More Words, Deeper Hole

While I am entirely sympathetic to the disdain for Dougie's manifest and extensive incompetence, we do still know what it means, whatever label Dougie sees fit to stick on it.

It's an insidious threat. You have to presume everyone you meet is infected and infectious and just doesn't know it yet. Any amount of contact suffices for transmission. (More contact makes it more likely, but any amount will do.)

Don't leave the house without a clean mask on, and it stays on the entire time you're out there.

Leave the house by necessity and not preference. Rearrange things to limit your movement to the greatest possible extent. (It's an insidious threat with no current effective counter; if you're alive where you are, hold what you've got.)

Sanitise your hands. Only if you start to feel sticky -- you're degreasing your subcutaneous fat -- are you going too far. Switch to washing. Wash if there's anything on your hands. Wash for at least thirty seconds. This applies to any time you come in contact with outside, or anything that's been outside. (Fomite transmission risks are low; contact-contact risks are not low.)

Shared space is bad; talking is ten times worse. Singing, shouting, exercise, loud talking, chanting, cheering, etc. are fifty times worse. Outside isn't safe; it's safer, but safer isn't safe. Masks reduce your risk, but like any PPE they're an admission of failure; you had to get into a situation where you needed PPE. Stay out of the situation if you possibly can. If you can't, wear the mask. Wear a clean mask.

COVID is from a class of diseases that's worse in the winter as people are necessarily inside more. Just because it can spread in the summer because no one has any pre-existing immunity doesn't mean that it won't be worse in winter. We know you can catch it a second time. Act like it.

Success looks like the whole miserable effort was unnecessary, just like wearing your life jacket, switching off electrical supplies before doing work on wiring, shutting off the gas, and keeping your fingers out of the rotating machinery.