Adam Tuma

Hi there,

As you can see above, my name is Adam Tuma. I am a senior this year at Macalester College, working towards a major in chemistry and a minor in physics. In my free time I do homework, run, play video games, and mostly do homework. I am interested in doing research in biomedical engineering when my time at Mac comes to an end.

11/9/20

This morning started out like many others, watching my medical geography lecture video, followed by homework and a run. During my run I passed a few different people that seemed very cautious about COVID. I don’t run with a mask, so I always make sure to give anyone I pass 6-10ft of space. Today though I had a couple of people dart into a nearby yard or driveway to get even further from me, which is a little unusual. I think many people assume the person coming towards them won’t move out of the way so they have to, even though I always try to give them enough space ahead of time so they don’t have to move. On top of that, I always hold my breath or make sure I’m breathing in for about 4-5 meters on either side of the person I’m passing. I read a study early in the pandemic that showed while running or biking, potentially infected droplets can be exhaled for 5 meters behind a runner, since they’re breathing more than normal and moving relatively quickly (https://medium.com/@jurgenthoelen/belgian-dutch-study-why-in-times-of-covid-19-you-can-not-walk-run-bike-close-to-each-other-a5df19c77d08). So, I’m careful to do my best not to infect people I pass. To tie this interaction (or lack thereof I suppose) back to class, I think it would be very interesting to try and map COVID incidences to areas around popular outdoor activity spots. One might be able to correlate an increased number of cases due to walking/running/biking on certain trails for instance. I wasn’t able to find a study like this.

11/19/2020

... I am a firm believer in the fact that our best defense against this virus is to stay healthy. Everyone you hear talks about the importance of wearing masks and washing hands, which I totally agree with, don’t get me wrong, but no one is saying, make sure you exercise 5 days a week and take your vitamins. I think we can do a lot to curb this pandemic by doing all of the right things to keep people’s immune systems and bodies at full strength. ...