Physical distancing is being observed by many in public, and it seems to work very well.
A nearby pizza joint has a policy that only two patrons are allowed to be inside the store. When there are already two persons inside, the rest have to stay outside and queue up. The funny thing is that there isn’t any notice posted outside. When the third patron tries to enter, employees inside would yell “get out!”.
Some supermarkets change their opening hours by open an hour earlier. Usually, the first hour of shopping 7 am – 8 am is reserved to the community’s most vulnerable folks, i.e. our seniors and those living with disabilities. Anyhow, well before 7 am, you can see that young and old customers start to line up, standing about two metres away from each other. It’s amazing that sometimes, people come out and only hand-carry a carton of eggs or a few bananas. Shouldn’t it be more efficient to buy a whole lot more and visit the market less frequently?
Nowadays, while we try to go out less and stay home more, we tend to do more online shopping. There are so many deliveries in the community, yesterday we received the wrong shipment. We tried to notify the delivery guy, but he just dropped the parcel and left. He ran so fast, and it’s like he thinks the package or our house is contaminated with the virus. Is it technically possible a parcel or mail coming to your home already infected with a virus picked up somewhere along the way by people handling it?
The New England Journal of Medicine published a recent study of this topic. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973 Somewhere it says “On cardboard, no viable SARS-CoV-2 was measured after 24 hours and no viable SARS-CoV-1 was measured after 8 hours.” So, I guess, the infection risk is low. Besides, cardboard is porous, and aerosol can probably penetrate the cardboard material. You may not pick up the virus when touching the package. Or, to play safe, we can leave the box and pick it up much later?
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