Thread by @KashPrime

Thankfully Covid hasn't touched my family yet. In the absence of any advice from the authorities, these are some tips on how you can minimize your exposure while living a life as close to normal as possible. I'll expand in more detail in this 🧵

The Omicron surge is ending, a huge portion of the population has fresh immunity from boosters or from getting infected. Many have gotten Long Covid via the infection route unfortunately. Hopefully immunity will stand up in the face of the BA.2 variant, but time will tell.

I have two children under 5 who are not eligible for vaccination, and those of us in a similar bind, like the immune compromised and elderly, are being left to fend for ourselves as our governments rush recklessly to remove protections.

1) Airborne spread awareness is at the core of our strategy - I wear N95s at work, and the family wears them in malls, shops, museums etc. Even after seeing hundreds of patients a month, many with Omicron, no one in the family has gotten sick.

2) Ventilation - each space I work at has sufficient air cleaners, from fresh air (in the hospital setting), through HEPA filters or from Corsi-Rosenthal boxes (in clinic settings). I avoid lingering in any poorly ventilated space, even with an N95 on. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi%E2%…

3) Rapid testing - I use these to protect more vulnerable family members. We test before visiting grandparents, who are themselves also careful. For a relative with a newborn, we wear masks when visiting to protect the baby.

4) School precautions - our elder child's preschool has upgraded ventilation (as many schools in Ontario do), teachers are vaccinated and wear masks. While the other children aren't required to mask, ours wears a KF94.

5) At home we have the privilege of having some help with child care. They wear an N95 mask at all times, are periodically rapid tested, and each floor of our home has enough HEPA filters to guarantee 6 air changes an hour. This saved us from getting Covid at least once already.

While our strategy is more geared to those with unvaccinated children, some will judge the risk to themselves and their families is less, and engage in activities that are higher risk for airborne transmission. While community rates are low, that's fine...

... but we need to maintain the safety of common community spaces with ventilation and masking. You can use rapid tests and cooling off time periods (to allow virus to incubate and show symptoms) before seeing people on the more vulnerable end of the spectrum.

I am incredibly fortunate to have the resources to get N95 masks, rapid tests, HEPA filters and many of the other tools and measures mentioned here. Many do not have a say in any of their work conditions, and are being forced to return to work in appalling conditions...

We are not safe until we are all safe. We need to keep pushing for universal access to
- Good ventilation at work and school
- Free access to higher quality masks
- Free access to rapid tests
- Paid sick time
Currently, any move to end mask mandates will be extremely harmful

Some great ideas on when masking itself could become less necessary, but without proper testing and monitoring we’ll never know in Ontario when we’re at that threshold of <10 cases per 100k

https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1495165503106543618

If you’re being forced to return to an unsafe environment, especially when WFH is still viable, I would:
- demand disability insurance. Long covid is a real risk, and may get you the 1st, 2nd, 3rd go with the virus
- document any lack of safety measures

Any other ideas?

This is a great idea, assess the quality of the ventilation at your workplace with a CO2 monitor. If it’s >700 ppm, then there has to be enough hepa filters sized to that space. This guide can help: docs.google.com/document/u/1/d…

https://twitter.com/PapyrusBrigade/status/1495155024007241736