Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It's Too Late by Deborah BirxMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
And then there was the surface sampling on the Diamond Princess. It was bad enough that not everyone on board her was tested every day, but after passengers disembarked, surfaces on the ship were swabbed for the virus. Of course, the PCR test showed SARS-CoV-2 everywhere. RNA fragments can survive on surfaces where the full-length infectious virus may not. What was left behind, therefore, couldn’t infect people. Experts should have understood this immediately, or investigated it quickly. By doing that, they would have eliminated the possibility that surface contamination was contributing to spread. Inadvertently this swabbing led to the “surface transmission” theory of Covid-19 spread, producing the run on disinfecting wipes across the globe, the religious quarantining of packages, and the habitual wiping down of all groceries for weeks. And it was another distraction from the true source of continued spread: the infected experiencing no symptoms and transmitting the virus to others.
Research News
COVID’s Catch-22: The paradox of masking and disease
There's a paradox at play in the dynamics between mask-wearing and the spread of disease: While masking reduces transmission rates and consequently disease prevalence, the reduction of disease inhibits mask-wearing — thereby promoting epidemic revival. A new study led by researchers at the University of Virginia, co-authored by SFI's Simon Levin and Stefani Crabtree, explores these dynamics.
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