Coronovirus in the Philippines

6300 cases in the last 24 hours

It looks like it is doubling every three days, I expect it to be 8000 odd tomorrow and 12,000 on Thursday, they have only just introduced MECQ (modified enhanced community quarantine) or re-introduced depending on whether it's any different to ECQ, it is going to take time for the quarantine to have any effect and I think that up to now they somehow managed to keep the genie in the bottle but this is starting to look like the disaster a lot of us thought might happen back in March just based on our own experience of the Philippines

If it is in the slums and the squats it is going to be a nightmare.

I'm very happy to say that my prediction was wrong they are back down to 3000 odd new cases in the last 24 hours, hopefully it is not just poor reporting or delayed test results causing this.

My son just asked me a surprising question, ABS-CBN had been reporting that tall people above 6ft had a higher chance of contracting covid-19 I was sceptical but theorised that as hot air rises taller people might be more likely to be infected through rising air currents but I thought it would be a minimal effect.

However I just read stuff published in the UK last week that backs this up and that the risk is more than twice as high for taller people, the finding backs the view that the virus spreads in aerosol and not just droplets and makes all indoor settings much more dangerous.

I am going to have to get back to James and explain to my 14 and half year old 6' 3" boy that he is indeed at more risk

It is an interesting if unexpected finding and goes some small way to explaining the lower transmission rates in some hot but poor countries like the Philippines where the population is still probably quite small on average due to calorie restriction during childhood. It also potentially explains to some extent why transmission in the slums and squatter areas has not been that high, during summer a lot of that kind of housing has a lot more ventilation than you might get here, it could also explain things getting worse in high humidity rainy season. I'm just speculating and I have of course no real evidence just a thought really.

Most of the women in our family and a lot of the boys are small with the exception of James who takes after his mother and his grandfather, Ana is fairly tall for a Filipina and her father and two uncles were all well over 6' tall.

Exchange rate is already better Jim, I made the mistake of sending a £1000 2 weeks ago as teh kids school was due but we only paid it today had I waited I would have got 2000 peso more for my money.

If they devalue depending on how they do it there will probably be inflation to compensate.

Purification using UV light to kill viruses and bacteria is apparently already in use to some extent but really this is a solution for indoor spaces for the next 50 years, the reality is that there is no chance of doing anything about this now that would have any real impact in the short term.

Gut feeling no proof, but I would warn people against ozone generators and various gadgets that claim to do in viruses via ultrasonic mists, honestly creating an ultrasonic aerosol in a room is going to be a great way to get people to breath in and exhale a fine aerosol with the exhalation being full of virus particles.

The ozone generators, well ozone (O3) is good way up there far up in sky but down here it's a bit more problematic, some ads are promoting it as an air purification mechanism to destroy viruses, well maybe, but there are many health side effects from a very unstable molecule at ground level.

And the reality is that there is a large volume of air in a room and no device is going to process it fast enough to stop some virus particles from an infected individual being passed to other people in a room.

The problem with purification is airflow, in any one environment how to you ensure directional airflow that will direct exhalation, rapidly, to a vent where it can be exposed to UV, or heat, or in my fantasies Cobalt 60 don't think that will get popular but it would probably work