Thanks, @cinnamon1212. That list is exactly what is informing my decisions.
I think I saw that Los Angeles is now requiring masks outside all the time. Even when exercising - unless you are in the water.
@“Cardinal Fang” - thank you for explaining how contact tracing works. A contact tracer wouldn’t have to dig very deep with me. I see dh and occasionally we go sit on the beach with friends. Well-separated but no masks. I would not be happy if I had to wear a mask on the beach. This seems to now be the requirement in L.A.
I am quite annoyed at my dentist’s office. Out of the blue, I got a call this morning from the office reminding me about my cleaning on Monday. I said, “I didn’t even know you were open.” “Oh yeah, we’re open.” Stated like why would I even ask. Nothing more. volunteered. They have had zero communication with patients since the office closed. No emails, nothing posted on their web site.
So I said I wasn’t sure if I was ready to come in yet and asked what protocol they were following. She said, wearing N95 masks, having patients wear masks (I’m assuming not during tooth cleaning!), asking screening questions before patients come to the office. I asked about cleaning between patients. Oh yeah, we clean before and after. No details on how.
I asked to reschedule for late June. I don’t know if it was just the person calling (she was new late last year and I already didn’t like her patient communication skills) or if she was advised to act like nothing was different than normal. I went online and learned that dental practices in the county have only just been approved to open for routine services this week, and that they needed to follow strict protocols and file paperwork and such.
I’m sending an email to the office advising that this was really a poor way to reopen for business considering the circumstances. And that the call certainly doesn’t give me confidence in what they’re doing.
That is why the mask requirements that I have seen apply only to when one is inside or in line to enter a business, workplace, health care provider, public transportation, or taxi/rideshare.
But then people sometimes imagine restrictions that are stricter and more pointless than they actually are. For example, believing or implying that the mask requirement applies to any activity outside, or that a “no more than 5 or 10 miles from home” limit applies to all activities rather than specific ones, or that all N95 respirators (as opposed to those with valves) do not fulfill the mask requirement. But then this may be “the game of telephone” where some important details get lost or changed along the way.
Patients can’t wear masks during their dentist appointments. Dentists drill teeth, and dental hygenists use whirring instruments, which could aerosolize viruses if the patient was unknowingly infected. Unmasked patients could breathe in these viruses, if ventilation was such that the air from the infected patient traveled to the air around the other patients.
I would be concerned if my dentist didn’t address this issue somehow.
Or conversely to the above,
-if you’ve had COVID we do not know that getting it a second time would result in a much milder form due to partial immunity
No, we do no know yet, but the above is also a possibility.
The previous poster could have spent 15 or 20 minutes in line to pay for the groceries, or in line to get into the grocery store.
My mom forwarded this to me.
I will let the more science oriented poster opine on this.
@emilybee I read @TatinG 's post to mean simply he/she is less nervous about trips to the grocery store or taking a walk in a park. Maybe I am wrong, but I didn’t read the post as saying that they were taking less precautions. Where I live something like 75% of cases are in nursing homes. I still stay at home, only leaving to go to the grocery store 1x per week, wearing a mask when I do, but these trips are less stressful knowing that most cases aren’t transmitted there. This knowledge doesn’t give me free reign, just a little peace of mind. That’s what I took away from Tatin’s post.
They could have. And the people next to them in line would be contacts, then, maybe. I’m not sure how people six feet away and masked are regarded; probably contacts if talking was going on, probably not if no talking happened, but I don’t know. If they were standing unmasked next to the next person in line for 15 minutes, that unlucky person would count as a contact. Contact tracers might be able to find and reach that person, or maybe not. Contact tracers are expected to do a bit of detective work.
Absolutely! And in my email to the office, I gave links to two other dental offices that have detailed info online of their safety and cleaning protocols. I haven’t stayed safely at home for this long to go somewhere I can’t trust right now. I do generally like my dentist but have encountered other issues with poor communication.
There’s a county jail there just like any other county, but no state prison.
@choatiemom Well we picked up a box of masks from a close friend/coach who had Covid back in late March/early April this morning. It’s in the shed. We quarantine everything coming in the house ( all food, amazon/shipments and really anything). IT goes into the garage and either gets washed (like some food items) or sits in a plastic bin with the lid on for a few days. The box stays outside and is thrown away after a week.
Are you worried that since they had Covid that the virus is in their house? I’m not sure I’d have any issue with that as time has passed.
In terms of them being contagious/not since they had it, I’m not ready to open up and eat out at this point. That’s just personal preference. I’m also not sure that they would fall into a “more desirable” category to me as they presume they have antibodies. Just not enough is known about this disease.
I think it’s likely that immunity might only last months instead of longer. But I tend to the very conservative stance since we have been quarantined so long here and I don’t want to get it at this point.
When laws are vague, inconsistent, or simply make no sense, there’s not always a virtue to following them. And if your decision is reasoned and considered, while you’re maybe risking a fine in departing from the letter of the law, I don’t think you should be condemned for it.
Three of my friends had dinner together before it was legal to do so (now, you can meet outdoors in small groups or invite members of one other household for indoor meals). Two of them are a married couple; husband is in a high risk group. The other lives alone and struggles with depression, in addition to physical health problems. None of the three of them had been outside for weeks, even to go to the grocery store or pharmacy - everything was delivery only.
What they did was illegal. I have a really hard time seing how it was unethical or unsafe. And yes, of course there is the infintesimal chance that despite everything, one of them contracted COVID from the plastic bag that came with their groceries. But to me, that’s looking for a reason to condemn. By any reasonable calculus, they were behaving responsibly.
All of this will get worse if people aren’t given any sense that at least some of these restrictions have a definable end date. The article from the Atlantic I posted yesterday noted that during the AIDS crisis in the 80s, for a while doctors were simply telling gay men not to have sex. Ever. But other realized that while that was of courses the healthiest option, it was netiher realistic nor fair for the solution to the crisis to be possibly lifelong celibacy. So the model changed to minimizing risk.
Again, I really do think that MOST people are willing to accept that Corona will cause large changes in our lives, just as AIDS caused significant changes to gay culture. That’s what polls reflect; very few people are clamoring to reopen movie theaters or baseball stadiums or to go to blowout parties. But if you make restrictions so severe and at times irrational that it nearly impossible to keep all of the laws while maintaining any quality of life, you’re going to wind up with people ignoring even the laws that make more sense.
No. My concern is the same as it is with anyone—I have no idea what anyone brings into their house or how they clean it (and because our friends are “immune,” they are not quarantining what comes into their house), so I am not entering anyone’s home, and no one has crossed our threshold other than me and DH since my mother’s last visit on March 5th.
Given what we know (or don’t) at this point, I consider immunity to be a one-way street: Our friends may be safe from the virus for some unknown length of time but could still be transmitters, so I consider them no different from anyone who has not had the virus.
A thought on protecting the most vulnerable and reopening…
What if we lowered the SS full retirement age to 62 (or pick a number below 65). Give the folks in the highest risk category a bump in stable income NOW. Open the rest of the economy faster to those at lower risk.
Remember, all those people who are now unemployed are not paying into SS!!! As this number continues to grow the SS fund is depleted at a faster and faster rate.
Just a thought…
When one’s action can cause illness or even another person’s death I think it’s entirely appropriate to condemn someone for their behavior.
If you knew someone was going to drive drunk, would you not do everything you can to stop them?
I have no qualms about condemning people for their reckless behaviors in the middle of a pandemic.
^Yeah, I got slammed for “public shaming” and “judging” on a community Facebook page. Thank you, I will take that as a compliment.
I’m probably not the right person to say this, being a proud graduate of the Attila the Hun School of Charm and Grace, but maybe public shaming doesn’t work, and other forms of civic encouragement work better.