Maybe?
At least to the degree that superspreading is a function of behavioral choices like going into large crowds and otherwise large contact rates. More contact gives you both more exposure to become infected and more impact in spreading it if you are for other individual factors a superspreader.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/846
ETA not agreeing with HoneyBadger but addressing that point.
This is exactly why a non-expert (with an agenda, I suspect) is useless.
Discussing risk of death per capita - a useless concept when a country is in either in lockdown or restricted activity. Of course the risk of death is lower because the risk of catching the virus is lower when society is imposing mitigation strategies and people are voluntarily restricting their movements. Take all that away, and then we can talk about risk of death per capita as being relevant.
Leaving out deaths in July - So she tries to make a point of how there were so much less death in Texas and Florida in March - June without considering that there were less cases. Why leave out July? By July 22 when she published this, deaths were clearly on the rise in Texas and Florida. In fact, they’re just now starting to decline a month after her article. Why would I trust someone to leave out that kind of information?
Why the focus on death? - As others have said when we speak of health consequences, do we only speak of death? In San Antonio, 21% of the people who were sick enough to go to the hospital were in the 18-40 years range. How many of those people were in the hospital for weeks or more? How many of those people will be debilitated even when they get back home? How much does this put them in debt? Even if you’re not sick enough to go to the hospital, how many people were too sick to go to work? Who the hell wants to catch the worse flu in their life, miss work and feel crappy for several weeks or even months? How many young people passed it on to an older family member?
Besides not being an expert, that author is not being honest.
Yes, that certainly seems like a reasonable inference.
I wasn’t really sure to what extent the notion of a “superspreader” is behavioral, or whether it’s a biological phenomenon, someone who for whatever reasons sheds a lot of virus. Probably both?
Yes, it’s a bit of both. You can have a superspreading event or a superspreader person. A superspreading event would both the environment and the behaviors. Large occupancy, indoors, low ventilation, shouting/singing/talking, no masks.
A superspreader person is usually asymptomatic, presymptomatic or mildly symptomatic that does a lot of socializing with no mask or physical distancing.
I suppose you could have someone who, for some reason, has a higher than normal viral load.
Presumably the worst case would be someone who for whatever reason has an unusually high viral load, but is still asymptomatic. I’m not sure if this happens, so I don’t know if the biological (non-behavioral) aspect is significant.
Standard thinking is both.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all#
Exactly. Presymptomatic people are kind of like this. Viral load is its highest around the first day of your symptoms. So the day before symptoms will be a pretty high viral load. Even as you start to get symptoms, most people don’t get super sick right away. So they’ll have their highest viral load and may still be out and about.
So now that the CDC has been pressured to change guidelines so asymptomatic people won’t be tested, this problem will go away, amirite? 'Cause we won’t know who the asymptomatic-yet-positive people are. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
You have to love shit like this.
It’s not 'We want your caution to be based on a good understanding of the actual risk."
It’s “Your caution is preventing us from getting back to normal. Also, please ignore all the bodies that we’re piling up to get there.”
Did we read the same article? Where does the article mention anything per capita?
I honestly have no idea what you’re referring to. The word “Florida” appears once in the article, and here is the context:
Below that text is an illustration of two charts. One shows a case chart of Florida and Texas together, which shows a rise from 0 to 2 per million over a 6 month period. The rise is obvious. The next chart shows the same chart, but includes New York. With the addition of New York, Texas and Arizona look completely flat. Texas and Arizona are nowhere close to what New York went through. Her point was that data presentation matters and affects peoples opinions.
I don’t think this is really something to pick on this article specifically for, but…It makes sense to focus on deaths because we have been tracking deaths and causes of death for hundreds of years. We have entire professions and governmental infrastructure built around tracking deaths. We’re pretty good at it, and it’s the best we’ve got. When considering the question “How bad is a thing?” it’s reasonable to look at deaths. Does this mean deaths are the only thing that matter? Of course not, and nobody (whose opinion I care about at least) argues that to be true.
As for as your list of questions, those are all great questions. The answer to most of them is that we don’t know yet.
Well when there’s some breaking news because we have the answers, please post them here.
That isn’t necessarily an adverse impact.
People who catch it, but are asymptomatic or have very mild cases, can nevertheless spread it to other people. And a very high percentage of young and basically healthy people have some interaction with those who do have significant risk factors. Therefore it’s important for them to be cautious, even if their own chances of getting seriously ill are low.
Then post the daily numbers early. 
I just made popcorn for this thread! 
Here’s a good first-person account from a freshman at UNC who got COVID one week in.
It seems to me that given the people who are actually at the highest risk under-estimate their risk and act accordingly, it’s beneficial that people who are at a lower risk over-estimate their own risk and act somewhat overcautiously given their interaction with the older people who are often their family members…
24,628,074 total cases
835,627 dead
17,094,173 recovered
In the US:
6,046,634 total cases
184,796 dead
3,347,940 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
This should be an interesting case study. County Virus Information page
My county, Johnson County Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City) just passed the 100,000 tested mark. They started keeping track in March. We have about 600,000 citizens.
Some stats of those tested:
7,796 tested positive (about 7.7%)
393 of those tested required in-patient hospitalizations
There were 116 deaths
Question on this:
While yes, a person showing no symptoms can pass it on but arent they less likely than a person who has VERY visible symptoms like heavy coughing and sneezing?
Depending on where they are in their infection, they may be shedding virus as much as a symptomatic person when just breathing or talking. However, coughing and sneezing project a lot more virus (and further) than talking.
These percentages are what I see in San Antonio. So the death rate seems to be stubbornly high even with more testing. Early in the pandemic South Korea’s death rate was between 0.5-1% as I recall. They had extensive testing, so it was thought that their fatality rate was more realistic. Plus, they also were wearing masks right away so people’s innoculum were lower on average. Even with this, had we not done any mitigation, we would have had over a million dead by the end of the year or maybe a little longer than that. (Of course, people’s behavior would change regardless of what the government says.)