There is a meme going around Facebook with 25 points that are "just to clarify/confuse what we're supposed to do." I have always refused to engage in what I call "copy-paste-booking", however I'm going to address each of the 25 points in that original post without copying the original.
1. You can leave the house - nobody ever said you can't leave the house. All you are being asked to do is stay home as much as possible, and don't go to public places unnecessarily. Nobody is being locked in their homes.
2. Masks can be helpful, the experts have always said that masks will reduce the risk of you spreading the disease to someone else. The problem was that too many people don't really understand the real purpose of the masks is to protect others from you, not the other way around. Also, people panicked and started buying up the N95 medical grade masks that are needed for people treating sick patients. There were massive shortages that were literally putting healthcare workers (and you by extension) in danger. Eventually once the mask supply situation got clearer, and more data showed that masks are effective, they changed the recommendation to encourage people to wear them.
3. Non-essential stores are closed. The stores we need for everyday survival and comfort, and even many that are borderline necessary are open and operating with some restrictions and inconveniences. You may not agree in every situation about what is essential vs. non-essential, but when has everyone ever agreed about anything?
4. You should not go to the hospital for anything non-essential that can wait a little while, like elective or cosmetic surgery. The same applies to doctors visits. Obviously if you are very sick, particularly with symptoms that might be COVID-19, you should go to the hospital. But don't just show up unannounced and ask to be treated! Make an appointment, follow the procedures, and they will tell you what to do.
5. This virus is deadly ... and is scary. It kills by blocking the lungs from taking in oxygen - it literally suffocates people. But the actual effects of the disease are not what scares the medical experts, it's the way it is transmitted, and the fact that people who aren't sick and don't know they have the virus can spread it for days. That is why this virus is causing a global disaster worse than other similar diseases.
6. Gloves won't help if you don't know how and when to use them, but they do still help medical professionals who are trained exactly how and when to remove and dispose of them properly. They are not recommending that everyone use them because the average person won't handle them properly. The message has been consistent and clear that washing your hands is more effective than wearing gloves.
7. Again, stay home as much as possible, but get OUTSIDE and get exposure to nature for your own physical and mental health. You don't need to go to public places where you come into contact with a lot of people to do that.
8. There are shortages of groceries in the supermarket because the whole supply chain has been disrupted and people are panicking and hoarding. Nobody has ever denied this problem. But I haven't heard of anybody starving or going without critical supplies, not even toilet paper. Fortunately there are still enough decent people in the world willing to share these items with people who run out. The grocery stores need to catch up with the demand... and they will eventually.
9. The virus does effect children, and it has killed children, and children can spread it. That has never been in doubt.The risk to children seems to be lower than adults... but there is still a risk.
10. Some animals are affected, but there are very few cases. They might be carriers and spread the disease without having any symptoms, just like people. But it needs to be studied more before we can be sure.
11. You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you can also get sick without symptoms, have symptoms without being sick, or be contagious without having symptoms. This is my only verbatim copy from the original post - because it's accurate. This is how viruses work, and we've all known this, or should have known this for years.
12. In order not to get sick, you have to eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have on hand if you don't have the healthiest food available. Did you need anyone to tell you that you have to eat to survive, even if it's not the healthiest food available?
13. It's better to get some fresh air. If someone looks at you "very wrong" for getting fresh air, who cares? You can handle it... unless you're a snowflake. And if you are healthy and strong enough to walk, then you don't need to sit on that park bench and risk spreading the virus onto it. Keep that bench clean and safe, so that elderly people, pregnant women, and others who really do need that bench can use it with less risk.
14. You shouldn't go to retirement homes just to visit, because you risk bringing the disease to them and everyone around them. But you have to take care of the elderly and bring food and medication, so figure out a way to do that which minimizes the risk. It can be done.
15. If you are sick, you can't go out, but you can go to the pharmacy.... as a last resort if you have no other options. But if you can get someone to pick up your medications for you instead, do that!
16. You can get restaurant food delivered to the house, which may have been prepared by people who didn't wear masks or gloves. That's your call. If those people preparing and serving the food for you have minimized their contact with other people by staying home most of the time, then your risk is lowered. And you don't have to have your groceries decontaminated outside for 3 hours - that was just something some overly paranoid people were saying, but was never an official recommendation from the CDC or other official sources.
17. No, every disturbing article or disturbing interview does not start with "I don't want to trigger panic, but…" However, I have seen an awful lot of posts from people that start with "I do care about other people dying, but....." then they proceed to come up with some rationalization for why they shouldn't have to do any of the things that are intended to keep other people from dying.
18. You can't see your older mother or grandmother, but you can take a taxi and meet an older taxi driver.... if you absolutely have no other choice but to use a taxi to get somewhere for a critical necessity.
19. You can walk around with a friend or with your family if they don't live under the same roof, as long as you keep 6 feet apart or more and be cautious to keep social distance. Just don't meet all 150 of your friends and family one-by-one and make a chain of connections between them all!
20. You are safer if you maintain the appropriate social distance, but you should use your judgement about going out with friends or strangers even at social distance because it isn't a 100% guarantee of safety. Nothing ever is.
21. The virus remains active on different surfaces for hours, but it depends on the surface type, the air temperature and other environmental conditions. It is constantly being studied and we're learning more every day. This is totally normal with a newly discovered virus.
22. The virus stays in the air. We've known this all along. It isn't known yet whether it can turn "aerosol" which would mean that it could stay around a lot longer even after the moisture droplets descend to the ground. Again, we just need to keep studying it.
23. We count the number of deaths but we don't know how many people are infected because there isn't enough testing capacity (yet) for various reasons. Let's come back to those "various reasons" later... but the key point is that they had to ration the tests and only use them for people who demonstrated symptoms, which has complicated things quite a bit. The medical experts have said from the beginning that we need to test as many people as possible to find out how many have it so that we make better decisions based on facts.
24. We have no treatment. Period, full stop. There is no miracle cure. Even the drugs that are now being touted as treatments only seem to help a little. The very small scale studies that have been done only showed a small fraction of people getting better results when using these drugs ... in addition to other drugs and treatment methods. And yes, all drugs are risky if overused, but there are other dangers to rushing into using an existing drug that hasn't been proven to be effective at treating COVID-19. The risk is that the supply of that drug can run out, or the prices go up making it harder for people who needed that drug for other diseases to obtain it, putting their health at greater risk. So when certain people say "what do you have to lose?" - that is the answer.
25. Nobody said we should stay locked up until the virus disappears. We needed to do this because the virus was spreading too fast and if we did nothing we would have too many cases for our health system to handle, and then we'd have a total nightmare on our hands. This was explained, over and over and over and over, but some people seem to have still missed the key point about "flattening the curve". We needed to slow down the spread so that we can effectively treat people. The ultimate goal is to get to the point where we have collective immunity, either from a vaccine, or by actually exposing people to it, but we need to do that slowly and carefully. We are not going to be locked up forever, and they are already working on plans to gradually open up again. But we need more testing and more knowledge in general because if we just went back to normal tomorrow, we'd have an explosion of cases, and then all of this would have been for nothing. The key point here is we're not done yet, and we all need to hang in there.
I do not know the author of the original post, but you are not helping this situation, so I will not thank you. You are making people who are already confused and anxious even more doubtful of what they are being told. Half of the things you claim you heard are inaccurate, misconceptions, or even deliberate misinformation for political purposes. I don't know what you were thinking when you wrote it, but your post is harmful on the whole, or at the very least irresponsible.
Science is complicated. Viruses are microscopic and we can only really understand them by observing their effects on a large scale. We know more about this one today than we did a month ago, or the month before that. The information you were told back in January was based on what we knew then. The medical experts do not want people to panic. So all of the advice they gave was based on a judgement call balancing the risks of the disease against the risks of over-reacting to the disease. It's confusing and frustrating and we all wish there were simpler, clear cut answers to all of our questions.... but that's not how the world works.
I get it. We are all losing our patience with this situation. We desperately want to get back to our normal lives because we are all missing out on something or another right now that got us through our days. Of course, some people are affected a lot more than others. People who have lost their jobs, or are struggling to keep their businesses afloat during this are justifiably upset. But if we all recognize that, and work together to make sure that the people who were hurt the most by these shutdowns are given the help they need we will be just fine in the end. What we need right now is for everyone to stay united on adhering to social distancing as much as possible, for as long as necessary... and then be united in helping those that were financially harmed by this collective choice we made to save human lives.
Even more importantly, we need to commit to preventing something like this from happening again. I'm not saying we can predict when another virus like this will mutate into existence and block it completely, but we can put systems in place to make sure we don't have to completely stop the world from turning the next time it does happen. If we had reacted sooner, and instituted these social distancing measures more tactically, in specific areas, we might have been able to stop it before it spread so far beyond our control. These international shutdowns were necessary because we refused to accept even some limited inconvenience and economic impact early on. We need to be smarter next time. That means listening to the people who study epidemiology and do risk analysis instead of ignoring them or trying to discredit them for not being able to successfully predict everything with total accuracy, or for adjusting their recommendations in real-time as they learn new information.
Viruses cause the most damage when they are replicated and come into contact with a new host. Just like bad ideas in memes that people post on the internet. Please stop spreading the original version of this post.
