Covid-19 will go away if we just keep our schools closed

by philg

Good news from the Department of Correlation DOES Equal Causation: if we keep our schools closed, coronavirus will go away and leave us alone. From the maximally prestigious JAMA: “Association Between Statewide School Closure and COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality in the US”

Some excerpts:

All 50 states closed schools between March 13, 2020, and March 23, 2020.

The absolute effects associated with school closure during the 26-day period after school closure (days 17-42), which were calculated using model estimates with the assumption of linear growth, yielded 638.7 cases per 100 000 that would have occurred if schools had remained open (Table 3). Compared with the 214.8 cases per 100 000 estimated from the school closure model, the absolute difference associated with school closure was 423.9 (95% CI, 375.0 to 463.7) cases per 100 000.

In March 2020, states enacted multiple nonpharmaceutical interventions, including closing schools, nonessential businesses, and restaurants and bars, and prohibiting large gatherings, to curb SARS-CoV-2 spread and prevent death. Completely isolating the effects of any single nonpharmaceutical intervention is impossible because recommendations for increased handwashing, cleaning, and wearing of masks evolved simultaneously. Measured COVID-19 incidence also was affected by testing availability, which was limited early in the pandemic and varied nationally.

The authors reject the “Flatten the Curve” dogma as it was explained to us back in March. Infections are not merely delayed. They are prevented. The shutdown was “to curb SARS-CoV-2 spread and prevent death” and “school closure may be effective in curbing SARS-CoV-2 spread and preventing deaths during future outbreaks.”

Should we be more afraid of touching a dog with coronaplague in his/her/zir/their fur (an often-voiced concern of neighbors here in the Boston area) or a child?

Studies have documented lower attack rates for children, and children comprise a small proportion of documented infections. Children may be less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, studies have documented viral shedding in asymptomatic children.

#AbundanceOfCaution time! #KeepThemSafeKeepSchoolsShut!

If you’re going to criticize this paper, keep in mind that, based on the journal, this is the absolute pinnacle of American medical thinking! I would like to re-title the paper, though, even if I don’t feel distinguished enough to criticize the statistical methods employed. Philip’s title for this work: “We closed our schools in March 2020 and coronavirus has hardly bothered us since then.”

Below, a picture of something we won’t be doing any time soon… bringing one of the flight school helicopters to a local school and explaining to the youngsters how it flies.

Related:

  • “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”
  • “Teachers Are Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too” (NYT, July 29): Unions are threatening to strike if classrooms reopen, but are also pushing to limit live remote teaching. Their demands will shape pandemic education. … remote learning failed many children this spring, deepening achievement gaps by race and income. … one of the stickiest points of contention being how many hours per day teachers should be required to teach live via video. … a full school day over video would not be feasible for either students or teachers (although some private schools have embraced it).
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Boston Bruins hockey team and Black Lives Matter

by philg

“How Bruins Plan to Support Black Lives Matter During National Anthems” (NBC Boston):

The Bruins plan to lock arms during the playing of the Canadian and U.S. national anthems prior to games in the restarted 2020 NHL season, the team announced Tuesday.

The gesture will be “a sign of solidarity with the Black community,” per the team, and is “solely intended to be a positive sign of support for the Black community, and a way for us to use our platform to help end racism.”

Is this the ultimate proof that BLM is actually a movement by and for white people? (click on the photo below, the result of typing “Boston Bruins fans” into Google image search, and let me know if you see any people of color!)

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Visual artists will switch to outdoor sculpture due to plague?

by philg

With art museums closed or compromised (regulated pre-arranged visit times, masks, etc.) and art galleries damaged by the destruction of American retail, will visual artists switch to outdoor sculpture?

If most people with money flee the cities to suburban or country estates, and then spend a lot of time imprisoned in their yards, that’s a big market for attractive sculpture, right?

From the Storm King Art Center, now somewhat reopened (good day trip due to being adjacent to a near-infinite-length runway at KSWF; Dia:Beacon will reopen August 7):

(you may be able to park next to Donald Trump’s family Boeing 757 at KSWF, which is where it lives)

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Why hasn’t coronavirus been able to succeed in Laos, Vietnam, or Cambodia?

by philg

From The Google:

  • Vietnam population: 95 million
  • Laos population: 7 million
  • Cambodia population: 16 million

Number of deaths from Covid-19 so far among these nearly 120 million people? WHO data: 0.

People in these three countries can be smarter than Americans and Europeans, certainly. So perhaps they have managed coronaplague better than Americans and Europeans. But is it reasonable to assume that they’re infinitely smarter? That’s the assumption that we would need to explain an actual death rate of 0.

Maybe these countries are not good at testing and diagnosing Covid-19 compared to Americans and Europeans. But can they be infinitely bad at testing and diagnosing? That’s the assumption that we would need to explain a reported death rate of 0.

Unlike New Zealand and some similar success stories featured in our media, these countries are not islands, protected from immigrating viruses by a Trump-style wall of ocean. They are snuggled up against China, the original source of the “non-Chinese virus”. China is a big trading partner for these countries.

Readers: What could account for 0 deaths out of 120 million population? A mostly immune population due to previous exposure to a similar virus?

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Focus on Black Lives Matter degrades business performance?

by philg

I am hopeful that readers will notice a more responsive server as of last night. The virtual server behind this site had hit a load average of 21 while simultaneously using only 1-3 percent CPU for user processes. How is that possible? The Unix top command was showing up to 98 percent CPU used for “st”. If you’re a dinosaur like me and most of what you learned about top was learned in the 1980s, this is confusing indeed. “st” is “steal time”, i.e., time that was “stolen” by other virtual machines on the same host and/or the hypervisor. If st is more than 10 percent, that’s a sign that the underlying physical machine is overloaded.

Why hadn’t the hosting service noticed this issue and migrated some of the demanding virtual machines off the physical machine to prevent this kind of overload? What could they be doing if not writing a Perl script to catch problems like this? “We stand with the Black community”:

(The page notes that the company will offer “Paid time off for voting”. Perhaps there will be a few decades of unpaid time off for any employee who shows up with an “All Lives Matter” T-shirt or a MAGA/KAG hat!)

The company is sufficiently committed that a banner reading “Black Lives Matter. Linode is committed to social justice and equality.” appears at the top of every page for a customer’s tech nerds. Want to know the operating system running underneath your server? IPv4 versus IPv6 traffic? See if your server was backed up? The hundreds of pages that show information like this are all headed by a “Black Lives Matter” message.

Readers: On the theory that humans aren’t great at focusing on multiple goals at the same time (witness nearly the U.S., now entirely devoted to the single goal of avoiding coronadeath and the folks who switched attention to BLM immediately abandoned all thoughts of social distancing), is it fair to say that any company that truly commits to Black Lives Matter will also deliver an inferior product and service compared to if they hadn’t made this commitment?

Related:

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Now legal to bring our filthy bags into Maskachusetts grocery stores

by philg

“Reusable Bags Allowed Again In Massachusetts Grocery Stores” (CBS):

Reusable bags have been cleared to return to checkout lines in Massachusetts, with a previous ban now removed in the latest round of Baker administration guidance affecting grocery stores.

“This is a home run — good for the environment, for public health, for reducing waste, and for protecting both workers and shoppers,” MASSPIRG executive director Janet Domenitz said in a statement.

“Reinstating bags bans, effective immediately, doesn’t give business owners a chance to use up their stock of existing plastic bags or a chance to stock back up on paper bags if they need them. Even 30-60 days advance notice would have been a help,” Reibman wrote. “?It’s bad enough that store workers have to enforce mask wearing. Requiring cashiers to be the ones who inform customers this week that they have to pay for bags again, is just cruel.”

We’ve seen how powerful a virus can be, generating enough fear to paralyze a society of 330 million, for example, despite killing only about as many people as will be replaced in a few months of immigration (see “More than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year.”). We watch as $billions continue to be spent on obsessive sanitizing of every surface that is reachable with a Lyson wipe. Does it actually make sense to encourage people to bring their filthy bags into stores again? (for a canvas bag to do less harm to the environment than a series of disposable plastic ones, the canvas bag must be re-used literally hundreds of times (Oregon Public Broadcasting))

After all of this effort to turn our grocery stores into Japanese- or Swiss-style models of cleanliness, we’re going back to bags that have been soaked in germs for years?

Bonus… the Big Save market in Hawaii, 1990. Rollei 6×6 SLR and… film!

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Jair Bolsonaro recovers from Covid-19 with the help of hydroxychloroquine

by philg

“Brazil’s President Bolsonaro says he tested negative for coronavirus” (NBC):

The right-wing leader who previously downplayed the disease posted on social media on Saturday that he had tested “negative” along with a greeting of “BOM DIA A TODOS” or “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE” in Portuguese. The posts were accompanied by a photo of Bolsonaro holding a packet of hydroxychloroquine that he credited for his quick recovery.

The 65-year-old president has gone further, dismissing the disease that has killed hundreds of thousands as nothing more than a “little flu.”

Might this prove to be the Lisbon Earthquake for the devout followers of the Church of Shutdown? From Wikipedia:

The [1755] earthquake had wide-ranging effects on the lives of the populace and intelligentsia. The earthquake had struck on an important religious holiday and had destroyed almost every important church in the city, causing anxiety and confusion amongst the citizens of a staunch and devout Roman Catholic country. Theologians and philosophers focused and speculated on the religious cause and message, seeing the earthquake as a manifestation of divine judgment.

How could the God of Shutdown have failed to strike down Jair Bolsonaro, who actively mocked the Church, compared coronaplague to influenza, agreed with Dr. Donald J. Trump, M.D. regarding hydroxychloroquine, refused the Sacrament Of The Mask until he developed symptoms (i.e., he followed the W.H.O.’s advice, circa early June!), and actively taunted mask-wearers while mocking the Rainbow Flag religion? (“Before Getting COVID, Brazilian President Said Masks ‘Are for Fairies'”)

Here’s a bizarre unexplained angle to the story…. “Jair Bolsonaro is denounced in The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity” includes a picture of the genocidal maniac sitting next to a Hanukkah menorah (a bit out of season!).

Wikipedia says that Bolsonaro is Catholic. Was he at someone else’s house for that photo? He just loves Hanukkah when not committing genocide and got the menorah out five months early? What?

Related:

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High school will be two mornings per week here in Maskachusetts

by philg

Friends have a son who had planned to head into Lincoln-Sudbury High School for 9th grade. The superintendent/principal (remarkably, the same person does both jobs in this one-school school system), sent an email to parents:

As you may recall from earlier communications, we are required to develop three learning plans for the opening of school: 100% all remote, hybrid in-person and remote, and 100% in-person. We are required to submit the learning plans to the state by July 31st after approval by the L-S School Committee. The state is also requesting that we indicate which plan we anticipate utilizing when we reopen school this fall. The School Committee is scheduled to take its vote at its meeting scheduled for July 28.

As stated in the preamble for the initial draft for fall opening it is my recommendation that we reopen school with a hybrid of in-person and remote learning and not 100% in-person. This recommendation is based on the challenge of ensuring a safe environment with 100% students in school all at one time and the compromise to delivery of instruction. Maintaining 3’ separation would significantly compromise delivery of instruction in all science classes. Maintaining 6’ separation significantly compromises delivery of instruction in all classes. And, finally, maintaining a strict protocol of social distancing and disinfection during lunch periods, mask breaks and travel through the school between classes is not feasible with 100% in-person.

[Why a limit based on “disinfection” if masks are the answer (the link below says “All staff and students wearing masks”) and if “science” now tells us that people are getting coronaplague from aerosols, not from funky surfaces?]

The “hybrid plan” recommended by Bella Wong (principal/superintendent) features two mornings per week of in-person instruction:

On Monday, the students tracked into “Cohort A” will attend school from 8:25 am to noon on Mondays and from 8:25-11:05 on Thursdays.

I asked the father of the 14-year-old boy who is headed into this arrangement why the teenage boys sitting at home wouldn’t play shooter games during all of the time that they should supposedly be in “remote learning” or “independent activity”. He responded “One of them was doing that already, according to [the son]”.

Will we go back to the Victorian era when families of even slightly above-average means hire private tutors to come to the house?

Also, won’t this heavily favor students who happen to live in super-sized McMansions? They can have a dedicated classroom, not just a desk in a cluttered “room room”.

(Note that teachers will presumably have to clock in four mornings per week in order to collect a full-time paycheck.)

Related:

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Will coronaplague boost teacher income the way that it has for daycare workers?

by philg

Parents in the western suburbs of Boston like to talk about First World problems. The License Raj here in Maskachusetts is has allowed daycares to reopen with some limitations (boston.com). Great news for working parents, right? (or for parents who are simply tired of dealing with their children 24/7) “It is impossible to enroll,” said one mom. “The daycare workers won’t go back because they’re getting $600/week plus regular unemployment plus under-the-table cash from parents who hired them to do in-home care after the daycares were shut down. If they went back to work, it would be a 70 percent pay cut.”

I wonder if the same thing will happen with school teachers. Based on my Facebook feed, teachers and rich parents are opposed to opening in-person schools. Unionized schoolteachers in particular say that they won’t work unless their safety is guaranteed somehow. “School closures ‘a mistake’ as no teachers infected in classroom” (Times of London):

Scientists are yet to find a single confirmed case of a teacher catching coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, a leading epidemiologist has said.

Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Edinburgh University, offered reassurance to staff preparing for the full reopening of schools next month.

Professor Woolhouse is definitely going to be an exception to the #FollowScientists rule!

Is there a cash value to #RejectScienceAndStayHome? In the cower-in-place system, public school teachers in Lincoln, Brookline, and Newton are required to work only a handful of hours per week (see “Massachusetts private school students zoom ahead”). If a teacher must send out one email on Monday morning, host a couple of chats on Tuesday and Thursday, and provide a bit of feedback on assignments emailed in on Friday afternoon, that leaves at least 40 hours in the middle of the week to… teach! Every public school teacher can offer to come into the homes of richer parents and provide some actual instruction at $100/hour in cash. As a practical matter, maybe this works for only 20 hours per week, but that should still be enough to at least double the spending power of a teacher receiving $70,000 per year (plus pension and benefits) from taxpayers.

(“Florida Orders Schools To Reopen In The Fall For In-Person Instruction” (NPR) is a possible exception:

In the state where more than 7,300 new coronavirus cases were announced on Tuesday, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran declared that upon reopening in August, “all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students.”

but there are no guarantees for taxpaying parents: “Those services include in-person instruction unless barred by a state or local health directive“)

An aircraft owner friend hired a public school teacher at $60/hour cash to teach two children. If this were 4 hours per day, 180 days per year (the standard school year), that’s only $21,600 per year per child, i.e., much less than a lot of Boston-area districts spend even without counting the lavish capital spending.

His children are examples of “The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’” (NYT):

If they become the norm, less privileged kids will suffer. … As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing “learning pods” or “pandemic pods” — small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns. … Based on what I’ve seen online, the learning pod movement appears to be led by families with means, a large portion of whom are white. Paradoxically, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a national reckoning with white supremacy, white parents are again ignoring racial and class inequality when it comes to educating their children.

Parents are also more likely to join pods with families who have similarly low exposure to the coronavirus. This seemingly rational impulse will, in practice, exclude many Black and Latinx families, who are disproportionately infected by the virus.

Related:

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Musicians of color in classical music

by philg

In May I wondered “What happens to classical musicians in the Age of Corona?”:

The audience for live classical music and opera is perilously close to the 82-year-old average age of a Covid-19 victim in Massachusetts (source). Concert venues are shut down by orders of the governor, First Amendment right to assemble notwithstanding. Even if it were legal to host a concert, would the core of elderly patrons show up?

The New York Times has an answer: the musicians become more diverse, at least in terms of skin color (but if, for coronasafety, there is a limit of one audience member at a time, there can’t be too much skin color diversity in the audience!). “To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions”:

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

Related:

  • “A Famous Study Found That Blind Auditions Reduced Sexism in the Orchestra. Or Did It?” (Reason) : In May, Columbia University statistician Andrew Gelman took a deep dive into the study. He described them as “not very impressive at all,” and had great difficulty trying to locate the 50 percent statistic within the modest findings. “You shouldn’t be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large,” he wrote. “I don’t hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem.”
  • Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (starring Will Ferrell, on Netflix, in case you are tired of old recordings of older music)
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