Continued from here
INFOMASS – at 21:25
Bronco Bill: Don’t companies provide expense money for meals and sometimes advance it? Or they could offer a variety of foods. The legal system is not likely to be in overdrive if we have a pandemic anyway. If the company is taking the operations continuity seriously, they will be thinking about food, masks, gloves, Tamiflu and even provisions for families. The main problem is that without federal leadership, the web of companies will break down because some critical ones will not be prepared. It is not just “just in time” but also that we are so interdependent. Our system is efficient when it is working well but is fragile when hit by unexpected (?!) shocks. An important unresolved question is how bad things have to get for a total breakdown as distinct from spot shortages. I do think social distancing would help prevent or slow the “total breakdown” scenario. If we learn how to deal with the disease, a slower spread would be a big help.
no name – at 21:58
As I read the postings on social distancing, which I understand, believe, ect. I see myself becoming more amd more aware of door handles, washing hands, touching face and working to retrain myself in these behaviors.
However, I am finding myself shaking hands, hugging and casually touching people more than I have done in the past. I wonder if knowing of the coming BF and what it will take to survive…I am trying to “stock up” on human contact also.
Ya’ll are talking about the personality that it would take to SIP and whether you know anyone that is capable of maintaining isolation. What choice do we have? If we don’t stay in how can we survive? It is a strange world we are envisioning. Sci Fi couldn’t get any better.
01 September 2006
‘’‘Bronco Bill – at 00:20
INFOMASS – at 21:25 --- Most companies that I’m aware of nowadays only give a daily stipend that will cover 1 meal. Of course, that could be stretched out for personal preps. Where I work, they REQUIRE a person that travels to have a corporate credit card, and then turn in receipts after the fact. No cash up front. Many companies are doing that now so they don’t have to have cash on hand for travelers. The credit card company does the direct billing to the company, the company pays the bill, and in turn simply deducts it from the paycheck. Insurance companies, such as the one I currently work at, are highly unlikely to shut down right away. They’ll have customers calling from all corners of the globe asking questions about their health benefits…
I am one of those who could not work from home. Working with PC hardware all day, I have to be onsite to repair any desktop or server problems that may arise. The company has promised that they would supply a modest stash of rubber gloves, and I’ve checked that out. What they’re planning is purchasing a large amount of Playtex dishwashing gloves, instead of disposable gloves. That way, we’re “not as likely to throw them away after each use”. Antivirals? Only for the executives. Food on-site? No place to put it. Masks or provisions for families? Fuggedaboutit. We’re on a cost-cutting binge right now that has managers telling employees to cancel any continuing education that they may have signed up for if the company is paying for it.
I’m sorry, but I use a pair of gloves once on an employees keyboard or desktop items? Those gloves go in the trash as soon as I walk away.
I have a question regarding this article and social distancing.
Rats — suddenly this link isn’t working. Anyhow, the article was just in an Atlantic newspaper about some group “Safe AMerica, maybe” working with a group in France to see if office workers could work 3 feet from one another…. they will try it in some US companies too.
My question is, why 3 feet? Is that anywhere near enough social distancing? Would 6 feet be better? Do you think 3 feet was just picked because no one could possibly work in an office while keeping 3 feet away from each other? Is there any scientific basis for 3 feet? thanks!
I’ve seen numerous claims that the “three foot safety zone” idea got started with some meningitis study conducted in 1920, and thereafter became entrenched in the healthcare literature. This factoid is usually presented as a precursor to its debunking. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth around airborne droplet transmission during the SARS epidemic, and it never was completely resolved.
It ain’t exactly rocket science (though some of the principles could be applied; square of the distance and all that). Watch somebody sneeze sometime when sunlight is streaming in through a window. Estimate the number of droplets within a foot or so of the sneezer, and the number that make it three feet out, six feet out, etc. The closer you are to a bomb, the more likely you are to catch frags. The closer to a fire, the greater the warmth. Do we really need scientific studies to tell us that the closer we are to a sneezer, the greater the liklihood of inhaling some of the resulting droplets?
Racter — I was wondering, what’s the difference between say 3 feet and 4 feet? Is there some huge drop-off in risk of transmission between those two distances, making the 3 feet the important distance to look at?
I mean, clearly if you keep say 10 feet from everyone, there’s much less chance of inhaling droplets of a sneeze. (Sorry for lack of correct terminolgy here!) But I am assuming that it is not possible to keep everyone in an office 10 feet away from everyone else. But why 3 feet?
“Is there some huge drop-off in risk of transmission between those two distances, making the 3 feet the important distance to look at?”
I’m guessing no. Somebody used three feet as the reference point in their studies. Maybe that was determined as “the point at which N percent of large droplets have fallen out”. The arbitrary line being drawn would then be “N” (and the assumption would be that large droplet transmission is the most significant route of innoculation). Maybe they just said: “hey, in this ward, the beds are only two feet apart, but in this other one, they’re four feet apart; let’s look at whether that seems to make a difference for transmission”. If anyone has tested across a range of distances, say using ferrets — no, wait… do ferrets sneeze? — well, anyway, I’d be interested in seeing the results, but intuitively I’d expect a gentle gradient rather than a sharp dropoff, especially if air was circulating to any significant degree. Three feet is the CDC recommendation, and standard advice for healthcare workers, but that may include some assumptions regarding negative air flow.
I say just keep as much distance as you can, and don’t worry too much about the numbers. If I just had to have a number, three feet sounds like about the minimum I’d be comfortable with. A hundred feet, and I’d be a lot more comfortable. Come to think of it, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be anywhere during a pandemic.
Rcter — the reason I am asking here is, I emailed the artcile about trying to stay 3 feet away from others in the office to a friend of mine (midlevel management for a government office) and she said it was interesting, but didn’t think it would be hard for her and her workers to stay 3 feet away from each other. She says that when you get as close as three feet to someone (in the US) our cultural norm kicks in and you start to feel you are too close, so you back off. The only way she feels she is 3 feet close to someone at work is when 2 people are looking at the same piece of paper, or at the same computer screen.
I could argue with her about how often she comes into 3 feet of contact with people, but that got me wondering, what’s the point, if there is nothing particularly “safe” about 3 feet. I’m POSITIVE people in her office come into 4 feet of contact with each other all the time. So, I was just wondering why the 3 feet versus 4 or 5 feet.
“She says that when you get as close as three feet to someone (in the US) our cultural norm kicks in and you start to feel you are too close, so you back off.”
Unless you are an EST graduate. Hey, here’s an idea: what if everybody wore proximity alarms that would start beeping like crazy when they got too near each other? I’ll bet you could put that together for less than fifteen dollars a unit using off-the-shelf parts from Radio Shack.
“I am finding myself shaking hands, hugging and casually touching people more than I have done in the past. I wonder if knowing of the coming BF and what it will take to survive I am trying to stock up on human contact also.”
See, now I think this is a bad idea. Lenny Bruce once talked (while eating a hotdog) about the importance of building up one’s resistance to toxins. I don’t recall his exact words, but it was something like: “If you go around for years eating nothing but certified organic pesticide-free vegetables, the first time you get your hands on one of these babies, it’s going to knock you right on your ass”.
I think the best course is to gradually wean oneself from the need for human contact. It’s like an addiction; the more you get, the more you’ll want. Do not engage in idle chitchat. Avoid social engagements. When invited to parties, weddings, Bar Mitzvas, make some excuse. Hang in there, this will get easier over time. Eventually, those potential vectors will start to catch on, and they’ll quit pestering you with so many invitations. Learn to hug yourself. Done properly, this can be an excellent stretching exercise as well. Get creative. You can’t give yourself a full-body massage, but you can do what you can reach. Every so often, treat yourself to a candlelit dinner for one. There are hermits and spinsters everywhere who have this down to a science. Seek one of them out. The harder this is to do, the better the quality of their advice is likely to be; they surely will have some useful tips if you can manage to get close enough to pry anything out of them.
We can get through this together. No, wait: Together, we can get through this alone. There.
“Together, we can get through this alone.”
Another gem…my friend.
Someone has to start a quote thread so that we can grab these when they fly by. Thanks.
3 feet is kind of difficult to maintain in an elevator, stairwells, halways or passing a person on the sidewalk.
High rise buildings with sealed windows full of cubicles will be undesirable places to work in a Pandemic.
Never mind the cubes. Air circulation anywhere in a sealed high rise may still be an issue.
I intend to commute off rush hour, but a certain amount of interaction will be unavoidable.
I totally agree that it will be alomst impossible to stay three feet away from people if you are working in an office. It’s ridiculous to even try.
So — why is Safe America even trying?
That’s the question for this thread — Efficacy of Social Distancing Measures. Is “Keeping a certain Distance away from others” at all effi…catious?” If so, is 3 feet going to make a difference? Or does it have to be 10 feet? Is it all or nothing? Is it worth it to even try to keep some distance away? Is it better to use masks and handwashing and not even try to stay away from others? Is there no point to any social distancing?
Sure would be nice to just be a complete hermit — for the rest of my life — no, no, wait, if we do that the terrorists will have won… I mean the virus… I get so confused who and what I’m supposed to be avoiding. (-:
Racter – at 12:16 You can’t give yourself a full-body massage, but you can do what you can reach.
That can be interpreted in so many ways…
I read some school’s planning site and they also said they would “place children in smaller working groups.” I’m sorry, did I read that right? Wouldn’t you just then point all the possibly sick kids right at each other so they can share germs even more efficiently? Keeping kids apart in an already too small classroom. Good luck with that.
3ft, 4ft, who knows. Maybe we’ll learn more as things change - what is getting people sick now may be different than when it goes H2H. Obviously the farther away the better. It may not always work but it has to help. And, if you’re combining with other safety measures (masks, hand washing, etc.) will raise the odds in your favor.
Brooks – at 13:58 “Never mind the cubes. Air circulation anywhere in a sealed high rise may still be an issue.”
Yes. Although there is a difference between droplet transmission and airborne transmission. The first is very likely, and is very much related to distance, the second is far less important compared to the first. I don’t know how long the virus can survive as particle floating in the air, I suspect a lot of that will be deposited on surfaces quite quickly rather than floating around. Anybody know?
Transmission from contaminated surfaces should probably rank higher than airborne risk in a high rise, I suspect.
A recent entry by the reveres (I will provide the link below) has gotten me thinking again, and again I don’t know.
http://www.med.umich.edu/medschool/chm/influenza/index.htm links to a heavy PDF file about American communities that had experienced extremely low rates of influenza during the infamous 1918–1920 influenza pandemic.
Limited by the quantity and quality of data, we nevertheless ultimately concluded that protective sequestration (the shielding of a defined and still healthy group of people from the risk of infection from outsiders), if enacted early enough in the pandemic, crafted so as to encourage the compliance of the population involved without draconian enforcement measures, and continued for the lengthy period of time at which the area is at risk, stands the best chance of protection against infection. We also found that available data from the second wave of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic fail to show that any other NPI (apart from protective sequestration) was, or was not, effective in helping to contain the spread of the virus. American communities engaged in virtually the same menu of measures. Despite these measures, most communities sustained significant illness and death; whether these NPI lessened what might have been even higher rates had these measures not been in place is impossible to say on the basis of available historical data.
Or rather here.
My personal summary:
Does anyone know of the distancing measures employed, and its problems in being adhered to, during any of the last few pandemics we’ve had recently?
Someone must know someone who can comment on such a central issue? Then again, it would’ve been raised.
Like-how did everyone die from the “big one” in 1918?
Can someone link in Goju’s (I think it was his) charts showing the rate of deaths vs time during 1918 for Philly vs St. Louis? HUGE differences in terms of how quickly it spread and the outcomes. Sure people in St. Louis still died, but not nearly as many. St. Louis also had a bit of an advantage of some advance warning - Philly was a beach-head and was hammered before they even knew what hit them.
Goju? I just don’t know where to find it! Thanks!
The following link: http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/health/morris/3.html provides a short history of which cites were badly hit (mainly coastal - first to be infected) and which were not (interior). It looks as if the social distancing was one thing that helped St. Louis, but why was the death rate of Toledo (Ohio) even lower? Did the flu mutate as it spread? All of the East Coast had 4–7 deaths per 1000, while a number of interior cities had only about 2. I am not arguing against social distancing at all, but am not sure we can ascribe all of the difference between Philadelphia’s death rate (over 7) and St. Louis’s (about 2) just to social distancing. Still, even if it accounted for 1/3 to 2/3 of the difference, it would be well worth doing.
LauraB. was it the U.Michigan link on the Main Wiki page?
Escape Community Digital Archive
…”Limited by the quantity and quality of data, we nevertheless ultimately concluded that protective sequestration (the shielding of a defined and still healthy group of people from the risk of infection from outsiders), if enacted early enough in the pandemic, crafted so as to encourage the compliance of the population involved without draconian enforcement measures, and continued for the lengthy period of time at which the area is at risk, stands the best chance of protection against infection.
We also found that available data from the second wave of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic fail to show that any other NPI (apart from protective sequestration) was, or was not, effective in helping to contain the spread of the virus.
American communities engaged in virtually the same menu of measures. Despite these measures, most communities sustained significant illness and death; whether these NPI lessened what might have been even higher rates had these measures not been in place is impossible to say on the basis of available historical data.
However inconclusive are the data from 1918, the collective experiences of American communities from the pandemic are truly noteworthy, especially in light of the fact that faced with a pandemic today we would likely rely on many of these same NPI to attempt to contain the spread of the infection until pharmacological supplies of vaccine and antivirals were available.”…
(NPI; non-pharmaceutical interventions)
This kind of knowledge will influence policy. We all need to know.
No it wasn’t the UofM stuff. It was just one or two graphs goju had. Hopefully he can check in and attach them. They were great and I wanted to use them but they were too small to rpint out well.
This is re-posted from a different thread:
InKy at 20:31
The graphs posted on this thread at FluTrackers show epidemic forcasting for pandemic flu given various interventions or none at all. Scroll partway down the thread to the big graphs. School officials contemplating whether or not to close schools in the event of an emerging pandemic need to see these.
Coastal cities get hit hardest…all awareness that helps to grab peoples attention.
Good.
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