Seanly asked a good set of questions in comments yesterday:
- If we’re mostly staying at home, how is the virus still spreading so much? Is it that even with restrictions there are still some people spreading it? Seems the odds of that happening would decrease? Is it possible there are some people who are asymptomatic carriers (like for weeks)?
- at some point we will have to open things up a bit more (not now, not so fast). I’m not sure what that will look like. We’re going to still need some food production, still need to get teeth cleaned, and may need pants. How & when can we do this?
- Weren’t there some experts who thought the way to proceed with effective testing, tracing, etc is that we’d have the country mostly open (with masks & social distancing) and then if a hotspot bloomed only that area would need the stricter lockdown?
#1 Yesterday, Scott Gottlieb in Congressional testimony estimated the (R)eproductive number is currently about 1.1. 1.1 R means that for every 100 people who are currently infectious with COVID, they will infect, on average about 110 new people. Other sources have the national R at or a smidge under 1. All of these estimates have large confidence intervals.
Infection is not occurring randomly. Instead we are seeing clustering of new infections and clustering of non-infections. New infections are happening disproportionally in places where isolation and distancing do not readily or easily occur. This means nursing homes, assisted living centers, slaughterhouses, prisons, jails, detention centers and aircraft carriers are seeing virgin field, rapid spread outbreaks. Indoor spaces with prolonged proximity and lots of aerosol exchanges are prime locations for hot spots.
#2 Building on #1, a recognition that indoor spaces with high density of interactions is a very bad thing allows us to shape the environment and our monitoring to lower risk. North Carolina is slowly re-opening in phases with the intention of keeping density of interactions and personal proximity low even as stores that have been closed for 7-8 weeks restore some degree of service. Florists can probably have a decent chance of safely re-opening while sit-down dining at Red Lobster is far more questionable in terms of risk management.
Duke University has been slowly planning to bring a small cadre of workers back on campus for a few weeks. I fully expect that I won’t be allowed on campus until July. I expect that I will be encouraged to work at home for the rest of the year as a means of minimizing on-campus interaction density. No one needs a life saving blog post or a critical revise and resubmit.
#3 Yeah, that is my boss’s plan. The hope is that the baseline rate of spread is low enough that a hot spot can be quickly identified and then smothered. South Korea is doing that now. They had a micro-hotspot in Seoul’s bars. They tested 2,000 20,000 or more people and isolate plenty of folks so that the hot spot could not light the rest of the city on fire again. That is the suppression model that has a chance in hell of working until there is a vaccine while keeping the economy mostly open.
Soprano2
Sadly, I am already preparing myself for the fact that until there’s either an effective treatment or a vaccine it’s likely that choirs will not be able to meet and perform. I think that probably applies to orchestras and other musical ensembles, too. It sucks, but I cannot see how a bunch of people singing together in a room can be made safe under current circumstances. The only way would be to test each person at the door of the rehearsal room every time the group meets, and I don’t see any college or university having the resources to do that. I find myself wondering how conducting students are going to get practical experience.
PaulWartenberg
I work at a public library, and it is looking more and more likely we will be going to curbside service after Memorial Day, with a likely June opening to the public. Most of my staff is uneasy about opening to the public because we will be facing demands on computer use and close contact to patrons that increase the risks. We’re supposed to get some protections in place soon but it might not be enough. :/
artem1s
I’m concerned the second wave of protests will be all about testing and tracing. You take a bunch of yahoos who already believe that the gubmint is coming for their guns – tell them the state is mandating routine testing, and any who are positive, they have to reveal their interactions for the past two weeks (either by interview or electronically), and submit to quarantining and mandated tracing for two weeks – what you get is the Ohio and Michigan militia geared up for violence. There have been a wave of GOP controlled legislatures that are trying to block governors and health department plans to institute systematic openings. Wisconsin yesterday, Ohio the day before. And now you have Twittler riling up the masses about the FBI entrapping Flynn and overreaching. The martial law part of this pandemic was never going to be about food or toilet paper shortages.
David Anderson
Agreed.
I used to referee soccer and wrestling. I think soccer could probably be safely played with appropriate precautions for fans. I don’t see how wrestling happens until there are a couple billion vaccine doses.
I am very curious what Duke is thinking about the men’s basketball season as there is no way that Cameron Indoor Stadium is safe. If you think a choir has a lot of high volume droplet creation and projection, a Duke home game is that times several hundred.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Here’s what’s happening in the retirement community where I live.
About 2 weeks ago, I mentioned that someone in a separate building housing the Memory Care Unit had been hospitalized with a confirmed case. The last I heard, that person was stable. This morning we learned that an asymptomatic worker in the Food and Beverages Department has tested positive. They’re now self-isolating at home for 10 days. The memo we got says that if they’re still asymptomatic at that point, they will return to work.
The person was identified when management tested everyone who’d been in or around the Memory Unit for both IgG and IgM antibodies. Seven people tested elevated for IgM, though once again they were all asymptomatic. All 7 then had the nasal swab. Three tested negative. Three are still waiting for results. And then there was the one Food and Beverage person who tested positive.
According to the memo, the person testing positive had no direct contact with residents. Any worker who came in contact with this person has already been tested or is currently undergoing testing.
I guess that’s reasonably good, though of course it’s not good good. I don’t know how the person in the Memory Unit was infected. Residents all over campus have been locked down in their residence since mid-March. No worker has entered my condo since then, though someone from Food and Beverages delivers my dinner orders. They wear masks and leave the food on a shelf outside my door. When any of use leaves our own unit, we’re required to wear masks, which I do, though I often take it off once I’m outside if no one else is around and I’m going for a walk or something.
Sorry to ramble so long
Chief Oshkosh
@artem1s: I wonder if it would be a good thing for governors to get together virtually for a press conference to explain that gun-humper actions like we’ve seen at state capitols slow re-opening. Basically, the gun-humpers are ruining it for everyone else. Right now, the gun-humpers keep getting their way (OH, WI, etc.). They in effect are holding the rest of us hostage.
Jeffro
Here’s what bothers me: things like this and this, where we are essentially giving up on testing and tracing because of the lack of a coordinated federal response. Instead, we are “minimizing collateral damage” and “moving to a new strategy of harm reduction”.
It’s completely unacceptable and ought to be laid squarely at every “BUT THE ECONOMY!” GOP official from trumpov to Abbott to Kemp to DeSantis and so on. It was a false choice they put in front of Americans, and now they will turn masks and other common-sense Covid19-fighting strategies into yet more facets of our 24/7 partisan warfare.
Well, they can screw themselves (and in a way, they have). 75% of the country is not at all enthused about gatherings of most any size so hey sports leagues, restaurants, airlines, hotels, and higher ed, y’all can all look forward to doing minimal if any business until there is a new administration in place, one that’s committed to truly massive amounts of testing, even if it “spooks the stock market“(!!)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David Anderson:
Yeah, but the only people that care about Duke playing are Duke fans – the rest of us would be happy if that team gets the DP for L’affaire Zion, sooooooo……
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Speaking as someone who has been hugely affected by “but the economy” and a completely incompetent Federal response that directed more than the lion’s share of benefits at megacorps, banks and investors, it is a concern. It is easy to say “stay closed” if income streams from ongoing pay, pensions and/or SS are continuing, but that doesn’t do anything for shuttered small to mid-sized businesses that are facing huge pressure from ongoing obligations. Had the response been competent, there wouldn’t be a sense of pervasive desperation that inclines people to want to open up.
I want to be decent – I really do, but that doesn’t pay my office rent. It doesn’t pay Citi, it doesn’t pay AMEX and it doesn’t pay my mortgage. As the car repos and evictions and foreclosures ramp up late summer and throughout the end of 2020, there will be a clamor for aid that conservative ideology is keeping away from people.
Maybe people like me can subsist on straw alone, with that eventually whittled down to air, but I have doubts.
RSA
My wife’s assisted living facility (locked down since early March) has a common dining room, a day room, and other areas where people gather, with nurse assistants and staff moving constantly throughout the building. I’m very concerned about the people I know there; I don’t see how distancing is possible, given the needs of so many of the residents.
Geoboy
@artem1s: Regarding the government coming for the guns of wack jobs who are juiced up on the Fox Pravada network – if the goverment cannot or will not protect us from them then the government has abdicated it’s power to them. It’s time to have massive arrests and long term incarcerations of those who use threats of violence to subvert our goverment and society. After all, those FEMA camps aren’t going to fill themselves.
MattF
For #1, I guess there’s a possibility that there are virus reservoirs (other than humans) somewhere in the environment. But who knows? Lots of mysteries here, not helped by the stupid promoted by Trump et. al.
Sab
OT. My husband aged 69 is doing coffee klatch with his high school buddies. They have gone out in the world so it is international. Some of them are single so stuck at home alone, which would be unpleasant.
I am an off the charts extreme introvert, but I cannot imagine being stuck alone at home without my spouse, my dogs, and our five utterly annoying kitties.
This klatch is hilarious. What a bunch of goofballs. I did my duty and made him percolated coffee on the stove an hour ago.
JMG
We are social animals. Some of us feel the economic impact of the virus and the response to it more than others. I’m one of the lucky ones and I know it. But all of us feel the same impact of social isolation from family and friends. My daughter lives in France. I honestly don’t know when I will ever see her again. That’s a real downer, so I try not to think of it too much.
wvng
@Soprano2: I ache for you.
My wife and I run (ran) an open mic at the local bar and grill. Over the years we had built a wonderful community of solid musicians, all of whom really looked forward to the monthly event. Now, I can’t imagine doing this in an enclosed space before there is a vaccine that is widely implemented. Indoor live music just feels impossible anytime soon. The virtual open mics that we plan and that others are doing let people see one another but it isn’t remotely the same.
Amir Khalid
@David Anderson:
You might find this story from The Guardian‘s football page interesting.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@RSA: One issue that my state noticed early, is that many health care workers, including nurses, doctors, home heath aides and skilled nursing assistants work at multiple facilities. Some live in one state and work in another. That was the case in some of the first cases in Connecticut, the person lived in Westchester county, one of the early hotspots.
NY resident working at Norwalk and Danbury Hospiytals tests positive
Sharing Staff Among Nursing Homes
Percysowner
Not an expert, just anecdotal evidence here but it seems to me that enough of us aren’t staying home, For weeks as I went to curbside pickup my groceries while wearing my mask and only cracking my window to get the receipt I saw lots of people going into the store unmasked.
I also watch my granddaughter. The kids are working from home, they have self isolated (curbside pickup, contactless delivery, masks when out) so I’ve felt safe. The other grandmother used to watch her one day a week, but her husband (over 65 with a heart condition) continued to work (he’s retired with a state pension so not a money issue) in a hospital setting until his kids said “You’re 65 and have a heart condition and your work can be done from home”. So after 2 weeks of them “self isolating” the other GM took my GD and I had a day off. After that, once I was watching her again we found out that she had been seeing her daughter who WORKS IN A HOSPITAL and last week her husband got his hair cut because God Forbid he be shaggy. Their reasoning was these were all good responsible people who were taking all possible precautions, so they couldn’t POSSIBLY be carrying COVID. I suspect there are many people who are staying at home and “self isolating” because the only people they are seeing are “good people who take precautions and couldn’t POSSIBLY have picked up the virus”.
Obvious Russian Troll
My wife is slowly resigning herself to the possibility that she will never see her mother again. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and moved into the nursing unit in her assisted living facility over Christmas, and has rapidly declined to the point where she just moved into the memory care unit.
The nursing home has been pretty aggressive about keeping people out (which I admit is a pleasant surprise for rural Kentucky). However, that also means my mother-in-law can’t see my wife, who’s been going down for a week once a month, or any of her sisters, all of whom live just a few miles away.
We are in Toronto so it’s going to be some time before we can even cross the border, and then we don’t know if the nursing home will allow guests anytime soon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Percysowner: If you want to get terrified, spend a half hour in the Sullivan MO WallyWorld parking lot.
raven
@Percysowner: My wife is getting wobbly on the hair stuff. Our tenant is also her hairdresser and that complicates things since she went back to doing “select” clients. I told my bride if it was that important she could quarantine for two weeks. She laughed.
rikyrah
I believe that the GOPers should put their bodies where their mouths are .
THEY can open up the economy, and I will see them in, say, two months, after I see how it goes for them???
twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1260900567045586945
The Moar You Know
@Sab: I responded to your question/post last thread, post 132 (I think). My wife and I have a similar dynamic.
Freemark
@Obvious Russian Troll:
Really sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine not being able to see my parents again. I really hope it works out you can.
WV Blondie
I went to my nearest Walmart a couple of days ago (yeah, I know, but when you live in WV your choices are somewhat limited). I will give the corporation credit – there’s an employee at the door actually counting how many people come in and go out, and I’ve seen him delay folks until enough people come out to keep the density below the threshold; the doors have been configured for one-way traffic in and out; there are very clear directional signs on the floor for all the aisles and marking 6-foot intervals; there are ample supplies of wipes, sprays and paper towels that shoppers can use to clean the carts.
OTOH … the workers aren’t wearing masks. And the use of masks by shoppers has dropped precipitously. Two weeks ago, I’d say mask-wearing was at 90% or so, by both employees and customers; two days ago, I think 60-65% of the shoppers went mask-less.
I’m gonna have to drive another 20 miles and find a safer store. I’m the designated “go-outer,” both for my husband (underlying pulmonary issues) and a widowed neighbor in her 70s.
Barbara
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: When my sister realized she had worked a shift with a person who was later diagnosed with the virus, the first thing her employer told her was not to work at more than one location, i.e., don’t take overtime shifts at other places. She did eventually get tested but only after she had symptoms (negative — but as we are finding out, not all tests are created equal). The absence of nationally coordinated testing is an abomination. The realization that while Trump and Birx pooh pooh testing for you and me, White House staff are being tested daily should make people investigate the possibility of whether you can use a 3D printer to produce guillotines.
Barbara
@Obvious Russian Troll: I am so sorry to hear this. My mother died without me getting a chance to say good-bye and it hurts.
rikyrah
Maybe it’s easier for me to say this because I am a natural introvert..
When my office opens backs up in a couple of weeks…It’s going to take all my energy to get to and from work COVID-19 free.
I won’t have energy for anything else.
I feel like I’M RISKING MY LIFE going to and from work.
I love to swim.
I love the movies.
Am I going back to either one of them once things ‘open up’?
HELL MUTHAPHUCKIN’ NO.
You all can knock yourselves out when things ‘ open up’.
But, it won’t be me.
artem1s
@David Anderson:
very very expensive coaching staff and millions in lost TV revenue
CaseyL
The most interesting statistics will come from states where there is a strong Red/Blue divide, with the Blue portions locking down and the Red portions not.
My state, Washington, has a strong Blue corridor all along the Puget Sound coast (King County especially) surrounded by Red (east of the Cascades especially). Governor Inslee is allowing the parts of the state with few Covid-19 cases to re-open more quickly than the places with massive cases. It’s happening in a very careful manner, but SFAIK there are no mechanisms to limit travel within the state.
Theoretically, even if King County stays locked down, new disease vectors could come from any of the re-opened counties – to visit re-opened state parks, for example (I can’t think of any other reason why they’d come here as everything else is still closed). They could spread infections via gas stations, and convenience and grocery stores.
That’s the scenario in the sane states, the ones conscientiously trying to get it right.
The states where neither the Governors nor, frankly, most of the residents, give a shit, are going to be disasters for their neighboring states as well as for themselves. (Washington is bordered by Idaho to the east and Oregon to the South. Idaho is Wingnut Central, and eastern Oregon is very rural, rife with White Supremacist Prepper types, right across the border from rural eastern Washington’s White Supremacist Prepper types.)
The GOP is gonna have to cook the books really hard to stop people from realizing we’re on track for 200,000 deaths by end of summer.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I think the big answer to #1 is that people aren’t isolating enough. Even people who follow the rules strictly are allowed to shop at essential businesses, work at essential businesses (and essential jobs at non-essential businesses), take public transit to those places, and to go outside for fresh air, exercise, and mental health. There’s every reason to believe that some people are not keeping strictly to those limits and are engaging in other forms of socializing. And when people come home from doing those things, they interact with the other people in their household. Those all provide opportunities for the virus to spread, if not quite as rapidly as it would in the absence of social distancing.
I think the last one is massively underrated as part of the overall picture. Imagine you have a household with three people who all work in essential jobs. If one of those people gets sick at work, they will bring the sickness home and risk spreading it to their household. Since we know it can be spread while it’s asymptomatic, they may already have spread it by the time they start exhibiting symptoms and isolate within the home. And if we follow our relatively weak guidelines, the other people in their household will still be going to work and spreading it to their coworkers until they too develop symptoms. The home to work and back process provides a way for the disease to spread from one workplace to another.
RSA
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Thanks. That’s news to me but not surprising.
@Obvious Russian Troll: I’m so sorry to hear about your terrible situation. I’ve been through this recently with my wife, and we couldn’t find any good solution.
schrodingers_cat
I have no idea when I will be able to go to India. That guilt eats at me everyday every minute of the day. Some of us don’t have the luxury of “respite” threads. They just feel like more salt in the wound.
artem1s
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think it would be great if the governors were doing more to support each other and send a coordinated message about testing, tracing and quarantining. Problem is DeWine has already bent the knee and rescinded order about the mandated customer masking. Once travel is eased across state lines, there will no be controlling the spread again.
There is no mention of expanding testing or implementing tracing in any of Ohio’s official releases. He is lining us up for a NY style wave of infections and once that starts, it will be nearly impossible to back track on closures without calling out the national guard. Ohio governors have a really bad track record when it comes to using the guard to assist the public in managing emergencies. It will trigger a lot of people on both sides and rightly so. Or he can ignore it and hope it will go away and we will still have the Ohio militia standing on the statehouse steps demanding the schools and casinos open back up DeWine knows he personally isn’t at risk. I’m sure he and his staff are getting tested. Right now he’s rolling dice on not implementing testing and tracing because he personally won’t pay the price.
Logan Brown
@Soprano2: The choir director at my church sadly concurs with you. He’s been busy trying to re-imagine our services but still keeping the strong community which is the chancel choir. His hope is that as we move into “Phase II” in NC that the handbells and smaller groups can start to perform. It’s really hard because we just hired him in the Fall and he had really started to do some amazing work.
rikyrah
@Obvious Russian Troll:
This broke my heart.
WaterGirl
@Obvious Russian Troll: I’m sorry. That must be heartbreaking. To have no contact or any control over the situation must be harder than hard.
ciotog
@WV Blondie: The reduced mask wearing is because of a concerted conservative propaganda campaign, I’m sure.
Amir Khalid
@ciotog:
You need to start a propaganda campaign telling conservatives that it’s unmanly to take showers.
Obvious Russian Troll
Thanks everyone. My wife is struggling and I’m not thrilled either. I’ve been close to my mother-in-law, particularly since my own mother died twenty years ago.
Roger Moore
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’m not sure how much difference it would make. We’re already really polarized on the issue. The people who aren’t sympathetic to the protestors understand the protests are a terrible idea and don’t need the governors to tell them that. The people who are sympathetic to the protestors will see that kind of criticism as retaliation against them for exercising their rights. I guess there might be some people on the fence who might change their minds, but it’s not a big group.
bluefoot
@Obvious Russian Troll: I’m so sorry about this. My family recently went through the same thing when my mother passed away – family only a few miles away couldn’t see her before she died. I’m holding you, your wife and her mother in my thoughts.
Raven Onthill
David, I don’t see how we are going to stop this from becoming endemic in the USA, not with whole swathes of the country concealing hotspots. You are being reasonable; many places in the USA are not.
We have identified hotspots where the reaction is to hide the evidence. Meatpacking plants. But also, I suspect, Amazon warehouses. All the unsafe workplaces are turning into hotspots.
In Wisconsin, the corrupt Supreme Court has declared social distancing orders unconstitutional. In Nebraska, the governor is directing local departments of health to defer to meatpacking plant owners before publishing COVID-19 statistics.
Feathered brothers and sisters, we eat tonight and for many nights to come!
Raven Onthill
@CaseyL: “The states where neither the Governors nor, frankly, most of the residents, give a shit, are going to be disasters for their neighboring states as well as for themselves.”
Not just neighboring states; every place people fly to. At this rate we’re going to end with the entire country under intermittent lockdown for the next two years.
Seanly
Thanks for your answers, David!
Like a lot of others, I am a big college football fan (go Clemson & Lehigh!). I’m not so sure if we’ll have football this season. The logistics of 140(?) players, coaches & staff traveling on 4 or 5 buses & staying in hotels for game day sound terrible for avoiding COVID-19. I’d love to see what my Clemson Tigers can do this year, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in football being played even if no fans are allowed in the stadiums.
Our current state of residence (Idaho) is letting municipalities open as they see fit. It being Republican-dominated at the county & state level, I can see bluer Boise being forced to open more at some point. But I think that many of the people will be like my wife & me. I doubt we’ll be sitting down in a restaurant or visiting any shop other than groceries through June or July. We miss our favorite waitress at our fav breakfast place, but don’t want to get COVID-19.
Bill Arnold
@ciotog:
The interesting thing is that #Masks4All (the push to get guidelines changed in particular) had and still has a lot of conservative boosters. I have not dug into the origins of the anti-masker movement but it might not be as American or “conservative” as one might initially suspect; there is an influence operation involved for sure.
Though Trump and Pence have not been helping; they are racking up a lot of American deaths with their public displays of their personal anti-masker beliefs.
(A lot more than anti-vaxxers have racked up in this country.)
I am so happy that NY State is in an intervention arm of the US masks vs anti-masks natural experiments being conducted. The body counts for this science will be very very high. It’s frankly terrifying and deeply saddening reading the stories here about life in the control arm. Please y’all be as safe as possible, and preferentially avoid stores that allow the unmasked, if possible.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: Or a Lowe’s here in Ky….
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I did have a question about my doggie, now that the weather is warming up. This is COVID related. I live near Sligo Creek, in Montgomery County, MD. Population is over 1 million in this county. As the weather warms up, which it will eventually even though the spring has been surprisingly cool so far, my dog is going to want to take occasional dips in the creek. I’m wondering if there is any significant risk of picking up COVID from the creek water if I let my dog do this. At one point the creek had a combined sewage overflow problem…that may no longer be an issue – the DC area has been addressing the problem but it’s hard to figure out for sure. I’ve read that natural bodies of water dilute the concentration of the virus to the point where swimming etc is not a significant risk but if anyone has any guidance to provide that would be great.
karen marie
That is what I am understanding is key to minimizing risk of contagion. This is a short explainer I came across on the twitter from “a Comparative Immunologist and Professor of Biology (specializing in Immunology)” – she includes an about section that describes her background and experience which is helpful in evaluating her advice. That, plus what I already know (including that we should all behave as though we and anyone we meet are asymptomatic carriers), leads me to believe that having even one friend over the house could be potentially problematic unless the visit takes place in an outdoor space. Here in Arizona, that’s going to become more difficult as the summer wears on because it’s so fucking hot 24/7. But needs must
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: My apartment complex reopened the pool the other day. I was really surprised. My using the pool was unlikely to happen anyway, because there are a lot of young children here and I have no interest in swimming in diluted pee, but even absent the kids, I don’t think I’d be taking a dip.
J R in WV
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Bathe your dog when you get home, lots of soapy bubbles, and don’t pet Dog until after the bath. We use Mane and Tail horse shampoo for the dogs, they don’t mind it much, esp. compared to the actual bath events.
One of our younger dogs has quite a novel aroma, I suspect she found a skunk and avoided all but a drop or two of the spray.
Matt McIrvin
Erik Loomis still thinks mass infection to the herd-immunity level is completely inevitable, so any degree of lockdown beyond what’s necessary to keep hospital systems from being overwhelmed is probably pointless. He’s basically saying there’s going to be a million-plus dead in America and there’s nothing we can do. I can’t get a bead on how consistent this is with expert opinion.
MoCA Ace
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Regarding medical staff working at multiple locations… my son graduated and is applying at hospitals and nursing homes. He had an interview at a nursing home the other day (part time nursing work) and they said they would not hire him if he got the part-time hospital job he is also pursuing.
So some of them are trying to avoid it.
WaterGirl
@karen marie:
I have been thinking about that for awhile. Just like one should assume that every gun is loaded. even if we think we know it’s not.
Original Lee
@artem1s: Oh, yes, I’ve been seeing this already on FB for the past week or two. Trumpistas (interestingly, very few older Trumpistas) are passing around posts about how to subvert the contract tracing – mostly by leaving their cellphones at home and by paying for everything in cash.
Arclite
And then there are special snowflakes who believe the virus is a hoax, no worse than the flu, and won’t be told what to do. Those people spread it too.
WaterGirl
@Arclite: “You’re not the boss of me” will be the cause of the end of life as we know it.
Bob Hertz
To David Anderson:
I am not an expert at all, but why can’t all Duke office workers come back to campus? They work in offices and carrels and libraries at least six feet from each other all day.