Anecdotally: I got to spend a week making daily visits to a hospital this summer, and of course ended up spending a lot of time chatting with the care team abo

Anecdotally: I got to spend a week making daily visits to a hospital this summer, and of course ended up spending a lot of time chatting with the care team about the pandemic. For context, the room we were in was next door to the space set aside for the COVID-19 isolation cohort, and the some folks were back and forth between both areas throughout the day. As far as customer-facing jobs go this year, having your customers be, not just anyone, but specifically people who are a known SARS-CoV-2 infection risk, seems like a pretty singular situation. They all felt pretty safe, though, and, at least up to that point, hadn't had a single staff member test positive. They attributed this to everyone on the team being very scrupulous about masks and hand washing. Somewhat similarly, and less anecdotally, my state recently released some information about their contact tracing efforts, and, while they didn't give any specific numbers, they indicated that workplaces did not seem to be a significant source of transmission as long as mask policies are being followed. The bulk of the transmission was from social gatherings, both in home and in public. There were some case studies of super-spreader events at public gatherings, and the general story is that, as long as the staff is sticking to the policy of wearing masks while at work, they are generally not getting caught up in these events. So, I suspect it would be fine as long as everyone involved kept a mask on at all times. The problem with getting together for a Thanksgiving dinner, then, is that you simply can't share a meal and (properly) wear a mask at the same time. Heck, you can't even offer your guests light refreshments and have them properly wear a mask at the same time.