covid: mask up and shut up
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/wear-your-mask-and-stop-talking/615796/
"compared with yelling, quiet talking reduces aerosols by a factor of five; being completely silent reduces them by a factor of about 50. That means talking quietly, rather than yelling, reduces the risk of viral transmission by a degree comparable to properly wearing a mask."
Makes sense, given the superspreader epidemiology: a bunch of quiet infected people don't spread it, that One Loud Guy at a party spreads it. Which may mean we should relax more about mask deviants on buses if they're quiet. Of course, that's from 2020 August; do Delta and Omicron make more aerosols, or the same number of more infectious aerosols? I dunno.
Also schools: masking teachers is a great idea, but I've seen mixed evidence on whether masking students helps. The teacher is talking a lot by definition, but if the kids are mostly quiet, may not matter much. Of course there's lunch and play time.
Relatedly, an innovation in Japan has been 'mokushoku', or silent dining: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/japan-silent-pandemic-dining/620565/ and https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/27/national/mokushoku-japan-restaurants-coronavirus/
Schools again: if people don't want kids to wear masks, then go for silent dining (do that anyway), and send them outside to play. If it's too cold out (Finnish kids say 'what?') have them mask for indoor recess when they're louder.
This sort of thing also makes it harder to compare countries and policies. Some places have formal mandates that don't get enforced; Japan has almost no mandates even in a pandemic, but crushing social conformity. Japan has looked similar to Korea in masking, Korea probably has better testing and tracing -- but if current restaurant behavior is quieter in Japan, maybe that's why Korea's been having an outbreak and Japan isn't. (Well, wasn't -- my scraper sees new cases inching up in Japan, though it doesn't show up yet on a graph scaled for anyone else.) See the
DW comments at https://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/591469.html#comments
"compared with yelling, quiet talking reduces aerosols by a factor of five; being completely silent reduces them by a factor of about 50. That means talking quietly, rather than yelling, reduces the risk of viral transmission by a degree comparable to properly wearing a mask."
Makes sense, given the superspreader epidemiology: a bunch of quiet infected people don't spread it, that One Loud Guy at a party spreads it. Which may mean we should relax more about mask deviants on buses if they're quiet. Of course, that's from 2020 August; do Delta and Omicron make more aerosols, or the same number of more infectious aerosols? I dunno.
Also schools: masking teachers is a great idea, but I've seen mixed evidence on whether masking students helps. The teacher is talking a lot by definition, but if the kids are mostly quiet, may not matter much. Of course there's lunch and play time.
Relatedly, an innovation in Japan has been 'mokushoku', or silent dining: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/japan-silent-pandemic-dining/620565/ and https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/27/national/mokushoku-japan-restaurants-coronavirus/
Schools again: if people don't want kids to wear masks, then go for silent dining (do that anyway), and send them outside to play. If it's too cold out (Finnish kids say 'what?') have them mask for indoor recess when they're louder.
This sort of thing also makes it harder to compare countries and policies. Some places have formal mandates that don't get enforced; Japan has almost no mandates even in a pandemic, but crushing social conformity. Japan has looked similar to Korea in masking, Korea probably has better testing and tracing -- but if current restaurant behavior is quieter in Japan, maybe that's why Korea's been having an outbreak and Japan isn't. (Well, wasn't -- my scraper sees new cases inching up in Japan, though it doesn't show up yet on a graph scaled for anyone else.) See the
DW comments at https://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/591469.html#comments