Covid Gear and Precautions

• My May 2020 precautions were clearly excessive, in hindsight. See https://www.rasmusen.org/blog1/covid-19-precautions/. At least I have a good mask for paint fumes, the pulse oximeter to check my condition after jogging, and the good glass thermometer for ordinary fevers.

May 19, 2020 Blog Entry on Precautions

This post is to keep track of things my household is doing out of worry about covid-19. Comments welcomed as to what might be excessive or insufficient.

1. Put tissue boxes in every room.

2. Require visitors (e.g., Connell girls, home church guests) to wash hands when they visit.

3. We bought a glass thermometer and a pulse oximeter.

4. We bought a couple of ten-packs of surgical masks, two or so N-95s, a 30-dollar fancy mask (but gave that to Amelia), and have a fancy 70-dollar 3M mask on order, and Helen made a pretty blue cloth mask-with filter pocket for each member of the family before we had any others. Note: masks get to smelling bad (or, rather, I don’t like the smell of my own breath), so a few drops of lavender or rosemary oil helps. Masks are uncomfortable, so I’d like to know what the most comfortable masks are, at any price. That’s more important than degree of virus protection, since any mask is helpful, even the surgical ones, but people aren’t going to want to wear them if they’re not comfortable.

5. We are taking more Vitamin D (which Helen and I both tend to be deficient in) than usual.

6. We wash hands after coming home from shopping.

7. We make even more use of hand sanitizer than we did before (and we were heavy users).

8. I wear a mask when shopping, if I don’t forget and leave it in the car (it’s worth doing, but not worth going back for).

9. We put spare masks in each car, since we usually forget to bring them otherwise.

10. I volunteered for the big n = 5,000 study so I could get a free virus and antibody test (both came out negative).

11. I’m shaking hands much less.

12. I’m not visiting my neighbors who are old or my neighbor who routinely uses an oxygen tank.