This really lays it all out. We have a crisis of leadership.
It’s understandable that the president hoped the travel restrictions would work. But he knew perfectly well that he hadn’t shut off all travel to the United States (which would have been economically ruinous) and thus that it was possible border control would fail. Experts were nearly unanimous in their judgment that travel restrictions would not work, and Trump not only overruled their advice to put restrictions in place, he ignored their warnings and did nothing to create any kind of fallback plan. And since he’s stubborn and vainglorious, he continues to insist that the moral of this whole story is that the experts were wrong and he was right so we should bank on further travel restrictions to save us. It’s absurd.
Because data analysis is my coping strategy, I’ve started a spreadsheet tracking King County case numbers. Will continue to update this so I can follow trends.
One thing I’ll say is that these might look a lot different if testing were more widely available. This might be in the cards.
Keep an eye on the places that are “ahead” of us on the progression. What’s it like in Italy today? What do I need to do today to prepare for that? Seattle is that for the rest of the US. Keep an eye on what is happening here.
I’ve settled into a good routine with cleaning. Habituation is a good thing. Start forming habits now and keep improving yourself.
Don’t spend too much time on facebook and twitter. They are stress multipliers that you do not need. Keep yourself informed though. Don’t shut everything down.
I work from home and am on a lot of conference calls. I end every call with, “wash your hands”. It’s important to bring everyone into the fight (yes, it’s a fight!)
I see signs that Seattle is coming together on this. I believe that we want to help each other and it will work.
I’m going to keep saying it. You aren’t just protecting yourself. You are responsible for the safety of the more vulnerable people you come in contact with. They need you!
An interactive model that shows how important early and aggressive measures make a difference.
The article ends with this:
We’ll be honest: We worried that the clean lines in the graphics here risk suggesting a false precision. None of us know what lies ahead. But the wise uncertainty of epidemiologists is preferable to the confident bluster of television blowhards. The one thing we can be confident of is that enormous risks lie ahead — including a huge loss of life — if we don’t take aggressive action.
We have already squandered weeks in which the president scoffed at the coronavirus and tried to talk up the stock markets, but it’s not too late: We can still change the course of this epidemic.
If you’ve never seen a Kurzgesagt video before I’m happy to introduce you to it. These things are always interesting and informative, regardless of the subject.
One thing that I think most people don’t appreciate is how much or understanding of viral propagation is dictated by simple math. I think this epidemic calculator does a good job of illustrating that.
It’s important to look for optimism in times like these. Here’s my submission
Here’s my optimistic take: The world has given us an opportunity to rewrite the old rules. The power structures in place will try to maintain the status quo, but we don’t have to follow if we think of something better. We need to think about what should change and how to do it. A lot of these predictions are in that spirit.
This site uses cell phone GPS data to rate how close to home people are staying. The Surveillance State at its best! Encouraging to see King county is doing well anyway
This is along the lines of Pinboard’s controversial take from the other day that we need to employ data that lots of company’s and the government collects but is hidden because of privacy concerns.
This video shows a lot of simulations of viral propagation. Examines the effects of social distancing, isolating cases, and also the effect of having central locations that everyone travels to. The animations of everything are really good at getting the point across.
I see a fair amount of speculation that COVID-19 is a deliberate attempt at some kind of biological warfare. I haven’t seen any evidence presented for that theory. This article reports on actual scientists who have examined the question and found it wanting.
Andersen assembled a team of evolutionary biologists and virologists, including Garry, from several countries to analyze the virus for clues that it could have been human-made, or grown in and accidentally released from a lab.
“We said, ‘Let’s take this theory — of which there are multiple different versions — that the virus has a non-natural origin … as a serious potential hypothesis,’ ” Andersen says.
Meeting via Slack and other virtual portals, the researchers analyzed the virus’s genetic makeup, or RNA sequence, for clues about its origin.
It was clear “almost overnight” that the virus wasn’t human-made, Andersen says. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties.
This Nature article summarizes research conducted on the passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined on February 3 in Japanese waters. Since the population was isolated and everyone received testing, often multiple times, it makes a good controlled study of the characteristics of the virus and possibly measure the effectiveness of quarantine efforts.
