Today we shall begin with a vocabulary issue. I was just reading the covid-19 guidelines that the local university has put out in preparation for the return of students next month. Under "Case Management and Containment" there is this sentence:
Employees will need to isolate if they test positive for the virus, and to quarantine if they have been exposed.
This raises the question of what the difference might be between "isolate" and "quarantine." Without having looked either word up, I would think that the above guideline gets these backwards. "Quarantine" seems more severe than "isolate," so why are you isolating if you do have covid-19 and quarantining if you might? I shall now turn to dictionary.com to see what the lexicographers have to offer.
It appears, at least on dictionary.com, that "isolate" has a distinct definition in the medical area: "to keep (an infected person) from contact with noninfected persons; quarantine." I would say that the key point is keeping an infected person away from noninfected people, but "quarantine" is listed as a synonym. The first definition for "quarantine" is "a strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease." It appears then, that the two words are interchangeable. "Isolation" can be "quarantine," and vice versa. Did someone just decide that there needed to be different terms for staying apart because you have a disease and are contagious as opposed to might have the disease and might be contagious? If I get bored enough with packing and moving things later and find something definitive on the subject, I'll post a sequel.
The state covid-19 case count from yesterday was a bit lower than the 1,000-plus of the day before, but we're still fucked. The seven-day rolling average of 920 cases was equivalent to that measure in early June. The highest seven-day rolling average was 1,195 cases, on May 31. We do have a ways to go to match that, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
While college football is still on the books around here, fall football will not be on the public high school level. Similar to the educational side of the school re-opening issue, there are three options on the table. Under the first, sports would stay in their traditional season, but in the fall, all would be cancelled save golf and cross country. In both of those sports, it's not hard to maintain some form of social distancing. Under the second option, all three sports seasons would be held in abbreviated form, starting in December and finishing near the end of June. The only sports dropped would be boys and girls lacrosse. The third option is flipping fall and spring sports. The argument against this is that if schools must suddenly close in the fall, the athletes in spring sports will have their season interrupted for two years in a row. I fall in the small corner of people asking why there should be high school sports right now or, perhaps, ever, especially those that contain physical contact. If it is not safe for kids to attend school in person, why should they play organized sports?
And the local university continues to be open for in-person classes in the fall. New guidelines have been issued that, to be frank, aren't worth the screen they're shown on. Students are supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days before they leave home and arrive here. They are supposed to be tested for covid-19. The university will pay for the tests, which will be sent to each student's home. Tests will also be required for faculty and staff. Do I think students, especially undergraduate ones, will really self-quarantine for 14 days? I'm not sure some of them would make it 14 hours. As for the tests, we know from the case of VP Pence's press secretary that you can test negative one day and positive the next.
And they still seem to think that once they get here, students will police themselves in terms of not holding or attending large parties. This after last weekend's being a traditional event called mid-summers. Mid-summers is basically a party weekend. The front yards of fraternities were full of empty beer cans and red plastic cups Monday morning. The only time social distance might have had a chance of being practiced was on the way to a party or staying well away from one. I've said it before. This is oh so not going to end well.
The
floor fiasco starts on Monday. The contractor is coming by on Saturday
to check on things before the husband and I head to the cabin, which is
about a 90-minute drive. To make things even more interesting, my
mother's (hi, Mom!) assisted living facility called to tell me that an
aide had noticed a lump on one of her shoulders. It does not hurt, but it is
there. They said they'd left a message with her personal doctor and were
waiting to hear from him. This raises the possibility that she might
need to go see him tomorrow or early next week. A special trip to the doctor? We can handle that.
And the world just keeps
getting stranger by the hour.
2 comments:
The only reason I can think of to use isolate and quarantine differently is for quarantine to mean stay at home for 14-days, and isolate to mean stay away from others until you are better, which could well be longer than 14 days.
I'm alternately saddened by the situation in our sometimes-beloved country, and PO'ed about the handling of the crisis from the very beginning/very top. That's while I'm reading the news. Getting outside for exercise is the saving grace.
It doesn't matter what is meant by the two terms as long as everyone understads what it is. The countries that dealt with this better were very clear in what they wanted their citizens to do rather than the erm/maybe/sometimes/forever changing guidance that is hard to keep up with. I've lost the plot as to how many people I can meet inside/outside my home because it keeps changing and there's a lot of "it depends". Like Janet, I am mad at the way this has been handled here from the start, so much back slapping about how well we were doing when we weren't.
Here you can rely on first year students to drink until they fall over. It's been that way for the last sixty years and I can't see it changing in a pandemic.
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