posted January 17, 2021 02:09 AM            

1. Household/Social Gatherings -- 73.8%

2. Healthcare Delivery -- 7.8%

3. Higher Education -- 2.0%

4. Education Employees -- 1.5%

5. Restaurants & Bars -- 1.4%

6. Hair & Personal Care -- 0.1%

posted January 17, 2021 06:11 AM            

But social gatherings and households have also without a doubt been one of the biggest problems here also. Idiots partying throughout lockdowns, Christmas/New Year gatherings, freshers week, schools being open initially with no masks - crammed onto buses and into classrooms. At least some of those children would have been from families who continued to hold social gatherings. We were asked to sacrifice social gatherings in order that the schools could be kept open, however, many people ignored this and now our children's education has been compromised to compensate for the reckless behaviour of adults.

Social gatherings were against the lockdown regulations. We will never know now just how effective lockdowns could have been because people didn't comply and because they never shut down schools until this 3rd lockdown.

However, the in the figures reported over here, cases and deaths have decreased following the onset of a lockdown (we've had 3 now in my area at the highest level of 4), so there is some impact, but the impact could have been greater if people had complied.

posted January 17, 2021 06:16 AM            

quote:

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One in five (21 out of 104) workers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, indicating a prevalence of 20% at that point in time. This was significantly higher than the prevalence of the infection in the local community at the time: 0.9-1.3%.

Three out of four of those testing positive (76%) had no symptoms. And of those testing positive, most (91%) had a customer facing role compared with 59% of those testing negative.

Workers in customer facing roles were five times more likely to test positive than their colleagues in other types of role, after accounting for potentially influential factors, such as the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 where they lived. Those in supervisory roles were six times more likely to do so.
http://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/high-rate-of-symptomless-covid-19-infection-among-grocery-store-workers/

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posted January 17, 2021 06:24 AM            

A US study using mobile phone data conclude that Social distancing mandates reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are followed.
http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.11430

posted January 17, 2021 01:28 PM            

For example, by far the most affected population across the board in many countries have been elderly folks in nursing homes/care facilities.

Having worked with the elderly population directly myself, I'm well aware that much of this population doesn't get out much and often don't get much in the way of visitors minus employees. It's sad, but a lot of them are rather lonely except when they have friends among their peers.

Exactly how does closing schools, restaurants, not allowing parties, etc really affect and benefit this population? Wouldn't they have been served better by the facilities and companies putting in extra measures for their employees and/or occasional visitors, while at the same time cleaning up the air (installing UV, filter, negative ion air purifiers, opening up windows when possible, etc), cleaning up general conditions, providing better and healthier food, etc

posted January 18, 2021 08:11 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by GalacticCoreExplosion:
Some Epidemiologists like Knut M. Wittkowski have argued that it is better to not try to stop the general spread among the general and relatively healthy population, but to focus on protecting the elderly and immuno compromised more specifically.

For example, by far the most affected population across the board in many countries have been elderly folks in nursing homes/care facilities.

Having worked with the elderly population directly myself, I'm well aware that much of this population doesn't get out much and often don't get much in the way of visitors minus employees. It's sad, but a lot of them are rather lonely except when they have friends among their peers.

Exactly how does closing schools, restaurants, not allowing parties, etc really affect and benefit this population? Wouldn't they have been served better by the facilities and companies putting in extra measures for their employees and/or occasional visitors, while at the same time cleaning up the air (installing UV, filter, negative ion air purifiers, opening up windows when possible, etc), cleaning up general conditions, providing better and healthier food, etc

For many of these care facilities and nursing homes, it was more or less business as usual except for masks and/or gloves. Despite those measures, a lot of these folks still got sick and died.

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IF they had shielded the elderly and sick in the first place, then I believe this would have been sufficient, as they are the most at risk of not recovering. But they didn't.

You have to remember that a very large population of elderly and sick were at home so they are still within the chains of transmission if they and their families were mixing. Another reason they did not want to shut schools was to avoid working parents using their elderly and sick parents as babysitters.

It's just a hot mess now and they have to take excessive measures that could have been avoided. Like I said before, hindsight is a wonderful thing. They did not know all we do now about the virus, so we can't exactly hold them accountable for information they weren't sure of at the start.

They came down heavy-handed with restrictions to mitigate risk. But we only know now, when its too late to go back, that this was heavy-handed.