New Tips for Gathering 100% Safely for the Holidays

Two new tips:

- I thought it went without saying, that if you’re sick, don’t come inside a building with other people - any kind of symptoms that could be covid-19 (see Dec. 13th post). However, it seems that people are not thinking of this any more, and still showing up with a sniffle or a fever. I had a couple of technicians come to my house for a chimney cleaning a few weeks ago. “You don’t have any symptoms, do you?” I asked. One of them admitted he had a sniffle, which he had had for a few days. Turns out it wasn’t needed for him to come into the house, and they did their work from the roof. But if I hadn’t thought to ask …

- Finally, it IS possible to gather with 100% safety, or as close as we can get. Actually, there are different versions of this—here’s my personal one: It takes at least a week of preparation before the actual gathering, and I realize many people will not be able to do this. For those who are able: you spend at least seven days of staying home and isolating from other people. Five days just isolating—no contact with other people outside your bubble, except if you’re outside in the fresh air. On day 6, you get a PCR test, and as soon as you get a negative result you can consider yourself safe to gather together with others who have done the same thing. (You DO need to continue to isolate up until the time of the gathering.) Here at the Keene hospital, we have been getting PCR results on the next business day. If the delay is longer where you are, take that into account and bump up your PCR test to day 5, or allow longer than seven days as needed.

And reminders of the tips I mentioned in my Nov. 22 video:

- Lots of fresh air to dilute any virus present! Outside of course is best, but if you’re inside, open windows to keep the CO2 level less than 600 ppm as measured by an ACCURATE carbon dioxide meter.

- If you have HEPA air purifiers, run them in addition to the open windows, and keep the CO2 less than 750 ppm. (Purified air should be at least 15 cfm per person.)

- Our own practice is for each of us to do the BinaxNOW test on the morning of the gathering. (The CDC echoed this recommendation on Dec. 6th.)

- Real N95 masks for people close together, inside.