Do you think covid spread is a function of weather?

Geez, sorry Mr Trump lover, (Trump said COVID would just disappear when it got warm last year.)

The reason that viruses like colds, flu, and COVID get transmitted more in fall and winter is because people congregate more indoors.

@zenvelo 15 GAs ! ! !

I think wind is a factor.

Pretty sure that “a function of weather” is not to spread disease. Or, well, anything.

@zenvelo The reason that viruses like colds, flu, and COVID get transmitted more in fall and winter is because people congregate more indoors.

That seems to be part of it, but even now it’s disputed among scientists why exactly colds and flus are clearly seasonal. Spending more time indoors is generally accepted to be a factor, but there’s some evidence that cold and flu viruses survive better in cold weather and that cold, dry weather may make the respiratory system more vulnerable to the viruses. Not sure about COVID, though.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/

Fauci said he had concerns about people being together inside when there is colder weather and also having to deal with flu and covid at the same time. He didn’t say cold weather causes more covid cases. We saw covid did not slow down in warm weather, just come to FLORIDA. The end of the interview the reporter mentioned Fauci would not go into bars, that had nothing to do with the weather but rather people getting buzzed and not caring about guidelines, and for sure we had many superspreaders in bars in Florida, which is why they were shut down for a long while.

Regarding flu, we had a good guess there would not be a lot of flu cases in America because Asia had gotten through their flu season with a very low case rate in their 2020 season. Remember, health officials were worried about hospital capacity.

Personally, I feel colds and flu occur more in the winter because the cold makes our noses drip and then we touch our noses, moving any viruses on our hands to our mucous membranes, and also school is in session. Cold and flu probably lasts longer on cold surfaces also. Moreover there is a flu pattern of starting in Asia and moving to Europe and then North America and then South America. It seems to me to be a mixture of travel and the virus burning out as the population builds immunity.

My guess is that seasonal fluctuations in airborne contagions are more likely the result of social factors rather than weather. For example, anyone with kids realizes that no vector on earth can match a school for the spread of airborne infections. It should be no surprise that incidents of colds and such drop precipitously during the months of Summer vacation. And the enormous covid spikes clearly associated with the massed herd migrations such as Thanksgiving or Trump’s campaign death rallies guaranteed to “make America sick again” show us what to expect.

Have to agree that almost all major surges in cases have been holidays and large celebrations. Thanksgiving and Christmas they knew would have a huge amount of cases and deaths and they let Americans choose to die. Americans were well warned by then. The UK did it too, scheduling a lock down in January way before all the numbers were even in.

Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, Sturgis. There is no mystery.

So curious to watch the upcoming holidays and see what happens and events like Sturgis that might have a lot of unvaccinated people. The saving grace is a lot of it is outdoors.

Indirectly, not a direct 1:1. Cold weather brought people indoors last fall. Indoor closeness was a contributor to the rise in cases. If people hadn’t come inside then the rate of case growth would have remained close to static. So it isn’t the weather per se but the actions that people take as a result of the weather.

In Georgia this past winter, it was relatively mild – not all that cold. Cases went up as a result of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, but you can’t tie those directly to weather – you can tie them to people, once again.

People tend to be outdoors when the weather is nice and indoors when the weather is cold and rainy. So it’s an indirect effect at best.

As for India – I think they have other factors: cleanliness, medical care and treatment options, crowded surroundings, and of course this new variant. So I don’t know that US observations from last year can be directly tied to conditions today in India. Apples to tangerines.

@elbanditoroso Thank you for a good answer. Are you a medical doctor?

India has always had those other factors you speak of. Yet they were doing just fine until the latest wave hit. India had never chad more than 100,000 cases per day until April 6, 2021. I have been in India in April; it is so damn hot outside or inside unless you have a/c, which is exceedingly rare. Also, all the super spreader events like the great religious festivals and political rallies were outdoors.

My personal belief, with zero basis, is that what causes the spread is spacing between people; indoors vs outdoors does not matter much, unless wind is a contributing factor.

@crazyguy I think spacing and a prolonged time next to the person and no masks on. Trump rally created a surge in cases here. They were outside, no masks, right next to each other for a few hours. First waiting for Trump, then the speech, then eventually being able to file out.

We had a garage sale that created an outbreak. One woman selling was actually symptomatic! But still went ahead and talked to everyone and sold her items.

People at bars and restaurants, even outside, who were at the same table, sometimes the entire table got sick. That’s 2.5 feet apart for an hour or more talking.

The BLM protesting did not create a lot of cases in NY, but they were very masked. I don’t know in other cities. I think in NY they often were marching through the streets, other cities might have been more stationary. I really am not sure.

Just a coincidence that the peak of the burgeoning COVID pandemic hit in the spring. When subsequent pandemics hit, you will be surprised at just when they peak. Weather will not factor in as you might think.

@JLeslie I had to look up the significance of Sturgis; unlike most posters on this board, I did that, and I agree it may be just as important as Thanksgiving and Spring Break. BUT let us not hang our hat on outdoors.

@Demosthenes Good answer. I really do not think outdoors is any better than indoors. Except for one thing. Outdoors is larger and therefore more conducive to social distancing.

@crazyguy Sturgis isn’t likely to produce as big an outbreak as last year, but my guess is it easily will cause over 10,000 cases. Not all at Sturgis, but connected to it. Our only hope is even if they didn’t take COVID very seriously maybe a lot of the people who go still might have been vaccinated. The vaccination rate in SD and surrounding states isn’t terrible.

I think outdoors is less likely to have transmission. I do agree though that people can distance easier in most cases.

I think covid spread is more a function of stupidity rather than the weather. One of the biggest problems in dealing with the virus is people ignoring expert advice.

@crazyguy I think outdoors is better because of dissipation in the open air. Air gets stuffy indoors unless you have an excellent ventilation system.

When all this started, the belief from most experts is that it would follow the path of most viruses and fade away as the weather got warmer. Fauci et al predicted this, as did the CDC and the WHO. It didn’t behave that way. They had to revise their beliefs.

I suspect the idea behind saying it would spike in colder weather is that people would spend more time indoors than outdoors and be sharing the same air with many others.

The one I never understood was closing the beaches. The idea was that there would be too many people in one area. But every time we went to the beach, we weren’t within 6 feet of others. We were outside where there was fresh air breezes blowing everything away. And we were in a pretty good UV environment, which kills viruses.

@seawulf575 The biggest problem with the beaches was the bars at the beaches full of tourists and young people. In FL DeSantis was reluctant from the beginning to close beaches and parks. I think they were closed a few weeks. Many for a while were open to walking and anything remotely like exercise, he just curbed sunbathing. I agreed with him on that. I don’t remember the exact time line, and he always coordinated with mayors. In fact, he coordinated with mayors on most everything. DeSantis did support closing beaches, curfews, masks, where it was warranted. The idea that Republicans think he was ok with a free for all is false. That Democrats think he was ok with a free for all is false.

@JLeslie There aren’t that many bars on the beaches here in NC and they closed them all for a long time. It was a matter of propaganda. Someone took a picture of a beach with a lot of people on it. From the angle it looked, at first glance, like they were right on top of one another. If you looked closely though, you would see it wasn’t so. There was space between each group of people, just like always. But you had to look and evaluate it. Meanwhile, it is put forth that the people are too close so the beaches closed.

@seawulf575 Those type of photos happened here too. Overall, I agree with you about the beaches and the photos and I was saying the same on Facebook at the time. There were some instances where beaches were scary crowded, but mostly not the case.

People were stupid and rushed to the beach the first day they opened. That was another problem. Just wait a week and things were back to normal and easy to distance.

It is absolutely dumbfounding to me what has become of just basic common sense in America. Management of this disease has amounted to endless repetition of locking the barn after the horse has fled. Over and over, it’s too little too late. Opening up too soon, and surprised at the arrival of the inevitable surge. The outcome here regarding covid was as predictable as was Trump’s fate as he rode down that escalator. The only hope for suppression of contagion in an epidemic is to limit social interactions to an absolute minimum to await the arrival of effective vaccines. The beaches and any other venue suitable for the gathering of people should have been shut down on the spot. How hard is it to understand that? The shortsighted stupidity of people regarding all aspects of this disease continues to be truly appalling. The bulk of us are not even aware of just how profoundly our lives have been irreversibly altered due to this catastrophe. What does it take?

@stanleybmanly The country was not shut down, and it looks like covid will be endemic here. Living with covid means trying to make the best of it. I completely agree the US was a constant game of locking the barn after the horse has fled. I also observed where I live we had very few cases and transmission was extremely low when people were outside and distanced. Luckily, the developer of the city, who still has a lot of control, put in some rules that helped protect people from themselves, but we still had a ton of activities going on, mostly outside. We have had just over 4,000 cases in a city of 130,000. I don’t know how that compares to other cities around the county.

Now, which is different than the beginning, because we have vaccines now, we have an average of 3 cases a day for the past two months, I would love to get it down to zero. We have not seen any exponential growth here in the last few months and we are back in restaurants, exercise classes, crowded areas outside, swimming pools, and most people are unmasked everywhere for the past 3 months, except for grocery stores and pharmacies.

We can’t be Taiwan or Australia, I wish we could have been. I hope for flu season more people will where masks. I hope if we have another new virulent flu or coronavirus come through that Americans mask up immediately next time, impose quarantines, stop travel, and squash it like a bug immediately. I hope we have learned something from the experience.

@JLeslie those numbers 4,000 out of 130,000 are great. We’re at 9,200 for 81,000 in the county I’m in and only about 28% have gotten fully vaccinated in the county. Last week we were at 6.8% positivity rate. That means we are still an “Orange” county in the state.

I went to the supermarket last week, wearing a mask, 85% no mask, do the math most were lying about having their vaccination, which is a requirement to shop mask-less.

@seawulf575: I did some research on your claim above, that Fauci said that the virus would go away in warm weather. This is what I found, which is not what you said he said: https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-says-coronavirus-may-disappear-like-sars-spreads-too-efficiently-1493343

@Tropical_Willie I looked it up, it is actually 4,653 cumulative cases here. My city is over 70% vaccinated. Our 65 and up population is over 84% vaccinated, possibly more. My city is unique since we have a very high percentage of older adults. The cities around us have higher numbers and they do work in our stores and restaurants and recreation centers so that created some risk. My city goes through three counties, and I can look up cases specifically for my city in all three counties.

The STATE has a positivity rate around 5%. I don’t think I can see the county level or city in any simple way, although the Florida report does give the test numbers by each lab and location.

Some stats are tricky because Florida on some categories splits out residents and non-residents. I don’t know if all states do that. Florida obviously has a lot of non-residents here throughout the year.

Here is a recent report if you are curious. You can search the pdf using ctrl F like most pdfs to skip around, although the first few pages give you the general stats you might be most interested in. https://www.floridadisaster.org/globalassets/covid19/dailies/2021-may/state_reports_20210521.pdf

I want the news to use my city as an example why people (republicans) should get vaccinated. We are stereotyped as the Trump city, might as well use it to an advantage.