With new COVID-19 case counts below prior minimums, and weekly risk-of-death now similar to that of flu during a typical flu season, I felt a little self-conscious, masking up for a local theater performance a couple of days ago.
I mean, COVID-19 infections are so last year, already.
Except for today, when the CDC announced that 35 people caught COVID at a recent CDC conference attended by about 2000. Doing the math, that’s a known infection rate of 1.75% of the persons attending.
In hindsight, I’m not feeling quite so stupid about masking up in that crowded theatrical performance.
The thing that gets lost, in any COVID-versus-flu comparison, is that COVID is vastly more infectious than flu. And the infections are vastly more clustered than flu.
If you can recall R-nought, the basic measure of infectiousness, the R-nought for season flu is somewhere around 1.5. On average, absent vaccines, precautions, or prior immunity, every person infected during flu season goes on to infect 1.5 others.
The last estimate of R-nought for COVID, by contrast, put it in the the mid-20s. That is, absent vaccines, precautions, or natural immunity, each person infected goes on to infect an average of 20-some others.
The other way in which the two diseases differ is in their “kappa”. Few individuals with COVID actually go on to spread it. But those who do tend to spread it a lot. And so, unlike flu, which seems to settle across the entire population, COVID perpetuates itself via outbreaks.
Just as it did at this recent CDC conference.
I suspect that I will continue to mask up in higher-risk situations. Given that the use of a high-filtration mask is more-or-less free, and reasonably effective, in light of what just happened, it still seems like a prudent thing to do.
