I’m more or less carrying on the same as I always have. Can’t help but avoid restaurants, since they’re all closed. Will continue to grab fast food very occasionally. Will continue to go out on walks playing PGo, once the weather warms up a bit more. I don’t hang out a ton with friends anyway, but if something like a movie night is scheduled, I wouldn’t cancel it. I’m hoping my June flight doesn’t get cancelled, and assuming it’s not (and that I don’t get sick), I’m absolutely going.
I’m far more worried about the effect this will have on the economy than I am of the illness itself. I’m worried about those who are so clearly susceptible to panic growing even more out of control. I do worry about my grandparents and the immunocompromised, and have no plans to visit my grandparents, just in case.
I agree that I am more concerned with spreading it than catching it. But my neighbor is also practicing pretty strict social distancing. He’s not going to public places either. He could be lying to me, of course, but I think that’s unlikely. So it’s not a matter of “and then it’s off to the races”. If over the next month, I see a total of 10 people (all under 50) in private social settings, and each of them follows the same guidelines (with a lot of overlap), that can’t be as impactful as even one of us going to church or the gym or sitting in a restaurant a single time.
The CDC has gone out of their way to encourage people to eat take-out and go to drive thrus. I feel like the amount of contact a small social gathering (2-3 people, private home, observing social distancing) has to be less than the impact of a line cook making food for take-out. ,
I don’t question the value of social distancing and I don’t question the value of self-isolation of diagnosed cases for those not requiring hospital treatment.
But social distancing in schools could mean not going unless no cough, no fever, no runny nose or other symptoms; reducing visitors; education on keeping your distances; even masks. Stronger options have been taken because people are scared of disturbing trends from parts of the world. It makes sense to “flatten the curve” when there is so little excess emergency capacity - outbreaks over more time. But if it turns out people can be reinfected, this may apply less.
It is not easy to react to an unknown crisis. Politicians don’t want future blame hampering re-election. If things turn out well, they will give themselves credit. If not, they did take bold steps. It’s not unreasonable to take a hiatus for a week or two. And sensibly re-evaluate the situation if this is possible.
But if you had a social gathering of a small group planned, it would be reasonable to continue. Ask people who feel ill to stay home. Understand not all risks are large and not all risks can be mitigated. In perspective, though, risks are small if no one has recently travelled or has current symptoms. The more cautious could wear masks.
This is not meant to be definitive and you should follow local health advice. It does not apply to visiting people at higher risk in institutions.
That is unambiguous. My county is in Texas, and we have 28 cases, not the 150+ of Santa Clara. So are shelter in place restrictions appropriate for us? I think maybe, and I will cancel Wednesday, but I don’t think it’s so black and white that I would feel like someone else, in a region not under a shelter-in-place order, did visit a friend. And if I lived in one of the many places in a America with no reported cases, I would probably feel comfortable meeting in a private home with a friend.
Manda Jo, in case I was coming across as holier-than-thou, I apologize as that wasn’t my intent. In fact, up until a couple of days ago I had every intention of going to my lesson, as well as asking my boss how mandatory our new WFH policy, and being annoyed by our city’s library closures. But two days ago the “penny dropped”.
There’s a fourth possibility. As cmosdes noted, they may believe (rightly or wrongly) that the infection won’t inevitably spread from an infected person to and uninfected person just from them being in the same room.
After all, we’re being told to wash our hands and cough into our elbows. Why would they tell us that if infection was inevitable no matter what we do?
The more people who take this seriously, the faster this will come under control.
Why hasn’t air travel been shut down? Because we have coward in charge. And, of course, there’s a big difference between TPTB not shutting down air travel and it being a good idea to travel on planes now.
Let’s remember that in a public health crisis, people aren’t just making decisions for themselves. What each one of us do has an impact on the whole community. In a time like this, let’s not presume we are islands.
Right, but the question here is if someone who has stopped going out in public at all, who only shops for groceries and observes careful hygiene there, who has cancelled all their doctor appointments and hair appointments and put off maintenance in their car, etc etc, if that person has a beer sitting on a stool in their neighbor’s kitchen and vents for an hour or two–from 6 feet away–is that person “not taking this seriously”? There are nuances here. Having a beer in your neighbor’s kitchen is not licking the door knobs at the local retirement community.
No, this is pretty much how infectious diseases work. More isolation is more effective in stopping the spread.
If every single person is isolated from every other person until the disease runs its course for everyone, then the disease disappears. But that harms us all because we depend on each other not just for companionship but for economic interdependence and mutual aid.
The only question is how much we can isolate, and for how long, without doing more harm than the virus itself is doing to us.
Manda JO, I admire and respect you. But I live in King County, WA, and have been discussing this “nuances” business with people in my city on Facebook for days. “It’s a matter of balance!!” No, it isn’t. I’ve lost all patience with the justification. People are dying from this. Even if people “only” get sick, if they take a hospital bed, most likely they took someone else’s life. People with other medical emergencies will also die. My local hospital could barely handle emergencies before this crisis. I’ve done my reading and I don’t pretend that I won’t get this and I’m immunocompromised. So will my 81-year-old mom. But I would rather get it later after we’ve ramped up our hospital capacity, our medical supplies, hopefully, medical personnel, and knowledge.
We’re doing our part to contain this. My mom hasn’t been out for two weeks and I was last out very early last Wednesday morning for groceries. We’re sheltering-in-place. It really pisses me off that so many people aren’t doing their part.
Would I walk with your neighbor? No, even if I weren’t immune-compromised. The asymptomatic spread is too big a risk.
No. Being six feet away doesn’t really matter if one is touching their doorknobs, corkscrew, tissue boxes, etc. That goes for the host having the virus or the guest having it.
Which I interpret to mean, even if the coronavirus is on your neighbor’s doorknob, we don’t know how much of a risk there is of catching it that way. Maybe it’s not something to worry about. Maybe it is.
Having dealt with social anxiety and agoraphobia at my worst, you think I would have an easy time dealing with this. And I have seen others make jokes online about how introverts and shy people mus be having the time of the lives so to speak.
But frankly it’s just worse. Granted I isolated myself a lot before to deal with the social anxiety. BUT that was on my own terms. I always had the freedom to go out if I felt up to it. Forced isolation is horrible everyone.
Plus before I didn’t have to deal with the shortages of TP and other stuff. So this just horrendous for everyone.
I’ve talked to my social worker and therapist from my local mental health center over the phone. They really don’t anyone going to their offices if isn’t absolutely necessary. I worry about the other clients they have because a lot of them have more serious problems then me(i.e. schizophrenia, eating disorders, addiction problems). I suspect the longer this goes on a lot of them will relapse into worse states.
People are thought to be most contagious when they are most symptomatic (the sickest).
Some spread might be possible before people show symptoms; there have been reports of this occurring with this new coronavirus, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.