There’s an epidemic of covid among deer. Your can catch covid outdoors. I think @colonelsmoothie is right to compare the risk to cigarette smoke. If there’s enough ventilation that i wouldn’t notice the smell of your cigarette, then there’s no reason for us to wear masks. I live in the burbs, so “outdoors” is generally pretty safe. But when i visited Manhattan i did wear a mask on crowded streets.
I’ve been going out. But i wear a mask a lot. I have a whole wardrobe of masks, now.
You do you. I walk outside all the time without a mask and i have not caught covid. Its been over 2 years now. I dont view my risk of catching it outdoors while interacting with nobody as that high regardless of some deer.
Studies have shown that you’re far less likely to catch covid outdoors lucy despite your claims otherwise.
Depending on the quality of the ventilation, I think it could help. Aerosols can take hours to settle on a surface, so by going first thing the aerosols from the previous 20 patients won’t be in the air as they would have settled overnight, and the ones from the staff are likely fewer in number too, which also helps.
But good ventilation can mostly mitigate that risk.
I think dental hygienist is one of the Covid-riskiest jobs there is. So hopefully most dentists (who mostly possess an above-average understanding of health care) have looked into the quality of their ventilation systems and made upgrades as needed.
That said, first appointment of the day probably is still the least risky time to go even with great ventilation. But I don’t bother to insist on this.
i have friends with immune issues who try to stay isolated.
i am pretty much back to a normal life.
will mask on airplane or conference hall. but that is about it
I didn’t claim otherwise. I’m willing to socialize with smokers outdoors, too. (And I’m really not willing to socialize indoors with someone who is smoking.) I just said that it’s possible to catch it outdoors, and the denser the outdoor population where you happen to be, the easier it is to catch it outdoors. And that when i was in Manhattan, i chose to wear a mask on the sidewalk, because there were a ton of people on the streets.
Yup. Although my dentist has put HEPA filters in every examining room, which helps a lot. I leave my mask on there until they hand me the hydrogen peroxide to gargle with, to give the filters as much time to work as possible.
I was pretty much a homebody before the pandemic, but-for monthly travel out-of-town to go into the office and check up on my father. We were doing grocery and restaurant delivery before the pandemic made such popular. Our other shopping was almost exclusively online
My wife is disabled/has health issues, so really we mostly only went out for medical appointments, perhaps dining in a restaurant or seeing a movie on the way home.
Since my company declared offices to be open (although no minimum attendance), I’m back to something resembling “old normal” patterns. My father passed away during the pandemic, so that travel has been eliminated, but offsetting that is a decent amount of recreational travel, to burn off some wanderlust that accumulated at the height of the pandemic.
I’m still eating inside restaurants only when I can’t avoid it. I doubt we will go back to a movie theater due to a combination of my wife’s health, poor behavior of other movie-goers in the Before-Time (and my wife’s b*tching about such), and the viability of streaming / quality of our home entertainment.
We did attend a local USL match a few weeks ago, and weather permitting I’ll be going to an MLB game this afternoon.
But I was asocial and a bit grossed out by other people before the pandemic…and I am finding those quirks have intensified over the past couple of years.
My company is encouraging actuaries to attend the CAS meeting in Minneapolis this fall, deviating from policy on such meeting attendance. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll go, partly due to the gross-out factor.
Mmmmm I love the smell of fresh secondhand smoke.
Possible but the risk is low. I live in Manhattan and walk around outside all the time maskless and its been over 2 years of this and not only haven’t i caught covid but i barely caught anything at all.
Smoothie is a healthy young person, but sure lets encourage him to lock himself indoors most of the time and when he dares venture out to wear a mask while running a marathon because he doesn’t live in the suburbs. Makes complete sense.
Pretty much back to normal other than i get to work from home most of the time. Once everyone in the household was vaccinated, there was little reason to continue trying to avoid covid. We were responsible when we had covid to prevent giving it to others, and will continue to take precautions with future exposures. It’s part of life at this point.
CS, is staying home how you want to spend your life? It seems like this is a big change from your previous lifestyle. Unless your family risk is much different from what we perceive, i think your precautions far outweigh the risk from the virus.
I think that CS is a germaphobe. He was like this pre-covid as well, but covid made him worse. I’m not sure he’s changing his ways all that quickly.
CS, it’s not healthy to avoid exercise and social activity. I hope you can find ways to hang out with other people that you are comfortable with.
I guess I’m a germaphobe, too. Well, really it’s just respiratory diseases that scare me more than most people, but they do, and that’s not new. The pandemic just hits me hard because of that. But fortunately I’m comfortable wearing a mask, and have friends who are even more phobic than i, and friends who aren’t, but who don’t mind my wearing a mask.
Apart from work from home life is 99% the same as pre-COVID. I visited France in September and British Columbia last month. Probably visit Europe again next fall.
The mental impact from socially isolating is probably more dangerous than COVID at this point.
Plus, it’s gotten so contagious you’re going to catch it no matter what now, so why not just get it over with?
If he never leaves his home he wont. Plus, arent they coming out with a better vaccine in the fall? If cs waits until then to venture out to the scary world he could avoid it completely
While I’m not as isolated as CS seems to be I’m still trying to avoid it. Unfortunately COVID isn’t a one and done illness (unless you die).
Unlikely, it will continue to evolve, we’re not vaccinating our way out of this.
Because long COVID, while uncommon, is unpleasant enough to justify some avoidance.