Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

[LordMortis]

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with people who continue to stick their head in the sands and insist there's nothing to the whole Covid thing.

Had a conversation with a friend this weekend who believes the whole thing is exaggerated out of proportion. He also called people who wear masks "sheep" even though he will still wear one in a store if he absolutely has to.

It's frustrating trying to get through to someone that the reality isn't "Covid isn't that bad, so people are wearing masks for no reason." The reality is "Covid isn't worse BECAUSE people are wearing masks."

Was in for an infusion this weekend. A clinic. Where people go for their treatments to become immuno suppressed. (There is always talk about how great GOP this is and how socialist Democrat that is from the medicare folk) but this weekend in particular, after the courts stuck down the state mandate on masks, and the FBI stopped the governor from being kidnapped, comes in this manly man, to a clinic, where people go to nuke their immune systems, likely his self included, and he's wearing his mandated mask below his nose. And they let him. Now he's nowhere near me, but all of the staff attend to him are the staff that attend to me for the next three hours.

That would be my last infusion there but they are the only clinic open on weekends, which is the only time I can give 3+ hours every other month.

[Daehawk]

Its strange the sheep calling others sheep.

[LordMortis]

Its strange the sheep calling others sheep.

What's strange to me is being called a sheep for seeking the guidance of experts but you are some sort anti sheep for flocking with to those who seek to avoid the guidance of experts by searching for the shepherd who claims knowledge without having demonstration of it.

(This is actually why I was curious and still am about the experts who "are* virologists/epidemiologists that Little Raven linked to)

[Daehawk]

Its like that zombie movie.... Covid can survive 28 days on surfaces

Australian scientists have found that the virus that causes Covid-19 can survive for up to 28 days on surfaces such as the glass on mobile phones, stainless steel, vinyl and paper banknotes.

[El Guapo]

Its like that zombie movie.... Covid can survive 28 days on surfaces

Australian scientists have found that the virus that causes Covid-19 can survive for up to 28 days on surfaces such as the glass on mobile phones, stainless steel, vinyl and paper banknotes.

Smoove can correct me, but this sounds a lot like this is grounded more in theory than in practical reality (especially since the article notes that the experiment was done in a dark area, so doesn't factor in UV light which reduces the viral half-life). If there was significant surface-based transmission I think we would already know that from observing viral outbreaks.

That said, it is helpful as a reminder to wash hands and not to dismiss the risk of surface-based transmission entirely.

[Smoove_B]

Right, it's lab condition, not environmental. It's good information but it doesn't change practice. We still haven't seen a documented case (that I'm aware of) where SARS-CoV2 has been spread via fomites (door knobs, desk tops, hand railings, food packaging) so I'm not sure anything really changes. I'm firmly in the group that all the crazy cleaning we're seeing now that restaurants, schools and companies are bragging about is "hygiene theater". Anything you were doing before as part of normal cleaning should still be adequate. Hand washing is still important (it always was) but none of this mitigates mask use and limiting indoor close contacts unmasked.

[hitbyambulance]

juuuust be careful

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424 ... xsie-wiles

[Blackhawk]

We still haven't seen a documented case (that I'm aware of) where SARS-CoV2 has been spread via fomites (door knobs, desk tops, hand railings, food packaging) so I'm not sure anything really changes.

I've seen this several times, and I'm genuinely curious about how that is determined. I mean, if ten people are in a house for a get-together, one comes in positive, and six others end up sick, how do you determine that it was from the air and not the light switch?

[YellowKing]

What's strange to me is being called a sheep for seeking the guidance of experts but you are some sort anti sheep for flocking with to those who seek to avoid the guidance of experts by searching for the shepherd who claims knowledge without having demonstration of it.

It's more projection in my opinion, and I hear the "you're a sheep" thing a LOT from my Trumperoo acquaintances. They desperately want to believe that they have some secret knowledge that the rest of the population doesn't. It doesn't surprise me at all that they are the same people who are attracted to conspiracy theories. I think it's a psychological thing.

The thing that REALLY angers me about it is when you think you know better than me, but yet you don't even watch the news (either because you're disinterested or you've decided it's all fake). MF I visit multiple news sites a day, I participate in this political forum. And they range from all over the political spectrum. On any given day I'll hit CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Politico, RealClearPolitics, Drudge Report, Fox News, 538, and BBC. Don't fucking dare tell me I'm not knowledgeable about what's going on and you are because you read a Facebook meme.

[Smoove_B]

I've seen this several times, and I'm genuinely curious about how that is determined. I mean, if ten people are in a house for a get-together, one comes in positive, and six others end up sick, how do you determine that it was from the air and not the light switch?

Bigger picture. If there was fomite spread, the way the disease moves/presents in the population would be different. In other words, the outbreaks/clusters we're seeing are connected to gatherings, not random people using the same elevator or shopping cart at a Piggly Wiggly.

Maybe some day we'll quantify the actual risk associated with touching something and then touching your nose or eyeball, but by all accounts this seems very, very unlikely to be the way things are spread. I guess if I were to offer advice based on what I've been reading, focus touching porous surfaces and/or surfaces with lots of surface area. Bad: plastic buttons or metal handrails. Good: 70s shag carpeted conversion vans.

[Daehawk]

I find it forehead thumping that the people shouting fake news are the ones actually spouting fake news and eating it up.

[Blackhawk]

I've seen this several times, and I'm genuinely curious about how that is determined. I mean, if ten people are in a house for a get-together, one comes in positive, and six others end up sick, how do you determine that it was from the air and not the light switch?

Bigger picture. If there was fomite spread, the way the disease moves/presents in the population would be different. In other words, the outbreaks/clusters we're seeing are connected to gatherings, not random people using the same elevator or shopping cart at a Piggly Wiggly.

Ah, that makes sense. I knew there had to be a method in there somewhere. Thank you.

[YellowKing]

I find it forehead thumping that the people shouting fake news are the ones actually spouting fake news and eating it up.

What's particularly infuriating is that nobody talked about "fake news" until Trump popularized the phrase. Up until then it was just the typical complaints about liberal media bias. It's an incredibly frightening escalation to go from "news is biased" to "news is not real."

[LawBeefaroni]

I find it forehead thumping that the people shouting fake news are the ones actually spouting fake news and eating it up.

What's particularly infuriating is that nobody talked about "fake news" until Trump popularized the phrase. Up until then it was just the typical complaints about liberal media bias. It's an incredibly frightening escalation to go from "news is biased" to "news is not real."

IIRC, "fake news" was originally coined taking about literal fake news stories on Facebook, etc. Trump essentially co-opted and weaponized the term in his trademark projection style.

[LordMortis]

I find it forehead thumping that the people shouting fake news are the ones actually spouting fake news and eating it up.

What's particularly infuriating is that nobody talked about "fake news" until Trump popularized the phrase. Up until then it was just the typical complaints about liberal media bias. It's an incredibly frightening escalation to go from "news is biased" to "news is not real."

I remember the term starting about with Alex whatshisface but then Palin came around with "Lamestream Media" and then bots and social media started going crazy with misinformation and then Trump stole the phrase conflated the phrase and the Palinism and what extremist conspiracy sites (from both sides, mind you) were doing, branding anything negative about him as an equivocation of Fake News. Is it any wonder that pizzagate is about a child sex ring and QAnon steals its name from Anonymous and claims to know that Trump is taking on a child sex ring and that he doesn't dispel this BS?

[LawBeefaroni]

Aaand of course the beeb is on it.

The (almost) complete history of 'fake news'


....
On 8 December 2016, Hillary Clinton made a speech in which she mentioned "the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year."

"It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences," she said.

...
But in that speech, Clinton also asked her audience to help "protect our democracy". Other reporters interpreted that more broadly as a reference to the election.

President-elect Trump took up the phrase the following month, in January 2017, a little over a week before taking office. In response to a question, he said "you're fake news" to CNN reporter Jim Acosta. Around the same time he started repeating the phrase on Twitter.

"That signalled to the many people out there who were supporting Trump and running websites supportive of him, that he was saying 'OK, we're going to take this term and make it ours'," Silverman says.

The fake news horse had not just bolted from the stable, it was off and running.

[Little Raven]

I was wondering when this would cross my radar. Who's behind the Great Barrington Declaration shared here a few days ago? Charles Koch:

...

So yeah. Trash.

But...we already knew that. We know where the money for the American Institute for Economic Research comes from, and we knew they were behind the Declaration from day 1. I agree that it's always nice to know where they money behind things originates, but nobody is paying attention to the Declaration because Koch money is or is not involved - it's getting attention because 3 very prominent scientists have been willing to put their names to it. Are we saying that Kulldorff, Gupta, and Bhattacharya have all sold out?

And if they have, has the WHO has sold out too?

A World Health Organisation doctor has backflipped on the organisation's original Covid-19 stance, calling for world leaders to stop locking down their countries and economies as a "primary control method".

Dr David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop "using lockdowns as your primary control method" of the coronavirus.

He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.

...

"We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus," Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.

...

"And so, we really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems for doing it. Work together and learn from each other."

[Smoove_B]

I think there's some general confusion.

Lockdowns in March/April made sense because it was newly emerging and at the tail end of winter. Large scale lockdowns (blunt instrument) in October don't make as much sense because we now know it can be significantly limited by people wearing masks - particularly in high-risk encounters. Add in the theoretical ability to test and trace, and you now have a surefire way to stop spread (in theory).

I wouldn't expect to see lockdowns again at the scale we experienced earlier unless things take a really bad turn for the worse. Instead, I'm expecting to see targeted communities where lockdowns occur - exactly what's happening in parts of NYC right now. However, all that is couched in mask use and social-distancing compliance. It's also highly reliant on quick testing turnaround and compliance with contact tracers.

What seems to be happening is people are (broadly) arguing that we're still in some type of "lockdown" right now (we're not) and that we should just go back to doing what we were doing (we shouldn't) because, reasons.

Instead, we collectively need to accept practices and policies that limit spread. Until that happens, we're going to continue to see 50K+ cases a day in the U.S. and the next ~6 weeks are going to suck. Maybe we'll get it right next week and collectively agree to wear masks, get more tests and cooperate with tracers. If so, December is looking better. If not, worse.

EDIT: To clarify a bit more, I do think there are likely still some states that could benefit from a ~14 day lockdown right now. Like apparently the Dakotas. But I doubt it'll happen, so I'll just watch in horror from NJ.

[Daehawk]

Sounds more like him and not WHO.

[LawBeefaroni]

Are we saying that Kulldorff, Gupta, and Bhattacharya have all sold out?

You drop this as if they are all household names. Why do they carry so much weight?

And you don't have to sell out to be inaccurate. Gupta had a paper back in March that claimed a 68% infection rate at the time. It's not disproven but it's far from proven either. Is that influencing her position in the Great BD?

Personally it doesn't hold any weight with me and the long list of co-signers is really off-putting and non-academic. This despite the fact that I would prefer the world they're advocating for and tend to lean towards more risk to help the economy.

[LordMortis]

I think that's about language and I'm not sure what's at fault there. People use the word lock down incorrectly. They also exchange quarantine with self isolate. You darn well anti maskers are going to exploit that communication gap but at the same time, if you are running a thin margin restaurant at 1/4 capacity after being shut down for six months, lock down feels pretty appropriate.

I want to say we were locked down for only part of March and April where you could technically have fined/jailed for leaving the house for purposes other than sustenance but by late April "the essential workers" list grew so much there was no lock down. But again, in May if you are a factory or office worker and you can't go to work, it sure feels like a lockdown. In June, if if you can technically go to work but there's no point in your having a retail front, it may as well be a lockdown for you.

Quite frankly, in Michigan, where as a travel hub, we were coming up right behind travel hubs on east and west coasts, it worked. It took weeks but it worked, the curve flattened and hospitals started adapting and more room was being made and we (mostly) adapted to mask wearing and social distancing. Our deaths per million was top five and going up up up, now we're falling out of the top 10, even as we were totally brutalized early on and have been subjected to mass young adult stupid spread multiple times.

[LordMortis]

Personally it doesn't hold any weight with me and the long list of co-signers is really off-putting and non-academic. This despite the fact that I would prefer the world they're advocating for and tend to lean towards more risk to help the economy.

Thisish. I don't yet know if it holds weight with me but the co-signer thing made it so I didn't even know the original authors much less what was so important about the co-signers. I just saw a bunch of names out of 78,000 that meant nothing to me. LR had to point me to the three authors.

[Little Raven]

You drop this as if they are all household names. Why do they carry so much weight?

Because of where they work. They may not be household names but Oxford, Harvard and Stanford most certainly are.

It’s always possible for a crank to get tenure, even at a prestigious university, but presumably you shouldn’t get 3 cranks in 3 top level universities on board with the same insanity.

And you don't have to sell out to be inaccurate.

Certainly, but there’s a large gap between “I question their accuracy” and “trash.”

Edit - I assume smoove’s comment is just being snarky, which is also fine.

[malchior]

I was wondering when this would cross my radar. Who's behind the Great Barrington Declaration shared here a few days ago? Charles Koch:

...

So yeah. Trash.

But...we already knew that. We know where the money for the American Institute for Economic Research comes from, and we knew they were behind the Declaration from day 1.

Oh really? The AIER was not well known before this. They had $2M in donations in 2018. That is chicken scratch in the think tank world. AEI has a budget 25 - 30 times that. Anyway, the funding links to Koch were uncovered only a few days ago so I wouldn't call it well known. Most had no idea it was Koch money. Still if you look back I speculated about this when I said that this smelled like climate science denial. Lo and behold the biggest donor behind climate science denial is involved. This is the right-wing science denial playbook at work. This is how the wealthy manipulate the policy domain. They find an expert who aligns with them and then they attach them to put some heft behind their policy idea. Then they get that idea published and they push it out to muddy the policy discussion. It doesn't mean it's wrong but it sure undermines the credibility of everyone involved.

I agree that it's always nice to know where they money behind things originates, but nobody is paying attention to the Declaration because Koch money is or is not involved - it's getting attention because 3 very prominent scientists have been willing to put their names to it. Are we saying that Kulldorff, Gupta, and Bhattacharya have all sold out?

This is complete and utter nonsense. How prominent are they? It is getting little mainstream coverage other to push back on it outside the right. It gets attention because big money is pushing it. End of story. The names were attached to give it a veneer of credibility.

The edges of the policy are meant to sound legitimate but the core of it is opening up economies so that rich people can stay rich while the little people die. And I'll even give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the three lead authors might not have that agenda. However, the big money backers who put this together almost certainly do. They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt anymore.

Edit: To give an idea how you can be mislead about pedigree, an example of someone who got it wrong from a big name school is Richard Muller. He is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at Berkeley. He was a strong climate change skeptic and Koch funded his research to further climate science denial. About a decade later Muller became convinced the evidence was overwhelming and repudiated his own research. Also as an example of how this works, here is a top 10 list of top scientists from 2009 that seems quaint now yet they weren't laughed off back then. They got neutral or positive press. This is an old con.

[Smoove_B]

Edit - I assume smoove’s comment is just being snarky, which is also fine.

Maybe a little snarky. But this is not snark and from a voice I trust. I *hate* Twitter threads, but it is what it is.

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/stat ... 3223676930

So, no one likes lockdowns. No one thinks that they are without secondary harms. And most importantly, NO ONE is arguing for Wuhan-style full-scale lockdowns. No one is. But a straw man argument is being set up by those who want to mislead the American and British publics. 1/

[Little Raven]

Anyway, the funding links to Koch were uncovered only a few days ago so I wouldn't call it well known.

In the article I posted the day I posted the link to the Declaration, the AIER was identified as a Libertarian think tank. I dunno about you, but when I hear the phrase “libertarian think tank” I just assume the Koch’s are behind it, because they’re behind ALL of those things.

They find an expert who aligns with them and then they attach them to put some heft behind their policy idea.

Its an effective tactic. Like most people on this board, I believe in listening to experts.

How prominent are they?

They are professors at three of the top universities in the world. Did I miss a memo? Have Harvard and Oxford been discredited recently?

[RunningMn9]

You just keep repeating that over and over again.

I really don’t understand why it holds such sway over you. Take the Harvard one - what is their reputation amongst their colleagues? What is their history? Their published work? Do you know literally anything about them? Other then who hired them (to do something other than what they are doing here)?

I can’t remember seeing such a committed appeal to authority, almost at all costs. To what end?

We get it, they aren’t employed at bullshit institutions. We know they are getting promoted by folks who are widely known for pushing bullshit.

I don’t get it.

[malchior]

Anyway, the funding links to Koch were uncovered only a few days ago so I wouldn't call it well known.

In the article I posted the day I posted the link to the Declaration, the AIER was identified as a Libertarian think tank. I dunno about you, but when I hear the phrase “libertarian think tank” I just assume the Koch’s are behind it, because they’re behind ALL of those things.

So is this a tacit admission that this doesn't undermine the premise for you then?

They find an expert who aligns with them and then they attach them to put some heft behind their policy idea.

Its an effective tactic. Like most people on this board, I believe in listening to experts.

Way to miss the point.

How prominent are they?

They are professors at three of the top universities in the world. Did I miss a memo? Have Harvard and Oxford been discredited recently?

It is funny that you are defending a huge public health strawman argument with a strawman argument but that's apparently all you've got in the toolbox.

[Little Raven]

I really don’t understand why it holds such sway over you.

Because I’m NOT an epidemiologist. I don’t know shit about that field. You and malchior seem to know which experts are real and which ones are shills, and I genuinely envy that, because I don’t know any of these people.

So yeah, I fall back heavily on the reputations of the institutions that employ them.

[Little Raven]

So is this a tacit admission that this doesn't undermine the premise for you then?

Of course not. The Koch brothers will happily wield truth to further their goals as well as falsehood. Being informed about where material support comes from is good. Assuming that ANYTHING that the Koch’s have ever condoned is automatic falsehood is the path that led the Republican Party to madness, just in the opposite direction. The Koch’s are irrelevant to the health argument being made here, and if the argument is bad, we can demonstrate that with more and better science.

[gbasden]

I get that these are three scientists from respected Universities. From what I've seen, there are a lot more scientists from the same and other respected Universities that don't agree. Do you think this is incorrect? On Climate Science, there have always been outliers that believe that climate change is a hoax, but the preponderance of the scientific analysis disagreed. Do you believe these three individuals represent the consensus view of most epidemiological experts?

From what I've read, I don't *think* they do, but I could be mistaken.

[Little Raven]

I get that these are three scientists from respected Universities. From what I've seen, there are a lot more scientists from the same and other respected Universities that don't agree. Do you think this is incorrect?

Not at all. One of the reasons I love this board is that it’s full of a lot of smart people that read a lot of stuff. The main reason I posted the Declaration was to get expert feedback on it, both the personal, as smoove provided, and links to outside scientific argument.

I love seeing that stuff. What disappoints me is seeing arguments like “well, the Koch’s like these guys, so it MUST be bullshit.” That’s just lazy. The antidote to bad science is more science.

Do you believe these three individuals represent the consensus...

That’s what I’m trying to figure out, honestly. From what I’ve seen, their notion that everything should open up immediately seems extreme - I haven’t seen too many other experts echo that. However, past that, things get murky. This doesn’t seem to be a climate change situation, where scientists overwhelmingly agree on causes and solutions.

[malchior]

So is this a tacit admission that this doesn't undermine the premise for you then?

Of course not. The Koch brothers will happily wield truth to further their goals as well as falsehood. Being informed about where material support comes from is good. Assuming that ANYTHING that the Koch’s have ever condoned is automatic falsehood is the path that led the Republican Party to madness, just in the opposite direction. The Koch’s are irrelevant to the health argument being made here, and if the argument is bad, we can demonstrate that with more and better science.

The only way to 'prove' this experiment is to run it at some scale. A chorus of other experts have already said it'll prove very risky and that the 'focused protection' scheme they talk about -- but didn't define tightly -- is inadequate.

It is wrong to say the backers aren't relevant. They funded the group that put together an outlier policy proposal out on the eve of an anticipated increase in COVID cases. Their policy argues against measures to stem the pandemic and instead just let go of the reins. That is just the context though. The more important thing to consider is that big money involvement is likely the only reason we are even talking about it.

To follow that line I'll dissect this another way. If this policy proposal was so meritorious, why did it need a big money push? Shouldn't their impeccable academic pedigrees have been enough? No. They were being ignored because it *is* an outlier policy position. That is almost certainly why it was done this way. Once this Declaration was published, the policy position -- incomplete as it is -- ran into a wall of debunkers almost instantly. That however didn't matter much to the big money backers. They don't care about the policy merits or whether it was an actual better approach. Their goal was to muddy the policy discussion. The prize was coverage in papers like the WSJ which influence money and politicians. In other words, the Kochs want to make it harder to implement policy that hurts their bottom line.

I love seeing that stuff. What disappoints me is seeing arguments like “well, the Koch’s like these guys, so it MUST be bullshit.” That’s just lazy. The antidote to bad science is more science.

You *solely* drop strawman's like this trash above and arguments to authority and have the nerve to call others' arguments lazy.

[Kraken]

I really don’t understand why it holds such sway over you.

Because I’m NOT an epidemiologist. I don’t know shit about that field. You and malchior seem to know which experts are real and which ones are shills, and I genuinely envy that, because I don’t know any of these people.

So yeah, I fall back heavily on the reputations of the institutions that employ them.

When in doubt, I believe Smoove...our very own Dr. Fauci.

Universities don't necessarily police their faculty's conclusions or opinions. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is no crackpot, yet he's still pushing the hypothesis that ‘Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft. It can't be proved or disproved so he's free to hold onto his chosen conclusion and enjoy his notoriety, but being at Harvard doesn't make him right. At most, it gives him a soapbox.

[Jaymann]

Sounds like a logical fallacy.

[RunningMn9]

So yeah, I fall back heavily on the reputations of the institutions that employ them.

But those institutions don’t employ them to craft or advise public policy as it relates to the intersection between the spread of infectious disease, the impacts of lockdowns on mental health, educational impacts of virtual learning, or the economic impacts of not fully opening up.

[Sudy]

I realize "I saw something stupid on Facebook" hardly justifies a post, but geez. Tonight I saw an image stating, "If you can do this" (image: accepting a drive-through order at McDonald's), "then they can do this" (image: a child trick-or-treating). Caption: "Let them have some fun!!!"

If you don't realize the difference, then I'm not sure there's anything I can do to explain it to you. Yes, most restuarant visits are probably unnecessary. But there's a big difference between driving through McDonald's and opening your doorstep to neighbourhood kids. In some communities, this could mean hundreds of exponential interactions. And I'm willing to accept that since they tend to be done outdoors, the risk of Covid transmission is low. But the rate of PPE usage is also going to be low (unless you're dressed up as a healthcare professional lol); and while surface transmission rates are likely very low, I doubt people (especially kids) are going to individually sanitize packages of candy or wash their hands after they unwrap them but before they eat what's inside.

While McDonald's isn't at serious risk, keeping smaller chains and businesses running, if done responsibly, is beneficial. Most Hallowe'en treats, decor, and costumes are produced by large corporations who've had several months to prepare for a slow season. As for the value of "letting the kids have fun", yeah... that's not meaningless. But there are alternatives, and many communities are trying them. Pandemics suck, but we'll get through it. A lot faster if we use our braaaainsss.

[YellowKing]

I don't think the danger is as great in terms of transmission by candy as it is large groups of kids and parents walking around together.

I'm prepped to hand out candy as safely as possible because I don't think there's a chance in hell kids aren't going to go trick or treating this year. We'll have a table at the end of the driveway with individually sealed sanitized grab bags. Take one and move along.

[malchior]

I don't think the danger is as great in terms of transmission by candy as it is large groups of kids and parents walking around together.

I'm prepped to hand out candy as safely as possible because I don't think there's a chance in hell kids aren't going to go trick or treating this year. We'll have a table at the end of the driveway with individually sealed sanitized grab bags. Take one and move along.

This is what we are doing. Police tape off the walk and table at end of driveway. We don't get tons of visitors but its a Saturday...so who knows.

[malchior]

I don't think the danger is as great in terms of transmission by candy as it is large groups of kids and parents walking around together.

I'm prepped to hand out candy as safely as possible because I don't think there's a chance in hell kids aren't going to go trick or treating this year. We'll have a table at the end of the driveway with individually sealed sanitized grab bags. Take one and move along.

This is what we are doing. Police tape off the walk and table at end of driveway. We don't get tons of visitors but its a Saturday...so who knows.