Inviting Covid for Dinner
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2020
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you go to a gathering of 25 or more people, what are the chances one of you has coronavirus?
Imagine that you’re planning to hold some sort of gathering or dinner at your home. Take your pick of big festivities - it’s Thanksgiving in the US, we’ve just had Diwali and Christmas is on the horizon. In some places such a gathering is simply illegal anyway. But if it IS legal, is it wise?
Professor Joshua Weitz and his team at Georgia Tech in the US have created a tool which allows people in the US and some European countries to select the county they live in, and the size of gathering they are intending on having, and then it calculates the chances that someone at that party, has Covid 19.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less the show that explores the numbers in the news and in |
| 0:05.1 | life. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm Tim Haafard. |
| 0:07.8 | This week we take a look at yet another dubious tweet from President Donald Trump. |
| 0:13.7 | Twitter has labeled it disputed. |
| 0:16.0 | We think it's just plain wrong. |
| 0:17.6 | But first, in many parts of the world you can visit a website and find out how many COVID-19 |
| 0:23.8 | cases there are in your local area. |
| 0:26.4 | But what do those numbers really mean on a practical basis? |
| 0:30.0 | How do they translate into a risk that you'll meet someone who's infected? |
| 0:34.0 | I don't know. |
| 0:35.6 | Or at least I didn't. |
| 0:37.4 | Until I came across a simple online tool to help. |
| 0:42.9 | Imagine that you're planning to hold some sort of gathering or dinner at your home. |
| 0:49.8 | Take your pick of big festivities, it's Thanksgiving in the US, we've just had Devali, |
| 0:54.9 | and Christmas is on the horizon. |
| 0:56.7 | In some places such a gathering is simply illegal, but if it is legal, is it wise? |
| 1:06.1 | Professor Joshua Whites and his team at Georgia Tech in the US have created a tool which |
| 1:11.1 | allows people in the US and some European countries to select the county they live in |
| 1:16.6 | and the size of the gathering they're intending on having and then calculate the chance that |
| 1:21.2 | someone at that party has COVID-19. |
| 1:25.1 | I spoke to him and started by asking him why he created this tool. |
... |
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