Should poly people consider stopping intimate contact (hugs+) at some point? The network structure of polyamorous relationships might make people particularly vulnerable.
Household transmission In China, human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus is largely occurring in families. The Joint Mission received detailed information from the investigation of clusters and some household transmission studies, which are ongoing in a number of Provinces. Among 344 clusters involving 1308 cases (out of a total 1836 cases reported) in Guangdong Province and Sichuan Province, most clusters (78%-85%) have occurred in families. Household transmission studies are currently underway, but preliminary studies ongoing in Guangdong estimate the secondary attack rate in households ranges from 3-10%.
From the WHO report on China, most infection clusters they found were family clusters. This may be applicable to your thinking on this.
Something is weird about that 3-10% secondary attack rate number. The study isn’t published yet, so I don’t know what exactly they’re measuring, but I’m pretty confident that people who share a household and hug each other will transmit at much greater than 10% probability.
This is a fairly late update, but closing the loop on this: I believe the 3-10% number ended up being the secondary attack rate among households where the infected person was isolated after diagnosis. So that’s an estimate of the rate of transmission during extended close contact before symptoms/diagnosis, not after, which makes more sense. I assume that extended close contact with a symptomatic infected person will result in very likely transmission.
Keep in mind that there may be substantial variation in the amount of viral shedding for infected people (there are superspreaders, presumably there are also subspreaders), as well as in the susceptibility of people to the virus (presumably there is some cross-immunity for people who have had a coronavirus-type common cold recently, for example.) So the transmission rate among household members can’t necessarily be estimated from the per-contact rate assuming each contact is an independent chance of transmission.
Should poly people consider stopping intimate contact (hugs+) at some point? The network structure of polyamorous relationships might make people particularly vulnerable.
Having all partners isolate together is maybe another option for small polecules who all get along well.
From the WHO report on China, most infection clusters they found were family clusters. This may be applicable to your thinking on this.
Something is weird about that 3-10% secondary attack rate number. The study isn’t published yet, so I don’t know what exactly they’re measuring, but I’m pretty confident that people who share a household and hug each other will transmit at much greater than 10% probability.
This is a fairly late update, but closing the loop on this: I believe the 3-10% number ended up being the secondary attack rate among households where the infected person was isolated after diagnosis. So that’s an estimate of the rate of transmission during extended close contact before symptoms/diagnosis, not after, which makes more sense. I assume that extended close contact with a symptomatic infected person will result in very likely transmission.
Keep in mind that there may be substantial variation in the amount of viral shedding for infected people (there are superspreaders, presumably there are also subspreaders), as well as in the susceptibility of people to the virus (presumably there is some cross-immunity for people who have had a coronavirus-type common cold recently, for example.) So the transmission rate among household members can’t necessarily be estimated from the per-contact rate assuming each contact is an independent chance of transmission.