Category: Coronapanic

California: Masks will stop a viral epidemic, but won’t help with smoke

by philg

“Bay Area smoke: To breathe safely, stay inside and don’t count on masks” (Mercury News):

Don’t count on masks to help with bad air, experts say

But people shouldn’t expect much protection from the bandanas or surgical masks they have become accustomed to wearing in public to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Experts also caution against relying on the more sought-after N95 respirator masks because they are in short supply.

With wildfire smoke, microscopic soot particles, about 2.5 microns in size, can be inhaled and cause inflammation, explained John Balmes, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, in an article published on the university’s website.

There also is concern that poor air quality from the wildfires could increase the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Dr. Stephanie Christenson, an assistant professor of pulmonology at UC San Francisco, said this concern is based on preliminary research linking air pollution to increased COVID-19 susceptibility, severity and death.

Because of the pandemic, people should continue to wear cloth and surgical masks in public, because they block respiratory droplets and help slow the spread of the coronavirus, Christenson said. Unfortunately, these masks don’t block out the “very, very small” toxic particles from wildfire smoke, she said.

So the coronavirus is smaller than 2.5 microns?

Back in February, in “Can Masks Capture Coronavirus Particles?”, our big enemy was “spheres with diameters of approximately 0.125 microns (125 nm). The smallest particles are 0.06 microns, and the largest are 0.14 microns.”

As of July, the coronavirus was still 0.125 microns in size, according to “Can HEPA Air Purifiers Capture the Coronavirus?” (Wirecutter).

The McKinsey folks responsible for Enron’s success, in “Can HVAC systems help prevent the transmission of COVID-19?”, describe humans being victimized by particles as small as 0.1 microns.

Science tells us that masks are useless against smoke particles that are 2.5 microns in size and also that masks will stop a 0.125-micron coronaplague dead in its tracks. #FollowScience !

(From the New York Times, the progress of coronavirus in a state under a universal mask order and blessed with science-informed leadership:

)

See also the higher rates of coronavirus infections in masked U.S. and France compared to never-masked Sweden and barely-masked Netherlands:

From Bar Harbor, Maine:

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Join the teachers union if you don’t want the government sticking needles in your arm

by philg

One of the latest orders from the Maskachusetts governor is that children will be denied a K-12 education if they don’t submit to a flu vaccination. (In ancient times, of course, this could be conveniently obtained at the school itself in about 30 seconds, from a public health nurse with a gun, but today this will involve more than 20 minutes of paperwork at a CVS or similar.)

So everyone in the school building will have a reduced chance of getting the flu? There was a discussion about this on the town mailing list. The righteous who attended a School Committee meeting reported that the bureaucrats concluded that they lacked the power to force the teachers to accept the needle.

(How effective is the flu vaccine? Not effective enough for the British medical technocrats to recommend it for those between 11 and 65 years of age (Oxford; NHS), perhaps partly because “Over time, protection from the injected flu vaccine gradually decreases and flu strains often change.” (NHS). If the Brits are correct, perhaps the current American zeal for flu shots will lead to a lot of flu deaths among the elderly 10-20 years from now. See “Repeated flu shots may blunt effectiveness” (CMAJ, 2015))

In other coronaplague news, the town decided not to defer construction of what seems to be, on a per-student basis, the most expensive school ever built in the United States. They started demolishing the old building in June, as planned. Instead of the old building plus the temporary trailers, therefore, the school will try to operate within half of the old building and the trailers. In other words, they affirmatively decided to reduce the square footage per student in the middle of a raging viral epidemic.

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  • “Brazil’s Bolsonaro says COVID-19 vaccinations will not be mandatory” (Reuters): “Many people want the vaccine to be applied in a coercive way, but there is no law that provides for that,” Bolsonaro said in a Facebook live chat with his supporters. … “There is no way for the government – unless we live in a dictatorship – to force everyone to get vaccinated,” Mourão said in a radio interview.
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Demand for cars is UP, not DOWN

by philg

It looks as though I actually can be wrong about everything.

From March 25, When do car makers cut prices?

Shouldn’t the car manufacturers be having coronavirus special deals? A car plainly isn’t worth as much as it was two months ago. Why are the prices mostly the same? Are people actually buying cars at a similar rate to what it was a year ago? Is the shutdown of car factories roughly balancing the collapse of demand? Even with the U.S. and Europe paralyzed, Japan and China are open for business, right? They can produce a ton of cars, can’t they?

We still don’t have that new car, but it looks as though I was dead wrong as usual: “Looking to Buy a Used Car in the Pandemic? So Is Everyone Else” (nytimes, yesterday). Excerpts:

Eager to avoid public transit and Uber, and to save money, buyers are emptying dealerships.

“Used cars are supposed to depreciate, but I’d look up the book value of a car on the lot and see it was higher than at the beginning of the month,” said Adam Silverleib, president of Silko Honda in Raynham, Mass. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Early in the pandemic, when many people avoided leaving home for all but the most pressing needs, carmakers offered no-interest loans for as long as 84 months to lure buyers. With new-car inventories low, such generous incentives have mostly disappeared.

I was only 90 percent wrong about new car demand:

Those fears might be overdone. Buying a used car does not increase the number of cars on the road, of course. And sales of new cars are not taking off. If anything, part of the sudden mania for used cars stems from the yearslong rise in the price of new cars and trucks. On average, new vehicles now sell for about $38,000, more than many consumers can afford or are willing to pay.

Speaking of wrong about everything, Senior Management likes the idea of a station wagon. These are rare birds on our Planet of the SUVs and I am seriously averse to the Karenmobile (Volvo). That leaves “How Subarus Came to Be Seen as Cars for Lesbians” (Atlantic: “it’s the result of a calculated, highly progressive ad campaign launched 20 years ago.”) and… what else? We saw an interesting looking car the other day, a Buick Regal TourX:

1.4 billion Chinese consumers can’t be wrong about Buick, can they?

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What happens when cold season starts?

by philg

I’ve been in a bunch of masked-up environments recently. People have their masks off to take a sip of a beverage or a bite of a sandwich. What would happen if someone took off the mask in order to sneeze and wipe his/her/zer/their nose? Pandemonium, panic, and violence?

Are we going to end up with a society more like Japan, in which it is rude to be out in public while coughing or sneezing? (this does not seem to have helped with virus control there; the death rate from flu in Japan has been 2.5X the death rate in the U.S.)

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What’s the coronaplague situation in Peru?

by philg

From NPR, March 24, “I’m An American Stuck In Peru — Glad To Be On Lockdown To Avoid COVID-19”:

Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra had just declared a total quarantine for 15 days, halting all air and land transportation, even taxis. With fewer than 150 cases of coronavirus identified at the time, the Andean country was immediately going into lockdown to stem the spread of the virus. … We have followed the daily White House briefings, where U.S. leaders often insisted what a great job they were doing but stopped short of announcing a national lockdown. … By contrast, on Friday in Peru, President Vizcarra addressed his nation in a speech that sent his popularity skyrocketing. He insisted on the urgency of the quarantine, then chastised those Peruvians who disregarded it and the local authorities who didn’t enforce it “with the strictness this situation requires.” … In the next few days, TV news showed images of residents on their apartment balconies cheering on police and public health enforcers in the streets. … Peru’s swift shutdown of intercity travel is likely to help reduce the spread of the virus. The government’s actions, the nation’s solidarity and seriousness of its approach have raised our hopes that the quarantine will expire as planned on March 31, and the disaster will be controlled enough to permit limited travel for folks like us to return home. … At least the measures here mesh with the lessons The New York Times drew from a study of Italy, the new epicenter of the virus: “that steps to isolate the coronavirus and people’s movement need to be put in place early, with absolute clarity, then strictly enforced.” U.S. infections have surged each day yet the federal government has remained reluctant to impose drastic actions. Other countries such as Italy and Spain have enforced quarantines, but too late to stop COVID-19 from ravaging them. … When we do get out, what scares us most is the life we may encounter when we get to the U.S.

From June, Christian Science Monitor:

Peru set a global example of quick action in the face of COVID-19, implementing a nationwide lockdown March 16, soon after its first confirmed case. The government invested in respirators and hospital beds, and offered bonuses to medical professionals. It designed an economic relief package that not only offered low-interest loans to businesses and helped employers keep workers on payrolls, but also targeted the poor, vulnerable, and self-employed with vital cash transfers.

In other words, the country did everything right thanks to effective leadership. However…

Despite Peru’s lauded response efforts, it now [in June] has one of the world’s longest lockdowns, and the second-highest tally of COVID-19 cases in Latin America, with more than 264,000 cases and more than 8,000 people killed. In the region, Peru ranks only behind Brazil, which has taken a decidedly less deliberate approach to halting the pandemic. Where things went wrong, experts say, was in misunderstanding the dynamics of poverty in a country that has gained “middle-income” status over two decades of growth.

Peru took the same kind of muscular action that was credited with keeping Covid-19 deaths in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to 0. But the virus went in a different direction in Peru, suggesting that humans do not control the virus. The WHO dashboard shows Peru having the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate, having surpassed (female-led) Belgium, Spain, the UK, Chile, the wicked scoffers in Brazil, the unfortunate Italians, the wicked Swedes with their anti-lockdown anti-mask MD/PhDs, and we Americans, so sorely lacking in the national leadership that would intimidate the virus.

Peru has had a lot of problems with drug-resistant tuberculosis. Maybe it is a place where microbes infecting the lungs happens to flourish?

Readers: What do we know about Peru right now? Can it be said that the God of Shutdown is a fickle god and is punishing truly righteous Peruvians for reasons that we will never understand?

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Will the post-plague world change the work-versus-welfare tradeoff?

by philg

Some of my friends were discussing whether adjustments due to coronapanic will make it irrational for more Americans to work, rather than to set themselves up for welfare (means-tested public housing, Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphone). As with child support profits, there is a a lot of variability from state to state. From Cato’s work-versus-welfare trade-off 2013:

What’s changed with coronaplague? The desk jobs are less fun: sit at home and stare at a screen all day. The non-desk jobs are more dangerous: work in a supermarket and be exposed to hundreds of people every day, any one of whom might kill you with a breath.

What about spending? An MBA friend’s perspective:

I guess the worst-hit people will be those who earn $80-150k

They used to be able to afford a lot of “near luxury” stuff despite not being eligible for the good welfare gravy train and despite the high taxes that the government hits them with to support the welfare gravy train. but now they will be stuck at home. Near-luxury goods such as restaurant meals, airline tickets, theater tickets, and theme park tickets all go way up in price due to mandated de-crowding measures,

Everything will cost more. so the difference between their lifestyle and a welfare family will become minimal. since they won’t be able to afford meals out anymore. they would be better off not working, playing Xbox and swiping EBT card for food. do some cash labor for luxuries (if cash isn’t outlawed under the pretext that it spreads coronavirus!).

Readers: What do you think? Except for those who can earn well above the median, will working be a completely irrational choice for an American?

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Rich college kids immune to coronaplague?

by philg

A friend who is a professor at NYU told me that so far they’ve found only five students who test positive for coronavirus. He says that this is a population of 24,000 undergraduates who converge from all corners of the U.S. (there are additional foreign students, ordinarily, but presumably they are being barred from entry to the U.S. due to the Trumpenfuhrer’s cruel entry bans that were imposed in February and March).

From an official NYU update:

7,772 COVID-19 PCR diagnostic tests were performed on students (including those who arrived early for quarantining) at the two NYU testing centers — Gould Plaza and 6 MetroTech — established for testing students. Five tested positive; all are in isolation, are being monitored by the COVID-19 Prevention & Response Team, and will not be permitted to enter NYU facilities until cleared.

and regarding the prison camp that they’re running…

Last week, some 2,700 students moved into residence halls to begin a two-week quarantine period, which the University sought to support by opening the residence halls early and delivering meals (both at no cost to students).

The move-in went well; the meal service less so. The food service was an unprecedentedly complex undertaking for the University and its food vendor, Chartwells, involving delivery of three meals per day to the door of each of the 2,700 students’ rooms, a substantial percentage of which were individualized, specialized meals. We fell short of the plans we had in place. Chartwells has taken a number of measures to correct the initial missteps — including doubling the food preparation and delivery staff — that have helped, and we are continuing to make efforts to improve meal service for the quarantining students in the residence halls.

So the $80,000/year “hybrid” education starts with two weeks of incarceration!

American Pravda says that the U.S. has roughly 40,000 new cases per day. That’s nearly 300,0000 per week (reasonable length of infection for a 20-year-old?). Assume that there are two people who would have tested positive, but didn’t get a test, for every actual positive test? That’s close to 1 million. Based on a U.S. population of 330 million, we should have at least 1 in 400 people currently infected with coronaplague, right? But NYU had at least 7,772 tests and only 5 positives, only 1/4 the expected rate. What can we infer from this? The U.S. actually is testing everyone who might conceivably be positive? Asymptomatic infection is less common that we thought? Families that are rich enough to pay $80,000/year for an education that is no better than what is available at the local State U are not infected? What?

(How does the $80,000/year education actually work? Roughly one third of the students show up in person to any given lecture. The teacher tries to manage a forest of newly installed Zoom monitors so as to be able to interact with the two thirds of the students who are present via Zoom. There is a tech support hotline number in case the teacher is not a desktop computer system administration wizard. Classes start today.)

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Why are we still out of paper towels and spray cleaner?

by philg

It has been six months since coronapanic started. Why is the local Target still out of paper towels, spray cleaners such as Formula 409, cleaning wipes, etc. People are actually using way more of these items? The Chinese can build a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days, but American factories can’t expand production in 6 months?

From August 26, 2020, the Target store in Watertown, Maskachusetts:

(shoppers were continuously reminded via the overhead audio system that wearing a mask was required, a bit like being at an airport and hearing warnings about unattended baggage over and over again)

Maybe AOC and Ed Markey are right? Capitalism is a failure?

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U.S. retail will have permanently shorter European-style hours as a result of coronapanic?

by philg

With tens of millions of Americans on the “$600 per week and chill” plan, a lot of retailers shortened their hours. In theory, things should be getting back to normal (it was a brief shutdown to “flatten the curve,” right?), but at least our local supermarkets seem to have kept their new shorter hours.

Are we on track to become more like Europe, where if you don’t want to conform to the standard hours you won’t be able to get meals, food, etc.? (walk around Paris and see if you can find a 24-hour CVS!)

Readers: What have you seen in your regions of the country? Are hours still curtailed?

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COVID-19 kills the malls

by philg

Some of our recent helicopter flying has been with a photographer tasked with getting pictures of shopping malls in the context of highways, cities, etc. What are these for? “Everything is for sale now,” he said. “They’re all going bankrupt.”

Is it actually too late for these spaces? If schools need more square footage to do in-person learning, why not rent the vast department stores to local school districts? Because the schools aren’t actually willing to pay? In Shanghai, a typical mall might have half the space devoted to after-school programs for children, e.g., dance or English-language instruction. Perhaps that can’t work in the U.S. because at any time a governor can make it illegal to operate the after-school program.

Readers: What else can be done with these spaces? If retail and most other forms of gathering are outlawed, what is the value of a lot of climate-controlled space?

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