Boston sets voluntary nighttime curfew, will shut basketball, hockey and tennis courts

Pickup basketball and scratch tickets seem to be unconquerable. Who knew such inconsequential things mean so deeply much to people that they are willing to take such a risk? In my East Boston neighborhood people are congregating and socializing over scratch tickets inside and outside convenience stores like they haven't got a care in the world. The governor really needs to suspend the lottery for the time being.

Are there huge crowds out at night? Aren't the playgrounds and courts already off limits and people are cutting off the zip ties or breaking the locks? Is there some difference from where we are already at?

Cases are increasing exactly like they were expected to, nothing about it is surprising.

Also not shocking is that some people are not physically distancing, whether out of loneliness, not caring, etc.

Not sure how telling people to stay home after 9 helps. Doesn’t that just mean more people out at the same time? How many were out late at night?

What good is a voluntary policy? When has that ever worked??

Bite the bullet now and shut down the city instead of changing the rules every few days. If stricter rules where in place two weeks ago we could already be on the down slide. Every week that goes by with "voluntary" restrictions probably adds a month of pain.

This is death by a thousand paper cuts.

The recommendation only changed Friday, that masks are helpful. The claim before that was they were not needed, even inside crowded stores. This was purposefully done because of the shortage of masks, but it was a misinformation campaign and is causing the problems we are seeing now. Most people certainly don't understand that keeping a minimum distance when outside is not enough...hard to blame people when the messaging was the opposite 2 days ago and the whole thing was minimized for months.

Outside of active communal recreations where people are in close contact and breathing heavily - e.g. Basketball, street hockey, soccer, rugby, touch or tackle football -- being outside is just about ideal

The direct blasts of aerosol droplets emitted from an infected fellow player have a limited range of a couple of arms lengths. Hence Social Distancing.

However --The recent MIT study on coughing and sneezing showed that the large and small aerosol droplets carrying the virus are accompanied by an invisible warm & moist cloud of air which allows essentially un-packaged submicron-scale SARS-COV-2 virions to float around in the air for a while.

The actual time that such an infectious cloud hangs around depends on the temperature of the surrounding air [buoyancy] and the air currents. Indoors in a corner of an unairconditioned garage or similar room with still air -- the virions might still be there for the taking or breathing for many minutes. In a highly conditioned space with a large air flow and plenty of external make-up air the virions might be cleared out in seconds. Outdoors in any kind of breeze the only people with a chance at your virions are those whose faces are almost at kissing distance. Such close up action occurs under a basket or by a hockey net or when someone is closely guarding someone on a football field, etc.

The real and hidden transmitter of the virus by infected but asymptomatic people is through normal breathing and speaking -- where there might be much less of the aerosol droplets but still plenty of the infected warm moist cloud. Once again indoors in still air is near ideal for transmission. On the other hand outdoors with stiff breeze blowing on the shoreline or jogging about Pleasant Bay or Jamaica Pond is not very favorable to the cloud being persistent.

Of course there is always the mechanism of transmission via contact with infected surfaces. You pick-up individual virions or moist films containing virions with your hands and then transfer them to your sensitive mucus membranes of your mouth, nose or eyes by wiping the sweat from your brow or moving your hair away from your eyes.

So the bottom line -- go outdoors, walk, run, rock-climb, take pictures, sit or even talk on your celphone -- just make sure that there is a breeze and keep out of reach of the other people -- you'll be much better off than standing six feet apart in the deli line at the Supermarket.

60’degrees and sunny tomorrow and Tuesday. Good luck with that social distancing and wearing masks outside.

Unless Marty is a believer in the miasma theory of coronavirus, this is counterproductive nonsense. People may be going out late at night to get needed exercise when they're more likely to be alone, and now they're going to go out during the day when they're not. This would be like someone mandating that because too many people go out during rush hour (6am-10am), we're going to mandate rush hour only be "allowed" 8am-9am. Now four times as many people are out then. Brilliant.