What one can make of it is that contrarians are getting it wrong.
Based on other studies and data, it is clear that restaurants are first and by a long margin regarding contagions, followed by coffeehouses, gyms and hotels. Of course once other measures like masks (that are disparaged too by contrarians (of course, )) are used and serving outdoors for restaurants, the risks are reduced.
Point is that it was likely that Cuomo was right. And this also shows that once again, contrarian points of view are not being given too much of a chance where it counts. Seems that the only resource left for contrarians is to use “social” media to spread the misleading info coming from dubious sources.
Here I have to point out that many that fall for those ruses do claim that they also look at research, but as I have seen on this and many other science issues that affect social policy, the ones misleading others misinterpret the science or worse, those interests do know the actual risks and continue to seed doubts because not doing so does affect their -not human- bottom line.
Let me quiz you here. ‘First and by a large margin’ among what? Does the set of things they are first among include homes, workplaces, primary and secondary schools, public transportation, airports and airplanes, or hospitals?
This thread got me thinking about the early days of smoking bans in restaurants. A restaurant would change from “smoking permitted” to “smoke-free” from one weekend to the next, and, in those early days, it was not unusual for the restaurant to receive a certain amount of pushback from the now displaced smokers.
Someone, obviously worried about the erosion of “muh freedums”, would defiantly light up while seated in their booth. This person would get a couple of drags off of his cigarette before confronted by restaurant personnel; all told, the cigarette was probably lit for about five minutes.
Almost immediately, other patrons in neighboring booths and tables would know that someone had lit a cigarette, and would also know who lit up. Within a few minutes, pretty much everyone in the restaurant would know that someone had lit a cigarette, even if they weren’t sure who.
Why wouldn’t I presume that a similar dynamic also applies to COVID exposure? Everyone in the restaurant was exposed to the cigarette smoke from one person lighting up for five minutes.
The “dynamic” that things float in the air? Because the social dynamics of people smelling smoke in the air and knowing someone is smoking certainly aren’t the same. The physical dynamics of a virus floating and being dangerous is also certainly different than the danger from the wide variety of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Nonsense. Aerosolized virus particles and aerosolized smoke particles are going to follow similar flow patterns with the air flow. Some will impact surfaces and cling, some will fall away to the ground, and some will spread throughout the volume of the container. How many virus particles does it take to expose someone?
Just by glance, and depending on the city, Full service restaurants got a proportion of .15 to .3 while other spreaders got .1 or less. In second place were Gyms and Hotels. Although grocery stores in Miami blew them all off for almost a month, but Restaurants remained consistent on their high rate there.
Reopening full-service restaurants has the largest predicted impact on infections, due to the large number of restaurants as well as their high visit densities and long dwell times
Yes, I know. I have read the study. What I want to know is if you know, or will recognize, that the class of things that you describe restaurants as leading by a long margin does not include:
homes
offices or other workplaces that are not already included as categories in the studies
Not all aerosolized particles stay in the air the same amount of time. A biological agent must remain a functional unit, dependent on a number of factors, to be dangerous.
Well, that shows something alright, that some are still missing things…
Those other items you mention are places that many times can not be avoided (in reality we stay there many times because of the pandemic as a safety measure). We do control diseases by limiting the places where we go to by choice.
BTW public transportation has mask use enforced and limited usage.
But one has to notice that contrarian sources out there do confuse many by implying that no one has looked at items like the ones you mention here so as to seed doubts about the other items. Researches have noticed the differences before:
At first glance, public transportation seems to have every ingredient for a super-spreader event. Closed spaces? Check. C rowds? Check. Close contacts? Check. But sophisticated contact-tracing efforts in countries like France, Austria, and Japan have failed to link any COVID-19 clusters to public transit. This could be due to the difficulty of tracing contacts that occur during a commute, but it might also have to do with the way people use transit services.
For starters, people don’t typically spend long periods of time on the bus or subway — at least not compared with the time they might spend in the office, at the gym, or having a leisurely dinner in a restaurant. Secondly, people tend to sit or stand quietly during their commutes. They’re not talking, singing, shouting, or engaging in other activities that would increase the number of respiratory particles released with each breath.
Evidence thus far indicates that COVID has an appreciable longevity when aerosolized. Also, the cigarette was lit for only about five minutes, while the COVID-sloughing freedom-loving American has been exhaling for the duration of his hour-long meal. Which prevails, the longer-lasting cigarette smoke, or the increased length of time that the virus is pumped into the air?
lol Yeah, sure. After looking up your poorly sourced cites, I’m going to want to look at a cite you can’t even be bothered to read. /s
The December 2019 line is for the month of December 2019, not for the entire year.
Considering most of December 2020 is above the dashed line and the current count is 1208 and rising, I doubt December 2020 will be below December 2019, even IF (big IF) it’s true that last December was near capacity due to the flu. The end of December 2020 is already past capacity.
Eureka! Maybe that’s the reason for the outdated and nonsense cites. Your search engine might be broken. I did a search for that term in both Google and Duck Duck Go and found dozens of current articles about LA’s hospital situation since they went beyond capacity, ran low on oxygen and had to call on the state for help, there was a lot in the news. I didn’t find anything on the first couple pages about anything in June.
The dynamics are close enough that I’m confident the virus would be spread thought the volume of the container; the differences may be sufficient that there could be a difference in relative concentrations. Regardless, people within that “container” will be exposed. How many viruses does it take to infect someone?
Heffalump_and_Roo, I appreciate that link! Thanks!
Um, yeah, I know. The point I’m making is that December 2020 has bounced above and below that average from the same month last year (which is what things that vary do) and looks to me like on the whole for the month it lines up with last year very well.
To put it more directly, which would seem to be helpful to you (or at least stop you from misstating my claims: Usage at those hospitals in December 2020 appears to not vary significantly from usage at those hospitals in December 2019. In fact, it looks almost exactly the same.
Again, IF that’s true, it’s likely because the hospitals are at capacity for December. Another conspiracy theorist claims that CA hospitals are normally at 90% capacity due to the flu in a normal December. Since there’s no going past capacity, the hospital rates might be somewhat near each other if both are at or near capacity. Right now, since the hospital was at capacity, they are turning people away and making decisions about who lives and who dies. This is the situation that was to be avoided early in the pandemic. It is now at that stage.
If hospitals were making the decision about who lives and who dies based on hospital capacity every year, something is very wrong with the system. I doubt that was happening every year prior to this one.
)) are used and serving outdoors for restaurants, the risks are reduced.