![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Safety practices
Apr. 8th, 2022 11:08 pmEdit: In the time since April 2022, some of the following has become charmingly anachronistic. I will perform an update at some point. The most important updates for 2023 are: A healthy, vaccinated person can wait five days after a potential exposure (not 12) to be pretty sure they're okay. The new variants are so virulent that the 90/10 rule should now, at the very least, consist of masking around any crowds (indoor or outside) for even brief visits; masking indoors in public always; and avoiding extended periods with indoor crowds (or wearing a P100 if you cannot avoid them). Rapid tests peak in sensitivity four or five days after symptom onset (in vaccinated people).
Deciding on personal COVID safety practices, in the absence of reliable guidance, is difficult. Often, individual circumstances must be judged on a case-by-case basis, and the felicific calculus (a tongue-in-cheek term for the vague but difficult math that goes into finding the best course of action) gets intricate. Actual risk management math involves making educated guesses for things about which we lack hard numbers.
That said, it is absolutely essential to work it out anyway. If my actions get me infected with COVID-19, and I pass it on to someone who passes it on to someone else, who gets disabled or killed by it: THAT'S ON ME. I will be morally culpable for that result. I will not destroy my fellow human beings' lives that way. That ought to go without saying, but, well, *gestures around*. It needs saying.
Even if one were perfectly selfish and "low risk," the mathematically illiterate public has confused a "greatly lowered personal risk" conferred by vaccination with a "negligible risk".
Put it this way: In terms of just personal risk, getting COVID-19 is like falling off a stoop onto the sidewalk. You might be sore for a week. You might break your arm. You might suffer a permanent, crippling injury. If you're particularly unlucky, you might hit your head and die. Getting vaccinated is like wearing a helmet. You've just made it much safer to fall off the stoop. Does that actually mean it's safe to fall off the stoop? Of course not! You can still break your arm or shatter your hip, and maybe die if you land particularly badly.
Getting vaccinated, and also taking really good precautions, is like walking down the steps from the stoop to the sidewalk. That changes the risk in both cases from "What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" to "Safer than my morning commute" (which is not to say, "perfectly safe").
Here's my set of general precautions. Your circumstances may alter these in either direction.
* No time spent in public, indoor places without a high quality mask. (N95 for me, but if your KN95 fits really well, cool. No cloth masks. I bought a box of 50 N95 masks for $40 including shipping, and rotate through eight of them, giving each one at least a week to dry out and let germs die. I gave out several to coworkers and the folks I support. Eighty cents each is a very small price for keeping people safer!)
* Yes, this means no eating inside restaurants. (If there is really good ventilation from windows/doors, and there is no crowd, and I have a further compelling reason ("I miss restaurants" doesn't count), I might consider making an exception. But I think the last time I did that was before Delta, in an empty restaurant, and I put my mask back on whenever the waitstaff approached.) Takeout and outdoor dining are vastly safer.
* No time spent indoors in a crowd. (I just nope out of there.)
* Minimize time spent indoors near coworkers, strangers, and anybody else whom I do not know to be practicing good safety measures.
* Use windows for ventilation whenever I am stuck inside with people outside of my household or social bubble for an extended period. No matter how good my mask is. (Some of my coworkers complain when I do this at staff meetings in the dead of winter. I give zero foxes, they suck it up, and the room warms up once everyone's there. I've also convinced the managers to follow my lead on this.)
* Confer with those in my social bubble about risky behavior. Avoid "unprotected" indoor time with them for twelve days if they did something I consider very risky. If they travel to visit people they know, I ask them to check in three days after returning: If none of their contacts are symptomatic, they're probably safe, and I resume contact. (The contagious period typically starts no more than 2.7 days before symptoms.)
* Keep my social bubble small. Violate it with unmasked indoor time only rarely, and only with people whom I know and trust, in the smallest possible groups. Prefer redundant connections (such as a recent contact of someone else in my bubble), as they represent less added risk than entirely fresh connections.
* Avoid touching high-touch surfaces (such as door handles) in public places. Wash or sanitize hands if I must touch them (as at an ATM or gas pump). Do not trust myself to remember not to stick a finger up my nose or rub my eye in the next half hour.
* When considering any exceptions to my rules, carefully weigh the expected risks and benefits. (e.g., I took a slight risk, by babysitting, to help loved ones in a crisis.) If I temporarily increase my own risk, work to decrease my risk of infecting others.
* Always respect and match the protocols of those who are practicing more caution than I. (e.g., If they mask outdoors, then I mask outdoors when with them.)
* Understand that other people have different needs, circumstances, and access to information.
* Amplify the voices of those vulnerable people who are begging everyone to behave more safely. Continue to listen to them.
* Express my displeasure with those who threaten the lives of my loved ones by not taking COVID-19 seriously.
To be clear, if you're already someone I trust to make good decisions, this is not me judging you. Your situation is your own to judge. This is me providing social proof, in a world where we go out and see mostly bad decisions, because often the best thing to do is to stay home.
( Addenda )
Deciding on personal COVID safety practices, in the absence of reliable guidance, is difficult. Often, individual circumstances must be judged on a case-by-case basis, and the felicific calculus (a tongue-in-cheek term for the vague but difficult math that goes into finding the best course of action) gets intricate. Actual risk management math involves making educated guesses for things about which we lack hard numbers.
That said, it is absolutely essential to work it out anyway. If my actions get me infected with COVID-19, and I pass it on to someone who passes it on to someone else, who gets disabled or killed by it: THAT'S ON ME. I will be morally culpable for that result. I will not destroy my fellow human beings' lives that way. That ought to go without saying, but, well, *gestures around*. It needs saying.
Even if one were perfectly selfish and "low risk," the mathematically illiterate public has confused a "greatly lowered personal risk" conferred by vaccination with a "negligible risk".
Put it this way: In terms of just personal risk, getting COVID-19 is like falling off a stoop onto the sidewalk. You might be sore for a week. You might break your arm. You might suffer a permanent, crippling injury. If you're particularly unlucky, you might hit your head and die. Getting vaccinated is like wearing a helmet. You've just made it much safer to fall off the stoop. Does that actually mean it's safe to fall off the stoop? Of course not! You can still break your arm or shatter your hip, and maybe die if you land particularly badly.
Getting vaccinated, and also taking really good precautions, is like walking down the steps from the stoop to the sidewalk. That changes the risk in both cases from "What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" to "Safer than my morning commute" (which is not to say, "perfectly safe").
Here's my set of general precautions. Your circumstances may alter these in either direction.
* No time spent in public, indoor places without a high quality mask. (N95 for me, but if your KN95 fits really well, cool. No cloth masks. I bought a box of 50 N95 masks for $40 including shipping, and rotate through eight of them, giving each one at least a week to dry out and let germs die. I gave out several to coworkers and the folks I support. Eighty cents each is a very small price for keeping people safer!)
* Yes, this means no eating inside restaurants. (If there is really good ventilation from windows/doors, and there is no crowd, and I have a further compelling reason ("I miss restaurants" doesn't count), I might consider making an exception. But I think the last time I did that was before Delta, in an empty restaurant, and I put my mask back on whenever the waitstaff approached.) Takeout and outdoor dining are vastly safer.
* No time spent indoors in a crowd. (I just nope out of there.)
* Minimize time spent indoors near coworkers, strangers, and anybody else whom I do not know to be practicing good safety measures.
* Use windows for ventilation whenever I am stuck inside with people outside of my household or social bubble for an extended period. No matter how good my mask is. (Some of my coworkers complain when I do this at staff meetings in the dead of winter. I give zero foxes, they suck it up, and the room warms up once everyone's there. I've also convinced the managers to follow my lead on this.)
* Confer with those in my social bubble about risky behavior. Avoid "unprotected" indoor time with them for twelve days if they did something I consider very risky. If they travel to visit people they know, I ask them to check in three days after returning: If none of their contacts are symptomatic, they're probably safe, and I resume contact. (The contagious period typically starts no more than 2.7 days before symptoms.)
* Keep my social bubble small. Violate it with unmasked indoor time only rarely, and only with people whom I know and trust, in the smallest possible groups. Prefer redundant connections (such as a recent contact of someone else in my bubble), as they represent less added risk than entirely fresh connections.
* Avoid touching high-touch surfaces (such as door handles) in public places. Wash or sanitize hands if I must touch them (as at an ATM or gas pump). Do not trust myself to remember not to stick a finger up my nose or rub my eye in the next half hour.
* When considering any exceptions to my rules, carefully weigh the expected risks and benefits. (e.g., I took a slight risk, by babysitting, to help loved ones in a crisis.) If I temporarily increase my own risk, work to decrease my risk of infecting others.
* Always respect and match the protocols of those who are practicing more caution than I. (e.g., If they mask outdoors, then I mask outdoors when with them.)
* Understand that other people have different needs, circumstances, and access to information.
* Amplify the voices of those vulnerable people who are begging everyone to behave more safely. Continue to listen to them.
* Express my displeasure with those who threaten the lives of my loved ones by not taking COVID-19 seriously.
To be clear, if you're already someone I trust to make good decisions, this is not me judging you. Your situation is your own to judge. This is me providing social proof, in a world where we go out and see mostly bad decisions, because often the best thing to do is to stay home.
( Addenda )
