Tweet
Trump's new Covid advisor, who's job is to tell the boss things he wants to hear. And yes he did use his Fox News spots as an audition tape.
Worked for the Hoover Institute. In this day-and-age, it still amazes me that anyone would want to be associated with Herbert Hoover, after the fiasco of 1929-1932.
Atlas is trained in radiology (don't tell Boggs that MDs are "trained" he'll flip out at that word), which means he may or may not understand the math of epidemics.
He has been quoted as being a mask doubter. Probably that shoes the limits of his training. Here's the deal with masks, and why they matter:
In epidemics, "R0" is the name of the measurement: on average how many others does each sick person infect?
If R0 is > 1 then the outbreak is growing with time. If R0 is < 1, then the outbreak is shrinking. People only stay sick for a finite amount of time. And the R0 can change with conditions.
Now to masks: Picture a room that has on average 100 people in it, some staying, some coming and going. Like a grocery store. In one case, say nobody wears masks, get an infection rate. Now do the other case, where everyone has a mask on. Less virus in the air, more trapped in the masks, less virus to make people sick. Remember, dose matters. One virus particle by itself can't do it.
So compare the rates of infection, no masks, to masks. Say it's a 20% reduction with masks. 20%? What's the big deal about that? Not worth the hassle! But....apply that 20% to the R0. Now lots of things go into an R0, including whether bars are open, house parties, gyms, etc. But with those other measure in place, if one gets down to masks, a 20% reduction in R0 could be the difference between a R0 value of 1.1 (numbers going up) and 0.9 (numbers going down).
Hopefully not hard to understand, and maybe it goes to show that when you get close to a R0 of 1, then even a small change makes a difference.
And maybe Birx or Fauci can explain this to Atlas, eventually.
Comment