I am generally sympathetic with the CDC's desire to be extremely conservative in its pandemic advice. People might gripe, but that's a whole lot better than being a little too liberal and ending up with a bunch of dead bodies.
Still, enough's enough. Last week the CDC announced that "less than 10%" of COVID-19 transmissions have happened outdoors. That's technically true, but as David Leonhardt points out, badly misleading:
That benchmark “seems to be a huge exaggeration,” as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation.
Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving.
The difference between 10% and 0.1% is more than just a couple of orders of magnitude. It's the difference between "still a little bit dangerous" and "totally safe to have fun in the sun." The former just isn't true, and the latter could easily be made 100% accurate by adding something simple, like "but still best to avoid big crowds."
So why not do that?
How large a crowd is too large?
How close a conversation is too close?
The devil for our esteemed science wags is on picking where on the tail is “safe” in this age of every black swan and unicorn being broadcast worldwide.
How large a crowd is too large?
How close a conversation is too close?
I'm guessing you are 1.5 times beyond 'say it don't spray it' range, you'll be fine. But I am not a doctor or epidemiologist.
So, if I go to the beach and there is a shark sighting my response should be “hop in the water, you will be fine. After all, there are only 150 shark attacks each year”?
Noooo....that's more like "I'll go talk to that group of people over there, at least one of whom I know has Covid."
Saying "risk of transmission outdoors is safe" is more like saying that there are (unsighted) sharks in the ocean worldwide, so it's too dangerous to ever go swimming.
I saw Jaws at the drive in as a kid. I don't even go into pools without checking first.
I learned that from Caddyshack.
Clearly not. What you might want to do, however, is to make sure no sharks have been seen in the vicinity before going in the water. If none have been spotted and you are not at Bondi Beach, you're almost certainly safe from sharks and so you should feel free to go for a swim. Indeed, if you subtract shark attacks in the vicinity of Sydney, you are almost guaranteed to be safe from sharks.
Obviously, you're never safe from being deliberately obtuse, unless you want to be.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/shark-sighting-nsw-hungry-nurse-sharks-filmed-swimming-meters-from-surfers-at-bondi-beach/6eea13a8-34bd-4c60-97b1-ef50c34ed4ff
I remember the Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett, a super-spreader event that almost killed the C-in-C (Pity it didn't, but whatevs).
It was outdoors.
Was it complete outdoors, or was their an indoor reception too?
Pretty certain there was a large indoor component to that. "Come in to the Oval Office and have your picture taken with the President*" "Jared has a business proposition for you; less than a million to get in on the ground floor. He'll discuss it with you and some others in his office."
There was.
His tiny demotic office.
So if you were at that event and got Covid, how would anyone know if you got it at the indoor or outdoor portion?
Was it just a ploy for Kellyanne to bring COVID home, hopefully liquidating her daughter as a threat to the persistence of the Benevolent Rule of Donatus Maximus?
Remember the clientele, you know, the simple farmers, the clay of the new West, those under the sights
0.1% x 33,535,949 = 33,535
0.1% 33,535 = 33 dead Americans
Outdoors will always be much safer, but...
There's always the person walking towards you or from behind you without a face mask on, coughing. Or someone walking towards you without a facemask and doesn't care how close they pass you. Or that person yelling at you without a facemask, because you're wearing a facemask.
It's the space in-between getting from your apartment door to the outside, via hallways, a tiny elevator, and/or stairs with other people not wearing a face mask.
We live in a shitty world where every day you will come across assholes who don't give a shit about you.
If you are worried about things that kill 33 people a year you are going to be a very worried person. In normal times, no one, I mean no one ever worries about events that rare except for serious OCD cases. You are about 10,000 times more likely to die in a traffic accident. Do you never get into a car? You are about 10 times more likely to drown in the bathtub. Do you never bathe?
Well, there is always that person coming up behind you in the bathtub...
Grover Norquist, no!
This is a conservative number. It could be as large as 1000x that. And in any case, the point is, it's not about the people who reduce their risks by wearing masks, etc.; it's about all the assholes who deliberately spread their ignorance and diseases because they don't give a damn about anyone else and are too ignorant to recognize their own risks.
Also, traffic accidents are avoidable if you don't drive and you can't drown in a bathtub if you use a shower.
I feel like this has been well known for at least a year now. Also, I think it's time for the CDC to say that vaccinated people don't need to worry about getting Covid anymore. Yes some small number might get it and some small number of those might die but the risk is tiny. Obey local mask rules, but otherwise give the vaccinated a complete green light to get on with their lives to incentivize more people to get vaccinated. And admit that there is no real reason for the vaccinated to wear masks at all anymore.
People don't have to worry about getting Covid for a few months, until something worse blows out of India.
You're probably in more danger of getting killed in a traffic accident driving to or from the place where you get vaccinated than you are of dying of covid after getting vaccinated.
The reason for continuing to wear masks is partly a question of prevalence (particularly indoors) and partly the difficulty of distinguishing between a person who has been vaccinated and a Republican.
I think the crunch will come over the summer as people want to get rid of masks and want life to be normal again. A part of the reason why vaccination rates have declined is that the rest of the country has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. What we need are vaccine passports to make it possible for the majority of people to return to our pre-pandemic way of life and to exclude the unvaccinated and thereby incentivize others get vaccinated.
We need to stop coddling these people or else find a way to prevent them from coming to California, New York, and similar places.
I've been saying it for a long time. We need to partition the country. If the Republican idiots want to be ruled by a pig-faced lying moron, let them, and let the rest of us have our reason-based democracy back.
Texas is down to single digit deaths per day and we (I say we as a Texan even though I have nothing to do with such decisions) have been pretty much open for about a month now. Schools have been in session since last fall. It doesn't appear that there is much reason to worry about coronavirus anymore, unless this is just a seasonal lull and it comes roaring back in the winter or something.
500 people a day are dying in the US so I wouldn't say it's over just yet.
Well, Sharks have to eat too. And speaking of people coming up behind you in the bath tub, didn’t any of you see Psycho? And just like the guy who saw Jaws as a kid, I never get in the shower without checking first....
I never ask the bellhop for a newspaper:
https://youtu.be/emKogBBdbHE
Anyone else here not able to get email notifications if someone responds to your comments? I feel like I'm stuck in 2004.
WordPress assumes any blog with heavy traffic or sophisticated users in their comments sections will eventually break down and install IntenseDebate. Which Kevin definitely should do.
Thanks. I just sent Kevin an email.
I wish you the best of luck with that. Truly I do.
I always do, even when there's not a deadly virus circulating.
Even without crowds it's still not 100% outside. It's about as safe as can be reasonably expected however.