Now, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0of all outlets is calling out the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for a bullshit claim that “less than 10 percent” of COVID-19 transmission happens outdoors.<\/p>\n In reality, it’s more like 1% or less, and the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0nails them on it.<\/strong><\/p>\n “…the number is almost certainly misleading<\/strong>,” writes David Leonhardt. “Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that\u00a0sharks<\/a>\u00a0attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It\u2019s both true and deceiving.”<\/p>\n It appears to be based partly on a misclassification of some Covid transmission that actually took place in enclosed spaces (as I explain below).\u00a0An even bigger issue is the extreme caution of C.D.C. officials, who picked a benchmark \u2014 10 percent \u2014 so high that nobody could reasonably dispute it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n That benchmark \u201cseems to be a huge exaggeration,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation. -NYT<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The CDC is then called out for continuing to treat outdoor transmission as a major risk – saying unvaccinated people should wear masks in most outdoor settings, while those who have gotten the jab should still wear them at “large public venues.” Summer camps, meanwhile, should require children to wear them “at all times” according to the agency.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>continues:<\/p>\n “These recommendations would be more grounded in science if anywhere close to 10 percent of Covid transmission were occurring outdoors. But it is not.\u00a0There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world\u00a0from casual outdoor interactions<\/a>, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.<\/strong><\/u><\/em>”<\/p>\n Next, the CDC’s foundation for the 10% claim on outdoor spread is torn asunder – with the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0noting that the academic research cited relies almost exclusively on\u00a0construction sites in Singapore<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In\u00a0one study<\/a>, 95 of 10,926 worldwide instances of transmission are classified as outdoors;\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a095 are from Singapore construction sites.\u00a0In another study<\/a>, four of 103 instances are classified as outdoors; again, all four are from Singapore construction sites.<\/em><\/p>\n This obviously doesn\u2019t make much sense.\u00a0It instead appears to be a misunderstanding that resembles the childhood game of telephone, in which a message gets garbled as it passes from one person to the next.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The Singapore data originally comes from a government database there. That database does not categorize the construction-site cases as outdoor transmission, Yap Wei Qiang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told\u00a0my colleague Shashank Bengali<\/a>. \u201cWe didn\u2019t classify it according to outdoors or indoors,\u201d Yap said. \u201cIt could have been workplace transmission where it happens outdoors at the site, or it could also have happened indoors within the construction site.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As Shashank did further reporting, he discovered\u00a0reasons to think that many of the infections may have occurred indoors<\/strong>. At some of the individual construction sites where Covid spread \u2014 like\u00a0a complex for the financial firm UBS<\/a>\u00a0and a skyscraper project called Project Glory \u2014 the concrete shells for the buildings were largely completed before the pandemic began. (This video<\/a>\u00a0of Project Glory was shot more than four months before Singapore\u2019s first reported Covid case.)<\/em><\/p>\n Because Singapore is hot year-round, the workers would have sought out the shade of enclosed spaces to hold meetings and eat lunch together, Alex Au of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group, told Shashank. Electricians and plumbers would have worked in particularly close contact. -NYT<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Responding to the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0over their 10% figure, the CDC\u00a0<\/strong>admitted that there are “limited data on outdoor transmission<\/strong>,’ adding that “The data we do have supports the hypothesis that the risk of outdoor transmission is low,” and that “10 percent is a conservative estimate from a recent systematic review of peer-reviewed papers.”<\/p>\n This type of answer erring on the side of extreme caution has\u00a0only added to widespread confusion<\/strong>\u00a0– causing some Americans to ignore other CDC guidance.<\/p>\n Still, the no-mask crowd won’t like the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0conclusion, which is that “scientific evidence points to a conclusion that is much simpler than the C.D.C.\u2019s message:\u00a0Masks make a huge difference indoors and rarely matter outdoors.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/mask%20on%20beach.jpg?itok=upguX6Op\")
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