Thanksgiving as a superspreader event
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I wonder how hard it would be to come up with a reasonable estimate for what percentage of holiday gatherings of, say, 25 people could expect to have a contagious Covid case among them.
Seems like you could make reasonable assumptions based on known new case counts and a little data about typical holiday gatherings, data that probably is available somewhere.
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You also have to adjust for local hotspot activity.
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DON’T let them eat cake.
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@jon-nyc said in Thanksgiving as a superspreader event:
My real point is the data you’d need to make a reasonable estimate almost certainly exists.
I'd say 50/50 for the average Thanksgiving get-together across the board.
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People are usually contagious 2-3 days before symptoms. By TG we’re at, say, 200k cases a day. Let’s call it 500k contagious pre-symptomatic people.
Also about half the people who get the disease never show symptoms at all but still have a contagious period. That’s another half million.
There’s a million contagious people.
Let’s say the average TG get together has 10 people and 250,000,000 participate. That’s 25MM T-day events.
1MM contagious would be 1 in 25 of the events. 10MM with damn good potential for exposure.
Also there’s skew here, convexity as Taleb would say. The larger events far more likely to have a contagious person and people would be at much closer quarters. Very few homes host 25 people without the chairs practically touching.
Nobody’s masked. All day inside. Eating, drinking , loud talking. Damn good spreader event if you do have someone contagious.
Now these numbers are all ballpark from 30s of googling. They could be greatly improved upon. But I probably got the order of magnitude correct.
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Now factor in that the majority of the daily new cases are in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, etc... then we can guess that the odds will be closer to 100%. If you are in West Virginia with an average of say 1200 new daily cases by Thanksgiving In a population of 2,000,000 then you are probably closer to the 1% side of things...
Even in zip codes you will have wild disparities. I live in an area in my city with very little COVID-19 activity. Some, but still relatively mild. Across the tracks is an area called Sterling Park. They are getting ravaged. My TG get together with neighbors would likely be a lot safer than one in Sterling Park...
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We called off my family's Thanksgiving dinner at my house last night. Two people were uncomfortable with it and I made the call that if anyone was uncomfortable it should be cancelled. there will be other years. MFR's sister and brother are still coming Thanksgiving Day and we are good with that.
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@Mik said in Thanksgiving as a superspreader event:
We called off my family's Thanksgiving dinner at my house last night. Two people were uncomfortable with it and I made the call that if anyone was uncomfortable it should be cancelled. there will be other years. MFR's sister and brother are still coming Thanksgiving Day and we are good with that.
We started with the plan of having everyone tested, to test with wait and see to calling it off about 10 days ago. Mostly based on the optics of having an event and then the worse optics if someone brought it and spread it.
I think the testing would have been fine honestly but some old folks involved and young folks from way too many places. The super isolated folks are not happy, meaning feeling their loneliness.
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I was thinking maybe we have a 60 minute zoom session for TNCR that day...
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Maybe set up a main room with breakout rooms for talking food, football, politics, Trumps D&D proclivities...
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@jon-nyc said in Thanksgiving as a superspreader event:
@Loki said in Thanksgiving as a superspreader event:
The super isolated folks are not happy, meaning feeling their loneliness.
Think you could do a zoom thing for them?
We will definitely zoom (maybe FaceTime) and on the big screen via Apple mirroring. It’s great for the TV side but I am wondering if there is a webcam I can get on my TV And software Yada yada. Need to google or have someone tell me how to do this. Will probably do those internet games too for improved engagement. Maybe there is an immersive experience possible.
Did a dinner zoom call with friends. Was grateful when the 40 minutes hit and it was over. Not because of them but because it was so boring. I FaceTime friends one on one and zoom all day at work but social zooming with many people I am ambivalent about except for quick check ins.
