People are really shit at social distancing even outside where there ought to be plenty of room to, so let’s just simplify the guidance. If you’re going to be around people you don’t live with, wear a mask. Inside, outside, standing in a doorway so you’re not really inside or outside…
Yeah the US is screwed at this point. We’re not even in flu season yet. Most reasonable people will continue the drudgery of wearing masks and going out less while all the anti-mask dipshits revel in their idiocy and continue spreading the virus while yelling at service workers who just don’t want to die for minimum wage.
Meanwhile our idiot president continues to push an anti-malarial drug (again today) that was tested on over a thousand sick veterans at VA hospitals (and likely resulted in higher death rates).
Instead of following simple social protocols like most of the world we’re praying (with billions of dollars) to corporate pharma to save us by modifying RNA in an attempt to approve a vaccine nearly 10 times faster than a vaccine has ever been approved.
I have a question. No sure where to ask it, so here seems like a good place.
I posted an article in the CV Breaking News thread about the Texas Renaissance Festival, which is going ahead as scheduled from Oct 3 to Nov 29 with an anticipated (reduced) attendance of 22,500 expected DAILY. Whatever.
Staff, performers, and vendors will be required to wear masks (not so attendees), and will get their temperature checked every day when they come to work.
Here’s my question: if you get your temperature checked and you have a significant fever, say 102 or something, then fine, they send you home. But chances are you’ve already been contagious for X number of days. So … how does this help, except by preventing you from infecting any more people than you already have, which is not nothing, but come on! It’s not preventive.
In a similar vein, getting tested tells you whether you have detectable virus in your system on the day you’re tested. If you’re negative, you could pick it up the next day. Even trump in his minimal wisdom alluded to this a while back, only he vaguely said (paraphrasing), “You could be negative and then something could happen…”
I think testing is essential and temperature checks are good. Don’t conclude that I’m saying we should abolish these practices. I’m not saying abolish them, okay?
But people seem to think that getting tested or getting your temperature checked seems to somehow magically protect you or prevent you from getting COVID. “I got tested, so I’m fine!” Well, you’re fine today. Keep up the protocols and with any luck and the creek don’t rise, you’ll continue to be fine. But a negative test (assuming the results are correct) is not a predictor.
Am I missing something? Nuances occasionally escape me because I’m terminally literal-minded. Getting tested = good, but it doesn’t protect you. Someone straighten me out if I’m off base.
Unfortunately, you are not missing anything. There was a line from School of Rock where one of the kids accuses Jack Black of being drunk and he explains that he is hungover rather than drunk, which means he was drunk yesterday. A fever today’s means you were already sick.
Distancing, masking, hand washing, and testing are the keys to keeping this in check. All fairs, amusement parks, etc. are still closed down in Ontario and I don’t expect that will change this summer.
Businesses want to reassure customers they are safe. This involves largely accepted things like social distancing, handwashing, contact logs and masks. But it also involves some “hygiene theatre” which makes people feel better - frequent spraying of tables and equipment, plexiglass shields, changing lineup positions, “healthy” advertising.
Temperatures are an intermediate intervention IMHO. They miss many cases - not all have high temperatures, not all have them that early, many other things cause that… But it might be better than nothing, convincing sicker people not to try attending. Thermometers are hard to come by in Ontario so folks may not know they are high - I repurposed some from Dollarama meant for $3 garden decorations. They make people feel safer since they are taken. Better still if other contact details are there too. No substitute for better methods, though.
What makes it even crazier is that apparently the no-contact thermometers have a really high false positivity rate, especially if you’ve been, say, walking across a parking lot in the hot Texas sun. So either they will have to have a shady place for people to cool down to try again, turn away great swathes of people, or just start, or ignore the results if people pinky swear that they aren’t sick. All of those seem deeply problematic.
Nope, you’re not missing something. Not only doesn’t protect you, it doesn’t protect me (from you) nor you from me.
People believe what they want to believe so they can do what they wish to do. Notice I didn’t say what they need to do.
At least here the advice is to retake the temperature if it shows a high reading, ideally after 10 minutes away from the sun and a heat source.
In my offices, we have established a conference room as an isolation chamber and anyone with a high temperature detected at the door is supposed to go there, wait 15 minutes and get rechecked.
Do you have most of the building come in during the same half hour interval?
How often do people need to cool down?
Generally people come in at the start of the workday and at post lunchtime which is a Firm owned off site premises, a couple of minutes walk away.
We have greatly restricted outsiders ability to visit.
Does it seem like they would be practical if you have say 2500 teens coming into a building in a half hour surge? We are anxious.
As for cool down, perhaps a few times a week we see a high temperature. Three times it has led to a person being sent to the hospital and on two occasion, the person was later diagnosed with Covid. Masks are mandatory, there is at least 6 feet distance between all workstations, all surfaces and fixtures are cleaned twice a day, support staff is provided with PPE and hand sanitiser is available everywhere.
We have placed plastic barriers where social distancing is difficult and people who can work at home, do and come in only when needed. We have engaged a local medical practice, whose doctors did Covid rounds at the now shut overflow hospital as consultants and they are available.
Management enforces the rules, we have had on a couple of occasion had to send someone home for persistently not following the rules, and newly installed cameras monitors the workplace remotely. Compliance is high right now and we have avoided a major outbreak despite the aforementioned two diagnosis (both have now recovered and returned).
Fingers crossed.
I don’t mean to suggest that you should do the exact same, you need to tailor it to requirements, What should be done is identify and mitigate and if possible eliminate the most risky bits.
I am specifically concerned if we are going to have like 10% of kids register as “hot”, if they are standing in the sun in a line to get their temp checks. Will we have to have room to cool down dozens? Hundreds?
If it is very occasional, that is comforting.
I’ve vaguely wondered the same thing.
IANAD but I assumed that if we all socially distanced and washed hands and wore masks—there could be sick circulating among us, but most of the healthy wouldn’t get sick. That may depend some on how long the virus could live on various surfaces but basically as a tribe we would be ok. Once symptoms cause the individual’s fever, that person could be checked but the potential damage was mostly avoided by those other precautions…we hope.