I’ve long suspected that it’s safer to be outside than in. I don’t ’t know of anyone who has caught Covid outdoors. I did an extensive google search to check.
It led me to a health science paper on medrxiv.org an online eprint site for academic health literature run by Yale university. The paper is funded by the Hong Kong government and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, analysing 7,300 Covid cases in China up to April.
Here’s a clip, from the Discussion:
The first salient feature of the 318 identified outbreaks that involved three or more cases is that they all occurred in indoor environments. Although this finding was expected, its significance has not been well recognised by the community and by policy makers. Indoors is where our lives and work are in modern civilisation. The transmission of respiratory infections such as SARS-CoV-2 from the infected to the susceptible is an indoor phenomenon.
Overall, only one case in 7,300 was contracted outdoors. Yet our government fails, despite having part funded the study, to recognise that catching Covid is “an indoor phenomenon”. And hence the senseless closing of beaches and pools. And hence the photo and caption above suggesting that people going outside maskless are somehow irresponsible.
We have just over 4;800 cases in HK. Tomorrow we start mass testing. Let’s say we find we have double that number, round up to 10,000. That’s 667 per million of our 7.2 mill population. If we factor in the data from the study above, one case in 7,300 contracted outdoors, then the chance of one of those Sharp Island frolickers above catching Covid is one in 11 million. [ADDED: I realise that figure is a bit dodgy main point remains: catching Covid outdoors is a highly unlikely ecent]
And for that we close beaches, parks, pools, schools?!
ADDED: At 45’45, Bret Weinstein analyses an article that says “300 beach goers aught Covid at beach party”, but turns out that it was in a beach house... iow: indoors.... And thus the headline is misleading. And as Bret says, dangerous.
