Temperature testing prior to get-togethers - what would you do?
I've been effectively isolating for the last six years, other than selectively meeting some friends in open-air surroundings.
Recently, I've gotten up the courage to invite a few people over for a dinner at my house. We're all up-to-date with either 10 or 11 vaccines, and will be taking covid tests the day of. Air purifiers and CO2 monitors (with audible and strobing light alarms) are in every room, and hooked up to APC battery backups in case of power outage. The plan is to socialize before dinner in my spacious living room with windows open before gathering at my large dinner table, where every second seat will be empty.
As an added layer of protection, I'd like to take the guests' temperatures when they enter my home to monitor for the first signs of "covid fever". I used to be a nurse (quit for safety reasons), and am familiar with temperature monitoring methods. Herein lies the problem.
Forehead scans with an infrared thermometer are useless. Oral/sublingual measurement is a bit better, but is affected by breathing, drinking, etc. Accuracy of axillary (armpit) measurements fall somewhere between forehead and oral/sublingual. To compound the danger, these three methods are prone to error downwards - making it more likely that the first signs of covid fever may go unnoticed. As well, the margin of error in these measurements is greater than the range that I would consider "abnormal".
It is undisputed that rectal temperature, particularly "deep rectal" temperature (ie, 10-15cm inside body past anal sphincter) is far and away the gold standard of body temperature measurement. SOURCE: https://nata.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/attr/52/4/article-p332.xml
I own several digital, professional-grade Welch-Allyn medical thermometers of the type that are used in hospitals, with the disposable plastic sheaths that cover the metal probe. I broached the topic in our group chat and gently suggested (stopped short of actually asking) that upon entering my home, guests could take a quick 2 minutes in the powder room adjacent to front door to measure their deep rectal temperature. To my dismay, my suggestion was met with laugh emojis and a "WTF dude".
I'm now leaning towards cancelling the dinner party altogether. Worse, given that such measurement would be only a minor inconvenience in the face of a highly contagious disease that could lead to death or permanent disability, I suspect that the refusals to take part in this gold-standard safety protocol may have been due to latent homophobia, especially among the cis male guests.
What would you do? TIA