
Is It Okay to Go to the Beach? - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/it-okay-go-beach/613849/
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uwuwuwu
Would be ok if everyone was wearing a mask. You go to the bathroom, cough
cough, you go to the restaurant, cough cough, and you're driving back home
with your friends in the car, cough cough. If we tried to reduce infection
during these occasions, there maybe wasn't even a need for much lock-down.

Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning
off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to
wear a mask before sth happens.

I'd be very happy if there was an experiment, just for 4 weeks everybody
should wear the damn mask both in private and public, and see what happens.

How can so many people fail to grasp the concept of prevention?

~~~
mcntsh
> Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning
> off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to
> wear a mask before sth happens.

There were 140 new cases in Germany yesterday in a country of 83 million. In
my city of 3,5 million there were 17 new cases. At what point would you say
it's safe to not wear a mask in stores?

~~~
ulfw
When it's been ZERO for a while. Obviously?

I don't understand this question at all. As long a there's >=1 case and little
immunity the virus WILL spread.

~~~
mcntsh
Wasn't it the goal all along to flatten the curve and gradually introduce herd
immunity while softening the impact on hospitals?

No one estimates a vaccine any time remotely soon and even with one it would
take years at best to achieve zero cases globally.

~~~
kadoban
Flattening the curve was the most immediate and important goal, because
overloaded hospitals kill a _lot_ of people.

Herd immunity by everyone getting infected should _not_ be a goal. That's
still going to kill many, many people.

The estimate for the US by that route was around 2.5million dead. You could
probably scale that by population size and maybe reduce a bit as we get better
at treatment for this disease, but that's still a big number.

I don't think we have much option other than to prevent the spread as much as
we can while waiting for something like a vaccine and/or far better treatments
than we currently have.

Zero cases globally will indeed be a while, if it ever happens.

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alpineidyll3
The Atlantic tries to churn moral panic 24/7, and now they are trying to also
churn anti-moral panic?

Stop getting science advice from op-ed magazines! I sympathize with 100% of
the Atlantic's political views and completely hate their desperate and
misguided attempts to remain relevant.

~~~
aeternum
Is it possible that the Atlantic employs multiple writers that don't all share
the same set of opinions?

~~~
Rapzid
It's just as likely they run op-eds from authors willing to have whatever
opinion is necessary.

The business of op-ed and analysis pieces is pretty crappy, and it does not
require any moral or intellectual honesty from the authors.

~~~
taejo
The author of this piece, Zeynep Tufekci
([https://twitter.com/zeynep](https://twitter.com/zeynep)), has had a pretty
consistent viewpoint throughout the epidemic: she called for early response,
early mask wearing (when most western authorities were advising against it)
and co-authored a review on the topic
([https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1](https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1)),
and has consistently said that closing outdoor public spaces is a mistake.
Whether she's wrong or right, she's not just writing what the Atlantic's
editors tell her to.

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reilly3000
Being at the beach does not seem to be much of a threat, but going to the
beach is a different story. Cramped, less than sanitary public restrooms,
crowded food stands, parking kiosks that rarely get cleaned- this all adds up
to lots of contact. Sweat is an interesting substrate which doesn’t get a lot
of airtime, as are shared beverage containers.

There are worse things than going to the beach, but when hundreds of thousands
of people go to them at once, things most certainly get transmitted. I shudder
to think how much gets transmitted at Venice Beach on a normal day, let alone
in a pandemic.

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perl4ever
At this point, don't we have quite a few examples of a lot of people getting
infected in one place? Can't such outbreaks be categorized and summarized to
get an overall perspective on where it's really hazardous?

My impression is that such events have been places like bars, restaurants,
meat packing plants, and nursing homes, and not outdoors, but I haven't seen
an article or study on it.

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bsder
The problem is all those people _ALSO_ go somewhere else _AFTER_ the beach.

Do they need to go to the bathroom? Do they all need gasoline for their cars?
Snacks to go home? Are they all overloading the stores on the way out? Do they
need to hit an ATM?

 _THAT 'S_ where all the spread will occur. Especially amongst a bunch of
entitled dipshits who _also_ don't believe in wearing masks or washing hands.

~~~
Jolter
You ask a lot of questions for which the answer may very well be “no”.

~~~
thomaslord
Only if people plan ahead and make some attempt to help contain the disease
(wearing masks, limiting non-essential indoor stops, social distancing), which
it's now been proven we can't rely on (at least in the US).

Unfortunately the people who feel most comfortable leaving the house are the
people who are least likely to take precautions, which seems like a recipe for
lots of super spreaders to me.

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musicale
TL;DR: probably, as long as you maintain physical distancing.

