Hello Rosemary,Regarding your question on classes, I am a lacemaker during the rare occasions when I actually have some free time! But in my day to day life I was a clinical microbiologist for 35 years before getting my certification in the field of infection prevention and control. As you can imagine, our profession has been completely immersed in the whole COVID-19 issue and the most effective ways to prevent the spread of the virus for hospitals, nursing homes, congregate living centers, as well as the average person living at home and trying to get on with their lives. It has been quite a ride! I thought I would offer my two cents to the discussion regarding lace classes. I would not risk damaging the bobbins, pillow, or lace by trying to disinfect. What I would recommend is class members sit at least 6 feet away from each other and mask. Each lacemaker should have hand sanitizer available. If an instructor needs to touch your pins or bobbins, they should sanitize their! hands first. Correctly sanitized hands will not deposit the virus on surfaces. When I was 12 years old and my grandmother taught me to tat, she strongly emphasized cleaning your hands before tatting, and frequently during tatting if spending more than 30 minutes at it. That helped to keep the lace clean since it was constantly being handled. When I learned to hand quilt, I received the same instruction-- always clean hands before starting and frequently during the process to keep the thread and fabric clean and free from sweat and skin oils. So even before COVID, clean hands for lacemaking was a thing! You should sanitize your hands before starting, anyone who touches your belongings should sanitize first, and as with anything, clean your hands when you are done!In order for masks to work, people need to mask appropriately and completely. That means BOTH nose and mouth must be completely covered. Do not touch the mask while wearing it, or if you have to, then clean your h! ands afterwards. Remember that wearing a mask below your nose does abs olutely nothing. If that is how you plan to wear it, you might as well just take it off. By the same token, if you want the hand sanitizer to work it must be used correctly. I can't tell you the amount of sanitizer I have seen completely wasted because it wasn't used correctly so it was ineffective. Use about a quarter-sized dollop of alcohol sanitizer in the palm of your hand. Briskly rub it on the ENTIRE SURFACE of both hands. That means front, back, between fingers, thumbs, finger tips, and wrists. Every bit of the skin of both hands should be wet. Continue rubbing the entire surface of the front and back of both hands until they are dry. Do NOT blot away excess with a tissue. Rub till they're dry. It should take 20-30 seconds. If they dry sooner, you probably haven't used enough of the product. If it takes longer, chances are you haven't spread it around sufficiently.Lastly, no one should come if they are symptomatic. Even if they are sure it is just allergies or just a! cold, symotoms= stay home. As far as gloves, we strongly discourage the use of gloves unless you anticipate coming in contact with highly contaminated objects or liquids. So healthcare personnel wear gloves in specific instances while providing care for patients, but outside of that, gloves tend to do more harm than good. Study after study show that people wearing gloves have a false sense of security and end up with far higher levels of contamination on their clothing, belongings, and skin than people who just clean their hands after touching a potentially contaminated surface. Gloves become increasingly permeable when they get wet-- and that includes the moisture from your hands sweating inside the glove. So unless you are going to be exposed to blood or are providing wound care or some such thing, frequent hand sanitizing is far preferable to gloving.So if you communicated that everyone would need to djstance appropriately, wear a mask correctly for the entire time t! hey were in class, made sure everyone knew not to come if they had sym ptoms, and had everyone hand sanituze upon entry and before touching anything belonging to another, you should be able to have a class. Most people know all this anyway, they just may need reminders about how to wear the mask and hand sanitize correctly. Hope that helps!Elise in Maine-- CIC, M(ASCP)Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone -------- Original message --------From: "N.A. Neff" <nancy.a.n...@gmail.com> Date: 8/14/20 5:17 PM (GMT-05:00) To: Rosemary <rjbrow...@virginmedia.com>, Arachne <lace@arachne.com> Subject: Re: [lace] Return to class Hi Rosemary,I am not a teacher but I've kept up on some of the relative risks, and theeffectiveness of some mitigation steps, and perhaps can offer a fewsuggestions.Transmission via touching surfaces appears to be very rare for this virus.If two things were done, everybody could handle everybody else's bobbinswith very close to zero risk. 1) Everyone wash their hands thoroughly atthe start of class, and again after each time they touch their face ortheir mask, and 2) after washing their hands, everyone wipe their bobbinsat the start of class with a cloth dampened with 90% or higher isopropylalcohol. (It doesn't have to be dripping nor the bobbins rubbed, so itwon't damage any finishes )Transmission is almost entirely respiratory, either via fine droplets orvia ! aerosols of virus particles. The former are what fall from the airwithin about 6 feet -- hence the personal distancing -- and are blocked byproperly worn masks.The latter, however, the virus particles, don't fall out of the air, and incrowded settings with poor ventilation can become quite concentrated,leading to high rates of transmission. Most masks don't block theseparticles. The main defense here is ventilation because one's risk ofinfection is directly related to the size of the dose of virus you get. Soyou need to dilute the concentration of airborne virus, or blow it awayaltogether.By far the best thing is to hold your class outside, with fans if thereisn't a gentle breeze. The next best would be inside in as big a room aspossible, with outside air coming in, and fans preventing pockets of staleair. In those situations, if you both have masks on, it would be safe forboth a student and the teacher for one to look over the other's shoulder,etc.Finally, remember, all th! is is protection just in case you or someone inyour class is actually sick with covid. The best protection is for everyoneto agree not to come to class if they have a dry cough, trouble breathing,or lose their sense of taste or smell. And take everyone's temperature whenthey arrive for class -- no one should attend with a temp of 37.5��C orabove.In summary, from what I've read recently, ventilation is what's really key.I hope some of this helps. I can dig up a few articles that would citereferences if you would like them.NancyNancy A. NeffConnecticut, USAOn Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 15:31 Rosemary <rjbrow...@virginmedia.com> wrote:>> I am planning how to return to teaching my lace class.>Have any of you returned to teaching in class? Do please share your> experiences of how Covid has changed your practices.>> Rosemary Brown>-To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line:unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write toarachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site:http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
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