Seattle Forrest

I was using the word slightly sarcastically because they're obviously very different. I could have made that more clear. Sorry for the confusion.

aclinjury

healthy people may not die, but they still may get permanent partial lung damage. Not what you want if as a cyclist!

woodcraft

Ah, I missed that...


For purposes of comparison, the 2009 swine flu pandemic is estimated by C.D.C. to have caused 60.8 million cases,

274,300 hospitalizations, and 12,500 deaths in the US, from April 2009 to April 2010, and is now a regularly circulating flu strain.

However, W.H.O. world estimates are relatively much higher, attempting to account for unreported deaths. (according to Wikipedia)

https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates_2009_h1n1.htm

Attilio

I am a physician and on the periphery of the forefront of this crisis. For the record we closed our office this week and will be staying home for the duration. The state just passed a law allowing us to keep taking care of patients through telemedicine and insurance even covers phone medicine for old people that don't have technology in this time of crisis. I live in the USA and have family in Italy. The news from there is pretty bad. Mostly its old people who die but more than a few 30, 40 and 50-somethings wind up on ventilators in the ICU or even die. One town's obituary list this weekend which is normally 1 page in the local newspaper is 11 pages long.

No it's not the bubonic plague and never will be. But the variability and severity of symptoms is huge, from the most common presentation of all to be nothing (meaning high chance of contagion because people are off their guard) to death. Huge randomness there. The only way to protect yourself is to be around only people you normally live with. So if you live with a spouse and kids or maybe room-mates or even you have your parents or in laws living in the in-law apartment next to you, then that's who you should be frequenting and only those people.

Rural or non urban walks, hikes or bike rides are fine. So are forests and trails as long as you're away from anyone you don't live with. Urban people not so much, you should be in total lockdown. Don't step or be in places where a lot of people are stepping. This thing can live up to 9 days on surfaces. Consider yourself under siege. Best thing to do is NOTHING, repeat, do NOTHING, as in stay home, stay away from people, and out of harm's way.

I can't post URL's yet but look up "

Urgent Messages from Italians in Coronavirus Quarantine"

MinnMan

Today's new federal guideline, coming from the Whitehouse, is not to congregate in groups larger than 10.

At the moment, I am hoping I can have a spring full of long solo rides, on gravel and on pavement, or maybe with a friend or two. With hydration packs, no rest stops at gas stations or coffee shops are needed.

If we end up in a situation where we're not allowed to ride solo outside, as seems to be the case now in Spain or Italy, I am going to be miserable.

MinnMan

This is terrifying. For those of us not fortunate enough to live in rural areas, it sounds as though bicycle tires and bicycle shoes are also potential vectors into our houses? Do you have further reading to suggest about this?

Attilio

It is absolutely terrifying. Thankfully I live in rural suburbs; I don't know what I would do if I lived in a city like most Italians.

Most of the stuff I have either friends or family sent me and it's on my phone on Whatsapp but its all in Italian. This is not a good moment but better to shutter up. Suggestions include using only one pair of shoes to go out of the house and leaving them at the entrance, not going to the entrance for any other reason than to food shop, or bare essentials, food shopping online and going as far as to disinfect all items you buy.

Trust me I am conspiracy realist #1 , I disbelieve everything and in my early 40's have lived through enough of this 9-11 Anthrax, SARS, Swine Flu and all the other crying wolf baloney about various infections that for months I felt it was overblown like every other such "crisis". I never read the headlines and get all the news I need from the weather report as to me in short it's all the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and their stupid central banks trying to engineer crises and control everyone. Lies, I pay attention to nothing. Then it happened in Italy. At this point I think one should not attribute to malice what can be attributed to misunderstanding, laziness and incompetence as these three area lot more common.

It's not plague levels that half the population will die but it's bad and the worst thing about it is the huge variability from individual to individual in how this presents, in many people little to nothing, but in more than a few, a lot more than a few, like 10-15x more than the influenza it hits with catastrophic levels. Mostly old and sick people, but not always. Regard leaving the house like playing Russian roulette. If you don't have it already and don't know. I might. You might. The person reading this might. Who knows? At this point the only course of action is not to get tested as it's useless, but for every person to behave like they already have it.

Easy for me to say because I live in the country but I cannot stress it enough: STAY HOME.

taco2ewsday

My local club just cancelled all group rides and events until further notice. I understand but :-(

Seattle Forrest

I don't see people licking the sidewalk. I love in a residential district, there's nothing but houses and apartments (no destinations) and the sidewalls are complete empty; in my case it seems pretty safe, it's hard to see a realistic way to get it from walking. It won't travel through my shoes into my feet, I don't rub the bottoms of my shoes. Your local amount of risk night be different.

The SF Bay has almost 7 million people on lockdown, but they're allowed to go for walks and runs.

WhyFi

Yeah, I'mma take advice with a grain of salt when it's given anonymously online from someone that claims not to be a conspiracy theorist and then goes on to outline how everything is lies created by a select few to manipulate worldwide domination.

MinnMan

Good point. I'm sure they don't sneeze or cough while walking on the sidewalk and if they do, the droplets they disperse just float up to heaven. And surely the don't drip snot on the sidewalk either. Or spit. Or blow their nose before they put on their shoes.

Seattle Forrest

@MinnMan

It's not that nobody ever sneezes outside of their house, but:

1. It's about degree of risk, acceptable or unacceptable. Maybe there's 1 sneeze booger for every 10 miles of sidewalk. I don't know, but I do know every square inch of sidewalk isn't coated in death. At this point, I think the risk of getting it from walking around my neighborhood is acceptably low.
2. There's no one else out walking around to sneeze onto the sidewalk!
3. The virus can live up to X days on a surface, but that's in perfect (for the virus) conditions. On a sidewalk, in the sun and breeze? Maybe hours? I hope.
4. How is it going to get from the bottoms of my shoes (which, on a microscopic virus-sized level, wear down every step) into my blood?

Anyway, that's my thinking, everyone has to make up their own mind on this. If I'm missing something I'm open to changing my mind, I might feel differently in a week.

To be honest, I'm starting to feel like grocery stores aren't really the best places to be anymore. I'm in Seattle and it's been spreading here since January, we're ramping our testing up and we're finding 6.5% positive in the community at large. Everybody's touching handles to the freezer doors etc, you're either talking to a cashier who's talked to 100 other people that day, or doing the self checkout with a screen 200 other people have used lately. I don't have enough freezer space for milk. If you get boxed or canned food, you haven't washed your hands yet when you picked it up, do we need to sterilize the groceries we bring home? But just walking in an urban place, I think that's below the threshold of what I need to worry about right now.

MinnMan

Some reasonable points here. But the question is not whether to go outside, really. It's how to think about what you are bringing in your house, on the bottom of your shoes or on your bicycle tires. After reading that post, I did some of my own reading and indeed, restricting shoes indoors is one of the recommendations. We did a little thinking and we've set up some chairs, mats, and plastic holding bins by our garage door so that the shoes don't come in the house. A reasonable accommodation, don't you think?

As to thinking about "every square inch", etc., just consider that if your bicycle tire has a contact patch of 1 cm, then your tires cover 10 square meters for every km you ride - that's 170 square feet for every mile you ride. My bikes live in my finished basement and are not wholly separate from our living space. It's something to think about and to be aware of, no?

I wear disposable gloves to the grocery store. And we are implementing plans going forward to make sure that we go shopping very infrequently. The idea is that apart from food shopping and bicycle rides, I am not leaving my house for the foreseeable future..

Zaskar

But what about when you get home - are disinfecting every item you bought... the items that have been handled by several people before your gloved hands grabbed them? Literally just had this discussion at home today. I mean, we could... should be doing that. Or, maybe "quarantine" the groceries for 72 hours in the garage... Yeah, I know.

mcours2006

Anyhoo, I went on a trail ride with a couple of my buddies, but now in hindsight probably shouldn't have. We didn't stop at any cafes. We bought individually packaged snacks. We didn't draft. But still, solo rides for me from now on.

WhyFi

No, not really.

Bikerider007

Carbonfiberboy 

Here's how to think about reducing infection risk, IMO . . .

What's the path for the virus to get into your body? Basically, through your facial orifices. That's what you need to protect. As they say, don't touch your face within the T formed by eyes, nose, and mouth, thus eliminating the hand-to-face path. Once you eliminate that you see that it really doesn't matter what you touch as long as you wash or sanitize your hands before touching your food or your face.

So put a bottle of sanitizer in your car and put it in your pocket when you leave the car. Sanitize before touching the car door handle when you return. After you return home, clean the door handles again. Once a day, clean surfaces and door and cabinet hardware with alcohol. Wash your hands before touching food, before brushing your teeth, all that sort of thing.

Don't worry about what's on the bottoms of your shoes or on your bike, etc. The virus likes wet, doesn't like dry. So keep everything you want to be safe, dry, especially your hands.

All that said, I wash or sanitize my hands after looking at my mail, after opening a package, unpacking groceries, IOW touching stuff that is new to my house. We can't disinfect everything, so just take care of your hands and face.

Thinking about this, we should realize that this social distancing and cleaning will not prevent us from eventually becoming infected. This is supposed to "flatten the curve" so that the population gets sick at a slower rate and doesn't massively overwhelm the health care system. Most of us probably will get sick, just later, now now, we hope.

Carbonfiberboy 

Many of us have noticed that hand sanitizer is currently unavailable from anywhere. Fortunately, the WHO has posted a recipe for making our own. The recipe is here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK144054/

You'll notice that the main ingredient is alcohol, preferably 96% or so. I would prefer to be using WHO recommended sanitizer than none. I kinda think they know what they are doing. I couldn't get the pure stuff when I made mine, so I used 70%, which I'm sure is just fine.

On the bummer side, last time I checked both alcohol and hydrogen peroxide were also unavailable. Lotta people saw that post. Still it seems reasonable to expect that those items will show up sooner on Amazon then will Purell. $1/pint is also nice.

HTupolev

The thing about 70% isopropyl is that it's already at a target concentration intended for antiseptic use, so diluting it further can make it less effective. The article you linked is targeting an isopropyl concentration of 75%, which is obviously impossible when starting with a 70% solution. In your case I definitely wouldn't top off the result with water since the isopropyl already has too much water in it for the mixture.

The main point that AdkMtnMonster is making is not to use denatured alcohol, which is probably good advice: some of the commonly-used toxic additives, like methanol, can be absorbed through the skin.

MinnMan

My local club finally made its statement. All club rides canceled of course. Also this

"We do not support or endorse any club, team, group, or social rides during this time period. We do encourage you all to continue to get out and ride solo or ride with others from your immediate household."

And so it shall be. I'm going to miss group riding. I do not expect it will come back into my life until the early fall at the soonest. I enjoy riding solo, but there's no way I can find the motivation to ride as long and as hard, week after week, as I do with a mixture of club and solo rides. I will stay in OK shape, but not be in top form. And I will miss the friendships and spirit of it all.

Tom L

my local club just did the same thing , all group rides cancelled

njkayaker

"Everybody" is worried that they will catch it and die.Those people are missing the goal of limiting the spread of it.

Seattle Forrest

This came across my feed this morning.

Is it safe to hike, run, or bike outdoors right now?According to the Los Angeles Times, medical experts say “individuals should take part in any outdoor activity they feel healthy enough to do while practicing social distancing recommendations. Of course, if you’re feeling sick and have a cough, don’t go out and do any activity.”

https://www.nynjtc.org/news/how-hike...hy-responsibly

MinnMan

I've seen this in various forms and I take some solace in it. In some of the European countries, riding outside alone is now banned. I saw some things that suggested that this was also now true in the Bay Area, but elsewhere (for example, this, which seems authoritative), it seems that solo outdoor exercise is exempt from shelter-in-place.