Simple Math for Snotty Noses

 

 

This piece in The Tulanian is a great summary of the toll on marginalized people, and what doctors in New Orleans learned about how COVID affects people differently. I am particularly thankful for this piece because they still held our 25 year reunion (which I obviously did not attend), which I thought was incredibly tone deaf. It's unlikely it was being planned by physicians fighting COVID, though.

This piece by WBUR in Boston reveals how the 2021 4th of July celebration in Provincetown became a super-spreader event, and how the community there determined the vaccinations weren't preventing spread.

If you live in Larimer County, there is a great dashboard showing the current COVID threat. It will probably always be a good idea to wear masks indoors in public, and limit meals with others outside one's home to no more often than once every 2.5 weeks, since the rapid tests aren't reliable, and it can take some time for people to develop symptoms. If you are feeling well, that's when to take a test, but otherwise we need to listen to our bodies and slow down the timing of our exposures. It might be a good time to decide who those people are going to be - and hopefully they are people who are around for you when the going gets tough. Other folks who are unable to reciprocate in this way should probably be limited to socially-distanced and masked interactions.

Furthermore, research has shown that the virus can be shed for up to 30 days after infection, so it seems rather silly to be relying tests which are not sensitive enough to catch low levels of virus to determine when it is safe to leave quarantine. Clearly the tests are not sensitive enough to pick up many infections, even symptomatic ones, so why would we use them to know when it's "safe?" We were sold a lie.

I think taking these approaches would reduce a lot of societal pain.

But, you know, I'm not public health official, just someone who cares passionately about the well-being of society.

Please take good care of yourselves. Please! It turns out that mouth holes are just as dangerous as butt holes. I wonder what the conservatives will think of that.

 

Sad, but true...