…the facts are I don’t know what qualifications you have in microbiology, infectious diseases, and I don’t know how many years you’ve been studying infectious microbes. I do know that Siouxsie Wiles is an expert in all of these, and if her advice is to “limit conversations to a couple of minutes if you are going to insist on having a conversation” I’m going to assume she has more facts, evidence and logic behind what she has suggested than what you probably do in voicing your skepticism. I think now more than ever we need to be listening to the scientists. I don’t have all the answers. In a time of crisis I’m gonna defer to them. I don’t really have much of a choice. Its become a matter of life and death.
I actually did do a college internship in a medical microbiology/immunology lab at the University of Minnesota, but that was a long time ago. I’m an educated laymen, trying to look at a variety of sources and evaluate them. That’s kind of the MO of this board.
And no, it’s not right to always just bow to the official advice. I called it weeks ago that the party line that masks don’t help laypeople was bullshit, and the cracks in that edifice have subsequently grown so prevalent that it’s about to crumble down completely. If they had had a sufficient supply such that there were plenty for health care workers and everyone else, I feel sure that they would have from the beginning been urging everyone to wear them whenever out in public, rather than peddling this other propaganda.
…if I have the choice of adopting the advice of an anonymous person on the internet or someone (that isn’t speaking in official capacity) with relevant qualifications then I’m not going to take the advice of the anonymous person no matter how many times the anonymous person claims to have “gotten things right.” As you say we are truthseekers here. Facts, evidence, logical arguments.
I would say it should depend, a lot, on the nature of the different kinds of advice you are hearing. If the U.S. Surgeon General (and CDC, and maybe WHO?) say “no, don’t buy masks–only medical personnel benefit from them and we need to save all the PPE” but the layman on the Internet points out the logical problem with it as well as the clear motivated reasoning, you’re going to dismiss the layman even though what he is advising you to do is actually the opposite of something like “go have a backyard party” in terms of caution? Really?
Speaking of which, this article came out yesterday interviewing a Chinese scientist who said this has been a big mistake made in the West, and that’s not all he thinks we’re failing to learn from Asian countries:
…the advice we are talking about here is “you shouldn’t really be talking to anyone outside of your bubble at all. That defeats the purpose of the lockdown. But if you must talk to someone then get no closer than 2 metres and keep it under a couple of minutes.”
If the laymen suggests that “How is it that a brief chat won’t infect anyone but a long one will”, then I’m going to take the advice of the expert and not the laymen who is “just asking questions” and hasn’t actually offered any advice.
I think its been pointed out over and over again the failures to learn from Asian countries over this. And the failure of the US Administration has been criminal. But you don’t think we should be talking about that either, so lets just pretend that isn’t happening.
Since I don’t see an answer from anyone else, I’ll venture a WAG:
During the time you’re chatting with someone, there’s the possibility that one of you will unexpectedly sneeze, or cough, or just expel some droplets of moisture particularly forcefully while speaking, far enough to reach the other person. This is something that probably won’t happen, but the longer you’re chatting, the greater the probability.
But like I said, this is just a WAG. I’d rather see either this answer or a different one from someone who really knows what they’re talking about.
It’s my understanding that it’s also true that viral load matters. One virus is almost certainly not going to infect you. Your immune system can handle that. You get infected because your immune system is too overwhelmed with virus to stop them all. This is why healthcare workers are in so much danger: they are exposed to a much higher viral load. So I can see that a brief conversation with 10 people, 2 of whom are infected, might lead to a much lower viral load than 1 infected person for a longer period of time.
That said, I also think that inverse square law applies. If 2 meters has been determined to be “safe enough”, then 3 meters is going to be substantially safer–and 4 meters dramatically safer. Now, a conversation at 4 meters is not comfortable–you’d have to raise your voice–but it is possible. If 2 meters for a few minutes is “probably safe”, it really seems to me that 3-4 meters (all outdoors, of course) for 10 minutes almost has to be. However, arguments about compliance and normalizing socialization still apply.
My Wife and I don’t go out that much. She may go see her girlfriends a couple of times a month. Or we will go out for dinner once or twice a month. I’m going to have to take care of my 90 year old mother in Denver. I do her grocery shopping. I do that a few times a month. And her doctor visits as well. But I do that anyway.
We have been playing a lot of chess for the last couple of years, and are now playing cards as well. Need some more good two person card games. GOOGLE is your friend.
We are also now working from home. Separate offices. It’s over satellite internet, so the latency sucks, but it works. I’m going to have to keep an eye on our data allowance.
My Wife takes our dogs snowshoeing pretty much every day. Our house backs up to National Forest, they leave right from home. No driving involved.
The local distillery has a “Buy one, get one at half price” So I stocked up on that. I’ve become a Bourbon man (that’s a bit of a surprise). So that has changed.
I hate, hate what is happening, but for my wife and I it’s working out well. No traffic (our grocery store is in a resort area, and it’s not busy at all, when usually it would be a mad house. It’s great). Don’t get me wrong, I feel for the people that this is truly fucking over.
We did cancel a trip to Key West, but that’s not a big deal really.
Aside from working from home, it’s kinda business as usual. I’ve been fighting for the ability to work from home for years. TPTB had been sitting on their thumbs until this happened.
Hicks:
“Outstanding. Now all we need is a deck of cards.”
I know better than to express any personal opinion in a thread like this but I think that perhaps passing on Marc Lipsitch’s expert opinion might be of interest to a few.
Christ on a cracker, people! It’s just common sense.
There’s nothing magical about 6 feet. It’s obvious that the longer you spend in proximity to someone else, the more likely you’ll catch or infect. The more people you add to the group, the more likely it is that infection will be transmitted. 6 feet does not create an impermeable barrier.
It’s also obvious that wearing a mask will help reduce transmission. How could it not?
Quibble about distance/time ratios and microns and expert opinions all you want, but you know perfectly well what you should be doing.
Does any distance? It’s “obvious” to me, through I don’t know if it’s true, that there is some about of open air that is as impenetrable as a glass window. There’s so amount of space that water droplets cannot cross in sufficient quantity to be a risk. The original question wasn’t if that distancewas 6 feet, but if it was 10. The answer seems to be “no one knows, but it’s not entirely implausible, so probably you should err on the side of caution”.
Do you think there’s any distance where it’s safe? Do you think through a window is safe?
Comparing distance to a glass window is really a straw man argument.
Distance in air is all about droplets. There is evidence that droplet transmission is a real problem with Covid-19. Stand distance x from something emitting droplets, what is your chance of inhaling a droplet? Then what is the chance of inhaling enough drops that you get a critical dose of virus to start an infection? It is really as simple as that. The longer you stand there the higher your chance of infection. One minute versus one hour - your risk may be 60 times higher.
Droplet density will decrease with the square of the distance (very roughly) and any wind will effectively increase or decrease the effective distance. Even a light breeze may collapse the effective distance dramatically.
After a time the droplet will dry or fall onto a surface. Dry will eventually kill the virus.
5 feet versus 10 feet is 4 times the area. So as a very rough approximation, 4 minutes at 10 feet is as bad as one minute at 5 feet. Obviously there is a distance at which the rate droplets dry out or have dissipated that starts to make the density of dangerous droplets fall faster than just the distance to the potentially infectious person. But what that is is hard to know. It probably depends upon a range of local factors, including temperature and humidity.
Imagine you were some distance from a smoker. Once you breathe in a critical number of smoke particles, you are infected. How does that change visualisation of the risks?
But overall, spending an hour ten feet from an infected person is driving your risk up dramatically.
I’ve conceded that. But what about 15 feet? 20? What about 5 minutes instead of 60? I don’t think any of it is “obvious” at all. I think it’s worth discussing.
I was walking around the block 3 days ago and a neighbor I used to work with was outside. He said hello and we stood 15 feet apart and talked for at most 5 minutes. I don’t think it’s obvious whether or not that was safe. I really don’t know.
