Fighting quarantine fatigue with yet another newsletter. I love all of your emails, links and memes –you can find them in my  past newsletters . I’m also thrilled to hear that people are forwarding this along – if you’re new, join my  mailing list . And, as always, thanks for protecting yourself and others by staying home when you can, washing your hands slightly obsessively, and masking up!
 
How to socialize safely? It’s the loudest, most commonly repeated question these days, especially as some areas open up while others remain in an evolving state of shelter-at-home-but-it’s-okay-to-go-outside-so-long-as-you-are-moving-around-and-masked. The rules vary so widely, of course we’re all confused! But there is clarity to be found, and I am going to dish it out right now. Shameless plug: check out tip #3 to find out where you can get  super comfy, filtered masks  for the entire family.

  1. Stay home as much as you can. Doesn’t matter if your city is wide open for business – by hanging at home most of the time, you are doing your part to reduce the spread of coronavirus in your community. You are also lowering the chance that you and your family will get sick.
  2. When you do go out, go OUT. Your chance of picking up coronavirus is far lower when you are outside versus inside. So yes, keep at least 6 feet of distance between you and the next person, but aim to do it outdoors where viral particles will naturally diffuse through the air. Virus is trapped by walls and roofs, but not by wide open spaces, especially with a nice breeze.
  3. And don’t forget to mask up! Wearing a mask protects the people around you – if others wear masks, they do you the same favor. The dream mask would be made from unbelievably soft fabric, have a built-in filter and comfy overhead straps that won’t pull on the ears, and it would come in more than one size. And masks would be donated to those who can't afford them or don’t have access. Wait! I just launched that company!! There’s more on OOMLA at the end of this newsletter, but if you want to check out the epic OOMASK ASAP, I won’t stop you.
 
Alright, enough  OOMLA  promo. Onto articles worth your time, today all centering around safe socialization. Every day seems to bring a new study, often with results that directly conflict with yesterday’s headlines. This leaves people rightfully perplexed. I like this article because it makes and defends a single point: being outdoors is safer than being indoors – in fact, being outdoors is downright safe. That is, so long as you are following the three tips outlined above.
 
This one talks about  expanding your quarantine bubble , AKA your quaranteam, AKA your germ family. People have all sorts of names for the wider circles they are creating as we slowly start to take steps toward social integration.
 
And this one helps you weigh the risks of  how exactly you might begin to socialize  – from bike riding to hosting an outdoor dinner (and yes, it covers whether you should let someone into your house to use the bathroom, too!)
 
If you want to hear similar advice from a medical guru, read  this piece by Paul Sax . He runs the Infectious Disease program at the Brigham and Women’s (a Harvard hospital), teaches at Harvard Medical School, was an editor at  New England Journal of Medicine … I will stop there because almost no one has more cred than that. Plus, he’s funny.   
 
One of my favorite parts of writing this newsletter is all of the feedback. When I post an article, oftentimes someone sends me a related one. This weekend, I received an article debunking one of the links I posted about whether or not a person can become repeatedly infected with coronavirus. The piece says, rather definitively,  no you can’t get coronavirus twice  – rather, the people who had recovered from infection only to test positive again were swabbing positive because there was residual, likely dead, virus remaining in their respiratory tract. This is an important bit of information if we are all trying to figure out how to socialize safely.
 
And finally, if you are going to be around more people, you really need to wear a mask. So here’s a little more about  OOMLA ! Our  origin story  is pretty amusing, but the brief version is that OOMLA is actually not a mask company – it’s a company aimed at solving the pain points of puberty with super comfortable, great looking, healthy products. Our plan was to launch with the softest, coziest bra ever invented: the OOMBRA. As many who have tried it have exclaimed,  it’s like sweatpants for your boobs!  But when coronavirus hit, our factories were shuttered. As we were trying to figure out our next steps, a new need emerged for kids/tweens/teens: masks. So, we took the amazingly soft fabric we had on hand and made the  OOMASK . Then we  partnered with charitable organizations  so that for every mask we sold, we could donate one to a kid who wouldn’t otherwise be able to mask up comfortably. In the three weeks that I have had OOMASK samples around the house, no one in my family has worn anything else. And lest you think my family dons the OOMASK because they’re biased, my son is a 14-year-old boy who is not taking any clothing direction from me. Period. When he puts an OOMASK on every single day, that’s my sign we have a winning product. Please  check it out  and pass along to your friends.
 
No meme today… just some of the cool stuff you can do in an OOMASK.