Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

Alfred I just mean that studies that recover complete (potentially infectious) coronavirus genomes after X amount of time from various surfaces do not necessarily show that it’s likely or even possible to be infected by virus lurking on those surfaces. HIV is a quite different thing from CoV but the point is, while you can possibly collect viable HIV genomes off of a surface or from a discarded needle, nobody has ever contracted HIV that way.

Again I don’t mean to draw a direct analogy here. HIV is difficult to transmit, relatively speaking, and certainly isn’t transmissible vía fecal-oral route or respiratory aerosol. But catching the vid off a box of Wheaties hasn’t been shown to happen and one’s risk tolerance may reasonably allow for excluding that possibility from consideration.

wiping groceries is def excessive. just need to wash your hands.

and your ass

check and check!

ah, that makes sense, silby. Are you a scientist by profession? I haven't caught anyone explaining these subtleties in the news conferences.

I am not a scientist nor do I play one on TV but I worked for five years in an HIV research lab programming computers for science, for which I had to learn what was going on.

xp

Trump didn't mention them?

hands and asses?

time for that "ass and titties" remix

I swear the birds and squirrels are adapting and becoming weird....

― joygoat

the uprising is coming

― genital giant (Neanderthal)

Ban birds

― Joey Corona (Euler)

I, for one, welcome our new avian overlords.

But if this fucking thing takes Jackson Browne I will not be best pleased.

Anyway who here still wears underwear

if I weren't doing those deliveries I'd probably have given em up 20 or so days ago

Honestly all I know about Jackson Browne is the song from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and him getting arrested for domestic violence and the latter rendered him dead to me so I never bothered looking further into his oeuvre

NPR has weighed in on the great grocery wiping controversy:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely

i was in mcarran park yesterday and saw a stupid amount of people doing pull-ups on public exercise equipment, jogging around a track fewer than three feet away from each other, etc.. like peering into the past

i did something comparably stupid last night though so i'm gonna refrain from shaming those people

I have had dozens of conversations now, as I'm sure we all have, about surface contamination, wiping down groceries, etc.

I guess the thing that bothers me about all this is how we calculate risk. Something like this, for example, is not going to discourage me from taking the extra, probably unnecessary precaution:

"While it is possible to contract the virus [from contaminated surfaces], the majority of transmission is probably going to be from respiratory droplets, which you're exposed to when you're around other people," says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

9https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely)

Oh, so there's just a *small chance* that I will contract this from a box of cereal and end up suffocating and dying alone? I mean, we're all gonna do but what we're comfortable doing and obv. ymmv, but I'm not going to take a 1-1,000 chance when those are the stakes, much less "minority of transmissions"

sorry, that link: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely

My general feeling about this is that my life has already been radically altered, it seems wise to err on the side of over-the-top for just a couple months while I'm at it

That NPR piece is good. I started doing that a couple of weeks ago, putting whatever I buy (except for a packaged salad) away for at least three days rather than cleaning everything.

NPR has weighed in on the great grocery wiping controversy:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.),

Thanks, this helps.

I find the very low surface contamination risk hard to square with the amount of transmission that's still happening in places with serious distancing measures in place.

who knows if those people contracted the virus from other people, though? It may not be from grabbing that box of Cheerios and picking your nose.

Yeah I come down strongly on the side of leaving things sitting around until I need them or 2-3 days, which ever comes first. It's a lot less work, and we're going go run out of disinfecting wipes eventually (we buy them in bulk at BJs so happened to have a lot when this started).

Going back out to store today; also down to last bottle of wine so have to fix that.

luckily most food products have an excess of packaging, so it's pretty easy to toss the box and keep the inside packaging. that's why my freezer is full of loose tater tots.

ooh I hadn't thought of that

I was wondering if the problem with grocery packaging would be avoided if the customer went several packages back . Or if this would just mean that everything was exposed to whatever. Just occured to me that if the front packet was exposed to people sneezing/coughing /breathing whatever if that would be avoided by going back wherever one could.
But can also see it being self defeating.

If the virus is on an object does it automatically transfer to any other objects around it or is it only to the person around them. I mean are inaninamte objects playing virus tags behind our backs, like.

From what I understand, there has to be enough of the virus in droplets on that surface and you gotta touch it and bring it your face.

left a bag of bagels in the 'decontamination zone' aka utility room and next morning a rat or something had nibbled a hole through the bag and nibbled a bagel.
bastards

xpost For sure. There are cooties everywhere, but you need cooties in significant amounts to catch anything.

I think I heard the NPR grocery thing on the radio, but is that the one where the doctor or scientist points out how disinfecting packaging could actually be worse, since there's a risk of contaminating the content with disinfecting chemicals?

I find the very low surface contamination risk hard to square with the amount of transmission that's still happening in places with serious distancing measures in place.

Occam's Razor would suggest people are still catching it from other people. Not everyone is as or can be as diligent at washing their hands, not touching their face, etc. It's amazing how much face touching or coughing into nothing I've seen at the stores the few times I've poked my head in. A lot of people do these suddenly potentially dangerous things unconsciously.

i did see a theory floating amongst the various experts that the severity of the disease you get might depend on how much of the viral load you are infected with. suggesting that the person to person transfers are usually the worst.

but again...."not confirmed", just a theory.

lots of people out there still having conversations with others in spitting distance

xp
enjoy covid, rat

oooh i get it! the rat symbolizes INFECTION

https://sites.google.com/site/pasletempsdelirefr/_/rsrc/1414267566840/auteur/albert-camus/la-peste/La%20peste.jpg

which in English is of course

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-Plague-by-Albert-Camus.jpg

I had that exact French edition at one point.

yeah, you don't have to wipe your groceries

and a month ago, you didn't have to wear a mask unless you were sick...

I can tell my acid reflux has been acting up (I generally don't medicate it, bcz with all the other pills I have to stop pissing at some point every morning).

Then last night I spat up a trivial amount of... blood. Not comforting. I don't feel like going to a doctor for that in the middle of all this, so I just skipped coffee today and feel better. So much for the beer a friend brought me last night. Not sure what to do about all the frozen Indian and Mexican food I have either...

(which is the reason for my tender throat and increased reflux)

ugh when my reflux wakes me up it's the worst, seeing blood come up sounds awful. Hope you can get the Mexican and Indian swapped out for some white people food. :\

or just drink a quart of water with dinner

I think the mask and the groceries might not be parallel, though. With the mask, it's primarily (based on what Fauci says, and what I've read) so you, if asymptomatic, don't infect others; with the groceries, it's the risk of you getting infected yourself.

But the point that information keeps changing is valid.

Yeah, the standard or DIY mask is intended not necessarily to keep you safe (they're better than nothing, but that's what the serious N95 masks are for), it's to make it less likely to transfer it to someone else if you are asymptomatic. Of course, if you are asymptomatic that means you are not coughing and sneezing all over the place, which is why a modest mask might help you keep it to yourself. In that sense I'm not sure the information has really changed much. What's remained consistent is washing your hands, not touching your face, keeping away from others, especially those with symptoms. And if you are experiencing symptoms, obviously you should stay away from others entirely, mask or not.

I wipe my groceries because it's ten minutes out of another day of sitting around the house and I figure removing a tiny risk is better than not removing it for p much zero cost.

I was just disturbed yesterday because even though I was wearing a mask (a painter’s mask because that is what I have) I could feel the air coming in around the sides when I breathed in, and several people not wearing masks stood right next to me in the trader joe’s aisles, it felt like we were breathing the same air. I know the risk is low but I don’t understand why people aren’t being more careful

It is a herd mentality thing. The more people who begin to wear masks in public, the more other people will feel that they, too, should wear a mask in public. You can be a thought leader!

The big problem with masks like painter’s masks and n95 ones is fit. They only work if you have the right size and know how to fit them properly. If you work in an industry that requires them you have to go through fit testing at least once a year to check your face hasn’t changed shape and you still know how to use them effectively.

double sided tape too.