I wish we didn't have to be wearing masks. Is it safe not wearing them?
It’s guaranteed exposure, either way, in a typically sized therapists office, for a typical length session. Cov19 is like TB, it can exist outside of a host for a very long time. So all it takes is 1 person who’s positive breathing hundreds of billions of microdroplets into the air over the course of an hour, to infect everyone who comes into that room for the next 5 days or so.
To conceptualize airborn transmission? How long do you have to be in the same space with someone to smell the perfume they’re wearing under their clothes? Because if you can smell their perfume under their clothes; You’re breathing the air they’ve exhaled, under their mask. The smaller the space, the more concentrated the exposure, the faster it happens.
- In an elevator, that’s seconds.
- In a small room, minutes.
- In a large room, tens of minutes.
- In a huge & well ventilated or open aired space, atrium/warehouse/box store/outside you’ll never smell it, unless you get very close to them (within about 3 feet... social distancing? Isn’t designed for prolonged exposure in confined spaces. It’s designed for minimal contact in large spaces).
Unlike perfume, whose volatile oils dissipate quite quickly? So only people who come into that small space over the next few hours can smell it? Cov19 keeps going strong for up to 5 days. Most microdroplets are going to settle in 2 days or so, but they’re settling on floors, furnishings, and... the people in the room.
So if even one client is shedding virus in a typically sized therapist’s office? The therapist and everyone they see after that client, for the next week, is going to be exposed. The people immediately after that client are going to get the heaviest viral load, of course, and the people at the end of the week the least. By then though, the therapist themselves will be shedding virus.... keeping the viral load in the air at its heaviest for at least a solid week, and possibly two, before they show their first symptom.
Cov19 isn’t just airborn, it also clings to surfaces, via fomites. Easy to envision that one, just imagine a person sprays themselves down with a hose right outside the building, then sloshes in and sits down, soaking the furniture for the next hour. Everyone who follow is going to be sitting in a “puddle” of virus.
But not any more of an issue than with MDs.
Except that
- Medical offices are both designed to be sanitized between each patient; with non-porous surfaces / furnishings, and a massive positive flow venting systems that makes most of them the next best thing to being outside, or in a lab... even during normal times. And during epidemics, their level of “universal precautions” are significantly upped from universal to specific precautions directly targeting that infection in play.
- Medical personel are trained & experienced with limiting exposure and transmission via both universal precautions, and dozens of different kinds of specific precautions (the rules aren’t confusing, they’re just what one does, as a matter of course)
- Medical appointments are comparatively SHORT. Whilst thay means a whole helluva lot more people are in that room, compared to a therapist’s office? 25-50 over the course of a day... Instead of 5-10? The room is also
being cleaned 25-50 times a day. Before/After every patient. Specific Precautions, with Cov19 also mean the air is being completely cycled during that process.
LOL... Instead of “A Tale of Two Cities”? It’s more like “A Tale of Two Small Rooms“! :roflmao:
It was soaked in virus, it was sterilized... it was designed for feeling safe, it was designed to be safe...
