Post 60 - May 10, 2020
Day 60…
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there.
For all of those we have already lost to this virus may this day be a day to remember how they lived and not how they died.
My mother lives in Florida on the eat coast up near Daytona Beach.
She seems to have been responsible so far during this crisis.
In normal times, she has a wide orbit of friends with whom she is socially active.
They play mahjong.
They meet together in book clubs.
They have meals together.
These days, her contact with her friends is via the phone.
Mom has figured out how to play mahjong online.
Her local library has a whole process in place whereby she places her order for books, then when they come in, she gives them a call that she’s coming. She drives up to the library and somebody, masked, brings the books out in a bag and then retreats.
Mom gets the bag and drops off the books she’s already read then heads home.
We are all certainly worried about a lot these days, but it is our mothers (and our fathers) who remain most at risk from what is going on around us.
We have already lost some.
Losing a parent these days is even more difficult to navigate through because you can’t be with them.
You can’t even be with the living members of your family to grieve.
As businesses start to re-open it is really our parents who are going to be in the most danger every day that we move forward without a vaccine.
A very good friend of mine, here in the city, who has been socially distancing, wearing a mask and behaving responsibly since the stay-at-home orders started, got sick the day before yesterday.
My friend has no underlying conditions and falls outside the vulnerable age range.
It is still not confirmed that what my friend has is COVID-19 but if they are still sick tomorrow, they are going to be tested.
How could that happen if all the guidelines are being followed?
There is a very clear and interesting report by Dr. Erin Bromage who is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth that tries to explain the theories behind how this virus moves. I will try and give it a short summary here. (You can google the whole thing - it is well worth the read.)
To get infected, a person needs to be exposed to a certain amount of the virus.
One or two particles of COVID-19 won’t do it, you need to get a dose of it.
1000 particles of SARS-CoV2 can potentially do the trick.
If you are with somebody who has it, you could get 1000 particles in one big breath or 100 particles per breath for ten smaller breaths or smaller amounts in more breaths.
From studies of the regular flu, we know that 3-20 particles are released per minute of normal breathing.
If you hang out with a person who has the virus for an hour, you could get more than enough.
That’s if they aren’t speaking.
Speaking increases the amount released by a factor of ten.
You only need to be with an infected person who is speaking for five minutes for there to be enough COVID particles present.
That’s assuming normal breathing and speaking from a person with no visible symptoms to make you think that they are sick.
A single cough or sneeze from an infected person can release 200 million virus particles into the air.
200 MILLION.
Remember, it could take a little as a thousand to infect you.
If an infected person sneezes in a small room and then leaves, the infected droplets from that sneeze can hang in the air for a couple of minutes.
A healthy person can then walk into an otherwise empty room and easily inhale enough particles to get it without ever even having laid eyes on the infected person.
Well, nobody’s going to walk into a small room where a stranger might have been.
Really? Think public rest room.
If somebody gets sick, five days before they had any symptoms, they could have been shedding virus particles.
Some people shed more than others.
When you get people into groups, especially in an enclosed space, it becomes that much easier to share the virus.
The largest outbreaks to date have happened in prisons, meatpacking plants and churches.
Weddings, funerals, and birthdays have also accounted for a big percentage of concentrated cases.
In all of those cases, people are in close enough contact with potentially ill people over a certain amount of time. Many of those people may have no visible symptoms whatsoever.
ONE person infected in a 5,000-person mega church during a service that lasts an hour or more - you don’t need to have scored well on your math SATs to be able to figure out the potential results.
When your local restaurant reopens under the plans currently in place, not every table will be available for seating.
There will be space between parties.
That should be safe, right?
Here’s the thing, if you are having a meal in a restaurant, you are in an enclosed room.
You cannot wear a mask while you are eating a meal.
Chances are, if you are with even one other person, you are going to be speaking.
If you are with a group, you are probably going to be speaking with some animation.
Particles are going to be released into the air.
The air in that restaurant is not going to be still.
There will be some sort of air conditioning so that the room doesn’t get stuffy.
That means that the virus particles will travel on those air currents.
Keep in mind that my friend who is now sick has been doing everything “right”.
Even if it turns out that what they have is not COVID, they got SOMETHING.
Something jumped onto my friend despite the fact that my friend is living alone and keeping away from other people.
Five days ago, my friend was likely already sick and didn’t know it.
My friend could have been sitting in that restaurant with you five days ago - asymptomatic and feeling great - two tables over.
Even if everybody in that restaurant doesn’t speak a word and just sits there eating for an hour, enough particles will have been released into the air from a single infected person breathing, that after an hour, others will potentially have been able to get infected too.
That, now famous, restaurant diagram from China showing how a single infected diner infected some people in the restaurant and not others, really does make sense when you take the time to try and understand it.
Ten people sitting responsibly apart from each other in a movie theatre.
You are sitting in an enclosed space with each other for as long as two hours.
The AC is on and the air is moving.
You laugh. You gasp.
Again, how hard is it to see what the effect of that is going to be.
I called my mother this morning to wish her a happy Mother’s Day.
She was looking forward to finally getting her hair done now that the salons have reopened in Florida.
I talked her out of it.
At least I hope I did, lol.
You cannot distance yourself from somebody cutting your hair. It is a physical impossibility.
When you get your hair done, you are in an enclosed salon.
The person styling your hair will potentially have been in close contact with many other people - some of whom may be infected.
It takes time to get your hair done. An hour?
Masks are a FENCE not a WALL.
They don’t stop everything.
Most every state that is reopening is seeing their numbers rise.
WE ARE NOT READY TO DO THIS YET.
There is simply no way for people to congregate in any way that will not potentially allow 1000 particles of SARS-CoV2 to travel from an infected person to a non-infected person.
Science dictates that.
Basic commonsense dictates that.
There are now lawsuits cropping up all over the place from church-goers irate that their religious freedoms are being trampled on.
They are demanding that it is their right to congregate.
Landon Spradlin was a Virginia preacher who called COVID-19 a hoax and refused to stop holding services.
Dead of coronavirus.
You want to go to a church service despite this disease, at this point, I say have at it.
Go to church and be with your community.
If you want to take that chance with the lives of your fellow congregants, that’s your choice.
Do whatever you want, but just stay the heck away from my mother.
I love my mother.
She’s a smart woman.
She’s not going to get her hair done.
Yet.
She’s not going to get here hair done yet because if she does, I am totally going to call her out on it in a future post.
Happy Mother’s Day mom.
Messy hair and all, I love you.