Environmental factors contribute to the spread of microorganisms causing diseases. Sunlight can kill viruses in minutes, while increased air pollution could be one of the risk factors of more severe outcomes. Humidity is also thought to be important. A team of scientists from Northeast US analyzed COVID-19 cases from 2669 counties and found that cold and dry weather and low levels of ultraviolet radiation are moderately associated with increased SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility, with humidity playing the largest role. 17.5% of the virus’ reproductive number was attributable to meteorological factors, with temperature accounted for 3.73%, humidity accounted for 9.35%, and UV radiation for 4.44%. This is in line with earlier findings about SARS-CoV-2 being less stable at higher humidity and warmer temperatures in human nasal mucus and sputum. Like in previous environmental studies, however, these fractions were not the same everywhere and were higher in northern counties.20 years ago, American scientists Wells and Riley developed a model of the airborne transmission of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and measles. A novel modified version of this model was used to estimate the impact of relative humidity on the removal of respiratory droplets containing infectious virus particles. The results showed that this impact depended on the ventilation rate and the size range of virus-laden droplets. It was concluded that increasing the ventilation rate is more beneficial, while installing and running humidifiers may not be an efficient solution to reduce the risk of COVID-19 disease in indoor spaces.
Aganovic A, Bi Y, Cao G, Drangsholt F, Kurnitski J, Wargocki P. Estimating the impact of indoor relative humidity on SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission risk using a new modification of the Wells-Riley model. Building and environment. 2021 Aug 23:108278.
Ma Y, Pei S, Shaman J, Dubrow R, Chen K. Role of meteorological factors in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. Nature Communications. 2021 Jun 14;12(1):1-9.
Berkessel J, Ebert T, Gebauer J, Jonsson T, Oishi S. Pandemics Initially Spread Among People of High (not Low) Social Status: Evidence from COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu.
Gabashvili IS. Community-Based Phenotypic Study of Safety, Tolerability, Reactogenicity and Immunogenicity of Emergency-Use-Authorized Vaccines Against COVID-19 and Viral Shedding Potential of Post-Vaccination Infections: Protocol for an Ambispective study. medRxiv. 2021 Jun 1. medRxiv 2021.06.28.21256779; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.28.21256779
The COVID-19 Back-to-normal study was initiated in January 2021 as an effort of a tight-knit neighborhood to help each other avoid the virus and vaccinate safely.
Later the research protocol was approved by MEBO Research IRB and the study was open to other communities around the world.
By now, we have over 600 participants.
Early results of the study in MEBO/PATM community, based on the replies of the first 26 enrollees, showed that while reactions to vaccine were similar to the general population, experiences with COVID-19 infections were not - 2 individuals were not able to avoid the disease in this group, and both of them experienced long term effects.
As of today, we have stories from 41 members of MEBO/PATM community and 6 different vaccines: AstraZeneca-Oxford, Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac and BBIBP-CorV, also known as the Sinopharm vaccine.
Why is MEBO/PATM community more susceptible to long COVID? A new study argues that long-haulers might actually be experiencing an attack of fatigue-inducing Epstein-Barr virus (EBV, a member of herpesvirus family HHV-4) that was lying dormant in their bodies. For this study, Gold and his colleagues analyzed blood of 30 people with chronic COVID (out of 185 COVID survivors). 20 out of these 30 carried high levels of EBV antibodies. Vaccines were shown to reactivate viruses too, in much rarer cases. As was demonstrated for Pfizer vaccine that woke up another herpes virus, chickenpox herpes-zoster (HHV-3), that causes shingles when reactivated (this happened to 1% of patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases). Herpes simplex (HSV-1) can be also kept in remission by a healthy immune system and can be also reactivated by COVID-19.
MEBO and PATM symptoms could arise following an infection. Perhaps SARS-CoV-2 can reactivate the old viruses that caused these symptoms to begin with?
Community immunity (also known as herd immunity) protects everyone. We hope that MEBO/PATM community stays COVID-free and safe.
March 20, 2021: Anaphylaxis to COVID-19 vaccines : What do we know about anaphylactic reactions to Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson & other COVID-19 vaccines?
January 20, 2021: Irritable Bowel and COVID-19 : Abdominal pain is less widely known as a symptom of COVID-19, yet it is - along with shortness of breath and confusion - a potential sign of the most severe form of COVID-19. In children, having gastrointestinal symptoms was more frequently associated with severe and critical phenotype.