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Tag: super-spreader

Super-spreading, mobility and crowding

Super-spreading, mobility and crowding

I still see quite a few journalists in India refer to “super-spreaders” vis-à-vis the novel coronavirus – implying that some individuals might be to blame for ‘seeding’ lots of new infections in the community – instead of accommodating the fact that simply breathing out a lot of viruses doesn’t suffice to infect tens or hundreds of others: you also need the social conditions that will enable all these viral particles to easily find human hosts. In fact, going a step…

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Super-spreads exist, but do super-spreaders?

Super-spreads exist, but do super-spreaders?

What does the term ‘super-spreader’ mean? According to an article in the MIT Tech Review on June 15, “The word is a generic term for an unusually contagious individual who’s been infected with disease. In the context of the coronavirus, scientists haven’t narrowed down how many infections someone needs to cause to qualify as a superspreader, but generally speaking it far exceeds the two to three individuals researchers initially estimated the average infected patient could infect.” The label of ‘super-spreader’ seems to…

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