Oh people. Where do I start….?

How do you stop a virus?

By limiting the ways it can spread until a viable treatment is developed.

First, the quarantine. If everyone stayed inside at all times the outside world would still come in. We would all have to live in sterile bubbles for the quarantine to be 100% effective. And that’s just impossible. We have to leave the house. We are just being asked to do it as seldom as possible.

And when we do, we wear a mask. Preferably an N95 mask.

N95 masks are called that because they have a 95% effectiveness. That’s 5% left for you math fans. That is assuming everyone uses a mask, that they are all N95, and that they are wearing the mask correctly. I just have to look out my window to see that isn’t happening.

And most people are a bit confused about how the masks work. They don’t prevent someone from inhaling the virus. They prevent them from exhaling it.

Follow me here…you see me walking down the street toward you.

Have I tested positive? Am I one of those people who have the virus but have no symptoms? Have I been exposed to the virus but I’m still in that roughly two week period where I can transmit it but have no symptoms?

You don’t know. And I don’t know that about you. Some elements of it I might not be aware of. Same for you.

I’m not wearing a mask for me. I’m wearing it for you. Because I know that, with one barely consequential exception, the entire world is populated with people who aren’t me. That there is something larger than my wants. That there is something beyond the tip of my own nose worth caring about.

There is so much we still don’t know. Like how long the virus lives on surfaces. SARS can remain active on plastic and stainless steel for 3 to 7 days.

So, six feet. Because if you and I are out on the street, odds are good both of us have touched stuff. And it is an airborne virus.

There’s more, but this is a lot of words. So much to read and think about.

It’s so much easier when the entire complex issue can be distilled into less than 30 words. With a picture.

Yeah. Better get your information that way.