I've been wondering how much COVID transmission is attributable to people simply not following public health guidelines with get-togethers in private homes without masks, physical distancing, or other precautions. Contact tracing efforts basically broke down months ago, and there's been little effort to fix them. Even if you did have contact tracing, it might be compromised by people unwilling to admit they'd been breaking the rules. Masks and physical distancing seem to work pretty well when they're used. At my wife's ER, they've been exposed to COVID patients every day while only using surgical masks as protection unless they're doing a high risk procedure like intubation. However, not a lot of nurses have been infected, and some of the cases where they have appear to be attributable to people in break rooms together. In contrast, when you're going shopping you're only exposed to people for short periods of time and a far smaller fraction of them are going to be infected.
My hunch is that people have been taking more risks away from the places regulated by government - they're not wearing masks, and they're hanging out inside for extended periods having dinner or watching a hockey game together. There's likely an assumption that your friends or extended family can be trusted to not expose you, and it's probably reasonable to a point. However, they only have to be wrong 1% of the time to generate a significant number of cases in a population of millions. It's also disastrous if you're maintaining contact with your elderly extended family. Further restrictions on restaurants and retail are likely into sharply diminishing returns because they're not the places where infections are occurring. Instead, governments would have to implement draconian lockdown measures with curfews and stay and home orders.
I've been wondering how much COVID transmission is attributable to people simply not following public health guidelines with get-togethers in private homes without masks, physical distancing, or other precautions. Contact tracing efforts basically broke down months ago, and there's been little effort to fix them. Even if you did have contact tracing, it might be compromised by people unwilling to admit they'd been breaking the rules. Masks and physical distancing seem to work pretty well when they're used. At my wife's ER, they've been exposed to COVID patients every day while only using surgical masks as protection unless they're doing a high risk procedure like intubation. However, not a lot of nurses have been infected, and some of the cases where they have appear to be attributable to people in break rooms together. In contrast, when you're going shopping you're only exposed to people for short periods of time and a far smaller fraction of them are going to be infected.
My hunch is that people have been taking more risks away from the places regulated by government - they're not wearing masks, and they're hanging out inside for extended periods having dinner or watching a hockey game together. There's likely an assumption that your friends or extended family can be trusted to not expose you, and it's probably reasonable to a point. However, they only have to be wrong 1% of the time to generate a significant number of cases in a population of millions. It's also disastrous if you're maintaining contact with your elderly extended family. Further restrictions on restaurants and retail are likely into sharply diminishing returns because they're not the places where infections are occurring. Instead, governments would have to implement draconian lockdown measures with curfews and stay and home orders.