COVID - The Fallacy of Your Circle of Friends

Part of the recent conversations about Covid that prompted Thursday's post is that people tend to not to want to mask or maintain distance with people they know well.

So here's another simple analysis.

Let's assume I have a circle of 5 friends.... Me, Hubba, and 3 other people we know very well.

Since we're not actually a Cohort, our friends have their own small circle of trusted friends...

And so do theirs...

Eventually someone gets Covid (or the Flu, or some other infectious communicable disease).  Since we trust our friends implicitly, let's assume its one of their Friend's Friend's Friends, because we don't know that person.

And then this is how I would get sick.

You should be able to see how this can get complex quickly... especially if you work with other people in an office, retail store, or restaurant or have larger "Circles of Friends." 

I believe that most of us know this, but sometimes I think it's helpful to step thru the logic.

Also, most of us know that Government Mask Mandates are primarily about reducing the flow of patients thru the hospitals.

For the record.... my county and most of the Colorado Front Range has been in the High Risk Category, per the CDC, for the last few weeks.... AND while I work from home, my organization has re-mandated masking in the office and on our sites because there is untraceable community spread within the staff.

In my opinion, we should all be concerned about slowing the infection rate.

Slowing the infection rate slows the mutation rate of the virus... Conversly, the more the virus infects people, the more opportunity it has to evolve/mutate, and thereby migrating further away from the original variant, which therefore will make the vaccines the less effective.

Each variant of the virus presents a new opportunity for infection...  We personally know multiple people who have been infected multiple times.  

Hopefully this, again, illustrates why we continue to wear masks, maintain distance, and limit interactions... and why I think you should too.

This link takes you to a nice graphic and trend data reporting by the Mayo Clinic.

Stay Healthy my friends.