This will be my final post on COVID-19.

Folks, please stop with the well-intentioned but badly misguided calls for people to “stay home.” Right now, nearly everyone should GET OUTSIDE!

We have done enough contact tracing that we know where the virus spreads and where it doesn’t spread. It spreads indoors–at parties, in bars, and in churches (particularly choir practices.)

If you are outdoors, your chances of getting or spreading the virus are incredibly low. If you also wear a mask the chances are basically zero. If you stay physically away from others on top of all that the chances are literally zero.

You may have heard rumors that the virus spreads at the beach. With that many people so close together, there will be some minimal spread. But what’s really happening is the virus is spreading at the parties people go to after visiting the beach, and the bars they frequent.

Remember that even though this virus is particularly dangerous because it is so deadly to the elderly while not being much of threat to the young, it is still a virus. It’s not a living organism that’s going to crawl around or fly through the air. In order to get infected, you really have to get infected through water droplets, or vapor, and that is so much more likely if you are indoors with no mask on.

On top of all that, viral load matters. In other words, it matters how much you get infected if you do get infected. You can’t get the same level of viral load if you are outdoors unless someone is directly coughing in your face.

So please, go outside. Especially since your best defense against the virus is to improve your overall health and immune system. Build muscle. Eat well. Get sunlight. Associate with other humans, or at least other living things!

Tell your church to worship outside. Tell your friends you want to hang out, outside. Work from home, outside. You were meant to live in the sun, wind and rain. Your body and your mind and your gut all crave it. Please, don’t stay home.