09-30-2020, 10:44 PM
Yes, outdoor exposure is less risky than indoor, forgot to include that. Sorry.
There is for sure individual variation. But if you look at things at the level of an overall population, be it Waterloo Region, Ontario or Canada, you can take action on any one of the three factors I mentioned, you can't alter the individuals but the three factors will reduce the spread overall with the population mix.
One point the Economist article made (don't know whether you had a chance to read it) is that the second wave looks very bad but it's not actually as bad as the first wave. That's because we are using the confirmed cases as our metric, and the increased testing will increase the number of confirmed cases. As a corollary to that, it will reduce the mortality rate as we will detect more of the existing cases but the number of deaths will not vary. So, that is yet another factor in why the mortality rate is lower now.
There is for sure individual variation. But if you look at things at the level of an overall population, be it Waterloo Region, Ontario or Canada, you can take action on any one of the three factors I mentioned, you can't alter the individuals but the three factors will reduce the spread overall with the population mix.
One point the Economist article made (don't know whether you had a chance to read it) is that the second wave looks very bad but it's not actually as bad as the first wave. That's because we are using the confirmed cases as our metric, and the increased testing will increase the number of confirmed cases. As a corollary to that, it will reduce the mortality rate as we will detect more of the existing cases but the number of deaths will not vary. So, that is yet another factor in why the mortality rate is lower now.