How to mitigate COVID
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The best policy during COVID would be to shut down bars and restaurants to indoor dining and gyms altogether and bail them out. Failing that, strict limits on capacity seem to be fairly effective:
Restaurants, cafes, and gyms acted as “superspreading” sites for COVID-19 transmission last spring, accounting for the majority of new infections in large U.S. cities, according to a new study.
The findings, published today (Nov. 10) in the journal Nature, also suggest that reducing maximum occupancy at these venues may be more effective for curbing COVID-19 spread than blanket lockdowns, the authors said.
“Our work highlights that it does not have to be all or nothing,” study senior author, Jure Leskovec, a computer scientist at Stanford University, told The New York Times.
[…]
“Restaurants were by far the riskiest places, about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels,” Leskovec said in a news conference, according to the Times. The researchers hypothesized these venus were more risky because they tended to have a high density of people who stayed for long periods.
Some of the less risky venues including car dealerships, gas stations and hardware stores, the study found.
Overall, the researchers found that limiting venue occupancy to 20% of maximum capacity reduced predicted infections by more than 80%, while only reducing overall visits to these venues by 42%.
I don’t really understand wanting to dine/drink out indoors during the pandemic — how can you even enjoy it? — but perhaps I’m just old and risk-averse.
While limited-capacity openings are a reasonable comprise unless the virus is completely out of control, I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish:
With coronavirus cases surging in New York and across the country, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that private indoor gatherings statewide would be limited to 10 people and that gyms, bars and restaurants must close nightly at 10 p.m.
Shutting down restaurants and gyms when they likely to be least crowded — what’s the point here, exactly?
The apparently imminent vaccine makes these quarter-assed measures even more infuriating. If there was no end in sight and with Mitch McConnell in control of a veto point I could at least understand conceding that closures can’t last forever. But we could save a lot of lives by just holding on a few more months.
While we’re here, you know what absolutely doesn’t work is “herd immunity”:
A lot of Covid denialists claimed that Sweden had reached herd immunity and it wouldn’t see a second wave.
This chart has some bad news for them. pic.twitter.com/VgBJsUHMUl— German Lopez (@germanrlopez) November 11, 2020