The takeaway: everyone who works in healthcare is fucked
"All models are wrong but some are useful." - George Box The takeaway is not "everyone who works in healthcare is fucked" the takeaway is the model we have for aerosolized epidemiological spread is not 100% correct. I mean, biosafety levels are based more on how nasty stuff is than how contagious it is. So while the dual respiratory model isn't a great curve fit, if the goal is to minimize infection it works. If instead the goal is "never get personally infected" then you're looking at a moon suit anyway.
I was being tongue-in-cheek. Well sort of. The corollary of the quote is that a model is only as good as its assumptions. And when the assumption is that if you're X feet from an infectious person you're unlikely to be offered, but 2X or 3X turns out to be more accurate than you really don't have a useful model, and the bitch of it is that in this case "useful" means "safe". It's hard to evaluate whether the current PPE recommendations have been working, because we don't have good data about compliance. But certainly the rate of infection of healthcare workers seems high in some areas, so looking at model adjustments is probably justified.
Wanna see a video of the surgeon general turning a t-shirt and rubber bands into PPE? Public health measures are always reductive. I mean, we're at "yeah we know we told you to stop asking for masks because they don't do anything that was mostly because we want the doctors to have them more but actually Jared Kushner has been hoarding them in a warehouse and seizing shipments going to states because he's an asshole so I guess yeah wrap your fucking underwear around your head."
It's as simple as "I want a layer or two of material to block the passage of covid-19 particles between you and I". Why did it take us this long? Because we're pretty dumb. Are there complications related to fluid flow and turbulence? Yes, but such considerations still favor a reverse-Cornholio configuration, if all else fails. But wait! Be careful: At least do better than this guy:
Awww man my first time being Manning-faced on Hubski.
I’m not not a basic internet bitch edit: no wait there are two "not"s in the above sentence, but I didn't see the second one (?) when I re-read my own comment
Obviously not a novel observation, but the president has been unhelpful at best in this saga. But I'm not going to let myself off the hook either. I've been basically wrong at every turn since the beginning, definitely in the "that can't happen here" camp. But as Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind." I'm about to start spending considerable time in a large hospital that is inundated with severe patients, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't apprehensive. But I feel I have to do it. One of our nurses died yesterday, and I owe it to her and all my other colleagues to do what I can. So wish me luck with the FDA. Hoping they greenlight me to start manufacturing drug ASAP. Then it's in God's hands (metaphorically).