how concerned should I be about my Mom's church reopening?

The Quarantine Zone
1

Mom is still in our hometown, a small town in SW Virginia. Radford. Near Blacksburgh (go Hokies!). The church does not have one of those idiot pastors, more than a dozen of whom are now dead, who insists that God will protect them. There have been no services in the past couple of months, but week after next they will have them. Not in the usual place, which is fairly compact, but in the gymnasium area and they will limit the number of people to half capacity, and put chairs 6 feet apart. No Sunday school.

The latest info I can find is that there are still have been only 3 cases of COVID in that town, and those are on the east side of town where the university is (some idiot student went on spring break and brought it back with her). The chuch is on the west side. The city has been shut down like the rest of the country for the past couple of months.

2

Has she said anything about it?

A lot can change between now and the 24th.

3

I would be at least somewhat concerned. Church usually involves people singing together, and that seems to be a way to spread the virus. Do you know about the case of the Washington state choir practice where lots of people became infected?

4

Being spaced far apart is good, but everyone needs to wear masks and NO congregational singing and NO taking communion.

5

If everyone is wearing masks, why would singing be a problem?

6

I didn’t but they are not going to do that. And since I still always seem to screw up multi-quote, Thelma Lou, no communion. This is a Baptist church.

The pastor is an intelligent, decent man, he is not going to leave it up to God to protect the people. I actually had this conversation with Mom a couple of months ago, and she agreed God does not protect idiots. If you drive 100 mph down Main St., God is not going to protect you from killing yourself or others.

Even so, the church has a website. I think maybe, if I can, I should write to him and get more details about the exact plan. I don’t want to seem like a busybody butting in, and I understand the need to have in person services. I would guess that at least half of the congregation is over 60, and for many the weekly Sunday service is a high point of their week.

7

For my last service (Lutheran) before we shut down, our Communion was bread only.

8

I could not find a personal email for the pastor, but I found the email of the church. Below is what I wrote, pretending to still be a believer. There is some bullshit about the “great experiment” and that we don’t know what will happen with states opening up too soon. We know that there is going to be a great increase in the number of cases. But I don’t want to beat him over the head with the truth, lest I be exposed as a liberal, God-denying pagan.

I got this email from the Calvary web page.

I am ____, son of _____. Pastor ____, I belive you had the privledge to be there when my Dad got saved. As he said, “It only took 50 years for Mom to get me down the aisle.”

Anyway, I just spoke to Mom on the phone and she told me that the church will have live services starting next week. And that they will be held in the gymnasium area of the church. As I have lived in NYC for the past 30 years, I have only been at the church once a year when I come home for Christmas. I don’t know how large that area is, but from what I understand you are going to allow up to 100 people there. Is that area large enough to maintain 6 foot distances? Will you ask people to wear masks?

Both of these are the best recommendations we now have from the medical experts. Now, and as I said to Mom, we don’t know all the answers yet about the best way to combat this virus. But this is the best strategy we now have. And we must follow the most precautionary steps. A year from now, if it turns out that we were being overly cautious, no one will have been hurt. The minor inconvenience of wearing a mask at a service pales in comparison to what could happen.

It only takes one person who is infected, who doesn’t even know that they are infected, to infect an entire church.

Finally, I am asking you to consider waiting just a couple more weeks. We are now at the start of a great experiment in this country. States are opening up, people are starting to go to restaurants and other places. But as this virus has a 14 day incubation period, we will not know if this is safe until the end of May. The last time I checked, Radford only had 3 cases of COVID. The risk to ____ members seems minimal. But as I have said, it only takes one person who is infected to lead to disaster. One person who goes to one restaurant gives it to two or three or other people who give it to four or five more, and so on.

Ephesians 5:15. Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise

Proverbs 14:16. The wise are cautious and avoid danger; fools plunge ahead with reckless confidence

9

I’m opposed and I know that part of the country fairly well. I know you said Radford and not Blacksburg. There’s a particular small church in Blacksburg that was still thinking they could pray the gay away as recently as 2017.

That’s a very conservative area and I’m just not confident the congregation will obey the social distance rules.

10

That is my concern. Mom was telling me about a plant, Inland Motors, that was deemed an essential business, and all is fine. I didn’t ask what precautions they were taking. I would assume they are taking precautions, hence no spread of the virus. But it may be that it just hasn’t gotten down to that corner of Virginia. Hell, many thought things were fine in Sweeden, without lock downs, until they weren’t fine.

And now that all is well these states start opening up before they have even met the criteria for doing so. But they are going to have to find out the hard way, with pain and death.

I just hope it happens soon. A few thousand deaths now may prevent tens of thousands in six months. But I don’t want my Mom to be one of those sacrificial lambs.

ETA. If the pastor says to follow distancing rules, they will. That is the main point of my email.

11

Not church, but our neighborhood has some folks in their 30s and 40s who have been having a once-a-week happy hour type of thing on the side walk/street. It’s BYOChair and BYOB, come sit six feet away and chat, tell us how your quarantine is going etc. They assemble, have a few beverages, and they let their little kids run around. :smack: Before you know it they kind of slip into standing too close etc.

I get why people want to gather: many are social beings and this is deprivation. Few are disciplined or focused enough to do it right, however, from what I’ve seen. I think you’re right to be concerned.

12

Our fire department is dealing with this right now. Some are pushing for having the monthly meeting in person, others still want it online. At this time the consensus is both will happen next meeting at the choice of the firefighter.

The ironic part is our doctor (we are lucky to have a firefighter who is also a medical doctor), just sent us some training info about COVID-19 spread via indoors and HVAC systems and their air flow pattern they create. Two factors of that are relevant to the OP’s concern. Air moving systems such as HVAC, or even a outdoor breeze can carry the virus in infectious levels further than the 6 ft guideline. So that 6 ft distancing doesn’t exactly work if the air is moving.

The second one is that there appears to be a infectious dose of virus, under that level your fine, over that you stand a increasing chance of infection. Something like one sneeze in a room can spread a infectious dose pretty much everywhere in that room (assuming a large room, but not a church setting), this is due to the viral shedding, the amount of droplets containing the virus, the size of the droplets creating additional hang time, and the speed of the sneeze that propels the droplets. A cough will have less viral load and lower velocities, and more droplets will drop to the floor sooner, but also can be quite infectious in closer proximity. But the more concerning part is normal breathing will produce enough viral shedding that over time the dose can be high enough to be infectious. Talking and singing increases the rate of viral shedding. It’s dose over time exposed. So even sharing the air with a infected person for time frame of 1-2 hours could be enough, though each exhalation contains very little viruses.

Indoor gatherings seem to be the crux of that, and for that reason several members who wish to have the meeting in person are also saying that if the weather is good to have the meeting outside.

13

Same with communion (in case of denominations that have that), assuming they want you to wear the mask throughout.

I see politics creeping in here as usual when churches are discussed, as in relating it to the denomination’s view of sexual orientation which has pretty much nothing to do with the question at hand. That question is one mainly of belief not science, scientific inferences may play some role but secondary. Science is an auxiliary argument at most to the main actual one: ‘you should accept our positive beliefs about same sex orientation and abandon the traditional negative ones of your belief tradition, because our beliefs are better’. Which is fine if you feel so: predominant societal beliefs never change unless someone promotes new ones as better. As long as it’s honesty presented as what it is, mainly opposing beliefs, not science v anti-science.

In contrast, the degree of health risk from sitting indoors 6’ apart with masks (singing/no singing, etc*) in a given locality (prevalence of COVID varies extremely widely by place) really is a purely scientific question. However, unfortunately a scientific question we don’t seem to have a precise quantitative answer to now. If attending a worship service (of any religion) is not important to you, or even something you’d positively avoid in normal circumstances, then obviously it’s preferable risk-wise to spend that time at home (in most situations anyway). However, if it is important to you to attend the service, it’s just not clear AFAIK what trade off you are making against safety to attend. It could be very close to zero risk. I think it’s fairly clearly not outright reckless. But the exact answer doesn’t seem to be known, and will practically be determined by actual experience I think.

*some old churches are also immense spaces volume wise, 10’s of feet head room, that could be a factor also.

14

First of all, why would you sing if you’re wearing a mask?

But secondly, singing increases the number of droplets that would escape from the mask. Beyond that, I doubt every single person there will be wearing a mask.

15

Consider this example:

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Our church, where I’m on the board, is trying to follow the county/state guidelines, as well as additional guidelines from our synod (ELCA Lutheran), as well as feedback from the congregation.

The synod is asking churches not to reopen until there have been six weeks of declining infections, the county says no groups larger than ten people, and a number of our congregants have said they’ll wait until a vaccine is available.

To a lot of older congregants, church is pretty much their last social outlet. However, those are the members of our congregation who are most wary about coming back anytime soon. How’s your mother’s overall health? How badly does she want to go to church? I would advise her to wait 2-3 Sundays after church reopens to see if there’s a spike in reported cases. If things seem to be under control, then she might consider attending, with a mask, and without socializing.

17

Consider this example:

18

  1. I would think if masks are required, then no singing.

  2. If the church authorities say they don’t care if you wear a mask, then a lot of people probably wouldn’t. But if they say you must wear one, it’s very unlikely IME that people coming to be a part of that community, it’s not a random crowd, it’s not the relationship of a customer to a store, would ignore it, or moreover brush off the ushers at the door handing them one if they’re aren’t wearing one.

So the question would really be, does the church require masks? Not that we actually have hard figures as to what difference that would make on top of 6’ distance, but that’s a potentially real difference. I don’t think there’s actually a serious issue of enforcement if they seriously intend for everyone to wear them. Anyway the general curve of mask effectiveness in a crowd almost surely doesn’t have a big knuckle at 100% minus one person v just 100%.

19

Why would one preach, give bible readings, or report the news wearing masks? I’ve seen all three recently.

Do you have a cite for that assertion?

Your link below states that the choir wasn’t social distancing, and there is no mention of masks, one way or the other.

20

I think it’s a combo of 2 put together, that talking (thus singing, and that is a form of talking) increases virus shedding over breathing, and masks block a percentage (even the N95 masks block a percentage, which is 95%).