Interesting article in the Washington Post about virus spread locations

[asp3]

Unfortunately the Washington Post article is not available under their free Covid articles. If I find another article reporting on the same study that is available for free I'll post it here. The article is reporting on a study that has been accepted for publication my Nature. The unedited manuscript is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2923-3 .

The study concludes that restaurants, gyms and coffee shops as places where the virus is most likely to spread outside of home. It used cell phone location data for millions of Americans during the pandemic's first wave. They then used a simple epidemical model for transmission in those locations and used the cell phone data to determine when they had been visited. The results for the model closely matched the virus caseloads in the studied regions.

If you have access to the Post you can read the article here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/10/coronavirus-restaurants-gyms-hotels-risk/

 

[asp3]

Here's a public article with the same information available on Yahoo.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/stu...high-risk-contracting-covid-19-173213085.html

 

[garyt1957]

You shouldn't need a study to figure out that places where you remove your mask to eat and drink or a pplace where you huff and puff in close proximity to others would be likely sources of spread.

 

[StarSong]

Exactly, @garyt1957. I haven't been to a restaurant, gym or coffee shop since February because the danger seemed obvious.
Ok, I haven't been to a gym since 2005, but let's not nitpick.

I'm concerned about another huge spike due to the crowded street celebrations last Saturday. People started out mostly distancing and wearing masks, but as the evening and the alcohol wore on, some masks started coming off and many folks drew closer together.

 

[asp3]

You shouldn't need a study to figure out that places where you remove your mask to eat and drink or a pplace where you huff and puff in close proximity to others would be likely sources of spread.

It isn't so much proving that places where you remove your mask are more likely to spread the disease. It's more about showing that a model that uses that conjecture does show the spread matches the actual spread based on cell phone location information. Since the model has been shown to be reasonable it can be used to examine how certain actions can affect spread and give reasonable numbers for those actions. It can also be used to examine how to stop a spread once we've got things under control but before we have enough vaccinations to stop the spread. It can also be used to estimate the effects of having various percentages of the population vaccinated.