@crazyguy It just depends on how accurate the information is from the sick person and how many people they were in contact with. Sometimes I only interact with one other person all week. If I become sick, I know it’s probably her I got sick from, or only her I might have given it to. If I get sick the tracer could call her and then she knows she was exposed.
Because of the exponential quality of the spread of the virus, every time you stop one transmission, you might actually be stopping hundreds or thousands that would have happened over the next few weeks.
Imagine the Rose Garden event was just a group of people in a park. The people who are no sick had no idea for days that they had been exposed. Instead of 30 people sick now it could easily be 90, and in two weeks 270 or more with the nature of the virus. If any of the people in a chain infect more than 3 people, let’s say it’s 20, because they went to a 50 person wedding and interacted directly with 20 of them, then that number jumps.
The Rose Garden event everyone there is aware of the exposure, but typically there isn’t nationwide knowledge of specific cases, usually you would need contact tracers questioning and alerting people who were exposed.
The average person doesn’t understand the math (I realize you do) they don’t think down the line over time how big the number gets.
Just think about flu, we easily have 10–40 million cases of flu a year and that has a much shorter incubation time, and flattens people on their back once symptoms start, and we have some immunity in the population for some strains, all making it less contagious. Covid would be like wildfire without the quarantining, distancing and masks. Part of that is alerting people they were exposed before they even feel sick so they stop interacting with others.