So, remind me how contagious this thing is? Should I be worried if I might have shared an elevator with someone who was exposed, for example? Or does the 15 minute rule still apply?
*I don’t keep track of people I share elevators with, but wondering if I should start?
I’ve heard it compared to measles. That’s “you can catch it from an elevator” level, maybe even “you can catch it from the person in the elevator before you”. I have no idea how accurate that is, though.
As long as one person had a N95 mask, an elevator ride should be fine.
This chart was for delta, and omicron is thought to be 10-20 times faster from what I read:
Thanks. This helps me out but does not bode well for my bus driving husband. (The KN-95 masks I ordered didn’t fit him well.)
This feels like a sex ed chart
In this npr article, which has been linked elsewhere as well, it says O-variant is about as contagious among the unvaccinated as the D-variant. The difference is more vaccinated people are becoming infected and contagious.
The same article, however, cites a case study of somebody isolated in his hotel room, but somebody across the hall becoming infected. Soooo…???
If you’re vaxxed and boosted, your concern shouldn’t be catching COVID. You probably will. It’ll probably be mild. Your primary concern should be making sure you don’t spread it to anybody else.
And I do think the 15 minute rule still applies. Although it’s 15 aggregate minutes.
Why?
The 15 minute rule was promulgated with original-strain covid, and every variant since then has been more infectious.
I’m not saying you are wrong, but I would like a source. Because it seems implausible to me that the 15 minute rule is still valid, if it ever was.
That is actually my concern—spreading it. Like if I am at the office every day going up and down elevators with people who may have been exposed and not know it yet, and then I go to the grocery store on the weekend, should I also go to church? Should I volunteer to be the nursery attendant? I probably will this week and hope that not being in the office since Wed will reduce my risk.
don’t you wear a mask in the elevator?
I almost always take the stairs, so this isn’t really an issue for me.
That’s my thought. Wear a good mask in the office elevator and don’t worry about it.
Well, it kinda never was. All the original guidance was based on research of other viruses. But, AFAIK, the 15 minutes of exposure guidance hasn’t changed.
Yes I always wear a mask in the elevator. That’s why the little chart was useful to me.
yeah, not sure i’d worry about it then. seems like the chances of you catching this in the office are slim.
Yeah, i don’t trust CDC guidance. Especially if they haven’t reviewed it. My sister found something on their website saying fully vaccinated people don’t need to quarantine. Which contradicts other parts of their website, and is stupid in the middle of omicron.
Lotta good people work there, but their communication has been terrible since the start.
A few friends from the neighborhood have been doing a bourbon and fire night occasionally since COVID started where 3-5 of us hang out around the fire pit and drink for a few hours. We did that last night, and the neighbor host said that half the houses on his street have been hit by COVID in the last week or 2. Anecdotal, but seems quite different than past waves in my neighborhood.
Are you talking about fully vaxxed people who are exposed or fully vaxxed people who got Covid.
If exposed, I thought the CDC recommended to a) get tested 3-5 days after exposure and b) no need to quarantine unless you are having symptoms.
If you got it, then it was still the 10 days quarantine that was just changed to 5 days (with caveats) last week.
I think that’s kind of the norm now. a lot more people are getting it now everywhere.
If that’s actually their current guidance, it’s way out of date. You need full vaccination plus a recent booster, or prior infection plus vaccination, to have even a moderate degree of immunity from symptomatic disease. And symptomatic disease means you can give it to other people, too.
It’s frustrating, because with Omicron the guidance would be so easy if we had a actual supply of rapid tests available:
Vaccination / prior infection status really doesn’t matter. They keep you out of the hospital with Omicron, but that’s about it.
