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Medicine

CDC Report Links Dining Out To Increased COVID-19 Risk (cnbc.com) 129

gollum123 shares a report from CNBC: Dining out raises the risk of contracting Covid-19 more than other activities, such as shopping or going to a salon, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings come as many states consider the safest ways to reopen businesses, especially restaurants. Those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, "were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results," the study authors wrote. And those who were diagnosed without any known exposure to the virus were more likely to report having visited a bar or coffee shop in the previous two weeks. The increased risk makes sense; it's easy to wear a mask in stores or in places of worship, but it's nearly impossible to do so while eating and drinking. In addition to being maskless, individuals are often close together when eating at a restaurant, sitting across the table from one another.
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CDC Report Links Dining Out To Increased COVID-19 Risk

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  • Interesting. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did the study also include political rallies?
    • No. If you attend a BLM riot then you are immune for 2 hours. No more, no less.
    • Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday September 12, 2020 @04:27AM (#60498586)

      Did the study also include political rallies?

      No, but that's already pretty obvious from the correlations to different political rallies and increases in infections in the local areas afterwards. Political rallies where most people wore masks most of the time, for example BLM / various local issues don't seem to have caused increases. Political rallies where masks weren't worn much and people didn't keep distances seem to have caused virus spread quite often, some of them even super-spreader events. Unsurprisingly, at anti-mask protests most of the people don't wear masks, so those would be the most dangerous ones that you want to avoid.

      Like most things now, it's not so much what you do as how you do it. For example if you eat out, but insist on a quiet outdoors table with direct sunlight and no cover and make sure you wear a mask except when you are sitting that should help. Making sure that you sit next to people you live with and keep some space from people from other households (preferably don't sit opposite someone from another group - sit side by side with space between) should also help. Avoid people talking loudly without masks if possible.

      • no cover

        R.E. no cover - what I should say is "not enclosed". So if you had tables with hedges around that would be bad. A simple parasol above you should be fine. Personally I try to sit upwind of the others, especially loud drunk people. I guess it would be difficult for everyone to do that.

        • While I agree that dining out obviously carries a certain risk, we have to be careful with statistics.

          People who often dine out, are usually people with an active social life. And social people are more likely to get the virus somewhere (not necessarily while dining out).

          So the causal part of the correlation is probably less than the factor of 2 that was claimed.

          Also, saying that people who got covid-19 are twice as likely to have dined out, is not the same as saying that people who dine out are twice as li

          • While I agree that dining out obviously carries a certain risk, we have to be careful with statistics.

            People who often dine out, are usually people with an active social life. And social people are more likely to get the virus somewhere (not necessarily while dining out).

            So the causal part of the correlation is probably less than the factor of 2 that was claimed.

            Also, saying that people who got covid-19 are twice as likely to have dined out, is not the same as saying that people who dine out are twice as likely to get covid-19. That's another statistical pitfall people often step into.

            Sure, but if you are a sensible, remote working IT type of person in an area with a noticeable level of infection, dining out might well be the most dangerous thing you do all week. That makes it worth taking a few extra precautions around this situation. Partly because of your point I don't consider the original parent post a full out troll - it's got a point that does need answering - how do we justify saying that this is the worst thing people do? How do we know other things are safe or dangerous?

      • You're feeding a troll thread.

        On the actual topic, I really do feel some tension when I eat out these days. I still do it occasionally, about 1/4 as often as I used to, and it makes me feel uncomfortable if the restaurant is more than about 1/4 full. Doing the math, that suggests that restaurants need to raise their prices by 16 times, but that wouldn't work too well.

        Actual solution for those governments that understood the actual nature of the problem would have been to stop the virus first. It really is a

        • You're feeding a troll thread.

          On the actual topic, I really do feel some tension when I eat out these days. I still do it occasionally, about 1/4 as often as I used to, and it makes me feel uncomfortable if the restaurant is more than about 1/4 full. Doing the math, that suggests that restaurants need to raise their prices by 16 times, but that wouldn't work too well.

          It doesn't have to be as bad as that. Lots of restaurants around here switched to using apps for reservation and ordering. People are also more willing to come at lunch time / other more empty times. You can increase the number of outdoor tables so that there's more space available and even if though there's a bit more work for the servers, you can still get by with the same staff for half the guests. Still it's going to be more difficult and a bunch of places are likely to go bust.

          The biggest problem ar

        • On the actual topic, I really do feel some tension when I eat out these days. I still do it occasionally, about 1/4 as often as I used to, and it makes me feel uncomfortable if the restaurant is more than about 1/4 full. Doing the math, that suggests that restaurants need to raise their prices by 16 times

          Couldn't resist pointing out the math error here: people eating out 1/4 as often, and restaurants being 1/4 full, are basically the same thing. No need to multiply those figures.

          (And also economically, you don't need to multiply prices by 16 to get 16 times as much net income since the base price of the food is not multiplied, but now I'm nitpicking ;-) )

          • by porges ( 58715 )

            The fixed vs variable costs of running a restaurant are so complicated that no multiplication factor is going to get it right.

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            Congratulations on catching my error. I realized that the two were not independent later on (and therefore should not be multiplied), but Slashdot immortalizes every mistake and typo. (However I deliberately decided not to mention the increase in take out meals or even the possible use of restaurants to help distribute prepared food to quarantined people.(Now I'm wondering how China handled it during their massive lock-down.))

            Or maybe not so immortal? The economic model of Slashdot looks worse than most res

        • Doing the math, that suggests that restaurants need to raise their prices by 16 times, but that wouldn't work too well.

          No, it doesn't, and that's obvious if you think about it.

          A one-fourth capacity restaurant needs, in just spit-balling here, about 1/4th the 'front of house' staff - waiters, food runners, busers, bartenders - and likely 1/2 the kitchen staff (you can't halve a chef or a line cook)..

          Food (ingredient) prices are about the same as before per-meal, and labor is largely a function of the customer volume.

          The issue is the portion of expenses that are fixed - rent, for example - the fraction of the cost of each mea

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            Per my earlier comment, I think my main mistake was treating dependent factors as independent. However my main point was that prices need to go up or something else has to give. Most restaurants were making small profits under normal times. Under The New Normal there are fewer customers, but so far rents are mostly holding steady, which alone is creating great pressure. Even if things went back to normal tomorrow, a lot of restaurant owners would look at the situation and decide to close down. So far the fi

      • Re: Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Saturday September 12, 2020 @07:36AM (#60498772)

        BLM protests have caused a spread. Its rediculous to say otherwise. Its just as rediculous to say wearing a mask does not help. Every time I see video taken by people at the rallies, I see unmasked people. When they took a video of that couple using a rifle and a pistol to make people leave their property after they broke down their gate, I saw plenty of unmasked people. When I saw videos of the looting in NYC, I saw unmasked people. When that 17yr old was chased and shot that guy that grabbed the barrel of his rifle, I saw plenty of unmasked people, including the guy with a felony conviction of sexual relations with a minor.

        When that motorcycle rally had 400,000 people attend, I saw unmasked people.

        When trump held that rally that resulted in the death of Herman Cain, I saw unmasked people.

        To say protesting is not a super spreader is ignorant. Standing shoulder to shoulder, unmasked, and yelling at the top of your lungs, is a seriously simple way to spread a respiratory virus. Its not just the topics you disagree with. The virus has no party affiliation. You yell in order to project your voice farther. You are also projecting your spit when you do that. Being outside helps, but not when everyone is packed in nut-to-butt.

        So can we dispense with the political bullshit with regards to the covid-19 pandemic and just stick to current clinical understanding? If you are within 6 feet of someone, inside or outside, the louder your voice, the greater chance your spit is going to land on someones face. When alcohol is involved, the risk increases more. An impaired brain talks louder because their hearing is also impaired. Hence the OLD expression - say it dont spray it -

        In conclusion, ANY mass gathering in close proximity without a face mask greatly increases the spread of Covid 19. The virus does not give a flying fuck as to your motive.

        • Agreed, and while masks don't stop the spread, they do a lot to slow it.

        • BLM protests have caused a spread. Its rediculous to say otherwise.

          You say that, but you don't know what the alternative is. Maybe they'd be sitting at home with their friends without masks and without spacing.? It seems quite reasonable to think that BLM rallies get more people outdoors, which is safer, and get more people wearing masks than they would have done normally.

          I'm not saying you aren't right and there isn't some small increase. Personally I advised several people not to go to the BLM rallies or to take care when there specifically because I thought it would

          • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

            i just think when they take pictures of the mob of people at the motorcycle rally, and condemn that... the pictures of the mobs of people unmasked screaming chants during a protest look just the same. Yes outdoor is a bit safer, but dont forget the outbreak from swarming the beaches too. if 100 people crammed together for a wet t-shirt contest, drinking beer, is a recipe for disaster, so is 100 people crammed together screaming any sort of protest chant. its the same exact mechanics in play. Like I said,

          • You are assuming staying at home with friends and attending a protest are the same level of risk which they aren't. The CDC has said masks aren't a substitute for distancing which is the exact opposite message of protesters. Its safe to gather in massive crowds, shouting for days because a mask which you might wear 80% of the time is 100% effective. The other major flaw is protesting greatly expands your social circle with people you don't even know so contact tracing is impossible. Also sitting at home w
            • You are assuming staying at home with friends and attending a protest are the same level of risk which they aren't. .

              Actually no, I'm postulating that maybe staying at home with friends in a closed room without masks is more dangerous that going out wearing masks and screaming whilst socially distanced. In which case maybe, actually, I'd say quite likely, for the average BLM rally attender, being at the rally with the marshals reminding them to keep their masks on from time to time might reduce their chance of infection over what they normally do.

              The difference is subtle, and I think you would be right, staying at home w

        • BLM protests have caused a spread. Its rediculous to say otherwise. Its just as rediculous to say wearing a mask does not help. Every time I see video taken by people at the rallies, I see unmasked people.

          Sure. But when you see video taken of conservative rallies, there's far less mask wearing. So while it's incorrect to say that BLM protests don't cause spreading, it's probably quite accurate to say that they cause less spreading than Trump rallies. At least, the ones that actually have people attending because they didn't get owned by kids on TikTok.

          The virus does not give a flying fuck as to your motive.

          Right, only your behavior. That's why a BLM rally is safer than a Trump rally.

          • And Fucking a whore in detroit has less chance of getting AIDS than fucking a whore in Kenya. Does it really matter? Both are high risk. Wear a damn condom. Wear a mask. If you want to roll those dice dont look for sympathy here. Sympathy falls between SHIT and SYPHILIS in the dictionary. If you do something that stupid and have a consequence because your math said your risk factor said you were safe, we certainly wont give a shit. In fact we probably will ridicule your hypocrisy.

            • And Fucking a whore in detroit has less chance of getting AIDS than fucking a whore in Kenya. Does it really matter? Both are high risk. Wear a damn condom. Wear a mask.

              Most left-wing protesters DO wear masks, most right-wing protesters don't. Which is why left-wing protests produce less Covid cases than right-wing ones.

              I haven't been to a single protest. I do wear a mask. I also don't dine out. Very simple.

            • by skids ( 119237 )

              How about rawdogging a porn star and then paying to cover it up?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by skids ( 119237 )

          When they took a video of that couple using a rifle and a pistol to make people leave their property after they broke down their gate, I saw plenty of unmasked people. When I saw videos of the looting in NYC, I saw unmasked people.

          If you're basing your judgement of the BLM rallies only on sensational youtube videos of the ones that went sideways, you have a very biased view, considering 93% of the BLM rallies were entirely peaceful [time.com] (and that 7% includes all of them where the only "violence" was tearing down a statue or some such shit.)

          It's an odds game, so while it would be preferable for everyone to be masked, what's important is the ratio of masked to unmasked. Trump could encourage rally-goers to wear masks, but he doesn't seem t

          • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

            so you send a link talking about violence vs criminal activity... hmm so you seem to think the virus discriminates between lawful and unlawful behavior... thats a pretty bad assumption to make and you missed the entire point. The article is claiming that eating in a restaurant is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Every restaurant I have been to has been pretty quiet. In my state the actual 'bar' portion of a bar or restaurant is closed. There is no loud music you have to yell over, there is no cr

            • by skids ( 119237 )

              You keep trying to make this political and its clearly not.

              That horse had already left the barn, if you look at the comment I replied to.

              Rolling the dice for a 45 min meal in a restaurant that only holds 40 people with the reduced capacity rules is a lot fewer dice rolls than attending a 2 hour rally with thousands of people, a week long protests with thousands of people, or a week long motorcycle festival with 400,000 people. And yet the media down plays some of these things, and complains about the others, totally ignoring the exposure times

              The reason we hassle Trump about this is he could fix it. With one sentence from the podium. And he knows it, and chooses not to.

              It would be interesting... no, more than interesting -- helpful... if we had data from COVID-infected people about all of the above activities. If we had a contact tracing program that was anything near what better run countries do, and we weren't swamped in many areas with too many cases, we would.

        • âoeRediculousâ

          That always makes me think of a Harry Potter spell... or maybe a misspell...

      • We're not seeing infections in commercial settings in developed countries that never implemented these distancing or mask guidelines. We're also not seeing significant transmission from asymptomatic carriers. Even in numerous developing countries where testing has ramped up we're not finding an epidemic. This suggests that other factors that aren't accounted for are driving transmission primarily in family clusters. As with SARS 1, fecal aerosols are likely driving transmission. This still doesn't explain w
        • This still doesn't explain why countries like Sweden and now Netherlands have been able to contain three problem without economy-crushing restrictions.

          The Netherlands (where I live) is now seeing exponential growth in the daily new cases with a doubling time of around 2 weeks. Our government seems to stimulate infections among people outside the risk groups, by actively discouraging mask use and by spreading misinformation, thereby throttling the reproduction number (Rt) to hover in the range 1.0 to 1.2. Meanwhile, many of those in the risk groups are scared to leave their home, which results in relatively few hospitalizations. My 87-year-old neighbor ha

          • Sound policy. A one size fits all shutdown for a virus that primarily harms a small segment of the population is assinine. High risk groups should isolate while everyone else goes about living...and developing immunity.
            • My biggest problem with the Dutch policy is that the government is lying and misinforming. They say "we must show solidarity and not let the vulnerable take care of themselves" but in practice, the latter is exactly what the government is pushing.

              And there is no sane defense for not even recommending people to wear face masks on a voluntary basis.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    We still go to bakeries and take-outs, though, we just retire to our car to remove our masks and eat. Bonus: you get to control the music and the air conditioning.
    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      This. Now if we could just get rid of those pesky open container laws so the bars can reopen. :-D

      I kid! I kid!

  • by hankwang ( 413283 ) on Saturday September 12, 2020 @02:34AM (#60498430) Homepage

    Note that the conclusion is not based on proven locations of infection from contact tracing. The summary reads like they just asked people whether they visited a restaurant and found that positive cases are more likely to have visited a restaurant. That would obviously be sensitive to correlation != causation issues.

    However, the CDC report explains that they tried hard to isolate the effect of various factors. Besides restaurant visits, those are general mask-wearing behavior and "shopping; gatherings with up to 10 persons in a home; going to an office setting; going to a salon; gatherings with 11+ persons in a home; going to a gym; using public transportation; going to a bar/coffee shop; or attending church/religious gathering."

    So, the corrolary is that these other activities appear to be low-risk. That's also useful to know. a quick skim of the report, I didn't quite get how/whether they accounted for mask wearing during other activities, though.

    • I am rather suspicious about this "correction for other factors". A related topic to high risk activities is the higher risk of infection and serious illness among people identified as BAME. There is certainly correlation. But it makes no sense that such a diverse population group should be genetically more prone to Covid-19, simply because BAME is not a genetic classification, it is a social classification.

      The point here is that epidemiologists and statisticians have tried to correct for factors such as lo

    • "That would obviously be sensitive to correlation != causation issues."

      They should interview the virus then.

    • by Veretax ( 872660 )
      I wonder, if they got a similar correlation to people that had gone out to shop for groceries, at krogers, or Walmart.
  • What part of (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 )
    ALL Social GATHERINGS are now a covid 19 risk did you miss? Stay away from people, they are ALL carriers!
    • ALL Social GATHERINGS are now a covid 19 risk did you miss? Stay away from people, they are ALL carriers!

      You probably do not realise this but In the land of Trumpistan that is very sound advice.

    • by wjwlsn ( 94460 )

      COVID is equal opportunity.

      Trump supporter at a rally.
      Anti-Trump christian at church.
      Agitator trying to stoke unrest at a protest.
      Ordinary citizen at a protest expressing support for racial equality.
      College student just trying to attend class in person.
      College student at a COVID party.

      COVID don't give a shit.

  • I dont get it. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bumblebees ( 1262534 )
    How f..ing hard is it to stay home? You just have to get rid of that money that burns a hole in your pocket or what is it? Same with the idiots insisting on going to smac full bars. But i guess this is natures way to weed out the idiots with no common sence. Its not that hard to just stay home. Darwin would love to see this.
    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      Staying home is damaging. It's as simple as that. People don't want to do it because it isn't healthy.

      Of course that cannot be true because it must not be true. Rightspeak is all about covid after all.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Because people can't stay put like us nerds and geeks who hide in our basements. They love to go outside and move around. :P

    • How f..ing hard is it to stay home? (..) Darwin would love to see this.

      The study shows that there are significant differences in risk for various not-at-home activities. For example, hair salons and shopping (presumably while most people wear face masks) and even visiting someone else's home have odds ratios below 1.0 according to this study. (Disclaimer: I don't know how to translate odds ratios to infection probabilities)

      The study doesn't distinguish between indoor and outdoor seating in restaurants. I'm inclined to believe that outdoor seating, with everyone who's not seate

    • Re:I dont get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WierdUncle ( 6807634 ) on Saturday September 12, 2020 @04:13AM (#60498566)

      Most people need a social life, which usually involves going out and meeting people. There is concern among mental health professionals that social distancing is having significant harmful effects. Introverts like me can get by with staying at home. Extroverts are clearly not so happy.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You don't NEED a social life. That's a WANT.

        • by zidium ( 2550286 )

          After my brother ignored my advice and went to a pool w/ 6 friends in west Houston (Katy) in mid-June and got sick with #coronavirus and ended up hospitalized on 3 July thru 29 July, and will need kidney dialysis weekly for life, I can confirm:

          A social life is a WANT not a NEED.

          I self-isolated all of July and then chose to do it all of August and now I'm half-way into September :-/ I leave the house maybe once every 3 weeks and haven't had a one-on-one conversation since I forced him to leave and go get tes

      • Most people need a social life, which usually involves going out and meeting people

        Most people should suck it up.

        I mean, I get it. It was this lockdown that made me realize that what little I had of my social life completely disintegrated over the last couple of years. Friends moved away, got married or had kids and over time I got into the situation where I could go an entire week without seeing anyone outside of work even prior to the coronavirus situation. I'm your typical /. introverted nerd but I'm not entirely asocia so I got a huge urge to fix this ASAP and go out with people befor

    • It is F'n hard to stay home.

      I live alone. Home can be fairly boring, although the TV and computer are good tools in fighting this. But it'd be a lot more fun to be playing live poker at the bar, and going to movies, and the gym.

      I actually do go to movies and the gym. Movies are so sparsely attended right now that it isn't even a threat to go. The gym I go to is absolutely huge, being set up in an old home improvements store, you know how incredibly large they are. You can social distance all day lon

      • by zidium ( 2550286 )

        First world problems.

      • With Roku and Netflix and affordable large-panel displays and good speakers, what possible reason is there to go to a movie theatre these days?

        There are certain things that the virtual world simply cannot adequately replace, but is the commercial movie theatre one of them?

        • You don't understand. Going to the theater isn't about _just_ seeing the movie.

          It is about seeing the movie as soon as it is available.

          It is about seeing the movie with other people. Yes, it makes a difference, even if you're seeing it with a couple hundred strangers. It's just better.

          Its about sitting in the dark, eating popcorn, drinking a fountain drink you really can't make at home, not having to clean up the droppings, and guaranteed not being interrupted when someone else come in the room doing so

    • by Petrini ( 49261 )

      The (generally intelligent and safe and sane) people I know who frequent outdoor-patio dining restaurants do it because they want to support the businesses. They want to keep people employed in their community and are willing to spend more for the menu and tip high to keep things in the black. They're careful - masks on until eating and back on after, lots of hand sanitizer, no touching face, physically spaced apart while waiting for tables, etc.

      I think it's higher risk than eating at home, but I understa

  • In the UK, the government actually subsidized eating out, to get the high street economy going again. I thought that pretty bizarre, especially for a Conservative government. My local area of Birmingham has a very high density of cafes and restaurants. It also seems to be close to the focal point of an increase in infections. More lockdown is on its way for Brummies.

    • In the UK, the government actually subsidized eating out, to get the high street economy going again. I thought that pretty bizarre, especially for a Conservative government.

      Conservative == profits uber alles == go buy stuff, you idiot plebes. It makes all the sense in the world if you use your little orphan annie decoder ring and translate from bullshit into reality.

      • > Conservative == profits uber alles

        I am not quite that cynical about the Conservative Party, but I am getting that way. I am working on ideas about positive lessons from lockdown and working from home. The government trying to bribe people to "get back to normal" looks like a massive missed opportunity. With my ecology hat on, I think mothballed airliners is a positive thing. I would like people to stop rushing about so much, and buying so much stuff. I think, with a bit of thought, I could get used to

  • I wonder if this will get McDonald's to start cleaning their tables? Wishful thinking, I know.
  • So many variables could cause this correlation. For example , people who go out to eat might just be more active and less isolating. In the North East states with outside socially distant dining have not seen a surge in cases. Furthermore, a big omission in the study from the article "One limitation of the report is that the researchers did not ask participants whether they ate or drank indoors or outdoors.
  • Just yesterday there was an article implying singing was the single most dangerous risk to the spread of the virus. Which makes sense when you look at the fluid dynamics of singing. It also explains the church outbreaks. Maybe they should just hum those hymns in church for now.

    An article in the UK put hairdressers at the top of the list. I seriously dont see how since everyone is masked the entire time. For guys we are in that chair all of 20min tops. We spend more time in the damn checkout line of a groce

    • I envision hi-tech end-of-the-world/military-type masks with built-in UV light.

      • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

        having worn military CBR (chemical, biological, and radiological) equipment, there are a lot of drawbacks. Your face itches, a lot, wearing them because of the seal around the mouth that separates the nose/mouth from the viewing shield. They get quite humid and without the portable samples constantly confirming the presence of nerve agents, people would be peeling them off left and right. Everyone kept breaking the seals (not actually breaking, just lifting off the face) during drills in order to get fresh

    • Apparently Just 1 second of sunlight or UV is enough to kill the virus.

      It's more like 10 minutes in sunlight to get a factor 10 reduction. The exact rate depends on the intensity (summer/winter) and humidity.

      https://academic.oup.com/jid/a... [oup.com]
      https://academic.oup.com/jid/a... [oup.com]

    • An article in the UK put hairdressers at the top of the list. I seriously dont see how since everyone is masked the entire time. For guys we are in that chair all of 20min tops. We spend more time in the damn checkout line of a grocery store than that with far greater number of people than the 6 people in the barber shop.
      Another top spreader? Meat packing plants. Because of the very cold Recirculated air in a closed environment. Those people are actually masked the whole time but it still spreads like wildfire. And its really THAT thats the root threat. Colder environmentally controlled spaces where are is internally recirculating.

      No, it really isn't. The people are so close to one another that there isn't time for the virus to die off regardless of the conditions. And that's why the barber is a point of high risk. You are close to one another. The masks are only stopping spray at that point, there will still be plenty of seepage around the mask and you're going to be breathing it.

      Six feet is a reasonably safe distance from someone you're only going to be around for a little while. It means that you're unlikely to get much viral load

  • Will they investigate the appaling lack of changes to ventilation ? It's been ~4-5 months since the CDC recommended HVAC changes (increase fresh air to potentially 100%) and basically no one is making them because regulators are spineless and lazy, and most corps. and facility owners are myopic and greedy: they won't proactively change unless mandated to.

    Check out this link:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

    By now, it should be obvious the virus spreads far through the air indoors, specifically in air-condit

    • My office vents are loud as fuck now. So I'm guessing ventilation is at maximum now or they upgraded the blowers.

    • An Apple store near me ripped out their efficient HVAC and shifted to 100% outdoor air pumped back to front of store. Beyond that, few places outside the medical field have made meaningful changes, and that is a big problem. In the industry there are still a few debates going on about laminar supply from the ceiling and low exhaust, or displacement ventilation from the floor and high exhaust, but one thing is pretty well agreed by everyone: traditional ceiling diffusers designed for air mixing at the ceili
  • The increased risk makes sense; it's easy to wear a mask in stores or in places of worship, but it's nearly impossible to do so while eating and drinking.

    Hold my beer... because I can't drink it without removing my mask.

  • 50% of group that dined out & got covid ALSO REPORTED HAVING BEEN EXPOSED TO FAMILY MEMBER WITH COVID 20% in control reported same https://mobile.twitter.com/Nah... [twitter.com]
  • Their water parks are open and packed.
    Netherlands has lifted mask requirements and states no evidence masks are effective.
    Sweden never bothered with any of this and their epidemic is over.
    Per CDCs own MMWR and ILI data, the US dropped below epidemic threshold in early May and has remained below threshold ever since.

    Australia continues to ratchet down in its citizenry.
    US governors have seized upon the opportunity to consolidate power and have gone so far as to ban doctors from utilizing evidence base
  • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Saturday September 12, 2020 @10:28AM (#60499150) Homepage

    I would interpret that to mean that those who engage in risky contact are very likely to have visited restaurants.

    If contact tracing is pointing at restaurants, then that's one thing.

    This study is not evidence that restaurants have a greater impact on infection than other places.

    Correlation != causation

  • those same people have been shopping more than eating out. using the same info you can say shopping has a higher risk and can be linked to the virus.

    • Other people have also been shopping, though, they can correct for that. The difference is that you can keep your mask on while you shop. You can't eat with your mask on. While dining you're also sitting in one place for an extended period. If you are downwind from someone who is emitting contaminated droplets then you're going to keep getting more exposure from them. Whereas you only stand near the same person shopping for any length of time while in line.

  • Do an experiment (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Cajun Hell ( 725246 )
    Here's what to do: go back to allowing smoking in restaurants. Let people smoke, whether indoors or outdoors. And then, if anyone complains that they're able to smell the smokers' smoke, you'll know for sure: it's an unsafe place to be. OTOH if nobody catches a whiff of other peoples' cigarettes, it's probably pretty safe.
    • And then, if anyone complains that they're able to smell the smokers' smoke, you'll know for sure: it's an unsafe place to be.

      Yeah because we all know that gases, fine particulates, and liquid droplets all spread through the air the same... Oh wait they don't.

      Now restaurants are still a bad place to be during a pandemic, but comparing it to smoke is just utterly ignorant of physics.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 )

    Yes, sitting for a prolonged time in an enclosed space with others and many people talking does have a larger risk.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    Understanding human behaviour is so tricky, it has not one, but several branches of science dedicated to it. So it shouldn't be a surprise that we don't know what, exactly causes more spreading.

    It's likely that sitting for an hour or so in a place with your mask off, surrounded by other people without masks, raises your risk.

    It is also likely that "visiting restaurants" correlates with other types of "outgoing behaviour", such as visiting friends, hanging around in the city, going to parties or other events

  • Where the two groups identical except for dining in restaurants?

    Did anyone actually trace back their infection to a restaurant visit?

    Didn't an equal number of study participants trace their Covid infections to family Nembutal/close friends?

    People willing to eat in restaurants likely took other risks - shopping in person, going to movies, social gatherings, etc. putting themselves at greater risk.

    Does correlation now equal causation?

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