Steering minutes: 2020-04-04

Agenda:

Steering Meeting Minutes April 4, 2020 - Pandemic Version via Zoom

Attendees: Willie, Marta, Dan, Kelly, Patti, Debbi, Fatima, Elph, Olas,
Amy, Mary,
Syndallas, Sharon, Drew, Annie, Eric, Bill Doster, Gayle Turner, Gail
Graham, Suzette

Agenda:

- Check Ins
- COVID-19 Update
- Sharon, Chief Scientist
- F&L Suspend agreement regarding legal action on household in arrears
- Community communication - Dan/Sharon (Debbi)
- New disinfectant: Electrolyzed water (Hypochlorous acid)

TODOs identified:
- Sharon and Kelly to talk more family situation and safety offline
- Debbi: the financial issue should come back at the closest steering
meeting to July 1st
- Debbi: sign up for a pro Zoom account, and figure out which committee's
budget to bill it against.


Patti is facilitating, Dan will manage the stack - please remain on mute
until it's your
turn to talk. Also turn off your camera if you're moving a lot. You can do
twinkles or
comments in the chat. If you want to talk, it's best to post something in
the chat. You
can also send private messages to Dan.

Agenda Review

Minutes:

Marta will be going first since she's likely to be pulled away for a
grocery delivery.
Everything else looks good.

Check-Ins
-----------
One word, something that has brought you comfort or ease over the last week?
Amy: Spring arrival
Annie: Having son back home
Drew: Sunshine
Debbi: Peepers
Elph: Takeout food
Eric: Warmer weather
Fatima: Still healthy
Gayle (iPhone): Phone calls
Kelly: Connection
Malcolm: The sun
Marta: Hot tub
Mary: Walking
Sharon: Music
Syndallas: playing cards with kids
Willie: basement swing set
Olas: Sunshine & Music
Bill Doster: Sunshine
Dan: Art
Patii: purple crocuses
Gail Graham: Sunshine


Grocery Delivery
------------------
Marta has a document she can share with information about how we'll be
managing a coordinated
grocery delivery service.

Current status: today we're receiving the first joint Instacart delivery,
this will be coming from 5 sources.
People can still join for the next round of delivery, there's a long cycle
time, this will
arrive in a week. She can be available to give the instructions via a zoom
call, so that people can
learn the difference between a personal vs joint cart. We decided to add a
generous gift, for the
Instacart worker, we're tipping at 20% and there's a service fee, so it's
going to be about 24% extra.
They might not find every item that you request, as the store could be out
of stock.

Another option that is being explored is a group order for a combination of
curbside pickup
and going into stores.

The spreadsheet can be edited by anyone and it has many tabs, each tab by
store.
The tab order will be indicating which store is next. The store coming up
next would be Arbor Farms.

You can also do Argus Farms or People's Food Co-op. These stores would like
for us to merge it into one
order and then figure out how to divide it on our own. PFC will be closed
on Sunday evenings.
We currently have 22 households, some from TS who are participating.
There are some things that they won't be able to deliver.

This is an experiment, we aren't yet sure that we'll be able to keep doing
this.

Questions:
- How will this information be conveyed to the community? We're staging
this so that we're
not training everyone all at once. Marta has been on-boarding a few people
at a time.
If this one is successful, the next one will be on Sunday night. We'll
re-evaluate and
could keep extending it. This is intended for the vulnerable people.
Eventually we can add everyone else.

- Which document mentions the day of the week and which store we'll be
shopping from? Marta will
send it out, she hasn't finalized Thursday or Friday yet. Unsure if we're
going to shop at Meijer or Kroger
via instacart. Is anyone sad if we don't cover Trader Joe's or Whole Foods?
No.
When the list is final, we'll have the shoppers already lined up.

We will have a lot of figuring out / sorting out the money / dealing with
the labor. She will
eventually transfer this duty to Tammy, who will be the grocery coordinator.
Follow up with Tammy, watch for emails with instructions.


COVID-19 Update - Sharon, Chief Scientist
--------------
Are we bending the curve yet, and if so, how would you see that? Not yet in
Michigan.
However, we are seeing it in other countries.
Bridge Michigan (bridgemi.com) has some of the best simple ways to see
what's going on, on their dashboard:

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigans-coronavirus-dashboard

Currently, SE Michigan has the most infections. Pay attention to the daily
cases number.
When the number of new cases discovered each day starts to decrease, that's
when we start to bend the curve.
When we get to 60%, or 6 million people - that's what we'll hit if we don't
do any intervention.
Looking at the models, if we keep going with what we're doing, we're likely
to go through the
first wave and be completed in the next month.

There's a crew at the school of public health which is working with
Whitmer's task force
and the business sector to figure out how people can safely go back to work
and how to
monitor the situation. It's clear that the Governor is going to extend the
"stay sheltered"
order, but we won't hear it for a week or 2. It is making a difference, but
we're probably
not going to see a real bend for a week or two. Pay attention to the daily
new cases.

Surfaces and shared surfaces is a really difficult area, hard to
extrapolate from science
to lived experiences like the playground. We've done a remarkably good job
on the common
house, like the laundry room. Keeping people who are sick from using the CH
is the hugest risk
for us, someone spreading it around.

Because of the way that we as a community are not venturing out into
gatherings where we
could get sick, and the people who have a higher risk because they're
interacting with the public on
a regular basis, they don't have small children. The last time that I saw
Mac on the playground
was a few years ago. Amy, tell Mac that he can't use the slide. Hope too.
:)

We're in much better shape now that we've been here a couple weeks. We've
done a huge amount to
lower our risk. However, there's no way to eliminate our risk. If we could
figure out a way to get
a mild case of this virus, that would be ideal. Social distancing is
working to flatten the curve,
and there will be people who don't have immunity to it. It's going to keep
popping up over time.

How do you help people navigate this until we get some herd immunity or
have access to some
vaccines? Keep in mind that vaccines have issues. The flu vaccine only is
only about 30-40% effective.
It's not going to be fool-proof. We're going to have more of these
outbreaks, it's not going
to go away.

Questions:

Annie - The governor is likely to extend shelter in place. Do you have an
idea how long
she'll extend it for the first push? She's a very smart woman who has a lot
of pressure
from a lot of different groups. Lots of people are trying to lessen the
restrictions, many
of them are CEOs of large corporations. We (at the school of public health)
are working
with them to help them understand why it's needed to extend it out a few
more weeks.
The Dept of Health is also helping her to see and understand the statistics
to see how it's going.
My impression is that it's likely to be extended through the end of April.

Why would it be best for us to get a mild case of it? There's a good
relationship between the
amount of viral dose and the body's response. If you get a large dose, the
body can't
ramp up defenses quickly enough. If you get a mild exposure, then you're
more likely to mount a
successful response. Are you saying that mild dose is like getting a
vaccine, and you start building
up antibodies? I'm not suggesting that anyone should be holding chicken pox
playdates.
I've heard this has happened in Kentucky, but this could be an urban /
rural legend.

There are some viruses where this mild exposure does not work, like rabies.
All you need is a single
particle, and the body can't fight it in time. Rabies just takes over the
body. Coronaviruses
are like the common cold viruses, but are a more deadly version.

Mary - I appreciate the information about how we have reduced our risk so
that we're not quite as
paranoid. However, this week I read in the NY Times how to think about
things outside of the
community, like getting takeout. They're now saying that 6 feet distance
might not be enough, that
someone could just breathe on you, not just cough. Also the recommendation
of wearing some
sort of face mask, potentially reducing your exposure by maybe 50%.

Where we are right now, by wearing a mask it both protects yourself as well
as other people.
It's not great at protecting yourself, but it's better for other people, to
help reduce
any spread that you're giving off. Some evidence that it could go more than
6 feet. It also
has to do with the amount of time of exposure. The sad story of people who
spent several hours
singing together in the choir, they're spending time in the same space in
close proximity
for a long period of time and projecting their voices / their breath.
We'll find that viruses can travel outside of 6 feet, but it depends on the
context.

Mac - there is some data that any kind of mask will reduce the risk,
Studies done on particles,
not just coronavirus. Coronavirus particles are about .125 microns, smaller
than a bacteria.

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/coronavirus-pollution-masks-n95-surgical-mask/

Even a cotton hanker-chief blocks something, at least 25% of the particles.

https://smartairfilters.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/4-EN.jpg

Every time we speak and our mouths make a fricative sound, like "F" or "T",
then you're
likely releasing a cloud of particles that we're all sharing.
The great thing about wearing masks is that you're going to reduce those
particles.

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/diy-homemade-mask-protect-virus-coronavirus/

A homemade mask with a cotton t-shirt reduces it.

https://smartairfilters.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DIY-Mask-vs-0.02-Micron-Particles-1024x694.jpg

Even with a tea towel, the longer that you used it, the better it got.
The more moist it becomes, the more sticky it becomes.

Can you wash a mask? It actually makes it worse. The best thing is to let
them dry and then use them
again.

Kelly - I love the idea that exposure increases risk, it's like stacking a
deck of cards,
and your immune system's ability to respond. With viruses, it comes down to
how much is your
1-time exposure that starts the whole process? It's not really about
repeated exposure, unless you're
talking about over time... We're anticipating that this one will be with us
for a while and
will be integrated into the other regular normal flu seasons. People at the
U are testing this
in communities by tracking how many people have flu-like symptoms. About
half of people who have
flu-like symptoms, actually have COVID-19. If you get COVID-19 this year,
you're likely to have some
immunity for next year. However, it may not last more than a year or two.

The laundry room is being cleaned a lot, I don't want to create a
super-bug. Sharon is actually concerned
about how humid the laundry room is, that we could be creating strains of
fungi or bacteria
where you would get an evolution of other microbes, not viruses. Just
opening the window once in a while
can make a big difference. Bacteria, fungus, and viruses are all eating
each other. It's like
insects, they need to be able chew on each other.

Jeff is home, and I'm kind of insisting on that for safety. There's a lot
of pressure for
him to go back to work, where he would be working on his own. Sharon is
trying to make
recommendations that can scale. Working with OSHA, etc to figure out how to
scale work.
If they're alone, outside, and more than 6 feet apart, there's really no
reason why they couldn't
go back to work, as long as they're isolating when they're going back home.
There's no way
to communicate that to an entire state. Kelly - it's more personal to me,
then if Jeff goes out and
works, do we need to self-isolate, or would all of GO be at risk? As long
as he's not interacting
with the public, or people who are sick. How about Sharon and Kelly talk
more offline. TODO

How similar is COVID-19 to other coronaviruses. Similar to weaknesses and
spread. The issue
is that this clearly has a different virulence, how it interacts with the
human body. the
way that we're reacting is different, and we don't have the antibodies
built up ahead of the
virus, and it's damaging people's lungs in about 15-20% of cases.

Mary - I've been reading about what types of people are dying from this.
Most people have underlying medical
conditions and there's a group of younger people who have been dying, not
necessarily from COVID-19,
but from cytokine storm release. (From online - A cytokine storm — aka
cytokine release syndrome,
macrophage activation syndrome, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis — is the
result of
when the immune system has gone wild. Killer cells are often defective,
resulting in increased production
of inflammatory proteins that can lead to organ failure and death.)

What is the profile of the people who are dying? What is the profile of the
people who are
going to have mild symptoms? We don't know that very well yet. The reason
why is that the
testing of cases has been elevated to only be available at first in the
hospitals, and people
who are presenting with significant symptoms, until we can build more
capacity for testing.
We have people studying flu and families, and just recently got permission
from CDC to measure it
from various people who didn't even know that they had COVID-19. What's
unique about them?

The state dept of labor wants to open things up. What if we have syndromic
sampling? If you
have any types of symptoms, you don't work, and don't take Tylenol to
suppress a fever.
There's also an idea of watching workers and constantly monitoring so that
it could be rolled out in the next
couple of weeks. If we do go back to work, the pressure will release and
then the
number of cases will pop-up again. In Asia, their lockdown was very
different, they weren't
even allowed out of their house.

The community doesn't have any protocols in place for shared resources,
play structure, shade
structure, sandbox and the grill. For now, users need to take personal
responsibility.
This issue could come back to the next community meeting or another
steering meeting. Do people
feel like this needs to happen? I'm not seeing an overwhelming amount of
interest in this.


F&L: Suspend agreement regarding legal action on household in arrears
--------------
Amy - will repeat some info from the community meeting the other day. F&L
is not empowered, and would like
Steering to approve their recommendation to delay the implementation of an
agreement to take action
against a household who has over two thousand dollars in arrears. This is
primarily because of the pandemic,
and how things are shut down, and people are out of work.

I'm not going to name the household, if you want to know, you can ask
anyone on F&L. We're
not going to brainstorm solutions today. If you want, you can reach out to
the household and
offer to help.

We're trying to enforce a standing agreement that we crafted back in 2015.

Amend the Late Payment of Association Dues Policy
http://gocoho.org/boa/?id=agreement&num=217

If people don't like this agreement, we can change it. F&L would welcome a
proposal to change
it if people have suggestions for a better way forward.

Current agreement - place a lien when arrears when association dues exceed
one thousand. We have done
that, when it goes above two thousand, then we begin legal proceedings.
This household has been going
over and under that limit. It's approaching 3138 as of April 1st. We've
already had our lawyer
send a letter to the household that we're prepared to take legal steps if
they don't take action
within 30 days. This letter went out right before the pandemic hit. F&L
would like to delay
taking action for about 4 months. The community discussion earlier in the
week seemed to be on board with this.
A suggestion of 6 months had come up, but there wasn't a clear consensus.
Today we would like to reach
an agreement on the delay and the amount of time.

Amy is proposing for a 3 month delay, and then empower F&L to make the call
to delay for another
1, 2, or 3 months. Four months from now, if no payment is made then the
balance would be about
4700-ish, just short of five thousand. How long does the community want to
hold out?

Patti - who is here from Steering?
Susan isn't here to represent Membership, she's at a conference... upstairs.
Annie is in attendance and can stand in for Membership.
Is Marta on the call at this moment? Yes.

Mary - was your proposal that it would be 3 months and then Steering would
deal with the potential
action? No, it would be F&L that would make their best judgement for 4-6
months, but not to exceed
6 months. Mary feels that it should come back to Steering, not to F&L.

Eric - how does this affect GO's bottom line? Does it mean that we won't be
able to pay cooks, etc?
How does this affect our operation? Becky, our bookkeeper is not on the
call right now.
We believe that we're in very good financial condition at this moment.
However, we're currently
having the caring committee take the pulse of the community to figure out
how households
are being affected by the economy and the pandemic.

When we have arrears and another household wants to get an equity loan or
refinance, the
lenders will want to know these numbers. It could have an affect on any
number of households.

Syndallas - What is the next step? Amy - to confirm our communications with
that household
that the community has agreed to delay action for 3 months, at which point
Steering would
re-examine. There will be a day that we'll need for them to pay up? Does
this involve foreclosure?
There are a number of things that could happen. Garnishing wages, tax
return, seizure of assets,
foreclosure. We know that there are no wages, so the likelihood of
foreclosure on this is high.
It seems that it makes it even more appropriate and motivating to delay
right now.

Is it a source of stress to think about doing this to another member at
this time? This is
tremendously stressful for F&L, and has been going on for a long time, and
various members
have been on the front line for dealing with this and have felt burned out.
This is a really hard time for everybody, including the household and F&L
members.

The current proposal is to delay implementation for 3 months then F&L has
the authority
to decide whether or not to take legal action. Amy resonates with Mary's
friendly amendment,
to change the responsibility to Steering. Debbi and Sharon are nodding.
It will come back to Steering for review in 3 months.

DECISION: We will delay implementation on taking action against the
household which is arrears
for 3 months then Steering has the authority to decide whether or not to
take legal action.

Can people live with this for now? There are general thumbs-up on this.
Is there anyone who does not want to delay the implementation of this
agreement? Nobody spoke up at this point.

There are a few more comments. Mary is not on F&L anymore, but has been
following this for the
past year or so. Mary is really glad to be taking this burden off of F&L,
which has had it
for a long time. It's important for Steering to know that this is a
situation that F&L was ready
to pull the pin on, but the only reason that we're delaying is because of
the pandemic. We
don't have any expectation that anything will change between now and then,
aside from the outstanding balance going up. We're likely to still be in
the same place,
larger balance, still under a pandemic.

A technical detail from Amy: this should come back at the closest steering
meeting to July 1st. TODO

A suggestion was made from the floor that the family should engage in
financial counseling.

It will be important for Steering to be ready to weigh in on this matter
when we get to this point.


Community communication - Dan/Sharon (Debbi)
--------------
Follow-up to the survey results. Dan has a google document and refers to
the email that he sent out
this morning, with results from the first round of the survey. Goal is to
do this every
week or two to keep up with our community's risk & exposure, and our
activities and how they
affect each other.

Sharon - more data is better. It's better if everyone in the household does
it. When you answer for your
spouse, that doesn't show up in a pie chart. Even teenagers are encouraged
to fill it out.

Going forward, the plan is to send this out periodically. However, there's
no need for 5 year olds to take it.

The big first impression is that people are actually doing social
distancing and staying at home,
even before the Governor puts out the order. It was driven by lots of other
sources.
This is what has made me feel that as a community, if we put this kind of
energy behind the cleaning
regime, this is what we're supposed to be doing to keep ourselves safe.
It's important that
everyone participates in the survey as much as possible, even teenagers.

The question on the first survey about vulnerability was a bit ambiguous.
It's
referring to vulnerability of health if you were to come down with the
illness, not
financially. If you were exposed, would that be particularly risky to your
health?
Future surveys will probably be more explicit, and the membership committee
will be looking
for more psycho-social and mental health aspects.

The next survey is not out yet. We have a revised version, just waiting for
Sharon to sign
off, which she took care of this morning. So Dan will be sending it shortly
after this meeting.

Thanks so much to Dan and the survey crew!

Debbi - I have been feeling somewhat frustrated by community communication
on different levels.
I would like to see Steering authorize for $200 for a Zoom account to have
a standard password
for the meetings. This morning before the meeting, I was feeling cranky. I
have also asked the minute
takers to be really clear to make the TODOs really clear at the top, please
check to make sure
that there aren't redundant efforts. We're starting to work across each
other.

Does anyone object to Debbi paying for a Zoom account? Twinkles and
thumbs-up, will talk to tech
to see if it goes through them, either way TODO- Debbi will sign up for an
account.


New disinfectant: Electrolyzed water (Hypochlorous acid)
--------------
Suzette - there's a new disinfectant which has become available.
Everyone knows that hand sanitizer is low availability and is hard to
replace.
On March 26th, the EPA added this to their list.

List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2
https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/list-n-disinfectants-use-against-sars-cov-2

This is also known as electrolyzed water (Hypochlorous acid). She's been
using this in her house for some time and has a device which easily makes
it.
It just requires some water, and a bit of salt and vinegar which combines
with the water.
The chemical symbol is HOCl.

Suzette - an even better website with comprehensive information:
https://www.hypochlorousacid.com/

Claims that it's more effective than bleach. We can make this virtually for
free
with Suzette's machine. The only drawback is that the contact time for
killing the virus is 10
minutes, which shouldn't be a problem if we can let it sit.

We can have things dripping with sanitizer. She's happy to share the
machine, which only
cost about $200. The same machine also makes a degreaser. It's perfectly
safe to use,
you can even drink this.

Olas - how long does a batch last? Up to 2 weeks. The CL atoms slowly
dissolve out of solution.

Mary - It's a miracle! Can we use some of the products which don't require
a 10 minute wait,
it might be nice to not have to spray and then wait for 10 minutes to start
laundry.

Suzette will announce how this process will work. She's just short on spray
bottles and can fill
them up for people.

Syndallas has consolidated a bunch of spray bottles and can find them. They
just need to be cleaned out.

Can we have some for personal use? Yes, indeed.

Eric would like Sharon or Mac to weigh in on this. Neither of them know
much about it.
For further questions about the science, Suzette can send out links to
pertinent websites. Sharon
has seen something about it, but we really need the bodies who create the
approved list
of sanitizers to give it their approval. It would be great if this
certification could be shared more broadly.

Willie - You don't want to combine any other chemical with this stuff,
particularly bleach.
Combining things with bleach can lead to the creation of nasty toxic
chemicals.



Next week's facilitators are Mary and Marta. Send agenda items to them as
well as Debbi, including
how much time you'll need. Andrew will be taking minutes next time.


Quick evaluation
-----------------

Went well:
- Willie: we're getting better at doing meetings via video chat
- Mary: great facilitation today!
- Kelly: good work for F&L, and thank you for the people doing the medical
education and surveys

Challenges:
- Bill Doester never figured out how to participate in the text chat.
- Marta called in from the phone, if on mute, she can't approve something
as a steering member.
- Kelly, bottling of Electrolyzed water could be for the laundry room. If
people use it
when they're done using the room, it would save resources.
- Suzette: had a hard time getting into the meeting.


Zoom discussion:
If we're getting a zoom account, perhaps we could consider going without a
password.
We believe that passwords were added by default by Zoom, who has been
facing security issues lately.
They also have added a new feature called the waiting room / lobby, where
the host needs
to approve new members joining. We should use the standard GO password. The
issue is largely
for publicly posted meeting links.
Suzette was still having the issue of getting on, even with the password.
Make sure that you're updating your installation of zoom with each time,
they have been rapidly
rolling out new features recently.


Marta - 3 of the 5 grocery deliveries are here now. Please swing by to pick
up items from
Kroger, PetCo, GFS or Plum market, those are here now.
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