7 ms·

"Don't go outside, you'll get COVID", sounds more and more like horrible advice. Before knowing the virus died in sunlight, I still couldn't fathom why people

"Don't go outside, you'll get COVID", sounds more and more like horrible advice. Before knowing the virus died in sunlight, I still couldn't fathom why people were avoiding going out to parks and stuff. It was totally non sequitor.

AlanSE 6y ago
Because the parks have people in them not wearing masks?
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  You don't need masks if you are maintaining distance of 6 feet. Masks are for situations where distance can not be maintained such as trains and stores.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
    You need masks indoors even if you are able to maintain a distance of 6 feet.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Evidence suggests that aerosols can remain in the air for minutes after being placed there by another non-masked individual. You could pass through the aerosol and inhale. Masks make sense outside too, at least in some circumstances.
    - JabavuAdams 6y ago
      Considering that the risk of transmission seems to depend on how long you are inhaling shared air from an infected person, and their viral load, I don't think it makes sense to worry about intermittently going through someone else's exhaust plume. I use a mask outside if I'm on a narrow sidewalk, but otherwise, I don't think there's much point. My favourite thing is the people who wear a mask over the mouth, but not the nose. Like worst of both worlds.
      - outworlder 6y ago
        > Considering that the risk of transmission seems to depend on how long you are inhaling shared air from an infected person, and their viral load You have a lot of faith in your immune system. Absent more data, it's just that, faith.
        JabavuAdams 6y ago
        Not at all. We have the data. It's called summer. Also, I probably have a weaker immune system than most, and have several risk factors. We have simply not seen the increases and flare-ups we would expect if what you're asserting is true. What worries me is October-November. This is for Toronto, Canada. The beaches and parks are fully of people socially distancing-ish. The streets are full of a mix of people social distancing and not. Maybe half are wearing masks. Get outside and take care of your physical and mental health! Winter is coming. EDIT> I'm a physics and biology student. I am not completely unaware of the science.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        > It's called summer. Did you somehow miss the season in progress when COVID19 hit southern hemispheric countries in the early US spring?
        JabavuAdams 6y ago
        This is what you choose to focus on, from my post? It's irrelevant as that was before social distancing. Also, we've learned more about this disease since then. Our current local guidelines are that masks are only required indoors or when distancing is not possible, and that seems to be borne out by the evidence. Over the summer people have been out at the beach, out in the parks, and out on the streets while only social distancing-ish. If walking through someone's exhaust plume were as much of a threat as you guys are trying to make out, we would have certainly seen that in the numbers. We don't.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  - cellularmitosis 6y ago
    6 feet helps. Wearing masks helps. These things do not drop your chances to zero. 6 feet is not a universally applicable number. If you are standing directly down-wind of someone at a park, 6 feet isn’t going to help you. Droplets don’t magically disintegrate at 6 feet. Similarly, if you are up-wind, even 4 feet would be very effective. All of the guidelines are about statistical safety, not about the physics of your particular situation. As always, use your noggin. Stay safe.
    - clairity 6y ago
      > "All of the guidelines are about statistical safety..." this bit is correct, but the rest is falling for false equivalency by throwing around the same "helps" with every case. just being outside is overwhelmingly helpful, meaning it overwhelms every other factor by a large margin. relative to that, wearing a mask outside is of such negligible help to be effectively unhelpful. distance also overwhelms masks, both indoors and outdoors. distance outside helps only a little bit, but distance inside helps materially (because the positional and velocity vectors available to droplets and their virii and the dangers to them outside are exponentially greater). masks by themselves indoors are helpful only in limited situations (when in the direct exhaust of others for prolonged periods). > "...do not drop your chances to zero" for real-world situations, boolean evaluations like this are nearly always misleading, no matter in which direction. your chances of dying in a bathtub aren't zero either but we don't worry about it. relative magnitudes matter. yes, use your noggin.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    We know the virus can transmit much further than that indoors, there was a string of infections from someone sitting in a restaurant and the HVAC vent they were sitting near blew it down the row and infected a couple people sitting down wind of them. The same rough thing can happen outside just with shorter distances because the wind is more randomized and will spread out the virus faster.
gregoriol 6y ago
By going outside you are likely to spread the virus.
- gojomo 6y ago
  Not really. Super-spreader events outside are essentially unheard of - both the sunlight & plentiful air make transmission much harder. Don't get up-close with crowds of strangers, sure, but growing evidence suggests 6' outdoors is safer than 20'-plus in any enclosed, recirculating-air indoors. Now, if you go outside in order to enter some other indoors, with people who may be infected, you're creating risks.
  - gregoriol 6y ago
    I meant outside of your home, not outside like outdoors; but you are right about your analysis.
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  This does not appear to be true as of Sept 2020.
ceejayoz 6y ago
The concern was presumably crowds at parks. Viruses take a while to die from sunlight; it's not going to save you from breathing in the droplets from someone standing right next to you. (Not to mention choke points like public bathrooms, or in places like NYC, residential elevators to get to them.)
- nautilus12 6y ago
  The likelihood of people being crowded in a park is much lower though due to inherint lower density. All the parks I saw closed their choke points (bathrooms, water fountains, etc) so I feel like being outdoors in a park is still much safer than staying indoors, going to grocery stores for example. But people were acting as though you could get it by just going outside. There was/is alot of fear mongering around leaving your house at all.
extremeMath 6y ago
I got one that is still in effect in Michigan- "Gyms are closed" (but bars and casinos are open) A virus that kills old and _obese_ people, and you are shutting down the gym? If anything I hope Coronavirus shifts politicians from business leaders to scientists.
- mft_ 6y ago
  It’s more likely to kill old and obese people, but there are still plenty of rarer cases of harm to younger fitter people (eg triathletes on oxygen post-infection). It’s not binary.
  - extremeMath 6y ago
    I'm more concerned about the 30% of Americans that are obese than the 0.1% top athletes, who in rare circumstances are badly affected. Open the gyms to save lives.
    - jmalicki 6y ago
      Truly obese people can benefit a lot from just walking, as they're not trained enough to need high intensity exercise to keep it up. Gyms are pretty horrible places for spreading COVID and other respiratory infections, as they involve a lot of heavy breathing in confined spaces. They are probably a worse place to be than bars. Would the increase in fitness over a 6 month period for a typical obese person really reduce the risk by more than being in the gym increases it? https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-why-covid-19-can-spread-so-easily-at-gyms-and-fitness-classes#Heres-how-COVID-19-can-spread-at-the-gym https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-why-covid-19-ca... Pre-COVID studies of gyms call out a very high risk factor for respiratory infections. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324993154_Infection_risk_in_gyms_during_physical_exercise https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324993154_Infection... There was one RCT of gym access in Norway that showed no difference, but that's because there was only one case out of over three thousand during the entire study, in either arm, so it's difficult to say that means anything at all. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v...
tinus_hn 6y ago
Don’t live, you’ll die!
Yver 6y ago
The patients in this study were not given a prescription of "go outside", they were given vitamin D3 as calcifediol.
outworlder 6y ago
There's a major difference between daylight and getting baked under direct solar irradiation. If the UV doesn't kill the virus the heat will. But even then, it's not immediate. If droplets containing viruses successfully land in your respiratory system (which is constantly sucking air), it doesn't matter how much sun there is outside, the virus is now cozy. A beach could be perfect, except that there may be strong winds. You should hope they are not blowing droplets from your neighbor into you. Similarly, if it's an overcast day, it doesn't really matter much.
- amluto 6y ago
  Strong winds seem likely to be a good thing to me. Any exhalations from my neighbor are going to be quite dilute by the time they get to me in the wind.
mypalmike 6y ago
The point of staying at home isn't a matter of inside versus outside. It's about limiting potential exposure to infected people. Unsurprisingly it is very effective.

AlanSE 6y ago

Because the parks have people in them not wearing masks?

vorpalhex 6y ago
You don't need masks if you are maintaining distance of 6 feet. Masks are for situations where distance can not be maintained such as trains and stores.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  You need masks indoors even if you are able to maintain a distance of 6 feet.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Evidence suggests that aerosols can remain in the air for minutes after being placed there by another non-masked individual. You could pass through the aerosol and inhale. Masks make sense outside too, at least in some circumstances.
  - JabavuAdams 6y ago
    Considering that the risk of transmission seems to depend on how long you are inhaling shared air from an infected person, and their viral load, I don't think it makes sense to worry about intermittently going through someone else's exhaust plume. I use a mask outside if I'm on a narrow sidewalk, but otherwise, I don't think there's much point. My favourite thing is the people who wear a mask over the mouth, but not the nose. Like worst of both worlds.
    - outworlder 6y ago
      > Considering that the risk of transmission seems to depend on how long you are inhaling shared air from an infected person, and their viral load You have a lot of faith in your immune system. Absent more data, it's just that, faith.
      - JabavuAdams 6y ago
        Not at all. We have the data. It's called summer. Also, I probably have a weaker immune system than most, and have several risk factors. We have simply not seen the increases and flare-ups we would expect if what you're asserting is true. What worries me is October-November. This is for Toronto, Canada. The beaches and parks are fully of people socially distancing-ish. The streets are full of a mix of people social distancing and not. Maybe half are wearing masks. Get outside and take care of your physical and mental health! Winter is coming. EDIT> I'm a physics and biology student. I am not completely unaware of the science.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        > It's called summer. Did you somehow miss the season in progress when COVID19 hit southern hemispheric countries in the early US spring?
        JabavuAdams 6y ago
        This is what you choose to focus on, from my post? It's irrelevant as that was before social distancing. Also, we've learned more about this disease since then. Our current local guidelines are that masks are only required indoors or when distancing is not possible, and that seems to be borne out by the evidence. Over the summer people have been out at the beach, out in the parks, and out on the streets while only social distancing-ish. If walking through someone's exhaust plume were as much of a threat as you guys are trying to make out, we would have certainly seen that in the numbers. We don't.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
- cellularmitosis 6y ago
  6 feet helps. Wearing masks helps. These things do not drop your chances to zero. 6 feet is not a universally applicable number. If you are standing directly down-wind of someone at a park, 6 feet isn’t going to help you. Droplets don’t magically disintegrate at 6 feet. Similarly, if you are up-wind, even 4 feet would be very effective. All of the guidelines are about statistical safety, not about the physics of your particular situation. As always, use your noggin. Stay safe.
  - clairity 6y ago
    > "All of the guidelines are about statistical safety..." this bit is correct, but the rest is falling for false equivalency by throwing around the same "helps" with every case. just being outside is overwhelmingly helpful, meaning it overwhelms every other factor by a large margin. relative to that, wearing a mask outside is of such negligible help to be effectively unhelpful. distance also overwhelms masks, both indoors and outdoors. distance outside helps only a little bit, but distance inside helps materially (because the positional and velocity vectors available to droplets and their virii and the dangers to them outside are exponentially greater). masks by themselves indoors are helpful only in limited situations (when in the direct exhaust of others for prolonged periods). > "...do not drop your chances to zero" for real-world situations, boolean evaluations like this are nearly always misleading, no matter in which direction. your chances of dying in a bathtub aren't zero either but we don't worry about it. relative magnitudes matter. yes, use your noggin.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  We know the virus can transmit much further than that indoors, there was a string of infections from someone sitting in a restaurant and the HVAC vent they were sitting near blew it down the row and infected a couple people sitting down wind of them. The same rough thing can happen outside just with shorter distances because the wind is more randomized and will spread out the virus faster.

gregoriol 6y ago

By going outside you are likely to spread the virus.

gojomo 6y ago
Not really. Super-spreader events outside are essentially unheard of - both the sunlight & plentiful air make transmission much harder. Don't get up-close with crowds of strangers, sure, but growing evidence suggests 6' outdoors is safer than 20'-plus in any enclosed, recirculating-air indoors. Now, if you go outside in order to enter some other indoors, with people who may be infected, you're creating risks.
- gregoriol 6y ago
  I meant outside of your home, not outside like outdoors; but you are right about your analysis.
JabavuAdams 6y ago
This does not appear to be true as of Sept 2020.

ceejayoz 6y ago

The concern was presumably crowds at parks. Viruses take a while to die from sunlight; it's not going to save you from breathing in the droplets from someone standing right next to you. (Not to mention choke points like public bathrooms, or in places like NYC, residential elevators to get to them.)

nautilus12 6y ago
The likelihood of people being crowded in a park is much lower though due to inherint lower density. All the parks I saw closed their choke points (bathrooms, water fountains, etc) so I feel like being outdoors in a park is still much safer than staying indoors, going to grocery stores for example. But people were acting as though you could get it by just going outside. There was/is alot of fear mongering around leaving your house at all.

extremeMath 6y ago

I got one that is still in effect in Michigan- "Gyms are closed" (but bars and casinos are open) A virus that kills old and _obese_ people, and you are shutting down the gym? If anything I hope Coronavirus shifts politicians from business leaders to scientists.

mft_ 6y ago
It’s more likely to kill old and obese people, but there are still plenty of rarer cases of harm to younger fitter people (eg triathletes on oxygen post-infection). It’s not binary.
- extremeMath 6y ago
  I'm more concerned about the 30% of Americans that are obese than the 0.1% top athletes, who in rare circumstances are badly affected. Open the gyms to save lives.
  - jmalicki 6y ago
    Truly obese people can benefit a lot from just walking, as they're not trained enough to need high intensity exercise to keep it up. Gyms are pretty horrible places for spreading COVID and other respiratory infections, as they involve a lot of heavy breathing in confined spaces. They are probably a worse place to be than bars. Would the increase in fitness over a 6 month period for a typical obese person really reduce the risk by more than being in the gym increases it? https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-why-covid-19-can-spread-so-easily-at-gyms-and-fitness-classes#Heres-how-COVID-19-can-spread-at-the-gym https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-why-covid-19-ca... Pre-COVID studies of gyms call out a very high risk factor for respiratory infections. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324993154_Infection_risk_in_gyms_during_physical_exercise https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324993154_Infection... There was one RCT of gym access in Norway that showed no difference, but that's because there was only one case out of over three thousand during the entire study, in either arm, so it's difficult to say that means anything at all. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v...

tinus_hn 6y ago

Don’t live, you’ll die!

Yver 6y ago

The patients in this study were not given a prescription of "go outside", they were given vitamin D3 as calcifediol.

outworlder 6y ago

There's a major difference between daylight and getting baked under direct solar irradiation. If the UV doesn't kill the virus the heat will. But even then, it's not immediate. If droplets containing viruses successfully land in your respiratory system (which is constantly sucking air), it doesn't matter how much sun there is outside, the virus is now cozy. A beach could be perfect, except that there may be strong winds. You should hope they are not blowing droplets from your neighbor into you. Similarly, if it's an overcast day, it doesn't really matter much.

amluto 6y ago
Strong winds seem likely to be a good thing to me. Any exhalations from my neighbor are going to be quite dilute by the time they get to me in the wind.

mypalmike 6y ago

The point of staying at home isn't a matter of inside versus outside. It's about limiting potential exposure to infected people. Unsurprisingly it is very effective.