Wear a mask or don’t come in. Simple as that.
My working theory: If you have to have a professional come to your house then, all other things being equal, the risk for you is inversely related to the professionals age. This came to mind because I recently struggled with the decision whether to let my long time housekeeper resume cleaning my house.
Now I've been very disciplined (staying home except for walks, groc delivered, etc.) and I am 99.5% sure I'm safe. For me the question is how worried should I be about her coming to my house, especially since she refuses to wear a mask? From what she has told me she has been kinda safe but a bit lax about who she lets in her circle, including a couple of teenager friends of her granddaughter. So a little iffy there. But another part of my decision came down to the fact that she is in the 55-59yo age range. It seems that makes her safer for me. A 30yo could easily be an asymptomatic spreader for weeks or months but that is very unlikely for the 50+ crowd, right? For us older folks it's pretty much we get it, we get sick. So for the over 50 crowd the asymptomatic spread duration is likely 2 to 4 days in the vast majority of cases. So i figured that the overall risk from me getting covid from her coming into my house to clean is Prob(her getting virus) * Prob(her cleaning day is one of those 3 days she is an asymptomatic carrier) * P(I get it |she cleaned my house when an asymptomatic carrier). It seems like that second term lowers my risk a lot, especially for a one or two time cleaning.
tldr vers: Older professionals coming into your house are less risky to you than younger ones because they are much less likely to have long asymptomatic spread windows.
Agree? Or am I wrong and missing something?
Wear a mask or don’t come in. Simple as that.
Would be a very easy decision for me. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, 'You lost me at "refuses to wear a mask"'.
I believe you're trying to be loyal, but to be frank, she is showing no consideration for you being an "older folk". I'm sure you have other options who would love to provide you a safer service.
Yup. As invitees to my home, it's my way or the highway when it comes to obeying the house rules. No way we let anyone outside the family nucleus into our home without a mask, whether they are 9 or 99. Period. Maybe at 50-59 there are only 2-4 asymptomatic days. But if she refuses to wear a mask at your house, she does that elsewhere, too. That means one of those days could happen in your home. That's just a non-starter for me.
yeah, good idea! Sounds like McD has a non policy policy.
Meanwhile, the WaPo weighs in on how Florida has made a hash of things:https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ge%2Fstory-ans
Pretty simple:
1) Tell your housekeeper to please put on a mask before entering your home and stay clear of you and your family.
2) Clean your own home. If you're like most of us, you have plenty of time on your hands these days. You and your family are too important to take a chance like that.
Stay safe.
Good article in the Atlantic about why even a vaccine isn’t a perfect solution: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...-check/614566/
“Feeding these hopes are the Trump administration’s exceedingly rosy projections of a vaccine as early as October, as well as the media’s blow-by-blow coverage of vaccine trials. Each week brings news of “early success,” “promising initial results,” and stocks rising because of “vaccine optimism.” But a COVID-19 vaccine is unlikely to meet all of these high expectations. The vaccine probably won’t make the disease disappear. It certainly will not immediately return life to normal.“
I want to pick on McDonalds as much as the next guy, but what they're doing is probably the best they can do without having armed security at each location to forcibly remove maskless people. Putting them in a separate waiting area away from everyone else isn't that bad a solution.
Thanks for the article. From this article I came away feeling negative about a cure for the virus. The article does mention Trump's projections of an early vaccine. It says basically there will be two side on the vaccine: 1) people that are desperate for the vaccine and 2) people that are afraid to get the vaccine. Those in group 2 will hurt herd immunity if enough people don't get the vaccine. But rushing the vaccine could cause a botched roll out and that could be devastating with people losing confidence in health experts. The article also states that the vaccine will not stop the virus but will help patients that have the virus to recover. It also said there will probably have to be two vaccines for patients. The part that gave me pause was this statement: We don't want to be spraying cornavirus up people's nose until we are absolutely sure that it's actually a virus that can't spread from person to person and that it can't make somebody sick. I'm a little confused on how a spray up the nose relates to a vaccine. Like I said, I'm really concerned about a cure for this virus after reading the article. Help rsvman!
That was the author’s intent. Squash all optimism and make people as scared as possible. Do this using the most sensational language to generate clicks. All Good news must be recast as bad news.
As for the virus up the nose, I’m not aware of any of the major candidate being live mist format. I think that is just there to be scary.
From the article, it seems that a vaccine that is injected into the bloodstream will likely only prevent severe cases of Covid-19, but won't prevent you from getting infected. A vaccine that is taken through the nose (like FluMist) would be more likely to provide complete protection from infection, but there are pretty big risks with a nasal vaccine, as you said.
You clearly did not read or understand the article, or the NYT reporting to which it links to show why a live-mist format might have some advantages for a primarily respiratory virus. There is no fear mongering; there is no squashing of optimism; there is no good news recast as bad; it is simply a sober analysis of available data.
Obviously, I'm expressing an opinion as many posters on this board do.
I reached that opinion because the author rehashes a bunch of points that everyone who is paying attention already knows with a frame that tells people to reverse any comfort they feel about a vaccine.
Her points are:
- A vaccine is likely to limit serious disease rather than all disease. I don't know that she is correct about this, but even if she is, that's fine. That'll work. Let's get it.
- A lot of doses will be required and that is logistically complicated. Yes, obviously. A lot is being done about that. A balanced article about the real issues here might actually be useful.
- The 2009 flu vaccine only ended up being used in 20% of the population because demand was low, as the disease had become much less prevalent. PLEASE let us have that problem again now. That would be fantastic!
- Flu mist is scary because it's alive. This isn't really true and also isn't relevant, as none of the major Covid-19 candidate vaccines use the live mist format.
- If there is a vaccine, some portion of the population will refuse to take it. Yes, this is well traveled ground. If vulnerable people and those who opt in get the vaccine, then the societal problem will be greatly reduced and some people will die who refused a vaccine. That situation would allow for normal life to resume.
The emphasis on negative aspects of a positive development, the throwing in of irrelevant scary statements and obvious statements framed as if they are insightful, leads me to my opinion that she's going for scare clicks. She is open about her intent to influence opinions about how optimistic to be. That is the frame of her article.
Last edited by freshmanjs; 07-26-2020 at 10:59 AM.
I believe I have come up with a solution to encouraging high vaccination rates when (said optimistically) we get a vaccine. It's been brought up before in the media, so, not an original idea with me, but the wealthier countries, the ones that have companies that are able to develop a vaccine, should commit to vaccinating the poorer countries first. I wouldn't say that no vaccine should be distributed to the United States or other developed countries, but their share of the pie should be limited to covering only the most vulnerable populations and get the widespread vaccination done elsewhere before we begin vaccinating our own mostly healthy, less at risk populations. Tell a bunch of Americans that can't have something? We'll get vaccination rates up once we have produced sufficient vaccine.
We aren't going to be able vaccinate everybody all at once. Plans do need to be in place. (I have no belief that there actually will be any plans made and chaos will ensue, but, I can hope.)
There's a good chapter in Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise about how hard it was to execute mass influenza vaccination in the USA, in 1976. And this was before the antivax movement and widespread "it's just the flu"-type misinformation about this pandemic, on the scale we see now. So if it was really difficult when America was less dumb, it's going to be nearly impossible now that we're steadfastly and wilfully dumber.
This is simply a terrible assumption. Virtually every single person will have a different amount of knowledge based on their level of interest and access to information, and a good journalist in a lengthy in-depth article must cover all the bases for anyone that is new to the issue or has missed pertinent parts. Some people will not even begin to pay attention until it affects them personally. Re the vaccine, I, for one, have paid no attention to this aspect of the crisis. Let me know when it's ready. But if I wanted to jump in, this article would be valuable to bring me up to speed.