Just read that VA is going to Phase 3 in a week. I can’t believe that our governor, who’s a physician, isn’t more concerned by what he’s seen in other states. Phase 3 here means no capacity restrictions for restaurants and retail stores, 75% capacity at gyms, groups up to 250. But masks are still required indoors, but not necessarily enforced. I can’t imagine that we won’t be like FL and Texas in a month, especially in NoVA.
Indoors seems to be the biggie. If outdoors and a distance away from others, there’s really no need. Hiking, biking, picnicking, beaches, etc - as long as folks are away from each other.
From what I understand outdoors it’s social distancing or masks. Indoors it’s social distancing and masks. Indoors I think the virus can be spread through ventilation as well as lingering longer without the wind/humidity/sunlight and similar.
On mask-wearing compliance: Here in Anchorage, Alaska, mask-wearing isn’t mandated, though there’s been some discussion of that happening. In the meantime everything’s open as normal, though dine-in business at restaurants is, by all measures, still precipitously down.
I went out for our biweekly grocery-and-everything-else run yesterday, and here are my observations:
[ul][]Carrs (a Safeway brand): About two-thirds of the customers were wearing masks, which was notably higher than what I’d seen two weeks prior. This included more than half of the men I saw, which is where the big difference was—two weeks ago, I was one of a very, very few male customers wearing a mask in the store. Employees were all wearing masks (mandated, as with every store on this list, by their employer), but many of them were wearing them below their noses.
[]Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand): A bit under half the customers were wearing masks, about the same as two weeks before. Employees were all wearing masks, but many, maybe even most of them were wearing them below their chins, which seems extra-bonus-points pointless to me.
[]Costco: There were signs up mandating the wearing of masks, and the people at the door were offering masks to people who came in without them, but there was precisely zero enforcement of the rule. Two weeks ago everyone was wearing masks, but this time only about 80% of the customers were wearing them. At least all the employees were, though, and doing so properly. (The thing that I found really annoying is that whereas Costco had been providing carts with sanitized handles in previous weeks, yesterday they weren’t, and they didn’t even have a station where you could clean your own cart, which every other place I went to did. Not cool, North Anchorage Costco.)
[]Walmart: Honestly, I went to Walmart not to buy anything, but because I was curious about mask-wearing there. About 25% of the customers were wearing masks, though all of the employees were, and of those I only saw one wearing it pulled down, and that seemed to be a temporary thing because he pulled it in place again when he came up to a co-worker to talk about something.
[]Natural Pantry (a Whole Foods-type store—we don’t have a Whole Foods—that somehow simultaneously attracts the hippie-granola crowd and the doomsday preppers): Everyone, both customers and employees, was wearing masks and wearing them properly.
[]Target: There were signs up mandating masks, but only about two-thirds of the customers were wearing them. (Two weeks ago all of the customers were, no exceptions.) All of the employees were, though, and nearly all of them were doing so properly.[/ul]
I’ll note, by the way, that this is Anchorage—anecdotally, the rest of the state’s cities and towns (including the ones nearby) have much lower compliance with mask-wearing. To some extent, this seems to be driven by the—let’s admit it, it’s real—politicization of mask-wearing, and Anchorage as a whole is politically center-left while the rest of the state (except Juneau and some places off the road system) is various shades of red.
One observation from my travels yesterday that I find kind of distressing, and I hope it’s just an oddity of the non-systematic way I collected my observations rather than a reality: If you arrange the stores above along an axis of “most associated with the working class” to “most associated with household wealth” (so, per local norms, Walmart→Fred Meyer→the rough equivalents of Carrs and Target→Costco→Natural Pantry), you get more mask-wearing the higher up the social scale you go. This wasn’t the case two weeks ago, though, so yesterday may just have been an anomalous day.
And finally, to answer a question posed upthread, I saw zero instances of people being gotten after, even indirectly, for either wearing a mask or not wearing a mask.
Just read that VA is going to Phase 3 in a week. >>>
Wonder what DC and MD will do. DC just went to phase two Monday and my part of MD to phase two on Friday.
@cap - I can’t imagine that DC and those parts of MD will go to Phase 3 so quickly, but who knows. NoVA had trailed the rest of the state in entering phases until now.
I’m taking moral judgments on whether or not people are being selfish or not entirely out of the equation. Given that people obviously aren’t doing it, models based on perfect compliance aren’t enitrely relevant.
I was also including improper use by people actually trying to do it right. People in Southeast Asia may be entirely on board with wearing masks all day. That doesn’t actually mean they are doing it in an effective way either.
There’s the ideal, and the real. If it turns out that people are a lot more willing to wear face shields, and a lot less likely to unintentionally use it in such a way that it becomes a hazard, encouraging face-shields as required coverings might be more effective than making masks the default option. Of course, I don’t know that to be true, but it seems worthy of study - especially given that it was only a few months ago that the medical experts were recommending against widespread mask usage entirely.
Immunity doesn’t only come from antibodies, it also resides elsewhere in your immune system (for instance, T-Cells). Even if antibodies are undetectable after two months, that doesn’t mean you aren’t immune. Not sure if a vaccine would create the same kind of response, but plasma, at least, is intended to boost the immune response of people currently critically ill with Corona. Whether or not it confers the other person with long-term immunity, it can still get them through the crisis.
@dfbdfb, you just made me homesick - we lived in Anchorage for 7 years (hence my screen name), and I was mentally following along on your journey. Stay safe.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/504169-california-texas-idaho-record-daily-highs-in-new-covid-19-cases-on I’m concerned for residents of all these states but especially for one resident of California: my younger daughter.
With all we now know about spittle, how fast it travels outward under which conditions, frankly I wish everyone would wear masks all the time forever going forward!!! LOL. I have become a germaphobe. Yeah, yeah I knew but…was easier to ignore. My habits will be forever changed in general like after going grocery shopping. For years I have kept hand sanitizer in the cars to use very first thing in leaving any public place, especially the grocery store. Greatly cut down on the incidence of winter colds for me.
Texas Covid hospitalizations jumped over 10% today, up 61% for the week.
Houston, we’ve got a problem.
It certainly seems as if mask wearing in Asian countries has controlled the spread fairly effectively as none (at least so far) have seen the out-of-control acceleration of cases that other countries (including the US) have. With the exception of the initial spread in China of course.
Here in the NYC suburbs, everyone is wearing masks when in stores or waiting in line to go into stores. However, very few are wearing masks when exercising or on the beach. Although most are working from homes, the folks that go into our office generally are not wearing masks which they should be when in shared spaces or hallways. We have individual offices so not needed when sitting at our desks.
Question: If the largest rise in positive cases is in the younger population (18-30 in my state ) who more commonly have less severe symptoms, and may not require hospitalization, is the hospitalization # really a better indicator of the rise in cases right now?
If I ran the zoo, I would say that Phase 3 should be when we have workable therapeutics and Phase 4 when we have a vaccine. I don’t understand the wishful thinking that is leading to sooner reopenings - what exactly has changed vs. a few weeks ago? Seemingly nothing relevant.
Not yet. There will be a delay. These young people will eventual infect others who may require hospitalization.
I do not wear a mask outdoors, but always have one with me in case I can’t get at least 6 feet from someone. We walk for 2 hours everyday (for exercise) and choose areas and times to walk when we know it will not be crowded. Since it has not been too warm in my area I wear a neck gator so that I can easily pull it up if I’m going to pass closer than 6 feet to someone.
Testing is supposed to be done to catch spread before it happens. It is supposed to be a way to come out of stay at home and be able to open things so it would mean testing a huge amount of random people with the super rapid and accurate tests (so people don’t test and then go home and spread it to others while waiting for results), followed by contact tracing and quarantine. As far as I know, we don’t have much of that happening. So far in the USA as far as I know, testing was first done on the most sick people only (and not even all those), and then was on some of the people who wanted tests, and has now moved more to most of the people who want tests or in some places, all the people who want tests. But those people suspect they have it and hopefully many are being careful to not spread it. The type of testing we are supposed to do to prevent spread is also testing random asymptomatic people so we can stop that type of silent spread before it saturates and area and then causes things to flare up big time as we saw in March. So, it testing a lot of people doesn’t mean we are testing in a way that will be effective at controlling spread. It means we have a lot of sick people! That’s a big concern.
I think that number of people tested is not that meaningful a number for this reason compared to how testing and other strategies to prevent spread are being used.
The big worry for me is the steep rise in cases that many states are now seeing that we know can’t be explained by just increased testing combined with people seeming to being also a lot less careful and in some places, fewer wearing masks. All that seems like a very bad combination.
Hearing about ICUs starting to fill up is not a good thing. Near part of my family in Florida ICUs are getting fuller and fuller. Very concerning situation.
Expanded UI ends at the end of July. MANY people will be unable to pay their bills, even if they are able to find work. For low earners, pay is not great, and there is no guarantee of 40 hours. If your kids are not in school/day care?
I was looking at jobs at INDEED today and nearly giving myself a panic attack.
And now there’s this; not surprising but disappointing nonetheless. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/exclusive-feds-about-to-bail-on-supporting-covid-testing-sites-in-texas-and-other-states
If I were in charge, expanded UI would also continue, and different funding priorities would balance the budget to accommodate that. I’m sorry about the panic attack! I’m on the board of a nonprofit daycare and I feel OK about their plans to open in a few weeks with full PPE etc. I think that essential daycares can open in Phase 2 with accommodations.
Today hospitalizations are a better indicator to compare in Ohio against the last few months even though they are a lagging indicator because most of the people hospitalized with covid were actually able to be tested. Now that anyone can get tested (just started June 12th), we can start comparing case counts moving forward to this current period.