What Is Your COVID I-PEN?
When friends and relatives visit, we have no qualms asking each other about our vaccination status. May be we can exchange each other’s I-PEN for the week before the visit as well. Let me explain.
Virus infections ebb and flow. Virus information comes and goes. But some things have remained the same: Vaccinated people are better off than those not vaccinated. Yet anyone can contract or spread the disease. Closely packed large crowds, indoors or outdoors, can cause virus spread.
Indoor settings, insufficiently ventilated, facilitate the most virus transmission, and that should get the attention of the vaccinated. I-PEN is Indoor Potential Exposure Number and it is a measure of our exposure. It depends on the duration of our exposure. It depends on the number of people. It is the hours we spend indoors multiplied by the number of people who inhabit that space with us while we are there. It is cumulative. The higher the I-PEN, the higher the virus risk, both to us and to others from us. The I-PEN for a household is the sum of the I-PEN for all its members for a rough approximation.
We can make up our own rules on what counts for our I-PEN and what our limits are. Do we count visits with vaccinated friends and relatives, when we are indoors, in our I-PEN? Does masking matter? Does it matter that the staff at a favorite store are vaccinated and all customers are required to wear masks? Do elevated ceilings and ventilation affect our counting? We can choose to count only what we consider risky, but keeping track will force us to be watchful when we are indoors.
An unvaccinated child at a school who may spend 8 hours indoors with 25 other unvaccinated children has an I-PEN of 8*25 = 200 for each day. For a week, that is 5*200 = 1,000. While that may be unavoidable, a weekend indoor party with 50 children for 4 hours adds 4*50 = 200 to the I-PEN. We may dine indoors and have parties, if we wish, but we need to be cognizant of how often and how long.
Here is my I-PEN calculation for last week. I am always masked when I am indoors except our home. When we go to a restaurant or get coffee, only one of us goes inside. We drink and eat at the outside tables. Typically, I am inside for less than a quarter of an hour. On average, there were eight other people with me while I was indoors, so my I-PEN for each such outing was ¼ * 8 = 2. My five such indoor visits make it 5 * 2 = 10 I-PEN. I choose to ignore my short visit to a specialty store with two vaccinated storekeepers, where everyone is required to be masked, and I was the only customer. I also went shopping at a large shoe store with about 20 customers, few of whom were in my vicinity. Masks were required, but it was not clear it was enforced. I was there for about half an hour, making my I-PEN for that shopping to be about ½ * 20 = 10. My total I-PEN for last week was 20, and half of it was for shoe buying — a topic ripe for a future blog. Our household I-PEN last week was 40.
Notice that staying for many hours in a room at a hotel, where we can remain isolated, is much less risky than dining indoors at the crowded hotel restaurant. I-PEN for the former may be close to zero whereas the one for dining could be 50. Count that I-PEN and stay healthy!
Someone asked I re-link this writing as colleges are back to classes and football in full force.
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