Very interesting article...

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/study-highlights-ease-spread-covid-19-viruses

It sounds like best practices are rapidly changing, and there are few things that really help much besides social isolation. Perhaps most important for now is to minimize travel and exposure to others who have traveled. And anyone at risk should be even more cautious.

It sounds likely that many of us will catch this over the next few months, and the risk is lower now, but will grow very rapidly over the next few weeks. There will be more people who are contagious but don't know it, and eventually the medical services may be stressed.

I would guess public transportation is more risky than small social events like ringing. But eventually someone will be infected on the T and bring it to ringing.

Personally, I'm not too worried about myself, but I'm trying to figure out whether to stay in isolation so I don't bring it home, or assume I will bring it home, and try instead to avoid transmitting it to Cathy.

I guess we will learn a LOT more in the next few weeks.

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:11 PM Dale Winter <moikney@gmail.com> wrote:

I think it's reasonable to let folks vote with their feet for now; Since
no-one in the group has particularly specialized information (AFAIK) there
seems no strong reason for any subset of us to recommend a course to any
other subset.

That said, I am very keen that no one feel pressured to show up to make up
numbers.

Once this discussion has run its course a bit I will also check in with
both churches and see if they have guidelines they need us to follow.

I do think Emily and I are expecting to stay away for the time being as we
both interact often enough with potentially vulnerable people that we're
uncomfortable with the risk of coming in. While I sincerely hope that Ken's
note on community spread not happening in Boston is correct I am not
confident that we are doing enough testing to be confident we'd notice it
if it happened.

Stay safe all,

Dale

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 11:02 AM Ken Olum <kdo@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:

> Hi, all. In my opinion it would be prudent to follow the CDC
> guidelines, but there is no need to go beyond them. As I understand
> them, these guidelines depend critically on whether or not there is
> community spread, meaning people who are turning up sick with no
> connection to any known case. In that case it is probably appropriate
> to cancel most events. Otherwise CDC recommends only ordinary
> precautions (handwashing etc.) At the moment, Massachusetts has
> community spread only in the Berkshires, so it seems that we can go on
> with our lives here at least for now.
>
> Ken
>
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