Coronavirus ~ COVID-19

[cathexis]

Originally Posted by Cin

People with gloves scare me. I'm not convinced they get it. Once you put on gloves they will shortly become as dirty as your hands. I have always hated seeing people with gloves. I am terrified imagining the things they have touched with those gloved hands. And gloved people often act as though those gloves somehow keep their hands sanitary. When just the opposite is the reality. Some stores here in my neighborhood won't let you come in to the store with gloves only masks. Weird but true. At least with this particular virus, it doesn't matter as far as gloves or people touching stuff, unless you touch your face with the virus they have on their gloves or with the virus they just deposited with their gloves or hands on some object that you touched and then touched your face. Just DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. Viruses can't jump into your mouth or up your nose or into your eyes. You need to give them a ride. Just don't touch your face. However, droplets, aerosols, airborne or not are problematic, but wear a mask and keep your distance. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. This is what I say to myself while I am out and about. It's easy to get complacent.

Fear of people with gloves on is reasonable. I would recoil from a person who walked up trying to touch me nor would I go around touching random patients, but the one being touched does not know that. The only acts a worker can perform in my room with already donned gloves would involve possibly contaminated items. What I would wear the gloves for include door handles, faucet handles, elevator buttons, trash, bodily fluids and the like. I would not touch my face with a gloved hand (30 years as a Critical Care RN).
Gloves would be changed frequently with brisk hand washing. It's difficult to maintain, but know I can last 16 hours in isolation, and rarely away from home base that long recalling the days of private duty of HIV before anyone knew what it was and what precautions to take. I consider everything in home base somewhere on the clean end of my clean/contaminated scale.
Indeed aerosol, droplet contamination is a problem. The sclera is exposed unless one also has a face shield on. Pretty soon we will have people walking around gowned for full isolation. I want my shoe covers and hat too.lol We had better get a vaccine or herd immunity soon.

[homoe]

President Donald Trump got history wrong on multiple counts Monday when he claimed that the “1917” Spanish flu pandemic likely led to the end of World War II ― which began more than two decades later.

“The closest thing is in 1917, they say, the great pandemic. It certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people,” Trump said during his White House press briefing. “Probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick.”

Leading up to that comment, Trump had been praising his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 160,000 people in the U.S., claiming without evidence that without his ban on foreign travelers, millions more would be dead.

Trump has incorrectly referred to the year of the 1918 pandemic dozens of times, even though his own grandfather Frederick Trump died of it in New York City in 1918.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by cathexis

Fear of people with gloves on is reasonable. I would recoil from a person who walked up trying to touch me nor would I go around touching random patients, but the one being touched does not know that. The only acts a worker can perform in my room with already donned gloves would involve possibly contaminated items. What I would wear the gloves for include door handles, faucet handles, elevator buttons, trash, bodily fluids and the like. I would not touch my face with a gloved hand (30 years as a Critical Care RN).
Gloves would be changed frequently with brisk hand washing. It's difficult to maintain, but know I can last 16 hours in isolation, and rarely away from home base that long recalling the days of private duty of HIV before anyone knew what it was and what precautions to take. I consider everything in home base somewhere on the clean end of my clean/contaminated scale.
Indeed aerosol, droplet contamination is a problem. The sclera is exposed unless one also has a face shield on. Pretty soon we will have people walking around gowned for full isolation. I want my shoe covers and hat too.lol We had better get a vaccine or herd immunity soon.

I am not concerned with health care professionals wearing gloves, but the average person makes me nervous. I worry they will think gloves are a substitute for washing their hands and it concerns me how often people might try to reuse them or just wear the same pair all day. Masks are necessary for everyone for sure even though they pose possibilities for misuse and contamination and one should educate oneself on mask safety. But I don't think gloves, outside of healthcare and food service,are really necessary for the average person under usual circumstances. It just adds another element that can go wrong to an already complicated situation. If you can't wash your hands for some reason and have a few pairs it's certainly helpful. I just see so much potential for misuse and cross contamination for the average person with gloves. I think masks are risky enough, but necessary.

Ya, the sclera is a problem with aerosol contamination but I imagine it would take a direct hit from a cough or a sneeze to send enough of a viral load into your eyes and it probably would get through a mask as well unless it's an N-95. Hopefully there is only short-range aerosol transmission mostly in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. Hopefully droplets don't hang in the air long enough either. But who knows.This virus might be more contagious than first believed.If you cannot maintain a safe distance and have to be indoors with people outside of your bubble I suppose a face shield over a mask is the best course of action. However, I find it hard to breath like that. But I would find it harder to breath on a ventilator I'm sure. I guess I'm hoping that just a mask will do the trick. But maybe just a shield is better than just a mask for the average person doing average daily activities. Masks often move around and require adjusting and therefore put you at risk of contamination. Shields don't do that. But I have masks so...

LOL. shoe covers, hat, gown yep. I'm kidding but who knows what the future holds, this virus is a tad on the wimpy side and yet pretty much brought the world to its knees, god help us if the next one is both deadly and airborne with a robust protein shell making it hard to kill.

[clay]

Originally Posted by Cin

Ya, the sclera is a problem with aerosol contamination but I imagine it would take a direct hit from a cough or a sneeze to send enough of a viral load into your eyes and it probably would get through a mask as well unless it's an N-95. Hopefully there is only short-range aerosol transmission mostly in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. Hopefully droplets don't hang in the air [B]long enough either. [/B]But who knows.This virus might be more contagious than first believed.If you cannot maintain a safe distance and have to be indoors with people outside of your bubble I suppose a face shield over a mask is the best course of action. However, I find it hard to breath like that. But I would find it harder to breath on a ventilator I'm sure. I guess I'm hoping that just a mask will do the trick. But maybe just a shield is better than just a mask for the average person doing average daily activities. Masks often move around and require adjusting and therefore put you at risk of contamination. Shields don't do that. But I have masks so.

<snipped your conversation except above..

Droplets can/DO hang in air & on the floor for up to 8 hrs. A person in say aisle 1 sneezes OR coughs, and is maskless..those droplets (called "goblet cells") are dispersed 27 feet outward....Another person comes down that aisle, isn't wearing a mask, or if wearing one, incorrectly, or wrong kind, will inhale a small percentage of those same goblet cells, PLUS will have them on their clothing, and the soles of their shoes. Once home, touch the soles to removes their shoes, later touches their face, voila....

Also, wearing gloves has potential to cross contaminate everything they touch....fruits, vegetables, everything...face, steering wheel, keys, phones. etc. It is not really wise to wear those in public, as general population does not know how to do so correctly nor have access to many gloves to change each time an item is touched.

Face Shields are NOT a good protectant. Sides are open, much more access for contaminants to get onto your person. Really good quality facemasks are the ticket, IF worn correctly, cleaned often, & worn to cover one's mouth AND nose...:0

I have 2 N95 masks, about a dozen of really thick, COTTON cloth ones, and several others. I wear each once, then it gets washed & air dried! Most of mine has the wire on bridge of nose to properly seal it onto my face.

Speaking from my nursing background, & I am sure my friend, cathexis, will also validate what I say.....

Just some FYI....carry on

[Kätzchen]

On a different subject: kids contracting Covid19.

I think its a mistake for childen to go back to school or even return to childcare settings.

With data culled from as recently as two weeks ago, *any* population in group exposure is like a ticking time bomb.

And, I hope sports is quashed for the time being too.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

. . . I hope sports is quashed for the time being too.

Yeah, I will miss my baseball, but I don't think we're going to make it to the end of the (very short) season. Players keep getting sick. They're supposed to stay in isolation in their hotels, but we're talking about guys who are mostly in their early 20s. I remember my early 20s - I don't think anybody could have convinced me to stay locked up in a hotel room if I was in a big city like Miami or New York for the first time. They are supposed to have security in the lobbies of the hotels, but you and I know that there are many ways in and out of hotels.

The MLB team owners made a major mistake when they decided to try to continue to have games at all the stadiums. This means the players (and coaches, and support staff and literally hundreds of other people) have to travel back and forth and try to maintain distance and wear PPE, etc. during changing hotels, on vehicles, and probably going to their individual homes if they're in their home city.

The NBA made a better decision when they decided to put all the players and necessary people in a "bubble". All games are played in a sports complex (in Florida, at WDW) and people stay in the same hotels throughout. No one goes in or out of the bubble without extenuating circumstances and the proper precautions. We'll see how that plays out.

[homoe]

~~

......

[homoe]

There is absolutely no way football can or should be played during this pandemic!

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by GeorgiaMa'am

Yeah, I will miss my baseball, but I don't think we're going to make it to the end of the (very short) season. Players keep getting sick. They're supposed to stay in isolation in their hotels, but we're talking about guys who are mostly in their early 20s. I remember my early 20s - I don't think anybody could have convinced me to stay locked up in a hotel room if I was in a big city like Miami or New York for the first time. They are supposed to have security in the lobbies of the hotels, but you and I know that there are many ways in and out of hotels.

The MLB team owners made a major mistake when they decided to try to continue to have games at all the stadiums. This means the players (and coaches, and support staff and literally hundreds of other people) have to travel back and forth and try to maintain distance and wear PPE, etc. during changing hotels, on vehicles, and probably going to their individual homes if they're in their home city.

The NBA made a better decision when they decided to put all the players and necessary people in a "bubble". All games are played in a sports complex (in Florida, at WDW) and people stay in the same hotels throughout. No one goes in or out of the bubble without extenuating circumstances and the proper precautions. We'll see how that plays out.

I am no infectious desease expert, but I am not "sold" on the 'bubble' experiment.

Here's why I tend to not trust that model of choice:

I already know of about 2 or three 'bubble' situations and those in that 'bubble' were still at risk of exposure and ended up having to quarantine. Not sure if those who quarantined actually caught Covid19, but to me? It is too big of a risk.

I know if I were in a 'bubble' type situation, it seems to me that there is a bigger risk of catching it because I dont think one can control the odds of becoming infected

But that is just thoughts I have concerning 'bubble' types of situations. There is a lot that is still unknown about how people are becoming exposed to people who are contagious yet don't know they are.

I worry each day I am at work that I will be accidentally exposed to Covid19. Worse, I have the same worry about where I live. I wear my mask and hybrid hazmat gear to and from my home. I bag up clothes and such each day, until the weekend when I go to the washertia to do my weekly laundry. It is costly because our studio units do not have room for laundry appliances, not even mini versions. But i have a strict method I adhere to, to keep my home free from outside contaminates. I feel it is prudent to go to great length to make sure I have taken every feasible precaution to make sure I safeguard my health.

I feel lucky that I can do that, and I realise the priviledge granted to me that makes it possible to even do that.

I am grateful tonight that I am safe, so far. But I realise that exposure to Covid19 is not 100% in my favor, or anybody's favor.

We, the general we, know this because of a vast accounting from others who we have learned about who did contract it and did not know how they were infected.

Which is scary. The danger is very real, and should not be discounted for reasons that the science and infectious disease community cannot even nail down yet.

But this is how I think about it and why I exercise as much caution as I can. While I can. Because if somebody here at home is infected or someone at work is infected, it jeopardises everyone's safety and wellness, including my own self, and if I were exposed and became infected, most likely I would die.

My health is fragile, so I have to be super careful in all I do. I am not swimming in money. If I were, I might could stay home for a couple years and ride it out. But I am not.

Anyhoooo. I take each day as it comes and live as responsibly as I can.

Stay safe and stay as well as you can.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Georgia.

~K.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by clay

Droplets can/DO hang in air & on the floor for up to 8 hrs. A person in say aisle 1 sneezes OR coughs, and is maskless..those droplets (called "goblet cells") are dispersed 27 feet outward

27 feet outward hang in air up to 8 hrs. Wow. Elevators are pretty much a death trap then. And I live on the 9th floor of a high rise. Oh well. If you think about it, it's pretty amazing that even more people don't get this virus just walking through the grocery store. As it gets colder more people will be doing more social stuff indoors. Scary.

Winter is coming.