Category: Coronaplague

Why not heated furniture to fight coronaplague?

by philg

In their righteous muscular efforts to “control” coronavirus, some state governors and city mayors have ordered restaurants shut down, except for outdoor dining. In response, restaurants have built four-sided tents filled with CO2-emitting propane heaters. It is unclear why this is different from being indoors, other than the lack of a real HVAC system. The tent sides are necessary, though, because otherwise the propane heat will blow away.

Why not heat the customers instead of the air?

Back in 2010, I wrote Heated Furniture to Save Energy?

A lot of cars have heated seats. When the seat heater is on, most drivers will set the interior temperature 3-7 degrees lower than with the seat heater off. Why not apply the same technology to houses?

Imagine being at home in a 65-degree house. Even in a T-shirt and jeans, it would probably be comfortable to walk around, stir a pot on the stove, carry laundry, scrub and clean, walk on a treadmill while typing on a computer (as I’m doing now!). However, if one were to sit down and read a book, it would begin to seem cold. Why not install heat in all of the seats and beds of the house? And sensors to turn the heat on and off automatically? In a lot of ways, this would be more comfortable than a current house because the air temperature would be set for actively moving around while the seat temperature would be set for sedentary activities.

There is a fine line between brilliant and stupid, of course, but could it be that coronaplague has pushed this idea over the line?

A Dutch company, sit & heat, seems to have thought of this: heated cushions that can fit into a standard frame. Serta makes a chair-shaped electric quilt (could not survive outdoors) for only $64. A plastic chair with a built-in 750-watt heater is $900 (Galanter & Jones; they have sofas too at roughly $6,000 and claim they are “cast stone”).

If heated chairs were mass-produced in Asia, presumably the cost per chair would be only about $100 more than a regular outdoor chair. That should be affordable for a restaurant.

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Does disinfectant theater contribute to coronaplague?

by philg

Text message exchange with a couple of 24-year-olds:

  • Me: We can come over now.
  • Them: We are at the gym!
  • Me: You’re always there. I am amazed you haven’t gotten coronaplague yet!
  • Them: Hahaha I know! The gym we go to is super clean.

Surface contamination has been ruled out as a significant source of coronavirus infection, right? (see below, however, for how cleaning can cut flu risk by 2 percent) Everyone agrees that it is now mostly about aerosols and therefore a gym is a perfect environment for spreading, yes? (People breathing hard and relying on non-N95 masks and/or bandanas as PPE.)

Masks make people complacent and prone to ignoring instructions to keep a 6′ distance. I wonder if the sight of workers with spray bottles and paper towels has the same effect. These 24-year-olds feel that they are significantly less likely to get infected because they’ve seen every surface being wiped, despite the fact that wiped surfaces are irrelevant when faced with an aerosol enemy.

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Elites dine out in Los Angeles while schools for the non-elites are closed

by philg

“LA County Supervisor dines at restaurant hours after voting to ban outdoor dining” (Fox 11, LA):

Just hours after Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted to ban outdoor dining at L.A. County’s 31,000 restaurants over COVID-19 safety concerns, she visited a restaurant in Santa Monica, where she dined outdoors, FOX 11 has learned on Monday.

During Tuesday’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, Kuehl referred to outside dining as “a most dangerous situation” over what she described as a risk of tables of unmasked patrons potentially exposing their servers to the coronavirus.

“This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously,” Kuehl said.

“The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”

Kuehl went on to vote in support of restricting outdoor dining in Los Angeles County, which passed by a 3-2 margin of the Board of Supervisors.

In other words, reasonable minds can differ on whether or not restaurant dining is permissible. Everyone can agree that public schools for children of the non-elite, closed since March, should remain closed. From the LAUSD site (retrieved 12/1):

As the level of the virus in the Los Angeles area remains widespread, state guidelines say schools cannot reopen at this time, and we will not reopen schools until it’s safe and appropriate to do so. We are preparing to serve students at schools as soon as it’s possible, in the safest way possible. Our plans include the highest standards for health, education and employee practices at schools.

Meanwhile, in Frogland… “Positive Test Rate of 11 Percent? France’s Schools Remain Open.” (NYT) How about in “give the finger to the virus” territory? From “Sweden has kept schools open during the pandemic despite spike in cases”:

“I think it is good that they don’t wear face masks,” one mother tells FRANCE 24, as she leaves her children at school. “I think it is very important that they go to school, otherwise it would be very difficult for me to work.”

The teachers also believe it is very important to stay open, particularly for struggling students.

“They need a teacher in the same room as them to cheer them on and clarify things,” says Charlotte Hammarback, a teacher at the NYA Elementary School in Stockholm. “Most of the time these students will not ask for help, they will just sit and wait until someone comes up to them.”

No-mask Mom doesn’t #FollowScience!

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Implementations of outdoor school for plague prevention

by philg

What about my May 2020 dream Plague-proof Florida and Texas with shaded outdoor classrooms?

“Classrooms Without Walls, and Hopefully Covid” (NYT) says that it is vaguely alive, but the examples are mostly in the frozen north. The efforts at physical infrastructure have been feeble. And, instead of simply teaching the regular curriculum, the schools are trying to reinvent teaching at the same time as reinventing the teaching environment.

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Will almost everyone have had COVID-19 by the time the vaccines are available?

by philg

“Government Model Suggests U.S. COVID-19 Cases Could Be Approaching 100 Million” (NPR):

The actual number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. reached nearly 53 million at the end of September and could be approaching 100 million now, according to a model developed by government researchers.

Since [September], the CDC’s tally of confirmed infections has increased to 12.5 million. So if the model’s ratio still holds, the estimated total would now be greater than 95 million, leaving about 71% of the population uninfected.

The model, created by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calculated that the true number of infections is about eight times the reported number, which includes only the cases confirmed by a laboratory test. … Some of these antibody studies have suggested that only about one in 10 coronavirus infections is reported.

Cases are currently “spiking” all over the U.S.:

We yearned for ventilators and, by the time they were available, realized that we didn’t need or want them (since they actually harm the typical COVID-19 patient). Currently we yearn for vaccines, but perhaps we won’t need or want them by the time they’re available in significant quantity. (Though perhaps a vaccine could be useful to boost the immunity of someone who’d had COVID-19 the natural way a year earlier.)

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Should we follow the Pope’s advice and make it illegal to drive to church?

by philg

“Pope Francis: A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts” (NYT):

With some exceptions [here’s looking at you, Sweden!], governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.

Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!

(Imagine a healthy 21-year-old believing that being locked into his/her/zir/their apartment is a reduction in his/her/zir/their personal freedom! He/she/ze/they is free to sit in any room in the apartment, watch any TV show, and eat anything/everything from the fridge.)

If we take the Pope at his/her/zir/their word, after coronaplague is a distant memory shouldn’t it be illegal for people to drive to a Catholic church? When it is quite easy for people to participate via Zoom, if “protecting health and saving lives” is the #1 goal, why let anyone subject themselves and others to the risk of an accident on the roads? A person killed from a car accident is just as dead as a person killed by COVID-19 (and, in fact, the loss of life-years is likely to be much higher due to the much younger age and better health of the average car accident victim).

God is everywhere, according to the Catholic religion. If we #FollowThePope, why shouldn’t the government protect health and save lives by forbidding anyone from driving to church in order to find God?

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Why aren’t saliva tests for COVID-19 widely available?

by philg

We’re more than a year into coronaplague. Saliva-based tests were developed back in the spring of 2020. At least here in Maskachusetts, children need COVID-19 tests before they can return to school following the sniffles and/or a trip to the cousins’ house (nearly every state in the U.S. is considered hazardous, even those with lower coronavirus infection rates than Massachusetts itself). Why isn’t is possible for children and adults to go to the local strip mall, spit, and have Kary Mullis‘s magic PCR machine give a thumbs up or thumbs down answer a few hours later?

(Is it the same answer as why we can’t buy Bounty or Formula 409? The U.S. managed to ramp up production of sophisticated aircraft during World War II (partial list). Why can’t we ramp up production of the tests that our governors and school bureaucrats are demanding? (separate issue as to whether there is any medical value to these tests! Last I checked with an MGH doctor, hospital care for COVID-19 patients still consisted primarily of “monitoring” and the care would be the same regardless of test result))

From the CVS MyChart site (November 26):

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Thanksgiving in the Land of Liberty

by philg

A round-up of Thanksgiving policies in the Land of Liberty (TM), COVID-19 edition:

Feel better about paying $trillions for the military that protects us from losing our liberty to the Canadians or Mexicans!

An immigrant originally from Moscow: “I never imagined that one day people would have more freedom in Russia than in the U.S.”

If you’re a sports car enthusiast, this floor sign from the National Corvette Museum might be a good addition to your living room before the relatives show up…

(Photo taken on Monday. Hardly anyone was adhering to this rule. Just as the Swedish MD/PhDs predicted, once you tell humans that masks will protect them, they don’t worry about proximity to other humans.)

Readers: I hope that your turkey cooking goes well! Our dish towel:

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Vegas casinos implement some of my coronaplague ideas

by philg

As readers of this blog may recall, I’m a big enthusiast for reengineering our environment so as to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses such as coronaplague:

One thing that I’ve been wondering for months is that, with $trillions allocated for dealing with coronaplague, why we don’t see handwashing sinks appear in more places.

Where is my dream alive? Based on a recent visit… Las Vegas! There are now sinks in the middle of the casino. Wave don’t push to open the doors. From the ARIA:

Instead of impressing by valet parking our rented Dodge Journey, we had to self park it almost everywhere.

Supposedly casinos were limited to 50 percent occupancy during our visit (just recently cut to 25 percent), but most felt uncomfortably packed. People proved the Swedish MD/PhDs correct: told that masks will prevent coronaplague, they ignore the 6′ social distance directive (and 7′ is the new 6′, according to the overhead projections on Fremont Street; see below and note that folks who confront Covid-19 at 350 lbs. or more can eat for free at the Heart Attack Grill).

Also from Fremont Street, the Main Street casino where whatever you lose goes to Wall Street and the California casino where presumably you’re funding retired public employees…

One positive for Vegas in the Age of Coronapanic is that one’s eyeglasses tend not to fog up when wearing a mask. Dry and hot is apparently perfect!

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