Lane County reports covid outbreaks in”college athletics and recreation”
By uomatters on 12/10/2020
I haven’t really been following the latest from Duck sports, so these may be old cases. Nothing on the UO covid page here, of course. Lane County Health link here.
So it appears that College Athletics and Recreation (whatever this entails), religious facilities, and UO Greek Life, are the three covid-safest on the list, comprising 8.4% of all cases. Sounds pretty good!
honest Uncle Bernie
12/11/2020
Another thing: 0.0% of cases are listed as from restaurants and bars, no? Yet these places, which account for a lot of jobs for people who really need money, are about shut down. Anybody explain? Is this just for show?
ScienceDuck
12/11/2020
The outbreaks account for 697 cases out of 5500 in the county. Many restaurants have closed temporarily because of covid-19 cases in their staff (for example, Tacovore yesterday), others do not close or communicate positive cases to the public. An outbreak is 2 or more cases from the same source…so two restaurant workers separately infected wouldn’t count as an outbreak.
I wonder if you think outbreaks would remain low if inside dining was allowed since you are questioning if the current restrictions are needed. Maybe the best data on that is that a study found that infected people were twice as likely to have reported eating out compared to a control group, even if they also reported normally wearing a mask.
It is unfortunate that the government can’t step up to mitigate the obvious damage from policies that are limiting the cases in Oregon, though.
honest Uncle Bernie
12/11/2020
The study you refer to proves nothing, in my book. As a clinical trial, it is as worthless as the studies “showing” HCQ effectiveness.
As to whether indoor dining in Oregon would be safe — I don’t know. I’d like to see some indication from the data that the county is providing. If the data they provide are misleading, let’s hear a more complete accounting. The shutdown is causing a lot of suffering, I’d like to be more assured that it’s worth it. (Personally, I am very very picky about eating indoors, rules or no rules.)
For sure, I think the shutdown a few weeks ago of outdoor dining and drinking was completely silly. And it had no discernible beneficial effect on the covid outbreak.
So too for that matter is the requirement to be masked outdoors on campus even when walking alone.
Mary
12/12/2020
We don’t about the amount of spread at happening at bars and restaurants because public health employees typically don’t have time to ask ask infected people during contact tracing calls.
In August, OPB reported that contact tracers rarely asked individuals if they went to at restaurants (“She says there’s a simple reason Oregon has little data on restaurant transmission: Overtaxed contact tracers and case investigators rarely have time to ask. ‘The actual case investigation interview is quite lengthy,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s already an hour, so we can’t ask every little thing that you and I think of or would like to know. We don’t ask if you were in a bar or restaurant.'”)
This month, Lane County changed its contact tracing process per OHA and individuals who test positive are now asked to notify the people they have been in contact with, so it’s even less likely public health has the time to ask about restaurants when they don’t have the capacity to reach out to all potentially exposed individuals. (“Investigators will only follow up on those case contacts who are in vulnerable populations. These include the elderly, those living in long-term care and people working in job settings with high risk of viral transmission. The county took up these new contact tracing recommendations from the Oregon Health Authority.” https://www.opb.org/article/2020/08/07/bar-restaurant-coronavirus-safe-oregon/
The big picture is that these dictatorial lock down policies simply do not control the spread of the virus. The effects of the virus are similar whether you close businesses and schools or not (and whether you wear masks or not). There is plenty of scientific evidence and analyses to support this. The virus comes and goes as it would normally. Illness from respiratory viruses usually increases in the Fall. That’s normal. As it is, overall death rates in Oregon are slightly below average for this time of year.
It is also now clear that massively testing asymptomatic people using the PCR test (typically used with more than 35 cycles of amplification) produces huge numbers of false positives, yet we are blasted every day by the media with the so-called “surge” in cases and public health policy is determined in part by case numbers.
The virus is real, but the lock down policies are not evidenced based and are destroying lives (literally killing people, destroying the economy, and taking away civil liberties). Maybe some of you are happy to give up your basic freedoms. I’m not!
So it appears that College Athletics and Recreation (whatever this entails), religious facilities, and UO Greek Life, are the three covid-safest on the list, comprising 8.4% of all cases. Sounds pretty good!
Another thing: 0.0% of cases are listed as from restaurants and bars, no? Yet these places, which account for a lot of jobs for people who really need money, are about shut down. Anybody explain? Is this just for show?
The outbreaks account for 697 cases out of 5500 in the county. Many restaurants have closed temporarily because of covid-19 cases in their staff (for example, Tacovore yesterday), others do not close or communicate positive cases to the public. An outbreak is 2 or more cases from the same source…so two restaurant workers separately infected wouldn’t count as an outbreak.
I wonder if you think outbreaks would remain low if inside dining was allowed since you are questioning if the current restrictions are needed. Maybe the best data on that is that a study found that infected people were twice as likely to have reported eating out compared to a control group, even if they also reported normally wearing a mask.
It is unfortunate that the government can’t step up to mitigate the obvious damage from policies that are limiting the cases in Oregon, though.
The study you refer to proves nothing, in my book. As a clinical trial, it is as worthless as the studies “showing” HCQ effectiveness.
As to whether indoor dining in Oregon would be safe — I don’t know. I’d like to see some indication from the data that the county is providing. If the data they provide are misleading, let’s hear a more complete accounting. The shutdown is causing a lot of suffering, I’d like to be more assured that it’s worth it. (Personally, I am very very picky about eating indoors, rules or no rules.)
For sure, I think the shutdown a few weeks ago of outdoor dining and drinking was completely silly. And it had no discernible beneficial effect on the covid outbreak.
So too for that matter is the requirement to be masked outdoors on campus even when walking alone.
We don’t about the amount of spread at happening at bars and restaurants because public health employees typically don’t have time to ask ask infected people during contact tracing calls.
In August, OPB reported that contact tracers rarely asked individuals if they went to at restaurants (“She says there’s a simple reason Oregon has little data on restaurant transmission: Overtaxed contact tracers and case investigators rarely have time to ask. ‘The actual case investigation interview is quite lengthy,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s already an hour, so we can’t ask every little thing that you and I think of or would like to know. We don’t ask if you were in a bar or restaurant.'”)
This month, Lane County changed its contact tracing process per OHA and individuals who test positive are now asked to notify the people they have been in contact with, so it’s even less likely public health has the time to ask about restaurants when they don’t have the capacity to reach out to all potentially exposed individuals. (“Investigators will only follow up on those case contacts who are in vulnerable populations. These include the elderly, those living in long-term care and people working in job settings with high risk of viral transmission. The county took up these new contact tracing recommendations from the Oregon Health Authority.” https://www.opb.org/article/2020/08/07/bar-restaurant-coronavirus-safe-oregon/
Link to the KLCC article about Lane County’s contact tracing procedure:
https://www.klcc.org/post/trace-yourself-lane-county-changes-covid-19-contact-tracing-procedure
An interesting conversation on today’s Think Out Loud from OPB (also heard on KLCC). https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/14/greek-system-tied-to-coronavirus-cases-in-lane-county/
The big picture is that these dictatorial lock down policies simply do not control the spread of the virus. The effects of the virus are similar whether you close businesses and schools or not (and whether you wear masks or not). There is plenty of scientific evidence and analyses to support this. The virus comes and goes as it would normally. Illness from respiratory viruses usually increases in the Fall. That’s normal. As it is, overall death rates in Oregon are slightly below average for this time of year.
It is also now clear that massively testing asymptomatic people using the PCR test (typically used with more than 35 cycles of amplification) produces huge numbers of false positives, yet we are blasted every day by the media with the so-called “surge” in cases and public health policy is determined in part by case numbers.
The virus is real, but the lock down policies are not evidenced based and are destroying lives (literally killing people, destroying the economy, and taking away civil liberties). Maybe some of you are happy to give up your basic freedoms. I’m not!
“Give me Liberty or give us all Covid!” attributed to Patrick Henry, patriot and saloon-keeper. Meanwhile can anyone figure out why it’s taking Oregon so long to vaccinate people? https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/12/oregon-receives-full-shipment-of-anticipated-35100-vaccine-doses-see-where-they-went.html