Has any place figured out how to stop it getting into nursing home? I feel like pretty much all places with outbreaks and a lot of places where it seems to be minimally spread in the general community, have failed to protect their nursing homes.
You can limit visitors, but I would imagine it’s the staff, possibly asymptomatic, bringing it in. Part of Wisconsin’s reopening plan is widespread testing of everyone in nursing homes, symptomatic or not. We’ll see if it works I guess.
I am one of the crazy people who wears gloves when shopping. I would never touch my face by accident with gloves on my hands - unless there was a mosquito or something biting me I guess. The gloves just make me hyper aware of whatever my hands touch. I like to think I take them off without contaminating myself but I then use wipes to wipe down anything I’ve touched since putting them on and then sanitize my hands. My phone stays in my pocket and I use my headphones and watch for any communications. (A PA friend keeps her phone in a sandwich bag when working.) When I get home everything I bring in from the store is also wiped down.
I just feel like the gloves are one step in a complex process, but is the average person taking this much concern every time they leave the house?! Of that I’m not convinced.
I can understand all of your frustrations with the meat packing plant (having not yet watched the video), but I DO think that the breakdown of food supply chains will have a much bigger impact than just a preference for a specific cut of meat. Can we feed everyone without meat In the food supply chain? How does it affect the people who have lost jobs if groceries are more expensive? What gets sent to the food pantries when there are shortages?
The Big picture is that break down has the potential to be devastating. All kinds of economic decisions have costs in real human life - and this is hard because it’s a very clear tangible example of that cost that I don’t feel like I have much right to weigh in on from safe in my house. Now is the right time to make sure those facilities are doing everything in their power to limit spread and make those workers as safe as they can without completely upending the supply chain. (I read somewhere else that it’s also the living conditions of the workers - they often live together in close quarters, that has to be addressed, too.)
I’ve been teetering back and forth on Texas reopening. The Texas Medical Center page on COVID-19 has given me a lot of reassurance. Have you looked at it?
This whole experience is heartbreaking. There is no single right answer that makes it not heartbreaking. The best we can do is push forward trying to find balance between keeping the economy moving, limiting those who get sick and die, and keeping our hospitals from getting overwhelmed. I don’t think there is any realistic way to hunker down for months on end.
Another major problem is that a lot of these facilities have staff who work at more than one facility. My soon to be SIL works at one and they realized this was a problem when the facility across the street came down with cases and some staff worked for both.
In NYS the governor mandated early in that nursing homes could not refuse residents based on COVID diagnosis.
So if a person is in the hospital with COVID and either needed to return to the LTC facility s/je came from or was a new placement, facilities could not refuse based on diagnosis. Which makes sense … except that our hospitals were empty anyway so it’s not like we couldn’t keep them after or became clear we were going to be ghost towns for 6 weeks.
I remember when it was Adventure World and Cal Ripken was in all the commercials. DH is old enough (and local to the DC/MD/NOVA area) that he can remember when it was a safari park (originally opened by Ross Perot, btw).
Somehow, miraculously, my grandmother’s nursing home has not had any cases amongst their residents. They did bring in one Covid-19 patient from another facility that had been discharged from the local hospital. They report that they have sealed off that section of the nursing home and are not sharing staff. So far it seems to be working, as the Covid positive person was placed in that sequestered part of the nursing home last week and there are no known cases in my grandmother’s side at this point.
The last I heard, the residents have been sequestered to their room. There are no visitors. All mail sits for at least 24-48 hours before giving it to a resident and no packages are accepted. I’m not sure how staff is being screened at this point.
Yes, I was an article about a strengthened virus last night. 
SARS also mutated to be less virulent,and then essentially disappeared. Anything similar with C19 would be a good thing.
This particular research is published in a peer review journal (online). The one about a strengthened virus is not (yet anyway).
Au contraire, mon frere. I wear them out shopping because it does prevent me from touching my face.The weight, weirdness, I don’t know. But I know that I have more than once taken them off and almost immediately touched my face after removal.
I do wipe down with alcohol wipes (unless home and can wash my hands). And you can take them off in such a way as to not contaminate yourself (or at least largely mitigate it).
I don’t think that anyone has everything figured out, but I know here in MA they have identified a few factors. One, they are seeing a large asymptomatic population (my great aunt among them) which has allowed it to spread silently. Second, the nature of the low-paying jobs have often required the employees to work 2+ jobs and can thus be spreading it even between different homes. Third, the lack of PPE as well and the nature of the extremely close quarters of a nursing home in general.
Having read countless articles on this subject, you would be the exception. And, I’d be willing to bet that if someone filmed you without your knowledge, you still end up touching your face with the gloves on without realizing it.
Even if you don’t, generally they have seen people do a BETTER job of being mindful of touching things and reducing spread when they AREN’T wearing gloves.
So, I’m sure there are individual cases where perhaps wearing gloves is more effective…more often it is the opposite.
Gyms are going to be a nightmare. Here, they are talking about people wearing masks. huh? working out? Can’t see how that will work, and even people good about not touching the masks will probably do so quite a lot.
will people start keeling over from hypoxic effects of certain masks? I guess if you don’t you’ll have gained the benefits of high altitude training. 
I would think also the masks will become damp almost immediately and cancel out any of the mask’s benefits. Force everyone to breath through their noses exclusively?
Wow. Hadn’t thought of that. Kind of a funny image to think about, though. 
Will that help? Noses are supposed to be covered as well. (Although, I am amazed how many people I’ve seen wearing masks where they keep it off their nose.)
Also many places are (very) understaffed. and I’m guessing many use some staff that is under trained and/or under qualified. This could only mean janitorial or kitchen staff; but also those in constant contact with the residents.
Often these jobs in nursing homes do not pay well. So it’s hard to find staff at all, much less good staff. And it means people will come to work sick, as they need the paycheck.
This, all this.
I also keep my phone in a baggie when I go to a beach to keep the sand out of it.
I have cousins that are 90ish and in an assisted living facility. So far everything is ok there. But anytime I see an article about an outbreak in a new facility, my stomach gets swirly.
Your nose produces fewer droplets than the mouth. And I would guess the mouth breathing spews droplets further than the nose (unless sneezing).
But from personal experience, my nose runs when doing even moderate cardio. I guess the mask could absorb that, but you’re back to the saturation of the masks issue.
There are a lot of people who are really gross at the gym. I never used water from the gym again after seeing a guy draw in all his mucous and hock a giant loogie directly onto the water fountain dispenser (where the water comes out to drink it). 
ETA:
Will that help? Noses are supposed to be covered as well. (Although, I am amazed how many people I’ve seen wearing masks where they keep it off their nose.)
Yes. even in the grocery store I see employees either not wearing or the mask is loose and off the nose. I get it, it’s tough to wear all shift. But still, not comforting.
That makes sense. So while covering the nose is ideal, it is MOST important to cover the mouth.
I am curious as to this. I wouldn’t think saturation of the mask would be an problem, other than annoying. The saturation, in fact, seems like it might IMPROVE the effectiveness of the cloth being able to contain any droplets because it “fills in” the holes in the cloth. (Of course, a saturated mask seems like it would make it harder to breathe…but, I mean, really? Who needs to breathe when we’re talking about the safety of mankind? 
In a normal environment, yes. Will it still happen that way under current conditions?
I get why you would think so. But really, no. I am SO hyper aware with the gloves. You might see be thrashing about trying to rub a bad itch on my shoulder, but I do not touch my face. Wearing the gloves out shopping really is very effective for me. I would be the poster girl for wearing gloves!
Also factor into my not-touching-my face-with-gloves success the fact I am only wearing them for short periods of time. Two hours at a stretch,at most. If I was wearing them all day, everyday, or even just extended periods of time, I probably would start touching my face with the gloves.
I want to also say I am definitely NOT one of those awful people littering with my used gloves. I have a bag in the car where I deposit them (along with used hand wipes) and get rid of them at home. Bad, bad people!
People dropping their gloves wherever are giving us glove wearers a bad name!!
Thanks everyone for putting up with my rant. Got some sleep and I’m still just so disappointed in my attempts to reassure myself that Governor Abbott is showing good judgment.
To clarify, I’m not proposing meat packing plants be closed. But reducing community spread is going to be super key to protecting them and the other “contained environments”, in addition to figuring out how to make those contained environments as safe as possible. But I am rapidly losing confidence that Texas is going to be able to keep a handle on either of those things by fast-tracking re-opening.
I know there will be deaths. But setting the bar at “everyone had an ICU bed that needed one” is far too low if that’s the metric they are using for acceptable casualties.
Yep, on the regular. I’m reassured that they are on top of things from a coordination standpoint and PPE looks good, but the following two bits do not give me warm fuzzies on re-opening.
That one has been ever so gradually moving towards yellow the last couple of weeks.
This one is bouncing between green and yellow.
These are telling me any loosening of restrictions needs to be slow and thoughtful, with at least 2 weeks to see impacts BEFORE new loosening is announced.
Rural Texas seems in a better position to loosen up than metro Houston. But that’s not where the big economic gains will be. So thus.
