| > The (let's face it, silly) notion that masks and distancing suppressed all respiratory pathogens except one is a theory with very little tracti Are you familiar with the concept of "R0" and that one virus may be more transmissible than another? Flu has an R0 of about 1.5, and whatever covid's is, it's higher (last I saw was 2.5). If we postulate that masking and distancing and similar measures act to reduce these numbers across the board, say by 0.6, that brings flu down to 0.9 and covid to 1.9. Outbreaks don't tend to stay around when their R0 is below 1, which would explain why there's hardly any flu this year and plenty of covid. Source: I was trained as a mathematical biologist and did a bunch of work with compartmental models:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem... In this admittedly over-simplified model, beta is (per wiki) "the average number of contacts per person per time, multiplied by the probability of disease transmission in a contact between a susceptible and an infectious subject". Social distancing reduces the average number of contacts, masking reduces the probability of transmission, and both act to reduce beta. You reduce beta, you reduce R0, you win. |