Originally Posted by
marathontiger1
Sorry, but I’m with this guy. Maybe not the tone, but . . . Simple question: exactly how many confirmed cases of cyclist-to-cyclist, group-riding transmission of COVID-19 are there? Answer: zero. And the answer will always be zero. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with social distancing. If you want to go on a group ride, go. If you don’t, don’t. But those who do aren’t increasing their risk, and those who don’t aren’t mitigating theirs.
the reason there's no confirmed cases of that is 1) we have extremely limited contact tracing data, so our knowledge of how the idsease spreads is pretty limited, and 2) most group rides were stopped pretty early in the Pandemic.
What we do have is a pretty good knowledge of the viral load necessary to transmit the disease, knowledge of how the virus aerosolizes with heavy breathing, how plong it hangs in the air, and the fluid dynamics of how drafting works.
All of that tells you that sitting in the draft for 2 hours, with everyone breathing heavily has the potential to impose a deadly viral load. So until proven otherwise, it is onlly reasonable to conclude it is a significant risk.
A few weeks ago, no one thought that you got Covid 19 from sitting across a room with people singing. Now we know some of the most deadly clusters come from singing.
As we get better contact tracing and testing we'll know more how the virus transmits. Personally, I'd prefer to still be alive as we learn those things, rather than take poor risks that may or may not pan out.