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MIT researchers say you are no safer from Covid indoors at 6 toes or 60 toes in new research

MIT researchers say you're no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet in new study

Customers dine at Picos Restaurant, which was threatened after the announcement of its continued need for masks as the state of Texas prepares to lift its mask mandate and shut down business during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Houston, Texas to fully expand again. March 9, 2021.

Callaghan O’Hare | Reuters

The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors is just as high at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet – even when wearing a mask. So, according to a new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who are questioning the social distancing guidelines adopted around the world.

MIT Professors Martin Z. Bazant, who teaches chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and John WM Bush, who teaches applied mathematics, developed a method of calculating the risk of exposure to Covid-19 indoors that takes into account a variety of issues that have an impact could be transmission, including time spent inside, air filtration and circulation, immunization, variant strains, mask use, and even respiratory activity such as breathing, eating, speaking, or singing.

Bazant and Bush question the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s long-standing Covid-19 guidelines and the World Health Organization in a peer-reviewed study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States earlier this week has been.

“We don’t think the 6-foot rule is of much use, especially when people are wearing masks,” Bazant said in an interview. “It really has no physical foundation as the air a person breathes while wearing a mask tends to rise and fall elsewhere in the room, leaving you more exposed to the average background than a person in the distance.”

The important variable that the CDC and WHO have overlooked is the amount of time they spend indoors, Bazant said. The longer someone is in the house with an infected person, the greater the chance of transmission, he said.

Opening windows or installing new fans to keep the air moving could be just as effective or more effective than spending large sums of money on a new filtration system, he said.

Bazant also says the guidelines for enforcing indoor occupancy limits are flawed. He said that 20 people gathered for 1 minute is probably fine, but not over several hours, he said.

“Our analysis also shows that many rooms that have actually been closed do not have to be closed. Often the room is big enough, the ventilation is good enough, the time people spend together is so big rooms can be even at full capacity safely operated, and the scientific support for reduced capacity in these rooms really isn’t very good, “Bazant said. “I think if you enter the numbers, even now, for many types of rooms, you will find that no occupancy restrictions are required.”

Six feet of social distancing rules accidentally leading to closed businesses and schools are “just not sensible,” according to Bazant.

“That emphasis on distancing was really misplaced from the start. The CDC or the WHO never really provided a justification for it. They just said that this is what you have to do, and the only justification I know of is based on coughing and sneezing studies that look at the largest particles that could settle on the floor, and even if it’s very approximate, you can certainly have large droplets of greater or shorter range, “said Bazant.

“The distancing doesn’t help you that much and also gives you a false sense of security because you’re just as safe at 6 feet as you are at 60 feet when you’re inside. Everyone in this room is about the same risk actually,” he noted.

Droplets laced with pathogens move through the air indoors when people are talking, breathing, or eating. Airborne transmission is now known to play a huge role in the spread of Covid-19 compared to the earlier months of the pandemic when hand washing was seen as the top recommendation to avoid transmission.

These droplets from the warm exhalation mix with body heat and air currents in the area and rise and travel across the room, no matter how socially distant a person is. According to the study, people seem to be more exposed to this “background air” than distant droplets.

For example, if someone infected with Covid-19 wears a mask and sings loudly in an enclosed room, a person sitting on the other side of the room is no better protected than someone just three feet from the infected person sitting person. Because of this, the time you spend in the confined area is more important than the distance from the infected person.

Masks generally prevent transmission by blocking larger droplets. Therefore, larger droplets don’t make up the majority of Covid infections as most people wear masks. The majority of people who transmit Covid do not cough or sneeze, they are asymptomatic.

Masks also prevent transmission indoors by blocking direct clouds of air. The best way to see this is when someone is exhaling smoke. Continuous exposure to direct infectious air plumes would result in a higher risk of transmission, although exposure to direct air plumes usually does not last long.

Even with masks on, such as when smoking, those in the vicinity are severely affected by the second-hand smoke that moves and lingers around the enclosed area. The same logic applies to infectious droplets in the air, according to the study. Indoors and when masked, factors besides distance can be more important to avoid transmission.

As for outdoor social distancing, Bazant says it makes almost no sense and that doing it with your masks on is “kind of crazy”.

“When you look at the flow of air outside, the infected air is swept away and is very unlikely to cause transmission. There are very few recorded cases of outdoor transmission.” he said. “Crowded outdoor spaces could be a problem, but if people keep a reasonable distance of about 3 feet outside, I feel pretty comfortable with it even without masks.”

According to Bazant, this could possibly explain why states like Texas or Florida, where companies reopened with no capacity constraints, had no transmission spikes.

For variant strains that are 60% more transmissible, increasing ventilation by 60%, reducing the time spent indoors, or limiting the number of people indoors could offset this risk.

Bazant also said a big question will be when to remove masks and that the study’s guidelines can help quantify the risks involved. He also noted that measuring carbon dioxide in a room can also help quantify how much infected air there is, and therefore the risk of transmission.

“We need scientific information that is conveyed to the public in a way that is not only frightening but actually based on analysis,” said Bazant. After three rounds of intense peer reviews, he said it was the most review he had ever been through and he hoped it will influence policy now that it is released.

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The right way to Get Vaccinated If You are Afraid of Needles

How to Get Vaccinated If You're Afraid of Needles

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“It would be heartbreaking for me if the fear of needles stopped someone from getting this vaccine because there are things we can do to help ease it,” said Dr. Nipunie S. Rajapakse, an infectious disease expert at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

A University of Michigan study found that 16 percent of adults from multiple countries avoided annual flu shots and 20 percent avoided tetanus shots for fear of needles.

Mary Rogers, a retired professor at the University of Michigan and one of the study’s authors, said it was too early to know if a similar number of people would be without the Covid-19 vaccine. However, that fear tends to subside as people get older – which is worrying given that the number of coronavirus cases have been caused by young people who are more likely to develop a phobia.

Experts say that whether fear is keeping you from getting the vaccine or just distressing you is a problem that can be overcome. Here are the steps they suggest.

A therapist can help people with the most severe fears by using some of the techniques that will help people overcome other fears that can affect their lives.

“When we are really concerned about a fear, it goes to the point where it bothers the person receiving adequate medical care or causes the person to get the flu shot or the vaccine. But they’re sick for a month and thinking about getting it, ”said Dianne Chambless, a retired professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

For other phobias, professionals often recommend slowly exposing yourself to fear, like someone who is afraid of heights and gradually spends more time on a balcony. However, this is more difficult with needles as shots are rare and easy to avoid.

Dr. Chambless suggested working on your comfort by looking at photos of needles and syringes first, then photos of someone taking a picture, and editing videos. But a therapist can offer a more comprehensive plan.

If you can’t see a therapist, self-help books on overcoming phobias might be a faster option, she said.

There may be techniques they can use or products available to help relieve the pain or be more patient, said Dr. Rajapakse.

Updated

March 20, 2021, 8:52 p.m. ET

If it would be helpful to have someone with you to assist, some vaccination centers might allow it, but you would need to ask beforehand.

Some people’s fears can be so severe that they may faint. If so, the nurse may be able to deliver the shot lying down or otherwise help reduce the risk, said Dr. Rajapakse.

If fainting is a risk and you feel light-headed, Dr. Chambless involves tensing the muscles of your body to push blood pressure to the head.

It will all be over in seconds, and a distraction can help you get through.

It could be a YouTube video on your phone or it could be your favorite song. You can practice deep breathing or meditative techniques or wiggle your toes or look around and count all the blue objects you can see in the room.

Many people choose not to look directly at the needle. You don’t have to see it.

“Take your attention away from what’s going on,” said Dr. Rajapakse.

For some people, the nervous anticipation of the shot is almost as bad as the pinch itself.

In the case of the Covid-19 vaccine, however, there is much to be expected if the vaccine manages to allow a return to normal. Dr. Rajapakse said when she got her first dose, “I personally felt more optimistic and excited than nervous.”

“With that in mind, you may find this a little less nervous,” she said.

The media can do its part by showing fewer pictures of people feeling uncomfortable while a needle penetrates their skin, which can worsen feelings of anxiety, said Dr. Rajapakse.

A good countermeasure is all of the positive photos popping up on social media of people holding their vaccination cards, she said. (Just be careful with how much information you share.) The more selfies, stickers, and grateful posts people see, the more likely they are to associate the vaccine with positive feelings, she said.

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When You’re a Small Enterprise, E-Commerce Is Harder Than It Seems

When You’re a Small Business, E-Commerce Is Tougher Than It Looks

There’s a chair in the middle of the Holiday Market, a grocery store near Detroit, and if customers are lucky, Tom Violante Sr. sits in it. The 91-year-old founder still comes to work most days – and he knows where everything is located in an area of ​​60,000 square meters.

“He asks everyone if they found what they wanted,” said his son Tom Violante Jr., who runs the business with his sister and brother-in-law. “If not, he’ll tell you which aisle it’s in, how many steps it takes to get there, and where it’s up, knees, head or stomach up.”

The Royal Oak, Michigan store is known for this type of customer service. When Tom Violante Jr. considered offering grocery shopping online, he wanted to provide the same level of care. He didn’t expect the service to generate massive sales, but he saw the future come as online brands like Chewy and Winc wooed their customers. In 2019, he assembled a team to build an online platform that could handle the store’s 60,000 items.

He was happy when the pandemic broke out.

“When we started we were so busy people couldn’t get a pick-up place for a week, but we wanted to be there within two days,” he said. “Now we can pick it up the same day.”

In terms of pandemic winners and losers, Holiday Market is in the positive column thanks to online shopping, which helped the store’s total sales increase 20 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. Ecommerce actually prevented US retail from having a disastrous year. Retail sales rose nearly 3.5 percent year over year to $ 5.6 trillion instead of ending in a deep red lows, according to research firm eMarketer. E-commerce alone grew by 33.6 percent in 2020.

Holiday Market’s success, however, is an outlier for small retailers – the boom has mostly helped big business. Ten major retailers accounted for 68 percent of all ecommerce sales in the US last year – and Amazon alone made up more than half of all online sales. According to real estate analysts from the CoStar Group, large e-commerce companies used almost 60 percent of all available storage space in the past year.

“The big just got bigger,” said Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at eMarketer.

For small businesses, the benefits are very uneven. There were winning sectors like groceries, health and fitness, and direct selling brands, but clothing boutiques and other specialty retailers – especially those with no existing e-commerce platforms – struggled.

“The pandemic has accelerated the growth of online commerce,” said Loren Padelford, vice president of Shopify, the e-commerce platform that primarily serves independent retailers. “It gave a lot of people the idea that if you have to close your physical door, you have to have a digital door.”

Shopify, a Canadian company, is helping customers build online stores quickly – and many companies turned to him for help when they had to close due to shutdown orders. Shopify’s revenue grew nearly 90 percent last year and now serves 1.7 million merchants worldwide.

Rooshy Roy started her online beauty business, Aavrani, with Shopify. She never thought of opening a physical store. “We realized that we can build a business that is about culture and ingredients and that selling directly to consumers can make that happen,” she said.

Ms. Roy, a first generation Indian-American American, grew up making hair masks and other beauty products with her mother and grandmother. However, she was never proud of her legacy or her formulations until she met her business partner Justin Silver in business school.

Together, they raised nearly $ 3 million from investors and launched the first iteration of Aavrani in 2018. The reaction was lukewarm, so they pulled back and renamed themselves. Last summer, they restarted the New York City-based company with new packaging and a new customer loyalty plan.

The company primarily uses digital ads to generate sales, but Ms. Roy also uses Instagram, TikTok, and Clubhouse to connect directly with customers. She has built a following on these platforms, she said, because she doesn’t just post about the products. She writes about what matters to her: the struggles in building a business, her upbringing, even confusion about how to “look” as a beauty brand owner.

Updated

March 7, 2021, 9:35 p.m. ET

“This is so different from the last version of the brand,” said Ms. Roy. “It’s less transactional, more authentic to me. It really contributed to our growth. “

In 2020, the company had sales of $ 1 million, Ms. Roy said. This year she expects $ 6 million.

However, for brick and mortar stores considering e-commerce, success isn’t always as simple as posting a website and watching orders come in. Even at the Holiday Market, there were significant logistical challenges – for example, where to store all of those online orders and keep them cool. Mr Violante had to core out one of the prep kitchens to make room for new freezers and fridges that were earmarked for storage. He also has to pay the staff to shop the order, organize items, and bring them to the curb.

“It’s very expensive to have an online shopping program,” said Violante.

Online purchases make up about 8 percent of all in-store sales, and there are 15 employees and a manager dedicated to service. But Mr. Violante’s vision is not to be the best online grocer. It wants to be the place where customers have a great experience and use online ordering as a convenience.

“When everything is in place, how are you going to sit down and start a conversation with people?” he asked. “Losing that really scares me. So we’re going to be more like the food hall you see in the big cities, a place where there are common spaces and a community where people can talk to each other. “

The costs and the logistics of implementing an e-commerce strategy convinced Rachel Lutz not to open any digital doors to her three Detroit fashion boutiques, Peacock Room, Frida and Yama. “Ecommerce websites are not a magical solution to saving small retail businesses,” she said.

For one thing, Ms. Lutz couldn’t find a good way to manage inventory across two sales channels. She carries a number of unique and specialty items and is concerned that an online customer might buy an item like someone picked it up from a store shelf. Keeping separate inventory for online and in-store stores was too expensive. Nor did she want to use her retail space as shipping and logistics centers when the cost of renting it is so much higher than the warehouse space.

In the end, she realized that the most important thing was to be a community-centric company. “I may be less efficient, but I have a more special and unique business and that attracts people to our business,” said Ms. Lutz.

However, it hasn’t turned its back on e-commerce yet. Ms. Lutz used Facebook Live – a tool she was already familiar with – to create a home shopping show. Several times a week she goes in front of the camera and talks about the products in her store and the people who make them. She numbers the items and people post “sold” in the comments when they want to buy something.

“Customers have started to call it” the show “,” said Ms. Lutz. “I knew we had moved from e-commerce to infotainment when I heard customers watching it on their big screen TVs.”

Amina Daniels, the owner of the Live Cycle Delight gym in Detroit, puts on her own show. She wishes she could just point a camera at one of her yoga or spinning instructors and start Instagram Live, but she knows she needs high production values ​​if she wants her clients to keep their membership. So Ms. Daniels built a mini production studio in her spin room and invested thousands in microphones, lights, and a film crew to produce on-demand video courses.

Regardless of how much she invests in her digital platform, it’s difficult to compete against Peloton, which is well capitalized and where entire teams are producing their digital classes. In the past fiscal year, the company posted a 100 percent increase in revenue, even though Live Cycle Delight revenue declined 80 percent.

“Our competition has changed,” said Ms. Daniels. “We’re not just competing with the gym on the street. Titans like Peloton and SoulCycle are true beneficiaries of this pandemic. We work twice as hard to compete with these titans and celebrity coaches. “

About 30 customers left Live Cycle Delight for Peloton, Ms. Daniels said, but she found support in other ways. With the move to support black-owned companies, people donated for them, and there was good demand for the studio’s branded items like pilates balls, t-shirts, and booty bands, the stretchy bands that add resistance to a workout. These goods have proven so popular that Ms. Daniels struggles to keep them in stock on her website.

Between the products, summer outdoor courses and memberships, she was able to keep the three-year deal open. The move to e-commerce wasn’t perfect, she said, but it was worth it. She remembers why she started the studio: to make fitness more accessible and inclusive.

“Peloton is just one type of experience,” she said. “We’re still here to give our customers the opportunity to join us on the path for the better.”

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‘You’re on Mute’ and ‘Unprecedented’: The Phrases of the 12 months

‘You’re on Mute’ and ‘Unprecedented’: The Words of the Year

“You’re dumb” was said in 1,000 percent more calls between executives and investors in 2020 compared to 2019.

December 29, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic released a new dictionary in 2020, and it appears that the American company started speaking a new language overnight. In conversations between executives and investors, there were a number of words and phrases used to describe the … unprecedented moment we were all in. These are some of the terms that have skyrocketed in use this year based on more than 20,000 corporate presentations we analyzed with Sentieo, a research company. (Surprisingly, executives swore as much as they did last year.)

+ 70,830%

“These are unprecedented times. Much of our reopening is not just our decision. We are not in full control. ” Christine McCarthy, CFO of the Walt Disney Company September 9th

“We have never been in a challenging environment.” Larry Culp Jr., CEO of General Electric 28th of October

“So expanding the shelter on site – or frankly I would call it the forcible detention of people in their homes against all of their constitutional rights – but that’s my opinion – and breaking people’s freedoms in terrible and wrong ways not why people came to America or built this country. What the (expletive). Excuse me. It’s outrage. It’s an outrage. ” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla April 29

Source: Sentieo • Figures come from transcripts of investor calls for all companies listed on the US stock exchange. Prevalence is measured by the number of transcripts that contain a phrase, not all of the individual mentions. Data as of December 28th. • Illustration from the New York Times

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Health

You’re Contaminated With the Coronavirus. However How Contaminated?

You’re Infected With the Coronavirus. But How Infected?

With Covid-19 patients flocking to hospitals across the country, doctors face an impossible question. Which patients in the emergency room are more likely to get worse quickly and which are most likely to fight the virus and recover?

As it turns out, there may be a way to differentiate these two groups, although it’s not yet widely used. Dozens of research published in the past few months found that people with bodies full of coronaviruses were more likely to get seriously ill and die more often, compared to people who carried much fewer viruses and were more likely to be relatively unharmed.

The results suggest that knowing what is known as viral load – the amount of virus in the body – could help doctors predict a patient’s course and more accurately distinguish those who may only need an oxygen check once a day from those who need it monitored, said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease doctor at Columbia University in New York.

Tracking viral load “can actually help us stratify risk,” said Dr. Griffin. The idea is not new: viral load management has long been the foundation of caring for people living with HIV and stopping the transmission of this virus.

Little effort has been made to track viral loads in Covid-19 patients. However, earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration announced that clinical laboratories may report not only whether a person was infected with the coronavirus, but also how much virus was transmitted in their body.

This is not a change in policy – laboratories could have reported this information all along, according to two senior FDA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for not having the authority to speak publicly on the matter.

Still, the news came as a welcome surprise to some of the experts who have spent months pushing laboratories to record this information.

“This is a very important step by the FDA,” said Dr. Michael Mina, epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “I think it’s a step in the right direction to make the most of one of the little pieces of data we have for a lot of positive people.”

The FDA change followed a similar move by the Florida Department of Health to require all laboratories to report this information.

Omitting viral load from test results was a missed opportunity not only to optimize strained clinical resources but also to better understand Covid-19, experts say. For example, an analysis of viral load shortly after exposure could reveal whether people who die of Covid-19 are more likely to have high viral loads at the onset of their illness.

And a study published in June showed that the viral load decreased as the immune response increased, “just as you would expect from an old virus,” said Dr. Alexander Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. who directed the study.

An increase in the average viral load across communities could indicate an increasing epidemic. “We can get an idea of ​​whether the epidemic is growing or decreasing without relying on the number of cases,” said James Hay, postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Mina’s laboratory.

Fortunately, viral load data – or at least a rough approximation of it – is readily available to feed into the results of the PCR tests that most laboratories use to diagnose coronavirus infection.

A PCR test is performed in “cycles”, doubling the amount of viral genetic material originally taken from the patient sample. The higher the initial viral load, the fewer cycles the test takes to find genetic material and generate a signal.

A positive result at a low cycle threshold or Ct implies a high viral load on the patient. If the test is positive after completing many cycles, the patient is likely to have a lower viral load.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York recorded the viral load of more than 3,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients on the day they were admitted. They found that 40 percent of patients with high viral loads – whose tests were positive at a Ct of 25 or less – died in the hospital, compared with 15 percent of those who tested positive at higher Ct and presumably lower viral loads.

In another study, the Nevada Department of Health found an average Ct of 23.4 in people who died from Covid-19 compared to 27.5 in people who survived their diseases. People who were asymptomatic had a mean of 29.6, suggesting they carried much fewer viruses than the other two groups.

These numbers seem to vary very little, but they represent millions of virus particles. “These are not subtle differences,” said Dr. Greninger. A study from his lab showed that patients with a Ct less than 22 were more than four times as likely to die within 30 days as compared to those with a lower viral load.

However, using Ct values ​​to estimate viral load is a difficult practice. Viral load measurements for HIV are highly accurate because they are based on blood samples. Tests for the coronavirus rely on wiping your nose or throat – a process that is subject to user error and the results of which are less consistent.

The amount of coronavirus in the body changes drastically as the infection progresses. The levels go from undetectable to positive test results in just a few hours, and the viral load continues to rise until the immune response sets in.

Then the viral load decreases rapidly. However, viral fragments can remain in the body and produce positive test results long after the patient is no longer infectious and the disease has resolved.

Given this variability, capturing viral load at a given point in time may not make sense if there is no more information about the progression of the disease, said Dr. Celine Gounder, Infectious Disease Specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and a member of the Coronavirus Inbound Management Advisory Group.

“When do you measure the viral load on this curve?” Asked Dr. Gounder.

The exact relationship between a Ct value and the corresponding viral load can vary between tests. Instead of validating this quantitative relationship for each machine, the FDA authorized the tests to provide diagnoses based on a limit value for the cycle threshold.

Most manufacturers conservatively set the thresholds for diagnosing their machine between 35 and 40. These values ​​generally correspond to an extremely low viral load. However, the exact threshold for a positive result or for a certain Ct as an indication of infectivity depends on the instrument used.

“So I’m very concerned about many of these Ct-based ratings,” said Susan Butler-Wu, director of clinical microbiology at the University of Southern California.

“Of course it is a value that can be useful in certain clinical circumstances,” said Dr. Butler-Wu, “but the idea that you can have a unicorn Ct that correlates perfectly with an infectious or non-infectious condition makes me very nervous.”

Other experts recognized these limitations, but said that the benefits of collecting Ct values ​​outweighed the concerns.

“All of these are valid points when looking at the test results of an individual patient, but they don’t change the fact that, on average, looking at the results of the admission tests of these Ct values, actually identifies patients at high risk of decompensation will and die, “said Dr. Michael Satlin, an infectious disease physician and lead researcher on the Weill Cornell Study.

Dr. Satlin said adjusting his team’s results for duration of symptoms and various other variables did not change the high risk of death in high viral load patients. “Regardless of how you try to statistically adjust, that association is extremely strong and won’t go away,” he said.

At the population level, too, Ct values ​​can be valuable during a pandemic, said Dr. Hay. High viral loads in a large group of patients may indicate recent exposure to the virus, suggesting an incipient increase in community transmission.

“This could be a great monitoring tool for less well-equipped facilities that need to understand the course of the epidemic but are unable to conduct regular, random tests,” said Dr. Hay.

Overall, information on the viral load is too valuable to be ignored or discarded without analysis.

“One of the things that has been difficult with this pandemic is that everyone wants to do evidence-based medicine and do it at the right pace,” said Dr. Greninger. “But we should also expect certain things to be true, like that more viruses are usually not good.”

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Did You Miss Out on Trip This Yr? You’re Not Alone

Did You Miss Out on Vacation This Year? You’re Not Alone

In a typical year, Condé Nast magazine publisher New York employees must use or lose their vacation days before the end of December – a common policy across America.

Earlier this month, the company sent employees an email saying they could carry up to five vacation days into the next year. This is an obvious confirmation that many have been saving on days off due to the long hours and travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic. “The transfer is automatic and you don’t have to do anything,” the email said.

Condé Nast wasn’t the only one making efforts to make year-end arrangements for workers with vacation deprivation. However, some employers have been less accommodating.

“It’s a big problem we’re seeing now – competing requests for leave for the next two weeks,” said Allan S. Bloom, labor attorney at Proskauer in New York. “Customers struggle to find out.”

Mr Bloom and other lawyers and human resources professionals said there was no clear pattern for employers to handle the challenge.

Many companies like Goldman Sachs (usually up to 10) and Spotify (usually up to 10) that already allow employees to move vacation days into the next year haven’t felt the need to change their policies.

The same is true of some companies that pay employees for their unused vacation days.

Neither General Motors nor Ford Motor, whose hourly workers can pay off unused vacation days at the end of the year, are making changes this year.

However, many workers may not be able to take a vacation that they postponed: employees of both automakers typically lose unused vacation days at the end of the year without compensation.

Other companies have taken steps to alleviate potential HR headaches and benefit their workforce during difficult times.

Bank of America, which normally requires its U.S. employees to take all of their vacation before the end of the year, announced in June that it could push up to five days into the first quarter of 2021.

Citigroup has typically allowed its US employees to carry vacation days into the first quarter of next year. However, an incentive was added in July: employees will get an extra day of vacation next year if they use all of their 2020 vacation time that year.

Smaller companies have made similar changes.

With Latshaw Drilling, an oil services company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, office workers can typically extend vacation time for up to three weeks. In December, Latshaw informed its office workers that they would buy up to a week of idle time in excess of what they would otherwise have lost.

“Because this year was so crazy and people were scared to travel, we made a one-time change,” said Trent Latshaw, the company’s founder and president.

Several experts said a philosophical question was looming about vacation benefits: is it important to ensure that workers take time off? Or are vacation days simply an alternative form of remuneration that workers can use at their discretion to take a break from work, supplement their income, or drag around with them until the end of time as a monument to their productivity?

An employer’s guidelines can reflect their views on this issue: Despite all of the downsides, use-it-or-lose-it rules can help workers take time off, said Jackie Reinberg, who leads the consulting firm’s absence and disability practice Willis Towers Watson. In contrast, rollover and withdrawal options imply that vacation is an asset that they can control.

For many workers, however, the problem during the pandemic is not unused vacation days, but insufficient vacation days. Jonathan Williams, director of communications for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which represents grocers in mid-Atlantic states, said workers have sometimes been forced to deplete their reserves of paid time off if they were quarantined a second time from possible coronavirus exposure . Only the first quarantine is usually covered by the employer, Mr Williams said.

And some employees struggle to take advantage of their company’s generous vacation policies.

Updated

Apr. 28, 2020 at 3:18 pm ET

A spokeswoman for Target said the company had extended vacation days, which both hourly and salaried employees could move into the next year depending on the employee’s role and tenure. According to Adam Ryan, who works for Target in Christiansburg, Va., Many employees struggle to qualify for benefits like vacation days.

Mr Ryan said in a text message that he had been with the company for three years but typically less than 20 hours a week. “That way I don’t get any vacation or paid sick leave, no real benefits,” he said.

The Target spokeswoman said employees could pick up more hours as part of their vacation cast.

Several union officials, employers and human resources professionals said financial considerations had made many vacation policy decisions during the pandemic. Typically, Toyota allows hourly and many US employees to pay off up to two weeks of unused vacation days. This year, the company cut the cap to one week, a change a spokeswoman said should help avert layoffs.

The considerations become even more complicated for days pushing workers into the years to come. According to Ms. Reinberg, allowing workers to roll for days can lead to a pile of liabilities to workers that many employers don’t like to keep on their books.

A union representative for news organization Reuters said the company cited accounting concerns as it adhered to its use or loss policy this year. The union asked for your indulgence, saying that their contract allows management to approve an extension of vacation days in “exceptional circumstances”.

“If this year hasn’t been exceptional, I don’t know what the hell was,” said union representative Dan Grebler, an editor who chairs the labor bargaining unit at Reuters. The answer was, ‘No, we can’t. It would be complicated bookkeeping. ‘”

Mr Grebler said Reuters had started pushing workers to take time off this calendar year, around the time it turned him away.

A Reuters spokeswoman said that “our policy for US employees has not allowed unused vacation days to be extended for several years,” and that “employees have been regularly reminded since the first half of this year.”

Union workers for the New York Times, such as B. Reporters, are encouraged to use vacation days during the year they are collecting the days, but can generally carry over until March 1st of the next year. Days that you do not use up to this point will be paid out in cash. A company spokeswoman said the policy hasn’t changed this year.

According to both law and custom, many Americans see vacation days as compensation rather than a mandate to take time off.

In an April survey by Willis Towers Watson, more than half of employers who made or planned changes to their vacation benefits said so because they didn’t expect workers to use all of their days. About a third of the planned changes said the benefits had become too costly.

Some states, like California and Montana, essentially codify the vacation ownership view by banning the usage guidelines. (Companies with use-it-or-lose-it or strict rollover policies must exempt employees from tax in these states.)

Such laws protect workers from effectively losing vacation days that are difficult to take advantage of during the year only to expire at the end of the year. But these laws can also subtly discourage vacations by making it easier to redeem for money or postpone indefinitely.

“For me as a lawyer, you should be legally able to take unused vacation time,” said Peter Romer-Friedman, labor attorney at Gupta Wessler. “But I’m not sure that this creates a good incentive.”

To that end, a number of companies, many in the tech industry, have taken advantage of the pandemic to ensure their workers are decompressing.

In the spring, the software company GitLab responded to a significant increase in the working hours of its more than 1,000 employees with so-called days for friends and family, during which the company was closed to prevent users from logging in. Google, Slack, and software company Cloudera have implemented similar policies, none of which count towards employees’ paid days off.

Automattic, the maker of the website tool WordPress.com, has gone a step further and has encouraged employees who work together to coordinate their vacations to avoid the friction that prevents breaks.

“We experimented with entire teams who were taking time off at the same time,” wrote Lori McLeese, the company’s HR director, in an email. “We hope this can reduce the number of catch-up workers that employees typically return to after a vacation, making their transition back less stressful or overwhelming.”

Peter Eavis and Clifford Krauss contributed to the reporting.

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Business

How Efficient Is the Masks You’re Carrying? You Might Know Quickly

How Effective Is the Mask You’re Wearing? You May Know Soon

There are currently more than 100,000 different face masks for sale. They come in silk, cotton, and synthetics; with and without filter; over the head and over the ears. They have sparkles and sunflowers; friendly greetings and insults; Cartoon characters and teeny reindeer.

What they don’t have is a label that shows how well they block infectious particles, an omission that has frustrated public health officials during the coronavirus pandemic. These experts find that the effectiveness of different designs varies widely and some particles barely filter out.

“The most basic and basic question is, what is the safest mask and how can I make sure I have it and my family members and children have it?” said Fran Phillips, who resigned from her post as Assistant Secretary of Health of Maryland in August. “It’s so amazing that we’re here right now and don’t have that information.”

This could change soon. A division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working to develop minimum standards of filter efficiency and labels showing which products meet them for the vast and confusing market for masks and other face coverings.

The National Institute for Safety and Health at Work, a division of the CDC known as NIOSH, tacitly published guidelines drafted next month with an industry standard organization, ASTM International (formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials).

“When you have a standard, you can know what level of protection is being achieved and you can consistently evaluate these products,” said Maryann D’Alessandro, director of the NIOSH National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been hardly any nationwide supervision of masks and other face coverings. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC have some authority over the industry. The FDA, which regulates medical devices, shares authority with NIOSH for monitoring N95 respirators, which are most protective devices on the market. However, most of the masks worn by the public are just pieces of cloth and are not subject to any government oversight.

Sales of masks spiked after the FDA issued an emergency measure in April – when healthcare facilities struggled to secure enough protective gear – that in part said the agency would not take action against companies that sell them to the general public . At the same time, however, the FDA also stated that these products “may or may not meet the liquid barrier or filtration efficiency”. That warning did no harm to the market, and some critics now blame the FDA for the poor quality of many products sold.

“There were many things the FDA could have done to improve the situation, especially after research was released into which masks worked and which didn’t,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit health policy group. “The FDA could have issued instructions that masks should be attached, at least two layers of fabric, not made of stretchable materials, etc. Instead, there was one free for all.”

The effectiveness of masks “can be between 0 and 80 percent depending on the material composition, number of layers and layer bonding,” said Dale Pfriem, president of Protective Equipment Consulting Services and member of the working group for the development of standards dealing with mask guidelines.

The gold standard for masks is the N95, which is tight and can filter out at least 95 percent of very small particles. But N95 masks are generally reserved for naturopaths and have been in short supply since the outbreak began. Hospitals desperate for more N95 have been driven to a booming black market to keep them secure.

To make up for the shortage, the FDA approved the sale of the KN95, the Chinese equivalent of the American N95, last spring. However, the agency soon discovered fraudulent and counterfeit products and narrowed the range of allowable KN95 imports. Nevertheless, the agency admits that there is still widespread fraud and that countless companies label masks that do not meet FDA standards with “KN95”.

Updated

Apr. 16, 2020, 4:13 pm ET

One step below the N95 in terms of protection are FDA approved surgical masks that must meet certain government standards. The surgical mask style is often copied by companies that sell imitations that do not offer the same level of protection.

And then there’s the Wild West: Millions of masks made of every possible fabric, from individual layers up, as well as headscarves and gaiters, closed loops of fabric that can be worn around the neck and extend over the lower part of the face.

Almost any mask is better than no mask, say public health experts. The CDC has updated its guidelines on masks several times to find that a tightly woven, multi-layered fabric provides better protection than a single-layer or loose-knit mask – both for the wearer and for those who come in with the wearer Contact. However, the agency’s website does not provide clarity on whether masks with filters provide better protection than those without filters, and how synthetic fabrics compare to cotton or other materials.

“There was a critical need for some sort of national program to test and certify masks and communicate with people about how they are used and cared for,” said Linsey Marr, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and lead expert for viruses in the air.

A working group of federal and industry representatives has proposed high and low filtration requirements that manufacturers and distributors can adopt and list on their labels. The lower standard is a 20 percent filtration barrier and the higher is 50 percent.

These numbers are more protective than they sound. Filtration Efficiency Percentages are based on a product’s efficiency in filtering 0.3 micron particles, which are the most commonly used particulate matter standard for NIOSH testing.

“A 20 percent efficiency at 0.3 micrometers would mean 50 percent efficiency for 1 to 2 micrometers particles and 80 percent efficiency for blocking particles 4 to 5 micrometers or larger in size,” said Dr. Marr. “I think it will be useful.”

According to Dr. Marr, the coronavirus itself is 0.1 micrometers in size, but is transported in aerosols, which can range in size from around 0.5 micrometers upwards.

Jeffrey Stull, a member who helps write the standards, said the group would also rate masks and face covers for “breathability”. The standard project has been a long way.

“It was a very difficult process,” said Stull, president of International Personnel Protection Inc. “We have been trying to find that consensus on what the level of performance should be. We were initially talking about higher levels and they said,” No. “80 percent of the industry can’t stick to it – it won’t do anyone any good.” So we had to compensate. “

Manufacturers who want to ensure that they meet the ASTM standard must first have their products tested by an accredited laboratory. They should also be able to demonstrate that their masks provide adequate adaptation to the general population. Those who comply with the standards can then determine that they meet the ASTM standard for the product or packaging. However, there is no enforcement mechanism.

Daniel Carpenter, Professor of Government at Harvard, described the work of NIOSH in the development of the standard “Regulatory Entrepreneurship”.

It says, ‘Let’s use the tools we have, even if we don’t have formal regulatory tools, “Carpenter said.” It’s an alternative way of regulating. It can have a pretty important regulatory effect because if it does If you do not comply with the standards, you will not receive a seal of approval.

Mr. Pfriem hopes that the standards will prevail. “What we have here is a really good standard,” he said. “Manufacturers will have something to design their products and incorporate into their marketing materials and packaging, and consumers will have a sense of confidence.”

He added, “I can tell you that a lot of what is marketed on eBay and other websites and manufactured, for example, in your neighbor’s garage, cannot meet this standard.”