This Week in the Pandemic, October 30, 2020
Toward the beginning of this* pandemic I had several friends and family call or text me asking what they should do. Should they panic? Should they ignore it? Being an epidemiologist, it wasn’t surprising but it was still flattering. My first piece of advice to them was usually this:
Listen to your local public health people.
I still tell people this. Colleagues over the summer would ask about certain activities, such as dining out or playing recreational sports. Friends down the street ask about cleaning procedures or how much time it takes to kill SARS-CoV-2. Usually I direct them to local public health web pages.
So with Halloween about 24 hours away, here’s the advice of an epidemiologist: Visit the website of your local public health authority and do what they recommend.
Why?
Because they understand your area better than anyone else. It’s their job. Public health people have better data than you do. They understand the economic implications of their decisions. Cultural nuances of your geographical area are in their wheelhouse. So do what they say.
And here’s another tip: if you visit the aforementioned websites and they have ranked lists of “low risk” things to do and “high risk” things to do, focus on doing the low-risk things. When someone in public health says something is low risk, that translates to “Please do this because it will make everyone’s lives a lot easier.” Something labeled as high risk similarly translates to “Oh, dear Lord, please don’t do this. The results could be really, really bad. (Really.)”
So, if they say “Carve pumpkins and watch scary movies!” then you should feel perfectly safe carving pumpkins and watching scary movies.
If they say “Costume parties with a lot of people are high risk.” That means you shouldn’t go to a costume party unless you want to be responsible for putting someone in the hospital.
On a related note this seems like a hot topic: Is trick-or-treating really a good way to spread COVID-19?
Like many things in epidemiology the answer is “It depends.” But since I can practically hear Voices of Professors past saying, “Depends on what?” here’s a short list of what factors play into trick-or-treating and spreading covid germs.
1. How many people will be crammed in a small area?
2. How many houses will you be visiting?
3. How many other people decide to go trick-or-treating?
4. How many people in your community have covid?
5. Will you ever be inside another person’s house?
6. What are the ages of the people involved?
7. Will kids be supervised?
8. Will adults be supervised?
9. Is there alcohol involved?
10. How many times, or how often, will the trick-or-treaters be eating candy whilst trick-or-treating?
11. In general, how much temptation do you think there will be to break social distancing, hand-washing, and other infection prevention protocols?
For me the primary issues are 1 and 11 on that list. If you get a whole bunch of people bunched together then respiratory viruses like covid can spread really easy. Beyond that, there’s just a general temptation to let kids do things that you normally wouldn’t do because “it’s a special occasion” and that could carry more risk than usual because case counts are increasing in a lot of places.
Now, some people might say “Covid isn’t as deadly as it once was!” and it’s true that mortality rates have come down a bit in many places. What’s not clear is why or whether or not that good news will continue. There’s something to be said for the higher risk people being more careful about not getting infected, but medical professionals have also learned some things about how to manage serious cases. So perhaps the lower mortality rates will continue.
On the less optimistic side, there are concerns about long-term effects that appear to be very real and not well understood. This means it’s still prudent to be careful and do whatever you reasonably can to slow down the spread of the virus.
Please? Because I don’t want to have another lockdown, whatever that would look like. And if we can all collectively get cases under control in our areas, we might be able to open schools a little more.
*Usually I try to say “this” pandemic instead of “the” pandemic for 2 reasons. First, you gotta give previous pandemics their due respect. Second, there will be more pandemics. That’s not pessimism, it’s just a statistical certainty.