demand, pushing up the cost of labour. axios.com/2022/12/16/the…
Mortality from pandemics has historically increased the value of labour. The plague probably helped to end serfdom in Europe. Chinese manufacturing depends on cheap labour, but with #infiniteCOVID, CCP serfdom will struggle, and this critical cogwheel in the economy will stutter.
There is a risk that the resulting economic and social unrest may crash the Chinese property market, mentioned as a risk in the EIU 2022 report. Reduced manufacturing will lessen supply and drive up inflation worldwide, forcing “fast monetary tightening”. mkto-ab220141.com/NzUzLVJJUS00Mz…
Once again, I would issue a stern warning to economists that biosecurity risks to world socioeconomic stability are being gravely underestimated. The socioeconomic impacts of COVID are only just beginning to make themselves felt. The political storm is only just brewing.
Those familiar with infectious diseases in other species will know they can be as much an existential threat to species survival as climate change from asteroid strikes. As with anthropogenic climate change, we are not taking this seriously enough.
Pestilence has forever been accompanied by famine and war. That there are signs of growing geopolitical military instability at a time of worldwide pestilence is likely no coincidence. The more we let rip with the pestilence, the greater the amplification of geopolitical risk.
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Malaria is vector-borne. How would you hasten the spread of malaria? By telling people to protect themselves against malaria by handwashing instead of using mosquito nets.
HIV is body-fluid-borne. How would you hasten the spread of HIV? By telling people to protect themselves against HIV by handwashing instead of using condoms (or PEP/PrEP)
Cholera is waterborne. How would you hasten the spread of cholera? By telling people to protect themselves against cholera by handwashing instead of boiling their drinking water.
Despite ancient origins, “contagionism” remained deeply unpopular because it implied the need for lockdowns to contain spread. Libertarian miasmatists claimed diseases weren't contagious. They regarded themselves as too modern for nasty Medieval lockdowns.
That's why when Semmelweis came up with the contagionist concept of handwashing to reduce disease spread, the whole libertarian medical world gasped in abject horror.
The idea of explosive contagiousness still terrifies people today. If a virus is airborne, like measles, it implies high-grade contagionism, leading to government to downplay the severity of the eruption: “Oh, it's nothing a dab of hand gel can't fix”.
This article on the outbreak of Cryptosporidium infections in Queensland is riddled with problems and contradictions. abc.net.au/news/2024-02-2…
It states: “Health officials say the spread of the illness can be controlled by proper hygiene and hand washing.” Yet, it also says, “You don't need to get much water in your mouth to potentially get a case.” How does handwashing stop that?
QLD Health claims: “What we saw with СОVID was people taking … precautions and washing their hands and limiting contacts, which led to a suppression of other communicable diseases. It's not surprising that there's a bit of a rebound where people are getting a bit complacent.”
Statements claiming that SARS-CoV-2 can't possibly be airborne because that would imply it is frightfully contagious, with an R0 more like measles, reminds us of how divisive a concept contagionism has been through the centuries. 🧵
Miasmatists held that miasmatism was more modern and libertarian, as opposed to contagionism, which had been used since the Middle Ages to justify quarantines and lockdowns to contain person-to-person transmission.
If you were a miasmatist, you held that lockdown and quarantine were useless since diseases were never contagious from person to person but spread by miasmas. It was your attitude to lockdown that determined whether you were a miasmatist or a contagionist.
A nice photo illustrating why surgical mаsks don't work as respiratory protective equipment. You can see big gaps at the top, sides, and bottom. All the air you breathe in goes through the gaps and enters your lungs unfiltered. Photo from a respirator ad by Koken.
But—you may object—surgical mаsks have excellent particle filtration efficiency (PFE). So they must work…right? A high PFE means nothing if the air you breathe in sneaks past unfiltered through these gaps rather than going through the filter. armbrustusa.com/pages/mask-tes…
This is why mаsks don't work. But there is a device that does work to stop you from inhaling airborne pathogens, and it is formally designated a “respirator” because it is designed to be tight-fitting enough not to allow leaks. #WearARespie
A bit of commentary on this @JAMANetworkOpen paper. It just means that HCWs should get a fresh respirator after they remove their respirators for a meal break mid-shift. Simple. 🧵 jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…
The mechanism of fit failure is uncomplicated. It is strap fatigue. The reason trifolds didn't last as long is that they were Auras, which have super thin straps. This is not the case with Trident trifolds. It has nothing to do with the facepiece design (cup, duckbill, trifold).
The authors note, “the safety of reuse found that N95 fit was reduced after 5 donnings and doffings”. This is because it stretches the straps, provoking strap fatigue. The solution is to get fresh straps.