Tango in times of pandemic

TTanguero said:
Could you link us to some of it? Thanks.
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How about you doing your own research?

It's not difficult, start with "coronavirus contagious period"
in Google and follow the news.

And what do you think social distancing is for,
which we aren't asked to do for influenza?
I actually prefer physical distancing as a more accurate
and meaningful description.

There is an increasing move towards hideous face masks,
not necessarily to prevent inward infection from others,
but to try and eliminate projection by the unknowing infected,
the not yet symptomatic and asymptomatic but infected.

All this because the belief is that cross contamination
occurs during the incubation period. In fact that understanding
has become stronger although there is a tendency now to talk
about infectiousness being in the day leading up to showing
symptoms. Meanwhile the possibility of picking up contamination
from surfaces touched by others has become of less importance.

Everything indicates there remains more to learn,
but that complacency leads to infection. Witness
the UK government's appalling initial responses.
 
Anecdotally, I suspect that considerable portion of the population (SF Bay Area) have already had it. Many friends reported symptoms similar indicating covid-19. Still, to be sure, I would like to get an antibody test, say, like these:
https@//www.raybiotech.com/covid-19-igm-igg-rapid-test-kit/
https@//www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covid-19-rt/

Once FDA approved, I would like to be tested.

A week and a half ago Stanford University conducted a trial on 3.2k volonteers around SF Bay Area, collecting blood samples:
https@//www.stanforddaily.com/2020/04/04/stanford-researchers-test-3200-people-for-covid-19-antibodies/
These can be helpfull in two ways: a) develop the test for widespread use; and b) estimate percentage of the local population that have already have immunity (3.2k people is a decent sample size);

Too bad there still no news about their results.
 
elpocito said:
Mr JohnEm, this is still not convincing. You either provide your references or retract your general and unsupported claims.
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It's not for me to convince you, do your own research
with an open and thinking mind.
We are all entitled to do that.

Besides all the medical chatter there are cases here
in Argentina and Uruguay which indicate the effect.

The history of dealing with this infection is full of missteps,
mistaken thinking and underestimation of its effects and impact.
The arrogance and manipulation of the UK Government was
atrocious. Medical experts at Imperial College have spoken
of their shocked surprise at what they were (not) doing.
So was I.

You have your own evidence of that with "The Donald".

The question of the extent of infection and the generation
of resultant immunity remains very much an open one.
 
TTanguero said:
That's not what's at issue. The point was made that intuitively it seems like tango ought to be a riskier activity than other forms of close social contact, but we have no data. You say that we do have evidence. Please post links to it.
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Ah, you are singling out one topic,
the rather narrow one that is trying to claim
that Tango may not be particularly more dangerous
than other forms of near contact.

My view has always been that confinement in a closed space,
exercise and coronavirus are a dangerous mix. Even outside
there have been worries about how much further behind
another jogger you should run.

All forms of exercise in a closed environment have danger.
Close contact is dangerous, inside and outside, you cannot
exclude Tango with or without data. Lack of data specifically
about that is a red herring.

I happen to think that some embrace forms are particularly
dangerous and some (one being the most social) slightly less so,
but not enough less to contemplate dancing in the near or far
from certain future. Some on floor non-dancing behaviour
might have to change in any event..
 
JohnEm said:
do your own research
with an open and thinking mind.
We are all entitled to do that.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I'm trying to do, JohnEm; the difficulty for people with "open and thinking mind" is gut reactions like
JohnEm said:
One day we might be free to make our individual decisions,
hopefully you will be dancing alone . . . . .
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It's a shame your reaction to a post inquiring about / discussing evidence is an attempt at public shunning. The contextual implication of your reaction is that the fact I'm asking such questions indicates that I'm recklessly handling the situation, which is completely baseless and, frankly, insulting (and also, by the way, false). That you are so ready to invoke terms like "complacency" in reaction to my post is also ironic, given that your comment
JohnEm said:
Ah, you are singling out one topic,
the rather narrow one that is trying to claim
that Tango may not be particularly more dangerous
than other forms of near contact.
Click to expand...
indicates you didn't even bother to read my post carefully before your wrote your first reaction. As others pointed out, it should be quite clear that my post only concerned a "rather narrow topic", to wit: if we are talking about the chance of catching a highly virulent respiratory disease, assuming that we also already participate in normal social interactions, does tango dancing as a social activity indeed significantly increase the chance of catching it, DESPITE it being CLEAR "that ceteris paribus the embrace increases the likelihood of transmission"?
JohnEm said:
Close contact is dangerous, inside and outside, you cannot
exclude Tango with or without data. Lack of data specifically
about that is a red herring.
Click to expand...
As for the contextual implication of your remark about lack of data being a "red herring", had you read my post carefully you would also have realized that I did not make any argument of the form "lack of evidence of higher chance of catching the virus for tango dancers is evidence for the chance it not being higher". What I did and what I am trying to do is to gather best evidence to inform my decisions, present and future, and trying to help others to do the same.

Moving on to substance, I am quite aware of the potential of asymptomatic carriers for COVID-19. But I'm also aware of the existence of asymptomatic carriers for the flu (almost around 50%, according to some estimates). More importantly, the flu can also be contagious before someone develops symptoms for it, to quote from the CDC website, "most healthy adults may be able to infect others beginning 1 day before symptoms develop". And so, even though there are important disanalogies between COVID-19 and the flu, and even though 1 day transmission potential before development of symptoms may be less than the potentially several days currently hypothesized for COVID-19, I think that from the perspective of the narrow question I am asking, already existing evidence about tango dancers experiencing a higher frequency of catching a flu than non-dancers would be relevant. I shared my own personal experience about this, warned to the danger of over-generalizing from it, and asked whether others know more about the issue. Some might have more relevant (anecdotal or study based) evidence which I'm not aware of. Or could potentially point out a reason why a certain disanalogy between properties of COVID-19 and the flu would be relevant with respect to the narrow question I'm asking. COVID-19 is more virulent than the flu, but this only seems to strengthen the point I was making.

I'd still be happy to be informed by actual evidence or arguments pertaining to the issue, although I wouldn't be surprised if people were less likely to volunteer their perspective if the discussion environment becomes dominated by JohnEm-type replies.
 
Last edited:
It is still early days and many unknowns. It will take several months before the answers to unknowns are found with high degree of certainty.

Among unknowns are viral loads in asymptomatic (their potency to infect), how infectious are people during the incubation period, how long after someone has recovered they may be testing positive (anecdotally few isolated cased are testing positive up to 30 days after full recovery), is someone still infectious after they have recovered, percentage of population getting infected, back of envelope calculations show that with restricted testing about 10% to 15% are positive (I don’t think we have data for restricted testing with social distancing in place and restricted testing without social distancing in place), fatality rate (big unknown though there are some educated guessed based on assumptions), if as some experts are predicting that 10 times more people have been infected than what the tests results are showing does it mean that it is contagious but less fatal. We simply don’t know a lot to have any meaningful discussions. We can only frame most likely or best case and worst case scenarios.

Which then leads to question of how contagious can going to milonga be. Let’s say after the infection rate has been dropped to near zero but before the vaccine or a confirmed treatment protocol exists. I think it all comes down to risk-mitigation. We as a people are very bad at assessing risks and probabilities unless it is imminent.

I can see people deploying various risk-mitigation when it comes to milongas

- Certain risk averse individuals will simply not go until widespread evidence convinces them it is safe.
- Some individuals in high-risk group (older or underlying conditions, etc) may sit it out for a while.
- People arranging closed private invitation only milongas of people they know (statistically it is not going to decrease the risk probability).
- If a region or a town has reached near zero daily infection rate may be out of town visitors will be denied entry.
- It will be hard to enforce age-based restriction at public event. I don’t see that happening In North America at least.
- avoiding close embrace to avoid faces touching directly (it won’t decrease probability of infection)

Any kind of fitness certificate before a vaccine comes into existence, is hard to implement.

It all comes down to the game of probability and risk tolerance of each person, on how many will be willing to go out dancing in short to medium term. Irrationality of human behavior is assured, so that also needs to be taken into the account.
 
Bailango-Redux said:
- avoiding close embrace to avoid faces touching directly (it won’t decrease probability of infection)
Click to expand...

The question I was asking is particularly relevant when we narrow it down to a comparison of the "chance of getting infected while dancing tango in embrace" vs the "chance of getting infected while dancing in open hold".

In fact what prompted my original post was opendoor's prior remark that
opendoor said:
Perhaps I cross over to salsa, but only en-linea and not in close hold.
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from which I gathered he thinks that going out to dance salsa will be safer than going out to dance tango in embrace. I didn't share this intuition for a highly virulent respiratory disease such as COVID-19, but would have been curious to understand what evidence exists on the basis of which this could be judged.
 
I almost never catch the flu. I catch colds relatively frequently. Dancing actively didn't change this - if there's a new cold strain in widespread circulation I just get it once either way.

There was a case of 45/60 people getting infected at a choir practice that tried to maintain distancing. One would probably guess that singing emits more virus particles, but they also sit in the same place most of the time rather than circulating. I don't think there is a point of worrying about dancing or whatever else is going on in the room, if there's someone infected and you're breathing their air it's enough.

What's going to happen of course is that dance and other social activities will restart in smaller private groups first in order to keep the number of people in the room down - we are not the only ones having this conversation.

On that note we should really use this time to think about how to make our tango scenes more attractive to new people when all this is over. The suspension and reboot can be a positive thing for the health of the community.

PS - the Imperial College source code for their modelling can be found here if anyone wants to play around with it.
 
People may start to compare tango dancers to those guys that climb up on high mountain walls with their bare hands, without securing themselves with ropes. Don’t they have loved ones to care for?
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:D
tangofolly.com

Back to Abnormal | Story | Tangofolly

It never really felt 'normal', to go to a tango night, but in the near future it is going to be weird. You know, things like touching a person and being within 1,5 centimeters of each other.
tangofolly.com tangofolly.com
 
I've read somewhere and can't remember where, that the flu season in the cold times especially because of the closed environments. So I'd think that an open air milonga would be far safer then a closed one. :D
 
gyb said:
The question I was asking is particularly relevant when we narrow it down to a comparison of the "chance of getting infected while dancing tango in embrace" vs the "chance of getting infected while dancing in open hold".

In fact what prompted was opendoor's prior remark that

from which I gathered he thinks that going out to dance salsa will be safer than going out to dance tango in embrace. I didn't share this intuition for a highly virulent respiratory disease such as COVID-19, but would have been curious to understand what evidence exists on the basis of which this could be judged.
Click to expand...


It might have been a tongue-in-cheek remark. Logic and common sense would say that dancing with an infected person 2 feet apart than 2 inches apart doesn’t decrease risk of them shedding virus on you. Unless you are wearing a full protective sealed gear :)

P.S. - Neeed to remove link from quoted post because it won’t allow me to post containing links till 50 mark has been crossed.
 
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