[PA Engineer]

I agree, but without coughing and sneezing aerosol spread is much less effective.

Does account for a lot of things that hand-washing is meant to prevent though...

I think we under appreciate the role of fomites in the asymptomatic spread. Hand rails, elevator buttons, ATMs, touch screen displays, light switches, door knobs...

I mentioned previously about how hard it is not to touch ones face. My wife started wearing gloves again while examining patients. She does not touch her face with gloves on. It was habit garnered decades ago while doing a public health payback.

Simply, the contact of the glove reminds you and is a helpful training tool.

We watched the videos coming out of China. They had masks on, but no one had gloves. Worse, everyone was engrossed in their fomites contaminated smart phones.

[mrsmith]

You make a good point.
“Fomites” is a mighty off-putting word though. Need better.

[cgbg]

Hand rails, elevator buttons, ATMs, touch screen displays, light switches, door knobs...

Exactly.

That is why the containment protocols do not make any sense.

It is almost impossible to track the people who touched those things in any reasonably busy building over the course of even an hour.

[steve86]

Does Covid-19 infect the brain like SARS?

The infection of SARS-CoV has been reported in the brains from both patients and experimental animals, where the brainstem was heavily infected. Furthermore, some coronaviruses have been demonstrated able to spread via a synapse-connected route to the medullary cardiorespiratory center from the mechano- and chemoreceptors in the lung and lower respiratory airways. In light of the high similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2, it is quite likely that the potential invasion of SARS-CoV2 is partially responsible for the acute respiratory failure of COVID-19 patients.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104915

[Fury]

Re: 595 - Great post with a good explanation.

It sure is tough to not tough one’s face. Was just watching that a couple of days ago and caught myself 3-4 times, but then missed 1-2 times.