Covid 19 worries
Today is Tuesday, March 10, 2020. I have been staying at home for the last week or so to avoid contracting the Covid 19 virus. I have been reading the news, and have seen pictures of empty subway trains during San Francisco rush hour. I figured that would mean people would not be out shopping either. I was wrong. I went to Home Depot to return some items I don’t need, and the store seemed just as busy as any other Tuesday. Then I went to Target to get some hand soap. The store was perhaps a bit slower than normal, maybe 80% of normal. The store had no liquid hand soap for sale, and no hand sanitizer. Most of the bar soap was sold out too. Then I went to Safeway, and the store was just as busy as normal. They had two large bottles of liquid hand soap, but only two, and I bought them, as I am washing may hands so many times per day that I will go through these in the next two months.
I saw hundreds of people during this afternoon of shopping, and nobody had on a mask, and nobody was trying to keep a safe distance from anyone else that I could see. I never saw anyone change their walking path to stay six feet away from someone approaching.
I wore my N100 welding fume mask and rubber gloves, and changed my shoes when I got home and washed my hands for more than twenty seconds. I don’t understand the appeal of paper N95 masks, which currently sell for a fortune. I think non-disposable N100 masks with a rubber face seal should be the minimum people consider given the consequences. I know the current guidelines call for nobody other than health care workers to wear any mask, but I am suspicious this advice is due to an insufficient number of masks available, not that N95 or N100 masks convey no protection. I wore my mask for hours when I learned to weld, so I got used to it, and fortunately I bought a second mask back then, so I am now wearing a brand new mask that does not have any welding fume odor.
There are thirteen confirmed cases of Covid 19 in San Francisco, but almost nobody can get tested, so there are probably far more cases that are not yet diagnosed. I will happily wear my N100 mask when not at home for the foreseeable future. I worry San Francisco residents by the hundreds or even thousands will soon come down with Covid 19 illness, and that all this mask-free activity will prove to be deadly. Just yesterday Italy ‘locked down’ the entire country and suspended all debt payments, including mortgage payments. I can imagine San Francisco locked down by the end of this month or April, 2020 at the latest.
