03-Dec-2020 MA Reported Clusters and What they Tell us About Gov Baker

The Baker administration continues to insist that the driving factor in cases is people holding social gatherings irresponsibly... Let's take another look at this idea.

(order of settings by cluster and by case-count can be found after my review)

From the cluster information the state provided, we see that Child Care is by far the greater spreader of COVID-19... BY FAR.  Seriously, there are nearly twice as many clusters within Childcare (156) as the next highest (Restaurants & Food Courts at 79) and 1.38 times as many cases (295) as the second highest case count (Hospitals at 213) and more than twice as many as from where Gov Baker is highly focused (Social Gatherings at 140).

This 100% contradicts the concept that kids don't spread COVID-19 as much as adults do... but it also doesn't matter because there is absolutely no way we're going to do anything to make child care more difficult / expensive to obtain because that would impact our ability to have workers doing other essential things like work in other high-spread settings.

Hospitals are the next up in terms of spread though they have less than half the number of clusters as most in the second tier of cluster-count settings.  They have 213 cases though, which puts them well above those in the next tier that have 127-169 cases each. Obviously, hospitals are already doing what they can to control the spread within their walls as best they can and there's not much we can do here.

What comes after Child Care and Hospitals then?

Well, there's the entire third tier of cases, Industrial Settings, Restaurants & Food Courts, Social Gatherings, K-12 Schools, and Colleges & Universities.  The third tier encompasses all the 100-200 case-count settings.  They also align with the second tier of settings by cluster count and the top of the third tier.  So, if Social Gatherings are the top concern after Child Care and Hospitals, clearly they're going to have way above the others in cases and clusters, right?  Well, in a word, "no".  In two words, "really, no".  Restaurants & Food Courts have more clusters than Social Gatherings and the same number of cases, but we still want those to be open for in-person dining, right?  Industrial Settings have more cases but fewer clusters (meaning more cases per cluster), but, well, you know, business likes industry.  K-12 Schools, which the state continues the hard press to get to be in-person, even with their current mix of some going fully remote and some in a hybrid model, comes in with more clusters and almost as many cases as Social Gatherings... imagine if they were all fully in-person as Baker wishes.

So, essentially, Social Gatherings is not the super-spreader the Baker Administration would have us believe and the administration is pushing hard for us to engage more with settings with the same spreading going on, if not more.  With that understood, why is Gov Baker behaving this way?  A few reasons come to mind.  Social Gatherings is a scape goat that he won't be blamed for.  Reducing Social Gatherings also doesn't impact the economy and doesn't require any governmental support.  K-12 Schools (or some other form of child care), on the other hand, is required for businesses to run the way it wants to (no, political pressure is not the reason seeing as he's been one of the those that are building up that political pressure).  I wonder why the Governor of Massachusetts would cater to businesses over the health and well being of its citizens.... oh, right, Baker is the kind of Republican who believes in business and lack of government support being the most important things.  

Below are the clusters and cases from the report on 03-Dec-2020, not including place-of-residence associated clusters (tier determination is my own based on settings that are relatively near each other in counts):

In terms of clusters:

1. Top Tier, only one setting: Child Care (156 clusters)
2. Second Tier
1. Restaurants & Food Courts (79 clusters)
2. K-12 Schools (69 clusters)
3. Industrial Settings (67 clusters)
4. Social Gatherings (62 clusters)
3. Third Tier
1. Colleges & Universities (43 clusters)
2. Organized Athletics / Camps (42 clusters)
3. Hospitals (32 clusters)
4. Other Healthcare (29 clusters)
5. Retail & Services (28 clusters)
6. Other Workplaces (27 clusters)
4. Fourth Tier
1. Places of Worship (16 clusters)
2. Offices (15 clusters)
3. Other (11 clusters)
4. Other Food Establishments (7 clusters)
5. Recreation/Cultural (5 clusters)

In terms of confirmed cases:

1. Top Tier, only one setting: Child Care (295 cases)
2. Second Tier, only one setting: Hospitals (213 cases)
3. Third Tier:
1. Industrial Settings (169 cases)
2. Restaurants & Food Courts (140 cases)
3. Social Gatherings (140 cases)
4. K-12 Schools (133 cases)
5. Colleges & Universities (127 cases)
4. Fourth Tier:
1. Other Workplaces (94 cases)
2. Other Healthcare (88 cases)
5. Fifth Tier:
1. Places of Worship (40 cases)
2. Other (37 cases)
3. Offices (35 cases)
4. Organized Athletics/Camps (34 cases)
5. Recreation/Cultural (21 cases)
6. Sixth Tier:
1. Other Food Establishments (8 cases)