Did the superspreading event which sickened many Republican politicians occur at the outdoor reception, or at some indoor events?
I have little to add to these three tweets by Helen Jenkins, a professor of epidemiology at Boston University:
A narrative is emerging that this was an outdoor superspreading event. The truth is we do not know. There were also indoor events that day.
A careful analysis of this cluster is critical to our understanding of covid. If this is a documented outdoor superspreader event, we need to know so we can ensure protective measures outdoors always.
If transmission was only indoors, this is encouraging for what we can safely do outside. But we need the data and for it to be carefully analysed and published, transparently!
We’ve found over that past few months that large outdoor gatherings of people wearing masks are not a major source of infection spread, but that people gathering indoors without masks is perhaps the most significant way for COVID to be transmitted. Many of the people infected spent time at indoor events as well, unmasked.
Personally, I am not all that interested in what happened in that particular event. I am however interested in everyone having a clear idea of what is more and what is less risky, and I hope that public understanding of these issues isn’t muddled by inaccurate information.