MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 1–UPDATED
This list of "clusters" of cases from the NYT is quite remarkable:
| Cases Connected To | Cases |
|---|---|
| Marion Correctional Institution — Marion, Ohio | 2,182 |
| Pickaway Correctional Institution — Scioto Township, Ohio | 1,641 |
| Smithfield Foods pork processing facility — Sioux Falls, S.D. | 1,095 |
| U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt — Guam | 969 |
| Cook County jail — Chicago, Ill. | 940 |
| Cummins Unit prison — Grady, Ark. | 911 |
| Lakeland Correctional Facility — Coldwater, Mich. | 819 |
| Bledsoe County Correctional Complex — Pikeville, Tenn. | 583 |
| Harris County jail — Houston, Texas | 488 |
| Neuse Correctional Institution — Goldsboro, N.C. | 480 |
| JBS USA meatpacking plant — Green Bay, Wis. | 348 |
| Butner Prison Complex — Butner, N.C. | 263 |
| Trenton Psychiatric Hospital — Trenton, N.J. | 247 |
| JBS USA meatpacking plant — Greeley, Colo. | 245 |
| Parnall Correctional Facility — Jackson, Mich. | 242 |
| JBS USA meatpacking plant — Grand Island, Neb. | 230 |
| FutureCare Lochearn nursing home — Baltimore, Md. | 220 |
| Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women — St. Gabriel, La. | 216 |
| American Foods Group meat processing facility — Green Bay, Wis. | 211 |
| Shelby County jail — Memphis, Tenn. | 205 |
| Stateville Correctional Center — Crest Hill, Ill. | 197 |
| Westville Correctional Facility — Westville, Ind. | 195 |
| Franklin Medical Center prison hospital — Columbus, Ohio | 185 |
| Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Waterloo, Iowa | 180 |
| Redwood Springs nursing home — Visalia, Calif. | 174 |
| Central Detention Facility — Washington, D.C. | 172 |
| Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Columbus Junction, Iowa | 166 |
| Lincoln Park Care Center — Lincoln Park, N.J. | 163 |
| PruittHealth Palmyra nursing home — Albany, Ga. | 163 |
Prisons, ships, and nursing homes are all places where people are clustered together for long periods of time without leaving. Meat-packing plants have people clustered together for long periods of time each day, but they do leave.
College dorms also have clustering, although perhaps not as tight and with more movement in and out. If there's a relevant difference, it's that the average age in dorms is much younger than these other places, and we can expect those who run dorms to have more incentives to encourage safe behaviors and provide soap, hand sanitizers, masks, etc. I imagine, though, dorms will have to ban congregating in hallways, for example.
In the case of nursing homes and similar facilities, a particular dilemma is that even if the residents/patients are not clustered together, they are highly dependent on staff, whether medical or otherwise, and thus have close contact with such people each day. That is plainly the main source of infection, given asymptomatic transmission. (My father, alas, acquired COVID at his assisted living facility precisely this way, since he otherwise had been staying in his apartment–but meals were delivered to the room, staff came in to provide medications twice a day, and other staff would come in to clean and assist with various things [the place had been on lockdown since March 15, so no outside visitors were bringing the virus in]. It's only in the last week or so that testing was made available to all staff, an indication of the spectacular incompetence of the United States in this matter.)
College students are more independent than nursing home residents in this regard, which may prove an advantage.
Has anyone seen any figures on what percentage of all cases are due to these three places: prisons, nursing homes, and meat-packing plants?
UPDATE: In partial response to my last question: 44% of COVID deaths in Illinois are from nursing homes!
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