Being Outdoors Doesn’t Mean You’re Safe From COVID-19 – A White House Event Showed What Not to Do

By Thomas A. Russo
If you think you're safe from the coronavirus just because you're outdoors, think again.
While the wind and the large volume of air make the outdoors less risky than being indoors, circumstances matter.
Someone who is infectious can cough or sneeze, or just talk and, if you happen to inhale those respiratory droplets or they plop into your eye, you can get infected. If you shake hands with an infected person and then touch your eyes, nose or mouth, you also run a chance of getting infected. You don't have to be inhaling an infected person's air for very long. What matters is the dose.
As an infectious disease doctor, I get a lot of questions from patients about COVID-19 risks. Here are some answers about the risks outdoors.
Doesn’t Wind Make Outside Safer Than Inside?
It's true that the wind helps disperse respiratory droplets that can carry viruses.
When you're indoors, one of the big concerns about how the coronavirus spreads is aerosols – tiny, light droplets people emit along with larger droplets when they breathe. These particles can linger in the air, and the concentration can build up in enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces. There's less of a risk in open outdoor settings because of the sheer volume of air and available space to physically distance.
At least one study, not yet peer reviewed, found COVID-19 patients were nearly 20 times more likely to have been infected indoors than outdoors.
But that doesn't mean you're in a protective bubble when outdoors.
What Behaviors Could Put You at Risk Outside?
To get a sense of how easy it is to put yourself at risk outdoors, look at crowd photos from the White House Rose Garden event on Sept. 26. About 200 people attended that ceremony, and at least 12 tested positive for the virus within days, including President Donald Trump and two senators. When and where each person was infected isn't known, but several behaviors at the Rose Garden ceremony raised the risk of getting or sharing the virus.
The first problem with this scene: Very few people were wearing face masks.
With no mask, infectious people can be shedding the virus when they talk and there is nothing to stop the respiratory droplets. For people not yet infected, no mask means the virus has several ways to enter their bodies – nose and mouth as well as eyes. The lack of masks also raises the risk of getting a larger dose, and a higher viral load may mean a higher likelihood of severe disease.
People were also seated close together. And before and after the ceremony, they mingled – indoors and outdoors – shaking hands, leaning in for close conversations and hugging each other.
Remember that just breathing expels respiratory droplets, and loud, animated speech like laughing or shouting expels more. We don't yet know how much virus is needed to trigger symptoms, but those doses add up. So, you might get a small dose from a person sitting next to you, but if that person later gives you a big hug or shakes your hand, they could give you another dose. Or you might talk to someone else who is infectious for several minutes and inhale more virus particles.
All it takes is one person in the peak infectious period – the 24 to 48 hours before and after symptoms start – to spark a superspreader event.
When Do I Have to Wear a Mask Outdoors?
Face masks lower your risk of getting infected, and they also reduce the amount of virus you're spreading if you're infected.
If you're running or walking, carry a mask with you. When you're near other people, put it on.
If you're sitting at an outdoor café, try to mask up between bites and sips, especially if your age or health or weight make you vulnerable to severe COVID-19.
The likelihood of a passing interaction from someone walking by a table is small, but it's still possible. The safest spot when eating outdoors is a table away from high-traffic areas and upwind of everyone else.
Is Six Feet of Social Distancing Enough?
Depending on where you are, maximize the distance between yourself and others. There's nothing magic about staying six feet apart. Particles generated by sneezes can travel a lot farther than that.
Twelve or 15 feet is safer.
It's all about minimizing risk. You can never drive that risk to zero when you're in public.
Can I Still Have People Over for an Outside Party?
Think of the coronavirus like a sexually transmitted disease – everyone claims to behave safely, but do you really know where they've been? It just takes one infected person. Rapid COVID-19 tests aren't 100% accurate, either, and are presently unavailable for most people.
To keep things safe for an outdoor gathering, set up tables for each social bubble – a family, for example. Keep the tables at least 15 to 20 feet apart. Set up food on individual plates in a central location and have people or each bubble go up separately. Don't share utensils or food or glasses. Wear masks as much as possible, and don't forget physical distancing.
There is a lot we still don't know about the coronavirus, including what the long-term damage is. Regardless of how old you are or how healthy, do what you can to avoid the virus until there's a vaccine. Even if you get over the illness quickly, we don't know what the long-term consequences will be.
Thomas A. Russo is a Professor and Chief, Infectious Disease, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Disclosure statement: Thomas A. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
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