"Don't go outside, you'll get COVID", sounds more and more like horrible advice. Before knowing the virus died in sunlight, I still couldn't fathom why people were avoiding going out to parks and stuff. It was totally non sequitor.
If the UV doesn't kill the virus the heat will. But even then, it's not immediate. If droplets containing viruses successfully land in your respiratory system (which is constantly sucking air), it doesn't matter how much sun there is outside, the virus is now cozy.
A beach could be perfect, except that there may be strong winds. You should hope they are not blowing droplets from your neighbor into you.
Similarly, if it's an overcast day, it doesn't really matter much.
You could pass through the aerosol and inhale.
Masks make sense outside too, at least in some circumstances.
I use a mask outside if I'm on a narrow sidewalk, but otherwise, I don't think there's much point. My favourite thing is the people who wear a mask over the mouth, but not the nose. Like worst of both worlds.
You have a lot of faith in your immune system. Absent more data, it's just that, faith.
We have simply not seen the increases and flare-ups we would expect if what you're asserting is true. What worries me is October-November. This is for Toronto, Canada.
The beaches and parks are fully of people socially distancing-ish. The streets are full of a mix of people social distancing and not. Maybe half are wearing masks.
Get outside and take care of your physical and mental health! Winter is coming.
EDIT> I'm a physics and biology student. I am not completely unaware of the science.
Did you somehow miss the season in progress when COVID19 hit southern hemispheric countries in the early US spring?
Our current local guidelines are that masks are only required indoors or when distancing is not possible, and that seems to be borne out by the evidence. Over the summer people have been out at the beach, out in the parks, and out on the streets while only social distancing-ish. If walking through someone's exhaust plume were as much of a threat as you guys are trying to make out, we would have certainly seen that in the numbers. We don't.
You're welcome to think that. But it's based on faith, not evidence. I admit that I don't evidence to prove that it's dangerous to a specific level either. I just prefer to err on the side of caution.
All of the guidelines are about statistical safety, not about the physics of your particular situation. As always, use your noggin. Stay safe.
this bit is correct, but the rest is falling for false equivalency by throwing around the same "helps" with every case.
just being outside is overwhelmingly helpful, meaning it overwhelms every other factor by a large margin. relative to that, wearing a mask outside is of such negligible help to be effectively unhelpful. distance also overwhelms masks, both indoors and outdoors. distance outside helps only a little bit, but distance inside helps materially (because the positional and velocity vectors available to droplets and their virii and the dangers to them outside are exponentially greater). masks by themselves indoors are helpful only in limited situations (when in the direct exhaust of others for prolonged periods).
> "...do not drop your chances to zero"
for real-world situations, boolean evaluations like this are nearly always misleading, no matter in which direction. your chances of dying in a bathtub aren't zero either but we don't worry about it. relative magnitudes matter.
yes, use your noggin.
Don't get up-close with crowds of strangers, sure, but growing evidence suggests 6' outdoors is safer than 20'-plus in any enclosed, recirculating-air indoors.
Now, if you go outside in order to enter some other indoors, with people who may be infected, you're creating risks.
"Gyms are closed" (but bars and casinos are open)
A virus that kills old and _obese_ people, and you are shutting down the gym?
If anything I hope Coronavirus shifts politicians from business leaders to scientists.
Open the gyms to save lives.
Gyms are pretty horrible places for spreading COVID and other respiratory infections, as they involve a lot of heavy breathing in confined spaces. They are probably a worse place to be than bars. Would the increase in fitness over a 6 month period for a typical obese person really reduce the risk by more than being in the gym increases it?
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-why-covid-19-ca...
Pre-COVID studies of gyms call out a very high risk factor for respiratory infections.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324993154_Infection...
There was one RCT of gym access in Norway that showed no difference, but that's because there was only one case out of over three thousand during the entire study, in either arm, so it's difficult to say that means anything at all.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v...
Ancedote sure, inevitable maybe. But this wasn't some January new years resolution, this was April.
2. A gym seems kind-of a high infection risk. Lots of heavy breathing and sweating, wiping of faces, noses, and mouths, sharing of equipment, locker rooms... probably not the ideal place to welcome anyone, let along the (as you say, high-risk) obese amongst us.
Any chance your irritation at closed gyms is more personal, rather than a caring nature looking out for peoples' weight loss regimes?
If you want to get rid of the virus we need to shut down everything.
Of course, someone who is obese will take a long time to get to a healthy weight if they are only losing a pound a week, but most people would have a hard time maintaining extremes of diet or exercise for a long period of time.