Playing Fair and Being Kind

CALCULATED RISK or IMPOSSIBILITY?

I am flabbergasted. Has no one even spoken up to challenge the concept of eating food with a mask on? Perhaps everyone, and I mean “EVERYONE!”, is ignoring the mastodon in the room. Communities are planning to open up restaurants during this phasing out exercise of pandemic precautions. I can’t wrap my head around why it is deemed safe to sit outside in small groups and slurp and munch in company with other potentially infected humans.

We have been conditioned over the months, since very early March of 2020, to be suspicious of anyone within coughing distance. The Covid-19 is an airborne, lung infesting disease that is fatal to air breathers. Recent graphics published in medical and health-conscious publications have illustrated the mechanics of lung exhalations. The air from persons can travel upwards to a dozen feet with normal breathing. The graphics also illustrated other forms of exhalations; talking loudly, laughing, sneezing, coughing, and so forth. I have practiced this activity on my own, particularly when reading the latest article in the Boston Globe regarding “step two of phase two” of businesses that can reopen today. When I read the part about reopening restaurants I exclaimed, “Holy shit!”. People walking past my house heard it loud and clear. I can imagine the air in my lungs travelled through the cracks around windows and doors and even electric sockets out into the neighborhood. I’ll grant you that there is a difference between air waves and sound waves. The fact remains that the “holy shit” and the air it took to disturb the molecule disturbed and migrated through the air in my house, at least the room in which I expressed my shock.

Please don’t try to kid me about this reopening-during-a-pandemic news. I’ve been around for a few decades and I know about air movement and stagnation as well. The minds in charge of determining the safety of air spaces, in which Covid-19 lurks, have not fully grasped the mechanics of infected droplets in air. I like to think of the way cigarette smoke, farts, and perfumes act in space. The way molecules and droplets and chunks of colon tissue can hang in air for long periods of time would surprise you. The air from a person’s lungs is exactly using the same mechanics to travel. Heavier than air but just tiny enough to catch the breeze like a hat on a head in the wind. A poof of wind takes the chapeau for a ride, surprisingly far for such a clumsy object. Air movement is the way it works and air is the thing that enters our lungs past the face coverings improperly placed on our kissers.

All the strategies and cautions people have learned and been advised to use are just basics, basic maneuvers to resist, maybe avoid or slow down the deadly behaviors of air borne virus bits floating toward the space in front of your face. Under normal circumstances of benign, at-rest breathing one can avoid the attack of an infected molecule hanging close to the entrance to your lungs, you know, mouth, nose, hands even. But, under circumstances such as chomping, talking loudly, with mouth full, to overcome other loudmouths, laughing, touching, being socially adept, now these acts will certainly overwhelm your silly little safety strategies in nothing flat. This is what step two of phase two is made of. No increase in the porous defenses you have somewhat arranged as a life-saver. Step two of phase two is an assault with deadly contaminants flying at you with precision, and addressed to you as reward for being so gullible as to think the world is getting over the pandemic. Step two of phase two indeed.

See you on the gurney.

Gentle George
June 22, 2020