This seems to be an unaddressed issue here in the USA.
In China they were aggressive about encouraging or pulling people out of their homes to live someone else. It’s hard to argue that if you are to be infected with COVID-19, the most likely source is someone living in your household.
So many people have hopped on board with social distancing, shelter in place, masks, hand washing and all of that. But from what I can tell, they seem unprepared with an actual infection in their household.
I have heard a fatalism that if one person in the household gets it, everyone will get it. This seems to be a reversion to “just the flu” thinking or “I can’t leave the home because it’s safe.” China obviously disagrees with this. Personally I do NOT think it inevitable that all people will contract COVID-19 just because one person has it. You are not automatically infected, it does not always happen. And if we are doing everything else to avoid being infected, why wouldn’t we take in the home danger seriously?
Personally, I have kids part time, no one else. If I get it, the kids will leave or not come over. It might be the last time I ever see them, but that could happen were they with me full time anyway. What do others plan to do?
We’ve discussed this. If my gf gets it she will stay home and I will continue to work. I will sleep in one of our spare bedrooms, like I would if she had a bad cold or the flu, and I’ll provide some level of nursing care for her. When she is ill she likes to be pampered a bit. If she gets sick enough, I will drive her to a hospital.
If I get it, she will continue to work from home. I will seclude myself to a spare bedroom and eschew any care from her. When I am sick, the last thing I want is someone checking on me, bringing me food/drink/meds/etc. I prefer to suffer in isolation, it is just my preference. I have decided ahead of time that I do not want to be in the hospital.
I think one real problem is that in the US, there’s likely no where to go. Most people can’t afford to check into a hotel for a month. If I had it, I would love the opportunity to go stay in a hotel and have someone deliver food and check my health. But we couldn’t do that. I would have to self-isolate in a make-shift spare room. I mean, the other alternative is sending my husband and son to my mom and dad’s house–but they might be carriers at that point.
Has anyone read about the situation in NY regarding this? Is it common in families where one member gets it and therefore most or all the rest get it? With social distancing and the virus living on surfaces for X days and delayed onset and people jammed into tiny apartments…
The whole social distancing thing is premised on the idea that this virus is super contagious. I can’t imagine it hitting only one member of a household. Certainly for me and my wife, if one of us gets it, we’re both getting it. We frequently exchange bodily fluids and sometimes kiss.
We have a guest room with its own bathroom which would become the quarantine zone. I have a window AC that I would install so I could seal off the room from the air circulation in the rest of the house. I’d install a HVAC air purifier to reduce viral load in the air. I’d have to figure out something to do around the doorway so that food could be passed in without contaminating the rest of the house. It’s probably excessive, but I figure why not try to be 100% safe rather than take a chance
I think it’s not so much “if one person in the household gets it, everyone will get it” as it is “By the time one person in the household has symptoms, everyone will have been infected.”
China implemented a system of centralized quarantine for precisely this reason. Studies have shown that before centralized quarantine, R was 1.3 and afterwards, R was 0.3. This was one of the key steps China took to drive new transmissions down to zero and reopen their economy.
Oddly enough, the hypothesis of “if one member of the household gets it, everyone will get it” does not appear to hold. The secondary attack rate within a household was estimated to be less than 20% (ie: if one member of a family gets it, there’s only a 20% chance a second member will get it). This is corroborated by stories outside of China of people who took care of their sick family members but still tested negative.
One other benefit of centralized quarantine that is mentioned less often is that one clinical signs of COVID19 is that people can have abnormally low blood oxygen levels for quite a long time and feel fine and then suddenly crash precipitously. China’s central quarantine system had people check for SpO2 blood oxygen levels twice a day and anyone with a level lower than 93% was sent to a hospital and given supplemental oxygen, no matter how mild their symptoms were.
With people recovering at home, there’s no way to regularly monitor SpO2 which means that we’re missing out on people who crash and then don’t make it to the hospital in time for medical intervention.
My sister tested positive, my BIL did not. She lived in a separate bedroom and connected bathroom for 2 weeks, he cooked food and brought it to her door. Since he was in quarantine as well, their daughter shopped for groceries and brought them to the front door of the house.
Obviously, not everyone has a set up like that. We have one shower, but two bathrooms so it would a bit more difficult for us.
It looks like I may have to travel for work in two weeks. If that happens my wife and kids are going to go live with her parents until I’ve been home from the trip for two weeks with no symptoms. Its not an ideal solution but it seems to minimize the infection vectors as much as possible.
My stepmother contracted it and died a week ago. My 79-year-old asthmatic father is still healthy, thank goodness, and is now well past his quarantine. If he had gotten sick, it would have been BAD.
I distance from my family naturally more than I do with co-workers (who always insist on coming inside my 6’ bubble) or anyone else as it is. I have a teen and pre-teen who aren’t really into daddy hugs or whatever anymore and my wife and I have been practicing distancing for years. I pretty much work and come home and sleep in my home office/basement. Wash my hands a lot, etc. I think my older teen son is the biggest risk and perhaps him touching things in the bathroom and such and not practicing the best hygiene could spread it.
Yeah, this is probably our approach if needed. We would just have the infected person stay in a bedroom with access to one of the bathrooms, and bring them food and drink. No one would enter the bedroom or bathroom until meeting the quarantine release conditions, or if that person got really ill in order to render help to get to the Doctor. Anything going into or out of the quarantine area would be handled with rubber gloves and washed immediately before and after use.
I wonder how many people would voluntarily self-isolate if they were given a safe and comfortable place to do so, at no cost? I would. But I have no idea what most people would do.
So you have this room set up now or do you plan to set it up after you are sick, contaminating everything in your house as you go about acquiring the items you mention in your plan?
When my son was sick and waiting for test results (negative) he was confined to his room, we delivered him food. He wiped the bathroom down after using it. He masked up when he left his room. Bummer Easter weekend for him.
We’ve discussed this at length. If either of us gets it, we’re separating by me moving into the RV for quarantine. It can easily act as a lifeboat for a month, and can be driven to a campground and hooked up with zero contact. Unfortunately I’m the only one qualified to drive it, so I go no matter who is infected.
I’m fatalistic about the virus and would prefer to stay put, take my chances, and get the damned thing over with, but she nixed that idea.
I could get everything setup within an hour if I needed. The room is currently being used as an office since everyone is home working and schooling. It’d be better to have it setup already, but hopefully the time it would take to setup the room wouldn’t contaminate the house too much more than it would already be from whatever virus I had shed before I knew I was sick.
We have beds set up in two rooms, both with HEPA filters (plus the electrostatic filter on the air system), one with its own bathroom. Each has masks and gloves in the bathroom cabinet, a bag of easy-open, easy-eat food, a water glass, a can of Lysol, antibacterial hand wipes, a thermometer, and a change of bedding. When my lovely wife ran a slight fever a few weeks ago, she put herself in one room and texted me. I wore a mask, sprayed Lysol, brought her laptop and prescriptions to the door, went to the other room and closed the door, and texted her. She sprayed Lysol from her side and took the supplies in; when her fever resolved, she opened the windows to air the room and we didn’t interact in the same space until the next day.
You might want to leave the RV at the house so the sick person can be checked on regularly. Sometimes people can crash quickly. You don’t want the person to be alone at some remote campground if that were to happen.