If you thought you’d get masks and ventilators faster through the Defense Production Act

by philg

When friends on Facebook expressed anger that Donald Trump had not used the Defense Production Act to expedite production of N95 masks and ventilators, I would endear myself to them by linking to “The Navy spent $30B and 16 years to fight Iran with a littoral combat ship that doesn’t work” (Australian-designed high-speed ferry with some guns on the deck).

I think that I might have a new favorite article regarding military speed… “The 9/11 Trial: Why Is It Taking So Long?” (nytimes):

The trial of five men accused of plotting the attacks had been scheduled for early next year — almost 20 years after the hijackings. Now even that schedule won’t be met. Here are the reasons.

But they have yet to come to trial. The military’s legal proceedings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have lurched from setback to setback, disappointing the families of the victims who have watched in frustration and dismay. Then over the summer, a military judge finally set a timetable toward a trial that envisioned a start date early next year.

Now, that schedule has suffered a one-two punch that promises more delay. First, the coronavirus crisis has cut off most access to Guantánamo Bay, complicating the work of the prosecutors, defense teams, judiciary and support staff who shuttle between the base and the mainland. Then the judge abruptly announced last month that he was retiring from the Air Force and would leave the case next week.

The crude court compound the Pentagon built at Guantánamo as a temporary outpost of the war on terrorism turned out to be expensive and inadequate.

Everyone but the men accused of the crime commute to Guantánamo from Washington, and points beyond for one- to three-week hearing sessions that have been plagued by flight delays, cancellations, mold-damaged offices and communications failures.

Judges have also canceled hearings because of hurricanes, health issues, higher court challenges and, recently, the coronavirus.

Maybe we can convince Joe Biden to promise to close Gitmo!

Full post, including comments

Swedes #persist in refusing to overwhelm ICU capacity (Massachusetts has a higher overall death rate)

by philg

Today’s numbers are out. From my big tracking post:

4/17 comment: Sweden at 613 cases/130 deaths; Denmark at 321/12; Massachusetts at 2,221/159. It is getting tougher to argue that the Danish shutdown was ineffective (but maybe Denmark will suffer its infections starting in a few weeks; kids in Denmark went back to school on Wednesday). And it is getting tougher to argue that the Massachusetts shutdown was effective (but maybe we won’t have a second wave since we were so incompetent at slowing down the first wave?). Sweden has had 1,333 total deaths without shutting down. Massachusetts shut down and has had 1,404 deaths (1.5X the rate).

American journalists and the Facebook righteous are sure that, just as it was in March, disaster is just around the corner for Sweden. The hospitals will be overwhelmed. People who could be trivially saved with a ventilator will drop dead in the street. (Example from fivethirtyeight.com hero Nate Silver.)

How is that going? The Swedes make their hospital situation public: https://www.icuregswe.org/en/data–results/covid-19-in-swedish-intensive-care/. It looks as though they have roughly 500 people in the ICU, up from 450 on April 8:

About 50 COVID-19 patients go into the ICU every day, but, if we interpreted the above chart correctly, nearly 50 are also coming out (unfortunately quite a few will be dead when they emerge, since there is no cure for COVID-19).

How do Americans maintain their faith in the face of these data. And in the refusal of God to smite the Swedes with a full ICU or a higher-than-Massachusetts death rate? One professor (of computer science, not epidemiology) simply asserted his sincerely held belief that Sweden would suffer an explosion of disease and ICU demand in the next week. Therefore, we had obviously saved lives by shutting down. Couldn’t Massachusetts have saved a lot more lives by continuing to operate our economy, maybe with a few more COVID-19 patients that had to be shuffled to a mostly-empty hospital, and sending the extra few $billion of wealth created (by the open economy) to Africa for clean water projects? No! Without a shutdown, the death toll in Massachusetts would have been staggering.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Coronavirus will make the suburbs cool again?

by philg

A friend has a beautiful house, decorated to a museum standard, here in our boring suburb of Boston (Zillow). I thought that it would be snapped up by an eager buyer, but it has been on the market for a while.

I’m wondering if coronaplague will push a rich Back Bay condo dweller to say “If we’re going to have lockdowns every few years, I want to live in 6,000+ square feet on 2+ acres.”

“The End of New York: Will the pandemic push America’s greatest city over the edge?” (Tablet):

Cities like New York pay a price for being both dense and cosmopolitan. As a new study from Heartland Forward reveals, the prime determinants of high rates of infection include such things as density, percentage of foreign residents, age, presence of global supply chains, and reliance on tourism and hospitality. Globally, the vast majority of cases occur in places that are both densely populated and connected to the global economy. Half of all COVID-19 cases in Spain, for example, have occurred in Madrid, while the Lombardy region in Italy, which includes the city of Milan, accounts for roughly half of all cases in the country and over 60% of the deaths.

In the long run, the extraordinary concentration of COVID-19 cases in New York threatens an economy and a social fabric that were already unraveling before the outbreak began. The city’s job growth rate has slowed and was slated to decline further, noted the New York City Independent Budget Office. Critically, New York’s performance in such high wage fields as business services, finance, and tech was weakening compared to other American metros. Half of all the city’s condos built since 2015 lie unsold as oligarchs, drug lords, celebrities, and others lose interest in luxury real estate now that cash, much of it from China, is drying up.

What happens when folks who say that the deplore inequality all get together in one big city?

Today the top 1% in New York are taking in over 40% of the city’s income—about double the top 1-percenter income share nationally in the United States—while much of the city’s population find themselves left behind. Even the epicenter of gentrification, Brooklyn, actually got poorer in the first decade of the new millennium.

This reflected in large part a precipitous fall in middle income jobs—those that pay between 80% and 200% of the median income. Over the past 20 years, such jobs barely grew in New York, while such employment soared 10 times as quickly in Texas cities and throughout much of the South and Intermountain West. Of the estimated 175,000 net new private sector jobs created in the city since 2017, fewer than 20% are paying middle-class salaries. Amid enormous wealth, some 40% of working families now basically live at or near the poverty line.

(Let’s hope AOC will reverse this trend!)

Readers: Is it possible that virtual socialization tools and habits honed during the coronaplague will make the suburbs cool (again?)? My pet idea would be a video wall in every home that would let a family’s best friends visit virtually (similar to my pet idea for a video wall that can show a life-sized co-worker). At a minimum, will coronaplague help the suburban real estate market? (At least here in the Boston area, downtown real estate has performed much better in recent years.)

Full post, including comments

What should we stockpile for the next flu-like epidemic?

by philg

I am informed by the New York Times and friends on Facebook that coronaplague was easily foreseeable and every intelligent person (i.e., not Donald Trump) saw it coming. Regrettably, in our own household we thought that coronavirus might be like the H7N9 avian influenza, about which WHO raised the alarm during 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 outbreaks (that later fizzled).

Because I like to be awesome at fighting the last war, what should be in our garage to prepare for a flu-like epidemic?

Here’s the beginning of a kit:

  • masks (50 per household member?)
  • gloves (100 pair)
  • pulse oximeter
  • ear thermometer
  • infrared forehead thermometer (how are these different from grill thermometers, if at all?)
  • hand sanitizer
  • Clorox Multi-Surface Cleaner
  • Clorox wipes (will these dry out between plagues?)
  • toilet paper (still can’t figure out why!)
  • paper towels (ditto)
  • high quality webcam for any desktop computer
  • high quality USB headset
  • Facebook Portal or Google Nest Max for keeping in touch with friends and family from the living room? (which one is better?) Also have a similar device already set up inside the homes of any older relatives.
  • ordinary cold/flu remedies

Readers: What else?

Full post, including comments

Your lockdown may vary

by philg

Our Boston suburb, which imposes a two-acre zoning minimum to keep out the riffraff, has hung a “We’re all in this together” banner across the main road. (We can restore the Black Lives Matter banner eventually?)

What about on a national scale? Are we actually all in this together? I talked to four friends from the aviation world in the last few days. One is isolated on 40 acres of oceanfront with 12,000 square feet of interior space, a dock with a sailboat and a power boat (not in the water yet this season), jogging trails, a tennis court, a hotel-size home gym, etc. One is isolated on 90 acres of ocean inlet with more than 8,000 square feet of interior space, a pool, a tennis court, a dock with multiple boats. One is on 20 acres of oceanfront over in Europe (in a country that is smart enough to do load balancing of patients to hospitals). One is in a city in a southern state with ample health system capacity. He’s on more than 2 acres with more than 13,000 square feet of interior space.

None of the Americans are in states where the University of Washington doom prophets forecast any shortage of hospital or ICU beds.

We use the same “lockdown”, “stay-at-home”, and “quarantine” terms for all Americans, but the experience of this life can be vastly different for those at different income levels. In non-plague times, when rich and poor Americans go for a walk they might have fairly similar experiences. Right now, however, even if the rich started out in a medium-sized city apartment they’ve often managed to escape to an uncrowded vacation destination, e.g., the Hamptons, Nantucket, or Maine. No matter how tight the lockdown gets, the rich can usually get ample fresh air simply walking around on their own private property.

I’m thinking that this variation in experience of lockdown is driving some of the ruling class’s high comfort level with lockdown. It is one thing to hear about a single mother, her boyfriend, and three kids from previous sex partners all crammed into a 3BR in public housing nearly 24/7. But can people with massive suburban estates actually understand what a Victimhood Studies professor would call “the lived experience” of this quasi-family?

Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times, on March 26, 2020, demanded that the Great Father in Washington issue a “shelter in place” order. Leaving aside the issue of whether any state governor would be required to comply with such an order, let’s consider what Mr. Friedman’s life would be like under “shelter in place.” He lives on 7.5 acres in Bethesda, Maryland (a 1/4 acre lot there is now considered lavish). He and his wife (the daughter of a billionaire) demolished the house that was on it and built an 11,400 square foot mansion. What relationship does Mr. Friedman’s “lived experience” of sheltering in place on 7.5 acres and 11,400 square feet have to that of a middle class family stuck in New York City in a 2BR?

Related:

Full post, including comments

Swedes #persist in refusing to die from COVID-19

by philg

On April 12, I noted “Everything the gleeful journalists said would happen to Sweden has happened… to Massachusetts”. Massachusetts has been shut down since mid-March. Swedes, on the other hand, are still going to school, eating at restaurants, and working at offices and factories as necessary. They may not even be using #StayHome and #SaveLives on their Facebook posts.

Combining what we’ve learned from U.S. media and 4th grade arithmetic lessons regarding exponential growth, we would expect most Swedes to be dead at this point. Yet as of April 12, a smaller percentage of Swedes had died compared to Massachusetts residents, and there was a dramatic difference in the rate of new cases (8X) and deaths (6X).

Maybe the sharp difference was a holiday (Easter) weekend data entry effect?

Here’s an update for today, based on WHO and mass.gov numbers:

The latest report for Sweden: 465 new cases and 20 deaths (Denmark was at 144 and 12). Massachusetts had 1,296 new cases and 113 deaths (8X the death rate).

I.e., Sweden (10 million population) is doing dramatically better than Massachusetts (7 million) and the stats per person are roughly comparable to shut-down Denmark (5 million). (see this post for numbers on previous days)

How does the U.S. media cover a country with a lower death rate than Massachusetts’s? “Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000” (Forbes):

Sweden’s relatively relaxed approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus has come under fire in international media and from many locals in the capital Stockholm, where more than half the country’s deaths have been recorded. Now, 22 researchers have publicly criticized the strategy and called on politicians to make changes.

Major public events such as the start of the Swedish soccer season are postponed and the physical buildings of universities are closed, but otherwise everyday life continues. Schools remain open.

(I will hazard a guess that the “22 researchers” referenced still get paid regardless of how long the shutdown lasts!)

The MD/PhD infidel (not a “scientist”) who doubts the shutdown religion does get one paragraph:

State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell quickly hit back at the researchers’ claims. SVT reported that Tegnell said there is “a fundamental inaccuracy in that article” regarding the numbers used.

How about the local newspaper in what became Wuhan-on-the-Hudson? “Sweden taking lax approach to coronavirus, top doc says it’ll ‘probably end in a historical massacre’” (New York Daily News):

Following the terrible examples of China, the United States, Britain and others, Sweden has decided that coronavirus is overrated.

The European nation known for being cold and socialist has not ordered any sort of lockdown, is still allowing up to 50 people to gather in groups and has been weeks behind the rest of Europe on social distancing advice, Time Magazine reported.

A top doctor as a large Swedish hospital told Time that this lackadaisical approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.”

What about Massachusetts? Is our forecast of suffering 12% of U.S. COVID-19 fatalities (with just 2% of U.S. population) a potential “historical massacre”? A search into the New York Times reveals only a concern about a Massachusetts roommate dispute regarding social distancing religious orthodoxy.

Update from my cumulative tracking post:

4/15 comment: Sweden at 1033/114; Denmark at 299/14; Massachusetts at 1,755/151. It seems that there was a substantial lag in reporting deaths in Sweden due partly to a three-day Easter holiday weekend. Even if all of the 114 deaths had occurred in the preceding 24 hours, the rate of new deaths in Massachusetts is substantially higher when adjusted for population. Total deaths in Massachusetts are at 1,108 versus 1,033 in Sweden, a 1.5X higher rate in the shut-down region of Massachusetts versus the up-and-running get-it-over-with region of Sweden.

It does look as though neighboring Denmark has at least deferred some infections and deaths with its temporary lockdown. As the top epidemiologist in Sweden says, “time will tell.” As noted in the comments below, we were told that, without an economic shutdown, coronavirus would kill 2.2 million Americans. Sweden did not shut down. They should be suffering close to 70,000 deaths from the exponentially growing virus, not 1,000 or 2,000. Even with the upsetting catch-up number of deaths following the holiday weekend, Sweden’s outcome so far seems inconsistent with most epidemiologists and government think that they know about coronavirus.

Full post, including comments

MIT tells us how to predict a coronavirus-free future

by philg

MIT Technology Review, the alumni magazine for what is regarded by people worldwide as the finest engineering and science school… in East Cambridge, titled its March/April 2020 edition “The Predictions Issue.”

There are ten breakthrough technologies presented for 2020 and a multi-futurist section regarding “How to predict what’s coming in 2030 and beyond.”

The breakthroughs circa 2020 include “hyper-personalized medicine” in which a single individual with a unique genetic defect can be patched up with heroic multi-disciplinary effort. We have purportedly made breakthroughs in anti-aging pills and AI-discovered molecules. We have more AI in general. The most important breakthrough is “Climate Change Attribution” in which we can figure out which unpleasant weather events are due to climate change: “If we choose to listen, they can help us understand how to rebuild our cities and infrastructure for a climage-changed world.”

Seven pages are devoted to the saddest emotional event of the 21st century, i.e., the failure of pollsters to warn us that the United States was packed with stupid, sexist, and racist Deplorables who would consider voting for a candidate who “appeals to the worst in us.” (Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon for this year. If election prophets don’t predict a certain Biden victory then enough of the righteous will be motivated to go to the polls and defeat Hate.)

The most interesting section, in light of recent events, is the collection of predictions regarding our world through 2030. The folks whom the magazine tapped (which happens to include one person of color and an LGBTQIA+ novelist, as well as a gender ID balance in favor of people with typically female-associated names) worked from the following assumptions: (1) the Earth will be warmer; (2) computers and Artificial Intelligence will be more powerful.

What did the best futurists that magazine could find miss entirely? That a human population of 8 billion on Spaceship Earth is an incredibly tempting target for a novel virus and that the virus would arrive in a lot of readers’ lungs on the same day as the magazine itself.

Full post, including comments

330 pages of coronavirus NOTAMs

by philg

ARINC (Collins Aerospace) is gathering up all of the COVID-19-related NOTAMs that it can find: https://direct.arinc.net/public/covid_19_notams.pdf. Right now the list is 330 pages long!

I wonder if this is a good way to determine the world’s level of coronapanic.

This is a great time to be claiming asylum. From Iceland, for example:

A0145/20 NOTAMR A0144/20
Q) BIRD/QAFXX/IV/NBO/E/000/999/6512N01832W
A) BIRD B) 2003241427 C) 2004162359
E) COVID-19: PASSENGER RESTRICTIONS.
ALL PASSENGERS ARE PROHIBITED TO ENTER ICELAND EXCEPT EU/EEA, EFTA
OR UK NATIONALS. THE FOLLOWING ARE EXEMPTED:

  1. FOREIGN NATIONALS WITH IMMIGRATION STATUS IN SCHENGEN STATES,
    OR THOSE WHO HAVE FAMILY MEMBERS IN THE SAME COUNTRIES.
  2. PASSENGERS IN TRANSIT.
  3. HEALTH AND CARE WORKERS ON PROFESSIONAL TRAVEL.
    4.TRANSPORTATION CREWS (AIRLINES AND FREIGHTERS).
  4. INDIVIDUALS REQUIRING INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION.
  5. INDIVIDUALS TRAVELLING BECAUSE OF ACUTE FAMILY INCIDENTS AND
    DIPLOMATS, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS STAFF, MEMBERS OF ARMED
    FORCES TRAVELLING TO ICELAND FOR DUTY, OR HUMANITARIAN AID WORKERS.

What if you don’t want to say that you’re being oppressed? Tahiti!

A0164/20 NOTAMR A0153/20 Q) NTTT/QXXXX/IV/NBO/A/000/999/1315S13830W999 A) NTTT B) 2004130523 C) 2004300959 E) COVID-19: CREWS/PASSENGERS REQUIREMENTS IN ACCORDANCE WITH FRENCH POLYNESIA GOVERNMENT AIMING AT PREVENTING INTRODUCTION OR SPREAD OF INFECTIONS BY THE NEW CORONAVIRUS 2019:
I. THE PILOT ARRIVING IN FRENCH POLYNESIA MUST PROVIDE THE HEALTH PART OF THE AIRCRAFT GENERAL DECLARATION UPON LANDING AT TAHITI FAAA.
II. ALL TRAVELLERS ARRIVING IN FRENCH POLYNESIA INCLUDING AFTER A TECHNICAL STOP, MUST FILL IN THE PUBLIC HEALTH PASSENGER LOCATOR FORM (SEE ICAO ANNEX 9, APPENDIX 13 AND FRENCH ORDER OF 9 JULY 2014 CONCERNING PASSENGER LOCATOR FORMS).
III. THE PUBLIC HEALTH PASSENGER LOCATOR FORM MUST BE HANDED OUT TO PASSENGERS BY THE CREW, COMPLETED AND HANDED OVER BY THE AIR OPERATOR TO THE AERODROME OPERATOR AT THE DESTINATION AIRPORT.

More: Visit https://direct.arinc.net/public/covid_19_notams.pdf (note that this is organized by ICAO airport code, which is what a pilot would enter into an aircraft GPS, not by the IATA code that you might use to buy a commercial airline ticket)

Full post, including comments

95% confidence predictions regarding coronaplague

by philg

The model of coronaplague with the best graphics says that Massachusetts, home to 2% of Americans, will suffer 12% of total COVID-19 deaths (8,219 out of 68,841, through August 4, 2020).

How sure can we be of this result?

“Learning as We Go: An Examination of the Statistical Accuracy of COVID19 Daily Death Count Predictions” (Marchant, et al., April 8, 2020) says “not very”:

Our results suggest that the IHME model substantially underestimates the uncertainty associated with COVID19 death count predictions. We would expect to see approximately 5% of the observed number of deaths to fall outside the 95% prediction intervals. In reality, we found that the observed percentage of death counts that lie outside the 95% PI to be in the range 49% – 73%, which is more than an order of magnitude above the expected percentage. Moreover, we would expect to see 2.5% of the observed death counts fall above and below the PI. In practice, the observed percentages were asymmetric, with the direction of the bias fluctuating across days.

So… the model was “wrong” (actual fell outside predicted 95 percent range) as much as 73 percent of the time!

Full post, including comments

Shutdown decisions are made by people with no skin in the game; when would they ever decide to reopen?

by philg

A friend in Holland in is his 60s and therefore beginning to enter the real risk window for COVID-19. When I call to check on him, he is usually out in the busy square of his university town. “Some students just walked by with six crates of beer,” he remarked. Holland never truly shut down. Unlike Sweden, however, the schools closed. “The teachers are unionized,” my friend said. “So they knew they’d get paid whether or not they went to work. Of course they immediately refused to work and said that the schools had to be closed in the name of protecting everyone.” How about the stores? “Everything is open except for the red light district,” he responded. (If the gals working there could somehow make it to Boston, they could earn a lot more than they’d been getting in Amsterdam!)

(How’s Holland doing? The Population is 17 million. As of April 9, they’d suffered 2,248 deaths compared to 10,853 in France, population 67 million. I.e., the Netherlands has had a lower death rate than France. France began locking down on March 13.)

If people making the decisions on shutting down continue to get paid, when would they ever suggest reopening? Who is involved in or has influenced decision-making in the U.S. on this issue?

  • State governors
  • CDC bureaucrats
  • NIH bureaucrats (such as Dr. Anthony Fauci)
  • WHO bureaucrats
  • Tenured professors at top research universities

One thing the above folks all have in common: they will still have the same job at the same pay regardless of the length of the shutdown. What’s their lockdown experience like? I was on FaceTime yesterday with a (flying friend) professor of “science and public policy,” i.e., exactly the kind of person whom a government might turn to for advice. He is suffering through the lockdown at a 20-acre family property right on the ocean.

If your job is engineering or manufacturing widgets, on the other hand, every additional day of shutdown is additional risk that a customer will decide to buy widgets from Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or Chinese suppliers that remain up and running. You will come back after the shutdown to reduced revenue and a much tougher competitive environment in direct proportion to the length of the shutdown.

Given that even one death is one death too many from COVID-19 and that we should always act out of an abundance of caution and that we assume that our shutdown has had a tremendous life-saving effect, when would folks who are immune to any negative effects of economic/societal shutdown ever decide that it is time to reopen?

Full post, including comments