The pandemic is still here. Do Not mingle so closely with your friends and neighbors this Memorial Day.
The pandemic is still here. Coronavirus is still infectious, we still do not have a vaccine, and no consistent treatment. We continue to struggle to have enough tests available to be able to diagnose those who are infected.
The most important thing to remember as we start opening up to go out and about is that we continue to be careful about not exposing ourselves unnecessarily to Coronavirus.
We are all at a great risk to expose ourselves to the virus and at danger to get Covid19. Humans are very sociable and once we start meeting with each other again it is but natural to come close to each other and to forget the social distancing norms. The stay at home orders are starting to get relaxed but the social distancing rules, wearing those masks and washing of the hands should still be adhered to. It does not mean that you can go around sitting close to your friends, having parties indoors, hugging each other, and of course being your pre Covid19 self.
The danger is very real as we go about exploring our freedom. I would like to emphasis that each new person you are adding to your inner circle you are adding all their contacts also. For example you went out to a restaurant without a mask, saw your friend whom you have not seen for last several weeks. Both of you tried to maintain a distance but slowly started to get near to each other as you got animated in conversation. One or both of you may be asymptomatic able to spread the virus to each other and both of you are not wearing masks. Just at that moment you have put your inner circle in a dangerous place by exposing your self and your family to every single person your friend was close to. The teenagers, students who consider themselves invincible are going around meeting their friends (with no social distancing and no masks) which means that they are exposing their family to every single contact the other person was exposed to. It is a very scary concept but it is a very difficult concept to understand because we humans just do not think like that. Unfortunately we have to if we want to keep ourselves safe. It will take about two weeks to realize whether the social distancing rules, and wearing masks were followed this weekend. The severity of second wave would be determined by the laxity of our thought process and laxity of our social behavior towards each other.
As of May 23, 2020 these are the statistics for Ohio. There were 614 new cases and 84 fatalities.
To illustrate my point lets consider this recent case of two hairstylists from Missouri who were diagnosed positive for Coronavirus and mildly symptomatic at a hair salon. They had both worked for about a week prior to being diagnosed. This is a perfect public health nightmare. They exposed about 140 clients to the virus. The hair salon had taken all the measures and fortunately everyone had been wearing a mask. However the public health officials are scrambling right now to identify each of those people and monitor them. We won’t know for a week or two on how many of them converted to getting sick. Imagine if you were the last client for one of those hairstylists you exposed yourself to them and also to the other 70 people they came in contact with. The only good thing here is that they were wearing masks. But was that really enough we won’t quite know for a little while.
Keeping yourself safe is your responsibility. It is like driving your car. If you follow the rules you will reach your destination without an accident. If you choose to ignore the rules such as going through the red light then you will meet with an accident. How about if others do not follow the rules you can still be involved in a bad accident. So all of us have to work collectively to keep our roads safe. The same thing applies to your virus exposure. Be smart about it. It is irresponsible of you and to humanity if you take a preventable and unnecessary risk to expose everyone around you. Wear masks. Do not touch your face and mouth. Wash hands. Maintain the social distance. This will help you keep yourself and your family safe from the virus as well as the community. Do what you can to help towards reducing the virus exposures and slow the spread of the disease.