Tag Archives: covid-19

December 2020 in Review

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2020 is officially in the books!

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The “Map of Doom” identifies risks that should get the most attention, including antibiotic resistance, synthetic biology (also see below), and some complex of climate change/ecosystem collapse/food supply issues.

Most hopeful story: The Covid-19 vaccines are a modern “moonshot” – a massive government investment driving scientific and technological progress on a particular issue in a short time frame. Only unlike nuclear weapons and the actual original moonshot, this one is not military in nature. (We should be concerned about biological weapons, but let’s allow ourselves to enjoy this victory and take a quick trip to Disney Land before we start practicing for next season…) What should be our next moonshot, maybe fusion power?

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Lists of some key technologies that came to the fore in 2020 include (you guessed it) mRNA vaccines, genetically modified crops, a variety of new computer chips and machine learning algorithms, which seem to go hand in hand (and we are hearing more about “machine learning” than “artificial intelligence” these days), brain-computer interfaces, private rockets and moon landings and missions to Mars and mysterious signals and micro-satellites and UFOs, virtual and mixed reality, social media disinformation and work-from-home technologies. The wave of self-driving car hype seems to have peaked and receded, which probably means self-driving cars will probably arrive quietly in the next decade or so. I was surprised not to see cheap renewable energy on any lists that I came across, and I think it belongs there. At least one economist thinks we are on the cusp of a big technology-driven productivity pickup that has been gestating for a few decades.

November 2020 in Review

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Only one month to go in this tumultuous year. In current events, the U.S. election was obviously a major historical event, and Covid-19 continued to spiral horribly. But my loyal readers (all 3-10 of you worldwide…) don’t need me to cover current events.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: It seems likely the Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump U.S. foreign wars may just grind on endlessly under Biden. Prove us wrong, Joe! (I give Trump a few points for trying to bring troops home over the objections of the military-industrial complex. But in terms of war and peace, this is completely negated and then some by slippage on nuclear proliferation and weapons on his watch.)

Most hopeful story: The massive investment in Covid-19 vaccine development may have major spillover effects to cures for other diseases. This could even be the big acceleration in biotechnology that seems to have been on the horizon for awhile. These technologies also have potential negative and frivolous applications, of course.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: States representing 196 electoral votes have agreed to support the National Popular Vote Compact, in which they would always award their state’s electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. Colorado has now voted to do this twice. Unfortunately, the movement has a tough road to get to 270 votes, because of a few big states that would be giving up a lot of power if they agreed to it.

aerosols

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A group of academic scientists has put together a long paper with scientific information intended for the public on Covid-19 aerosol transmission. I think this is pretty nice science communication. It is not dumbed down, but it avoids jargon. The graphics they include are mostly helpful. Here are a few takeaways:

  • Secondhand cigarette smoke is a useful analogy to think about. If you are around smokers outside, you are inhaling much less of their poison than if you are around them inside. The amount of time you are around them makes a huge difference – however, this group says the 15 minute CDC guidance is not supported by good evidence. Outside, distance makes a big difference. Inside, being closer is probably worse, but if you are in an enclosed space with them for any period of time you are at pretty high risk. Opening a window should help, but not as much as being outside.
  • Scientists disagree on the relative importance of the three pathways – surfaces, droplets, and aerosols. In the face of uncertainty, it is probably prudent (this is my opinion) to treat them as roughly equal and take precautions against each. Someone coughing or sneezing in your face is a big problem – stay 6 feet away for that reason alone, especially from anyone un-masked.
  • Aerosols probably persist for 1-2 hours. (My thought – this suggests staying in a hotel should be relatively safe. The room has been cleaned, hopefully the maids were wearing masks, and hopefully they cleaned the room in the morning and you are checking in in the afternoon.)
  • Sun and wind tend to reduce risk. All other things being equal, low temperatures and low humidity seem to aid transmission. (Don’t count on the opposite helping you in a sealed room, though. But I am a proponent of humidifying in the winter anyway.)
  • The time it takes air in your house to turn over varies widely – “30 minutes to 10 hours”. For commercial buildings, 12 minutes to 2 hours. Hospitals around 5 minutes!
  • A carbon dioxide concentration of 800-950 ppm is indicative of good ventilation indoors. A carbon dioxide meter costs about $150.
  • Air filters should help, and yes you can tape a furnace filter to a box fan. (I knew it!)
  • “There is no evidence that COVID-19 has been transmitted when people walk past each other outdoors. (But I’m using the bandanna system just because people are scared and confused out there.)
  • Taxis and rideshare are not zero risk, but reasonably probably, maybe reasonably low risk if everyone is masked and windows are open. If it is too cold to open windows, it is better to be drawing in outside air than just recirculating air.
  • Airplanes have very good ventilation, so it is a myth that one infected person on an airplane can infect everyone. If they are sitting right next to you, not wearing a mask, and/or coughing/sneezing, they can infect you. The airport itself is also probably higher risk than the plane. (But let’s remember people are working in all these places.)
  • They say “schools should operate in person only if the levels of infection in the community are low.”
  • Elevators are also actually quite well ventilated, and you are not in there for very long. Again, you don’t want people unmasked and/or coughing/sneezing on you. No singing allowed in elevators.
  • The dental office is suspect. Technology exists to ventilate them safely (but I didn’t see anything obviously new or high tech at my dentist recently.)
  • Masks still help with aerosols. Even though the particles are tiny, they are still inside droplets, which are tiny but not as tiny. Nothing in the air moves around in straight lines, it is turbulent and random, so even if particles are smaller than the openings in the fabric many of them will hit the sides and the risk will be significantly reduced. (Also suggests one reason having multiple layers is better.)
  • Masks work better if they fit well. (I’m a little tired of this, my family has about 100 masks now and not one of them fits well. If there are 1 or 2 I think fit pretty well, they are always in the dirty laundry when I need them. The same gremlins that steal one of each of my favorite socks also steal masks on occasion.)
  • Face shields and plexiglass barriers don’t help a lot with aerosols. You need a mask.

September 2020 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The Covid recession in the U.S. is pretty bad and may be settling in for the long term. Demand for the capital goods we normally export (airplanes, weapons, airplanes that unleash weapons, etc.) is down, demand for oil and cars is down, and the service industry is on life support. Unpaid bills and debts are mounting, and eventually creditors will have to come to terms with this (nobody feels sorry for “creditors”, but what this could mean is we get a full-blown financial panic to go along with the recession in the real economy.

Most hopeful story:

  • The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis had the courage to take aim at campaign finance corruption as a central reason for why the world is in its current mess. I hate to be partisan, folks, but right now our government is divided into responsible adults and children. The responsible adults who authored this report are the potential leaders who can lead us forward.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • If the universe is a simulation, and you wanted to crash it on purpose, you could try to create a lot of nested simulations of universes within universes until your overload whatever the operating system is. Just hope it’s backed up.

Covid Act Now

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This is a new site that gives a Covid risk rating based on five indicators: daily new cases, infection rate, test positivity, ICU headroom, and contacts traced. They try to give the same information by county, but they only have the data to provide a couple of the indicators at the county level. I know this data exists for my county, but it must be collected and stored (or not) differently in different counties and different states, so that there is no single organized database of it. This is the kind of thing the federal government could provide leadership on, and once again, they are just failing us in epic fashion.

I’ve added this to my running list of Covid data and simulation sites.

June 2020 in Review

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In current events, the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is spinning out of control as I write this in early July. I made a list of trackers and simulation tools that I have looked at. Asian countries, even developing countries, pretty much have it under control, Europe is getting it under control, and the U.S. and a few other countries are melting down. Some voices are very pessimistic on the U.S. economy’s chances to come back. So of course I’m thinking about that, but I don’t have all that many novel or brilliant ideas on it so I’m choosing to write about other things below. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The UN just seems to be declining into irrelevancy. I have a few ideas: (1) Add Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, and Indonesia to the Security Council, (2) transform part of the UN into something like a corporate risk management board, but focused on the issues that cause the most suffering and existential risk globally, and (3) have the General Assembly focus on writing model legislation that can be debated and adopted by national legislatures around the world.
Most hopeful story:
  • Like many people, I was terrified that the massive street demonstrations that broke out in June would repeat the tragedy of the 1918 Philadelphia war bond parade, which accelerated the spread of the flu pandemic that year. Not only does it appear that was not the case, it is now a source of great hope that Covid-19 just does not spread that easily outdoors. I hope the protests lead to some meaningful progress for our country. Meaningful progress to me would mean an end to the “war on drugs”, which I believe is the immediate root cause of much of the violence at issue in these protests, and working on the “long-term project of providing cradle-to-grave (at least cradle-to-retirement) childcare, education, and job training to people so they have the ability to earn a living, and providing generous unemployment and disability benefits to all citizens if they can’t earn a living through no fault of their own.”
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • Here’s a recipe for planting soil using reclaimed urban construction waste: 20% “excavated deep horizons” (in layman’s terms, I think this is just dirt from construction sites), 70% crushed concrete, and 10% compost

pandemic reinsurance

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You can buy insurance against a pandemic. Well, if you are a giant corporation or a small country. It seems like insurers wouldn’t be able to offer it, but some of the reinsurers, which insure insurance companies against rare catastrophic risks, actually do. They do it by finding parties that can insure them, and the parties that are willing to insure them are pension funds, because when old people start dying in large numbers pension funds actually have a lot of extra cash lying around. The bigger the pandemic and the more people are dropping like flies, the more cash they have to pay off the reinsurance companies. Yes, the insurance business is kind of sinister, so there it is. From Wired.

house of cards

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James K. Galbraith has a very pessimistic view of the U.S. economy going forward.

America’s economic plight is structural. It is not simply the consequence of Trump’s incompetence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s poor political strategy. It reflects systemic changes over 50 years that have created an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.

Project Syndicate

Slow, underlying trends can undermine the resilience of a system, without obvious impacts on the surface. Then, when a crisis hits, whether or not that crisis is related to the underlying trend, the system is not able to bounce back the way it would have without the trend. Imagine rising temperatures and invasive species very slowly putting pressure on a healthy forest or water body. The ecosystem can resist these pressures, maybe for a long time. But then one day, a major storm, fire, or drought comes along. Absent the underlying pressure, the the ecosystem could have rebounded to its original state, but with the underlying pressure, it rebounds to something short of its underlying state. Even if the shock is less than catastrophic and the system rebounds to something just a little short of the original state, successive crises over time can lead to a long, slow slide that might only be obvious in retrospective. Or, if the shift is very slow, “shifting baseline syndrome” sets in, where the people involved lose their memory of what the system used to be like, and don’t fully realize what has been lost.

May 2020 in Review

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You can’t say that 2020 has not been interesting so far. The Covid-19 saga continued throughout May. I certainly continued to think about it, including a fun quote from The Stand, but my mind began turning to other topics.

 

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Potential for long-term drought in some important food-producing regions around the globe should be ringing alarm bells. It’s a good thing that our political leaders’ crisis management skills have been tested by shorter-term, more obvious crises and they have passed with flying colors…doh!

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • There are unidentified flying objects out there. They may or may not be aliens, that has not been identified. But they are objects, they are flying, and they are unidentified.