As states and cities lift shelter-in-place restrictions, there’s still so much we don’t know about the coronavirus and how it spreads. Which has left a lot of people wondering: How safe is it, really, to start socializing again? Is wearing a mask a part of our lives for the foreseeable future—and is it possible to persuade stubborn family members to wear one, too? Are short flights safer than long flights? And, are single people destined to remain dateless in the time of coronavirus?
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED science writers Megan Molteni and Adam Rogers come on the show to try to answer some of these pressing questions. The short answer, of course, is that there are no easy answers; each decision we make is now a complicated labyrinth of potential exposure, personal circumstances, risk tolerance, and macro concerns about public health. We’re here to help guide you through this crisis.
Read Adrienne So's story about the dilemma of sending your kids back to daycare here. Read all of WIRED’s coronavirus coverage here.
Megan recommends the book Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin. Adam recommends the movie Footlight Parade. Lauren recommends HBO’s Run.
Megan Molteni is on Twitter @MeganMolteni. Adam Rogers is @jetjocko. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Lauren is @LaurenGoode. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our consulting executive producer is Alex Kapelman (@alexkapelman). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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[Intro theme music]
Lauren Goode: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Goode, I'm a senior writer at WIRED and my cohost, Michael Calore is out this week. So I was thinking maybe I would just monologue for 45 minutes, with some ad breaks. Of course I would not do that to you. I've actually invited our excellent health and science writers, Megan Molteni and Adam Rogers, back on the show. Megan, Adam, thank you for being here. By here, I mean, they're at home.
Adam Rogers: Happy to be anywhere, but nice to see your face on the Zoom as always.
Megan Molteni: Hello from my closet in Minneapolis. Glad to be here.
LG: The reason why I wanted to bring Adam and Megan on the show this week is because we're in a strange phase of the coronavirus pandemic right now. After months of quarantine, cities and businesses are tentatively lifting restrictions and reopening around the world. But that of course doesn't mean the coronavirus has just gone away. While essential workers have been interacting with people and exposing themselves to the virus for months now, for a lot of people, these lifts on restrictions mean that going places and seeing people is possible again, but with a lot of caveats.
So people are starting to ask questions about how they should and shouldn't interact with other people. This episode was actually inspired by one of our own WIRED colleagues who asked a question in Slack about a complicated family situation. Since Megan and Adam are two of our resident coronavirus experts, I've brought them on the show to help answer some of these. We went a little bit longer than usual this week, but that's because so many of you sent in great questions and honestly, there's no easy answer.
All right. So the first batch of questions came to us through WIRED's Instagram. Then later on in the show, I'm going to get to our staff questions and we're going to have some people calling in. First question from Instagram. "Do I need to wear a mask all the time when I go out?"
AR: Here's the logic with the mask. The logic is it's a respiratory virus and there are a few different kind of understood ways that respiratory viruses as genre, generically, transmit from person to person. But some of those things aren't understood yet, specifically about this one, about SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes Covid-19, which is the coronavirus we're talking about. Not only is one of the modes of transmission, the kind of large droplets that people will give off when they cough or sneeze, the way that you would catch a cold or the flu.
The idea is a mask will stop those. If you cough, it'll stop those big droplets, these particles of snot and spit, that are carrying virus. But it'll also stop smaller expiratory particles, much smaller, less than half a micron particles that come out apparently when you're talking, when you're exhaling, when you're singing, perhaps there's still some questions about that. Those behave very differently than those other droplets.
So there's some science to try to figure out the large droplets you cough them out into the air. Then, how far do they spread? That's what the six feet social distancing thing is about. People disagree about whether six feet is enough or too much or whatever, but that's what that is. You cough them out and then gravity pulls them down. But these small particles, because they're so small and because they dry out almost immediately, when they hit the air, they hang around more, they float around, they behave a little bit like a gas. Not completely like a gas. People are going to yell at me for saying that, but they float in the air. For how long and then how much virus do you need to then take in and where do you inhale that into your lungs? All of these things, people are still trying to figure out.
But the idea is that if you're wearing a mask, even a cloth one, a simple one, a simple cloth one, that it keeps you from giving those particles off as much. It stops some number of them. So they aren't out there in the world, especially inside where there's no air to blow them away and keeps them from other people getting them. That's the notion, and the messaging has changed so much there. I mean, Megan and I both covered three different phases of the messaging that's come from public health experts about this. But the one that I heard that I finally was able to get my head around was better than nothing. Something's better than nothing. That if some number of people wear a mask some amount of time that cuts down the amount of infection. That's what we're trying to do is get the number of infections below a certain number, because that's how you stop a pandemic.
LG: It seems as though there's been a little bit of a misunderstanding or misperception that if you're wearing a mask, you are protecting yourself. I've heard some people say, "Well, I went to the grocery store, but I was wearing a mask and gloves. So I'm probably OK." The whole idea behind a mask, which is I think part of the reason why they've become so complicated and so politicized and polarizing for people, is that if we collectively all wear them, it's supposed to be for the greater good of public health. It's supposed to be for other people.
MM: You should also check with the local laws and policies because you may live in a place where it's actually required to wear masks all the time. So just these things change quickly and you just want to be on top of them.
LG: Next question from Instagram: "How long can the virus stay on surfaces?"
MM: This one we know a little bit more about, although, a lot of these experiments have been done in closed lab situations. Not necessarily applicable to the real world, but, there have been some studies that suggest that the virus can live on surfaces for up to 72 hours and still remain viable. Now we have also come to... there've been changing science around, what's a bigger deal: transmission from surfaces or transmission through the air?
I think —Adam, you were referring to this earlier — first it was everybody wash your hands, and now it's everyone wear a mask. Some of the scientists I've talked to have mentioned something really interesting, that part of that changing and confusing guidance is related to the fact that it's easier to do experiments about how long stuff stays alive on surfaces. So those were the kinds experiments that came out first.
Now we're seeing more studies that are addressing, how does the virus live in particles? What size particles, how far do they go? How well do masks work? We're starting to see kind of an evolving guidance that's able to incorporate that new science and that new evidence. That maybe goes beyond the question, but I think if you go back to remembering everyone being really freaked out about it, keeping your groceries in your garage for 72 hours, that's where that number came from.
AR: Megan's absolutely right. It's much easier to do that research than it is to do aerosol research. The surface thing, they're called fomites. Those are the surfaces on which viruses can transmit. The thinking now does seem to be that it's easier to transmit via the air than on surfaces. But the cool thing about washing your hands anyway is that then there seem to also be some indications that numbers for like influenza and colds and other stuff that you do pick up from surfaces, those infection rates went down. So that's good. So keep washing your hands.
LG: Next question. "How safe is it to send children to daycare?"
MM As a childless person I'm going to pass.
AR: As a child-ed person, it seems like the disease does not spread as well to children and among children as it does among adults. It also seems like a more serious disease the older people are, nobody knows why that is. Children also do seem, when they do get it, to sometimes very, very rarely get a real weird set of complications that can sometimes be very, very serious on their own. In addition to being a respiratory virus, this disease also seems to have some impacts on circulation and blood and stuff like that.
One of the reasons that you close schools at the beginning of a pandemic is yes, to keep children safe, but also because it then keeps adults home as well. That's punitive, but it's also a public health move. My personal approach to this has been, it's probably not safe yet. But also if you can't earn a living, if you have no childcare, if there's no support for you, if you're trying to parent alone and you can't be in the house, there are other concerns here in addition to the risk of getting Covid-19 that have to be taken into account. We have to understand them and have respect for those issues as well.
MM: Just one thing to add, there are other creative ways around this potentially rather than sending your child to daycare where they're around lots of other kids, and you don't know where those kids have been. If you have another family that lives in your building or your neighborhood, similarly aged kids, is there a way that you can share childcare and some parents watch all the kids Mondays and Wednesdays and Saturdays? Allowing parents to both be able to work and really kind of limit the amount of exposure to that one family. You make a pact to basically be in each other's germ pods.
As I've heard some people call it, some people call it quaranteaming, your quaranteam is the another family that you kind of agree that you will be in each other's close contacts, but that's it. You make rules around who else is allowed in and who's not. So I just wanted to say that aside from daycare, there are other creative ways that people are trying to figure out this question.
LG: That's a good idea, Megan, not a bad solution, inviting another family into your Covid cocoon. We should also note that our WIRED colleague, Adrienne So, just wrote a story about this very topic on WIRED.com this week. I recommend that everybody go read it for additional information.
Next question: "Could short flights be safer than long ones considering physical distancing?" So I think this is a question a lot of people have right now about flying in general, but this is specific to short flights. What do we know about short flights versus long flights?
AR: It's not a crazy construction, because the way that you do this calculation is the amount of contact you have, but also the time of contact. Shorter flight safer than the longer flight. Flights aren't that safe. They recirculate about half the air. It's supposed to be HEPA filtered. There are not a lot of examples of outbreaks of any respiratory diseases, much less this one traced back to airplane flight specifically. But that doesn't mean that it's still not a risk.
Again, as Megan said, there's a calibration of risk levels here where a short flight is safer than a long flight. If you can avoid flying, it's probably a good time to avoid flying. If you can't, then you wear a mask and you wash your hands and have wipes and you try to follow social distancing rules. I think they're not seating people in middle seats anymore. That kind of stuff I think is probably a good idea.
MM: However, I will say that short flights tend to be smaller planes and you may have a higher likelihood that you have a seatmate or a lot of seatmates, and a longer flight you might be able to avoid that. So it's hard to say on its face, but those are also things that should go into your consideration.
AR: Yeah. I didn't think of that. It's a good point, Megan.
LG: I think I'm just going to start rolling my luggage around when I take out the garbage, just to feel like I'm going somewhere.
AR: Take a little drive around, but take a backpack and shove it down in between you and the gas pedal and the brake pedal in your car.
LG: That's a great idea. No leg space. I just miss it so much. All right. "Restaurants are starting to open up service again, in many cases, serving people outdoors. How can we trust restaurants when we eat from outside?"
AR It's not the restaurants! Trust the restaurant ... "What if the restaurant is cooking coronavirus?"
LG: These are from Instagram.
MM: I'd rather have my coronavirus cooked, right?
AR: Yeah, than raw? Absolutely. I mean, because you really only want to go to a raw virus place that you really trust, that you know that their prep is great.
Outside is better than inside. Outside is less risky than inside for the reasons of how small particles move around in the air. If you're outside, a breeze blows them away, it's less of a risk than being in an enclosed room.
The issue is that restaurants operate on such thin margins that they want people to be crowded in there. Also, you want them to be crowded because as a source told me this morning, crowded bars are more fun than empty bars. Can you trust that they're following food safety? As much as you trusted them before, and also it's a lot harder to transmit the virus that causes Covid-19 via food than it is all kinds of other stuff that you can get from food — I mean, if you want to panic about food, that's a rabbit hole. Enjoy that. But yeah, still, where this pandemic is, you want to be outside and you want to be distant from other people. The real risk there is to the people who are stuck in the kitchen together in an enclosed space or to the waitstaff who were working and having contact with all these other people. I'm going to be a jerk. It's not just about you, it's about all of us together.
LG: Exactly. I think you're right though in that I think there are so many calculations to do. One of those is not just your own risk, but the risk that you're exposing other people to including wait staff. The other is just how enjoyable is it for you, if at this point you feel like you need to escape the house or escape the apartment, but you go sit outside with your pod and you're all wearing masks and furiously sanitizing things? Then you go home afterwards and you think, "Oh, I could have patronized that restaurant with takeout and perhaps not exposed other people." It's a really hard thing to decide, I think.
MM: I would say, if you do for your mental health, or whatever reason, you have to go to a restaurant, maybe you could try to do that, like once every two weeks. So that you are trying to be isolated for most of the rest of that time. So that you know if you did get exposed, that you're not then going on and unwittingly exposing other people. That's one way you could go out and have your sit down restaurant experience and still be mindful of the rest of society. There are ways that you can mitigate the risks of onward transmission. You just have to be thoughtful about it.
LG: Great advice. So the next question is, "Should we stay in hotels?" Anyone from Las Vegas want to weigh in on this one?
MM: I mean, do you have to? I don't know. Are you on vacation? Then no, you shouldn't be on vacation. Do you have to go to a funeral? I don't know.
LG: I will say that I was on a group call with a bunch of fellow journalists. Then one of them said that she did end up staying in a hotel recently for reporting purposes. We were like, "What was it like?" As though we had never stayed in a hotel before. "Did you wipe everything down? Do you know if anyone had stayed there the night before you?" We were incredibly curious about the experience.
AR: It's like we forgot how lucky we were or where we didn't notice how lucky we were at the time. Now that we don't have it, we remember it. I think that I would avoid a hotel if you can. I think probably being in a hotel room by yourself, especially if you keep the do not disturb up and they don't come in and clean it, is probably safe because you're alone and you're not being exposed to other people. But I would avoid it.
I certainly think that reopening the large casinos, for example, as they are in some places is asking for a very specific kind of trouble at this point.
LG: At this point, I would like to sit at a hotel bar and have a drink.
AR: God, just so great. Isn't it?
LG: Yes. It's a luxury I took for granted. Next question is how long do you think it will be until immune compromised people can safely go out again?
MM: I mean, I think this is one of the questions that there is a lot of research aimed at right now. Because I think what we've been talking about this whole time is people trying to figure out what levels of risks they're comfortable with for themselves. I'm guessing for the most part, if you're talking about going to hotels and restaurants, you have a pretty healthy immune system, you are maybe worried about what it could mean to get the disease. But you're not in one of these really high risk groups.
We've been talking about that we all know the absolute safest thing to do is to stay in our homes forever for the rest of time. But obviously that's not tenable and it's going to wear on people's mental health. That's why we're talking about how to evaluate these risks as far as returning to society. I think for people who are immuno-compromised, I mean, the real answer is it's not going to be safe until we have something approaching herd immunity.
That could be if we get a vaccine that works in the next year or the next few years. I mean, we're talking about a long time scale. I mean, I don't want to be a downer, but those are the facts.
LG: All right. The final question from our Instagram audience. "When I go out for groceries, I always wear pants."
AR: Same!
LG: There's more than the question. [Laughs] Same... "Are shorts safe to wear at the store too?"
MM: I hope so. I've been wearing shorts. Nothing bad has happened yet.
AR: I want to answer that in a couple of ways. One way is: yes. Another way is: what? How do you think this disease is transmitted?
LG: Well, that's why I brought you on to help people understand. So please help us.
AR: That's not really a mode of egress for the virus, I mean.
LG: So shorts are OK. I think people have probably had this question about flip flops too, versus close-toed shoes. Am I going to bring it in the house? I think in general, this idea of exposure, we keep hearing about exposure and it manifests itself. It lodges itself into our brains. Then we start thinking of all the ways that we suddenly just as human beings feel vulnerable.
AR: That's a great construction actually because it is true. All of a sudden we're forced to confront how we move through the world and what we come into contact with and how the outside comes into the inside and what attack surface do we present as physical beings, as biological organisms out in the world, to the things that can do us harm? It's all scary stuff when you start to think about it. Welcome to the Monday morning meeting at the science desk.
MM: I think we should rename our desk to just like Apocalypse Beat.
LG: All right. Those were some great questions from our Instagram audience. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to ask some questions that our WIRED colleagues sent in and I have one of my own.
[Break]
LG: Welcome back. All right, this time, the questions are coming from inside the house. We solicited some questions from our WIRED colleagues. Some of them wrote them in, some of them declined to be named, and some of them actually sent in some voice notes. So we're going to get right to it. Here is our first question.
Scott Gilbertson: Hi, this is Scott Gilbertson, WIRED staff writer on the gear team. My question is about flying. Is it safe for my parents to fly across the country to visit their grandkids? What if anything, can we do to mitigate whatever risks do exist?
MM: I can take this one. I'm going to say, I think a lot of these questions coming from our colleagues are some variation of, "Will you please give me permission to do this thing I want to do?" I'm just saying flat out that, I'm not going to do that. These are decisions you are going to have to make for yourselves in terms of evaluating the risk. But I will say that, all the guidance we're getting from CDC and other world health organizations are encouraging people to travel only when essential, urgent and necessary.
If all you're trying to do is get your family together for a family visit or a family reunion, I think that, that probably does not fall under that category. So I just want to stress again, that any unnecessary travel is creating risk, not just for you and your family, but for every one that they might meet along the way in the airport, on the airplane, in the taxi ride. Whatever it is, there are ways to mitigate the risks, but there's no way to get to zero risk.
I think you just have to ask yourself, is that going to be worth it? Also, what health are your parents in? Do you want to be the reason that they don't make it? I don't know. I know that's grim, but these are conversations I've had to have with my own family, who's been asking me nonstop. "Can I go visit my grandchildren? Can I go do this?" We've had to have some really difficult talks. I won't kid you.
LG: Next question. "How do I convince my family to wear masks when we see each other in the future? If we're wearing masks, does it matter if occasionally we're less than six feet apart?"
AR: I'll just reiterate what Megan said. We can't give permission to people to engage in risky behaviors, especially when, by dent of asking these questions, they probably recognize the behaviors sort of riskier. But that said, none of us is perfect. Our masks all slip sometimes, both metaphorically and literally, and you want to be cautious. I'm not sure how to convince family members of anything. Because it's not like showing people the science helps. I think we've all learned that.
Maybe some of the things that we've been saying here about what the point of the mask is, that the point of the mask is not perfection. None of us expects perfection of any of ourselves. The point of the mask is to reduce, is to mitigate those risks. So like did the mask slip and you got within six feet of each other, like that one time. Try not to do that. That's the idea. Try not to do that.
Were you outside and not wearing masks? That's good. Were you farther apart? Good. That's how it's supposed to be. This is all difficult. People are starting to go nuts about it. That's people who aren't forced to go out and do hard jobs, essential jobs every day. It's just those of us who have been confined to home. We're getting a little stir crazy. So we try to be forgiving of all of that. With in mind that every time you do it, you increase risk a little bit and you should try to mitigate that.
LG: Here's our next question. "How long should I wait to get tested after going to a protest or other crowded event?"
MM: I can take this one. I'm in Minneapolis where there have been a lot of protests and crowded events of all kinds. The city has started to set up some free testing clinics around town, and they are recommending that people come and get tested within three to seven days of when they were exposed to a large group of people. You don't want to go too soon because if you have been exposed to the virus and then it doesn't have enough time to kind of replicate enough that the test can pick it up.
So we think the incubation is somewhere between 3 and 14 days with a median around five to seven. So if you can go in that window, you'll have the greatest chance of getting an accurate read on whether or not you have been infected.
LG: We already addressed some of this in the first part of the show, but this next question comes from our colleague Indu. She sent in her question.
Indu Chandrasekhar: Hey everyone, this is Indu. I'm WIRED's director of audience development. My question is about the Bay Area. We're now required to wear a mask within 30 feet of someone. Is this really necessary or are they just priming us psychologically to be ready to wear masks always and forever?
AR: Well, this is the complicated calculation that public health experts always have to make. Which is with limited information, how can you induce the safest behaviors by the most people for the longest amount of time, knowing that it won't always work? So if you tell people to wear masks within 30 feet, then a lot of people will try to do that. That will be safer than nobody doing it. When the people fail to do it and they get within 15 or something, that's also a little bit safer than if they're within three feet.
So you can imagine, and these aren't lies. It's not nefarious. It's an attempt to take incomplete information and apply it to a large population of people with different needs and different abilities to do what you want them to be able to do. Are they trying to prepare us to wear masks forever and always? There's the argument that cultures in which wearing masks outdoors, where that was already kind of normed did better with how Covid-19 spread than cultures where it didn't. Those arguments have a lot of problems. You can guess what some of them are. They conflate a lot of things. There's some race implications there. But the fact is that there are places where that was always OK. It hasn't been OK in the United States. I think it's going to be OK from now on.
A societal shift has happened. A cultural shift has happened where we wear masks outside and going forward, probably if you don't feel that well, you wear a mask. If we want to start using public transit again, it's probably a good idea to be wearing masks in public trans is going to be really important going forward too. Because we don't want to screw up cities with climate and congestion and all kinds of other public health things. So I think masks are part of what we do culturally now.
LG: Here's a long question from another one of our WIRED colleagues who did not want to be named. I'm going to condense this a little bit. She says, "I am my sister's maid of honor in her upcoming wedding. The pandemic has created an incredibly tense situation for us."
She originally planned a destination bachelorette party for her sister. It was going to involve 10 friends. It was this summer. As the day grew closer, they decided to cancel it. But then shortly after canceling it, her sister decided that she did want to go ahead with this destination bachelorette party. She's asked our friend to reschedule a new trip for the same month.
She's really not comfortable with this idea of planning a trip for 10 people that involves air travel, staying in a shared accommodation. Also, the staffer lives in New York City, which was a Covid hotspot. She talks about this in her question to us.
She also is aware that perhaps her sister and some of the other people involved in this potential party have been traveling around and maybe not always social distancing. So there's this excruciating back and forth that's that's going on. Her family has kind of done, like... it seems like her family has been a little bit passive in it, saying, "That's just a disagreement and there's no right or wrong."
So she is now trying to rationalize whether or not she could possibly go to this bachelorette party and still be a responsible human being. She ends the question with, "Help." What are your thoughts on this?
AR: What a mess.
MM: I mean, I think it's incredibly unfortunate to be put in that position, especially when there is enough science to be able to say some things.
AR: Well, no. Sorry, there is a right or wrong. They shouldn't have the party. I mean, we should say that. That's like the risk. That is a group of people getting together for a long period of time in close quarters. That's exactly the risk. Those are where the outbreaks have been. So we should stipulate that. The question is whether that risk is counter-balanced by not wanting your sister to think that you don't love her. Have I summed that up right?
MM: Yeah. That's it.
AR: Well, you think about the graduations and graduation parties that didn't happen. All of the kind of markers of transitioning, change that we rely on to be part of our lives and indicate to be with people that we love and show that we respect and care about each other and that time is moving. That all had to not happen. It's a weight and it's a real emotional weight in the same way as the more apparent weight of the 115,000 deaths in the United States already, and the people who've been sick and who are going to be disabled and all of the other things that this has caused.
We can't minimize those losses. But at the same time, what I feel like, and this is an emotional response, not a scientific one. Those are the things that should make us be coming together and being more resolute. In fact, because there are no drugs and no vaccines, we're supposed to be helping each other and caring for each other more in weird new ways. I'm being pretty adamant, I guess, about like bachelorette parties here as a thing that is a necessary sacrifice. But if it blows up a family, is that cost too high? I don't know.
MM: The thing about this pandemic is that everyone is making sacrifices. When we see other people breaking that social contract and maybe not making the same sacrifice, I think the knee jerk response is to say, "Oh hey, but they're doing that. Why can't I do my thing?" I think Adam's absolutely right, that this is a time where we need to see that and say, "No, I'm going to take extra care because I'm maybe not seeing that reflected and I need to set an example."
Not just set an example, but actually by making that sacrifice, you are reducing potentially dozens or hundreds of potential strains of transmission. If we're talking about multiple people flying from all over the country to, I mean, bachelorette parties are, you go out and you drink and you do things that then cloud your ability to assess the riskiness of that behavior. To me, it seems like there can only be one answer. But again, I think when it comes to family, there's no easy answers.
AR: I promise to still respect and care for my colleague, whichever decision she makes here.
LG: It's hard to communicate those answers too. One of you said earlier, "Can you change your family's mind about anything?" So there's certain ways in which you may try to communicate what your concerns are, and they may come across as sanctimonious. Then you're not really getting through to anybody. So it seems like in those cases that you do have to find ways to lead by example, or show that you care. In some ways showing that you care these days is not showing up, which is hard to grapple with.
This last question comes from our colleague, Jay. He also sent in a voice note, so let's hear it.
Jay Dayrit: Hi, my name is Jay, and I'm the director of editorial operations at WIRED. Here's my question. My gym was super gross to begin with, and I doubt it'll be any better once the pandemic is over. I frankly doubt I'm ever going to go back. So in the meantime, I've taken up running, but on my run today of the 15 or so runners or cyclists who breeze past me, only three were wearing masks. I mean, I get it. I wear a mask. I know how inconvenient they can be. My glasses steam up. I feel like I can't get enough oxygen. I have to smell my own breath. I actually brush my teeth before I run, but I wear a mask as much for my own safety, as well as for the safety of others. Am I being overly cautious? Is it OK to do cardio outside on the street without a mask?
AR: It does seem like it's really hard to transmit the infection by running past somebody else, even if you're breathing hard. Because if you're outside those small particles don't seem to get from the person who may be infected and who isn't showing symptoms yet. Because presumably if you're symptomatic, you're not out running. This is either if you're asymptomatic, which is say you're sick, but not exhibiting symptoms or you're presymptomatic, which is you've been infected and you aren't showing symptoms yet. So you still feel good enough to go out for a run.
The number of times that happens, times the number of times that you come into contact with somebody like that, times the amount of virus that you put out, times the cloud that you'd have to run through and inhale. All those things seem very rare. I think it's a good practice if possible, to wear the mask outside because we should be learning to do that. I think the transmissions of running past somebody are vanishingly rare. At this point, much safer than going to the gym, for example, which is opening, which I think is still probably something that if you can avoid, you should probably avoid for all the same reasons.
But how mad should you be at some other jogger for not wearing a mask? I mean, that's maybe not where we live yet. Yet either where we're policing those sorts of behaviors in that situation. Being in the supermarket and asking somebody to put a mask on, I think is more significant. I don't know. Megan, do you have a different view on that?
MM: No. I mean, the only nuance I would add is that where you run, you may want to consider different behaviors. If you are on a crowded jogging path or other throughway in a city and everyone else is there because they also can't go to their gyms. That might be again, a situation where you'd want to wear a mask.
LG All right. I have a quick personal question for you both to end the question round. So last year I "consciously uncoupled" after a very long partnership, and near the end of the year I moved into a new place. Then 2020 happens. Now I'm wondering if I'll ever date again. That's very dramatic, but I am wondering about dating and how people are supposed to date. I've heard that in dating apps that now there's a lot of suggestion and nudges that people video chat. I do know some people have gone for socially distant walks and that sort of thing.
But what do you really see as the future of dating here? There was a New York Times graphic this week where The New York Times surveyed more than 500 epidemiologists about the things they would do and wouldn't do. And 42 percent of them said they would wait more than a year before meeting new people, which was really disheartening to read. So what are your thoughts on that?
AR: I have been with the same partner living with the person for 25 years. So I don't think I would know how to answer a question about dating that didn't happen in a year where there was a pandemic.
MM: Well, way to throw a girl under the bus, Adam.
AR: I'm useless here and I'm embarrassed how useless I am here.
MM: I've also been living with the same person for a number of years, but I do have younger siblings.
LG: Guys, I was in your boat just a short while ago! My timing is impeccable.
MM: I'm going to say a few things I've heard of people doing. Then maybe we can do the thought experiment of what we ourselves would do. I have younger friends who have been on the online apps and they have been setting up video calls. My sister actually does this kind of funny thing where the first date is always some version of one person gives a TED Talk about whatever they want because it's kind of like, "Well, if this sucks at least like I learned about this thing or we don't have to make weird dribble-ish first date commentary over video."
I don't really know what the next step is, because I'm not sure there have been a lot of instant chemistry. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing.
LG: No, I have to say, I'm not surprised there haven't been a ton of follow-ups after that formula.
MM I think, I don't know. I mean, I'll just say I do not envy you or anyone else in that situation. Actually Lauren, I've been thinking about you a lot and how full of anxiety I would be if I was having to make all of these decisions on my own. So I feel for you.
LG: Thanks, Megan.
MM: I don't know. It's weird because I mean, I never did any online dating in pre-pandemic times. So if I were to start doing that, it would just be, I don't know, I might just become a hermit. It just sounds so overwhelming.
LG: I mean, there is a lot of time to focus on personal growth, which is something that you kind of hope for post-relationship anyway. But I think that there's a real risk of becoming too inward when the point is, right now, I think that you're also supposed to find ways to help people and connect with people and reach out to other people. It's really hard when you feel hamstrung in making those connections. I've seen some articles — I think The Economist ran one — about how the emotional connection is back in and sex is out. It's like, "Well, yeah, people's hands are forced." But also I mean, are we supposed to start writing love letters? Should I be expecting notes via pigeon? I don't know.
MM To go back to the concept of a germ pod. If you were to meet someone through an online dating app, I think there's nothing wrong with going out. Instead of going to get a drink at a bar, you go and you go for a socially distanced walk. Maybe after a few of those, you realize, "I want to keep seeing this person." Then you wind up having to I mean, do a pandemic age define the relationship talk about if you want to be in each other's germ pod.
There's a lot that goes into that in terms of being transparent about how often the other person is going shopping, how many other people they're seeing? You want to get on the same level in terms of what amount of risk you're comfortable with, but I think it might accelerate or decelerate relationships in that sense. But I think there's no reason if you have a genuine connection with someone that you could make that decision to explore the relationship more physically in a way that feels safe by having those kinds of conversations.
AR: Because it cuts off all the ways that we have to keep in touch with people who we don't our share homes with now or cut off the frequencies in relationship bandwidth that are so important to a romantic connection. They cut off a lot of socio-emotional cues because Zoom can't handle that. They cut off spontaneity. They cut off all of the ways that you build partnership with somebody or the things that a phone call or a video conference are not great at. They're OK at maintaining them. Maybe if you already had it, you can find ways to hold on to them if they preexist.
But to build them now going forward, it does seem like you'd have to find a way to be in person with a person, at least for a while. I think that this is one of those things where, we can identify what riskier levels of risk and behaviors are, and you can decide which ones that you're going to assume in a given situation. One of the ways that when public health folks try to understand why Japan seems to have dealt with the pandemic better than other places. One of the ideas here is that they communicated the risk very differently. They didn't do what like the United States did and say, "OK, always masks, wash your hands, be six feet apart. Don't be in crowds ever. Close all those schools. No mass gathering events."
What instead they did is they kept doing most of that stuff, but they said, "Here's what the risks are. So try not to do these things, especially together. Try not to talk to somebody really close up for a long time. Try not to be in a crowded room with a lot of people for a long time." All the stuff that we understand are risky, acknowledging that like they all kind of cross over with each other. I would say here's my guess. It's a guess and I'm not going to be expert in this.
But the risk of being alone to the point where it hurts a lot for people is probably that risk is greater than a risk of like, "OK, you went outside and sat with somebody at the other end of a picnic table for awhile and tried to get to know them." That has its own kind of risks as well, but maybe sometimes those are worth it too.
LG: Well, thank you to both of you for answering so thoughtfully. It seems as though my initial assessment was correct and that I am never going to date again. No, I'm obviously kidding, but it does seem as though we're entering a completely new era of social interaction and I'll keep you updated as I navigate it. We're going to take a quick break when we come back, we'll do very quick recommendations.
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LG: All right. Time for recommendations. Megan, would you like to go first?
MM: Sure. So this one's a little bit weird. It's actually an audio book. I don't listen to these very often, but kind of relevant to our conversation. I recently had to travel to Atlanta to take care of a ailing family member and they're an immuno-compromised person. So in an effort to minimize risk, my partner and I did the whole 17 hour drive in one shot. With only stops at like parks for outdoor eating.
But we listened to this book called Little Eyes, which is by the Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin who is this just amazing kind of surrealistic style of writing. I had read her 2017 debut novella, which is called Fever Dream, which was just wild and kind of messed me up for a while. But her new book is actually this kind of thought experiment on what would happen if an individual could be virtually inserted into the life of a random stranger anywhere in the world?
Kind of the vehicle for this is these little creatures that you feel like if they were real, we would be covering the heck out of them at WIRED, they're called Kentukis. Imagine like a cross between a teddy bear and a cell phone with legs that has a connection to one other person in the world inside of it. You don't know who they are and you don't know anything about them and you have to keep the Kentuki charged. If you don't, the connection is cut and you lose track of each other forever.
Anyways, it is wild and it has given me all sorts of things to think about in terms of the way we think about the future at WIRED. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The audio book is great. The woman who reads it is fantastic and she does accents amazingly. So yeah, it's great.
LG: That sounds super interesting. Thank you for that recommendation, Megan. Adam, what's yours?
AR: We spun up HBO Max in my house via our cable and internet subscription. It's like the 57th streaming service that we have for some reason, but it's divided into a bunch of channels. One of the channels is Turner Classic Movies, TCM, which means it's like this whole Warner Brothers back catalog. So the other night I turned on a movie called Footlight Parade, which is James Cagney's first song and dance movie from 1933. With these delirious psychedelic Busby Berkeley dance numbers with like 300 scantily clad women in swimming pools, sliding down water slides and all these really racy pre-code jokes and Cagney.
All the acting is really weird early '30s. They're still learning how to do talkies basically, except for Cagney who's magnetic and a movie star. You're like, "Oh, well, that's why he got to be famous." I stayed up until like one in the morning watching this movie to the end of it because I stay up too late now. Because things are things. But also I realized like, "I'm sitting here watching a 100 year old movie right now instead of trying to pay attention to what's happening or work or whatever. Why am I doing this?"
As my partner was going to bed finally, like, "I'm good not seeing how this ends. I'm sure it's happy." I was like, "What am I doing?" The answer is trying to be OK, trying to have something that feels better. I'm watching a 100 year old movie because a 100 years ago, things were different. They had gotten through the Spanish flu in 1918 and they were trying to deal with feeling bad about the depression by having these beautiful dance numbers.
There was no such thing as World War II. They had no idea what was coming. It was a moment that I think fit like a puzzle piece into a very specific place in my head and also movie's pretty good and the dance numbers are amazing.
LG: You watched that on HBO Max, you said?
AR: I did. Yes.
LG: All right. Which is, I think $14.99 per month, if I'm not mistaken.
AR: Holy smoke, I'm glad it comes with cable.
LG: I think it is. I think and I know this because I recently resubscribed to the HBO app. So now I have HBO Max on my iPad because I wanted to watch Run, which is my recommendation. It's a new series created by Vicky Jones, the executive producer is Phoebe Waller-Bridge who many of you may know from Fleabag. It stars Merritt Wever and Domhnall Gleeson. It is this zany runaway romance where the two main characters made an agreement many years ago, when they were dating in college, that if things in the real world ever got to be too much in the future and they texted each other "Run" and the other one responded with "Run", it meant that they were going to run away together. Throughout the years they had each texted each other, but the other wouldn't respond. In this case, they're both at a point in their lives and in their late 30s where they say like, "Fuck it. We're running." So they get on a train going cross country.
Well, one of the characters first flies from the West Coast to the East Coast. And she does the thing where she runs up to the desk at the airport and slaps her card down. And says "Get me a ticket." I'm like, "Oh my God, that sounds so fun right now. I would love to do that." There's no mask or hand sanitizer or mental gymnastics about, "Will I die?" So she goes and they meet on a train and then they're going westward. It's great, it's funny, it's zany. I really enjoyed it. It was a nice bit of escapism, certainly.
As you kind of noted, Adam, there's this thing about watching shows or movies from the Before Times where now all these interactions seem like we took them for granted. There were characters making out! They're using the train bathroom without worrying about things! In fact, one of them rips the handle off a train bathroom door, and then later makes a joke about germs. I just really enjoyed it and I recommend it. So that's Run on HBO.
All right. That's our very long show for this week. We hope you found it helpful. Thank you for listening and thank you to Megan and Adam for joining me.
MM Thanks Lauren.
AR: It's always a pleasure to get to talk to you.
LG: Thank you to everybody who submitted questions. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. Just check the show notes for our handles. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth and our executive producer is Alex Kapelman. We'll be back next week and until then, stay healthy.
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