Coronavirus pandemic

[kalvado]

But how likely, really, are we to have a vaccine in that window of time? that is substantially effective? in sufficient quantity to–what–vaccinate the whole world?

Just within the last week, doctors found a drug that reduces the death rate. As more drugs get tested, we can choose the best drug (which might be different for different people). If the death rate for those who have COVID-19 decreases by 80% or more, we can let it run its course (like we did with the 2009 swine flu) until we get herd immunity. Sweden and the Netherlands will not get this benefit of a drug reducing the fatality rate if they get most of their cases early.

Remdisivir was listed as very promising since early February if not January. Problem is there are only research quantities available, not millions doses. It was not approved when the mess started, so no production runs. And looking at the structure, it should be a complex synthesis.

[Max Rockatansky]

Apparently the beaches and State Parks aren't closing after all, just the beaches in Orange County:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-likely-announce-closure-states-061910695.html

[oscar]

Apparently the beaches and State Parks aren't closing after all, just the beaches in Orange County:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-likely-announce-closure-states-061910695.html

Good, but even the Orange County closures were IMO an overreaction. While there were a lot of people at the beach, they looked in the photos I've seen (one of which is in the linked article) to be in small groups more than six feet apart. And the small groups aren't a problem, if each group is already living in the same household.

Methinks the Twitterverse, and the governor, are offended by people out having fun in the sun rather than sweltering in their homes, not any clear violation of social distancing guidelines.

[Max Rockatansky]

Apparently the beaches and State Parks aren't closing after all, just the beaches in Orange County:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-likely-announce-closure-states-061910695.html

Good, but even the Orange County closures were IMO an overreaction. While there were a lot of people at the beach, they looked in the photos I've seen (one of which is in the linked article) to be in small groups more than six feet apart. And the small groups aren't a problem, if each group is already living in the same household.

Methinks the Twitterverse, and the governor, are offended by people out having fun in the sun rather than sweltering in their homes, not any clear violation of social distancing guidelines.

Apparently the memo police chiefs were getting was far more harsh and would have affected the whole state park system.  I'm sure there was some back door conversations on how enforceable that was and jurisdictions questioning why they were being punished for something that happened in Orange County.  At the end of the day the vibe I'm getting is that most police department don't want to enforce the stay at home order unless they are really forced to.  Bottom line IMO that was hard to justify making state wide when half the cases in California are concentrated to the Los Angeles area. 

[vdeane]

Apparently the beaches and State Parks aren't closing after all, just the beaches in Orange County:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-likely-announce-closure-states-061910695.html

Good, but even the Orange County closures were IMO an overreaction. While there were a lot of people at the beach, they looked in the photos I've seen (one of which is in the linked article) to be in small groups more than six feet apart. And the small groups aren't a problem, if each group is already living in the same household.

Methinks the Twitterverse, and the governor, are offended by people out having fun in the sun rather than sweltering in their homes, not any clear violation of social distancing guidelines.

A lot of this is being driven by image.  Cuomo's mask mandate came about after images leaked of crowded subway cars.  Today's announcement of it being closed at night for cleaning happened after reports that homeless people were living in the cars.

Seeing teen-agers wearing masks to walk their dog down the middle of a quiet residential street is just craziness.

If you're walking the dog, it might not be easy to put the mask on if you encounter someone.  I do something similar for laundry - mask on when I'm carrying laundry to/from my apartment, but mask off when walking back during a cycle and I'm not carrying anything.  Granted, I'm walking on a 3-4' sidewalk and not interested in walking on wet/muddy grass, not a street, so I don't have as much room to maneuver.

[Brandon]

Apparently the beaches and State Parks aren't closing after all, just the beaches in Orange County:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-likely-announce-closure-states-061910695.html

Good, but even the Orange County closures were IMO an overreaction. While there were a lot of people at the beach, they looked in the photos I've seen (one of which is in the linked article) to be in small groups more than six feet apart. And the small groups aren't a problem, if each group is already living in the same household.

Methinks the Twitterverse, and the governor, are offended by people out having fun in the sun rather than sweltering in their homes, not any clear violation of social distancing guidelines.

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."  - H.L. Mencken.
Just as true today as it was then.

[Max Rockatansky]

Fresno County just had a clinic open COVID-19 antibody testing.  I'm not sure what the volume of people will be but my wife and I are strongly considering it.  I'll have to ask my HR department if there would be any negative ramifications that might keep me out of work for getting an antibody test, to my knowledge they haven't established any protocols for the scenario. 

[Duke87]

Just within the last week, doctors found a drug that reduces the death rate. As more drugs get tested, we can choose the best drug (which might be different for different people). If the death rate for those who have COVID-19 decreases by 80% or more, we can let it run its course (like we did with the 2009 swine flu) until we get herd immunity. Sweden and the Netherlands will not get this benefit of a drug reducing the fatality rate if they get most of their cases early.

Remdisivir was listed as very promising since early February if not January. Problem is there are only research quantities available, not millions doses. It was not approved when the mess started, so no production runs. And looking at the structure, it should be a complex synthesis.

It's worth noting that it was potentially "promising" months ago but this was only based on one very small trial in Japan. There was not nearly enough evidence gathered to have conclusively demonstrated it to be effective. Thus, the FDA in the US has not approved it for anything more than clinical trials because it is unproven, and we don't go prescribing drugs willy-nilly based on untested hunches they might work.
The upshot is, the existence of promising clinical trials domestically establishes something crucial: that the results of the original Japanese study are reproducible, which is necessary for them to be scientifically valid.

It's still going to take some time for all the data to be gathered, the numbers crunched, and for prescribing guidelines to be written up and vetted. But once all that happens - which, mind you, might still take another couple months, it's not coming tomorrow - then we'll have an actual FDA approved drug treatment, which would indeed be a huge milestone.

I don't know how much production capacity for this stuff its owner (Gilead) actually has, and indeed the existence of an approved drug treatment is a lot less of a game changer if it cannot be procured in sufficient quantities to treat everyone who needs it. But at the same time you also have to expect that if there is such an FDA approval in place, there is also going to be an effort to scale up production as much as possible as fast as possible. The public won't stand for anything less and it would be a PR disaster for Gilead if they're unable to deliver on this. If the folks in charge of that company have their heads screwed on halfway straight, they already have a plan - it's just not public.

[Scott5114]

The industry I work in is considered essential business.  I'm working from home because I have a desk job, but the "real" work is done by contractors out in the fields, interacting with customers. [...] Furthermore, our field techs have been given the ability to take a hiatus from work for weeks at a time without fear of punitive action or loss of their position in our workforce. [...] I really don't see why it's so hard to believe that businesses can make this sort of accommodation and still stay operational.

It's not hard to believe that businesses can make those accommodations. It's hard to believe that they will.

Retail and food service type places tend to run with a skeleton crew. When I managed a fast food restaurant we had a meter on the computer that computed the percentage, hour by hour, of the labor cost to sales. Our goal was for labor to be 15% of hourly sales. That was hard to do. As a result, we didn't have any extra people scheduled. One manager, one on front counter, one on drive thru, two in the kitchen. We weren't even staffed enough to have someone in the first drive thru window (the one where you pay). That means if someone called in, there was a scramble to call all of the employees scheduled off and try to sweet-talk them into coming in on their day off.

This was in the late-2000s. Things have gotten worse since then due to the expectation that a wider range of employers provide health insurance benefits to their employees (I didn't have health insurance at all at that job, despite working 60 hours a week). So since employers have to pay a fixed cost per employee, these type of employers cut back the number of positions to the bare minimum to cover that bare minimum staff level that keeps their daily labor cost down. And this isn't just one fast food restaurant doing this, it's sit-down restaurants, grocery stores, big-box stores, retail of all kinds. This isn't just mom and pop places, there are major multinational corporations that run this way.

Do you think a manager in a company following those types of business practice would willingly let an employee take weeks at a time off? They would be unable to operate the business being one person down, never mind the potential of more than one employee taking them up on the offer for leave at once. Yes, this is a very stupid way of running a business. Yes, thousands of businesses are run this way, because it saves the company money, and usually isn't a problem. But when it all goes to hell, the business should suffer for being short staffed, but in most cases, they actually make more money, while the employees suffer the consequence in the form of increased workload and angry customers (but not angry enough to not buy things, just angry enough to verbally abuse employees).

It should be acknowledged by those of us who have jobs that are run in a humane way that our experience is far from universal. Most employers are not so generous, because they don't have to be, and since doing so loses them money, why would they?

[tradephoric]

But how likely, really, are we to have a vaccine in that window of time? that is substantially effective? in sufficient quantity to–what–vaccinate the whole world?

Just within the last week, doctors found a drug that reduces the death rate. As more drugs get tested, we can choose the best drug (which might be different for different people). If the death rate for those who have COVID-19 decreases by 80% or more, we can let it run its course (like we did with the 2009 swine flu) until we get herd immunity. Sweden and the Netherlands will not get this benefit of a drug reducing the fatality rate if they get most of their cases early.

For months researchers around the world have been looking for a miracle drug to combat COVID.  The best hope we have is Remdesivir, a limited supply drug that had a mortality rate of 8% as opposed to 11% in the placebo group.  I don't even think that is statistically significant.  NYC has been locked down for over a month and they are still seeing 1000 new cases per day.  If they are unable to contain the virus then what are the lock downs accomplishing at this point?  The front end lives in NYC have already been lost.... just as the city is getting close to herd immunity they keep the city shut for the next 9 months until a vaccine can be developed?  With currently 1000 new cases per day, NYC may gain herd immunity long before the vaccine is ready.  The weather gets nice, people go out more, the spread of the virus begins to accelerate again... ultimately the city's extended lock down measures may do more harm than good.

[kalvado]

Just within the last week, doctors found a drug that reduces the death rate. As more drugs get tested, we can choose the best drug (which might be different for different people). If the death rate for those who have COVID-19 decreases by 80% or more, we can let it run its course (like we did with the 2009 swine flu) until we get herd immunity. Sweden and the Netherlands will not get this benefit of a drug reducing the fatality rate if they get most of their cases early.

Remdisivir was listed as very promising since early February if not January. Problem is there are only research quantities available, not millions doses. It was not approved when the mess started, so no production runs. And looking at the structure, it should be a complex synthesis.

It's worth noting that it was potentially "promising" months ago but this was only based on one very small trial in Japan. There was not nearly enough evidence gathered to have conclusively demonstrated it to be effective. Thus, the FDA in the US has not approved it for anything more than clinical trials because it is unproven, and we don't go prescribing drugs willy-nilly based on untested hunches they might work.
The upshot is, the existence of promising clinical trials domestically establishes something crucial: that the results of the original Japanese study are reproducible, which is necessary for them to be scientifically valid.

It's still going to take some time for all the data to be gathered, the numbers crunched, and for prescribing guidelines to be written up and vetted. But once all that happens - which, mind you, might still take another couple months, it's not coming tomorrow - then we'll have an actual FDA approved drug treatment, which would indeed be a huge milestone.

I don't know how much production capacity for this stuff its owner (Gilead) actually has, and indeed the existence of an approved drug treatment is a lot less of a game changer if it cannot be procured in sufficient quantities to treat everyone who needs it. But at the same time you also have to expect that if there is such an FDA approval in place, there is also going to be an effort to scale up production as much as possible as fast as possible. The public won't stand for anything less and it would be a PR disaster for Gilead if they're unable to deliver on this. If the folks in charge of that company have their heads screwed on halfway straight, they already have a plan - it's just not public.

"Small study in Japan" is actually two studies in China with about 600 total participants. FDA approval gives way for 1000-participant study...
The company promised to produce 1 million sets by the end of the year, which will make a difference only if the spread is actually arrested. I also wonder what the price is going to be. With such complex molecule, produstion cost of tens thousands per treatment is not unrealistic.

[tradephoric]

'Social distancing assumed until infections minimized and containment implemented'

This is the assumption made at the top of the IHME website.  The fact is most of the country locked down starting the week of March 22nd and daily new cases peaked at 35k two weeks later.  A month since the peak in new cases (and 6 weeks into the lock downs) we are still averaging about 30k new cases per day.  The infections are plateauing not minimizing.  The IHME model is currently projecting 72,433 deaths by August 4th when in reality deaths will likely surpass that number by next week.  Perhaps if we had draconian lock down measures in place this virus could be contained in this country, but that's not going to happen here.  So if we can't effectively contain the virus the next logical step is building a herd immunity to it (by reopening the economy at a slow pace to ensure that health care systems don't get overrun). 

The IHME model has to keep upping their projections because their fundamental assumption is flawed.  By locking down the country we aren't achieving containment or anything close to it.  Good luck attempting to contact trace 30k new cases a day.

[kphoger]

I can certainly tell you that for my sake... I will be staying the fuck away from anything that involves people congregating for a while after things start reopening. I'm not going to trust that it's safe just because the government says so - I will want to see the results empirically show this and will be looking hard for any canaries of a possible resurgence.
And I'm not really interested in purchasing any non-essential items or services right now, because while I am still employed currently I'd be foolish to not be preparing for the possibility that that may change.

Perhaps, then, there is a fundamental difference between the way you and I live our lives.

Staying safe is not the goal of my life.  Heck, staying alive isn't even the goal of my life.  I fully expect to die at some point in my life.  That doesn't mean I live recklessly, but it does mean that "is it safe?" isn't the guiding question that controls my decisions.

In 2008, my wife and I decided to take steps towards doing mission work in Mexico.  A couple of months later, escalating cartel violence started making US headlines, and everybody we knew told is it wasn't safe to go to Mexico.  The first year we went (March 2009), my wife's own mother called her "stupid" for taking our one-year-old son to Mexico.  Her grandparents told us that, with any future trips, we shouldn't even tell them we were going until we got back to the USA.  Even today, the US Department of State says of the state we travel to:  "Reconsider Travel ... due to crime.  Violent crime and unpredictable gang activity are common..."  For the first several years, I did research about the safety of travel there.  I obtained detailed data from the Mexican attorney-general's office, downloaded Harvard mathematician-published research papers, looked through FBI crime statistics, made charts and graphs based on my findings, etc.  But all of that was really for the sake of others traveling with us.  It wasn't for our own sake.  We had a call on our lives to serve in Mexico, and it's our belief that one is supposed to follow his or her calling whether it's safe or not.  (I'm trying to avoid overtly religious language.)  Our best friends recently moved to the town we serve in, with our full encouragement and support.  "Is it safe?" is a question that factors into their decisions and ours, but it is far from the most important factor.

When we do go to Mexico, we often do roof demolition.  We destroy the very surface we stand on, sometimes swinging mattocks while balancing on the edge of the wall because there's nowhere else to stand.  Is it safe?  Maybe, maybe not.  After the work is done, we take the children down the street to the swimming hole.  The water isn't treated, people dump all sorts of stuff into the canal that flows through it, my friend has even seen a turd floating by.  Is it safe?  Maybe, maybe not.  But we decide to do these things anyway, because they are acts of ministry to the children there.

2 million drivers in the USA suffer permanent injury or disability because of car accidents in any given year.  I personally see or hear car crashes every year, and major wrecks on the highway frequently affect my commute.  But this does not keep me from driving a car.  Is driving safe?  Maybe, maybe not.

More than half a million Americans die from heart disease every year.  I have borderline cholesterol, and heart attacks run in the family.  But these things do not define how I choose what to eat.  I buy high-oleic sunflower oil for cooking applications I used to use lard for, for example, but I'm not about to switch to a raw diet.  Could I be healthier if I became religious about my diet?  Certainly.  But extending my life as long as possible isn't my goal.

If I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it.  Might I get sick from that?  I suppose so.

Back when I didn't have a car, I used to hitchhike.  One week-end, I took Greyhound from Chicago to Menominee (MI), then hitchhiked for two days across and down through Michigan and back to Chicago.  Just for fun, because I wanted to see Michigan.  Was it safe?  Well, who knows? because there are almost no statistics on the safety of hitchhiking.

"Safety" is an illusion anyway.  What will you be looking for?  100% safety?  It doesn't exist.  There are always canaries, if you look hard enough.  When the government does tell us it's "safe", what will that mean anyway?  No risk of infection?  That we can go to the store with zero risk of catching any illness?  That's an impossibility.  We live our lives with a combination of myriad factors, each of which lies somewhere along a continuum of risk.  Focusing on that continuum will leave a person paralyzed, because it's impossible to eliminate all the risk factors.

I'm not about to give up spending time with my friends just because it might be risky.  I'm not about to stop going to the grocery store just because someone might have sneezed nearby at some point earlier in the day.  I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.  If I determine that the risks are great enough to warrant a lifestyle change on my part, then I'll change my behavior.  But, until that time, I'm going to continue living my life as normally as possible under current government and corporate restrictions.  And when those restrictions are lifted, I'll be only too eager to return to normal life.

[bandit957]

'Social distancing assumed until infections minimized and containment implemented'

This is the assumption made at the top of the IHME website.  The fact is most of the country locked down starting the week of March 22nd and daily new cases peaked at 35k two weeks later.  A month since the peak in new cases (and 6 weeks into the lock downs) we are still averaging about 30k new cases per day.  The infections are plateauing not minimizing.  The IHME model is currently projecting 72,433 deaths by August 4th when in reality deaths will likely surpass that number by next week.  Perhaps if we had draconian lock down measures in place this virus could be contained in this country, but that's not going to happen here.  So if we can't effectively contain the virus the next logical step is building a herd immunity to it (by reopening the economy at a slow pace to ensure that health care systems don't get overrun). 

The IHME model has to keep upping their projections because their fundamental assumption is flawed.  By locking down the country we aren't achieving containment or anything close to it.  Good luck attempting to contact trace 30k new cases a day.

There probably actually are far fewer new infections right now than there were a month ago. It's probably not even close. But we were doing far fewer tests a month ago.

[Roadgeekteen]

I can certainly tell you that for my sake... I will be staying the fuck away from anything that involves people congregating for a while after things start reopening. I'm not going to trust that it's safe just because the government says so - I will want to see the results empirically show this and will be looking hard for any canaries of a possible resurgence.
And I'm not really interested in purchasing any non-essential items or services right now, because while I am still employed currently I'd be foolish to not be preparing for the possibility that that may change.

Perhaps, then, there is a fundamental difference between the way you and I live our lives.

Staying safe is not the goal of my life.  Heck, staying alive isn't even the goal of my life.  I fully expect to die at some point in my life.  That doesn't mean I live recklessly, but it does mean that "is it safe?" isn't the guiding question that controls my decisions.

In 2008, my wife and I decided to take steps towards doing mission work in Mexico.  A couple of months later, escalating cartel violence started making US headlines, and everybody we knew told is it wasn't safe to go to Mexico.  The first year we went (March 2009), my wife's own mother called her "stupid" for taking our one-year-old son to Mexico.  Her grandparents told us that, with any future trips, we shouldn't even tell them we were going until we got back to the USA.  Even today, the US Department of State says of the state we travel to:  "Reconsider Travel ... due to crime.  Violent crime and unpredictable gang activity are common..."  For the first several years, I did research about the safety of travel there.  I obtained detailed data from the Mexican attorney-general's office, downloaded Harvard mathematician-published research papers, looked through FBI crime statistics, made charts and graphs based on my findings, etc.  But all of that was really for the sake of others traveling with us.  It wasn't for our own sake.  We had a call on our lives to serve in Mexico, and it's our belief that one is supposed to follow his or her calling whether it's safe or not.  (I'm trying to avoid overtly religious language.)  Our best friends recently moved to the town we serve in, with our full encouragement and support.  "Is it safe?" is a question that factors into their decisions and ours, but it is far from the most important factor.

When we do go to Mexico, we often do roof demolition.  We destroy the very surface we stand on, sometimes swinging mattocks while balancing on the edge of the wall because there's nowhere else to stand.  Is it safe?  Maybe, maybe not.  After the work is done, we take the children down the street to the swimming hole.  The water isn't treated, people dump all sorts of stuff into the canal that flows through it, my friend has even seen a turd floating by.  Is it safe?  Maybe, maybe not.  But we decide to do these things anyway, because they are acts of ministry to the children there.

2 million drivers in the USA suffer permanent injury or disability because of car accidents in any given year.  I personally see or hear car crashes every year, and major wrecks on the highway frequently affect my commute.  But this does not keep me from driving a car.  Is driving safe?  Maybe, maybe not.

More than half a million Americans die from heart disease every year.  I have borderline cholesterol, and heart attacks run in the family.  But these things do not define how I choose what to eat.  I buy high-oleic sunflower oil for cooking applications I used to use lard for, for example, but I'm not about to switch to a raw diet.  Could I be healthier if I became religious about my diet?  Certainly.  But extending my life as long as possible isn't my goal.

If I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it.  Might I get sick from that?  I suppose so.

Back when I didn't have a car, I used to hitchhike.  One week-end, I took Greyhound from Chicago to Menominee (MI), then hitchhiked for two days across and down through Michigan and back to Chicago.  Just for fun, because I wanted to see Michigan.  Was it safe?  Well, who knows? because there are almost no statistics on the safety of hitchhiking.

"Safety" is an illusion anyway.  What will you be looking for?  100% safety?  It doesn't exist.  There are always canaries, if you look hard enough.  When the government does tell us it's "safe", what will that mean anyway?  No risk of infection?  That we can go to the store with zero risk of catching any illness?  That's an impossibility.  We live our lives with a combination of myriad factors, each of which lies somewhere along a continuum of risk.  Focusing on that continuum will leave a person paralyzed, because it's impossible to eliminate all the risk factors.

I'm not about to give up spending time with my friends just because it might be risky.  I'm not about to stop going to the grocery store just because someone might have sneezed nearby at some point earlier in the day.  I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.  If I determine that the risks are great enough to warrant a lifestyle change on my part, then I'll change my behavior.  But, until that time, I'm going to continue living my life as normally as possible under current government and corporate restrictions.  And when those restrictions are lifted, I'll be only too eager to return to normal life.

Nicely said. Some risks are a part of life.

[kphoger]

Our best friends in Mexico need to make a border run to try and get new FMMs and vehicle permits (which may or may not happen, depending on whether INM is issuing FMMs right now), and they need to drive through the city of Monclova in order to do so;  in Monclova it is now prohibited to walk down the street without having "good reason" to be outside your home, and no more than two people are allowed to be driving in a car at the same time;  hopefully, their family of five isn't detained by the police while driving through town.

I fully realize there might be nobody wondering how this situation played out, but...

Because our friends (a couple with two young daughters) don't have proper visas yet and have been living in Mexico in the meantime on FMMs (commonly called tourist cards), they didn't know if they could even get new papers because of the government and border shutdown.  They had tried calling various government agencies in Mexico to find out, been put on hold, and never gotten an answer (including the INM office in Saltillo and even–I think–the US Consulate's emergency number in Mexico City).  I had then asked around on an expat forum and found out that their papers were set to expire during a window of time that had no solution in place.  If their papers had expired earlier, then there would have been a process to get new ones at any immigration office.  Unfortunately, even though the government shutdown had been extended to the end of May, that process had not been likewise extended.  So, with no answer to the problem, they packed up as if they would have to stay outside of Mexico for an indefinite amount of time, and drove 275 miles north, not knowing if they would be stopped and turned around in Monclova along the way, not knowing what would happen when they got to customs.

It was mid-morning yesterday that they started heading north.  At Castaños (just south of Monclova), the police were stopping traffic but waved our friends on.  They stopped anyway and asked which way they should go to head north of town, and they were directed to take the bypass around the east side of Monclova (an ugly route mainly used by local truckers, but which our friends were already familiar with).  Upon arrival at the customs office near Allende, they found out that they could indeed get new FMMs and vehicle permits, but that they would have to wait till the shift change a few hours later for the FMMs and until after midnight for the vehicle permits.  So they canceled their soon-to-expire papers and laid up for the night at a local hotel, which fortunately had no problem with their dog being in the room.  By around lunchtime today, they had their new FMMs and vehicle permits.  They're currently headed back south, and I estimate they're within 1.5 hours of home.

For anyone interested in what it's like to travel within Mexico right now...

Within the 275-mile drive south from customs to their house, which did not cross any state lines, here's what our friends encountered:

– questioned four times
– temperatures taken twice with IR thermomenters
– tires sprayed with bleach twice (wtf?), once at a tollbooth and once at a roadside checkpoint

[J N Winkler]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

[bandit957]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

People never wear masks outdoors around here.

[hotdogPi]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

I've worn a mask while walking, but that's because I am walking 2000 feet to a convenience store to get deli meat. If I'm walking outside without going into a building, I don't wear a mask.

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

I see it on occasion with people walking but it might be 25% of them.  Usually those who are very elderly, I noticed they tend to have nitrile gloves too.  Someone actually got mad at me for not wearing a mask while running...clearly they don't get running. 

[kphoger]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

Yes, on multiple occasions.

[US71]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

I've worn a mask while walking, but that's because I am walking 2000 feet to a convenience store to get deli meat. If I'm walking outside without going into a building, I don't wear a mask.

Last time I walked my neighborhood, I saw one other person. So I wasn't concerned about not wearing a mask.

[GaryV]

I've seen a few people in our neighborhood wearing masks on our (nearly-) daily walks.  But most don't.  In fact the latest from the governor specifically said you did NOT have to wear a mask during outside recreation - but still abide by social distancing.

It is interesting to try to avoid the people you meet coming in the opposite direction.  It sometimes becomes like a game of "chicken" to determine who will turn aside first.  The only "rule" that seems to be universal is that you try to avoid the families with small kids.  After that, it's whoever blinks first.

[kphoger]

I've seen a few people in our neighborhood wearing masks on our (nearly-) daily walks.  But most don't.  In fact the latest from the governor specifically said you did NOT have to wear a mask during outside recreation - but still abide by social distancing.

It is interesting to try to avoid the people you meet coming in the opposite direction.  It sometimes becomes like a game of "chicken" to determine who will turn aside first.  The only "rule" that seems to be universal is that you try to avoid the families with small kids.  After that, it's whoever blinks first.

With this virus, I'd avoid the elderly before avoiding the children.

[Eth]

I'm not about to wear a mask to walk down the street just because I might pass by someone else.

Have you seen anyone doing this in your neighborhood?  I have not in mine.

Around me, probably about 2/3 of people are doing this. To be fair, I can't tell where they're going, and I live in a pretty dense area, so there's a reasonable chance they may be entering a building at some point.

I'm among those who feel that a mask probably isn't necessary if you're outside and away from other people, so right now I'm generally only putting one on for grocery runs (where now probably >90% are also doing so).