Plenty of public events with large numbers of people were (and sometimes are) feared to be the locus for an explosion of Covid infections. Sturgis and the Tokyo Olympics are two of the most high profile examples.
So given the numbers we know now, what events of the past five years could reasonably be blamed for “super spreading” Covid?
So the message I’m getting from the article is that any specific event I can name with more than a few dozen people can just be assumed to be a super spreader if it took place at literally any time after 2019, huh?
The article laid out it’s definition here:
Definition
Although loose definitions of superspreader events exist, some effort has been made at defining what qualifies as a superspreader event (SSEV). Lloyd-Smith et al. (2005) define a protocol to identify a superspreader event as follows:[2]
- estimate the effective reproductive number, R, for the disease and population in question;
- construct a Poisson distribution with mean R, representing the expected range of Z due to stochasticity without individual variation;
- define an SSEV as any infected person who infects more than Z(n) others, where Z(n) is the nth percentile of the Poisson(R) distribution.
This protocol defines a 99th-percentile SSEV as a case which causes more infections than would occur in 99% of infectious histories in a homogeneous population.[2]
During the SARS-CoV-1 2002–2004 SARS outbreak from China, epidemiologists defined a superspreader as an individual with at least eight transmissions of the disease.[5]
Superspreaders may or may not show any symptoms of the disease.[4][6]
SSEVs can further be classified into ‘societal’ and ‘isolated’ events.[7] Funerals have been known to epidemiology as common superspreader events. In particular where funeral rites involve contact with the decedent, funerary transmission may occur.[8] The International Red Cross proposed the practices now known as “safe and dignified burials” during the Western African Ebola virus epidemic to reduce funerary transmission.[9]
In April 2020 Jonathan Kay reported in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic:[10]
Putting aside hospitals, private residences and old-age homes, almost all of these superspreader events (SSEVs) took place in the context of (1) parties, (2) face-to-face professional networking events and meetings, (3) religious gatherings, (4) sports events, (5) meat-processing facilities, (6) ships at sea, (7) singing groups, and, yes, (8) funerals.
I was at a Microsoft global conference in San Francisco last month, 25,000+ attendees. I’m sure many came home with COVID, I did.
My strong belief is that the annual Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the first week of January 2020 was THE superspreader event of covid. December 2019 there was growing alarm among the medical community in Hong Kong of a nasty illness that was spreading. At CES, a HP executive explained he would keep his planned trip to China, but would only meet in Shanghai and Beijing. Would not do factory tours to secondary cities as originally planned a month earlier.
CES has 100,000+ visitors/participants/exhibitors/buyers from around the world. I worked for a Chinese company at the time with at least a handful of exhibitors that came from Wuhan, which was formally placed under lockdown less than 3 weeks later on 23 January. Manufacturing giant Foxconn implemented SARS protocols at the factories sometime around 15 January.
Several people that I later worked with at an American high-tech company came down at or immediately after CES with a nasty illness that could be explained by covid. IIRC the Italy outbreak occurred in Milan very soon after CES, and of course Milan had plenty of supply chain people visiting from China.
Just ancedotal, but if one games out that covid was making very early rounds at CES, then post CES when everyone went back home would likely explain one path in the connected world that covid followed.