From the L.A. Times:
First Californian to get coronavirus in community spread was infected at a nail salon, Newsom says
By PHIL WILLON STAFF WRITER
MAY 7, 20205:12 PMSACRAMENTO — The first person in California to contract the coronavirus through community spread caught the virus in a nail salon, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
Newsom cited the case when asked why personal services, such as nail salons, must remain closed even as the state starts to slowly open businesses.
“This whole thing started in the state of California, the first community spread, in a nail salon. I just want to remind everybody of that and that I’m very worried about that,” Newsom said during his daily COVID-19 briefing in Sacramento.
Newsom said the transmission of the virus occurred despite the fact that most nail salons already had safeguards in place before the coronavirus hit, including the use of face masks and gloves.
He did not provide further details, including when the exposure occurred and where.
In other words, the governor is presumably violating some rule about privacy of tracing results.
My feeling is, however, that researchers should be allowed to get their hands on track-and-trace files because they ought to be highly useful at informing the public about which places are more and which are less risky. Don’t just rely on the first case, look at one thousand (or more) cases. Publish the results.
For example, here is an NYT piece with some fun graphics:
Is It Safer to Visit a Coffee Shop or a Gym?
By Katherine Baicker, Oeindrila Dube, Sendhil Mullainathan, Devin Pope and Gus Wezerek
MAY 6, 2020
Using anonymized cellphone location data from April 2019, we can measure how crowded businesses get. Each bubble on the chart represents a business. Larger bubbles have more locations and customers. https://t.co/ApQ5Oulv7P pic.twitter.com/vb8CZVXpJS
Unfortunately, they just don’t know. They are making up theories like places where you touch stuff a lot are more dangerous than places where you don’t. But what if the virus is spread more by breathing or talking or laughing or breathing hard or singing? What about places where you can’t wear a mask? You can wear a mask at a gym but it’s hard to wear a mask at a coffee shop.
Let’s get some data.
Knowledge is good.
