Spreads so easily......

[sengsational]

The part that to me is so important is the idea that distancing is more important than masks. Stands to reason.

I'm not sure I took away anything that was more or less important. Points 1 and 2, masks are key. Point 3, outdoors and distanced, I agree it's reasonable to be with others that have no breath diverter.....the breeze will take care of problem.

 

[Montecfo]

You left out the all-important part that it was said specifically in regards to being outdoors.

I was not intending to quote the article. I consider distancing more important, period.

If you think of it, staying home is distancing. We are never told that distancing is not important if you mask.

Mask is secondary to distancing for me, that was my point. So for example, while I am in a store, masked of course, I maintain 6 feet plus from all life forms. Still always mask indoors, outside of my home.

Just how I manage my Covid risk "budget".

 

[Gumby]

Back when I was in the nuclear business, the mantra was "time, distance and shielding". All three were tools to minimize our exposure to radiation, but certainly there were occasions when we had to trade one for the other, as when we needed to do critical maintenance. There, for example, we might have several people or teams do a task in a high radiation environment, each of them only spending a few minutes on the job, because you would need to get close to the source.

Different scientific discipline, but same principle as here. So, I minimize the time I spend in proximity to other people, maximize my distance from them and wear a mask. All are important and helpful steps. But if I am indoors with other people, the mask becomes that much more important.

 

[retire-early]

I am in a state where there is a mask requirement and people are very good about wearing theirs properly.

We were in Walmart yesterday about 11 am.
There was only two cashiers and about a dozen self-checkouts.
We were in one of the lines with a cashier.
The guy behind us insisted on putting only the shopping cart distance between him and us - definitely not 6 feet.
Not only did he do that, he was shouting on his phone to someone.
It was as if he thought getting as close to us would make the line go faster.

We decided to get out of the line.
We ended up going to the electronics counter to buy two VISA gift cards.
Then went to self-checkout to pay for the other items.
Being too close to people these days makes me very nervous. It stresses me out to be honest.
.

 

[sengsational]

"We decided to get out of the line."


It worked

 

[braumeister]

We were in one of the lines with a cashier.
The guy behind us insisted on putting only the shopping cart distance between him and us - definitely not 6 feet.
Not only did he do that, he was shouting on his phone to someone.

There is definitely some strange behavior now and then.
I was in the checkout line at Costco a few days ago and the woman ahead of me asked the cashier about the availability of something. The cashier took her mask off and started shouting at the top of her lungs to get the attention of another employee. I told her to put the mask back on and she did. But the shout didn't work so she took it off again and started shouting again, over and over until the other person heard her.
I was a good ten feet from her and she was spewing in another direction so I stayed in the line but it was certainly disconcerting. None of the other Costco employees seemed to mind, so I'm not likely to go back to that particular store for a while. There is another one about the same distance that I'll use instead.

 

[REWahoo]

We decided to get out of the line.
We ended up going to the electronics counter to buy two VISA gift cards.
Then went to self-checkout to pay for the other items.
Being too close to people these days makes me very nervous. It stresses me out to be honest.

Yep.

I rarely go inside a store these days, almost always choosing curbside pick up. I decided to make an exception a couple of weeks ago and go into a small hardware store to purchase paint brushes for a project I was working on. Ended up waiting in a slow moving check out line with too many (masked) people not even pretending to keep their distance. Made me so nervous I got out of line, put the brushes back and walked out of the store.

 

[Ronstar]

Yep.

I rarely go inside a store these days....

DW and I are going into stores about every other day. We do shopping for MIL, and she calls about every other day with a list of something that she wants picked up.


I suspect that there are a lot people picking up Covid in stores. SIL and BIL got Covid even though that they are very careful. Always wear masks, and rarely go to stores. Never go anywhere else. So they probably picked up Covid from a store even though they were wearing masks.

 

[Rianne]

Yep.
Ended up waiting in a slow moving check out line with too many (masked) people not even pretending to keep their distance. Made me so nervous I got out of line, put the brushes back and walked out of the store.

This really bothers me. It seems very few, if any have cared about distancing in pharmacies, grocery stores with masks. So often, masks are half off, loose fitting, and thin material. A bandana over your mouth provides almost no protection. In the grocery store, people come up right next to me. It's usually me that walks away or gets out of the way.

 

[retire-early]

Yep.
I rarely go inside a store these days, almost always choosing curbside pick up.

I did curbside pickup for the second time yesterday at Home Depot.
The item was a foldable hand truck that sells for about $25.
The employee who came out was a older heavier woman.
She did not look happy.
I felt guilty.

 

[Montecfo]

Back when I was in the nuclear business, the mantra was "time, distance and shielding". All three were tools to minimize our exposure to radiation, but certainly there were occasions when we had to trade one for the other, as when we needed to do critical maintenance. There, for example, we might have several people or teams do a task in a high radiation environment, each of them only spending a few minutes on the job, because you would need to get close to the source.

Different scientific discipline, but same principle as here. So, I minimize the time I spend in proximity to other people, maximize my distance from them and wear a mask. All are important and helpful steps. But if I am indoors with other people, the mask becomes that much more important.

All measures have their places. But if you are far enough from people, a mask is not important. Maintaining distance always is.

I do worry that part of the spread is people assuming a mask innoculates them. Of course they don't. But distance does. That's why we sit in our homes unmasked, for example.

 

[Chuckanut]

Being too close to people these days makes me very nervous. It stresses me out to be honest.
.

As one of our members said "Who knew yelling 'Get the $!^@!$@ away from me' would be considered a public service instead of rude behavior?"

 

[stepford]

I did curbside pickup for the second time yesterday at Home Depot.
The item was a foldable hand truck that sells for about $25.
The employee who came out was a older heavier woman.
She did not look happy.
I felt guilty.

You were being responsible - and helping the employee and her colleagues by shielding them from the incremental risk of infection by you if you had shopped in the store. Don't feel guilty for doing the right thing.

 

[JoeWras]

With the spike going on in my state, I've decided to hold back on doing my regular be-weekly blood platelet donation. It pains me to let down those in need, but if we are "all in this together," then damn it, I need my fellow citizen's cooperation in slowing the spread.

It ain't happening.

Back of the napkin calculations* show that at least 1.5% of the state population has active covid right now, and the real number is probably much higher. Add to that the trend is clearly sky rocketing, so my calculations probably reflect reality of a week ago. Today is likely worse.

Being enclosed indoors for a few hours with dodgy mask wearers (chin strappers, nose exposers, etc.) doesn't seem like a good idea.

*: Back of the napkin calculations below
Given:
- Current average cases per day: 5600
- Factor 4x for untested cases (probably higher, some say 8x)
- Factor a case is contagious for 7 days (probably higher)
- State population is 10.5M

Then:
(5600x4x7) / 10500000 = 0.0149 or 1.5%

 

[audreyh1]

DH read a statistic today that the current Covid death rate in rural areas is 3.5x that of urban areas.

Could be less medical/hospital services as well as older population I suppose.

As deaths from the coronavirus have surpassed 250,000 in the U.S., new data show the pandemic has been particularly lethal in rural areas — it's taking lives in those areas at a rate reportedly nearly 3.5 times higher than in metropolitan communities.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/01/9406...ural-colorado-doctor-catching-the-coronavirus

 

[Chuckanut]

DH read a statistic today that the current Covid death rate in rural areas is 3.5x that of urban areas.

Could be less medical/hospital services as well as older population I suppose.

In my state the rural areas tend to be those with a higher percentage of people who have certain objections to masks, social distancing and even the existence of the pandemic. Thus it is not surprising that the infection rate in those areas is higher. Distance and lower population density protected them for a while, but now those barriers have been overcome by the virus.

 

[audreyh1]

In my state the rural areas tend to be those with a higher percentage of people who have certain objections to masks, social distancing and even the existence of the pandemic. Thus it is not surprising that the infection rate in those areas is higher. Distance and lower population density protected them for a while, but now those barriers have been overcome by the virus.

Well, yeah, there is that too. In GA I spend time in a rural county where the absence of basic PPE use indoors in most places including the courthouse is truly astonishing. So they have less ability to treat and lower compliance and more elderly.

This article was pointing out a significant difference in the rate of people dying of Covid. Independently of the infection rate although obviously one leads to the other.

 

[Koolau]

I found an interesting site from NPR. Not sure it hasn't been posted already, but this one purports to be updated to today's date.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...king-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s

The data are massaged and shown in a number of ways which may or may not be instructive to us. The visuals are rather stunning - especially the US map showing mostly "red" (bad) for all but a few states or territories. Heh, heh, Hawaii happens to be yellow, not red, but I digress.

After spending some time with the changeable presentations, it would seem to me (a totally IMHO and YMMV view) that "deaths per 100,000" might be the most instructive calculated comparison - area vs other area. It is not affect by varying "testing rates", area to area. Again, IMHO and YMMV, deaths are the most definitive raw statistic for (maybe) obvious reasons. So, calculated per 100,000 residents it would keep the same relative "validity." Feel free to ignore my "analysis" as, well, you know, YMMV.

 

[Gumby]

I found an interesting site from NPR. Not sure it hasn't been posted already, but this one purports to be updated to today's date.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...king-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s

The data are massaged and shown in a number of ways which may or may not be instructive to us. The visuals are rather stunning - especially the US map showing mostly "red" (bad) for all but a few states or territories. Heh, heh, Hawaii happens to be yellow, not red, but I digress.

After spending some time with the changeable presentations, it would seem to me (a totally IMHO and YMMV view) that "deaths per 100,000" might be the most instructive calculated comparison - area vs other area. It is not affect by varying "testing rates", area to area. Again, IMHO and YMMV, deaths are the most definitive raw statistic for (maybe) obvious reasons. So, calculated per 100,000 residents it would keep the same relative "validity." Feel free to ignore my "analysis" as, well, you know, YMMV.

I would refine your measure to be daily deaths per 100,000 averaged over the last 7 days. Why? Because you want to compare two places at the same point in time (right now) and cumulative deaths per 100,000 over a 10 month period won't do that, since different places have followed different trajectories.

 

[Sue J]

I did curbside pickup for the second time yesterday at Home Depot.
The item was a foldable hand truck that sells for about $25.
The employee who came out was a older heavier woman.
She did not look happy.
I felt guilty.

Yeah, I did a curbside pickup a few months ago from Home Depot and felt that way about someone else bringing an item out to my car. So this last time I used the Home Depot pickup lockers. When you order online you can specify that you'll pick it up and they send you the pickup code. At the lockers there is a scanner, you scan and sign and your locker pops open.

The only thing I didn't like was that I had to sign on the touch screen and I had to use my finger on a public screen! But I found wipes nearby and wiped my hands.

 

[Gumby]

...The only thing I didn't like was that I had to sign on the touch screen and I had to use my finger on a public screen! But I found wipes nearby and wiped my hands.

I thought about it for a while and concluded that the ring finger on my left hand is the one least likely to touch my face. So I try to use that one when I must.

 

[audreyh1]

You may not want to waste a glove on this, but touch screens work with disposable gloves.

 

[timo2]

You may not want to waste a glove on this, but touch screens work with disposable gloves.

Also, I used a touch screen that my fingernail worked for signing my name.

 

[retire-early]

Yeah, I did a curbside pickup a few months ago from Home Depot and felt that way about someone else bringing an item out to my car. So this last time I used the Home Depot pickup lockers. When you order online you can specify that you'll pick it up and they send you the pickup code. At the lockers there is a scanner, you scan and sign and your locker pops open.

The only thing I didn't like was that I had to sign on the touch screen and I had to use my finger on a public screen! But I found wipes nearby and wiped my hands.

I did not know about Home Depot pickup lockers.

It looks like my local Home Depot don't have the pickup lockers yet, but the Lowe's does. Unfortunately, Lowe's prices tend to be higher than Home Depot.

.

 

[retire-early]

Kohl's pickup lockers?

At the small Kohl's store nearest me, there are lockers near the front doors yet I never see them being used.

Does anyone have a Kohl's with working pickup lockers?

If I order something, I have choice of curbside or in-store pick-up but no lockers.