[beat]

As the parent of adult children currently living at home... one of ours keeps going out to be with friends. I understand she needs to get out of the house sometimes, but it's unnerving, knowing the points of contact (she often goes to her boyfriend's house, with his five currently-unemployed roommates).

Then again, she works in a children's health clinic. I know what vector is probably going to bring COVID into our house.

[dchichkov]

It'd be interesting to understand what evolutionary pressures the combined behaviors of population have on COVID-19.

Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus. And reckless behavior in the segments of population unaffected by the virus may put evolutionary pressure to make it a stronger, but not as contagious virus.

(an uninformed opinion of a software engineer / researcher)...

[me_me_me]

> Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus

This doesn't make sense to me. Distancing reduces number of cases and chances to spread infections, reducing chances for successful mutations.

It seems that instead of having multiple strains you will end up with most resilient strain in the end. But that's probably better as you have to fight a single strain then.

[SamBam]

I would really hope that someone working in a health clinic would be more careful than that. Going over to other people's houses is exactly what people are not supposed to be doing.

From my observations, the people who are most flippant about this seem to be boomers and young adults 20-25. I still see groups of young adults on the sidewalks, clearly not roommates, even though our state is in lockdown, and we're right next to a state that's starting to overwhelm their hospitals because of this kind of behavior.

[jwbwater]

A healthcare worker I talked to had the opinion that she's getting exposed at work anyway so why not do what she wants outside of work.

[kian]

shame that this healthcare worker apparently doesn't care for the other people she exposes. Perhaps the wrong profession?

[JPKab]

You're at really high risk in that living situation.

Does she not have another place she can stay? I'm assuming she is aware of the risk to you?

Never met you before, but as a fellow human being that situation sounds very high risk for you.

I'm very glad that none of my dad's five kids boomeranged right now. I had to cancel visiting him. Terrible situation.

[beat]

She's back at home temporarily (broke up with a boyfriend that left her in a bad financial situation, moved back home to recuperate). She was planning to move out this summer and move in with friends who were buying a house, but buying a house may not be viable for them now due to a job at risk.

Someone once gave me a definition of family... "If you have to go there, they have to let you in".

On the flip side, I think we're all going to get exposed sooner or later, over the course of the next year or so. I'll just get exposed sooner than ideal.

On the plus side, she may be moving entirely to work from home in the near future, as they'll be closing inpatient services at her clinic. On the minus side, her brother just got a job at a grocery store after losing his retail job at the mall (mall closed), so now he's probably an even worse vector than she is.