Well we have a much, much, much denser population on the whole than you guys do.
But that critical thing seems to be shutting down early. You guys cut it off before it could really take hold. The initial restrictions here in NY were just as strict, but barely slowed anything down until we added masks.
We’ve also seen a number of places, including places that look a lot more like Australia, have resurgences when restrictions loosened without enough mask use. Just from the US that seems to be what happened in California. And just recently there are worrying spikes in numbers in NJ.
NJ has rushed to reopen beaches, malls, boardwalks and amusement parks before the 4th of July weekend. And clusters of new cases are appearing in beach towns and traces to specific bars. Driven by college and high school students gathering there in numbers without masks.
So the story seems to be you can get out of the house and loosen things up. But it’s broad use of masks that allows that to work.
If you have transmissions within house holds, what do you think happens when multiple members of that household head out into the world?
They come in contact with larger numbers of people. Which increases the number of transmissions a single sick person causes.
Healthy people have more chance of contacting a sick person out in the world, because they’re in contact with more people. And they’ll carry it home to their families.
It isn’t about the amount of time you spend with a particular person. It’s all about how many people you come in contact with.
That’s why the masks are useful. They reduce the chance and number of transmissions from already sick folks. It’s also why the social distancing works.
Basically these things let you lighten restrictions.
I think the mistake NY and NJ are making is assuming they let you remove restrictions entirely. They can’t get over large groups of people, and shit where people gather in crowds let non compliant people cluster up. Where they get infected and carry it home. And promoting tourism and night life just means those people carry things from a larger geographic area.
Masks aren’t a replacement for any measure, but they improve things as part of the total system.
