In a moment when the world seems more desperate than ever for the slightest ray of hope, here’s some (literally) sunny news:
Warm weather has been correlated with a slowdown in the spread of COVID-19.
The paper comes from a squad of data scientists and economists at Beijing schools Tsinghua University and Beihang University, using data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, related to 4,711 confirmed cases of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
The scientists looked to see what those cases’ contact was like with other patients. Then — using a great deal of sophisticated statistical analysis and modeling, trend growth curves, weather stations, and contact tracing among patients who have had COVID-19 — they came to this conclusion:
“High temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of COVID-19, respectively, even after controlling for population density and GDP per capita of cities. […] This result is consistent with the fact that the high temperature and high humidity significantly reduce the transmission of influenza. It indicates that the arrival of summer and rainy season in the northern hemisphere can effectively reduce the transmission of the COVID-19.”
It’s important to note here that, first, the word is “indicates.” This is a data analysis and by no means a definitive piece of work. Next: We’re not talking about warm weather killing coronavirus (per the currently available information we have: it doesn’t). Or stopping it from spreading (it won’t).
But, and finally: It appears it will slow the spread.
While this might sound like little consolation, it should be. You’re going to hear a lot in the…
