[burger]

That's really encouraging news. It would be interesting to know whether most of the people who got haircuts were not among the high risk groups. If not, and if everyone wore a mask, avoided touching their mouth, nose, or eyes, etc., then it's possible that these partial mitigation efforts can go a long way towards reducing the spread.

But if that's true, it does make me wonder how the R0 is still not creeping below 1 in many places, since I would have thought the "barber with coronavirus" scenario would have all the makings of a superspreader event.

How long is a typical men's haircut?  15 minutes?  There's some evidence that longer-term contact is required, and even then there's no guarantee of spreading.  IIRC, in China, <30% of people living in the same house with an infected person got the virus.  So, maybe masks + short-duration contact means that the risk of spreading is low.

On the other hand, this is really just n=2.  If the two hair stylists just happened to be relatively poor spreaders of the virus, this may not be telling us anything.

[burger]

That's really encouraging news. It would be interesting to know whether most of the people who got haircuts were not among the high risk groups. If not, and if everyone wore a mask, avoided touching their mouth, nose, or eyes, etc., then it's possible that these partial mitigation efforts can go a long way towards reducing the spread.

But if that's true, it does make me wonder how the R0 is still not creeping below 1 in many places, since I would have thought the "barber with coronavirus" scenario would have all the makings of a superspreader event.

How long is a typical men's haircut?  15 minutes?  There's some evidence that longer-term contact is required, and even then there's no guarantee of spreading.  IIRC, in China, <30% of people living in the same house with an infected person got the virus.  So, maybe masks + short-duration contact means that the risk of spreading is low.

On the other hand, this is really just n=2.  If the two hair stylists just happened to be relatively poor spreaders of the virus, this may not be telling us anything.