COVID risk mitigation

This list is more fear mongering. Instead of ranking from 1-35, it needs to be on 0-10 scale about how dangerous each activity is. And taking a walk/hike should be about 0.001 on the scale. Whereas hanging with a sick person should be a 10.

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Yeah, I see little value to ā€œlets take 35 random activities that arenā€™t sitting alone at home and rank themā€. You want some sort of scale.

But that would defeat the point of having easy-to-write clickbait!

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Well, it wasnā€™t a slide show, so not clicking the bait. Or baiting the click?

A scale would be good. I think in the early months of COVID, there was a chart of some sorts posted on the AO regarding activities that were more risky than others. Time for a searchā€¦

OK, Iā€™m back!
https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=26936&publicId=395

Ooh, and a colorful chart, for those who donā€™t understand numbers one through ten:

Notably missing: ā€œhanging out with sick people.ā€

Well, even worse, calling the random list the 35 places most likely to catch COVID.

Not sure where to post this, but this thread seems like a decent place for itā€¦

Came across this fun site today:

GoA denizens: try out these quizzes & report back your results!

Is there a prize if youā€™re a member of the SOA (or a candidate for SOA membership)?

Free ASA to the best score.

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I was off by an average of 55 days.

In a couple cases, I was only 1 or 3 days away.

I could always use an extra ASA.

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Did you do the other quizzes (eg state vs state)?

I did not do that, mainly because I can pretty much eyeball the graphs and guess which state is which. [Iā€™ve been looking at those frickin graphs all year]

I hadnā€™t been looking at the European nation info at all, so thought Iā€™d take a stab at it.

lol

average 47 days.
50% on the pick 10.
67% at the end.

I averaged 36 days. I recall Austria was one of the first to mandate masks, and their cases stood out as dropping almost instantly.

State by state or country by country comparisons do not make for for a good science experiment given the amount of variability and widespread lack of compliance. Hong Kong somehow avoided a large outbreak in spite of a massive population density, so restrictions and masks obviously work. Probably in the US and most countries had lower COVID rates with a large share of the population restricting their behaviors either voluntarily or due to a mandate.

37 days for me. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Ok, with you so far.

Then you go and do this.

You realize basically the entire Pacific Rim avoided a large outbreak despite wildly different restrictions & mitigation responses, right? So maybe part of that variability includes other confounding variables (eg previous population exposure to SARS1, testing paradigm, population age & general health).

State to state comparisons generally have less variability in these other confounders.

SARS1 having 8000 confirmed cases probably did nothing for COVID other than being a recent reminder that pandemics can happen. What you also need to realize is that you will find high rates of masking across Southeast Asia without a single mandate and people will commonly wear one any time they are not feeling well to prevent the spread of disease to others. It is part of the culture.

Iā€™d be open to the idea of other factors such as much of the region is warm and have more open-air markets and businesses that would help as well, but more I suspect they just took it more seriously overall on a voluntary basis.

37 days for me too

Yup. Honestly, I took the experience of ā€œplaces where itā€™s normal to wear masks to reduce the spread of diseaseā€ as compared to ā€œplaces where the govt discouraged people from wearing masks, sowing widespread confusionā€ as pretty powerful evidence that masks made a big difference.

And of course the shining comparison is Sweden vs. the rest of Scandinavia. Same ethnic stock. Same climate. Extremely similar culture. Different official guidance.