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Comment by usaar333 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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https://sfist.com/2020/03/30/super-spreading-event-in-washin...

"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.

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)

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.

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