Mathieu van der Poel breaks bars on cobbles, throws away damaged drop...still helps teammate win; School cycle bus; Should we wear masks while cycling?; Tao hits back at Zlatan Ibrahimovic; Wild boar collision; Hot or not? + more on the live blog

Oh, didn't they tell you? Schools are "Covid Secure™" - it can't spread there. That's also why it's the only place you can hold meetings five times a day in a small room with 32 other people and not be required to wear masks. Just wash your hands and you'll be fine!

Sriracha wrote:

Oh, didn't they tell you? Schools are "Covid Secure™" - it can't spread there. That's also why it's the only place you can hold meetings five times a day in a small room with 32 other people and not be required to wear masks. Just wash your hands and you'll be fine!

Yep - don't forget to clarify, five different groups of 32 people, so 150+ over the course of the day - then you can go home and watch the proceedings in the House of Commons, where only fifty people are allowed into a massive room at any one time, and see ministers telling us we're all in it together.

deviate wrote:

Velosambas - Great. The cream being the best, although they'd get wrecked pretty quickly even with full mudguards

Tao - More power to him. Always thought he was a bit of a charisma vacuum, but have been impressed with him over the last few months

Masks when exercising - Not for me (Clive), just stay out of people's way. Transport, office, supermarket, shops etc obviously yes, as you're more likely to end up in situations where distancing is compromised

No! When it comes to Adidas Sambas - I'm very much with Henry Ford, any colour you want as long as it's black. I used to work as a Saturday part-timer in a sports shop that always had discounted trainers, and we couldn't keep enough Sambas (and Gazelles) in stock. Of course the job didn't actually pay enough for me to actually buy some - I could just about stretch to Hi-Tecs!

Tao - agree. One of the constant responses that Gary Lineker gets on Twitter when referring to a political issue is 'stick to football' - why? Does having one specialism automatically bar you from having an opinion on another issue? 

There does seem to be some evidence:

https://bgr.com/2020/09/01/coronavirus-spread-through-air-aerosol-transmission-studies/

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/20/health/cdc-coronavirus-airborne-transmission/index.html

Thanks. Indeed, and I had not been not aware that simple breathing can produce aerosols. I'd seen elsewhere that they could be produced if regular droplets (from speech, singing, etc) were able to shrink in size due to evaporation before they hit the floor [12:30 - 13:15]:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU
Once so diminished they could drift much further, but crucially a mask would catch them in the first instance before they had become aerosol sized.

What I find surprising is that there are old studies predating covid which clearly show aerosol production in simple breathing:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19415984/
That being so, I'm astonished that the WHO had been so adamant for so long that there was no airborne transmission.

Anyway, if aerosols are coming straight out of mouth through ordinary breathing then masks are not going to be nearly as effective. So the answer to the original question is still no. The best defence is just being outside. So carry on cycling.

Yeah, we're still learning about covid transmission, unfortunately.

I remember the early WHO advice about not recommending masks (was I arguing with you about it or was it someone else?) but then when the evidence started building up, they changed their tune. That to me is the essence of scientific/logical thinking - evaluating new evidence and changing direction if necessary.

There was two reasons for not recommending masks / face coverings initially. 

1: It doesn't work for smaller germs and respiratory illnesses like flu etc so no guarantee at the time it would work with Covid.

2: The only masks that do work with preventing smaller germs were ones specifically rated medical ones and they were being snapped up by people who it would have been useless for due to not having all the PPE kit or training needed to ensure you don't infect yourself when taking it off. So those masks were then not reaching the frontline workers who needed them.

When it was realised (via aforementioned scientific study) that aerolisised transmission was a vector it was then determined that normal face coverings would be effective. 

Weren't there also concerns about untrained people using masks and then touching their faces much more and thus increasing transmission?

And potential risk compensation - i.e. people thinking "It's OK - I've got a mask on, so I can crowd as close as I like to other people and it doesn't matter."

I think there was more to the mask debate. Early on the whole notion was about self-protection (hence PPE), especially for health care staff. Given demand outstripping supply authorities wanted to conserve what little they had.

It took the idea of wearing a mask to protect others quite a while to catch on in the west. The mechanism is different too - protecting others is primarily about catching droplets coming out of your mouth à la Roy Hattersley. Protecting oneself is mostly about filtering out aerosols (i.e. much smaller stuff). So general use masks don't need to be N95 quality just to catch your spit.

But AFAIK it has never been about filtering out free floating "germs", although that never stopped lively debate about the futility of filtering out viruses with cotton.

However if virus-laden aerosols are generated simply through breathing and so come directly out of the mouth, I'm not so sure cotton masks can do much to catch that.

Quote:

That being so, I'm astonished that the WHO had been so adamant for so long that there was no airborne transmission.

Aerolisised and airborne transmissions are  two different things. The former is also called droplet transmission and is the reason for the two metre rule and consists of larger droplets not travelling further then 6 feet. The latter normally means transmissions hang in the air alot longer and and go alot further (normal breathing not sneezing) and normal face coverings won't work as the particles are so small. I believe Covid needs the relatively larger droplets to give enough of a viral load for infection so hence not normally classed as airborne.

My understanding is that aerosols hang in the air enabling airborne transmission, quite distinct from droplet transmission (basically being spat on, like when you take a front row seat at the theatre).

True, viruses don't breed, but other germs do. You don't want a mask full of mould spores or bacteria either...

True. I had assumed someone was saying that masks might increase the spread of cornavirus. But if the actual argument is people don't want to wear masks (especially while exercising) because other germs might breed there, then that argument has a little bit more validity. 

kil0ran wrote:

I'm all for it. If you've got a platform, use it for good. Tommie Smith & John Carlos at the '68 Olympics, Kapernick taking the knee, even James McClean refusing to wear a poppy (he's done more to educate young football fans about The Troubles by doing that than the whole of the English education system). 

Now if only Tao could steer clear of the greenwashing of Ineos...

Really?!?!

​That's one way of putting it.

Now if only Tao could steer clear of the greenwashing of Ineos...

Agreed. It's an article about ethics, and Jeremy Whittle fails to ask the most important question.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

... and Jeremy Whittle fails to ask the most important question.

The most important question to you.

Jeremy Whittle spoke to TGH about politics and ethics. I respectfully suggest it is an obvious and important question, but Whittle flunked this journalistic test.

Or do you really think all this is irrelevant?

INEOS, the chemicals company Ratcliffe owns and controls, has been criticised for causing air and water pollution, dangerous leaks, fires and explosions, as well as creating vast amounts of plastic waste and carbon emissions. It is notorious for its aggressive stance against unions and workers rights and for lobbying against environmental regulations. Corporate Watch article.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

Or do you really think all this is irrelevant?

It's all very important.  But it was irrelevant to a focused piece on athletes being able to engage in politics.
Unless you assert that they are personally held liable across their entire personal life for the actions of their employer.

Ineos is where he gets his money from. As you say it's his employer. Everyone has to choose whether they are comfortable with the ethical stance of the company they work for.

The article was about politics with a specific focus on ethics, so this is highly relevant.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

Jeremy Whittle spoke to TGH about politics and ethics. I respectfully suggest it is an obvious and important question, but Whittle flunked this journalistic test.

Or do you really think all this is irrelevant?

INEOS, the chemicals company Ratcliffe owns and controls, has been criticised for causing air and water pollution, dangerous leaks, fires and explosions, as well as creating vast amounts of plastic waste and carbon emissions. It is notorious for its aggressive stance against unions and workers rights and for lobbying against environmental regulations. Corporate Watch article.

Where did I even imply that I thought any specific issue was irrelevant? 

You said it was THE most important question. I simply noted that maybe that was the most important question to you, but that doesn't make it THE most important question ... others will view it differently. 

Besides the thrust of the article was Tao's attitude to athletes involving themselves in political issues and focussed particularly on diversity where he has taken specific personal action to try and address it in some way. Seems to me like challenging him on the corporate behaviour of the company that sponsor his team is outside the scope of this particular article. 

Doesn't make it irrelevant, just makes it a topic for a different interview. 

Please make your points calmly.

Ineos is his employer - that's where his money comes from. If he is discussing politics and ethics, it is a central question that a good journalist should have asked.

'A topic for a different interview' is a recipe for the question never being asked - and cycling journalists never do.

Young riders like TGH and Pidcock seem like decent people with a social conscience. Pidcock used to plant trees to offset the CO2 for his travel. Now he is representing Scotland's biggest CO2 polluter.

That's what disappoints me the most - they are clearly enlightened people but with a massive blindspot connected to their wallets.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

Young riders like TGH and Pidcock seem like decent people with a social conscience. Pidcock used to plant trees to offset the CO2 for his travel. Now he is representing Scotland's biggest CO2 polluter.

That's what disappoints me the most - they are clearly enlightened people but with a massive blindspot connected to their wallets.

Well welcome to the world outside of Harrogate, it must be nice up there for you. 

It's not always pretty down here, but we do what we need to to survive and try and see the best in what we can.