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Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles.

We will probably get some innovation in face masks too. For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to better working face masks will help prevent all kinds of lung damaging diseases.

There's probably other benefits, like more people working from home. But overall, its been terrible. I see homeless people in my city like never before. Huge surge in mental health issues too.And nursing homes with their current configurations are old people slaughter houses.

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As far as Covid is concerned, surface transmission is not considered and has not been considered a major transmission pathway since May.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0522-cdc-updates-co...

i wonder what kind of damage we're doing with all the disinfection of touch surfaces. what dangerous microbes we're selectively breeding, and what beneficial ones we're destroying.

No human-infecting microbes can survive pure alcohol or bleach, so selection pressure is not an issue. And beneficial microbes don’t grow much on tabletops and guardrails either.

At most, the cleaner environment might lead to ill-calibrated immune systems in kids.

I think facemasks are going to be the biggest change to daily life that I don't see going away.

2020 had a nearly non-existent flu season and that is likely related to all the COVID restrictions (I think facemasks being a key).

If I were to guess, I think people wearing facemasks when they are sick (or even just through flu season) is going to be a lot more common and socially acceptable from now on. Hopefully that will translate into less severe flu seasons from here on out.

The biggest change will be WFH or online learning when you feel like you might just be a little bit sick. That alone should put a huge dent in flu season.

How are masks 99% effective against the seasonal flu, but not nearly as effective against COVID-19?

Easy, it takes less exposure to COVID to get you ill. Meaning, it's a more infectious disease.

And masks aren't ineffective against COVID-19. Everyone wearing a mask does a pretty good job at preventing the spread of disease. However, there are a lot of people that aren't as strict about following mask rules and guidelines.

Also, masks don't filter all the viruses, they just reduce the amount you breathe in. Viral load is important, an infection will be less likely to lead to a disease if the viral load is low, e.g. because you are wearing a mask or keeping distance.

If there is, in addition, a partial immunity, e.g. from a former flu infection, the threshold for the necessary viral load to cause a disease is even higher. Which is why masks are usually more effective against the flu.

I think its fascinating to think about it. Once you get infected, its basically a battle of doubling rates.

Will your immune system buildup up defences before the virus doubles to unstoppable overwhelming numbers. So a smaller starting initial number of the virus, gives the immune system a much longer time to organize.

So far there is no real experimental evidence that lower initial viral dose reduces the risk of developing disease symptoms. It's a plausible hypothesis but remains unproven.

They aren't 99% effective against the flu. They might not be effective at all for the flu.

Pre-covid studies were mixed as best, but many found that asymptomatic mask wearing wasn't significantly effective at reducing flu infections.

You are really only contagious with the flu for a day before symptoms show up (and even then you aren't that contagious until the symptoms get worse).

We'd eliminate the flu spreading by just self-quarantining after the onset of flu symptoms + wearing a mask when sick to go essential things like showing for essentials or going to the drug store.

I would have thought we learned something from the pandemic about staying home when sick. But when my wife's work found out she had covid symptoms it was STAY HOME. But the tests confirmed it wasn't covid--just a cold--COME IN. Now the whole office has a cold. They learned nothing.

In Sweden we're also seeing very low flu numbers for 2020-2021 but we have almost non-existent mask usage so I wouldn't attribute it to masks alone. I think social distancing plays a big part.

I mean, that could also just be a fact that worldwide everyone is masking up. One nation not participating doesn't matter as much because everyone else is. I'm guessing you've got far fewer visitors to Sweden due to all the travel restrictions.

I was living in South Korea 2015-2019, where use of face masks was already a normal fact of life seasonally (air pollution) and habitual when experiencing cold symptoms. It's not amazing, but also not a big deal. I did wonder about the trash/recycling factor.

Frankly - living as an immigrant in a very looks/appearance-conscious society, it had its practical perks. Quick late-day dash to the shop without having a shave? Masks takes care of that ...

OTOH, I enjoy how the lockdowns have been a sobering reset button to everyone's vanity and fashion proclivities, too. Hair styling fast fashion cycles seem like very silly preoccupations nowadays.

In the Netherlands, shopping carts and masks became mandatory in shops. The shopping cart is/was used as a way to keep track of the amount of people allowed in the store. This had the counter-productive effect of having to have someone disinfect shopping cart handles with alcohol or in worst case a do-it-yourself system where disinfectant is provided but only AFTER you've already had to touch the cart of physically prevent anyone from grabbing a cart by claiming the single disinfectant spray and paper before reaching the cart.

All of this could have been avoided if the handles were made of copper.

Copper helps, but it isn't magic. It takes about 1->2 hours to self disinfect.

You'd still need a step of disinfecting the handles.

That said, I'm not sure how often flu goes from cart handle to person, I've my doubts that it's a major disease vector. I'd think just being in a store with a bunch of idiots coughing on each other probably spreads the flu more readily.

I think its a better option than do-it-yourself disinfection.

Really, coronavirus presents itself as a virus that is not stopped by any means we currently have employed. on the micro level all these techniques are tried and tested (by the likes of almost perfectly sterile enviroments as surgical rooms) but at the macro level coronavirus spreads trough humans in a way that cannot be seen or prevented.

Its not like we ever stopped flu season.

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