Scary Peer Reviewed Science - Trigger Warning

[ClimbDad]

Taking Mumsnet HQ’s suggestion on board, this thread is for those who want scientific information about COVID-19. It is clearly advertised as scary, and has a trigger warning, so no complaints from anyone complaining they didn’t know what they were stumbling into.

I’ll only be sharing peer reviewed papers from respected journals and would advise anyone else who wants to share anything to use the same criteria.

The thread isn’t actually designed to scare. It’s designed to inform, so that people can make a decent assessment of risk and lobby decision makers when appropriate. Don’t assume government knows more than you. They’ve been behind the curve on everything.

I’ll start. The Guardian wrote a good article about the progress of respiratory viruses through autumn and how we don’t know whether SARS-COV-2 will compete with flu.

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/19/what-happens-when-flu-meets-covid-19

The theory of viral competition suggests COVID19 might be kept at bay by flu. In other words infection by other respiratory viruses might help reduce the impact of a second wave.

However this peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Medical Virology suggests flu and COVID19 don’t compete, and coexist simultaneously.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.26364

The inference is that having SARS-COV-2 circulating at the same time as influenza will cause more serious infection. It doesn’t seem that viral competition will make things better.

Practically what does this mean? I believe it means it is prudent to be even more cautious during flu season than we were in spring, and to do everything possible to reduce transmission. That is going to be particularly relevant to schools. Even if one refuses to accept schools play a role in COVID19 transmission, it is established science that schools are the engines behind influenza transmission every year, so precautionary measures make sense even if just to reduce spread of flu.

Which one of those comments is the one that made you decide to launch a campaign to discredit this poster?

@nellodee who are the people saying it is a bad flu though? I keep seeing this thrown around, mainly on ClimbDad threads, but I am yet to see anyone actually saying it.

I follow the Figures thread on here and stay up to date on most research before it's posted. I don't hang on ClimDad's every word - what I do is defend his right to say it without being harassed by a group of internet bullies.

Who is on a campaign to discredit him? I just want to know why he keeps posting the same thing all the time and what his agenda is.

This is a discussion forum but ClimbDad clearly isn’t up for discussion. He presents everything as fact and for us to blithely accept it.

@Jrobhatch29

Anothet drawback is that this is a study on adults ill enough to be in a hospital setting. Are these findings replicated in asymptomatic children? I dont want to be accused of having a pop at the OP, but his post was not rational.

@Jrobhatch29

According to the European Centre for Disease Control, citing a recent study:

“There is no significant difference between viral loads in persons 1-20 years of age in comparison to adults 21-100 years of age.”

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/latest-evidence/transmission

There have been multiple studies published on this subject.

No difference in viral load between children and adults. Study by C Drosten et al: virologie-ccm.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites/m_cc05/virologie-ccm/dateien_upload/Weitere_Dateien/Charite_SARS-CoV-2_viral_load_2020-06-02.pdf

Another study found no difference in the viral loads of asymptomatic and symptomatic children, and made this recommendation:

“Our findings suggest the necessity for children to wear masks, especially in schools, where children would talk in close proximity.“

wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-2449_article

The recommendation was written before the evidence of airborne transmission, so I’d be interested to hear whether the authors are more or less in favour of masks now.

The obstinate can pick holes in any evidence. I mean there are some people who believe the Earth is flat. But on the balance of probabilities, in the face of the evidence, it would seem prudent to follow the example of so many other countries and ask children and staff to wear masks (subject to specific individual circumstances) in school.

If I’m wrong, we can take the masks off. If you’re wrong thousands of people might end up falling ill. Risk reward of not wearing masks just doesn’t make any sense.

Your continued attempts to question my rationality aren’t working. I’m providing source data, papers and high quality evidence. What I say or think doesn’t really matter. People can read for themselves and make up their own minds. In fact, I advise everyone on here not to listen to anonymous mouthpieces of any viewpoint. Read the scientific evidence and decide for yourselves.

Jrobhatch I have been following this forum since before it was a forum and I have lost count of the amount of people who have minimised this virus and compared it to flu (or a cold). I'm not going to do a search on that because it would quite simply take up my entire summer holidays.

We are intelligent people on here, most of us! No danger of many people blithely accepting. Quite the opposite!

I find "his" style a bit like a tabloid. For example, the heading "Cardiac damage even in mild cases" is so misleading and designed to get people to read. The study showed some cases, and those are probably transient, but it's too soon to tell. Every study has its limitations, whether that's patient demographics, baseline characteristics etc. Rational discussion is good.

jrob they honestly exist. Someone last week said it was no worse than a cold.

@nellodee

Jrobhatch I have been following this forum since before it was a forum and I have lost count of the amount of people who have minimised this virus and compared it to flu (or a cold). I'm not going to do a search on that because it would quite simply take up my entire summer holidays.

None of them have been on these recent threads though. Not you personally, but on another thread this week it was being suggested that anyone who questioned the OP was in the "it is just the flu brigade". It isnt fair. I do worry about Covid lots, but I try to add some balance or perspective, which may not always be right. I dont think posting studies as evidence or declaring proof is right at all without any background information or acknowkedgement that the study itself says it is only a possibility. I don't think this is flu

@SengaStrawberry

Who is on a campaign to discredit him? I just want to know why he keeps posting the same thing all the time and what his agenda is.

This is a discussion forum but ClimbDad clearly isn’t up for discussion. He presents everything as fact and for us to blithely accept it.

Who is on a campaign to discredit him?

Quite a few people. Probably 5G, antivax, Us for Them types, but who knows?

I just want to know why he keeps posting the same thing all the time and what his agenda is.

Because this is a parenting website and I would like schools to reopen safely in September. Kids have missed out too much, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we won’t need better measures, including masks in school.

This is a discussion forum but ClimbDad clearly isn’t up for discussion. He presents everything as fact and for us to blithely accept it.

Blithely presents peer reviewed, evidence based science. It’s hard to discuss counterpoints that are based on gut feelings, positive vibes or third hand anecdotes. Happy to discuss what protective measures might be needed, and there are plenty of teachers on here who’ve got great ideas. But some people refuse to accept that opening up schools with normal class sizes and without masks for all is going to cause any problems.

Once again, stop playing the man. I’m unimportant. Focus on the science. And if the science isn’t to your liking, what are you doing on such a clearly labelled thread?

Fair enough @ClimbDad but in the future please consider presenting the studies in a more balanced way, and discuss the actual conclusions of the study, and not your own interpretation.

On the numbers thread the just a flu lot would be slapped down. I think maybe you are sensibly staying away from those threads where people still say 'children don't catch it', 'children don't spread it' and 'isn't Ebola' (always my fave!) along with ' we don't lock down because of a cold' and ' kids need to build up their immunity to everything' posters who think school during covid might be the equivalent to a chickenpox party.

On Twitter this morning there was device to NQTs : one poster said ' schools are like petri dishes; you will get ill'. Not scientific! She wasn't slapped down. But I did wonder whether, given the current circumstances, that was a responsible thing to say to NQTs. But, by the same token, all teachers know this is true. Lets hope all the handwashing (it won't be handwashing, it'll be anti bac slathering...) is enough and will, coincidentally help the petri dish effect.

advice

Very interesting summary news feature in nature - "Mounting evidence suggests coronavirus is airborne — but health advice has not caught up"

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02058-1

When SARS-CoV-2 emerged, health officials recommended frequent hand washing and maintaining a physical distance to break droplet and contact transmission routes. And some researchers and clinicians say these approaches are enough. Contact-tracing data support those measures, says Kate Grabowski, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “The highest-risk contacts are those that are individuals you share a home with or that you’ve been in a confined space with for a substantial period of time, which would lead me to believe it’s probably driven mostly by droplet transmission,” she says, although she says that aerosol transmission might occur on rare occasions.

But other researchers say that case studies of large-scale clusters have shown the importance of airborne transmission. When the news media reported large numbers of people falling ill following indoor gatherings, that caused Kim Prather, an aerosol scientist at the University of California, San Diego, to begin questioning the adequacy of the social-distancing recommendations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which call for people to stay 6 feet (1.8 metres) apart. The indoor spread suggested the virus was being transmitted in a different way from how health authorities had assumed. “For an atmospheric chemist, which I am, the only way you get there is you put it in the air and everybody breathes that air,” says Prather, who joined the commentary. “That is the smoking gun.”

@SengaStrawberry

Who is on a campaign to discredit him? I just want to know why he keeps posting the same thing all the time and what his agenda is.

This is a discussion forum but ClimbDad clearly isn’t up for discussion. He presents everything as fact and for us to blithely accept it.

I was going to post a list of people who had made personal attacks on ClimbDad rather than addressing these posts. I deleted it, because I thought it probably went against Mumsnet rules, but I had well over a dozen names and was only at page 4 or so of a previous thread. I clearly wasn't alone in my evaluation of this, as I also counted around 10 different posters questioning why people were attacking the OP so vehemently.

I'd really recommend this reddit subforum for balanced science about Covid with no real agenda other than collating current scientific knowledge www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/

A good read through it shows that, of course, this is a very worrying virus with wide-reaching effects but equally science is beginning to get a handle on it and there are lots of potential treatments and vaccine candidates coming through. T cell immunity is also looking positive for some groups of people.

"If I’m wrong, we can take the masks off. If you’re wrong thousands of people might end up falling ill. Risk reward of not wearing masks just doesn’t make any sense."

Apart from I did not say it was wrong. I said you were wrong to post it in this way.

Blithely presents peer reviewed, evidence based science. It’s hard to discuss counterpoints that are based on gut feelings, positive vibes or third hand anecdotes.

But you don't discuss anything with anyone. You lecture people, then if anyone disagrees with you, you complain that they're basing what they say on 'positive vibes' or 'expecting the virus to be kind to us'.

Posters above pointed out the difference between dead virus and infectious virus in that study, and that the study's authors themselves did not claim the level of proof for airborne transmission that you're claiming. But you don't want to discuss that, you want to claim that everyone is unfairly picking on you. Because you don't seem to want to discuss this paper at all, you want to present this paper as proof that your underlying point (I think masks in schools? yes? no? it is hard to tell) is right.

As I've said above, I do think it is sensible to act as if the virus can be transmitted this way in a lot of settings. I don't even disagree with you! But your approach to this is not helpful. You claim a level of expertise you don't have, you are condescending and dismissive to people who disagree with you, you catastrophise without any understanding of the impacts of catastrophising on public health measures, and you don't seem willing to actually talk to people, rather than lecturing at them.

(Did you really claim you were a scientist working on a Covid treatment, btw?)

@Jrobhatch, there was certainly a post questioning why it was important that Covid was linked to lingering heart problems as "even a cold" had the ability to do that. This was in the past couple of days. I only know this because I skim read it whilst looking for something else. I also read a couple of "my mum had this and it was mild and she was better in 2 days" kind of comments. It's ridiculous to say they don't come up all the time, you just don't notice them because you aren't actively looking for them.

I'm a scientist. There are now over 36,000 Pubmed entries for Covid 19, so unless people have a huge amount of time on their hands, any sharing of information could potentially be 'cherry picking'. What I see the OP doing is sharing emerging research from high quality journals so that people can choose for themselves the level of precaution they are comfortable with. Of course down the line some of this information will be proved or disproved with further research. But sticking our heads in the sand and proclaiming anything vaguely worrying as 'fake news' isn't helpful.

one study: good news for outdoor spaces but indoor environments might be more risky

A team at the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate in Washington DC found that environmental conditions play a big part in how long virus particles in aerosols remain viable. SARS-CoV-2 in mock saliva aerosols lost 90% of its viability in 6 minutes of exposure to summer sunlight, compared with 125 minutes in darkness10. This study suggests that indoor environments might be especially risky, because they lack ultraviolet light and because the virus can become more concentrated than it would be in outdoor spaces.

MichaelMumsnet (MNHQ) Thu 30-Jul-20 09:09:10
Hi all. We've removed some personal attacks from this thread.
Please address the point and not the person - and as always, please do report anything that you think breaks the talk guidelines.
Peace and love,
MNHQ

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02058-1

Any thoughts?

Climbdad you are lumping UsforThem in with 5G protestors and anti-vaxxers and expecting to be taken seriously?

usforthem.co.uk/evidence They have the support of a significant number of doctors and scientists. They are basing their campaign on the available evidence and a balanced view of other harms children are vulnerable to when they aren't in school.

People are making assumptions that others are taking issue with your posts simply because they want to deny reality or they can't take negative news or it's some weird personal attack against you.

That is completely inaccurate. You have shown across several threads that you barely read other peoples' responses, that even when they say 'yes I agree this virus is serious but ....' you will come back with posts about people denying the seriousness of the virus and say they are ridiculing you and not listening and will regret it and the world will never be the same again. Absolutely fair enough to have a discussion about the latest research on the virus but you seem to have missed there is a long running thread analysing the latest facts and figures where there is an appetite to look at this virus from all angles already.

I am very grateful others are sticking around to politely challenge your posts because I still feel strongly your posts are potentially harmful on the basis they are scaremongering.

If this virus is airborne I am unconvinced a damp, dirty, incorrectly worn mask which is fiddled with repeatedly will help much. I do favour mask-wearing on the basis they might slow spread and hopefully save lives but I also believe as winter sets in people will get better at wearing them anyway. Cases rising plus people being stuck indoors will scare many. I don't want to live in an authoritarian state where everyone is forced to wear one.