Is Coronavirus keeping you from booking liveaboard/overseas trips this year?

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All joking aside, what keeps getting repeated is that one of the best defences is to wash your hands, but if it is not thorough, then it may not even be worth the effort. How thoroughly should you wash your hands? I think that this sums it up nicely:
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All joking aside, what keeps getting repeated is that one of the best defences is to wash your hands, but if it is not thorough, then it may not even be worth the effort. How thoroughly should you wash your hands? I think that this sums it up nicely:
View attachment 571998
The usual instructions are to wash with warm water and standard hand soap (NOT antibacterial soap!), and to scrub all parts of your hands (especially your nails!) for a full 20 seconds. Humming the "happy birthday" song works fine for timing this. Then dry with a paper towel if possible, and turn off the water with another clean paper towel, and throw these away without touching anything else. Another towel on the bathroom doorknob or handle if indicated. If not possible or convenient, a good dose of alcohol hand gel in one hand then briskly rubbed all over until completely dry and all the alcohol is gone is an acceptable alternative. This is the mantra that the CDC has been preaching ever since Noah got off the ark, and it still holds today. It is a little fussy, but this is what they recommend, and it really doesn't take much. Automatic soap dispensers and automatic on-off faucets in public washrooms help a lot here. Just don't touch your face with those nice clean hands afterwards! This about the only value those paper surgical masks really have, as they limit contact with your nose and eyes, which are the primary portals of entry for infection. Sorry about the lecture, but you asked.:popcorn:
 
I'm curious on how COVID-19 will affect the DEMA Show. Nothing like a packed convention hall with manufacturers and retailers from all over the planet crowded into one space. What could possibly go wrong? :)
 
The usual instructions are to wash with warm water and standard hand soap (NOT antibacterial soap!), and to scrub all parts of your hands (especially your nails!) for a full 20 seconds. Humming the "happy birthday" song works fine for timing this. Then dry with a paper towel if possible, and turn off the water with another clean paper towel, and throw these away without touching anything else. Another towel on the bathroom doorknob or handle if indicated. If not possible or convenient, a good dose of alcohol hand gel in one hand then briskly rubbed all over until completely dry and all the alcohol is gone is an acceptable alternative. This is the mantra that the CDC has been preaching ever since Noah got off the ark, and it still holds today. It is a little fussy, but this is what they recommend, and it really doesn't take much. Automatic soap dispensers and automatic on-off faucets in public washrooms help a lot here. Just don't touch your face with those nice clean hands afterwards! This about the only value those paper surgical masks really have, as they limit contact with your nose and eyes, which are the primary portals of entry for infection. Sorry about the lecture, but you asked.:popcorn:

Sing Happy Birthday TWICE not once. Sorry about the correction but seeing as you asked.
 
The balance between under-reacting and over-reacting to a novel viral outbreak is always a tricky one for public health officials to manage. However, research on the 1918 influenza pandemic has shown that communities that enacted early social distancing measures, enacted multiple strategies (quarantine of suspected contacts and cases, isolation of the ill, school closings, public gathering bans, closing theaters, etc.), and kept them in place for longer had lower epidemic mortality curves than communities that did not. In addition, flattening and spreading out the curve, as Angelo posted, has the added benefit of helping to prevent a surge of cases that can overwhelm hospitals and other healthcare facilities, which still have to deal with other daily health emergencies.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions are like Swiss cheese: each individual one has holes in it, but if you layer them properly you can help prevent those holes from going all the way through.
My mother's parents lived in Mobile, Alabama, during the 1918 flu epidemic. Mobile under-reacted. When her parents both caught it and died, she and her sister were sent to live with an aunt in rural southern Mississippi, which was so small it never had visitors and never had a problem. Seems like over-reacting is the demonstrably safer response, if you can get through the short-term upheaval it causes. Kinda like lying in a ditch full of water when the tornado approaches your mobile home.....or you can tough it out and use hope as a strategy.
 
Sing Happy Birthday TWICE not once. Sorry about the correction but seeing as you asked.
You are right! Strange how I forgot that.:facepalm: However, we are usually lucky to get ONE out of most people.:eyebrow:
 
My mother's parents lived in Mobile, Alabama, during the 1918 flu epidemic. Mobile under-reacted. When her parents both caught it and died, she and her sister were sent to live with an aunt in rural southern Mississippi, which was so small it never had visitors and never had a problem. Seems like over-reacting is the demonstrably safer response, if you can get through the short-term upheaval it causes. Kinda like lying in a ditch full of water when the tornado approaches your mobile home.....or you can tough it out and use hope as a strategy.

My great grandfather died of the flu when he was serving in 1918.
 

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