Smoke and Vapor

 

I was at a friend’s house the other day, fighting an early Civil War battle with a half dozen other gamers.

Metal miniatures on an eight foot long table, enough social distancing to feel comfortable not wearing masks, even though all of us had been vaccinated for more than a month.

Still, one of the new guys asked me, as we walked to the front door, if we should be wearing masks. More a cultural and social thing than a medical inquiry.

Now, of course, the answer could be yes or it could be no. As a former President might have said “It depends on what you mean by ‘should’.”

Now none of us are scientists, although a couple of the guys are pretty smart about a lot of things, and our host is a retired high school chemistry teacher.

But, it was a nice moment to think about where we are, as a society, on the question of crowds and social gatherings, law and the mandates and advisories about wearing masks.

Simple answer for our wargamers, at least on that night, was that no one had to wear a mask. And, indeed, no one did. The same way no one has to wear a mask in a restaurant. Still, circumstances alter cases. In an operating room, everyone has to wear a mask all the time.

Our nation is celebrating the fact that almost half of us are fully vaccinated - the CDC says that on June 16, just over 41 per-cent of us had reached that status. We’re talking 146,456,124 Americans.

Now if you are in a ball park, out in the open, are you safe from getting an infection by someone six or eight seats away? Open air is better than a closed room, but still…..

That’s what bothers me. If you can smell the smoke from a cigar lit by someone two cars ahead of you in a long line to a drive-up window, than you are in the travel range of a virus.

Naturally, all of that led to a debate on game night, and our host - who used to teach things like molar equivalents and colloidal suspensions - sort of agreed with me. He pointed out that Covid 19 virus particles hang in the air for a short time. Long enough for someone to get infected in a crowded room. Think that’s a long shot? Well,  600,000 dead people say you’re wrong.

Those particles hang around a little longer. Hours or days or weeks. We haven’t even begun testing every surface under every condition of temperature and humidity and cleaning, exposure to sunlight, ambient airflow…damn,, but science can take a long time to do everything.

We don’t even know how long a vaccine will be effective. That’s because the clock only started running when people started getting vaccinated. Hey, you don’t really know that if you close your eyes and run across a crowded street you won’t be hit by a car. Want to do your research before you decide not to do it?

 But, transmission was an interesting question, so, I looked it up. It turns out that the Covid particles can hitch a ride on the ash in the smoke from a cigarette or cigar. They do rather well if they are exhaled by someone with the disease who is vaping. That big cloud when a vaper exhales is almost perfect for them.

By the way, none of us standing around the gaming table were smoking, or vaping. Not even coughing.

So, given the health data, our group was in pretty good shape. People who are fully immunized are not likely to come down with Covid. But that’s not a certainty.

The vaccines are designed to help your immune system activate and fight off the Covid virus. It will help you fight it off once you are infected, and people who are vaccinated will get milder cases and need less hospital treatment. But, it doesn’t mean they can’t carry the virus, at least for a while.

That means even if people are not showing any symptoms, they might still be carrying the virus and can still pass it on to someone who is not protected. Some people really will have to take precautions until we know a lot more.

Another interesting fact we don’t talk about very much. The CDC has found that the likelihood people will get infected in a closed room goes up if someone who has the virus stays in that room more than 15 minutes.

Why? The concentration of Covid particles goes up as they breathe.

So, be safe.