The Coronavirus

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-25-2020, 05:53 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Have you seen a lot of people not taking the precautions seriously where you are, and where is that?  In my area, Cambridge/Somerville, people seemed to be very serious about observing the precautions, at least up until masks were required.  There are maybe 10% scofflaws regarding masks, either not wearing them at all, or wearing them around the neck only, or over the mouth but not the nose.  But it's early to see results from the May 6 mask requirement yet.

Mostly I am staying in isolation. Most of the reporting I've heard comes from the Plymouth local group on Facebook. They are reporting a number of people who are not so serious about the isolation, leaving gaping holes, especially with letting kids socialize. If they are correct, that helps account for why you are seeing a lesser change in R. You give a number of other possible reasons for it.

Regardless, Trump's happy talk don't take it seriously propaganda does seem to be knocking a hole in the hot zone governor's alliance attempt at isolation. We seem to have knocked R down below one, but without cooperation among everybody we won't be able to open up the economy again without bringing R above one.

Notably, nursing home, meat packing plants and prisons are not the only places where a dense packing of people occurs. Opening up will mean restarting all sorts of problematic businesses. Without tests to pick up the local outbreaks, the outbreaks will tend do spread. We'll have to see the net balance.