Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

The New York Times has been a leader in stoking coronaplague panic (see “Power of the Media to Shape Coronaplague Beliefs” for an example of how the newspaper spun a declining death curve into an all-new reason to panic, for example).

Now they’ve added some articles about the unfortunate consequences of a society where nobody is willing to work.

Example 1 is “In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both.”:

The long-term losses [from unionized teachers being unwilling to work] for professional adults will be incalculable, too, and will disproportionately affect mothers. Working mothers all over the country feel that they’re being pushed out of the labor force or into part-time jobs as their responsibilities at home have increased tenfold.

So the newspaper’s goal of keeping the U.S. shutdown forever conflicts with the newspaper’s goal of helping the largest American victimhood class: women.

Good news or bad news, depending on who you are…

The wealthy win. Again.
Without a doubt, reopening schools is a colossal undertaking. There are no easy solutions to finding enough space for students to socially distance, ensuring teachers and staff are protected, adding more sinks and cleaning staff, and implementing widespread temperature checks, testing and contact tracing.

Reopening schools is so “colossal” that nearly all of the European countries have managed to do it?

But after nearly four months since the lockdowns began — four months of working all hours, at remarkable stress levels, while our children have gone without play dates and playgrounds and all of the other stimuli that help them thrive — most parents have been shocked to find that state governments don’t have any creative or even plausible solutions.

She doesn’t like the politicians she voted for in the New York State government! Maybe there is a way to blame Donald Trump?

For parents who cannot simply sort it out, our national response feels more like a dystopian novel where only the wealthy get to limit their exposure and survive the pandemic unscathed. Allowing workplaces to reopen while schools, camps and day cares remain closed tells a generation of working parents that it’s fine if they lose their jobs, insurance and livelihoods in the process. It’s outrageous, and I fear if we don’t make the loudest amount of noise possible over this, we will be erased from the economy.

My friends who are locked down on their oceanfront estates are not complaining so much!

Example 2 is “Colleges Face Rising Revolt by Professors”:

Most universities plan to bring students back to campus. But many of their teachers are concerned about joining them.

Could it be because professors often read the New York Times?

A Cornell University survey of its faculty found that about one-third were “not interested in teaching classes in person,” one-third were “open to doing it if conditions were deemed to be safe,” and about one-third were “willing and anxious to teach in person,” said Michael Kotlikoff, Cornell’s provost.

At Penn State, an open letter signed by more than 1,000 faculty members demands that the university “affirm the autonomy of instructors in deciding whether to teach classes, attend meetings and hold office hours remotely, in person or in some hybrid mode.” The letter also asks for faculty members to be able to change their mode of teaching at any time, and not to be obligated to disclose personal health information as a condition of teaching online.

Many younger professors have concerns as well, including about underlying health conditions, taking care of children who might not be in school full-time this fall, and not wanting to become a danger to their older relatives. Some are angry that their schools are making a return to classrooms the default option. And those who are not tenured said they felt especially vulnerable if they asked for accommodations.

There’s a great photo of a 35-year-old tatooed literature professor. Polynesians got tattoos to show their bravery and resilience to infection. Now the tattooed run away from a 0.01% risk of death?

Yale will be pocketing full tuition and delivering the Khan Academy experience:

Yale said on Wednesday that it would bring only a portion of its students back to campus for each semester: freshmen, juniors and seniors in the fall, and sophomores, juniors and seniors in the spring. “Nearly all” college courses will be taught remotely, the university said, so that all students can enroll in them.

Here’s a guy who should be trying to emigrate to Sweden:

Joshua Wede, 40, a psychology professor at Penn State, argued that it was not possible to maintain a meaningful level of human interaction when students are wearing masks, sitting at least six feet apart and facing straight ahead.

Related:

• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/06/19/professor-karen-prefers-to-stay-home-this-fall/

Full post, including comments

Back in March, the best scientists, including one with a Ph.D. in physics who happens to run Germany (see “60% to 70% of the German population will be infected by the coronavirus, Merkel says”) believed that the majority of a population would have to become infected with coronaplague before herd immunity would would kick in.

“The progress of the COVID-19 epidemic in Sweden: an analysis” does a region-by-region analysis of Sweden, in which plague mitigation efforts among the non-elderly have been minimal, and concludes that when 6 percent test positive for antibodies, herd immunity may be reached among a population that is taking only voluntary precautions:

Notwithstanding that a month ago antibodies were only detected in 6.3% of the Swedish population, the declining death rate since mid-May strongly suggests that the herd immunity threshold had been surpassed in the three largest regions, and in Sweden as a whole, by the end of April. … The herd immunity threshold is likely lower at present than it would be if people were behaving completely normally; it may also be seasonally lower.

Here’s a June 30 article from Quanta, “The Tricky Math of Herd Immunity for COVID-19”:

But on a larger scale, heterogeneity typically lowers the herd immunity threshold. At first the virus infects people who are more susceptible and spreads quickly. But to keep spreading, the virus has to move on to people who are less susceptible. This makes it harder for the virus to spread, so the epidemic grows more slowly than you might have anticipated based on its initial rate of growth.

The above paragraph could have come from a 100-year-old epidemiology text. Thus, it is a example of one of the few bright spots in my coronaplague experience, i.e., seeing how Americans pitch the near-universal failure of “scientists” (except for the MD/PhDs who work for the Swedish government) to predict the likely trajectory and death rate of the epidemic as a success for “science”: Yes, we got everything wrong by a factor of 5-40X, but that just proves how quickly progress can be made in Science with sufficient funding and the right leadership in the White House.

Now that the plague has run its course (for at least Wave #1) here in Maskachusetts, my Facebook feed is packed with people congratulating themselves:

Tremendous achievement in Massachusetts. Not easy. And not free of tremendous costs. But it works and is saving lives ! [over “Mass. Reports 0 New Coronavirus Deaths — and Its Death Toll Drops in Data Cleanup”, regarding a day in which state workers apparently decided to take a mini vacation and not report any deaths]

(A self-proclaimed “data scientist” also posted this as evidence of a grand achievement. The next day, at which point the reported deaths were back to the trend, I ingenuously asked “What happened today? Were there zero deaths again?” He defriended me, thus contributing to my effort to be the most defriended person in the history of Facebook.)

Some data: the July 2 report from MA, population 7 million, with 51 reported deaths. From Texas, population 29 million, 44 reported deaths for the same day:

Florida, population 21 million, suffered 67 deaths on July 2, according to the failing New York Times:

So my friends here in Maskachusetts were celebrating the triumph of humans over a virus despite a death rate vastly higher than the states they explicitly describe as “disasters” and a death rate vastly higher than Belarus, for example, which did not bother to shut down schools, mass gatherings, or anything else. It is a little strange to me, since every year the influenza epidemic winds down and we don’t, every year, celebrate our success in making influenza go away. Example from the CDC of human triumph over the influenza virus:

The smart American humans wiped this virus out back in 2009 (thanks to excellent leadership from President Obama?)!

I wonder if the Facebook and media celebration of a zero-death data anomaly in Maskachusetts is a guide to how Americans will process their months (or years?) of shutdown when coronaplague does finally burn itself out. They will simply assert that the sacrifices that they made prevented the virus from killing millions of people, just as the Flagellants believed that they ended the Black Death. And then there will be a twist in which people will assert that things being taught in epidemiology skool back in the 1800s (e.g., Farr’s law) were newly discovered by heroic “scientists” in mid-2020.

Full post, including comments

My Facebook feed has been dominated for about two months by friends who have faith in the perfectibility of human beings. Americans are on the cusp of wearing masks consistently and correctly, but need a slight push in the form of additional education regarding (a) the seriousness of coronavirus, (b) the deadliness of Covid-19 to people of all ages, (c) the discomfort of being intubated (see meme below), (d) the efficacy of masks in stopping coronaplague in its tracks.

The same people previously asserted that nearly half of Americans were dumb as bricks, gulled by a demagogue into voting against their own interests.

Implicitly, therefore, the idea is that stupid people, provided with a few Facebook updates regarding the merits of masks, will make a science-informed decision to mask up, wash hands after every time that they touch their homemade mask (a.k.a. “face rag”), and change masks or clean masks frequently.

Can we test this assumption by observing the behavior of people who are already reasonably well-informed regarding the oxymoron of “medical science”? Late last month, for example, I attended a birthday party for an MD/PhD. It was pitched via email as a “small and socially distanced” backyard event. Most of the guests were also MD/PhDs, age 50-65. Everyone showed up wearing a mask and settled in 6’ apart. The menu: potato chips, cupcakes, s’mores, scotch, and cigars. After 30 minutes, the gathering had grown and people were more like 3’ apart, nearly all unmasked on an uncharacteristically windless evening.

Readers: What have you observed in backyard BBQs and similar July 4-style events?

(Also, Happy Treason Day to friends and readers in the U.K.!)

Related:

• the Boston fireworks captured from the roof of an MIT skyscraper (canceled by Karen this year)

Full post, including comments

“Gun sales are off the charts” (Fortune):

U.S. consumers are rushing to buy guns as the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over police brutality combine with U.S. presidential politics to fuel unprecedented demand.

Firearm background checks compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a proxy for gun purchases, jumped to a record in June as street demonstrations spread around the U.S. That extended a surge that began in March as the coronavirus prompted lockdowns across the country.

James Hillin, owner of Full Armor Firearms in Texas, said the store’s gun sales have increased 75% since January, and that 95% of those were by new gun owners.“They’re scared,” Hillin said before cutting a brief interview short to attend to waiting customers. “They want to protect themselves.”

I wonder if, in the long run, more American life-years will be lost as a result of this increase in gun ownership sparked by coronapanic lockdowns and the subsequent riots by those who’d been locked down. (This is not to say that I am against Americans exercising their Second Amendment freedoms, which might be one of the few Constitutional rights that is left!) Keep in mind that the typical person who dies from a gunshot would is much younger than the typical person (80+) who dies from/with Covid-19.

From Back Bay (Boston) the other day…

(What does it mean to “attend” high school in a country where no teachers are willing to work?)

Older posts on the side-effect deaths from coronapanic:

• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/03/28/if-all-lives-have-equal-value-why-does-bill-gates-support-shutting-down-the-u-s-economy/
• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/20/stayhomesavelives-or-stayhometradelives-clinical-trials-for-new-drugs-are-on-hold/

Full post, including comments