“What the video demonstrated, is that it will spread to surfaces and to people very efficiently.”
[Editor’s Note: Remember, whatever you pick up at a bar or restaurant you carry home to your family and friends. — Mark L. Taylor]
By Luke O’Neil
The Guardian (5/15/20)
Even as Covid 19 deaths in the US continue to grow, now surpassing 85,000, many states have begun loosening lockdown restrictions.
Regardless of the wisdom of such moves, it’s clear that there’s a desire to return to something resembling normalcy across the country, as in Wisconsin, where locals returned to packed bars this week.
How many of those revelers there, and in other states like Texas with lax policies, may contract the virus remains to be seen, but a recent viral video from Japan gives an idea of how easily the infection might spread.
The video experiment, conducted by the public broadcaster NHK in conjunction with disease specialists, uses blacklight and a fluorescent substance to simulate how quickly germs can be spread across a variety of surfaces in environments such as restaurant buffets and cruise ships.
To begin with, one guest of 10 at a restaurant buffet is shown with the substance on his hands meant as a stand-in for the coronavirus. Over the course of a typical dining period, the rest of the guests behave in predictable fashion, selecting utensils from serving stations, enjoying their food, checking their phones and so on.
At the end of the experiment the backlight is turned on and …
Read The Rest And 3-Minute Video
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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The Difference Between Terms Like ‘Airborne Spread’ And ‘Droplet Spread’
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro
Morning Edition / NPR (5/17/20)
NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks Joshua Santarpia of the University of Nebraska Medical Center about the new research into how the coronavirus is transmitted through the air.