lydy | Plague Diary: In Which I Have the Plague

In preparation for my gig in Cleveland, and because I had a minor gastric event, I submitted a saliva test, administered on Nov. 23rd. Today, while at a rest stop in Illinois, I checked my email, and found that the result was positive.

I am currently in Indiana, and will go on to Cleveland and quarantine there. I have informed my employer, and he will inform the Cleveland Clinic, and let me know how to proceed on Monday. Even if the contract goes up in smoke, I will stay in Cleveland until I'm safe to go home.

I am very, very worried about my family. I am somewhat worried about myself.

As our president has said, It is what it is. It didn't need to be this way, but it is.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dreamshark

OMG, no! Do you have any idea how you might have been exposed?

From:

lydy

Absolutely none. We have all been reasonably careful, modulo shopping in brick and mortar stores. David had one close contact with Pamela's brother, doing household stuff, but that household has been very careful. I had one close contact with Beth, but she's been quite careful, too. Most likely is random encounter while shopping. So frustrating and frightening.

From:

dreamshark

That is very disturbing (over and above the disturbingness of catching the disease at all, of course). If you really can catch it while grocery shopping, then everything we thought we had learned about this disease is suspect. I mean, while you may pass by a lot of people in a grocery story, how often do you actually spend 10 minutes in close proximity to any of them? Never, in my experience (which mostly consists of shopping in fairly cavernous stores at non-busy times). Even without the masks and the plexiglass barriers, there just doesn't seem like much opportunity for sharing air with another person in a large store. Maybe we SHOULD be frantically washing off all our groceries when we get home, or sterilizing our shoes?

On the plus side, it sounds like you are doing great. If you got tested on Nov 23 it must be close to a week since you first had symptoms, right? If you get past the one-week marker without taking a turn for the worse you are probably well on the way to a complication-free recovery with minimal symptoms. Which is honestly the best situation that anybody can hope for with this pandemic - actually better than not getting infected at all. Fingers crossed on that.

Out of curiosity, why was your first impulse to tell nobody? And why is that psychopathic? Psychopaths make decisions based on prioritizing their own best interests above everybody else's, but I can't see how that would be in your best interests even if you were a psychopath.

From:

laurel

You 100% can catch the virus while shopping. Lots of the existing safety guidelines are based from data from very very early on and have not been updated to reflect latest science. Close contact for 10 or more minutes is not required, it’s really about the air quality now that we know this is airborne and not solely about droplets.

Stores should be limiting how many people can be inside them, should be making all aisles one way (so you don’t have to pass anyone close by), have distancing guidelines, etc. But most importantly need to have good air flow and good air filtering. And require masks (and enforce that somehow).

If you must shop in stores, limit your trips. Limit how many people go in. Go to stores with good safety measures (like the ones I mentioned if any are actually doing that). Go when least busy (or if they close, first thing after they open if aren’t too busy then). Stores that aren’t too busy which do enforce mask requirements. And wear a mask that has a filter (or has filtering capabilities built in). Face shields or goggles are a good idea if a place isn’t the best with safety measures. Gloves aren’t a bad idea for that matter, but that really depends. I wear gloves if I have to touch high touch surfaces and won’t be able to wash my hands for a while later; hand sanitizer is great but eh. I like gloves.

Leaving any shoes you wear outside on your porch or someplace is a good idea. We haven’t been super strict about this, but lots of people have switched to having “outside” and “inside” shoes since this all started. Who weren’t doing that already. I don’t worry about it if I’m in our yard or something but the rare time I’ve had to go inside another building, I’ve left my shoes on the porch. (But then I’ve also stripped immediately and put all clothing in wash & took a shower. But I’ve only been in other buildings very very rarely since this all started.) (It really is a lot more about air than surfaces. I started this practice early on. Most important thing is having a good mask with a filter if you’ll be anywhere where others might’ve been unmasked or wearing masks improperly.)

No need usually to wash food or food packaging, but wash hands after handling such stuff. (Likewise after handling anything brought in from outside your home. We aren’t as strict about quarantining mail and packages any more or groceries that don’t need freezer/fridge but we do wash our hands after handling all that stuff).

Sorry for carrying on, I’m always carrying on about this stuff. But it drives me nuts how little people know, especially those I know who are trying to be careful. If only we had decent federal leadership, this all could’ve been conveyed clearly & repeatedly all over & we’d have consistent guidelines (maybe). This all was going to be rough to explain to people even then. (Sigh.)

Maybe I haven’t carried on enough in enough places. I try my best!

Kevin & I haven’t stepped foot in a store since March. I had to stop in Costco in mid-March for prescriptions before we got them all switched to mail order. I know not everyone can afford to have groceries etc. delivered (or lives in areas where it’s possible), but it really is safest to avoid being in stores, etc. if a person can. (Don’t get my started about Black Friday. Ugh.)

From:

thewayne

It can also be a matter of cumulative dose. Yes, a big exposure may get you sick. But so can several smaller exposures over time.

And an asymptomatic positive can definitely be beneficial in that you get antibodies with minimal suffering. Not as many as a more serious case that may not last as long, but you get antibodies.

Still best not to get it.

From:

dreamshark

"You 100% can catch the virus while shopping. Lots of the existing safety guidelines are based from data from very very early on and have not been updated to reflect latest science."

Actually, all that guidance is being updated constantly (which is why it is so confusing). At first all the public health messages focused obsessively on hand washing, and hand washing and more hand washing, with most sources in total denial about aerosol spread and masking. Now the CDC and even the WHO have acknowledged that surface spread is probably not much of a factor and aerosol spread is real. As you say, it's a matter of concentration of virus in the air and how much of that air you breathe. At least that seems to be the latest scientific consensus.

But seriously, if you are walking around a cavernous supermarket with everybody wearing masks (which people do now, at least in Minneapolis) I just don't see how it is possible to inhale a significant amount of virus even if everybody else in the store is infected. Maybe surface spread actually is as important as people seemed to think back in March? And those people who disinfect every grocery bag really are doing the smart thing?

I still haven't seen one shred of actual evidence that people are getting infected in grocery stores except for this kind of anecdotal report. I don't know how you could run a strict scientific study on sources of infection, but there are attempts to summarize and quantify what people say to contact tracers. The main sources of infection are usually work-related, household infections, bars/restaurants/gyms, congregate living situations, or gatherings involving churches. I would like to see just one of those reports that included a specific category for the number of people who said, "I never went anywhere except grocery shopping." Those people just get lumped into the "No idea" category. And you never know if that means, "I have no idea because there are so many possibilities" or people like Lydy who didn't do anything remotely high-risk and are just baffled.

From:

calimac

Nobody ever said you can't catch the virus while shopping. What limiting contact does is minimize your chances of catching it. It's still possible.

From:

lydy

So, there is a lot we don't know. But the pattern of infection is consistent with airborne pathogens and not with food borne or fomite transmission. If the latter two were true, we'd be seeing different patterns of infection. The biggest questions seem to be about how much viral load creates the disease, how easy is it to acquire said viral load, etc. I listened to an epidemiologist talking about how we know it's airborne, and I don't remember all of the details, but roughly, they said that if it was, for instance, touch-based, we'd have more reports of people who had been in contact with a specific item being infected and that being the only common denominator, and we just don't have those.

As for why I didn't want to tell anyone, I knew it would complicate my life enormously. As, in fact, it has. I got yelled at by the hotel manager in Indiana, who threatened to charge me more money because he could not rent the room. He wanted to know why I had come there and I explained that I had no place else to go. He said I should not have come, I told him I didn't find out until I was an hour away, and could not possible return to Minneapolis. He started yelling, and I yelled back that he had no moral leg to stand on, he was letting college students have loud parties in the hotel. He said that they didn't have COVID and I yelled at him that he had no idea if that were true, he hadn't tested any of them. At which point, he suddenly decided that he didn't need to charge me more money. Honestly, they should be cleaning every hotel room as if someone who is positive has stayed there.

And the Airbnb hosts are upset, too. One of the two is warm and friendly, but warned me that his wife/partner is very stressed out. Additionally, they notified Airbnb, and Airbnb has "escalated your case to a safety team" and I don't know what that means. I am, of course, isolating (and it was a beautiful day for a bike ride, today, dammit). At the moment, the entrance they want me to use is not shared by anyone else, but on the 20th, another tenant will be there, and so there are concerns.

And my temporary gig could still all go up in smoke, in which case I will have spent a great deal of time, money, and effort to get to Cleveland, be sick, and turn around and go home without having any income to show for it.

So, yeah, there was a long moment where I just wished that I could pretend I didn't know, and act normal. But I am crap at being a sociopath.

From:

dreamshark

Got it. That is shockingly unprofessional behavior from the hotelier. As you say, they should be cleaning every room as if somebody sick had stayed there. Especially if they are letting college students party in those rooms. Sheesh.

So are you in Cleveland now, at the AirBnB? The idea that they are upset because someone else might be sharing your entrance IN FOUR WEEKS is absurd. You only need to quarantine for 2 weeks unless you get a whole lot sicker. Which I gather is not happening, right?

Have your housemates back in Minneapolis been tested? When will they get the results?

From:

pameladean

Going by the advice of the state health department, we've ordered at-home saliva test kits. They will be here Tuesday, which is the earliest that we should be tested anyway given that our last exposure to Lydy was Thursday.

P.

From:

dreamshark

Of course you don't know that one of you didn't get it first and expose Lydy.

In any case, it sounds like all of you are feeling well, which is good to hear.

From:

pameladean

That's true, of course. We never will know, I guess, unless they do contact tracing differently. But the state seems just to go by whether you were exposed to a known case.

P.