Author: philg

Have we figured out whether coronavirus is significantly spread via contaminated surfaces?

by philg

“NYC subways will close overnight for coronavirus cleanings” (New York Post):

New York’s 24/7 subway system will shutter nightly from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to facilitate coronavirus cleaning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday in a historic move.

“You never had a challenge of disinfecting every train every 24 hours,” said Cuomo in an Albany press briefing, a problem he earlier this week directed the MTA to solve. “It can best be done by stopping train service from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. every night.”

The “massive undertaking” is expected to impact 10,000 riders nightly, according to Cuomo, who said buses, vans and for-hire vehicles will be provided to pick up the slack.

“You do have essential workers who are using our trains and subways, and they will have transportation during that period of time,” Cuomo vowed.

The larger push to clean up the subway system has been made for those workers, who Cuomo said deserve better than dangerous, unsanitary trips to and from the front lines.

“It is our obligation as human beings to reciprocate, and make sure we’re doing everything we can,” he said.

Fine words, of course, from a guy who will probably not be working at 2:00 am with a bottle of Formula 409. But is there any evidence that touching surfaces previously touched by the plague-infected is a significant source of transmission? Is it touching door handles and subway poles that have turned New York into Wuhan-on-the-Hudson or is it sharing air, while actually together inside the subway and buses, that is primarily responsible?

For those of us who don’t live in a plague center (Boston and New York are the only ones left in the U.S.?), should we be touching everything with a cloth, OCD-style, or not worrying too much if we’re not in a crowded space?

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We are all pinheads compared to the Ancient Greeks and Romans

by philg

One of my activities during the coronaplague has been listening to Major Transitions in Evolution, a 24-lecture course that probably is best enjoyed in the video format because there are a lot of fossils presented. (And let me remind readers that the theory of evolution is only a theory!)

Are you an elderly curmudgeon who believes that every successive generation has been getting dumber? Do you think that the 19th century British were right to emphasize the study of Greek and Roman authors?

Science backs you up!

Over the last 10,000 years, human brains have been getting smaller! Professor John Hawks says that our brains have shrunk nearly 10 percent in relatively recent times and quite a bit of the shrinkage has occurred since Virgil was having a slave scribble out the Aeneid.

(Upset about all of the head injuries that occur as part of our sports culture? Our skull bones have been getting thinner as well.)

Related:

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Canadians want us to have all of their assault weapons

by philg

My gun enthusiast friends are excited by “Canada bans assault-style weapons after its worst ever mass murder” (CNN):

“You don’t need an AR-15 to bring down a deer,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a news conference in Ottawa. “So, effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons in this country.”

“These weapons were designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada,” Trudeau said.

Commonsense gun control, certainly. Canadians don’t want anyone to be shot and killed, so the weapons will be melted down and turned into shovels to dig up oil sands that can be turned into crude oil (after emitting tons of CO2 for processing), right? Maybe not:

The ban is effective immediately but disposal of the weapons will be subject to a two-year amnesty period. Trudeau said some form of compensation would also be put in place but the firearms can also be exported and sold after a proper export license is obtained.

So there is “no use and no place for such weapons in Canada”, but maybe, in Justin Trudeau’s opinion, people in Detroit need them for blasting coronavirus out of the air?

[Update, inspired by a comment below: Human life is priceless, which is why we need to shut down our economy for 50 years, if necessary, to prevent even one needless death from Covid-19. Assault rifles are dangerous and put human life, which is priceless, at risk. Why wait two years to collect them? Shouldn’t the weapons be collected no later than Monday at 5 pm?]

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Is the face mask the Church of Shutdown’s hijab?

by philg

Our town, which has a 2-acre zoning minimum, has imposed a rule requiring the “Use of Face Coverings”, starting today. People cannot be out of their yards without a mask:

Roads, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and trails: Walkers, joggers, cyclists, inline skaters, and skiers must wear face coverings when approaching or overtaking other persons. When no other person is nearby, the face covering may be worn under the chin in a position from which it can be quickly pulled up over the nose and mouth when needed. When approaching or overtaking another person, both parties must move off the path to the side to establish at least six feet of separation.

Most of the roads don’t have sidewalks, so this means people who are separated by the width of a two-lane road have to be masked. “Skiers” are mentioned, so it seems that the Church of Shutdown is preparing for a full year of worship.

Given that no effective masks are available for purchase in Massachusetts, the good news is that one can comply with this rule by wearing “scarf or bandana.” But aren’t those essentially useless against tiny particles of virus escaping into the air? If we can agree that bandanas and scarves are not adequate functional substitutes for surgical masks, is it fair to consider them religious symbols, i.e., the Church of Shutdown’s hijabs?

(Of course, it may also be impossible to buy a bandana:

Can the police arrest and/or fine people for failure to possess what cannot be purchased?)

Readers: What kind of evidence is there that a suburban street or sidewalk with a handful of walkers per hour, or a trail in the woods where people pass each other every 10 minutes (for example), will make any difference to whether a Covid-19 outbreak is sustained? (Separately, in what American suburb has a Covid-19 outbreak ever been sustained, despite up to two months of pre-shutdown spreading? For example, have we heard of a case of someone traveling from a St. Louis suburb to New York City for a Broadway show in February and then returning home to infect neighbors on the other sides of the white picket fences? The NYT map below doesn’t suggest that the fabled exponential growth has occurred anywhere in the U.S. other than a few cities.)

Related:

  • “The case for reopening America’s parks” (Vox): Another Chinese study looking at 318 outbreaks featuring three or more Covid-19 cases adding up to 1,245 total confirmed cases across more than 100 cities found just one instance of outdoor transmission.
  • Governor’s state-wide order on face masks: This applies to both indoor and outdoor spaces. … A face covering can include anything that covers your nose and mouth, including dust masks, scarves and bandanas. … make sure you wash the cloth mask regularly. Wash your hands or use hand sanitizer after touching the mask. [i.e., use the hand sanitizer that you can’t buy after touching the bandana that you can’t buy]
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How productive are you during this coronplague shutdown?

by philg

Happy International Workers’ Day, comrades!

How productive are you and your co-workers now that everyone has gone to work-from-home?

In my small survey of for-profit enterprises that are still up and running, but dispersed, popular answers are in the 75-80 percent range. (Massachusetts public schools, however, are down closer to 10 percent.)

One manager at a “Big Tech” firm said that he expected productivity to fall as new projects were undertaken, but that 75-80 percent was a good number for the current work. He’s in Silicon Valley where hardly anyone has children. A manager at a “Big Tech” coding plantation here in Cambridge, also said that her team was at 80 percent. “Really?” I asked. “What about the people with children.” Her response: “Oh, they’re useless.”

Readers: What are you experiencing? If companies can truly work at 80 percent without an (expensive) office, can this be boosted up to the point where office space can be cut out? And if remote work does become popular, why will people want to stay in high-tax high-cost mediocre-weather states such as Massachusetts, New York (#1 in overall state and local tax burden), and New Jersey? Why not sell the $1 million 2,000 square-foot house in MA and work from home in a $1 million 6,000 square-foot house in Texas or Florida, while paying nothing in state income tax?

Related:

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American health care workers rage against preferences for the H-1Bers

by philg

A friend is a physician in a moderately coronaplagued city here in the Northeast. She’s in a private discussion group for hospital workers. Since they actually do have some Covid-19 patients, they’re not in as bad financial shape as physicians, nurses, and other health care workers nationwide. However, they are having their hours, shifts, and pay cut…. except for the workers on H-1B visas.

Ordinarily, these folks are at least moderately pro-immigration. A caravan of Hondurans that crosses the border should be eligible for Medicaid soon enough, and certainly any children born to those Hondurans while they’re in the U.S. will be Medicaid-eligible. Medicaid will turn the “migrants” into “customers”.

Having their hours cut while the H-1B workers soldier on full-time at full pay, however, is apparently an unanticipated and bitter pill to swallow.

Where is the solidarity for International Workers’ Day?

(Personally, I think the rule makes sense. The H-1B workers do not have the flexibility to quit and work for another employer. So an employer of one of these indentured migrant servants shouldn’t have the right to cut hours and pay.)

Related:

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Order that Oshkosh 2020 T-shirt now

by philg

EAA Airventure (“Oshkosh”) is canceled (press release).

Is it time to buy the Oshkosh 2020 T-shirts? Unlike with Tokyo 2020, they won’t rename next year’s event, I don’t think.

Ordinarily I don’t like T-shirts that feature airplanes I am not qualified to fly, but if the event is fictional maybe it is not so bad to implicitly claim fictional flying skills, e.g., with this P-40 Oshkosh 2020 shirt:

Or use a magic marker to update “Cleared Direct” to “Cleared to Cower in Place”?

Admittedly, Covid-19 is targeting the general aviation demographic. Of the 316 people killed by the evil virus in Wisconsin, the largest cluster is among those 90+:

Ninety is unfortunately close to the median age of single-engine piston aircraft pilots and perhaps younger than the expected age at completion of a homebuilt project…

Related:

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Will the post-plague world be a better place for rich people?

by philg

A year ago I went to Disney World with a rich friend (post). He paid up $8,000 for two days of a VIP guide who enabled us to cut the lines. It still wasn’t that nice, however, due to the Times Square-ish crowds everywhere when we weren’t on a ride. I proposed the idea of a “crowd hater day” at each park each week where the ticket price would be 2X so that there would be some breathing room.

Every aspect of our Disney experience was ideal for spreading coronavirus. Even with the VIP guide we were jammed into crowds periodically. Dining was a mob scene. Shopping was mobbed.

I wonder if the parks will reopen with a capacity set by the tyrannical government at some level that seems unlikely to set off the next epidemic. If so, the most logical method for rationing the remaining tickets will be price. And Disney will have to raise the prices to get a similar level of revenue (since their overall expenses will be similar). So the parks will actually become a lot nicer for anyone who can afford $300/person for a ticket.

How about restaurants? If they have to cut capacity to 25 or 50 percent, as some of the reopened ones in various states are being ordered to do, again it seems as though though they’ll have to raise prices. So rich people will experience a negligible (to them) price penalty and a huge bonus in terms of peace and quiet for conversation, reduced waiting times for a table, etc. (Coincidentally, just as this post went live, a former student posted to Facebook a picture of herself eating wagyu steak in a Taipei restaurant’s private room. Their party of 4 was nicely spread out at a table that, in former times, would have easily held 8-12. As with most MIT students, she was born with an off-the-charts intellectual ability and then she has worked hard for 20 years. (She’s not “white” nor does she identify as “male” so you can’t say this is due to “white male privilege”!))

Getting to Disney? I am dreaming that airlines won’t ever be able to sell the middle seats anymore! As long as they bump prices by 50 percent, though, they can still have the same revenue with somewhat richer customers. Spirit prices are essentially $0 from the perspective of a rich American. It shouldn’t be a problem to pay 1.5 * $0.

Readers: What do you think? If everything has to be de-crowded and prices consequently raised, isn’t that actually a good thing from the perspective of the richest 5-10 percent of Americans?

Related:

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Heteronormative Prejudice and Gender Binarism from the Census Bureau

by philg

Note the priority given to the options for a person who might live in the same house or apartment:

Image may contain: text

Textbook Heteronormativity.

The gender ID choices:

Textbook Gender Binarism.

Aside from the agency’s failure to get up to speed on LGBTQIA+ issues, I have to say that Census has given us a good example of web design. Maybe it is best not to try to figure out what these forms cost the taxpayer, but the overall IT budget is in the $billions.

A 2019 article, “2020 U.S. census plagued by hacking threats, cost overruns”:

The effort to move the census online aims to streamline the counting process, improve accuracy, and rein in cost increases as the population rises and survey response rates decline. Adjusting for 2020 dollars, the 1970 census cost $1.1 billion, a figure that rose steadily to $12.3 billion by 2010, the most recent count. The 2020 tally is projected at $15.6 billion, including a $1.5 billion allowance for cost overruns.

U.S. population was 205 million in 1970 compared to 330 million today. So a 61% rise in population corresponds to a 1400% increase in cost.

We are informed by the New York Times that Vladimir Putin does all of our voting for us (but it is the Chinese who post coronapanic on Facebook). Will Mr. Putin also fill out our Census forms?

T-Rex’s work, which includes security, data storage and performance testing, is projected to cost taxpayers up to $1.4 billion, according to the census budget.

So if the $1.4 billion in spending includes a firewall, we will have to complete these forms ourselves…

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Number of new Covid-19 cases are (finally) on the decline worldwide?

by philg

On March 26, I asked “Number of new COVID-19 cases worldwide is declining now?” (updated every few days with data and comments) Within just a couple of days, the answer seemed to be “no”.

I’m wondering if we can finally say that coronavirus has flattened its own curve when viewed from a planetary perspective. Today’s comment:

Sweden 695 new cases/81 deaths; Denmark 153/7; Massachusetts 1,963/252. With 3,405 deaths so far in Massachusetts versus 2,355 in Sweden, the Massachusetts death rate (adjusted for population size), halfway through our second month of lockdown, is 2X Sweden’s. India has experienced only 31,332 cases and 1,007 deaths, despite the vast population and impracticality of a true lockdown.

With roughly the same number of “new cases” worldwide as at the beginning of the month, despite what must be an increased testing capacity, I am prepared to guess that the number of new cases is actually declining. Deaths in today’s report were 5,376. Deaths reported on April 1 were 4,193. (If my guesses continue to prove wrong, this will qualify me for a job as an epidemiologist at the University of Washington’s Bill Gates-funded Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation!)

Readers: What do you think? Given the almost-flat new-case count, despite radically increased testing capacity, and the almost-flat death count, despite the time interval between infection and death, is it fair to say that the human race has reached at least some sort of steady state situation with coronavirus? Or can we even say that coronavirus is declining?

Also, how do we explain India? The population did not have natural immunity. Only a small percentage of the population has the practical means to isolate themselves the way that an American suburbanite could.

Related/Unrelated… Some young folks meet in the Target parking lot in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:

They invited us to join them and it was a nice conversation until the roof of the Toyota Avalon crew car collapsed…

A separate question to which I don’t have a good answer is “Why do all of these young people comply?” In theory, they have a First Amendment right to assemble. Maybe some of them will be persuaded by the media and/or by sentiment that they have to sacrifice their social lives in order to protect hypothetical elderly Americans (82 is the average age of a Covid-19 fatality in Massachusetts, with more than 98 percent having an “underlying condition”). But why would most of them or nearly all of them do that? And unless we can keep almost all of our social young people locked down, containing coronavirus is hopeless, right? There has never been a situation in which old people have had long-term success telling young people what to do, has there?

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