Deb, if there are different mutations, are they such that once you catch one does that usually mean that you are unlikely to catch another version?
Unknown, but as with everything else with this virus it is being treated as an "assumption."
Let's address masks. Most people should NOT be wearing the N-95. The whole idea of the masks is currently misunderstood. They should be worn not as YOUR protection, but as a courtesy to protect others against your germs. I know most people are simply not wearing them, which, in all honesty,
in a public store or event I find to be absolutely selfish by the non-wearer. This is my opinion because you can be asymptomatic and have no clue you are spreading it. Our Commissioner of our State Board of Health put it this way on Weds.: Box: Not wearing a mask
when going into a store "is a selfish way of behaving. You may very well do fine. But the elderly person that comes behind you may not have that same response to the disease."
Don't wear one in your car, in your home, or even outdoors if you are following social distancing correctly. There are all sorts of controversies about mask wearing, but until everybody figures this out, caution should be the plan in enclosed spaces.
The pool party last weekend in the Ozarks just popped up it's first infection and hundreds of people are now at risk. If you are social distancing outdoors, I can see not wearing one. But these people were packed into a pool and at the bars.
Nursing homes become infected most often by staff who are asymptomatic. Testing of staff has sucked up to this point. Some of the early tests failed to work. Even now there are reports of bad tests out there that miss it and give false results. In NY, and a few other places, instead of moving patients out of the LTC's, they were ordered to keep them there instead of moving them to a hospital setting and they were not hospitalized until too late to even treat. Which spread it even more within facilities because they did not have proper PPE to handle it on site. This also applies to jail settings. This is not like the flu. The Ro rate on it is astronomical and the fact it affects so many organs is what puts it in the SARS category.
Look, you can crunch numbers like crazy but this is a novel virus. It is not acting/behaving/infecting the way any virus ever seen before. We simply don't have a firm handle on this thing so we have to go by what we feel can have an impact on it. People are assuming it's "over" because we are opening back up. Nope. It's not over. The quarantine effort was simply to slow it down. I do agree with Paul that tightly packed communities have a higher chance of spread. And the numbers may be impacted by a variety of issues...not just one.
My opinion is this has been handled poorly from square one. I won't go into all of that because I'd fill a page. But as this beast mutates, hang onto your hats, folks. As we've seen with kids now being impacted with different but deadly symptoms, we don't know what it will do next. I'm not saying live in fear, but I am saying a wise person knows when to take simple precautions for their health and others. The focus has been on deaths....no one has shown how many, many younger folks are now living with after affects of this thing. Somehow the press has managed to avoid that issue.
Each area is going to have it's own "numbers"....look beyond those numbers.
