The CDC relied on data from an outbreak in Provincetown for its new mask mandate, but various analysts are pointing out it’s a mistake to draw new conclusions from it.
Here’s one thread:
Lots of confusion about what Provincetown outbreak & CDC guidance mean
Mainly: how to think about spread among the vaccinated
And as importantly, what we know and what we don’t
So a short thread
— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) July 31, 2021
And another:
The P-town study was not a study that should have been used as the basis for an abrupt change to national policy.
It had (at least) three major issues:
1. exposure misclassification
2. generalizability
3. weak proxies🧵
— Joseph Allen (@j_g_allen) July 31, 2021
This thread points out why Provincetown, with its gay partying, isn’t a good proxy for the rest of the country:
If the CDC has increased their Delta Ro because of the Ptown cohort, then they are overstating it for the general population. The cohort was 85% male (WaPo and NYT have both failed to mention this). Hello, it was Bear Week. @apoorva_nyc rightly mentions packed bars, etc., but /1 https://t.co/VGYHqPMqQ3
— Peter Staley (@peterstaley) July 30, 2021
A subsequent update thread:
A PARTIAL WALK-BACK🧵
After reading through lots of smart comments below my Ptown Bear Week🧵and hearing from a CDC friend, I’m glad I put an “If” at the beginning of it. They did not base Delta’s R0 on the Ptown cohort as reported in MMWR. /1https://t.co/aJFC6VPb4Y— Peter Staley (@peterstaley) July 31, 2021
And Andrew Sullivan also noted it’s a mistake to extrapolate from Provincetown.