COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (23 Viewers)

Status
Not open for further replies.
So the assumption that people don't stay in a store for more than an hour, and/or people don't stay close to each other or speak loudly in stores near other people (as opposed to services), and people that attend servies are more at risk than say the massive number of older, overweight, mobility scooter riding people at WalMart?

That's not my experience. (especially in WalMart / WinnDixie)

And I was assuming that religious services would have to follow the same social distancing / mask / capacity protocols as all other places of gathering....

Seems anecdotal to restrict one and not the other based on those assumptions. JMO

If you can't see the difference between a church mass and Wal-Mart, using your own common sense, much less after we have pointed out the differences, then you just don't want to see it and have made your mind made up on the subject, so what's the point of asking?
 
Yeah Dave must not shop with his wife. Mine take 2 hours round trip and the HEB is about a par 7 from the house.

My track record is 11 minutes 💪

Lmao, my wife hasn't been in a store since the national emergency was announced. It's me and my kids taking turns. We go in, get our sheet and get out. I ain't messing around in stores here.
 
If you can't see the difference between a church mass and Wal-Mart using your own common sense, much less after we have pointed out the differences, then you just don't want to see it and have made your mind made up on the subject, so what's the point of asking?

Because it's not common or sensical... It's an opinion... and mostly based on personal experience (as other have already pointed out)... I accept the answers given.... I just don't 100% agree that they are based in reality and should be treated differently. I asked because I wanted to hear the logic behind the opposing point of view. I don't have to agree with it.... and I appreciate the answers.... Thanks.
 
That, and it's difficult to predict how many might show up in a given week. I think it would have to depend on the size and layout of the church. If at all possible, the ideal situation would be to hold the services outside. Many churches have space outside and they should utilize that to the extent possible. If there's inclement weather, be safe and do the service online.

Great point about churches being a gathering place for the most vulnerable in our population. What's happening in nursing homes can happen in churches if pastors are not careful. They're responsible for their congregations and should be as prudent as possible in protecting them.
I think this would be an ideal time for churches to be adaptive
Typically they are in use for ine day and maybe half of another day or so
The rest they just sit there as giant space/time sucks
What about spreading services throughout the week?
Maybe on Saturdays and Sundays you have hour long services on the even hours and the odd hours are spent cleaning
Then you have 2-3 services a afternoon/night during the week
Have people make reservations for church either online or over the phone for the less computer adept
 
Because it's not common or sensical... It's an opinion... and mostly based on personal experience (as other have already pointed out)... I accept the answers given.... I just don't 100% agree that they are based in reality and should be treated differently. I asked because I wanted to hear the logic behind the opposing point of view. I don't have to agree with it.... and I appreciate the answers.... Thanks.

And maybe you’re feeling salty and want to argue over others’ sensible replies
Not trying to be snarky, just pointing out that these are trying times for all of us and sometimes our emotions override our common sense
 
I do think churches are different, particularly from stores. I average maybe 10-15 minutes in a store. So I'm not there near as long as in a church. Also, during worship, everyone is singing and that has potentially been a big culprit in the spread of the virus. Entire choirs, church and otherwise, have been sickened by all singing in proximity. I really think the length of exposure dramatically increases the risk of getting infected. Like nurses who have gotten severely sick from working long and exhausting hours with covid patients.

I think it's too soon for most churches to start in person services, but the states will still have to apply the law equally to all organizations or they'll have problems.

Are any states saying “no church” in their reopen plans? I agree that if the rule is 20% or 50% occupancy - it should apply across the board. Yes there’s a First Amendment issue but I think if the rules are the same, it will be easier to defend.

Churches are going to be sites of significant risk - indoor, concentrations of people speaking and singing and for lengths of time. But what can you do? People want to be risky or put it in God’s hands or whatever, oh well.
 
I think this would be an ideal time for churches to be adaptive
Typically they are in use for ine day and maybe half of another day or so
The rest they just sit there as giant space/time sucks
What about spreading services throughout the week?
Maybe on Saturdays and Sundays you have hour long services on the even hours and the odd hours are spent cleaning
Then you have 2-3 services a afternoon/night during the week
Have people make reservations for church either online or over the phone for the less computer adept

Yeah, some churches are already doing some of this. Of course it varies greatly from church to church. Many meet in lease or rented spaces not otherwise available. Others do have the space available and are spreading services throughout the week. Still others are doing appointment only services.

This is a good opportunity for pastors to be smart and flexible with how to protect the community they're working with. Agreed that it can be done, and with thinking outside the box.

I really think they can cut the length of time to 30 minutes. Some services can last up to over 2 hours, which is really increases risk factors imo. Good suggestions.
 
My sister forwarded some information from a local news station in which it was reported that there have been 124 infections and 17 fatalities among 155 residents in the nursing home my mom was in, and 34 staff have been infected. My mom died there on March 5, under hospice care, in respiratory failure and on supplemental oxygen.

Seeing the reported data of the localized outbreak raises some questions in our family, but also with the knowledge that my mom's health was poor, and included a diagnosis of interstitial lung disease several years ago, though the certainty of that would become less clear in the time that followed.

We will never know if she was infected, though there have been no indications of transmission among family and friends that we know of, which leaves me doubtful. If there's a silver-lining, it's that she passed away days before the crisis really set in so we were able to be with her and then honor her with a proper funeral. Also the knowing that if she wasn't infected, she almost certainly would have been eventually.

Surreal, though, to know that so many people we would have encountered in our visits there have suffered on such a scale. The numbers are staggering and really drive home just how devastating this illness can be to vulnerable people.
Sorry for you loss David. I'm glad for you that you got to spend some time with her.
 
Are any states saying “no church” in their reopen plans? I agree that if the rule is 20% or 50% occupancy - it should apply across the board. Yes there’s a First Amendment issue but I think if the rules are the same, it will be easier to defend.

Churches are going to be sites of significant risk - indoor, concentrations of people speaking and singing and for lengths of time. But what can you do? People want to be risky or put it in God’s hands or whatever, oh well.

Churches should be grouped together with concerts, movie theaters and sporting events and share similar criteria for opening. They're more like those than say a typical retail store.

These policies shouldn’t be defined in terms of the type of business or organization but something closer to density of people and the level of interaction required.
 
Last edited:
But we could absolutely draw some directional conclusions that would help people to make decisions. If our knowledge of this disease is a scale from 0-10, and what we know in a decade is the 10, we could probably be at 4 right now. We're at zero.

It's either gross incompetence or that they already know what they'd expect to find and they don't want it out in the public. I suspect the former, but who knows.

I mean, there has been gross incompetence and some of it is in the collection of data which has been poor. And there should have been better funding for the CDC long ago and we should have invested more money in virus research in Universities, medical schools, and hospitals. But, as it stands now, I would say that our knowledge is probably in that 4 out of 10 range and maybe even higher. And we have drawn some conclusions about the disease and taken actions based on those conclusions. Chuck's post contained a lot of what we know.

But it's been done with the knowledge that those decisions may or are even likely to change. I suspect you just aren't used to reading scientific studies or epidemiology articles and that is the source of your valid frustration, along with the pressure a father feels to do the right things for his kids and family. I mean, that's how those studies are. Different studies find slightly different things and then we piece them together to come to a consensus over time.

As far as the specific complaint about UV, we do know that UV kills it and we do know how long it lives on various surfaces in the lab. But we can't know if UV kills it fast enough to stop infection of the public because we can't test it with people. So, the best we can do is say that UV kills it so you are likely safer outside in the sun. Which, I think is what the consensus opinion has been and it's the best we can do since we can't do human testing and we can't even test it outside the lab for similar ethical concerns. And the truth is it would take a lot of testing because wind conditions affect the spread of particles greatly.

And, they may know what they suspect to find, but a reputable scientist doesn't speak on or publish on what he suspects until he has tested it. I mean that's science. You suspect something, make a hypothesis, and then do experiments (or gather data in the case of epidemiologists) to find out if your suspicions were correct. I mean you are asking for very specific hard facts. You don't want to them to tell you what they suspect.
 
Because it's not common or sensical... It's an opinion... and mostly based on personal experience (as other have already pointed out)... I accept the answers given.... I just don't 100% agree that they are based in reality and should be treated differently. I asked because I wanted to hear the logic behind the opposing point of view. I don't have to agree with it.... and I appreciate the answers.... Thanks.

Even if you i assume the risk is the same in both settings, I think the difference is one of policy more than science. What it comes down to is that going to get food is a necessity, where as going to church services is not. I'm sure some will argue that it is and I could argue you are free to pray at home, but in the end, that's the policy decision that has been made most places.
 
I mean, there has been gross incompetence and some of it is in the collection of data which has been poor. And there should have been better funding for the CDC long ago and we should have invested more money in virus research in Universities, medical schools, and hospitals. But, as it stands now, I would say that our knowledge is probably in that 4 out of 10 range and maybe even higher. And we have drawn some conclusions about the disease and taken actions based on those conclusions. Chuck's post contained a lot of what we know.

But it's been done with the knowledge that those decisions may or are even likely to change. I suspect you just aren't used to reading scientific studies or epidemiology articles and that is the source of your valid frustration, along with the pressure a father feels to do the right things for his kids and family. I mean, that's how those studies are. Different studies find slightly different things and then we piece them together to come to a consensus over time.

As far as the specific complaint about UV, we do know that UV kills it and we do know how long it lives on various surfaces in the lab. But we can't know if UV kills it fast enough to stop infection of the public because we can't test it with people. So, the best we can do is say that UV kills it so you are likely safer outside in the sun. Which, I think is what the consensus opinion has been and it's the best we can do since we can't do human testing and we can't even test it outside the lab for similar ethical concerns. And the truth is it would take a lot of testing because wind conditions affect the spread of particles greatly.

And, they may know what they suspect to find, but a reputable scientist doesn't speak on or publish on what he suspects until he has tested it. I mean that's science. You suspect something, make a hypothesis, and then do experiments (or gather data in the case of epidemiologists) to find out if your suspicions were correct. I mean you are asking for very specific hard facts. You don't want to them to tell you what they suspect.

Something like "homes with a kid in day care have a X% higher (or lower) than expected infection rate" is a "hard fact" that could be gotten to, tested, and validated by a data scientist with the right data in a week. You don't need an epidemiologist for that. I understand how experiments and analyses work. The problem is that getting that data requires a concerted effort from a central authority. Which, well, yeah.
 
So the assumption that people don't stay in a store for more than an hour, and/or people don't stay close to each other or speak loudly in stores near other people (as opposed to services), and people that attend servies are more at risk than say the massive number of older, overweight, mobility scooter riding people at WalMart?

That's not my experience. (especially in WalMart / WinnDixie)

And I was assuming that religious services would have to follow the same social distancing / mask / capacity protocols as all other places of gathering....

Seems anecdotal to restrict one and not the other based on those assumptions. JMO


I think the assumption is that the best data we have says that you need to be near a person who is infected for 10 minutes to be at a high risk of infection. In a grocery store, that does not happen because people go down aisles at different paces and only pass each other. You aren't within 6 feet of any one person for very long and certainly not for 10 minutes. With the possible exception of maybe a person you stand in line behind or the cashier. But that's why you wear masks, stay 6 feet apart, and many stores have put up plexiglass in front of the cashier.

In addition, as buzd said, in church setting people are signing and talking a lot more than in any grocery environment so that potentially puts a much higher viral load in the air than in a grocery.

Then add in the policy considerations I mentioned above above the necessity of food, and I think that is the reasoning.
 
Something like "homes with a kid in day care have a X% higher (or lower) than expected infection rate" is a "hard fact" that could be gotten to, tested, and validated by a data scientist with the right data in a week. You don't need an epidemiologist for that. I understand how experiments and analyses work. The problem is that getting that data requires a concerted effort from a central authority. Which, well, yeah.

I don't disagree that a concerted effort from a central authority would greatly help our information, data, and reactions to all this. But I don't think it would have allowed us to have all the answers this quickly. It's not like every virologist and virus researcher in the country isn't working on this. And, I guarantee that every single member of Big Pharma and small pharma is pushing hard for their researchers to come up with a vaccine or treatment. Not to mention every epidemiologist that knows anything about communicable diseases.

But, as to your specific issue, how can you get that facts if kids aren't in day cares right now? At best day cares really opened up two weeks ago usually at much reduced capacity, one week for many, and it can take 14 days, if not more for people to start to show symptoms.

And you can't really know the true answer that quickly since you can't control the variables. The answer could vary greatly depending on the size of the day care, the time of year, the number of kids, the number of care givers, how much time they spend outside, the age of the children, whether the staff are wearing masks, what kind of masks the staff are wearing, whether they are being kept 6 feet apart, whether they are breaking them into small groups that are strictly kept apart, what percentage of capacity they are allowing based on useable square footage, etc. It really would take years of epidemiological data to come to a consensus on something like that. You just can't make a close to valid conclusion regarding something with that many variables in a week or even in months. Hell, it took many years to even come to a consensus on cigarette smoking, benzine, NORMAL, asbestos exposure, Raydon exposure, etc. People certainly suspected that they were bad for you, but it took a long time to get enough data to draw scientific conclusions that they actually were bad and caused cancer. And it took even longer to figure out what level of exposure you needed to attribute the cancer to smoking, asbestos, Raydon, etc. and what the safe levels of exposure are. Not to mention what procedures were necessary to limit exposure and how much risk remained.

I mean, in the end, you know the answer to this question in general. It obviously increases the risk because it increases the number of possible infection vectors. But nobody is going to be able to give you a percentage.
 
Last edited:
Are any states saying “no church” in their reopen plans? I agree that if the rule is 20% or 50% occupancy - it should apply across the board. Yes there’s a First Amendment issue but I think if the rules are the same, it will be easier to defend.

Churches are going to be sites of significant risk - indoor, concentrations of people speaking and singing and for lengths of time. But what can you do? People want to be risky or put it in God’s hands or whatever, oh well.

At least in Louisiana there is case law on this. A Federal Judge in Baton Rouge ruled that the first Amendment was not violated when Tony Spell was arrested and his church was stopped from having services prior to Louisiana entering Phase One. I assume it will be appealed to the 5th Circuit.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users who are viewing this thread

    Back
    Top Bottom