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Comment by gmuslera | Hacker News Reader

A lot of what makes a person a superspreader is not biology but behavior. They happen to be in a place with a lot of other people, they didn't maintained distance, didn't used facemasks, and probably neither the people that got infected did.

The point is that superspreader have the same behavior elements of most of the other people on those places, and each of them potentially will go to more big meetings and parties taking few if any measures to avoid keep infeting. You are dealing with clusters of superspreaders, not individuals, that may infect "normal" people as well as not all their contacts with other people will be in big parties.

Good policies to prevent the spreading of the disease should take those clusters and cultures into account.

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[citation desperately needed]. Environment matters, but if every infectee in such an environment triggered a superspreading event, R would be much, much higher. There's clearly some significant other reason infectivity is overdistributed.

If that's the case, we'd see some sort of pattern. Instead, there are specific events where, for some reason, one individual seems to infect 10s or more. Then those that are infected don't really seem to spread it as much despite being in the same environment. It'll be interesting to see how the research on this plays out over time.

Right. There aren’t really “superspreaders” as much as “superspreading events”.

It takes a combination of 1) high viral presentation, 2) breath activity that generates lots of droplets, such as singing, public speaking, shouting, exercise, cough or sneeze, and 3) a location where lots of unprotected people will breath the same air for a significant period of time.

Preventing the 1st is difficult, we don’t know who is infectious. The 2nd is where masks as source prevention are critical. The 3rd is where social distance and 3C interventions help.

> 'There aren’t really “superspreaders” as much as “superspreading events”.'

the fundamental attribution error strikes again.

also, you only need masks when you can't effectively distance (i.e., at potential superspreader events, like inside a bar, at a party, etc.).

socialize this one key modification to the rules, and you'd get more compliance and less pushback, with at least the same reduced transmission rate.

you don't need to lock down anything, just distance, and when you can't, mask. self-quarantine when sick. easy, and anxiety-free to boot.

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