# Anyone else questioning the extent of "social isolation"? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [March 17, 2020, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671 "2020-03-17T18:26:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/441 "2020-03-30T17:04:53Z")
You will get pretty close to the same pleasantry by talking to her on facetime/skype. We had a whole family gathering on facetime last night including my self isolated 83 y old mother in law. You should try it. 25’ is probably safe. I just don’t get why you want someone to promise you what’s safe. Why won’t you accept that the experts aren’t perfectly sure? ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/442 "2020-03-30T17:11:53Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I’m not looking for perfect answers, but I am trying to inform my judgment. I clearly can’t just trust the government guidelines–those are far too lax. But I also don’t think that I should just rely on what “feels” safe. You talk about “obvious”. I don’t think much is obvious here at all. For example, the discussion of droplets vs aerosols is a really interesting one, and not one I have seen before quite recently–up until a few days ago, everyone seemed pretty sure that droplets, not aerosols, were the problem, and so the media wasn’t making that distinction at all. It turns out it make a huge difference whether or not 2 meters is a meaningful distance. > > We have at least 6, maybe 8 more weeks like this. I’d really like to know if it’s safe to stand 25 feet away from my mom in open air, just to have a good look at her. I’d like to develop better judgment–and I can’t do that if every time someone asks a reasonable question they are accused of looking for loopholes and not caring about other people. No offense, but it seems like you’re looking for perfect answers, or specifications. There are no specifications for this. There’s no such thing as absolutely no risk. What you want to do is to approach this with risk reduction in mind. The fewer times you or other people in your household leave your house, the lower the risk. The more frequently you wash your hands, the more precautions you take, the safer you are. The more you violate these ‘rules,’ the greater the risk. You’re going to have to live with this, and probably for longer than 8 weeks. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/443 "2020-03-30T17:14:30Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > I just don’t get why you want someone to promise you what’s safe. Why won’t you accept that the experts aren’t perfectly sure? Where has **Manda JO** (or anyone else) ever said they were looking for promises? We all have to make decisions, and we want those decisions to be as informed as possible. (And no more so.) ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/444 "2020-03-30T17:19:08Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > We have at least 6, maybe 8 more weeks like this. I’d really like to know if it’s safe to stand 25 feet away from my mom in open air, just to have a good look at her. I’d like to develop better judgment–and I can’t do that if every time someone asks a reasonable question they are accused of looking for loopholes and not caring about other people. The problem is not only can we not tell you how risky it is to stand 25 feet from your mother, we can’t actually decide for you whether that risk is “safe” for you as an individual. Because your acceptable risk level is an individual policy decision. It isn’t an objective or uniform thing. For instance, if we were able to calculate that you or your mother have a 5% probability of being infected on the day you wanted to check on her and that there is a 0.1% probability of one of you infecting the other if you stand 25 feet apart on that particular day given your (or your mother’s) viral load, the wind velocity, wind direction, and humidity, would you consider this “safe enough”? Because personally I would take the chance given these odds. But I wouldn’t judge someone harshly for not feeling the same way since maybe they are older than me and have more underlying medical issues than I do, so the stakes are greater for them. But I probably would be wary of taking my chances once my probability of being infected was in the 10% ballpark. Or if my probability of getting infected at a 25 ft distance increased to 1%. I am not using a complicated calculus to justify my wariness at these thresholds. It’s just the odds feel scarier to me for some reason. All of it is subjective. In my line of work, I am always being asked if it’s safe to do X. Is it safe to eat the fish in a particular waterbody or is it safe to go swimming in it. It would be professionally inappropriate for me to tell people it’s not safe to do these things because everyone uses their own rubic to gauge “safe”. All I can tell you is that we’ve flagged a waterbody as being one of concern and what the health department recommends you should do to mitigate your risk. But I’m not going to be able to give the information you need to do your own risk assessment. Not only do I not have it, but even if I did have it, it would only be information meaningful for a tiny snapshot in time. A tiny snapshot from the past that may not be relevant today. It won’t tell you about your risk right now. So you’d be better off just following the health’s department recommendations as much as you can. And if you have to deviate from the recommendations, do what you can to mitigate your risk. Like, maybe in your case you can wear a scarf or something on your face and ask your mother to do the same. Maybe you can take a portable fan with you and position it so that it is perpendicular to your face, so that droplets and aerosols coming out of you are dispersed into the air. Maybe you can spray the air in front of you with a water bottle as you’re speaking so that aerosols get weighed down by humidity and don’t blow around so much. These may be crazy suggestions and I have no idea if they would do anything. But there are likely things you can do to lower your risk when engaging in a somewhat risky activity. (Like, I tell people if they gotta eat locally caught fish, at least take the skin off. Doing that one thing can make a huge difference.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/445 "2020-03-30T17:20:05Z")
Stay upwind, you’ll be fine. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/446 "2020-03-30T17:20:44Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Where has **Manda JO** (or anyone else) ever said they were looking for promises? > > We all have to make decisions, and we want those decisions to be as informed as possible. (And no more so.) Exactly how many times has she asked “I just want to know if 25’ is safe”? She is looking for a promise that no one is prepared to give. I have a feeling if someone told her “no, it’s not safe” she’s got “ok, how about 30 feet?” all loaded up. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/447 "2020-03-30T17:23:00Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > Early in March, a chorale group in Mt. Vernon, Washington, met to rehearse. They were aware of the growing rules about distancing, and any member with sniffles did not attend. They disinfected with hand sanitizers, sat apart from each other, and nobody shook hands or hugged. They rehearsed for two and a half hours, and then went home. > > Three days later, 45 of these 60 people came down with COVID-19, and two have died. > > [Story](https://www.fr24news.com/n24/2020/03/the-practice-of-the-choir-becomes-fatal-highly-suspected-airborne-coronavirus.html). According to the article, nobody coughed, sneezed, or looked sick. It’s worth pointing out that studies seem to show that, contrary to other viruses, the viral load seems rather high when people first contract it, which means that when they are going to shed virus when they are asymptomatic. They might have literally been spreading and shedding within that short span of time. The article suggests that this virus spread through aerosols, but I’m not really sure why they would reach that conclusion. A chorus is the perfect type of gathering for this virus - no aerosols required. Choir singers would be producing a higher number of air droplets even without coughing or sneezing. Their mouths would be open, and they would be exhaling a greater than usual volume of droplets. By singing, they would be projecting those droplets further than if they had been simply talking. I’m also guessing that their idea of “distance” was fatally inaccurate. By virtue of the fact they were singing, 3-6 feet might not have been enough distance. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/448 "2020-03-30T17:29:01Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Stay upwind, you’ll be fine. Or cut the odds, and have both you and your conversation partner BOTH stand upwind of each other. ---
**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/449 "2020-03-30T17:29:11Z")
> [@cmosdes](#): > > I pulled the data from [here](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/) and plotted the percent increase in the number of cases by day. If that increase is about 20% each day, we would double approximately every 3 to 4 days. There is a lot of noise going back to early March. There is a peak around March 19th of 50%, but since March 22 the rate has been pretty much monotonically decreasing. On March 22 it was 38.8%. Yesterday it was 16.2%. These numbers are driven to a very large degree by the NYC area right now. > > I have a couple of thoughts on this data. First, if we can continue to drive down the increase/day we can keep this from doubling every 3 to 4 days . Second, this appears to be coming regionally, which means it will rip through the NYC area, then maybe California and a couple of other places. That will help. We can perhaps keep moving ventilators around to meet demand in localized areas and we won’t need all the ventilators all at once. We might even be able to move patients to areas not slammed at that moment. There is a chance we can keep the medical system from getting overwhelmed. NYC will be a bellweather in a couple of weeks for how that will play out as that is when Cuomo said it will peak there. > > This doesn’t mean we can let up on the social distancing and other measures we are taking. But it is a good sign to me that we can deal with the emergencies and hot spots in a given region and perhaps respond appropriately, moving resources as needed. I screwed up my data plotting. I calculated the percent of cases by total cases, not increase by day. If you look at the percent increase by day, the numbers are even better and they have been below 10% for 5 of the last 7 days. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/450 "2020-03-30T17:43:00Z")
You can click on the graphs at your link to show different daily numbers. Deaths and cases are doubling every 3-4 days. Mar 25th 65k cases/1027 deaths vs March 29th 143k cases/2583 deaths. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/451 "2020-03-30T17:50:28Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Exactly how many times has she asked “I just want to know if 25’ is safe”? She is looking for a promise that no one is prepared to give. I have a feeling if someone told her “no, it’s not safe” she’s got “ok, how about 30 feet?” all loaded up. No. I want to be able to discuss relative risk without there being a chorus of “if it’s risky, just don’t do it”. We are ALL doing things that increase our risk. We are all having to negotiate this crazy new world. It does no good at all to treat all risks as absolute, and refuse to discuss the possibility of gray. You yourself said you went to the grocery store 5 days ago. Were you literally out of calories before you went, or could you have put it off another couple of days, if you’d eaten the dregs of your freezer and pantry? One of the decisions we all have to make is how often do we risk going to the store. It’s not useful to just say “no one has any fucking clue, so decide for yourself”. It’s much more useful to talk about potential avenues of infection in a grocery store, talk about ways to minimize them, talk about tradeoffs rather than just “if you have to ask, find another way.” I have learned a lot of stuff in this thread. Good, useful stuff that helps inform my judgment. But I’ve learned it despite the chorus of “everything is risky, so don’t do **anything** unless it’s life or death (except go to the grocery store and get take out and walk outside, that’s ok).” ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/452 "2020-03-30T18:01:21Z")
Wait til Trump calls a police state in America and suspends elections. You will change your mind pretty quick ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/453 "2020-03-30T18:03:29Z")
> [@SuntanLotion](#): > > Wait til Trump calls a police state in America and suspends elections. You will change your mind pretty quick Is there a police state in the USA that he can call? ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/454 "2020-03-30T18:27:20Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Is there a police state in the USA that he can call? I always get voicemail :mad: ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/455 "2020-03-30T19:18:57Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > I always get voicemail :mad: Be patient. Lots of people are calling for a police state these days. ---
**Author:** ![Helena330](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/helena330/32/531_2.png) [@Helena330](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena330)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/456 "2020-03-30T20:37:13Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I have learned a lot of stuff in this thread. Good, useful stuff that helps inform my judgment. But I’ve learned it despite the chorus of “everything is risky, so don’t do **anything** unless it’s life or death (except go to the grocery store and get take out and walk outside, that’s ok).” You, of all people, **Manda JO** , I can’t believe you’re doing this. I can’t believe how breezily you dismiss people as “the chorus”. People are saying the same thing because they/we have been listening to informed governors, public health officials, epidemiologists, and local officials. There aren’t any probabilities of risk here that you can calculate. Ten feet or twenty-five feet? _We don’t know_, so err on the safe side and just don’t do it. You’re asking an unanswerable philosophical/ethical/moral question that many people here have answered the only possible way. Is it worth risking the lives of your mother, you, and probably people you don’t know for some kind of principle? NO. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to shelter-in-place since March 8th. So have a lot of others around here and the Seattle area is reporting a slowing. The people that aren’t doing their part really, really piss me off. I can’t tell you how heart-breaking it is that you’re one of them. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/457 "2020-03-30T20:54:42Z")
I’m not risking anything. I’ve left the house 3 times since the 11th, and never gone anywhere but takeout, the grocery store or the doctor. I shower before and after I leave the house. But clearly not everyone is erring utterly on the side of caution. When people ask if they can go to the grocery store, no one is saying “NO NO NO we can’t calculate the risk. Don’t leave until there’s NOTHING left to eat in your house. Try to eat as little as possible: like, enough to survive, but be a little hungry all the time. If you do that, you can really stretch the time between those grocery store trips.” Why is no one saying that? How is a trip to the grocery store not at least as risky as some of the other things people have been called fools for even asking about? Look, this has been a really good thread. I’ve learned a lot. But it should be okay to ask HOW and WHY transmission happens, to try to help each other understand relative risk. I know we don’t know. But why is it taboo to speculate? To brainstorm? ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/458 "2020-03-30T21:00:12Z")
Thinking about extremes has actually gotten me wondering: what are New York City dog owners doing right now? Is giving up their dogs the most moral choice to make? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/459 "2020-03-30T21:02:26Z")
The Swedish approach of doing little worried some people. It is unclear how worried they should be. > **['They are leading us to catastrophe': Sweden's coronavirus stoicism begins to...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/catastrophe-sweden-coronavirus-stoicism-lockdown-europe)** > > There’s a surreal calm in the last country in Europe to hold out against lockdown. But the death toll is rising and some are voicing dissent ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-questioning-the-extent-of-social-isolation/849671/460 "2020-03-30T21:04:38Z")
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