The recent case of 45/60 choir members contracting coronavirus after actively practicing social distancing contradicts this unusually confident assertion that it's hard to contract the disease.
That seems consistent with GP's claim. I'd classify 2.5 hours of choir practice in the same risk category as a ski party, considering that the choir members are standing next to each other, constantly ejecting virus particles, and taking deep breaths.
There's not some magic involved where the virus gives up after exactly 6 feet.
6 feet was chosen as a matter of policy because it was the most you could reasonably get people to stay apart. Sidewalks, store aisles, elevators, etc, are all about 6 feet wide and so it's a good number to convince people to cross the street or wait for the aisle to clear. 100 ft would be a much safer number but that's just not really physically reasonable (and so the guidance would have been dismissed by the public).
And crucially, the context of the shared space makes a large difference. You simply cannot compare 6ft. outdoors with lots of ventilation vs. indoors and forced air vs. indoors and no ventilation.
The choir practice should not be an example of how easy it is to spread; rather, it should be an example of the unreasonable intuitions people have about 'distance'.
Remaining in close contact, indoors, while singing, for a long period of time is not a good idea. It is quite reasonable to expect that to lead to transmission.
Similarly, two people passing by each other on a sidewalk, with nose breathing and mouths closed, even if it's closer than 6 ft., is a very small risk. Still good to maximize space, but nothing to get worked up about.
Singing is also likely to expel more droplets further.
I don't have a source, but a microbiologist I know was saying that safe distances, based on droplet physics, depend on activity, e.g. standing in a single file line vs walking vs hiking vs running.
Where did the article (https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/corona...) say they maintained a 6 foot distance? If anything it suggests they were closer (foot between chairs, people weren't spread throughout the room but close to front).
Regardless, doesn't matter. Singing/shouting/chanting with a high density of people inside a closed setting is dangerous for any repository disease as viral concentration just keeps building up. Same thing happened with Shincheonji on a far larger scale.
"Members of the choir were already aware of the COVID-19 outbreak in their state, particularly around the Seattle area, which is about an hour south of Skagit County by car. Hand sanitizer was dispensed at the door of the practice that night in March, no one shared sheet music, and people were conscious not to stand too close to one another or engage in their huggy greetings. Also, no one remembers anyone coughing or sneezing, and no one present felt ill at the time. Nonetheless, a huge percentage of people present later tested positive for the virus."
My point is that the original article said that it's hard to get infected. Assuming that everyone was asymptomatic, and there was no coughing or sneezing, and everyone stayed away from each other, it's actually not that hard to spread the infection. In fact, if there was a single person who was asymptomatic and they infected 45 people, that means it's very easy to get infected.
From the LA Times article: "At one point the members broke into two groups, each standing around separate pianos to sing.". If you've ever watched a choir practice, this likely meant everyone facing inward toward the piano, and you can't stand too far apart because you need to hear everyone else to harmonize and adjust your volume. Singing loudly is probably only second to sneezing in terms of projecting atomized 'stuff' from the respiratory tract into the air. So there were 30 people standing in a circle spraying droplets directly at each other.
It may very well be that it's very easy to spread this virus, but I don't think this incident is a good indication of that. It seems more an indication of how poorly even well-intentioned people understood the contagiousness and what exactly social distancing meant at the time this happened (1 month ago).
I suspect that the risk increases the longer you're in an enclosed space with someone shedding the virus. Thought experiment, if spending two hours in the church with people singing meant 50% got infected. Then spending 5 minutes assuming it's linear (and it likely isn't), is only a 2% chance.
Brings up the difference between public health risk and personal risk. Public health perspective you want contacts to be infrequent and importantly short.
I'm not sure how to interpret hard vs. easy in this context. The measures they took to protect people (not touching) has no effect on the real risk (shouting/singing in a crowded room), which again should have already been known at this point in time to be a major risk factor (Shincheonji).
That is this evidence doesn't contradict Streeck arguing that formate transmission is unlikely and that it is long term exposure to breathing people that is the real risk. (Or that being in a relatively empty grocery store provides little risk)
(I don't have a clue one way or the other, just commenting on applicability of evidence)
Walking 6 feet past someone has a low risk of transmitting the virus to them.
Standing 6 feet away from someone for an hour... Is another story.
Also worth noting: My wife has worked with a lot of community choral groups. She is convinced that they took all reasonable precautions, but doubts that their rehearsal space was sufficient to accommodate everyone standing 6 feet apart from eachother for the entire exercise... Or even for any part of it.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out what this means for the typical tech firm's open office layout.
They mention “certain distance” which I suspect is 3-4 feet at best but frankly even 6 feet probably isn’t enough for people singing loudly in a confined environment for a long period of time.
But it's not the same as a ski party, where people are mingling together. My entire point is that the original article downplayed how contagious it is, but even following social distancing guidelines, there was an enormously high infection rate.
Getting into a large room with a bunch of people and singing isn't in my mind following social distancing guidelines, even if you're not as huggy as usual.
Also this is self report of behavior after people did what was in retrospect a very stupid and risky activity.
When you’re singing loudly, full-throated, with deep breathing... that seems like an ideal scenario for a respiratory illness that might not mean much for the general population.
