Come out of Thanksgiving with this interactive COVID risk map

If you’re still planning on going to some sort of in-person Thanksgiving event, otherwise known as the COVID party, I’m not going to judge you. However, I will do whatever I can to convince you that you are making the wrong decision, and that includes sending you to the handy “COVID-19 Event Risk Planning Tool” card so that you have a more complete picture. of your chances.

Said menu doesn’t have the sexiest of names, but it’s an incredibly useful tool that you can use to get a feel for the safety of spending time in groups larger than you and your roommates. And it’s not just some kind of pie in the sky, a “you might not want” recommendation. The site examines official data on your county’s COVID infection, usually updated the day before, and uses that to fuel its overall assessment: the likelihood that at least one person present at your event is a carrier of COVID.

So, for example, if I visit my Santa Clara County, California, I can immediately see the current level of risk – as assessed by the site – for a typical gathering of 50 people. All I have to do is find my county on the map and hover my mouse:

I can then use a slider on the left side of the site to indicate how many people are attending an upcoming event. So as an example, let’s say I think I go to a 10– Thanksgiving person. Here’s how that level of risk changes:

Not bad. It’s a seven-in-hundred chance that at least one person on Thanksgiving has COVID. I’m still not going to dinner, but that’s good to know. What if I lived in a place where COVID hits a lot harder, like North Dakota, I would barricade myself in my house:

One quirk of the site is that it Assumed that there are about five times more cases of COVID than what is actually reported. Who follows against global modeling studies, so don’t let your loved ones pull the “fake news” card when you show them that this site says you will die if you go to Thanksgiving. (I’m hyperbolic, but do not this many.)

If you have reports that your county is underestimating COVID cases even more, you can press a little button on the site that adjusts that “verification bias” from a 5: 1 to 10: 1 ratio. So, yeah, you have some control over the data which makes the site as useful as your settings. However, it’s still a great way to get a quick recording of how safe it can be to have a quick hangout with a friend (don’t) versus, say, some sort of in-person sporting event (please, please don’t).