[teejers1]

BC, thanks for posting that.  I hope someone in the California Governor's office gets this onto his desk.

In the limitations of the study:

Of note, the question assessing dining at a restaurant did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor options. In addition, the question about going to a bar or coffee shop did not distinguish between the venues or service delivery methods, which might represent different exposures.

At a recent town-hall meeting of my SCC commissioner, I asked a question (regarding case tracing) at the opportunity to do so by recording the question after the meeting is over (for those with questions who didn't get called on).  As before, one of the staff members called up to discuss the question.  [Kudos to Joe Simitian for holding these meetings and welcoming questions!]

After discussing the question  (basically where are all the cases coming from if only 33% are from known sources), I expressed my frustration that SCC has had thousands of cases, and the public isn't being told what MUST (or SHOULD) be known about them.  What are the life styles of the 67% that are getting it by community spread?  Are they getting take out (more than those that haven't gotten COVID), going on walks, working in construction (outdoors, indoors?), having beers with friends, sitting at home virtually all the time, etc.

Saying that 12K people have gotten COVID-19 by "community spread" without giving better information as to what these people do that let them get COVID, without warning the rest of us what is effectively risky behavior seems close to malfeasance.  If they were eating purple jelly beans much more frequently than the other 1.9M people, would they tell us?  Or, is there absolutely nothing about these 12,000 people that they do or experience more than others?  I'd find that hard to believe (and, if there was nothing distinguishing, downright scary).

One who tends toward conspiracy theories could think that the counties are covering up what constitutes risky behavior.

For them NOT to know the characteristics of the 12K people that have gotten the disease seems like they aren't doing their job.  I find it easier to believe they aren't telling the public rather than they haven't attempted to detect what some distinguishing characteristics are.


One has to tread carefully.  Regarding Boston Card's quoted statistics, remember this is an association, not causal.  For instance, suppose it were true the people that go to gyms also eat out more often.  If you just look at who eats out, and decide that's related to getting COVID, you might miss that (in theory) it might be those that go to gyms are more strongly associated with getting COVID.     Eating out may be related to whether the adult household members all work outside the home (which increases their exposure), or maybe to whether there are children in the household.  It also is likely related to how concerned the household members about getting COVID-19.

But then, that L.A. sports writer that wrote about his COVID experience suggested that he got COVID from eating out, in his first (only) two times to eat out.

In the category of information obfuscation, I would add this:

How many patients, between the ages of 20-30, who had zero comorbidities died from Covid 19?
Same question for each decade of age.

It's incredible to me that they are not sharing this information because they clearly have it: they report how many people died and what age group the decedents fall into; they also relay how many of those dying were known to have at least one comorbidity; but for some reason, they refuse to connect the two data sets. It's ridiculous, really, and only adds to the mistrust of those providing the numbers.

I mean, I think it's mathematically possible that the number of those dying with zero comorbidities under the age of 50 is . . . 0.

P.S.  The "community spread" category I view as a catchall, as I don't think contact tracing is worth a damn in this county - so that's the easy/default category.

[teejers1]

BC, thanks for posting that.  I hope someone in the California Governor's office gets this onto his desk.

In the limitations of the study:

Of note, the question assessing dining at a restaurant did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor options. In addition, the question about going to a bar or coffee shop did not distinguish between the venues or service delivery methods, which might represent different exposures.

At a recent town-hall meeting of my SCC commissioner, I asked a question (regarding case tracing) at the opportunity to do so by recording the question after the meeting is over (for those with questions who didn't get called on).  As before, one of the staff members called up to discuss the question.  [Kudos to Joe Simitian for holding these meetings and welcoming questions!]

After discussing the question  (basically where are all the cases coming from if only 33% are from known sources), I expressed my frustration that SCC has had thousands of cases, and the public isn't being told what MUST (or SHOULD) be known about them.  What are the life styles of the 67% that are getting it by community spread?  Are they getting take out (more than those that haven't gotten COVID), going on walks, working in construction (outdoors, indoors?), having beers with friends, sitting at home virtually all the time, etc.

Saying that 12K people have gotten COVID-19 by "community spread" without giving better information as to what these people do that let them get COVID, without warning the rest of us what is effectively risky behavior seems close to malfeasance.  If they were eating purple jelly beans much more frequently than the other 1.9M people, would they tell us?  Or, is there absolutely nothing about these 12,000 people that they do or experience more than others?  I'd find that hard to believe (and, if there was nothing distinguishing, downright scary).

One who tends toward conspiracy theories could think that the counties are covering up what constitutes risky behavior.

For them NOT to know the characteristics of the 12K people that have gotten the disease seems like they aren't doing their job.  I find it easier to believe they aren't telling the public rather than they haven't attempted to detect what some distinguishing characteristics are.


One has to tread carefully.  Regarding Boston Card's quoted statistics, remember this is an association, not causal.  For instance, suppose it were true the people that go to gyms also eat out more often.  If you just look at who eats out, and decide that's related to getting COVID, you might miss that (in theory) it might be those that go to gyms are more strongly associated with getting COVID.     Eating out may be related to whether the adult household members all work outside the home (which increases their exposure), or maybe to whether there are children in the household.  It also is likely related to how concerned the household members about getting COVID-19.

But then, that L.A. sports writer that wrote about his COVID experience suggested that he got COVID from eating out, in his first (only) two times to eat out.

In the category of information obfuscation, I would add this:

How many patients, between the ages of 20-30, who had zero comorbidities died from Covid 19?
Same question for each decade of age.

It's incredible to me that they are not sharing this information because they clearly have it: they report how many people died and what age group the decedents fall into; they also relay how many of those dying were known to have at least one comorbidity; but for some reason, they refuse to connect the two data sets. It's ridiculous, really, and only adds to the mistrust of those providing the numbers.

I mean, I think it's mathematically possible that the number of those dying with zero comorbidities under the age of 50 is . . . 0.

P.S.  The "community spread" category I view as a catchall, as I don't think contact tracing is worth a damn in this county - so that's the easy/default category.