HACKER Q&A
📣 ggm

Do anti-C19 foggers do any good or is this performance?


Lots of imagery on TV shows handheld foggers misting public spaces. I am confident this stuff works for mosquito borne disease, all it has to do is stop hatching of larvae. It appears popular in Asia, south America, Africa, India. I am trying not to assume this is bogus populism.

But, do these mister units actually do anything useful against an aerosol dispersed disease? It feels from here behind the TV set its performative hygiene theatre, and does nothing of substance. Because of mosquito control they have the devices, and they can fog bleach, or TCE or something (that would be terrible)

Or, are "fomites" still a real concern?

UV was said to be used to "sterilise" aircraft interiors. I would probably ask the same question: does it do anything useful?


  👤 voldacar Accepted Answer ✓
Fogging, wiping, etc is disease theater, much like the TSA is security theater. There has not been a single case of covid that has been definitively linked to a fomite.

Here is a review of some studies that mention cases linked to fomites: (scroll down)

https://ncceh.ca/documents/evidence-review/fomites-and-covid...

In each case, the link is pretty tenuous. Each of these events could be explained (much more parsimoniously, imo) by respiratory droplets in the air.


👤 traceroute66
My guess would be that the idea behind fogging is to weigh down aerosol in the room. It has been well documented by scientists across the internet that COVID aerosols could remain in a poorly-ventilated room for a number of hours, this is because scientific thinking from reputable sources has now moved from "aerosolised droplets" to "airborne" (hence the importance of high-quality masks and not some random piece of cloth cut off an old t-shirt).

So it could be therefore argued that in the absence of other (more preferred) options, fogging is a decent last resort to try to combat stagnant COVID aerosol because it will weigh down and/or disperse and/or dilute stagnant areas of COVID.

Of course it is well understood by now that the preferred means to combat COVID is high levels of ventilation (open windows) and filtration (HEPA filters). But this is not always possible to achieve in an ideal manner either due to building construction (sealed windows etc.) or climate (cold weather, windy days etc.). So it is quite possible that using fogging as a "plan B" should not be entirely disregarded.

(Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, the above is a simplified summary of my understanding based on what I've read from reputable scientists)


👤 ianai
Delta was already transmitting similarly to or faster than measles. Omicron vastly outcompetes delta. A quick search for measles and fomites shows its surface half life is 2 hours and a wide concern for fomites.

👤 netizen-936824
Surface transmission is not a significant risk

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4


👤 nikolay
Bulgaria had aerial theaters - a few mayors decided to step up a notch and sprayed their whole villages and their vicinities with disinfectants.

👤 VoodooJuJu
I'm sure they do plenty of good for the wallets of the people selling these things.