COVID-19 notes
Coronavirus: World sees highest daily increase in virus cases – WHO
Sweden becomes
country with highest coronavirus death rate per capita
Kidney injury seen in more than a third of hospitalized COVID-19
patients -U.S. study
"We found in the first 5,449 patients admitted,
36.6% developed acute kidney injury,"
"It's not specific to COVID-19. It's more related
to how sick you are,"
MIT: Loud talking could leave coronavirus in the air for up
to 14 minutes (the scientific article via PNAS.)
Singapore Rejects Herd Immunity as Strategy to Tackle
Virus
Coronavirus will win. America needs to make a plan for
failure
‘Finally, a virus got me.’ Scientist who fought Ebola
and HIV reflects on facing death from COVID-19
important and sobering. Makes clear the death rate
understates the consequences of getting infected
The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used
to portray COVID-19
Mass media routinely portray information about
COVID-19 deaths on logarithmic graphs. But do their readers understand them?
Alessandro Romano, Chiara Sotis, Goran Dominioni, and Sebastián Guidi carried
out an experiment which suggests that they don’t. What is perhaps more
relevant: respondents looking at a linear scale graph have different attitudes
and policy preferences towards the pandemic than those shown the same data on a
logarithmic graph. Consequently, merely changing the scale on which the data
is presented can alter public policy preferences and the level of worry,
even at a time when people are routinely exposed to a lot of COVID-19 related
information. Based on these findings, they call for the use of linear scale
graphs by media and government agencies.
Let’s Remember That the Coronavirus Is Still a Mystery
Respond to it with humility, and apprehension, too.
The odd thing about reporting on the coronavirus is
that the nonexperts are supremely confident in their predictions, while
epidemiologists keep telling me that they don’t really know much at all.
“This is a novel virus, new to humanity, and nobody
knows what will happen,” said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at
U.C.L.A.
Some of that epidemiological humility should seep
into public discourse.
Related Twitter thread: Here's a short list of things we do and don't yet know
about #COVID19.
The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them
It seems many people are breathing some relief, and
I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable
upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope is also predictable.
Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, that would mean that if we stay
locked down, we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off
that peak. That’s what’s going to happen with a lockdown.
As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all
bets are off. I understand the reasons for reopening the economy,
but I’ve said before, if you don’t solve the biology, the economy won’t
recover. …
After the Virus: The Way We Live Next
Regular Related Fare:
Waiting for “Rooseveltian Relief”: An Oversimplified
Framework for the Employment Situation
“I don’t have time or the inclination to visit
Roosevelt’s grave to see if he’s spinning in it, but I doubt very much that
Roosevelt would have allowed himself to get wrapped round the axle on complex
eligibility requirements”
Insofar as this crisis is not over, and this crisis is
most assuredly not over, it is necessary for all of us to adjust our
expectations. And this adjustment requires us to put aside the
comfort of “things will get better” in favor of the constant chafing of “things
can, and probably will, get worse.” The reason for doing this is twofold.
First, because this assessment will help us to think through the types of
actions and preparations that are necessary to make it through the crisis. ….
When you hear elected officials declaring that there’s good news, as much as
you may want to believe them, go see what the actual experts are saying. The
second point, is that thinking about the worst can help prepare you mentally
and emotionally for when the worst arrives. We are in for a very difficult
summer, followed by an even more difficult fall, which in turn will quite possibly
be followed by a catastrophic winter. And you need to be steeling yourself for
that possibility.
An “L”-Shaped Recovery Is Not An Anomaly, It Is The
Norm.
“If this crisis has told us anything is that even the
most bearish have been too optimistic. Shutting down an economy even for an
apparently short period of time has massive long-term implications in
solvency ratios that will not be addressed with liquidity.”
The Incoherence
Of Yield Curve Control
Bank Of Canada:
Repo Printer Go Brrr!
The False Choice
of Deaths Versus the Economy.
There is a vast amount of hand-wringing and angst going on about how we
can either save the economy by re-opening, or we can let the economy crash and
save lives. Of course, the economy crashing (and the US unemployment rate will
probably hit 30 percent) will cause the loss of lives also.
This is a manufactured, completely unnecessary choice.
To understand why, you have to understand three facts about money:
·
Money is imaginary. It is a
fiction created by humans. People are not fictions. Land is not a fiction.
Buildings are not fictions and neither are physical objects. Money, even when
it exists in paper form rather than 0s and 1s in a computer, is fictional. It
has value only because we agree it does.
Money is used for two things:
·
First, it determines who controls what. Can
you control land, people, or objects? If you buy land or an object, you control
it for as long as you own it. If you hire a person, you control their time.
Money is control of people, land, and things.
·
Second, money is a feedback mechanism. If
people who have money want less of what you offer, you get less money and
control less people, land, and things. If people who have money want more of
what you offer, you get more money and can control more people, land, and
things. (What people who have no money think is of no concern.)
What Covid-19 closures are doing is providing feedback – “people with
money want less of these things.” That causes the people who control
businesses, or live in apartments, or have to pay mortgages to run out of
money, and lose control of those things. Businesses go out of business. People
can’t pay rent or mortgages or their employees.
That causes an economic crash.
This is 100 percent unnecessary.
We want feedback in an economic system because we don’t want people doing
things that other people don’t want or need (or, in Capitalism, other people
with money). But when a one-time event happens which does not reflect a
fundamental shift in what people want (i.e., this pandemic will end) then you
actually want to stop the feedback, because it’s bad feedback. You don’t want
to change long-term economic arrangements because of something that is a
one-time event.
So, because money is fictional, because we just create it out of thin air
(central banks create trillions), this means that we can do one of two things:
·
We can just give people who have lost their
income due to Covid-19 enough income to pay their bills
·
We can freeze payments up
and down the line – rent, mortgages, interest payments.
Or, of course, we can (and should) do a combination of these two things.
…
To allow people to die to preserve the economy is idiocy: It hurts the
economy. People are the economy; it is people and natural resources which
produce everything of value.
So, when people squeal about the economy vs. lives, understand that they
don’t know what an economy is or how money works. …
Regular Fare:
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
It’s already
getting too hot and humid in some places for humans to survive
Extreme conditions are happening more often than scientists previously thought
Climate change
is turning parts of Antarctica green, say scientists
An Asset Grows
in Brooklyn: Conforming ecology to capitalist logic
Other Fare:
‘Zoom fatigue’
is taxing the brain. Here's why that happens.
Video calls seemed an elegant solution to remote work, but they wear on
the psyche in complicated ways.
Suddenly, many people meet the criteria for clinical depression. Doctors
are scrambling to determine who needs urgent intervention, and who is simply
the new normal.
Notes On The
Academy During The Time Of Covid.
Fun Fare:
Pentagon
announces ‘green’ 6th-gen fighters to burn $100 bills as fuel
Quotes of the Week:
“You know your generation’s screwed when even Monopoly is mocking you.”
From: Generation
screwed—and screwed again
Tweet of the Week:
Taleb: “I cannot live in societies that spend trillions on
nuclear weapons yet are incapable of delivering COVID testing to their
populations.”
Pics of the Week:
570 Workers Test
Positive For COVID At Tyson Plant In North Carolina
