Let’s say people have half of their interactions outside. If so, this implies an outdoor transmission rate of 0.012%, or about 1 in 8250. If only 20% of interactions are outside, it is about 1 in 2000.
That’s the risk of transmission given some outdoor contact with an infected person. Again, here we are thinking about the risk of transmission with more sustained contact — passing someone on the street has a risk of, basically, zero.
To then think about the risk of infection from being outside unmasked, you want to think about the risk associated with the people you interact with (or your kids interact with). Case rates are down a lot, although as people have noted, the cases we do have are largely in unvaccinated people. What share of the population of people running around outside are unvaccinated and carrying COVID-19? It’s almost certainly less than 1% in most areas of the US.
If you combine a 1% COVID-19 rate with a 1 in 2000 transmission rate, that gives a risk of 1 in 200,000.
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