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Trust the Evidence (TTE) has dedicated a series (the Transmission Riddles) which has been updated several times on the various problems encountered when looking at how respiratory viruses (RV) transmit from human to human.
We started the riddles very early in TTE’s life, in August 2022.
As our readers know, we have a long-standing research background in this area. For example, I became interested in the role of stress in the possible genesis of my condition while serving in the Army. We told the story here:
Another folksy story I have never told is what happened in the underground dressing rooms of the former Olympic Skating Stadium in Sarajevo. Yes, the place where the British Figure Skaters won gold.
Eight years on, it was inhabited by UN troops during the city’s siege. The trouble was a lack of power, so all the ice had melted, the water cascading into the basement. The basement was a good place to avoid the odd shell or wizzbang exploding, as it was made of good, strong Communist concrete.
However, crowding, stress (mine was naked fear), poor ventilation and water up to one’s ankles seemed to conspire to breed ILI, or whatever. So, yours truly was drafted in to sort the situation.
The only thing I could suggest was to blow a hole through the concrete to drain the swamp and improve ventilation. This was not a popular solution as shrapnel was considered worse than ILI, our UN French commander rightly concluded.
Apparently, exchanging one airborne hazard for a shower of flying debris did not qualify as “progress.” It was a helpful reminder that in our line of work, solutions often arrive wearing the same disguise as the problem.
Elsewhere, we have continued to criss-cross the transmission riddle with posts such as this one:
Clearing the Air Around Influenza | ||||||
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This post is an update and summary of several TTE posts including our Transmission Riddle 3 | ||||||
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And summarised our fairly recent work here:
The Body of Evidence we have published on SARS-CoV-2 Transmission | ||||||
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Our interest in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 started when WHO asked us to prepare a suite of reviews of the latest evidence on different modes of transmission. | ||||||
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However we dressed it, however we asked, however we framed it, we came to the same conclusion: we do not understand how these RVs get from A to B. That is, if they pass and do not sit and wait to be woken up or some other devilishly weird concoction.
I understand the innate wish for a black-and-white answer, or at least to be less uncertain about exactly what is going on with these pesky RVs, but the honest bottom line is that they remain a riddle.
Whichever paradigm you choose: Henle-Koch’s germ theory, Hope Simpson’s activation, Andrewes’ doubts or Tyrrel’s Common Cold Unit final emphasis on stress, none of them fits all the facts. So they are all wrong, or perhaps all partly right. Or perhaps we cannot see the wood for the trees.
Given that scientific investigation has been taken over by dogma and politics since the Covid pandemic, the clock has probably been set back a century.
It’s a shame none of us will be around to witness the rebirth of scientific curiosity.
This post was written by two old geezers who ask questions because they seldom know the answers.
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