I didn't do anything wrong....did I?

[Funkyslippers]

DD desperate to see her friend who lives a few streets away. She made brownies and we dropped them on her doorstep, went back onto the pavement around 12 feet away, DD called her and she came to the door, took the brownies and said thank you.

They then call each other while we're walking home (social distancing all the way but not many people around) and her older sister shouts in the background "her mum let her do that? That was stupid!!!" meaning we shouldn't have brough the brownies round to her house. I couldn't see anything wrong with it. I mean, the postman delivers mail to houses each day. Am I missing something? Or is she worried about eating contaminated food - we washed our hands thoroughly during the process.

I'm pretty laid back. The knocking on the door and stepping back, no problem. I wouldn't have moaned but the brownies would have gone straight on the bin, sorry OP. Not essential and there is no way of them knowing what your hygiene standards are. Not a time to just go with the flow really is it?

I am a chocaholic but Browies are not essential. Essential means can't live without it. Stay home. If people abuse excercise in this way or just pop to shops every couple of days then it will be total lockdown. It is perfectly possible to shop online once every couple of weeks and excercise at home.

Essential means can't live without it.

What a way to live. I dropped off a birthday card to a neighbour on my daily exercise. I took a food parcel to my grandparents and had a chat from the end of the driveway. I ordered a box of chocolates in my Asda shop. These things weren't "essential" but the risk to anyone is so minuscule . When all this is over we still need to be humans, not just shells who only do things which are essential.

It is soo not possible to shop online, all the slots to every shop in my area are all booked untill end of april and they dont go any futher than that

@MarginalGain I blame my slow brain 🙈

Human contact is essential IMO.

@buzzswole I think that is so sad. There are going be so many children with germ complex’s after this.

And I don't have any GCSEs

@DesLynhamsMoustache -
There can be no doubt about that! 🙄

What a way to live. I dropped off a birthday card to a neighbour on my daily exercise. I took a food parcel to my grandparents and had a chat from the end of the driveway. I ordered a box of chocolates in my Asda shop. These things weren't "essential" but the risk to anyone is so minuscule

It’s not a way to live - it’s how you are being asked to live TEMPORARILY
Yes, they may be minuscule risks but minuscule risks add up over time to equal one new case.
This is literally all you need to do to stop the spread. Stop being so selfish.

That sounds like a lovely idea, you're a lovely mum.

Ethelfleda

How are any of those things not ok?

I wonder how many people judging have got on an 'essential' trip to the supermarket to buy things that weren't actually essential. I bet many have plenty of food, but just dont want to be without x.

PishPosh
If you touch something and give it to someone else, there is a very small risk you’ll pass the virus on. If you touch something someone else has, there is a small risk you’ll catch it yourself.

Now is where you have to consider risk vs reward... so shopping for food is absolutely essential of course because you need to eat - so that is a very small risk for a worthwhile ‘reward’ I.e. it is essential
Dropping cards or brownies to people’s houses, although a very nice gesture, is not worth the risk.
Dropping food to people who are in isolation is definitely worth the risk - mainly because they probably already have the virus anyway - and because they need to eat and can’t leave their house. The government are advising not to leave your home unless it is essential. They’re counting one daily form of exercise as essential. Go out. For your walk/run/cycle but don’t touch anyone or anything as far as you can manage it.

Small risks can easily add up. Let’s say that touching a surface and then giving it to someone else carries a 1 in 100,000 risk of infection. Now let’s say 100,000 people do this (feasible as this is less than 1% of the population)
That equals one case.
BUT let’s say that those 100,000 people did this ‘risky’ thing daily. At the end of one month, that’s 30 cases. Now let’s say 5% of the population did one ‘risky’ thing per day each for a month... that’s roughly 35 new cases per day. At the end of one month, that’s 1050 cases. If they all did two ‘risky’ things a day, it’s 2,100 cases after a month... etc etc

Just please please don’t take any unnecessary risks.

Ethelfleda

Yes but presumably if I send a neighbour a birthday card they'll be washing their hands before and after they touch it, as will I? And therefore even on the remote chance the virus was on the card, it wouldn't infect them anyway.

Good hand hygiene is the most important thing, not doing frankly bonkers things like sanitizing the mail.

mainly because they probably already have the virus anyway

Of course they don't - my grandmother has been in isolation for 4 weeks as she has an underlying condition. Not everyone in isolation "probably has the virus". Indeed, the whole point of isolation for a lot of people is not to get the virus

God, there are some bonkers posts on here at the moment.

My parents are self-isolating because my mum (whom I love to bits) has cancer, not because they have CV. She needs not to get it.

However... she would be the first to say that it's batshit for everyone to be doing some of the things people are advocating at the moment. Or that they are advocating not doing.

I am not washing my hands before and after touching my post. Everything RhymingRabbit is okay. Those are the kind and thoughtful things that make life just about tolerable at the moment.

Remember that people - especially old people - die all the time, and the vast majority of them are not dying of Covid 19.

Yes but presumably if I send a neighbour a birthday card they'll be washing their hands before and after they touch it, as will I?

You presume this, you don’t know it for a fact.

And yes - I take your point - not everyone who is isolating is doing so because they have symptoms. Many are doing so because they are vulnerable. But the risk vs reward thing still applies here. It is safer for them if someone brings them their food shopping, which is essential, than if they go to a supermarket to buy it themselves. In this instance, the tiny risk of catching the virus from the food packaging is a necessary one.
But posting cards and such just isn’t necessary in the same way. These kind gestures are very well meaning and I totally get the point being made of being feeling isolated and miserable... but it is a necessary evil in order to stop this virus from progressing. Can’t you see that from the example numbers I posted above?

Remember that people - especially old people - die all the time, and the vast majority of them are not dying of Covid 19

What on earth is your point? Are you saying this makes it ok to potentially infect them then?

Youpresumethis, you don’t know it for a fact.

Well if they don't that's hardly my fault, just as if I go to the supermarket and touch something and then someone else touches it and doesn't wash their hands afterwards, that's also hardly my fault. Or are you telling me I have to take responsibility for everyone's shitty hygiene now.

Well if they don't that's hardly my fault, just as if I go to the supermarket and touch something and then someone else touches it and doesn't wash their hands afterwards, that's also hardly my fault. Or are you telling me I have to take responsibility for everyone's shitty hygiene now

Of course not
But - and this is going to sound a bit dramatic - what if it turns out you currently have the virus. You’ve not got symptoms yet but you’re contagious. You delivered a card to your friend, they got the virus too and become very ill. Let’s say they end up in hospital- or a member of their household does - or worse... they die. Would you just shrug your shoulders and say ‘they should have washed their hands then’ ???
YOU are the one creating the risk. Not them. It’s a very shitty attitude to have to just think it’d be there own stupid fault for not being hygienic enough...

*their

Even if I had the virus and didn't know it, if I'd washed my hands before posting the letter they still wouldn't be infected.

People need to learn what risk assessment is and what viruses are.

There have been NO cases anywhere of COVID transmitted through food, a letter or handling a tin of beans.

You have read something that says COVID can live on paper or certain surfaces and concluded there is a potential risk you can contract it that way when NO-ONE has.

People ACTUALLY die, documented cases, from falling down the stairs (more than 1000 a year) their dog attacking them, their toaster electrocuting them and on and on and on...and hundreds of other things.

Are people normally suggesting that people shouldn't climb stairs, use a toaster or have a dog for e.g because of the 'risk' as there have been actual reports of deaths?

Nope. So don't spread nonsense about COVID.

@Ethelfleda No, I'm not saying that. However, I am saying that people die, all the time, my own loved ones included, and that death is to be expected once people reach a certain age. When people in their 90s are said to have "died of Coronavirus", they haven't really died of CV. They have died because any opportunistic infection would have finished them off. It is Nature's way of ensuring that people don't live well into their hundreds.

I, for one, do not wish to become old and infirm. My dearly loved mum, who has cancer, doesn't want to either. She has said since we were little that she doesn't want to live beyond 80 (not least as she ended up caring for her own mum, who lived into her 90s).

She has a DNR thing by her bed, and another one about her person. Her death would be like someone stabbing me repeatedly in the heart - but that is all about me, not about her. She is 71 and she can decide how she wants to die, and whether or not she wants to live "beyond her time".

I would like to know how many of the people frothing on here have bothered with their elderly relatives in the five years before Covid 19 came along.

There have been NO cases anywhere of COVID transmitted through food, a letter or handling a tin of beans

How on earth can you possibly state this, given that all we can do is tell if someone has actually got the virus and not where they caught it from?? And we have no idea of actual numbers of infected, let alone where people are catching it from. And why the fuck would the government go on and on about washing your hands if you can’t catch it from from TOUCHING something?

And do you also need a lesson about risk vs reward as well? What is a necessary risk and what isn’t? Given we have absolutely no idea how many people have caught COVID from touching stuff, then we have no idea if it’s ‘more or less’ risky than climbing the stairs. Which is a stupid fucking comparison anyway. We are in the middle of a PANDEMIC. You do not get a PANDEMIC of people falling down the stairs, do you??