Some New Science on Virus Transmission on Airplanes

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Indeed, thermal scanners are a low cost, low impact screening measure.
Unfortunately, they are not considered to be very reliable.

These systems are sometimes seen as a magic bullet for mass fever screening. Measurements are almost instant, there is no contact, and data can be viewed at a distance, so there is minimal disruption in public places and little risk of cross-contamination or harm to the operator. And the systems can be used with minimal training.
However, there is a glaring lack of clinical evidence for thermal fever screening solutions.

For instance:

"FACT: Thermal scanners CANNOT detect COVID-19
Thermal scanners are effective in detecting people who have a fever

There's two main types of thermal "checker". The first is a 'gun' - you aim it at the person's forehead, pull the trigger, and a digital readout gives you the radiated temperature. The other is thermal camera, where colour indicates radiated temp... I haven't yet heard that these cameras are widely used.

But missing in this discussion, and maybe in the public's current perception... wtf would somebody with a fever be flying for, let alone going out out of the house? The message was (and should still be) if you're sick, STAY HOME. Unless there's a fast COVID-19 test onsite, a fever is the second best indicator of illness, including most active cases of COVID-19. So to me, testing for fever is quite reasonable for high-infection-risk activities like flying.

Just about all the open businesses around here are checking their employees' temperatures daily with the little gun, and anyone with a temp or the sniffles is told to stay home.

[goboatingnow]

I’ve being flying a fair bit around Europe , Mainly on Ryanair , everyone masked , planes running 70% occupancy to under 10%

[Dockhead]

[QUOTE=GordMay;3286259]

Originally Posted by Dockhead;3286201
Indeed, thermal scanners are a low cost, low impact screening measure.
[B

Unfortunately, they are not considered to be very reliable.[/B]

These systems are sometimes seen as a magic bullet for mass fever screening. Measurements are almost instant, there is no contact, and data can be viewed at a distance, so there is minimal disruption in public places and little risk of cross-contamination or harm to the operator. And the systems can be used with minimal training.
However, there is a glaring lack of clinical evidence for thermal fever screening solutions.

For instance:

"FACT: Thermal scanners CANNOT detect COVID-19
Thermal scanners are effective in detecting people who have a fever (i.e. have a higher than normal body temperature). They cannot detect people who are infected with COVID-19. There are many causes of fever."
WHO ➥ https://www.who.int/emergencies/dise...ermal-scanners

"Be aware that, even when the [non-contact temperature assessment] devices are used properly, temperature assessment may have limited impact on reducing the spread of COVID-19 infections. Some studies suggest that temperature measurements alone may miss more than half of infected people.
Thermal imaging systems and non-contact infrared thermometers, which are non-contact temperature assessment devices, may be used to measure a person's temperature. An elevated temperature is one way to identify a person who may have a COVID-19 infection, although an infected person may be contagious without an elevated temperature or other easily detectable symptoms."
USFDA ➥ https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/...id-19-pandemic

"Don’t rely on temperature screening products for detection of coronavirus (COVID-19), says MHRA
Warning that thermal cameras and other such “temperature screening” products, some of which make direct claims to screen for COVID-19, are not a reliable way to detect if people have the virus."
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (UK) ➥ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/d...d-19-says-mhra

That all sounds right to me, and I guess it's right to underline this to be sure that no one gets a false sense of security and relaxes other measures. But if you really only caught 50% of infected people like that, that's still going to have a massive effect on R0 if you can screen most people entering most venues where they will have close contact with others. Temperature screening, masking, hand hygiene, keeping distance from other people in public places -- none of these is a silver bullet. But I would bet that if you can implement ALL of these to a fairly high degree of compliance, it's going to make an enormous difference in the rate of community spread.



Also I seriously doubt that we're talking about only 50% of infection potential -- even if it's only 50% of infected people -- people who are feverish and coughing are surely 10x or 100x more infectious than asymptomatically infected people. I bet you will catch a lot more than 50% of really infectious people like that.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

. . . But missing in this discussion, and maybe in the public's current perception... wtf would somebody with a fever be flying for, let alone going out out of the house? The message was (and should still be) if you're sick, STAY HOME. Unless there's a fast COVID-19 test onsite, a fever is the second best indicator of illness, including most active cases of COVID-19. So to me, testing for fever is quite reasonable for high-infection-risk activities like flying.. .

Amen!


Quickly identifying and isolating newly infected people has got to be one of the most effective measures there are. Widespread screening for temperature has got to be a powerful tool for that, however inaccurate, just because you can screen so many people so often without much cost or disruption of anything.

[Dockhead]

Here is some evidence that flying is pretty safe:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/new...fe/ar-BB199nfz

If that's truen I would say that this is a pretty strong indicator that flying now with all the measures being taken is quite safe. If airliners were big transmission vectors then there is no way that crews would have such low infection rates.


I guess this is also a strong data point on the efficacy of masking, considering the difference to the Vietnamese case studied in the OP.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

There's two main types of thermal "checker". The first is a 'gun' - you aim it at the person's forehead, pull the trigger, and a digital readout gives you the radiated temperature. The other is thermal camera, where colour indicates radiated temp... I haven't yet heard that these cameras are widely used.

Usually larger higher end places are using the thermal cameras (as opposed to your local minimart)

They had them at the Nepal airport back in early March when we were getting out.

Recently stopped by Vegas and the casinos all had them.

You just walk by and if the operator sees a higher temp, he asks you to step to the side (not sure the process after that as we didn't get pulled to the side).

Particularly in an airport setting, it's not a 100% solution but even corona tests aren't 100%. If the temp reader catches 70% of cases, if you were going to have 100 incidents over a period of time, that reduces it to 30 incidents. That's a pretty big reduction in spread.

Probably the biggest hurdle is ramping up manufacturing and secondarily the cost.

[Yihang]

Office buildings and supermarkets all have thermal scanners in Beijing, they can track multiple targets through facial recognition so you just walk in as normal. In smaller cities it's the laser guns. When there is a new case in the area you need to scan a QR code to confirm you were not near confirmed cases before entering buildings and supermarkets.

Haven't heard of anyone actually being picked up. Maybe a Black van comes to pick you up.....

[Chotu]

I can testify to this one.

I live a very sheltered (from people) life. I don’t get sick at all typically because I don’t have exposure to other people.

A couple winters ago I had to fly a 2 hour flight and was seated next to the worst looking guy I’d ever seen in public.

Pale, shaking, coughing, sweating. I got the middle seat and he got the window. Not cool. There was nowhere to move to.

I sprayed the air vent at full blast on me the whole trip to try to avoid breathing his air.

No luck. Was down for the count for half a week after that.

Viruses are very easily spread in small, crowded places.

[Dockhead]

Not really all that relevant to the topic, but this is really pleasant to read: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/h...ion-first.html

A mass of practical details about distribution of vaccines -- it starts to feel more and more real.

I'm not sure if I agree with their priorities -- I would sure as hell be vaccinating people with a lot of social contacts with at least equal priority to the most vulnerable old people in nursing homes -- that looks like prioritizing statistics over actually breaking the back of the pandemic. But anyway at least "essential workers" are included, so that will mean early vaccination of workers with contact with the public, so that will help a lot.

According to the article it will be May or June at best before the vaccine will be available to healthy adults under 65 who are not "essential workers" or "health care workers". That means I'm last in line, but I'm ok with that.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Chotu

I can testify to this one.

I live a very sheltered (from people) life. I don’t get sick at all typically because I don’t have exposure to other people.

A couple winters ago I had to fly a 2 hour flight and was seated next to the worst looking guy I’d ever seen in public.

Pale, shaking, coughing, sweating. I got the middle seat and he got the window. Not cool. There was nowhere to move to.

I sprayed the air vent at full blast on me the whole trip to try to avoid breathing his air.

No luck. Was down for the count for half a week after that.

Viruses are very easily spread in small, crowded places.

I wonder if this is going to change air travel forever? Screening people for symptoms of ANY disease? I guess that would be a good thing. The world after this pandemic is going to be a very different place, methinks.

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I wonder if this is going to change air travel forever? Screening people for symptoms of ANY disease? I guess that would be a good thing. The world after this pandemic is going to be a very different place, methinks.

I wonder if being cashless and cardless played a apart in slowing the spread in China as well. Probably its all the little things that added up.

Architecture industry is scrambling to find ways to make everything touchless.

[gamayun]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I wonder if this is going to change air travel forever? Screening people for symptoms of ANY disease? I guess that would be a good thing. The world after this pandemic is going to be a very different place, methinks.

Exactly. Flying as well as working in an office. I used to hate to do both in the winter time when so many were hacking and sneezing on everything, but they were "taking one for the team" because staying home was seen as being weak. As bad as it has been this year, there will be many positives too once we're on the other side of this outbreak. Maybe providing more space for passengers on domestic (US) flights will be another possibility. All the planes I've been on this year have been full (middle seats taken up) and even one I moved because two kids were seated away from their mother in another row. Wouldn't it seem better to keep one's family together?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Yihang

I wonder if being cashless and cardless played a apart in slowing the spread in China as well. Probably its all the little things that added up.

Architecture industry is scrambling to find ways to make everything touchless.

In the Nordic countries, many businesses simply stopped accepting cash after the pandemic got going.


Perhaps it plays a role, and as you say, all the little things adding up is surely a powerful factor.


But OTOH, there is science which says that fomites aren't really a transmission vector for this particular virus, so cash or cashless and other touchless issues might not make much difference. I don't know. But surely this is the wave of the future in any case -- other diseases are for sure transmitted by fomites so less touching of surfaces and better hand hygiene will at worst make us healthier and protect us from other diseases.

[NPCampbell]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

This:
This study does give one pause however. I'm kind of surprised at how far away people were infected, in the studied case. A couple of meters of separation doesn't do the trick, in the absence of masking, anyway. I had thought that the ventilation systems on planes would greatly reduce the spread of airborne viruses; guess not.

I think the magical 6 foot distance has always been out there to give people a warm fuzzy. The reality of it is that it has probably done more harm than good. A virion doesn't magically die and fall to the ground after it has traveled 6 feet. Studies on measles have shown that the virion remains in the air for hours. I imagine Covid is somewhat similar.

In the US, most retail buildings have a design air exchange rate of 5-10 times per hour. The only way you completely turn over the air in a building that frequently is by air movement. A typical low velocity supply vent blows air 4-8 feet per second. A high velocity vent is upwards of 20 feet per second. Even if you keep your 6 foot distance, the air around you is definitely not complying. I can't see that being any different on a plane.

[Mike OReilly]

Interesting. I just took a flight across Canada a couple of days ago. This was my first flight since the apocalypse began. Everyone I observed wore a mask at all times -- all except when eating. This included both in the airports and on the flight.

There was no drama queens. No one claiming it was all a hoax. We were all thermally screened going into security, along with the self-assessment affirmation.

I felt reasonably safe, but being in the cheap seats, I was closer to strangers for longer than I've been since the pandemic was declared. Three days out now and I still feel fine, but I'm watching for any symptoms.

BTW, Transport Canada lists the flights with known Covid-19 cases, and gives the seat range where the person was located. I'm monitoring this closely as I'm going to visit my elderly mother soon and will not risk bringing anything to her.

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-heal...html#wb-auto-4