I can assure you I’m not making this up. I live in Virginia. Our governor is a physician. I live in an area where there has been a relatively large outbreak for our population size. I definitely understand why they want people to do this. I skimmed the letter as I had already decided against the surgery, but the testing was definitely mandatory. The quarantine may just be recommended. I will check when I get home.
Amen to this – which should be a public service announcement & a public health campaign.
From today’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security email newsletter:
CONTACT TRACER TRAINING The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies, in partnership with New York state launched an online course to train contact tracers. University faculty teach the basics of interviewing COVID-19 cases, identifying their close contacts, and providing them advice and support for quarantine. The course aims to provide the tools needed for future contact tracers to support COVID-19 response efforts that are critical to the country’s ability to safely relax social distancing measures. New York’s professional contact tracers will be required to complete the course, but anyone may take it for free. The course is available via the Coursera platform starting today.
I don’t know how people can quarantine for 7 days before surgery and then recuperate after surgery. I guess that the only people who can have surgery are those who can afford to work from home and have the resources/support network? Really disadvantaging to those who have to work or live alone. Or have limited sick time or time off.
It’s another impediment to medical services coming back. I don’t know what the solution is, it seems pretty punitive.
Everything about this situation is punitive for someone. We may be in different boats - but we’re all in the same storm.
I had an appointment scheduled for 5/15 with my local lung md. I didn’t really need to see him and already had a telehealth visit with my other two docs a few weeks ago, so canceled this appointment. I’m not interested in potentially increasing my exposure and sick folks visit lung docs.
I couldn’t agree more, @deb922. This would have been difficult under the best circumstances, but COVID is a whole new wrinkle.
The letter was mailed on 5/7, the same day they contacted me by phone. "We ask that you:
Continue to shelter in place
Practice physical distancing and handwashing - the person bringing you to surgery should do this as well
Once you have a surgery date, self-quarantine for 7 days prior to surgery as much as possible - so quarantine is not mandatory but encouraged
You will be contacted to schedule COVID testing at XX facility
Check for symptoms and notify us if fever >100.5 or new respiratory symptoms.
If you accomplish most of this, you are screened at the facility, given a mask to wear, you can have one person with you who must remain in the preop room the entire time - if they leave the room, they must leave the facility. "
I have adequate health benefits, but I work in a very small office where we’re all wearing multiple hats. One of our older employees quit as she didn’t feel the firm was taking adequate precautions and she was well past retirement age. I honestly don’t know how I would manage if I had gone ahead. Getting to PT, getting the dogs cared for, who would shop? We don’t have a lot of the services people talk about here. I have the money to pay someone, but I don’t want people in my house. 8 weeks on crutches and then rehab? Not going to happen. I figure when I get my hip replaced they can fix the tendon too!
The most recent TWiV podcast, “corona and crowns”, did a deep dive into dentistry challenges starting about 30 minutes in. It is quite daunting. Apparently the high speed of drills and other devices will broadcast fine particles of everything throughout the whole room. And dentists typically have those half open rooms that do not provide an adequate barrier for this phenomenon.
They gave some helpful advice, such as hydrogen peroxide rinses and rubber shields that make teeth a dry field, but the safest course is for dentists to give a rapid test to each patient. They should also do all drilling in a closed room or on different days than hygiene visits so a thorough cleaning can be done.
I’m overdue 6 weeks or so now. I’m going to wait a bit longer at least!
Thanks! I have not listened to this one yet. Forwarding to a dentist friend who is also a science nerd…
The story of the teen who quit his job at an ice cream shop on Cape Cod because of the abuse customers heaped on him at reopening - they didn’t want to follow the rules, such as ordering ice cream ahead of time.
I am so tempted to post this on Facebook for my friend from Massachusetts. He went on this tirade about how Mainers would be sorry that our governor was discouraging “YOU PEOPLE” (out of staters) from visiting. Well, yep, it’s because YOU PEOPLE act like idiots.
I’m waiting quite patiently for the second part of my root canal (and dentist’s here are still only doing emergency procedures, anyway:)
All the rooms have regular walls all the way to the ceiling,
My regular 6 month cleaning was supposed to be last week.
I’m not fretting over this. It’ll get done when it gets done.
I would be loathe to handle cash and then get a face mask from someone who has been handling cash and interacting selectively with non mask wearers!
I think their projections are still way too low. We are already at 80k death and likely will be at the least 100k deaths by the end of the month. We’re going to blow through the 137k they project by mid August, by mid June, imo.
‘Key virus modeler says rise in mobility is driving up death projection‘
“What he’s saying: “We’re seeing, in some states, a 20 percentage point increase in just 1o days in mobility, and that will translate into more human contact, more transmission,” Murray said.
Murray explained that the rise in mobility is likely a result of states relaxing lockdown measures and of people simply growing tired of staying indoors.
“The places that are taking off the social distancing mandates, the bump in mobility appears to be larger,” he said. “So somewhere like Georgia, which was one of the first, we’re seeing is in that category of a pretty big increase.”
https://www.axios.com/ihme-coronavirus-model-mobility-85b6aa01-eb86-4c8b-bea3-521e0300e010.html
I am not understanding what triggered the mess surrounding the ice cream stand. Was it just that people getting angry that their orders were hours late? Does ice cream really lend itself to pre-ordering in the first place? Couldn’t he have put up giant bifold signs saying “Sold out - preorder pickup only” or something? Handed out numbers (like deli counters), first come/first served, and try again tomorrow if you don’t have a number?
OTOH, we’re in different times now. Business must adapt if they want to reopen anytime soon. He tried something, it didn’t work out. He’ll try something else and eventually figure out what works. Capitalism rewards the adaptable.
How those customers behaved at that ice cream parlor is despicable.
This pandemic has been quite telling.
Sometimes…
Adaptability is rewarded when it is needed to handle changing situations. But if the situation is static or only very slowly changing, adaptability may be an extra cost to be cut in order to remain competitive. But if the situation does change rapidly, the lack of adaptability can be punished.
An example would be the supply chains for some foods and toilet paper. There was previously no need to maintain any adaptability between the household and commercial supply chains, because demand for each was relatively constant. But the sudden shift in demand from commercial to household products exposed the inflexibility there, resulting in wasted surpluses at the same time as shortages.
I phoned my mother yesterday to wish her a happy Mother’s Day and she informed me that my brother was there. 
@MaineLonghorn i saw that story in the WP and immediately sent it to my daughter. She and her coworkers have been experiencing this treatment at her bakery for weeks. Fortunately the kind customers far outweigh the nasty ones but it still stings.
I checked out the ice cream shop’s FB page. One of the commenters offered to pay the teenage worker’s pay for the missed hours she would have worked this week had she not quit. Several others echoed similar sentiments. In the end, a Go Fund me page was set up for her college fund and already has more than $13K in donations. A kind gesture by many, but the whole situation is a sad commentary on people’s treatment of others over something as insignificant as the “guilty pleasure” of ice cream.
^Wow, I’m glad people stepped up and donated like that! It does make me feel better about humanity.
Every time we visit Massachusetts, we’re very happy to get back to Maine.
I’m mostly with you, except that I think that we differ on what we think about opening safely meaning I think that it means at the least following the national guidelines and the more detailed CDC guidelines and don’t think that states should ignore those or skip over phases in opening. I think it should be based on data and what infectious disease specialists recommend and what has worked elsewhere. I’m not sure what you personally think should guide determining if it is safe to open but from what I read from others who want to open sooner it seems to be based on, ‘it’s been long enough’ rather than some data.
Otherwise, excluding your last paragraph, we are actually in agreement. I think that is largely true of many people who on the surface disagree.
As for the last paragraph, that doesn’t work with drinking and driving, second hand smoke, and other things. People can be as responsible as they are capable but this virus can spread very well so without taking other people’s safety into consideration, we are not going to get out of this mess. Italy and other places show that working together works to control things and allow things to open back up. I think sadly we will see states where people have opened too soon will find themselves 1 step forward and 2 steps back in a few weeks.