Thanks. One of the NH poker rooms has a sign that recommends staying on the premises for 90 minutes or less, but most everyone seems to ignore this recommendation.

Obviously not, but it decreases the risk.

Same as wearing a hard hat on a construction site decreases the risk of getting injured by stuff falling down. Still doesn’t ensure you of not getting killed because the hard hat won’t help if you’re getting hit by a piano dropping from 50 feet.

Good point(s). Being a (degenerate) gambler, I guess that the question(s) I want to ask are:

1. At a 6 max game where everyone where’s a mask, and I avoid touching my face what are the chances, of my becoming infected with the coronavirus.

2. Does it make a significant difference if I play for 1.5 hours max.

3. Assuming, I am in my 70’s how does that effect my risk.

I am not playing b/c I need the money or am killing the game but playing b/c I love the action.

100 to 1, 1000 to 1? Less?

What odds are an acceptable risk. I personally want 1000 to 1 on my money (life).

Let's do some approximations. In the us, .7% of the population has a verified active infection. To comepnsate for asymptomatic carriers, but then compensate for people being screened to self screening, let's just assume that that 1% of all people in a casino might be carriers

At a 6 max table, lets say you play for 6 hours, you will be exposed to 6 players and 18 dealers. Assuming that the players change at least once over a 6 hour session, you are likely exposed to about 30 people for >15 minutes. The chance of being exposed to at least one carrier is around 25% (I am not counting people you encounter very briefly)

Based on a basic reproduction number of 2.5, and making an assumption that this is based on approximately 20 exposures a day, I estimated that each exposure, with no protection, has around a 12% of infecting

I have read that a mask reduces the chance of spreading by 80%, and the chance of catching by 20%. So a single exposure from 2 masked individuals would have a 1.9% chance of spreading the infection.

The CFR varies dfrom country to country, but it looks like it would be around 10% for someone in their 70's.

Putting this all together, you have 25% chance of exposure, a 2% chance of catching, and a case fatality rate of 10%. So, if you played a six hour session, your extremely approximate risk of dying from COVID-19 is in the neighborhood of .05%, or 1 in 2,000

Doesn't seem worth it to me.

that's some funky math.
doesn't this have to be regionally adjusted?
the risk and rate of infection is far less in NH where rooms are open for us NE players versus playing in covid hotbeds

Calling that math funky is a vast understatement. It is merely meant to give maybe an order of magnitude estimation. Most of the numbers I used have large margins of error (Specifically, calculating the number of infected carriers in the casino population, and calculating the likelihood of catching from a single exposure by reverse engineering R-nought are pretty, ummmm, approximate)

NH does have one of the lowest per capita positives rates, but do we know if people at that casino are only locals?

Very interesting...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...0007B3D8200091

I appreciate the time and effort you put into your analysis (even if I wasn’t able to fully follow it). Getting down to a real life episode: My game plan today was to play for 1.25 to 1.5 hours of 1/2 NLH. I started of at a 1/3 table and quickly moved to the only 1/2 table that was open. I noted that the table had a tough lineup. I ended up playing for 3.5 hours, got tired and tilted and lost $535 for the session.

The “kicker” was the player on my immediate right did not cover his nose with his mask for the entire session.

So given the realities of the situation and whether or not your statistical assumptions are accurate, I can’t argue with your conclusion that “it is hardly worth it.”
Thanks again for your input.

Your rooms supervisor should have told him to cover his nose or gtfo. I would have spoken to the floor...also, check the article I posted above. It acounts for some of New England in this study that basically is saying the vast majority of positive tests comming in now a days don't carry enough viral load to be contagious.

Ask him in a nice way to fix his mask. If that doesn’t work, call for the floor.

If masks are mandatory, the casino is responsible for making sure everyone on the premises wears them correctly.

What the article cannot say, though, is how many of those with low viral loads are incubnating, how many are asymptomatic and en route to purging the virus, and how many are recovering from an infection.

If the majority of people with low viral load are simply at the early stages of their infection, the news may not be as useful as you think. Given that backlogs can delay test results for days, a low viral load positive could be a dangerous viral load positive by the time the person gets the news.

I'm unaware of viral load increasing on it's on during incubation. Also am not a scientist. Isn't viral load determined when you become in contact with the person as per how much you actually recieve? Anywho, take a look at this thread if you want

https://mobile.twitter.com/tlowdon/s...36519184232449

Viruses replicate themselves. You technically only need to catch "one" virus and it will quickly multiply. You end up with a bunch until your immune system figures out the right antibody to dismantle is.

(very non-scientific way to explain it)

I wouldn't risk it if I was in my 70s. The virus is orders of magnitude more dangerous to the older population.

If you start with 1, it takes longer to get to enough to cause damage to you than if you start with 10,000. Say you really only start feeling sick when you have a million in your body, that's the difference between 20 doubling periods and 7. It gives you a better chance to be able to overwhelm it before it takes over too much.

If the cross-coronavirus theory holds, having T-cells that are already ready to make antibodies could play a huge factor in this if they can go to work very early before the damage is done.

People who are showing symptoms are going to be far less likely to be playing. People with symptoms are more likely to spread it than those without. 1% carriers is absurd in public.

CFR is still not enough, you need to actually show enough symptoms to warrant testing. IFR is closer to 0.4%. That also doesn't account for age. If you are 85, you are in bad shape with this (but still not as bad as you think, still only like 5% chance of death with no underlying conditions), and if you are 30, your chances are worse than losing back to back runner runners perfect 1 outers on each.

You also have to assume that you *won't* catch it if you don't play. If I don't play, but I catch it getting groceries a month later, I'm not really any better off. If your assumption is that you will likely get it anyway, then it makes it even easier to justify playing.

We can weigh our own tradeoffs and what we value, but let's at least start with facts instead of garbage math.

In theory but very unlikely in actuality.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/14/...make-you-sick/

1) Quite low. I'd say 1/1000 per session might be a reasonable guess, especially if you are masked, wash your hands a lot, and even more if everyone else is masked. Also assuming people who are noticeably sick stay home.

2) Likely not, unless your table is changing frequently.

3) If you are otherwise healthy and in your 70s, your chances of survival are 99.5%. If you have underlying conditions, this goes down to 95.6%.

Assuming you are a healthy person in their 70s, your chance of death are 1 in 200 even if you get infected. Your chances of infection are surely less than 5% with those precautions.

Add in you aren't guaranteed from avoiding infection from other activities you do, seems like even easier decision to play.

If you have underlying conditions, might be worth staying home.

1: It is hard to say what the chances are. If everyone is wearing a mask properly then it is much better. If there are plexiglass dividers better still.

But ultimately the chances of catching Covid will depend on whether or not anyone at the table has Covid. And that will depend on the state they come from. Personally I am looking at all neighboring states to see their rates.

Another factor that reduces the chances that somebody would be playing with Covid is if their state is doing contact tracing. And this will also depend on whether or not the state is doing adequate testing. I would feel comfortable if the positive test rate (7 day avg) was under 3%. Best case it is even less. Experts are saying that it should be under 5% to be reasonable.

2: The amount of time you play matters in two ways. if the people you are playing with are also playing longer then if you catch Covid from them it is likely that the longer your contact the worse the viral load. Also, the longer you play the more people you will play with if others aren't playing that long.

3: If you catch Covid the fatality rate will be about 3% to 10% depending on how deep into your 70's you are and what if any health issues you have. Any cancer, heart disease, obesity, etc. will contribute to death rate.

Personally at 64 I will not play unless the casinos are limiting play to people from states with low infection rates. As of today there are none really. I would check in on Covidactnow.org to see what states are Green.

I also won't play unless there is some kind of testing requirements. Instant testing would be great. As of now, testing is still a mess in that results may take over a week to come back. I would want my state and all surrounding states to have decent testing tournaround and contact tracing (so people will know to test).

But ultimately we are talking about a population where a significant % won't wash their hands after using a bathroom. So ask yourself if you want to put your life at risk around these people.

This defeats the purpose of wearing a mask. That this player was allowed to play tells you all you need to know about the card rooms priorities. They value his business over your life.

I just read about a new antigen test. The crux of it was that people with symptoms spread Covid with a much lower load than people who are pre-symptomatic but are coming down with it.

The idea of the test is not to show when you have Covid but when you have max antibodies indicating that you are extremely contagious if you have it.

So ultimately when you play at a casino now you are relying on them caring about you more than their business, that the people you play with are considerate of your health, and that the rates of infection in states that people are from are low enough that you are unlikely to catch Covid.

At 64 years old I am not playing. And I am a professional poker player.

My guess is that when it is safe to play Foxwoods would be ideal in that the Northeast is doing better than the rest of the country right now and their Governors actually care about keeping Covid in check.

>I just read about a new antigen test. The crux of it was that people with symptoms spread Covid with a much lower load than people who are pre-symptomatic but are coming down with it.

Generally people who are sick in bed will spread it less than people just starting to get it just out of being less exposed to people. I'm not sure if this was what was meant. The point is you aren't going to have every sick person out in public spreading it, only a smaller portion will be since some will be feeling too shitty to even want to go anywhere. 1% of people in public actively being infected is way too high of a number.

>So ultimately when you play at a casino now you are relying on them caring about you more than their business, that the people you play with are considerate of your health, and that the rates of infection in states that people are from are low enough that you are unlikely to catch Covid.

I don't rely on anyone to do anything. I assume there will be people that could spread it anywhere I go. I take proper caution in such situations and sanitize my hands frequently, and avoid touching my hand.

Northeast is probably the safest place to play because COVID has already burned through your population and herd immunity has been reached. It hit there earlier, while other states shut down prior to it hitting, largely because the NE is densely populated and a travel hub from Europe where it came in from.

The NE has the highest death rates per capita in the entire country, and continue to lecture the rest of us about this. NY, NJ, MA, CT, RI are all 2-3x higher than the states that are being lectured about how their governors don't care.

I have done so in the past and should have done so this time. Overly concerned about creating an “enemy” on my right.

I played at Chasers Casino in NH a day prior and was stunned to see one player who sat down with no mask. After several orbits, the dealer remarked to the player (who was seated directly across from him!) that he couldn’t use his $2 chips. At that point I took it upon myself to ask the dealer if masks were required. He allowed that they were required but that he didn’t notice that said player was not wearing one! WTF?

RE: how long infectious, aysmptomatic/not -- https://mobile.twitter.com/tlowdon/s...841536/photo/1

As I acknowledge, there is a lot of ambiguity in each calculation. No need to be a jackass about it, though. At least I show my math rather than make assertions (I note that while you insult my findings, you assert an answer basically the same as mine).

And yes, asymptomatic carriers are less likely to spread. To what degree, we don't know (we don't even have wide enough sampling of antibody tests to accurately estimate the ration of symptomatic to asymptomatic carriers). However, since an exposure at a poker table tends to be longer than a casual encounter, I thought it fair to count asympotmatic carriers as a potentital exposure.

And yes, it would be better if we started with facts, but those facts are simply not available. The best we can work with is approximations (which I fully acknowledge). In your posts, you do no differently, other than asserting moe precise numbers.

In short, we are all guessing to a large degree, so try not to be a smug jerkface when your guesses are no better than anyone elses.

What I just read was that people who are pre-symptomatic will spread Covid with a much higher viral load than people who are symptomatic. Especially people who have been symptomatic for days. The absolute worst viral load will be spread just before they become symptomatic.

The bigger problem is that pre-symptomatic people will not be staying at home in bed or otherwise isolating unless they have been tested. And the CDC has just come out with new guidelines suggesting that people without symptoms don't need to be tested.

Couple this with the failure to contain Covid, the resistance many people have to wearing masks, and the failure of casinos to enforce the mask wearing mandate and it means that, for elderly people, playing poker is a disaster waiting to happen.

People are only pre-symptomatic a small percentage of the time for active cases. Say there is a 14 day infection cycle on average, and the first 3 days are pre-symptomatic. In this case, you only have 20% of the time they are infected where they are spreading it more. So if 1% of the population is infected at a point in time, only .2% of the population will be the pre-symptomatic spreaders. The vast majority of people infected are not out.


If you are in a significant risk group, absolutely avoid being out in public as much as you can, and when you are out, try to avoid close quarters indoors, etc... But with no underlying conditions and under 80, you are never more than 0.5% to die of it. If you are above 80 or in poor health, and especially if you are over 60 and in poor health, take necessary cautions.

An interesting comparison, if you are 75 years old male, you will die in the next year 3.5% of the time already (obviously this is weighted more towards those in ill health), but the .5% risk of death from COVID is only a 14% increase.