3 hours ago, charliearon said:

Is everyone going around sucking their thumbs and picking their noses after pumping gas??  Keep your hands away from your face.  Duh!

 

Yeah, its not as simple as that though. After touching the pump, you touch your car door handle, after touching your car door handle you touch your steering wheel, and then when you get home you touch your house door handle etc. The pesky little critters can survive on surfaces for a long time. Then you have to remember that touching your face, scratching your nose, rubbing your eyes, and all manner of face touching is often involuntary. We often don't even know we have done it.

So the advice is sound, grab those little plastic gloves by the side of the pump and wear them.

Edited March 21, 20206 yr by martin-w

4 minutes ago, cmpbellsjc said:

This pilot sent his message via flight path 😂

3 hours ago, charliearon said:

Is everyone going around sucking their thumbs and picking their noses after pumping gas??  Keep your hands away from your face.  Duh!

Hopefully not but did you see that idiot lady influencer the other day doing the “Corona virus challenge” by licking the toilet seat in an airliner. Just when you thought some people couldn’t be more idiotic, she comes along and proves us wrong.

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

 

Reading all the opinions on masks here I am confused as to whether the protection is inhaling or exhaling or, perchance, both.

 

I am confused on how the masks work.  Are they one way valves that protect others from exhales or do they protect you while inhaling?

 

Having worn cheap masks you buy at the hardware store to wear while operating power saws and sanders I was under the impression they were to prevent me from inhaling sawdust, not to protect the machines from whatever I might exhale.  

 

Common sense tells me the masks work both ways.  Am I wrong?

 

Noel

 

 

Noel, you are correct. Masks do work both ways. 

They protect you from the virus, to a degree, when we are out and about, but not significantly. 

They do, when worn by an infected person, help prevent the infection of others in our vicinity.

They do, when worn by those caring for the infected, provide a degree of protection for the carer. Hence why doctors and nurses and carers wear them. 

The point though, is that the masks we buy from drug stores aren't suitable. 

 

 

Edited March 21, 20206 yr by martin-w

4 minutes ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Hopefully not but did you see that word not allowed lady influencer the other day doing the “Corona virus challenge” by licking the toilet seat in an airliner. Just when you thought some people couldn’t be more idiotic, she comes along and proves us wrong.

What's more dangerous than the virus and the resulting illness is how a number of people are treating this. From your example to people partying in large groups in parks to people just not giving a word not allowed.

3 minutes ago, threegreen said:

What's more dangerous than the virus and the resulting illness is how a number of people are treating this. From your example to people partying in large groups in parks to people just not giving a word not allowed.

 

Apparently a multitude of idiotic kids decided they would ignore the advice and do the "spring break" thing and descend on a Florida beach. What can you expect though from kids.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2020/03/19/spring-break-beaches-florida-look-packed-despite-coronavirus-spread/2873248001/

7 minutes ago, threegreen said:

What's more dangerous than the virus and the resulting illness is how a number of people are treating this. From your example to people partying in large groups in parks to people just not giving a word not allowed.

I was in a store the other day and saw a customer walking around coughing all over the place without at least covering his mouth. It really bothered me that whether or not he has the virus, he didn’t have the common decency to at least cover his mouth when doing so.

 

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

 

Reading all the opinions on masks here I am confused as to whether the protection is inhaling or exhaling or, perchance, both.

 

I am confused on how the masks work.  Are they one way valves that protect others from exhales or do they protect you while inhaling?

 

Having worn cheap masks you buy at the hardware store to wear while operating power saws and sanders I was under the impression they were to prevent me from inhaling sawdust, not to protect the machines from whatever I might exhale.  

 

Common sense tells me the masks work both ways.  Am I wrong?

 

Noel

They work both ways.

N95 mask is required to protect you from inhaling the virus. Protection for you from the outside.

Any mask can contain the water droplets expelled when you cough or sneeze. Protection for the outside from you.

In a public health scenario, the wearing of any mask can help prevent the spread of a disease. But that requires wide participation to be effective. That is why asian countries mandate them. Go over my scenarios of 100 people in a room posted earlier.

In order to avoid collapsing a economy with widespread quarantine and shelter orders during a pandemic, people must be allowed to go out, travel and congregate to keep the economy moving. To safely do that, it must be assumed that everyone is infected and enact safeguards for possible interaction with the infected.  In Asia, they have found that the mandating of procedure masks makes the most sense. People can go about their lives, interact with possibly infected people, but still contain the spread and not have to be afraid.

 

14 hours ago, domkle said:

Again thank you @Alan_A for the references. Your posts are a civic service to the community. 

You're very kind to say so.  At the risk of repeating - it's just that, thanks to some turns in my largely accidental career path, I've had the opportunity to work with some of these questions and I've had some training in how to find and interpret information.  Trying to share some of that here to the extent it helps clarify things.

I've also collected a number of friends who are physicians and paramedics and public safety professionals, and that helps me stay in touch with what's happening and how it looks to them at ground level.  Which, I have to say, is pretty frightening.  Trying to share some of that urgency, too.

Back on track... I agree with @KevinAu that Asia has a lot more experience with masks than we do in the west, and that experience should be taken into account.  Clinical practice can change over time.  Same goes with safe distance - six feet is the current clinical standard but that could change based on new information.  Six-foot separation does have practical value, though - it's pretty easy for people to eyeball and it keeps them decently separate while doing things like walking down the sidewalk.  If the standard was 20 feet, that'd be harder to manage, and people might give up.  So six feet is a) the current standard and b) a lot better than no separation at all.

It'll be necessary to study how the disease spreads based on all these different practices, and adjust accordingly.

17 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

It'll be necessary to study how the disease spreads based on all these different practices, and adjust accordingly.

Singapore is the best example of management and mitigating risks during this pandemic, their numbers speak for itself, and they even operate a major international hub and were able to contain things better then others, they even kept the schools open during all of this.

But I think like said the individual in that culture is better prepared and the Civil Defense and Health Care in Singapore is better supported

Edited March 21, 20206 yr by Matthew Kane

3 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

Singapore is the best example of management and mitigating risks during this pandemic

True.  Of course, their geography makes it easier in some respects - city-state, limited travel in and out apart from the airport.  And very strict enforcement of social laws under routine conditions, which probably makes it easier to ramp them up.

But we'll definitely have things to learn from them.

I keep thinking back to that 1918 flu pandemic example of Philadelphia (no restrictions) vs. St. Louis (heavy restrictions), and how successful St. Louis was at flattening the curve.  We seem to be repeating the same kind of experiment on a global basis.

At great cost, of course, for regions that don't crack down.

Speaking of field experiments...

45 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

Speaking of field experiments...

Astounding, I just read about that too from another source.

The lesson learned is closing down early and offering a stimulus package for business and citizens will save billions and soften the blow on the economy. Both Kentucky and Tennessee ended up shutting down anyway but Kentucky just saved billions in health care costs and will get back on its feet sooner. Tennessee is shut down, facing enormous health care costs, and will take much longer to kick start its economy. This is a great example.

For me I am a small business owner with 4 staff, our government has ordered us to pay our staff during any leave and they will reimburse those salaries, they also said to report any business losses over 30% and they will give us a financial package, yes this will cost the government but it will also save them billions in health care costs and put our nation in a better position to get back working again, It also ensures people are paid during this time which is important. This is above and beyond what others are doing. Everywhere is a different approach and will have different outcomes.

20 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

...this will cost the government but it will also save them billions in health care costs and put our nation in a better position to get back working again, It also ensures people are paid during this time which is important.

Exactly the right way to do it.

And yet, Dr. David Katz, who runs the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, is up in the New York Times with an op-ed arguing for herd immunity, on the grounds that you can successfully isolate high-risk groups and avoid economic disruption.  He bases the argument on prevalence figures without considering hospitalization rates... or health system impact... or the fact that severe cases are cropping up outside the identified risk groups... or that herd immunity is something you get from a vaccine, not a novel, severe virus on the loose. And he ignores the Imperial College study entirely.

But of course, lots of people will seize on it because it seems attractive to turn the "herd" loose. So..,.

25 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

Everywhere is a different approach and will have different outcomes.

Yep.

Still more.

This is truly frightening.

 

EDIT: And another resource here, that updates regularly.  Have a look at all that red in Florida, and think of all those spring break kids heading home. Disclaimer - the data isn't said to be specific to COVID-19.  But tracking it along with the data in the graph above... well.... you get the picture.

In all, I've seen better news.

EDIT 2: And yet another information resource.

Edited March 22, 20206 yr by Alan_A