[Genuine Realist]

While this is an issue, at least in  San Mateo County a much larger issue is that often there are many other people in the household. It is impossible to isolate in that condition, even if you have sick pay. Further, the population doesn't trust the County (or government in general) enough to accept other accommodation if offered. Naturally the other people in the household are contacts and should quarantine. They also can not/do not, for the same reasons. This has been an ongoing problem all along.

I think what you say makes a lot of sense for a deterministic spread pattern.  However, I'm starting to wonder if families get it (aside from impact on elderly or susceptible members) how much this impacts the overall spread.  If super-spreader events are much more significant, the biggest risk is an actively infectious person winds up in a location that's very bad -- poor ventilation, crowded, long duration, etc -- perhaps as a service worker.  The worst scenario is someone who is working in nursing facilities or places like that.  Kids aren't going to concerts and I would think they hang out in small groups of friends.  Elderly aren't the active spreaders.

It is beyond question that an infected person who has lots of contact with the public over a long period of time can spread the disease widely. However, at least in SMC the home setting for many infected people is poor poor ventilation, crowded, and long duration. The other people in the household often do get it under those circumstances, and many of them are the service workers you reference. Dr. Morrow is attributing 50% of the SMC county cases to this type of spread. How good a number that is I can't say, but if it is even close it is a big driver. Not "super spreader" in the sense that in a 10 person household maybe not all 10 get it, but if even 5 do, Reff is 5. That is really hard to overcome, and contact tracing won't help if people won't/can't cooperate.

It is a good article, but I could do without the reflexive US bashing. The notion that liberal sick leave policies had anything to do with this belies most of what we have been reading these past six months. So far from some Upton Sinclair notion that diseased workers were forced to stay on the assembly line while they spread contagion, my recollection was that whole businesses shut down if so much as a single worker tested positive. So I would look to the cause for discrepancies elsewhere than better unemployment insurance.

What Swedish policy, taken at its best, did do was go straight to the dynamics of social distancing that the US reached far more belatedly. What Swedish policy, taken at its worst, didn't do was make sufficient allowance for the truly vulnerable. Obviously, those two objectives are not irreconcilable. I think we are heading towards some balanced policy at this time, e.g., in distinguishing the reopening of schools for a portion of the population that badly needs the schooling and is relatively invulnerable to the worst consequences.

My own thought is that the drastic lockdown has actually impeded the march towards the best (i.e., best balanced) policy. It bred a cynicism in a fundamentally anti-authoritarian society that lingers on with regard to much more sane and sensible policy. The dreadful leadership of Trump (since early March) contributes to this, but Trump's personality is not the only factor. 

Finally, the national obsession with race once again rears its ugly head in terms of distorting the inquiry. Class and labor categories matter a lot more here. I would dearly love to know what type of laborers kept our distribution systems going and what price they paid. It sure as hell wasn't computer programmers and lawyers. Joe Biden may pay tribute to the Black women who restocked the shelves, but around here they are union workers, largely Caucasian and Hispanic But race doesn't matter, or at least is distant second. I'd like to see infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths broken down by labor and work category. I don't know if anyone has done or is doing this.

And I wonder who did this work in Sweden? And how that has worked out?

[Genuine Realist]

While this is an issue, at least in  San Mateo County a much larger issue is that often there are many other people in the household. It is impossible to isolate in that condition, even if you have sick pay. Further, the population doesn't trust the County (or government in general) enough to accept other accommodation if offered. Naturally the other people in the household are contacts and should quarantine. They also can not/do not, for the same reasons. This has been an ongoing problem all along.

I think what you say makes a lot of sense for a deterministic spread pattern.  However, I'm starting to wonder if families get it (aside from impact on elderly or susceptible members) how much this impacts the overall spread.  If super-spreader events are much more significant, the biggest risk is an actively infectious person winds up in a location that's very bad -- poor ventilation, crowded, long duration, etc -- perhaps as a service worker.  The worst scenario is someone who is working in nursing facilities or places like that.  Kids aren't going to concerts and I would think they hang out in small groups of friends.  Elderly aren't the active spreaders.

It is beyond question that an infected person who has lots of contact with the public over a long period of time can spread the disease widely. However, at least in SMC the home setting for many infected people is poor poor ventilation, crowded, and long duration. The other people in the household often do get it under those circumstances, and many of them are the service workers you reference. Dr. Morrow is attributing 50% of the SMC county cases to this type of spread. How good a number that is I can't say, but if it is even close it is a big driver. Not "super spreader" in the sense that in a 10 person household maybe not all 10 get it, but if even 5 do, Reff is 5. That is really hard to overcome, and contact tracing won't help if people won't/can't cooperate.

It is a good article, but I could do without the reflexive US bashing. The notion that liberal sick leave policies had anything to do with this belies most of what we have been reading these past six months. So far from some Upton Sinclair notion that diseased workers were forced to stay on the assembly line while they spread contagion, my recollection was that whole businesses shut down if so much as a single worker tested positive. So I would look to the cause for discrepancies elsewhere than better unemployment insurance.

What Swedish policy, taken at its best, did do was go straight to the dynamics of social distancing that the US reached far more belatedly. What Swedish policy, taken at its worst, didn't do was make sufficient allowance for the truly vulnerable. Obviously, those two objectives are not irreconcilable. I think we are heading towards some balanced policy at this time, e.g., in distinguishing the reopening of schools for a portion of the population that badly needs the schooling and is relatively invulnerable to the worst consequences.

My own thought is that the drastic lockdown has actually impeded the march towards the best (i.e., best balanced) policy. It bred a cynicism in a fundamentally anti-authoritarian society that lingers on with regard to much more sane and sensible policy. The dreadful leadership of Trump (since early March) contributes to this, but Trump's personality is not the only factor. 

Finally, the national obsession with race once again rears its ugly head in terms of distorting the inquiry. Class and labor categories matter a lot more here. I would dearly love to know what type of laborers kept our distribution systems going and what price they paid. It sure as hell wasn't computer programmers and lawyers. Joe Biden may pay tribute to the Black women who restocked the shelves, but around here they are union workers, largely Caucasian and Hispanic But race doesn't matter, or at least is distant second. I'd like to see infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths broken down by labor and work category. I don't know if anyone has done or is doing this.

And I wonder who did this work in Sweden? And how that has worked out?