FOLKS—Do **NOT** gather indoors for the holidays . Just too darn risky. You shouldn’t gather at all to be safest, but if you must gather, please do it only *outside* by a fire pit or under heat lamps w/ blankets with distance. Damnit, the coronavirus is airborne people! https://twitter.com/kprather88/status/1328009200212041729

2) Let me be clear:

#COVID19 is airborne & require masks.

Masks work. Premium masks (surgical, KN95, KF94, N95+) work even better, especially if others refuse any mask.

Ventilation & filtration (HEPA or MERV13+) key.

Masks save lives.

3) VENTILATION is key. Both ventilation and masks needed to reduce risk indoors. But most buildings not ventilated well enough. Hence don’t do indoors for holiday parties.

4) we need to both mask and disperse aerosols quickly. Key is ventilation. Japan assumed it was airborne from the very beginning. But most indoor environments unable to ventilate well enough to have turnover every 5-10 minutes. #COVID19

5) What if one tests before visiting? Testing isn’t fool proof for capturing all virus especially if exposed very recently & early in illness. Quarantining for 2 weeks & testing everyday maybe, but we don’t have enough. Difficult because so much of Covid is among silent carriers.

6) this polls says we are going to hell... https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1328239981580652544

7) If this is what happened after Canadian Thanksgiving in October... and Canada has much much lower baseline than US now... then our Thanksgiving and Xmas will be so screwed.