Transcription:
Halloween 2020: How to Stay Safe and Celebrate

Bill Klaproth: Halloween in 2020 is sure to look much different than years past COVID-19 is still active in our communities, and many traditional Halloween activities can increase the viruses spread. So what can parents and children do to safely celebrate? Well, we're going to discuss the Shelby County Health Departments Directive: Several Safe Alternative Ways to Participate in Halloween and Explain the Potential Risks. As we talk with Dr. John McCullers, Pediatrician and Chief at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, and Chief Operating Officer for the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center about these questions and more. This is The Ped's Pod by Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. I'm Bill Klaproth. Dr. McCullers, it is always great to talk with you. Thank you for your time. So what events or gatherings are not permitted under the Shelby County Health Directive?

Dr. McCullers: Well, the Shelby County Health Directive prescribes large gatherings, which are defined as those over 50 people, as well as gatherings where social distancing cannot be managed. And of course, mask uses are required in all sorts of gatherings. There have been some limited exceptions made to that based on plans that were submitted to the Shelby County Health Department that allowed larger groups to get together. But under very strict policies and procedures. Specifically, Shelby County has said that they don't regulate Halloween. And so they can't put restrictions or cancel Halloween or anything like that, but they have given guidance consistent with CDC on what to do for gatherings like Halloween and what things might be safe and what might not be safe.

Host: Right. So a small Halloween party of say 15 people or so that could be okay, but you should still try to social distance. Is that right?

Dr. McCullers: Well, it depends a little bit on what's the composition, we'd like to avoid mixing households as much as possible. So if you're having a Halloween party and it's inside your household, you'd want to do things like have it outdoors, have masks required, set it up so that social distancing is occurring and there's not a lot of kind of mixing and so on, and you're not getting multiple exposures within that setting.

Host: Right. That makes sense. So that leads me to my next question. What are some low risk activities families can do to celebrate Halloween?

Dr. McCullers: I think the best things that you can do are kind of keep it within the household to the extent that you can. So if you're doing something like pumpkin carving and, you know, arts and crafts decorating your house. If you were to use another holiday, for instance, like the Easter egg hunt, and instead you have your Halloween candy hunt or scavenger hunt, I think those are great family oriented things. Certainly, I think families can go out and walk around and look at the decorations in the neighborhood and kind of experienced that piece of the trick or treating where you're going out and seeing all the fun decorations without the actual physical contact with the trick or treating. So those are the things I would recommend. Again, if you're getting together with other households to have some sort of party, better be outdoors, as few numbers as possible, and try to avoid the mingling aspects of it and use social distancing and masks.

Host: Keeping things within the family that would be considered low-risk what would be considered a moderate risk Halloween activity? Would that be where you are mixing different families from around the neighborhood?

Dr. McCullers: Yeah. I think getting together in groups and traditionally Halloween, you may get together several households and go around and walk around. So I think you get into more risk there as the number of people increase and when you're exposing different households to one another. So any of those sort of backyard parties or parties where you're walking around, Hay rides, a few, want to go do a hay ride or something where you're mixing two households together. That's more risky than if each household does it independently. Right?

Host:

So as we talk about moderate risk activities, let me run a couple by you. What about trunk or treating? Would that be safer than traditional door to door trick-or-treating?

Dr. McCullers: Now we would consider the trunk or treating in the same category, to me that's high risk because you have multiple people going to these same different areas and a lot of potential, both for mixing and mingling and close contact, because you're all going to the same trunk as well as what we call fomites spread. Whereas if you get contagion in one of the particular trucks, well, then everybody's going to go to that trunk and the course of doing the trunk or treating. So that's to me, close to as high risk, certainly within the high risk category, just like trick or treating door to door would be.

Host: Right. Got it. And then as we talk about potential moderate risk, where would this rank visiting a pumpkin patch? And you mentioned already the hay ride, where do those stack up low risk, moderate risk or high risk?

Dr. McCullers: Again, it depends a little bit on what's the crowd situation. So if you're going as an individual household, there's low density. So you're not there mingling with other people, you do the hay ride by yourself, go to the pumpkin patch by yourself. Those are all quite reasonable family activities. As you mix in more households, more people, as the density increases within a pumpkin patch, then the risk increases. With the pumpkin patch, you also might want to think about hand hygiene and is there a way really to clean your hands and to avoid everybody touching the same pumpkin or something like that.

Host: You know, kids with their hands and wanting to touch everything. So earlier you mentioned trick or treating around the neighborhood, just to be clear, is traditional trick or treating around the neighborhood safe?

Dr. McCullers: We would put that into a high-risk category and would recommend against traditional trick or treating where groups of kids are going up to the same set of doors and having that one-on-one contact. So we'd say stay away from that this year and try to find some alternative way to celebrate the holiday.

Host: Yeah. So this is a tough one. As a parent, my wife and I are having this discussion. We love seeing all the kids trick or treating and we love handing out candy. It's a great night. We love Halloween, but we're saying maybe this year, it's probably best that we don't even hand out candy. So should households pass out candy this year?

Dr. McCullers: I think for the most part, the answer is no. If you're going to do that, then it ought to be individually wrapped and ought to be maybe set out somewhere. So you don't have that one-on-one personal contact between the kids and the person who's distributing the candy. So if you were to set out some little baggies of candy spaced on your porch, and then you were inside and they were coming to the porch, but once you get to that point, why are you even doing it? Because the fun is seeing the kids and having a good trick or treat and handing them the candy yourself right, this year probably is one to take a pass. Let's just pretend there was a bad rainstorm, the whole Halloween, and it got canceled for that reason.

Host: Good way to put it in, think about it. So then if a family does go out trick or treating and decides to do that, should mom and dad disinfect the candy if they participate in traditional trick or treating. And if you think that's a good idea, how do they, how should they do that?

Dr. McCullers: We generally said not to spend too much time worrying about disinfecting groceries or mail or packages or things like that. This is a little bit more high risk, and then it's come immediately from one person. And if you're going through a neighborhood, you're then exposing yourself to multiple people. So I think is reasonable to think about wiping down the exterior of candy packages with Clorox wipes or with a dilute bleach solution or something like that. Most of the time that's getting into a little bit of overkill, but here, maybe it's reasonable to take some basic precautions or maybe just put the candy in quarantine for a day or two before you touch it to let anything that's on it dissipate

Host: Again. If a family does decide to participate in traditional or treating activities and a child or a mom and dad has a costume with a mask, do you still need to wear a face mask?

Dr. McCullers: It depends a little bit on what the mask is like. We do want to have people protected. And so if it's one of those plastic masks that has the big holes in it, you're probably not providing much protection by the same token. If there's a mask that comes with the costume that covers the face and the mouth and the nose, then we probably don't want to have two masks on at the same time. Cause it may make it difficult to breathe. So I think the parents have to have a little bit of input and maybe it's best just to find some nice Halloween themed mask and wear that without any other face covering. That probably is a simple solution. Otherwise I think you have to kind of use some judgment there.

Host: Right. And is there any other personal protection measures families should take while celebrating?

Dr. McCullers: The hand hygiene and social distancing as we've learned for any activity also applies here. I think with the mask use, that's what I would be recommending.

Host: And then what about someone that says, Hey, I want to get out of our busy city life and in Memphis, would it be safer to travel to more rural areas to participate in Halloween activities?

Dr. McCullers: Well, not right now, right now the case counts and the per-person, frequency of disease is much higher in the rural areas outside of Memphis than it is here within the city. I think that's because within Memphis, we still have a mask mandate. People are abiding by it for the most part, businesses are careful to comply and you get out into rural Tennessee now and without a statewide mask mandate, there's a lot more disease. So six months ago that would have been a different answer. But right now there's just too much out there for me to say that that's safer. It's probably less safe.

Host: That's really good advice. And then for someone kind of throwing their hands up and going, okay, what can I do? Are there any activities that the Shelby County Health Department does recommend?

Dr. McCullers: The Shelby County Health Department has really tried to just go back to the basics and say, this is the way to safely do anything with the social distancing, the masking, the hand hygiene, avoiding crowds, avoiding mixing households. Hasn't spoken specifically to what can you do for Halloween? Aside from some of the examples I gave with stay home as a family activity and do Halloween decorations or pumpkin carving or something like that.

Host: And those safe activities can still be fun. And then last question, Dr. McCullers, and thank you so much for your time. Some people are throwing their hands up and saying, you know what I'm done with this? Some families say they're tired of sacrificing because of the virus. In your expert opinion, what is your advice to families who say, Hey, COVID-19, won't stop me from participating in traditional Halloween activities. We're going for it. What's your advice to a family that has just had it. And it said, you know what, we're going for it. We don't care about the virus anymore.

Dr. McCullers: I think that this is impacting us all the kind of pandemic fatigue wearing a mask really isn't that hard. You get used to it within a few days, really, but I understand this thing in and avoiding a lot of your normal day normal activities. It's hard on people, but you have to recognize that if you're doing that, you're becoming, I'd say part of the problem and that you're becoming a potential vector for disease that may get into your family, make it into other families. And we are seeing a tremendous spike in hospitalizations right now. A lot of it from our rural communities who aren't following a lot of the same rules that we are here in Memphis, and they're coming here of course, to the center. And that's the risk you play, but on a population basis, we're going to see a lot more people in the hospital, including young people in the hospital, a lot more deaths, including deaths in young people. So I would just take that community view and we all need to pull through this together and deal with it in our own way. But it's a little irresponsible to say, I'm just going to throw up my hands and do what I want.

Host: Right. Take that community view. And we are all in this together. And if we do all participate in safe activities, we will get through safer, healthier, and a lot faster. Dr. McCullers, thank you so much for your time. This has really been informative, answering a lot of questions that parents have this year. So thank you again for your time. We appreciate it.

Dr. McCullers: You're very welcome. Anytime.

Host: That's Dr. John McCullers, and to learn more, visit Lebonheur.org/podcast and be sure to subscribe to The Ped's Pod in Apple podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you can also check out Leboneur.org/podcast to view our full podcast library. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels. This is The Ped's Pod by Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. Thanks for listening.