Coronavirus

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packgrad
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China has an improved method for identifying the infected.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/anal-swab-china-coronavirus/2021/01/27/cc284f56-6054-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html
ciscopack
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Civilized said:

Would have been fascinating to see infection and death curves for the Spanish flu.

With no vaccine, took that one 15 to 18 months to burn itself out as I recall.
Pretty big difference in passing it, in 1917 and 2020. The world continues to shrink.
Daviewolf83
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Brief vaccine update with some good news.

1. The CDC updated their dashboard and vaccine distribution was 8.1M doses over the past week (more than 1M doses per day). Here is the week-by-week breakdown:

12/23-12/30: +1.5m doses
12/30-1/6: +2.7m
1/6-1/13: +4.9m
1/13-1/20: +6.2m
1/20-1/27: +8.1m



The US will need to get to 2M doses distributed a day to start making an impact, but I do not expect to see this happen until March, when the J&J supply starts to ramp up (assuming it gets approved by the FDA). With the increased numbers Biden announced yesterday, we will see 1.4M doses per day starting next week for the next three weeks.

2. NC announced today they are changing their vaccine doses distribution guidelines. Due to the complaints they have received from a lot of counties about not having supply or having supply taken from them, NC will now allocated vaccine doses based on the population of each county. This should help many of the rural counties that were seeing their supplies allocated to counties with mass vaccination sites.

3. The top ten states for administering their vaccine doses are:

North Dakota (84.6%)
West Virginia (78.1%)
New Mexico (74.3%)
South Dakota (70.8%)
Connecticut (66.4%)
Indiana (64.1%)
Utah (63.5%)
Arkansas (62.2%)
Alaska (62.1%)
Colorado (61.2%)

North Carolina has administered 52.1% of their available vaccines, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, ranking 34th in the nation.

TheStorm
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Daviewolf83 said:

2. NC announced today they are changing their vaccine doses distribution guidelines. Due to the complaints they have received from a lot of counties about not having supply or having supply taken from them, NC will now allocated vaccine doses based on the population of each county. This should help many of the rural counties that were seeing their supplies allocated to counties with mass vaccination sites.

What a novel idea, why didn't I think of that?
PackPA2015
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Our county is now working on getting school staff vaccinated regardless of age or medical history. My wife got her 1st dose of Moderna vaccine yesterday. Arm is significantly sore, but other than that she feels fine so far. They are gearing up to try to go back to 5 days a week in person learning. They are currently on the hybrid system - 2 days of in person, 2 remote with day in between for deep cleaning.
Daviewolf83
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PackPA2015 said:

Our county is now working on getting school staff vaccinated regardless of age or medical history. My wife got her 1st dose of Moderna vaccine yesterday. Arm is significantly sore, but other than that she feels fine so far. They are gearing up to try to go back to 5 days a week in person learning. They are currently on the hybrid system - 2 days of in person, 2 remote with day in between for deep cleaning.
If this step will get the kids back in the schools, I am in support of this effort. Hopefully your wife does just as well with regards to symptoms when she gets her second dose in a couple of weeks. I am sure she is ready to get back to in-person learning, since trying to educate remotely has been tough on the teachers as well as the students. The kids have really suffered through this entire pandemic and I am very concerned about the impacts to them, not only educationally, but also developmentally and emotionally.

Unfortunately, there are some school systems across the country (Fairfax, Virginia and Chicago to name a couple) where teachers are refusing to return to the classroom until students are vaccinated (regardless of teachers being vaccinated). Considering there are no current vaccines approved for use on children, it is a hollow demand. I hope most school systems reject these types of demands and find ways to open schools. The CDC says it can be done safely and there is significant scientific evidence it can be done safely. I have provided quotes in the past directly from an infectious disease physician saying that kids should and can be returning to in-person learning now.
PackPA2015
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I have not heard any rumblings of that in our county. Most are in support of 5 days of in person learning, just request it be done as safely as possible.

I think the risk will be significantly low with most staff vaccinated, children being low risk already, AND out of RSV/influenza seasons.
packgrad
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PackPA2015 said:

I have not heard any rumblings of that in our county. Most are in support of 5 days of in person learning, just request it be done as safely as possible.

I think the risk will be significantly low with most staff vaccinated, children being low risk already, AND out of RSV/influenza seasons.


My wife is a teacher as well and has been operating under the same schedule. The "as safely as possible" has wide ranging expectations that I find are quite unreasonable in many instances. One of those being, like Davie mentioned, wanting students vaccinated. I've heard the "as safely as possible" mantra many times and to me it's begun to ring quite hollow. I'm finding more teachers are enjoying their time away from school and are using this as a crutch, in my limited situation.
PackPA2015
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packgrad said:

PackPA2015 said:

I have not heard any rumblings of that in our county. Most are in support of 5 days of in person learning, just request it be done as safely as possible.

I think the risk will be significantly low with most staff vaccinated, children being low risk already, AND out of RSV/influenza seasons.


My wife is a teacher as well and has been operating under the same schedule. The "as safely as possible" has wide ranging expectations that I find are quite unreasonable in many instances. One of those being, like Davie mentioned, wanting students vaccinated. I've heard the "as safely as possible" mantra many times and to me it's begun to ring quite hollow. I'm finding more teachers are enjoying their time away from school and are using this as a crutch, in my limited situation.
Of course, with anything, it can be abused. There are very specific situations that we worry about - teachers with cancer on chemo, folks with autoimmune diseases on immunosuppressants, etc. I think the majority are not trying to abuse the system. I think if we focus on vaccinating staff, continue social distancing and mask wearing practices for some amount of time, the risk is acceptable for most.
packgrad
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PackPA2015 said:

packgrad said:

PackPA2015 said:

I have not heard any rumblings of that in our county. Most are in support of 5 days of in person learning, just request it be done as safely as possible.

I think the risk will be significantly low with most staff vaccinated, children being low risk already, AND out of RSV/influenza seasons.


My wife is a teacher as well and has been operating under the same schedule. The "as safely as possible" has wide ranging expectations that I find are quite unreasonable in many instances. One of those being, like Davie mentioned, wanting students vaccinated. I've heard the "as safely as possible" mantra many times and to me it's begun to ring quite hollow. I'm finding more teachers are enjoying their time away from school and are using this as a crutch, in my limited situation.
Of course, with anything, it can be abused. There are very specific situations that we worry about - teachers with cancer on chemo, folks with autoimmune diseases on immunosuppressants, etc. I think the majority are not trying to abuse the system. I think if we focus on vaccinating staff, continue social distancing and mask wearing practices for some amount of time, the risk is acceptable for most.


Social distancing is not a reasonable request for 99% of schools.
PackPA2015
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I am going to disagree with that. I think it is not likely to occur 100% of the time at 100% of locations. However, there are creative ways to accomplish this at most points during the day with most activities. The more you limit the physical interaction, the less the risk is.

Teachers already use small group learning styles in a variety of ways to break up the monotony of listening to lecture-style teaching. It would be a little bit of this on a larger scale.

I have spoken with many, many of our local teachers and they all say how the kids are battling this adversity much easier than adults. I have added this study that was performed more to battle seasonal flu, but practices can still apply to our situation. Will it take creativity and hard work? Yes, but our teachers and staff can do it. They have shown so much courage and adaptability already.

I just don't think releasing the kids back to 5 days per week without some attempt at social distancing is likely not the best idea.

Social Distancing in Schools Study
wilmwolf
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If the teachers are primarily getting covid at home or from each other, as has previously been indicated in studies in this thread, I'm not sure why socially distancing the children would be a top priority. I'm not aware that children contracting or spreading to each other has been a major problem. If teachers are vaccinated, there really shouldn't be any roadblock to returning kids to full time. Understanding there are some unique situations out there, but it's much easier to accommodate a few kids or teachers that have issues individually than it is to keep the whole school system jumping through the hoops they are now.
Just a guy on the sunshine squad.
packgrad
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PackPA2015 said:

I am going to disagree with that. I think it is not likely to occur 100% of the time at 100% of locations. However, there are creative ways to accomplish this at most points during the day with most activities. The more you limit the physical interaction, the less the risk is.

Teachers already use small group learning styles in a variety of ways to break up the monotony of listening to lecture-style teaching. It would be a little bit of this on a larger scale.

I have spoken with many, many of our local teachers and they all say how the kids are battling this adversity much easier than adults. I have added this study that was performed more to battle seasonal flu, but practices can still apply to our situation. Will it take creativity and hard work? Yes, but our teachers and staff can do it. They have shown so much courage and adaptability already.

I just don't think releasing the kids back to 5 days per week without some attempt at social distancing is likely not the best idea.

Social Distancing in Schools Study


Again, I disagree. I've also talked to several teachers, not many many but several, and they don't see it as a realistic situation. How big are your schools? There simply isn't the space to do it in most schools. Class sizes trying to space students 6' apart with 20-35 students in each class. 6' apart when changing classes.

And what risk are you trying to minimize here? The students aren't passing it around to each other, and are not passing it to the teachers. If you want to require staff to social distance that's fine. It's not remotely reasonable to do so with the kids in most schools in my area, and will 100% not be enforceable for any significant amount of time.

I think in many school systems the students are not handling the adversity well. Absence rate are terrible for minority students in most school systems and has increased substantially.

Daviewolf83
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I saw some speculation several months ago that NY was undercounting deaths from LTC facilities. At the time, it was reported that they were not counting a death as a nursing home death if the nursing home patient did not die in the nursing home. The NY Times has followed up on this and says the undercounting could be as much as 50% higher than what Governor Cuomo has been saying.

You can read the full story from the NY Times at the following link:

NY Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says
wilmwolf
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I'm so not shocked by this.
Just a guy on the sunshine squad.
statefan91
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Daviewolf83 said:

I saw some speculation several months ago that NY was undercounting deaths from LTC facilities. At the time, it was reported that they were not counting a death as a nursing home death if the nursing home patient did not die in the nursing home. The NY Times has followed up on this and says the undercounting could be as much as 50% higher than what Governor Cuomo has been saying.

You can read the full story from the NY Times at the following link:

NY Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says
Cuomo has been a disastrous leader during COVID. His combativeness against Feds and judgement of other States looks ridiculous at this point. The fact that he put out a book on leadership during a pandemic that is still going on is reason enough he should be recalled (is that a thing in NY?).
PackPA2015
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I think you are thinking of this as a more strict guideline than recommendation. What I am suggesting is not necessarily 'keep children 6' apart at all times', it would be more to keep them spaced out while in desks, limiting large, close gatherings, working in smaller groups, etc. I agree it is not possible to fully social distance everyone in the building 6' apart at all times. That is not what I am suggesting.

I guess it is a more loose interpretation of social distancing.

We know the risk increases with increasing age. I think this will be paramount in getting high schoolers back to in person learning. We have seen children in our school system pass it to staff and vice-versa even with current measures in place. Has it been a statistically significant portion? Likely not, but it is there. We are trying to limit those specific instances if we can.

Newer studies have shown a slight increase in children contracting the virus AND spreading it to others. This link is showing increasing numbers of COVID cases in children. Note the mortality is miniscule at best, which is still very encouraging, but if we pass the virus around in schools, you put a lot of adults at risk.

American Academy of Pediatrics
packgrad
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statefan91 said:

Daviewolf83 said:

I saw some speculation several months ago that NY was undercounting deaths from LTC facilities. At the time, it was reported that they were not counting a death as a nursing home death if the nursing home patient did not die in the nursing home. The NY Times has followed up on this and says the undercounting could be as much as 50% higher than what Governor Cuomo has been saying.

You can read the full story from the NY Times at the following link:

NY Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says
Cuomo has been a disastrous leader during COVID. His combativeness against Feds and judgement of other States looks ridiculous at this point. The fact that he put out a book on leadership during a pandemic that is still going on is reason enough he should be recalled (is that a thing in NY?).


Agreed. My sister and her husband, that both live in NY, love him though. Blows my mind.
packgrad
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To me, it's nothing but virtue signaling. Require the staff to social distance. The students do not need to though. It would be more science based to require students to do this for the flu, not the coronavirus.
Daviewolf83
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packgrad said:

statefan91 said:

Daviewolf83 said:

I saw some speculation several months ago that NY was undercounting deaths from LTC facilities. At the time, it was reported that they were not counting a death as a nursing home death if the nursing home patient did not die in the nursing home. The NY Times has followed up on this and says the undercounting could be as much as 50% higher than what Governor Cuomo has been saying.

You can read the full story from the NY Times at the following link:

NY Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says
Cuomo has been a disastrous leader during COVID. His combativeness against Feds and judgement of other States looks ridiculous at this point. The fact that he put out a book on leadership during a pandemic that is still going on is reason enough he should be recalled (is that a thing in NY?).


Agreed. My sister and her husband, that both live in NY, love him though. Blows my mind.
My son has a teammate whose grandmother contracted Covid in a nursing home, after Covid infected patients were returned to the nursing home. Her daughter (my son's teammate's mom) was able to get her out of the nursing home, but she was already infected and died a week later of Covid. Let's just say that she has a 180 degree opinion of Gov. Cuomo from your sister and her husband.
AlleyPack
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A classroom that is 20' x 30' can only seat (approximately) 13 students when they are six feet apart.

So unless/until the governor changes his rules about middle schools and high schools (and the distance that must be maintained in classrooms), school simply can't go back full-time.

This isn't a teacher/county decision, it's a "governor's rules" type of decision.
Here in N.C., at least.
Daviewolf83
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statefan91 said:

Daviewolf83 said:

I saw some speculation several months ago that NY was undercounting deaths from LTC facilities. At the time, it was reported that they were not counting a death as a nursing home death if the nursing home patient did not die in the nursing home. The NY Times has followed up on this and says the undercounting could be as much as 50% higher than what Governor Cuomo has been saying.

You can read the full story from the NY Times at the following link:

NY Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says
Cuomo has been a disastrous leader during COVID. His combativeness against Feds and judgement of other States looks ridiculous at this point. The fact that he put out a book on leadership during a pandemic that is still going on is reason enough he should be recalled (is that a thing in NY?).
But, he wrote a book about how great he did and he won an Emmy. I wonder if this latest news will keep him from winning an Oscar?
packofwolves
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https://nypost.com/2021/01/28/ny-nursing-home-covid-deaths-50-higher-than-stated-ag-probe/

Cuomo - what you say now?
PackPA2015
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I don't think lowering risk is virtue signaling when there is a demonstrable risk there. Is the risk low with K-5 students in particular? Yes, but there is still a risk that is science-based. Why not lower the risk as much as possible to try to keep everyone as safe as possible?

I will give you an example. We have a local religious-affiliated private school that operates on their own rules. During the early portion of the school year, they decided masks and social distancing would not be required. Within 1 month, they had three-fourths of their staff and half of their students infected or out with similar symptoms. Now, obviously, it is difficult to say would masks help more or would social distancing have helped more? But, why not do both and try to make school as safe as possible?

It is all about lowering risk as much as we can. I think we owe that to our teachers and students.

packgrad
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What school is this? I'd be interested in reading the news articles about it.
packgrad
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There is a demonstrable risk of flu too and it's more deadly to children. It is absolutely virtue signaling to mandate these requirements on schools for a virus that is less deadly than the flu.
hokiewolf
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AlleyPack said:

A classroom that is 20' x 30' can only seat (approximately) 13 students when they are six feet apart.

So unless/until the governor changes his rules about middle schools and high schools (and the distance that must be maintained in classrooms), school simply can't go back full-time.

This isn't a teacher/county decision, it's a "governor's rules" type of decision.
Here in N.C., at least.

If the new COVID-19 economic relief bill passes with $82 billion for schools, they better damn well open since they typically only spend about $40 billion a year sending to states for schools
PackPA2015
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But, not less deadly to the adults who will be at risk, because of the children. Now, vaccinations should in theory help, but to me any chance you can get to lower risk is beneficial. I think we may have to agree to disagree on this and that is okay.

Trinity Christian is the school.
packgrad
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PackPA2015 said:

But, not less deadly to the adults who will be at risk, because of the children. Now, vaccinations should in theory help, but to me any chance you can get to lower risk is beneficial. I think we may have to agree to disagree on this and that is okay.

Trinity Christian is the school.


Which gets back to a reasonable request IMO. The adults will be vaccinated. There is almost a zero percent chance students will pass the virus on to teachers, when they weren't vaccinated. Now that they will all be vaccinated, you get even closer to zero if that's even possible. Less a signed affidavit from Joe Biden guaranteeing they won't get the virus, how much safer can we make the schools?

After a very brief search I couldn't find anything on the school outbreak you mentioned.
PackPA2015
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There will be staff that refuse to be vaccinated. The risk is not zero with transmission to adults. Locally at least, we have seen it increase. I know that there are creative ways to promote social distancing, so not a heavy request. Again, we can agree to disagree on this and that is fine. Coming from a healthcare perspective having to take care of these cases, I like to err on the safe side, but I understand not everyone will think as I do. Here is a really good article that discusses the nuances of reopening schools.

School Studies

Let's just say Trinity likes to stay out of the news. They had their headmaster arrested 1-2 years ago for embezzlement and went through lengthy endeavors to hush that up.
AlleyPack
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hokiewolf said:

AlleyPack said:

A classroom that is 20' x 30' can only seat (approximately) 13 students when they are six feet apart.

So unless/until the governor changes his rules about middle schools and high schools (and the distance that must be maintained in classrooms), school simply can't go back full-time.

This isn't a teacher/county decision, it's a "governor's rules" type of decision.
Here in N.C., at least.

If the new COVID-19 economic relief bill passes with $82 billion for schools, they better damn well open since they typically only spend about $40 billion a year sending to states for schools

Look, I get that, and I'm not trying to make any sort of political point.

All I'm saying is that as long as the "six feet of distance" mandate is kept for middle/high schools, that there simply are not big enough classrooms, and/or enough staff to cut the class enrollments in half, to get all the students back into (most of) the buildings around the state.

Again -- if the "six feet" mandate is dropped then all the schools can open back up. It's as simple as that.
(and that's based on physical measurements -- not politics)
Daviewolf83
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As a follow-up to a post I made a couple of days ago, Germany is limiting the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on people over the age of 64, due to lack of data about its efficacy. When the news broke several days ago, AstraZeneca and its lead officials went into damage control mode, trying to paint the vaccine in a better light and claiming the reports in the media were wrong.

Apparently, the reports were accurate and AstraZeneca's vaccine will not provide the full relief to Germany, as they try to ramp up vaccinations. It will be interesting to see the results for the US trial, when data is made available in late February (current expectation on timing).
Mormad
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PackPA2015 said:

There will be staff that refuse to be vaccinated. The risk is not zero with transmission to adults. Locally at least, we have seen it increase. I know that there are creative ways to promote social distancing, so not a heavy request. Again, we can agree to disagree on this and that is fine. Coming from a healthcare perspective having to take care of these cases, I like to err on the safe side, but I understand not everyone will think as I do. Here is a really good article that discusses the nuances of reopening schools.

School Studies

Let's just say Trinity likes to stay out of the news. They had their headmaster arrested 1-2 years ago for embezzlement and went through lengthy endeavors to hush that up.


Haha, yeah, you ain't gonna find squat about covid outbreaks at the private schools if at all possible. I know two local privates that have recently quarantined entire grades for student positives or shut down portions of the school for staff positives, but you won't find it on the internet. I do feel the privates have better resources to manage this whole covid crap better than the publics. My wife's on the board of a private here, and they work tirelessly to keep these kids and staff in school and safe. Air systems, outdoor "classrooms" with space heaters, social distancing, masking, alternative scheduling, and meeting after meeting after meeting just to name a few. So far so good, tho some of their sanity may be at risk fo sho.
packgrad
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PackPA2015 said:

There will be staff that refuse to be vaccinated. The risk is not zero with transmission to adults. Locally at least, we have seen it increase. I know that there are creative ways to promote social distancing, so not a heavy request. Again, we can agree to disagree on this and that is fine. Coming from a healthcare perspective having to take care of these cases, I like to err on the safe side, but I understand not everyone will think as I do. Here is a really good article that discusses the nuances of reopening schools.

School Studies

Let's just say Trinity likes to stay out of the news. They had their headmaster arrested 1-2 years ago for embezzlement and went through lengthy endeavors to hush that up.


You don't make the rules for everyone based on the exceptions to the rule. Those that choose not to get vaccinated can either work knowing their extremely minuscule chance of contacting the virus from a student is slightly more than those who did get the vaccine, or they can stay home using vacation/sick time/no pay.

What has your percentage increase student to teacher or child to adult been?

We can agree to disagree, and I agree that's fine. I come from a production perspective where risk is measured, calculated, and accounted for. Imagine if we determined whether electricians could work based on a less than 1% chance they could get shocked. Or painters on a less than 1% chance they could fall from a ladder. Work would never get done on any project.

My dad instilled in me when I was young to try for perfection, but don't let the perfect get in the way of the good. Teachers want a perfect scenario. That ain't happening.
PackPA2015
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But electricians and painters perform safety measures so they do not get shocked or fall off a ladder. That's all I am saying. If you know there is something that can lower your risk, even if risk is miniscule, then why wouldn't you do it?

Again, I'm not saying keep everyone 6' apart at all times. I know that cannot happen due to physical constraints, but there are many ways throughout the day that you can lower the risk of transmission. It is irresponsible to not try everything you can to limit risk.
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