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by WalterGR
2218 days ago
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I was emphasizing how uncommon Covid-19 is and, in particular, how rare Covid-19 deaths are. At one choir practice, one person spread COVID-19 to 52 people, two of whom died. During dinner at a restaurant, one person infected four people sitting at the same table, and five people sitting at other tables. You think because COVID-19 is rare right now that we should go back to work and the 2-hour meetings in conference rooms? Working back to back with someone in a cubicle? Just... going to a restaurant and eating? COVID-19 in the US is rare because of the lockdowns. Deaths are rare because COVID-19 infections are rare because of the lockdowns. (For some definition of rare.) |
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"At one choir practice, one person spread COVID-19 to 52 people, two of whom died."
There were 61 people present. The sick singers' average age was 69 [shades of "Nearer My God to Thee!"]. Of those, two died of Covid-19. 2 of 61 is pretty good odds, if you ask me, BUT...
how can we be certain that both deaths were due to presence at choir practice? Maybe they caught Covid from their grandchildren, a neighbor, or the postman, .... Similarly for the restaurant case, the affected could have caught the virus from someone other than the assumed.
Did the two deceased choir members have comorbidities (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, lung disease or asthma, AIDS, cancer treatment, an immune-suppressed system, etc.)?
We should avoid the 2-hour meetings b/c they are unproductive and boring.
Back to back in cubicles puts the actual effective recommended 1 metre social spacing into play. The 2-metre value was a judgment, a non-scientific value, tossed out by a British official:
https://sports.yahoo.com/coronavirus-social-distancing-lockd...
From that URL:
"Robert Dingwall, from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the [2-metre] rule was 'conjured up out of nowhere'. The sociology professor at Nottingham Trent University said scientific evidence supports a one-metre gap, but the two-metre advice was a 'rule of thumb'.
Laura Ingraham may indeed have been correct when she claimed during her May 4 Fox News broadcast:
"Although, intuitively, I think it probably seemed like social distancing would be necessary, there was no real scientific basis for believing that since it had never been studied,"
Covid-19 is rare and will remain rare. The lock-downs reduce spread but destroy the economy, which also kills people.
It remains to be seen whether the "cure" of lock-downs is any better than the disease of Covid-19. It is almost certainly not less expensive.