The implications of this finding are huge and haven't really made it into the public discussion of coronavirus. The pandemic spreads in a very specific way and is going to be much easier to stop than the outdated "herd immunity or vaccine" framing suggests. Hooray!
The protests, though, we're stuck with until we can break the back of white supremacy in America.
The upshot of the findings is that the fairly gentle Japanese tactics seem to work, and some combination of mask-wearing and avoiding prolonged periods in unventilated crowded indoor spaces will be enough to stop the pandemic in its tracks without the additional lockdown drama.
If you want to learn more about the Japanese approach, the amazing @miekocakes is translating their public health experts on the account @fightingenie55. I spent the last three months in Japan and assure you that kind of lockdown is completely livable while we wait for a vaccine
Lots and lots of linked studies in the article at the top of this thread, so you're just going to have to click.
And one selfish reason we should fight with all our might for Taiwan and Hong Kong is the contributions they have made to the science of this disease, its spread, and how to effectively contain it, even if we didn't always listen
This theory of spread leads to a somewhat testable prediction that the large outdoor protests taking place in the US should not cause a significant spike in coronavirus cases, and that the locus of spread will continue to be indoor spaces like nursing homes and meatpacking plants
