— Submitted by a reader for everyone you know and don’t know —
We don’t want to contribute to corona-fatigue so if you are already aware that you should act as though you are contagious, feel free to skip the rest of the message.
This is important to understand – from a public health perspective the US does not have the resources and people to handle this as a Containment effort (where they find every person in close contact with confirmed cases and test them, then isolate confirmed cases). We are in the stage of Mitigation, where it has already spread throughout the community and containment efforts are ineffective. It is now assumed that most people will be exposed.
So… patients with symptoms that are not severe are being told that if they self-quarantine for 14 days then they don’t need the test. (again to preserve supplies for more severe cases).
We may all be one-degree away from a confirmed COVID case. And we will not know if we may have been in close contact with a confirmed case because h/she is not getting tested.
So assume you have been exposed. You do not know if you have been exposed to a positive case because even extremely high-risk cases are not being tested and confirmed, let alone having contact-tracing done.
This means taking precautions to not spread the virus to others. Assume you are contagious. Assume everyone you interact with is contagious also.
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Nice, thank you.
One of my concerns is the effect on the environment will be of using all this disposable stuff. And where will it go?
Since I’m even assuming my dog may be contagious, or may pick up a microbe when we’re out, I’m wiping him down when we get home from very necessary walks with homemade sanitizer. (alcohol + lavender and tea tree drops). I keep this in a spray bottle near the door with a pile of freshly laundered cloths that have been through a hot dryer. These are used for wipe-downs of all kinds and are thrown into the washing machine after use (not left lying around for the next clean-up).
My granddaughter sent us. pile of home made masks which are acutely uncomfortable because the elastic that goes around the ears is too short. There’s no elastic to be had around here, so I’m thinking about looping rubber bands together.