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No, Just No…New Rules of Social Distancing on Reopening
Per the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday:
As states across the country reopen and several report fresh outbreaks of the [Wuhan] coronavirus, many people are unsure how to navigate this confusing time. We asked experts about resuming a near-normal life while minimizing the risk of getting the virus that causes Covid-19.
Here is what some of those so-called experts said.
About how the virus is spread:
Health agencies like the CDC and WHO have long focused on preventing transmission of the virus through droplets, largely through coughing and sneezing. Now, many experts say, there is increasing evidence that it can be spread through smaller droplets, called aerosols, which are released and inhaled through breathing, talking, singing, and other activities. …aerosols can linger in the air for hours. Preventing transmission through these invisible particles is trickier and underscores the importance of face coverings and distance, air filtration and proper ventilation.
About optimal social distance:
Six feet is good, but 10 feet is better, says Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, who has warned about airborne transmission of the new coronavirus for months. …More space around people is always better.
About expanding our social circles:
Yes [expand social circles], particularly if you are gathering outside and taking the proper precautions in terms of distance and masks. …”The fewer contacts we have, the better“, Dr. Allen says….”I think you can start to expand your circle but it depends on how serious the other family is taking their precautions and if they have quarantined and locked down.”
About elevators:
If you can, take the stairs. If you can’t, don’t board a crowded elevator–unless the lobby is more crowded. Don’t touch buttons if possible, though it is fine to use your elbow or even fingers as long as you avoid touching your face before cleaning your hands.
About that summer vacation:
Yes! “We need to get out and about in the world for our mental health,” Dr. Allen says. “We should take advantage of the summer when we can be outdoors because we don’t know what the winter is going to bring.”
Choose destinations where it is easy to practice social distancing…can include national parks and beaches if not crowded. …places where you can bring your own food and supplies, or where there are options that make it easy to avoid crowded restaurants or grocery stores.
About camping:
If camping with people outside your immediate family, maintain the 6-feet distance even when outside, don’t share food and drinks, and try not to touch each other’s supplies (or wash and sanitize your hands before and after if you do).
If people actually try to observe all these rules, what families or friends would even want to get together at all? Yes, let’s all go outside, in our masks, maintaining a 6-10 foot distance from our friends (good luck talking with them, behind a mask from six feet away). No talking, singing, or breathing, for fear of spreading the virus. Who is going to sing from behind a mask? Who even believes anything out of the CDC/Deep State or (China-aligned) WHO these days? Going to that restaurant? How are you supposed to communicate your order to the server if you are both wearing masks and 6 feet apart? Outdoors is noisier than indoors, making communication even more difficult.
It seems to me that all these rules for avoiding contagion take most, if not all, of the fun out of life. Going outdoors would seem like an ordeal, not an excursion.
How will we be able to have a Ricochet meetup in the future? What will the Black Hills meetup look like in September, if everyone is masked and six feet apart? Will the group be able to go out anywhere to eat or drink, or be confined to the vacation house that Randy has already rented?
The rules for reopening are depressing, and enough to make me wonder if there will ever be a return to normal (what was normal in December 2019). Are people doomed to never getting close to their friends again? Is this what the so-called experts really want society to look like? I sure hope not.
Published in Healthcare
I agree. No one’s going to live forever so at some point, you just have to take your chances and live and enjoy life. Here’s hoping that America’s short attention span will play in our favor for once.
Me too, Kay.
I wore a mask in Surgery for 40 years. It was to protect patients from bacteria I might be exhaling. I am aware of no evidence that these masks affect viruses. It may well be that those with upper respiratory illness will express droplets that a mask may contain. Without symptoms, I am aware of no evidence that masks, especially those made of cloth, have any function except theater.
I have no objection to 6 foot “social distancing” in places like the supermarket. It was amusing as I was scolded by a “Karen” for not observing the directional arrows in the aisles of the local Safeway store.
Tucson has allowed restaurants to resume serving but the one locally they we like has closed alternate booths. Tucson has a loony left Mayor so she may damage local commerce more. Most people are ignoring her.
My wife, who has a long history of pulmonary issues, including asthma as a child and smoking for far too long, was hospitalized two weeks ago. She had severe respiratory trouble and I was concerned one day I might not see her alive again. Of course, I was not allowed to visit although I am a physician. She is better now, no thanks to one of the hospitalists. She has been taking hydroxychloroquine for years for her rheumatoid arthritis and she attributes her survival to that much criticized drug. Her internist agrees and advised her to continue and to have me take it, which I am doing . Because she was high risk, she has stayed mostly home and I have done shopping, etc. She had five Covid tests, all are negative. Still the two good doctors she has seen agree she has had it.
Dear, elderly friend in minimum security independent living has been ‘allowed’ out to attend our church, shop for groceries, for several weeks now. But when the director of the institution learned that she and a friend went out to eat, she was forced to quarantine for 2 weeks. What the heck?
The only law that is imposed on me is the mask, (which I resent) but since a major social circle of mine is too fearful to contemplate gathering again before next summer or a covid vax has been created, their fear affects my future and my way of life. Nothing will sway them. Nothing will fix that. To me the future looks grim and lonely. To them it looks safe and cozy.
If it’s that easily transmitted, I’m no doctor, but I can’t see how anyone anywhere avoids it. We’re attempting what looks to be impossible–to stop the spread of the uncommon cold. Meanwhile my kids are losing more of life’s little milestones to a disease that really doesn’t affect them.
I know there are people who have worse cases or complications, but that’s the case with just about any disease. It’s awful and I feel for them.
Just looking at the numbers and then reading things like this, I’m more worried about how much childhood is going to float away for something decidedly less than an extinction level event.
For the record, I don’t believe Fauci was lying then (what they said about masks was repeated by everyone and supported by evidence). I believe he is lying now.
I wouldn’t put a mask over my face if you paid me.
I have been saying this a lot. Masks protect against bacteria (which is why surgeons also wear caps and gowns), not viruses.
I haven’t eaten out yet, but I have gone shopping. I too am bothered by clerks and check-out personnel wearing masks. Your face is a big thing that makes you human. As I’ve said before, wearing masks that cover the face dehumanizes Muslim women. Wearing masks is also what executioners and terriorists do because it enables them to perform inhuman acts.
My son, who lives in Orange County CA, just got back from a trip to look at colleges and also to look at places they will move once he retires in two years. He is a fireman for CA and his wife runs a successful business from home. They will NOT stay in CA once they can get out. They spent part of a week with friends in Arkansas and loved it, including a look at U of Ark. They looked at Texas and thought Waco and Austin are dumps. In the fall, they are going to look at U of Alabama. His son, who is 15 and 6 foot 4, was encouraged by the friends in Arkansas to look hard at baseball at U of Ark. I think Ark is close enough for family in CA to visit, AL is pretty far. Lots of former OC friends in Austin but they were not impressed.
For what it’s worth, talking and hearing each other with masks on from 6 feet apart is no problem.
I hate the masks! Being hearing impaired I cannot lip read people. And most people do not talk clear enough or loud enough for me to understand them, through the masks, even with my new hearing aids. However, every single professional person I have dealt with, has agreeably move their mask down so I can lip read them. Bless their hearts! I figure they really want me to understand them.
This is 100% correct. And I’m in the same boat with my kids. We’re pulling them out of school this fall because regulations have turned schools into little mock-prisons where kids are psychologically abused by being taught to fear human contact. While everything we are learning about this virus shows all these actions to be useless at best, but the public doesn’t work like that. This is a mob mentality like nothing we’ve seen in a hundred years.
I hate wearing the mask, but my hairdresser and nail salon require it, so I will do it. (the hairdresser has a new procedure for when they are washing your hair in the basin. They say that they will put a towel over your face! Needless to say, I will wash my hair at home). Both dentists have very strict rules about mask-wearing, dictated by the State, of course, and I followed their rules while in their offices. But I sure ditched the mask the second I was out the door to go home.
I never ate yellow snow, I only created it.
Taking hydroxychloroquine without zinc is useless against the virus, and possibly counterproductive even aside from the virus if it effectively “leaches” zinc from the body, leading to a zinc deficiency which has other consequences.
You might want to provide a citation for that (by which I mean the “leaches” zinc part).
It was posted elsewhere on Ricochet, including references to medical studies as I recall. But I mostly just absorb information for my own benefit, I don’t keep track of footnotes in case someone wants me to repeat them.
Last week I was thrilled to be able to go to my long-time hairdresser as I was in desperate need of a haircut. We both wore masks, and she lightly placed a towel over my face when she washed my hair, something we both thought was strange, but it wasn’t terribly unpleasant. The only negative was that she couldn’t use the blow dryer to style my hair! I couldn’t believe it as the drying and styling is a very important part of getting your hair done.
OK, then. It happens to me, too. But I’ve been trying to keep up on this topic, and that’s a new one on me. If I knew the basis for that statement I might post a common on MedCram about it to see if I could get their take. Unless I could figure it out for myself, that is.
Well it’s come up before too, such as when CDC announces they’re going to do clinical tests of hydroxychloroquine WITHOUT zinc, which suggests they are deliberately setting up a negative finding.
But since hydroxychloroquine more or less “wants to find” zinc to propagate into cells, if there isn’t “extra” zinc available – because extra zinc is being taken along with the hydroxychloroquine – it will “borrow” zinc from the rest of the body, which can result in an overall zinc deficiency and its effects.
“Common symptoms include increased rates of diarrhea. Zinc deficiency affects the skin and gastrointestinal tract; brain and central nervous system, immune, skeletal, and reproductive systems.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_deficiency
The pulling-them-out thought has crossed my mind. None of what I’ve heard out of my kids’ school has sounded good, but we’ll see how things actually shake out this fall. If it’s implemented the same way a lot of businesses around here have done with their restrictions, it’ll be nothing to worry about.
Washington is requiring all kids over age 2 to wear masks at all times. That is the final straw for me.
I can’t imagine trying to keep a mask on two-year-old for any length of time. Do these people even have little children? Ever worked with them?
They think we are children–deplorable children who need their guidance and discipline for now, and who can be discarded when they’re done with us.
Just found on MyNorthwest.com. Dimslee is issuing an executive order for Yakima County:
Inslee said ICU patients are now being transferred to Seattle for lack of capacity.
“Without us doing something quite dramatic, cases in Yakima County could double in the next couple of weeks,” the governor said.
In the next few days, Inslee said he’ll issue a proclamation mandating facial coverings.
“This is a legal requirement, not a suggestion,” Inslee said.
Also under the proclamation, businesses will not be allowed to sell products or services to those that aren’t complying. “That essentially means no masks, no service,” Inslee said. “No masks, no goods.”
Yakima hospitals are not full of covid patients. They are filled with the 2-month backlog, and the beds “reserved for covid” account for a very small percentage of beds.
Lies upon lies, and the idea that masks will do anything is abject nonsense.
That pisses me off so much. Inslee has zero evidence to back up those ridiculous statements. In the meantime, he ignores the lawlessness in Seattle. I hope he has a massive heart attack.