Interesting reading about the concern a lot of people have about the Christmas break.
There are some interesting models around – so I ran one. A typical Christmas day with 8 people that manage to avoid touching, just sitting together in a decent sized room. Without windows open then if one person is infected there was an estimate of 3.5 people getting infected from them. With windows open that dropped to under 1.
But that is without people touching (including handing out plates etc). So the bottom line is – if somebody is infected at a Christmas get together then somebody else will get infected as a result.
So people are worried about a Christmas blip in infections.
But there is one thing that will be really interesting to see. SAGE estimated that education added 0.3 to the R value. And education is taking a break over Christmas.
So maybe, just maybe, we will not see that blip at Christmas. But just think about what that would mean – it could confirm we could get rid of lockdowns and tiers if we paused education for a few months.
Of course the other side of the coin is that people missing education makes it hard for people to go back to work. Of course that would never be the reason education is such a priority….