03/17/2020
ABMP a massage and bodywork insurer also recommended stopping services. Here is an informational article from one of their columnist.
Part of ABMP update: Following is a message from our Massage & Bodywork columnist and Pocket Pathology partner Ruth Werner and her own advice for the profession.
Ignore My Earlier Advice. Shut It Down.
By Ruth Werner
My friends and colleagues, it’s time to shut it down. It’s past time to shut it down.
I wrote a piece two weeks ago that provided some ideas about how to take care of your practice, assuming you were still seeing clients. I hereby rescind that advice, and I apologize to anyone who was misled.
Close your practice.
For how long? Who knows?
If it were me, I would start with four weeks and re-evaluate after three.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had all the information we needed to make informed, non-panicky decisions that we knew would maximize effectiveness against the spread of COVID-19 virus, and minimize financial hardship?
Sadly, we don’t have that data.
No one is going to make this decision for you. Not your membership organization, not your state board, only you.
No one is going to make this any easier for you.
This is your call. And if you want my opinion (and presumably you’re interested, because you’re reading this), here it is: close your practice.
Here are some things we know that have led me to this point of view:
1. The time between exposure and symptoms can be up to 14 days.
2. The virus is contagious for days before symptoms develop, so your “healthy client” might not be.
3. The virus stays intact on surfaces for several days; it stays intact in the air for several hours (at least).
4. COVID-19 is extremely contagious, and it doesn’t take a lot of exposure to spread from one person to another.
5. The virus appears to be contagious after symptoms subside—but we don’t know how long.
6. At this point, older people and those with impaired immune systems are not necessarily more likely than others to catch the virus, but they are more likely to need extensive medical interventions. (Although that may be changing. In some countries the number of people in hospital care are skewing much younger.)
7. We don’t have enough medical capacity to manage what’s coming—which makes it even more vital not to add to that load in any way.