Category: Life, The Universe and Everything

The Boy Scout’s Marching Song

I would like to state at this time that I am not now and
Have never been… a member of the Boy Scouts of America.

Tom Lehrer

Like many smarter and more informed than me, I’ve been struggling to come to grips with how the western world could have been caught so flat-footed by SARS-CoV-2.

I’m not surprised that some governments have responded more successfully than others – though the underlying mechanics there certainly seem fertile ground for discussion.

I’m also not particularly surprised that America both failed to prepare and has presented what could charitably be called an “uneven” response. [You may be tempted to dismiss this as post-facto cynicism, but in my adult lifetime American federal institutions – under both parties – have shown a pattern of failing to adequately prepare for plausible disasters and struggling to coordinate response when they occur.]

What I keep coming back to is that no western government was adequately prepared. None of them. Not a sausage.

That suggests the failure was, and likely is, something fundamental. And that gets my attention.

In my search for answers, I stumbled upon The Ostrich Paradox, by Meyer and Kunreuther. It’s short. You should read it.

Building on the (much longer) work of Daniel Kahneman, they explain the common failure of individuals to prepare for disasters as the output of six biases: myopia (overly focusing on the short-term), amnesia (quickly forgeting the pain of the past), optimism (underestimating the likelihood of loss), inertia (maintaining the status quo in the face of choices), simplification (considering only a select set of factors when deciding) and herding (basing decisions on the behavior of others).

They sketch an outline of how we might acknowledge and incorporate these biases into our planning to encourage better outcomes.

Frustratingly, but maybe not completely unreasonably, they largely talk about the role of government as being part of the solution.

What’s to be done when it isn’t?

Chernobyl

Today marks the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster [nytimes.com].

I highly recommend Adam Higgenbotham’s incredible account of the disaster – Midnight at Chernobyl. Fantastically detailed, compellingly told, and undoubtedly among the most impactful books I’ve read in years.

I also found the acclaimed HBO dramatization to be well worth the time. That’s not the same as saying I enjoyed it – I found it worthy while being occasionally agonizing to watch.

Read the book to understand the disaster, watch the series for a relentless emotional pummeling.

Gang aft agley

Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. At least three more weeks of lock-down…

Like many of the 7.5 billion inhabitants of this insignificant little blue green planet we call home, we had plans. (Our best laid plans, you might say.)

Funny thing about plans – they’re bets on the future state of the universe. Much of the time, most of the time, reality cooperates. Tomorrow will probably be pretty similar to today, which is pretty similar to yesterday.

I don’t know anyone who’s plans included a global pandemic, infecting 2.1 million people, claiming over 140 thousand lives to date, forcing huge swaths of the population to stay in their homes, shuttering the global economy, and setting us on an uncertain path toward an as-yet-indescribable new normal.

And speaking of “new normal,” I can’t be the only one who’s (already) finding that phrase irritating. We have a deep desire to name things. I get it. And I guess “new normal” is as good a name as I can think of for the current uncertainty. And it seems true that we’re going to have no choice but to rapidly evolve our societal norms. But still. “New normal” is high on my list of phrases I’ll be happy to see the back of. Like “lock-down.”

Like many, I’ve been thinking about why basically all the western countries failed so utterly and completely to prepare for, and respond to, this pandemic. As comforting as it might be to think it was unpredictable, it wasn’t. People have been raising the general alarm about our global susceptibility to pandemic for years, and this specific event has been raising alarms for several months. But like a car in a mall parking lot, the alarm was screaming, and everyone was ignoring it.

I think it has a lot to do with how we learn. And how we don’t. And how a lack of deep scientific literacy among elected leadership became a force multiplier for uncertainty.

You might disagree, but on the whole I think individuals are pretty good at learning from their experiences. It’s generally a good idea not to make the same mistake twice – so much so that we often “over-index” on not doing so (everyone remember taking off their shoes at airports ’cause of that one guy who tried to get something on a plane in his shoes? everyone remember airports? ahh. good times.) It’s also usually sensible to assume that what’s happened (many times) before is pretty likely to happen again – and to assume that extraordinary events are… well… extra-ordinary.

What most of us are not so great at is learning from other people’s mistakes. Especially mistakes made by people we don’t have a high implicit degree of trust in. It’s too easy to convince ourselves that we’re different. That we’re smarter. That they were just unlucky.

Responding in the moment to the pandemic required taking action without direct experience – before, as they say, all the facts were in. It required us to take action based on theory.

It required realizing that novel in “novel coronavirus” was the game changer. That the exponential nature of the spread of infection meant a decision today was literally twice as good as that same decision tomorrow. And maybe most difficult, it meant realizing and admitting that we weren’t different. We weren’t smarter. And that this time we were all unlucky.

Politicians – at least US politicians – rarely have scientific training or backgrounds. They live in the shades of grey – in organizational structures and leadership, and soft power. The good ones have deep experience with the malleable rule systems humans create, negotiating changes to those rule systems is their stock in trade. To those people, the predictions of calamity must have been hard to fathom – and the idea that the counter-measures being proposed were proportional and appropriate must have beggared belief.

It couldn’t have helped that the only choice they were being offered by their scientific advisors reduced to a shut down of their economies. Those who acted quickly and decisively to curtail public activity – with immediate and massive economic impact – must have felt like they were taking a hugely expensive bet.

Consider what might have happened if every country, and ever local leader, had acted quickly. In that alternate timeline, with much lower infection rates and mortality counts, it seems certain that the nagging question would be if we over-reacted.

The key question now, and one I don’t have any answers to, is “how do we get out of this mess?”

And as we navigate toward that “new normal,” how do we learn from our near-global mistake? And how do we apply that learning to other low probability high impact events? How do we convince ourselves that just because yesterday and today are fine, there’s a small but important chance that tomorrow may be the day when our best laid plans gang aft agley.

You Can Run, But You Can’t… Dine

I should establish something up front. I’m not “a runner.” I’m not one of those people who enjoy it. I’m not fast. It’s not easy. It doesn’t fill me with a sense of freedom. I started running because I’m not getting any younger, I appreciate good food and drink, and I have a “desk job.” So some aerobic exercise seemed like a good idea. I’ve tried joining gyms (I give them my money and quickly stop going), bicycles (every home we’ve owned has managed to be up a hill), and my low tolerance for “pre-workout-work” combined with crappy Seattle winter weather convinced me I needed an indoor solution at home.

So, years ago, we bought an elliptical. I used it irregularly, and Dawnise never loved it, so when we moved from our house in the Seattle suburbs into the city we sold it and bought a treadmill. In theory the treadmill folded, and would take up less room in our more compact urban space. Even folded it still took up much of the room it was in, but it fit where the elliptical wouldn’t have. I convinced myself to work up to running a couple miles three mornings a week. I never really learned to like it, but after a while I built a habit, and would bring running shorts and shoes on business travel and mostly stick to my routine.

That all changed when we moved to London. Our initial apartment had an exercise room, and I used it for the month we were there before moving into our “permanent” space. We don’t have a good space for a treadmill, so I looked around at gyms. The fees seemed too high a price to pay for access to a treadmill – and I knew I’d likely stop actually going pretty quickly anyway. The prospect of running through London’s crowded streets and using my lungs as a fine particulate filter for London air didn’t appeal.

All that changed a couple weeks into the pandemic. The streets in our part of London are pretty empty. The air quality is notably improved. And I wasn’t even getting my 20 minute walk to work each day. So I woke up one morning with a plan to go running. And quickly realized that I didn’t have anything suitable to wear to go running when it was 3 degrees out (high-30’s in “freedom units”). I asked a couple friends who run what I needed and “went shopping.” From my sofa, of course.

A quick look at Amazon left me discouraged – running base layers aren’t essential goods, and delivery prioritization meant nothing would arrive for a month. By that time this crazy idea would have subsided. Which would be good for the lazy bastard in me, but probably not good in general.

One bit of advice I got was to avoid cheap synthetics and try a merino wool base layer. That bit of advice, combined with my inherent, um, frugality, led me to mountainwarehouse.com – who had what I needed on sale for a price I was willing to pay, and even claimed I could get it in a few days. True to their word, and frankly to my surprise, the package arrived only a day later than promised and the next morning I hit the road.

Turns out running on the street isn’t quite like running on a treadmill. And it turns out that I don’t know how to self-regulate my pace. I ran faster than “normal” and could only run about half my normal distance. I chalked it up to the elevated pace and 8 months of being sedentary. I’ve gone a bit further each run, and this morning I ran to St. Paul’s and back – which is about what I’d have run in the spare room in our townhouse. Despite reaching 22 today (72F) it’s still cool in the morning, and the wool base layer has worked well.

I figure as long as exercise is still a legitimate reason to be out, I’ll keep running. I’ll have to see how I feel when the weather turns in the fall – it’s hard to imagine choosing to run in the windy rainy cold – but frankly fall is so far in the future it hardly bears thinking about.

Who knows what the world looks like by then.

Central London: Island Paradise

We woke up Saturday morning in Hawaii.

After a fashion.

The sky was bright blue, bright sun among scattered fluffy clouds. The hint of chill in the air was fighting a losing battle with the gathering warmth, and the only sound in the air was birdsong.

I opened the a wall of floor to ceiling glass windows that lead out onto our deck and welcomed the outside in. We spent the day sitting on the deck, or the sofas just inside. I finished the book I was reading and started another. In the early afternoon, Dawnise watched Ru Paul’s Drag Race on Netflix with a friend, her laughter spilling out into the hush of the courtyard. We had afternoon aperol spritz. The cats took full advantage of the unusual opportunity to lounge on the deck.

We left the wall open all day, closing it against the evening chill.

This morning started out much the same.

We tried our hand at making shakshuka – our regular dish at Mola, the cafe around the corner we frequent for weekend breakfasts and have been missing in the shutdown. (We gave it a 7/10, flavors were good, the eggs spread further than intended and ended up a bit over cooked.)

As I type these words the birdsong has been temporarily replaced by the ringing of the bells of St. Paul’s – a reminder of where we actually are. We’ve all temporarily retreated out of the direct sun, even the cats, currently lounging in the shade – one under a deck chair, the other on the rug inside.

I anticipate another day of forced relaxation. I’ve got a piece of brisket flat sous-vide’ing, and I think we have all the necessary bits for Pimms this afternoon.

And really, why wait?

Here’s to your health, safety, and sanity. Slainte.

When the Devil Drives

Not too much to report from London. We’re still healthy and safe, and increasingly grateful to have access to the outdoors.

I think it’s fair to say that life is slowly settling into some semblance of a “new normal,” and the UK government is starting to more clearly communicate that this won’t likely be over anytime soon.

After a couple weeks camping out at the stair rail, my computer perched on a stack of books, I bought a small standing desk, and spent the last few days working in the master bedroom. At Dawnise’s suggestion we’ve taken down the guest bed and turned the spare bedroom into a work space. I’m resisting populating it with new furniture, as I look forward to converting it back and welcoming back visitors in the late summer, or fall.

In the past week I’ve added a dozen links to my growing list of worthy articles. Some I’ve stumbled upon, some I’ve been pointed at by one of the feeds I follow, and some I’ve been sent by friends and colleagues.  

I’m particularly interested in writing that explains the science of the disease, offers insight into the systemic failures of preparation and imagination that led to nearly all western governments being caught flat-footed, and that explores the potential medium and long term impacts of this moment in history.

If you have articles you think I should read, please send them my way.

What I’ve Been Reading: COVID-19 Edition

There’s been an incredible amount of “ink” spilled about the virus, and I don’t pretend to have read most of it – or even much of it – but I have read some articles I think are worth sharing. I’ll likely update this post as I find more.

[Update: 22-Aug – The list has been inverted, so the newest additions are now “up here.”]

[Update: 30-Dec – I had largely stopped seeking out COVID-related press, and found less of note in what I did read. I was content to let this list fade away, until a friend sent me the article that became today’s update.]

[added, 24-May] The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill
….scientists brawled over how the virus spreads…At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences [Megan Molteni, wired.com]

[added, 11-May] A Misleading C.D.C. Number [David Leonhardt, nytimes.com]

[added, 8-May] Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid? [Zeynep Tufekci, nytimes.com]

[added, 7-May] Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19 [ihme.org]

[added, 4-May] Millions Are Saying No to the Vaccines. What Are They Thinking? Feelings about the vaccine are intertwined with feelings about the pandemic. [Derek Thompson, atlantic.com]

[added, 6-Apr] Are We Much Too Timid in the Way We Fight Covid-19? The debate among doctors, epidemiologists and economists is still going strong. [Ezra Klein, nytimes.com]

[added, 27-Mar] Unlocking the Covid Code [Jon Gertner, nytimes.com]

[added, 9-Jan-2021] The Lab-Leak Hypothesis For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …? [Nicholson Baker, nymag.com]

[added, 30-Dec] Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine [Bert Hubert, berthub.eu, h/t Mario]

[added, 5-Oct] Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders A study of more than a half-million people in India who were exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 suggests that the virus’ continued spread is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected. [Morgan Kelly, princeton.edu]

[added, 1-Oct] This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic It’s not R. [Zeynep Tufekci, theatlantic.com, h/t Christopher]

[added, 25-Sep] A survival guide for the Covid age [Tim Harford, timharford.com]

[added, 16-Sep] Trump Health Official Apologizes for Facebook Outburst Michael R. Caputo, the head of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, apologized to the health secretary and his staff and is considering a medical leave. [Sharon LaFraniere, nytimes.com]

[added, 15-Sep] Trump Health Aide Pushes Bizarre Conspiracies and Warns of Armed Revolt Michael R. Caputo told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection and accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.” [Sharon LaFraniere, nytimes.com]

[added, 13-Sep] The Sturgis Biker Rally Did Not Cause 266,796 Cases of COVID-19 [Jennifer Dowd, slate.com, h/t Christopher]

[added, 10-Sep] How the Coronavirus Attacks the Brain It’s not just the lungs — the pathogen may enter brain cells, causing symptoms like delirium and confusion, scientists reported. [Apoorva Mandavilli, nytimes.com]

[added, 7-Sep] Trump’s Vaccine Can’t Be Trusted If a vaccine comes out before the election, there are very good reasons not to take it. [Laurie Garrett, foreignpolicy.com]

[added, 5-Sep] Coronavirus: Tests ‘could be picking up dead virus’ The main test used to diagnose coronavirus is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead virus from old infections, scientists say. [Rachel Schraer, bbc.co.uk]

[added, 4-Sep] Coronavirus Vaccine Roundup, Early September [Derek Lowe, blogs.sciencemag.org]

[added, 2-Sep] Is a Bradykinin Storm Brewing in COVID-19? Excess of the inflammatory molecule bradykinin may explain the fluid build-up in the lungs of patients with coronavirus infections. Clinical trials of inhibitors are putting this hypothesis to the test. [Alakananda Dasgupta, the-scientist.com]

[added, 1-Sep] How the Pandemic Defeated America A virus has brought the world’s most powerful country to its knees. [Ed Yong, theatlantic.com]

[added, 1-Sep] We Need to Talk About Ventilation How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission? [Zeynep Tufekci, theatlantic.com]

[added, 26-Aug] Some people can get the pandemic virus twice, a study suggests. That is no reason to panic [Kai Kupferschmidt, sciencemag.org]

[added, 22-Aug] The race to collect the pandemic’s history—as it unfolds
From protest signs to Purell, archivists try to preserve 2020 artifacts before they’re lost. [Eve Sneider, wired.com]

[added, 22-Aug] Untested COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, begins 40,000-person trial next week Russia skipped trials to grant approval and claim breakthrough. [Beth Mole, arstechnica.com]

[added, 16-Aug] The new two-hour, supply chain robust saliva test [Tyler Cowen, marginalrevolution.com]

[added, 14-Aug] Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020 [Mark É. Czeisler, et al. cdc.gov] tldr*; “The percentage of respondents who reported having seriously considered suicide in the 30 days before completing the survey (10.7%) was significantly higher among respondents aged 18–24 years (25.5%), minority racial/ethnic groups (Hispanic respondents [18.6%], non-Hispanic black [black] respondents [15.1%]), self-reported unpaid caregivers for adults§ (30.7%), and essential workers¶ (21.7%).” (*tldr; too long, didn’t read)

[added, 14-Aug] As Britain Climbs Out of an Economic Pit, Tough Questions Loom The government’s aid programs are winding down, and officials are so far resisting pressure to extend them. But what if the virus resurges? [Mark Landler, nytimes.com]

[added, 13-Aug] These are the top coronavirus vaccines to watch We are tracking 200 experimental vaccines...[washingtonpost.com]

[added, 12-Aug] Life here in Britain is largely returning to normal, highlighting Trump’s failures in America [Brian Klaas, washingtonpost.com]

[added, 8-Aug] Bill Gates on Covid-19 Gates on vaccines, Trump, and why social media is “a poisoned chalice.” [Steven Levy, wired.com]

[added, 3-Aug] Scared That Covid-19 Immunity Won’t Last? Don’t Be Dropping antibody counts aren’t a sign that our immune system is failing against the coronavirus, nor an omen that we can’t develop a viable vaccine [Akiko Iwasaki, Ruslan Medzhitov, nytimes.com]

[added, 3-Aug] ‘A huge experiment’: How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast [Andrew Joseph, statnews.com]

[added, 1-Aug] We Thought It Was Just a Respiratory Virus We were wrong. [Ariel Bleicher, Katherine Conrad, ucsf.edu]

[added, 26-Jul] Boris Johnson changes tone over handling of pandemic
[Laura Kuenssberg, bbc.co.uk]

[added, 26-Jul] How the U.S. Compares With the World’s Worst Coronavirus Hot Spots [Lauren Leatherby, nytimes.com]

[added, 18-Jul] Your Mask Cuts Own Risk by 65 Percent [Rick Kushman, ucdavis.edu]

[added, 18-Jul] How Dixie cups became the breakout startup of the 1918 pandemic Dixie cups were like the Zoom of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, which helped the product become a household name. [Kevin Leland, fastcompany.com]

[added, 8-Jul] How speedy lockdowns save lives Early stay-at-home orders contained covid-19 the best [economist.com] (see also: Lockdowns flatten the “economic curve,” too Cities that locked down faster in 1918 bounced back better. [Cathleen O’Grady, arstechnica.com])

[added, 8-Jul] Steven Pinker on the Tribal Roots of Defying Social Distancing [Robert Bazell, nautil.us]

[added, 7-Jul] Women’s Roller Derby Has a Plan for Covid, and It Kicks Ass
While baseball, basketball, and other sports struggle to adapt, an international team of skater-experts has figured out a safer way to play. [Christie Aschwanden, wired.com]

[added, 7-Jul] Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing? In France, where I live, the virus is under control. I can hardly believe the news coming out of the United States. [Thomas Williams, theatlantic.com]

[added, 28-Jun] How the Virus Won Invisible outbreaks sprang up everywhere. The United States ignored the warning signs. [Derek Watkins, et al., nytimes.com]

[added, 28-Jun] Behind The Curve How the World Missed COVID-19’s Silent Spread [Matt Apuzzo, et al., nytimes.com]

[added, 25-Jun] The cost of keeping schools closed will be dreadful Reversing lockdown is perilous, but we cannot sacrifice our children’s education indefinitely [Tim Harford, ft.com]

[added, 23-Jun] Lessons on Coronavirus Testing From the Adult Film Industry An industry that survived one health crisis could be a model for others looking to build confidence, experts say. [Michele Hollow, nytimes.com]

[added, 23-Jun] The Dudes Who Won’t Wear Masks Face coverings are a powerful tool, but health authorities can’t simply ignore the reasons some people refuse to use them. [Julia Marcus, theatlantic.com, h/t Christopher]

[added, 20-Jun] In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm [Rick Noack, wapost.com]

[added, 14-Jun] Can a Vaccine for Covid-19 Be Developed in Record Time? A discussion moderated by Siddhartha Mukherjee. [nytimes.com]

[added, 13-Jun] The Looming Bank Collapse The U.S. financial system could be on the cusp of calamity. This time, we might not be able to save it. [Frank Partnoy, theatlantic.com]

[added, 13-Jun] Tim Harford: can the pandemic help us fix our technology problem? The history of innovation has plenty of lessons on how to fight the corona crisis and transform our future [Tim Harford, ft.com]

[added, 7-Jun] How Germany got coronavirus right From extensive testing to early track and trace, Germany is a model for tackling the disease [Guy Chazan, ft.com]

[added, 7-Jun] Democracies contain epidemics most effectively People living under freely elected governments have been more responsive to lockdown measures [economist.com]

[added, 6-Jun] The C.D.C. Waited ‘It’s Entire Existence for This Moment.’ What Went Wrong? The technology was old, the data poor, the bureaucracy slow, the guidance confusing the administration not in agreement. The coronavirus shook the world’s premier health agency, creating a loss of confidence and hampering the U.S. response to the crisis. [Eric Lipton, et al., nytimes.com]

[added, 30-May] Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything Many of the infection’s bizarre symptoms have one thing in common [Dana Smith, medium.com]

[added, 26-May] Virus Crisis Exposes Cascading Weaknesses in U.S. Disaster Response [Christopher Flavelle, nytimes.com]

[added, 23-May] Yet another novel I will no longer write [Charlie Stross, antipope.org]

[added 23-May] Carnegie Mellon Researchers: Half of Twitter Accounts Discussing COVID-19 Are Disinformation Bots [John Gruber, daringfireball.net]

[added, 22-May] ‘How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?’ The government’s disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same. [Alexis Madrigal, Robinson Meyer, theatlantic.com]

[added, 22-May] Pepys and the plague Samuel Pepys, a young civil servant living in London, recorded his daily life for almost ten years in the 1660s. [Surya Bowyer, wellcomecollection.org, h/t Dawnise]

[added, 21-May] What to Expect When a Coronavirus Vaccine Finally Arrives Sobering lessons from the history of the polio vaccine. [Elena Conis, Michael McCoyd, Jessie Moravek, nytimes.com]

[added, 21-May] Chronicle of a Pandemic Foretold Learning From the COVID-19 Failure—Before the Next Outbreak Arrives [Michael Osterholm, Mark Olshaker, foreignaffairs.com]

[added, 18-May] Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience Massive Scale Testing, Tracing, and Supported Isolation (TTSI) as the Path to Pandemic Resilience for a Free Society [Danielle Allen et al., ethics.harvard.edu, PDF]

[added, 18-May] Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done A Supplement to the Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience [Danielle Allen et al., ethics.harvard.edu, PDF]

[added, 18-May] We could stop the pandemic by July 4 if the government took these steps A $74 billion investment in testing, tracing and isolation could rescue the economy — quickly [Alex Tabarrok, Puja Ahluwalia Ohlhaver, washingtonpost.com]

[added, 16-May] Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reëntry Health-care workers have been on the job throughout the pandemic. What can they teach us about the safest way to lift a lockdown? [Atul Gawande, newyorker.com]

[added, 16-May] Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis — and what does it mean for the US? [Edward Luce, ft.com]

[added, 11-May] The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them [Erin Bromage, erinbromage.com]

[added, 10-May] Why we fail to prepare for disasters [Tim Hartford, timhartford.com]

[added, 8-May] The Real Reason to Wear a Mask Much of the confusion around masks stems from the conflation of two very different uses. [Zeynep Tufekci, Jeremy Howard, Trisha Greenhalgh, atlantic.com]

[added, 8-May] There Is Still No Plan [David Wallace-Wells, nymag.com]

[added, 3-May] How the Virus Got Out [Wu, Cai, Watkins and Glanz, nytimes.com]

[added, 3-May] Coronavirus: How infection rates are changing across Europe and what it means for ending lockdown Transmission rates for COVID-19 are down across the continent, but could rise again if governments end restrictions too quickly. [Carmen Aguilar-Garcia, Alice Udale-Smith, sky.com, h/t Christopher]

[added, 1-May] Stocks Are Recovering While the Economy Collapses. That Makes More Sense Than You’d Think. [Zachary Karabell, time.com]

[added, 1-May] How Long Will a Vaccine Really Take? Here’s how we might achieve the impossible. [Stuart Thompson, nytimes.com]

[added, 29-Apr] Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond the coronavirus Bill Gates saw the coronavirus coming. Here’s his plan to beat it [Ezra Klein, vox.com, h/t Christopher]

[added, 28-Apr] In Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine, an Oxford Group Leaps Ahead As scientists at the Jenner Institute prepare for mass clinical trials, new tests show their vaccine to be effective in monkeys. [David Kirkpatrick, nytimes.com]

[added, 23-Apr] Without More Tests, America Can’t Reopen And to make matters worse, we’re testing the wrong people. [Ezekiel Emanuel, Paul Romer, theatlantic.com]

[added, 23-Apr] We Are Living in a Failed State The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken. [George Packer, theatlantic.com]

[added, 22-Apr] Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest Two preliminary efforts to survey citizens for antibodies to the virus have produced controversial results. [Gina Kolata, nytimes.com]

[added, 21-Apr] J.D. Scholten on Coronavirus in Iowa [Maciej Cegłowski, idlewords.com]

[added, 18-Apr] Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever [Sharon Begley, statnews.com]

[added, 18-Apr] When Will the Riots Begin? (do yourself a favor, don’t read the comments) [Alex Tabarrok, marginalrevolution.com]

[added, 18-Apr] The Price of the Coronavirus Pandemic When COVID-19 recedes, it will leave behind a severe economic crisis. But, as always, some people will profit. [Nick Paumgarten, newyorker.com]

[added, 18-Apr] The World Knows an Apocalyptic Pandemic Is Coming But nobody is interested in doing anything about it. [Laurie Garrett, 20-Sept-2019, foreignpolicy.com]

[added, 18-Apr] A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does. [Meyer & Madrigal, theatlantic.com]

[added, 18-Apr] How Trump Is Fueling a Corona Disaster Are we witnessing the implosion of a superpower? (caveat emptor) [DER SPIEGEL Staff, spiegel.de]

[added, 14-Apr] Contact Tracing in the Real World contact tracing in the real world is not quite as many of the academic and industry proposals assume [Ross Anderson, lightbluetouchpaper.org]

[added, 12-Apr] I’ve read the plans to reopen the economy. They’re scary. There is no plan to return to normal. [Ezra Klein, vox.com]

[added, 12-Apr] Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing As part of this partnership Google and Apple are releasing draft technical documentation. [Apple/Google, apple.com]

[added, 10-Apr] A (possible) solution to COVID-19 This data suggests a simple and testable hypothesis – there are natural strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have mutated to be non-pathogenic (asymptomatic), but are still infective and will provide immunity to the more pathogenic (deadly) strains [Daniel Tillett, tillett.info]

[added, 10-Apr] What Is Britain Without the Pub? Through two world wars, Britain’s pubs stayed open. Their closure now, for the first time in the country’s history, is forcing some to seek creative alternatives. [Allison McCann, nytimes.com]

[added, 5-Apr] Viral dynamics in mild and severe cases of COVID-19 [Liu, et al., thelancet.com, h/t Kris]

[added, 5-Apr] Which high street shops should get your money? While some brands are behaving badly, others are stepping up to help their staff and others in times of need. [lewiscotter.com, h/t Dawnise]

[added, 5-Apr] In Pictures: Coronavirus: Sophie Raworth’s deserted London [Sophie Raworth, bbc.co.uk]

[added, 5-Apr] What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Toilet Paper Shortage It isn’t really about hoarding. And there isn’t an easy fix. [Will Oremus, medium.com, h/t Dawnise]

[added, 2-Apr] Protecting Civil Liberties During a Public Health Crisis [Matthew Guariglia, Adam Schwartz, eff.org] related: Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing [h/t Jan-Peter]

[added, 2-Apr] COVID-19 in Iceland – Statistics [covid.is]. Linked for reasons discussed here [futurism.com] here [buzzfeed.com] and here [stratechery.com]. tldr; the asymptomatic rate of infection is significant (maybe up to ~50% according to Iceland’s chief epidemiologist Thorolfur Guðnason), and current guidance (e.g. “you need only wear a mask if you’re sick or caring for someone who is”) is not well aligned with that reality.

[added, 30-Mar] The untold origin story of the N95 mask The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making. [Mark Wilson, fastcompany.com]

[added, 29-Mar] The Science Behind Coronavirus Testing, and Where the U.S. Went Wrong America was never prepared for this [Anna Minkina, medium.com]

[added, 29-Mar] Rich countries try radical economic policies to counter covid-19 History suggests that the effects will be permanent [economist.com]

[added, 28-Mar] God be with you till we meet again On September 29th, 1918, months before the end of World War I, a freshly assigned physician at Camp Devens military base in Massachusetts wrote the following letter to a friend and fellow doctor, and described a terrifying influenza epidemic that was now killing hundreds of his camp’s soldiers each day. [lettersofnote.com]

[added, 27-Mar] Understanding SARS-CoV-2 and the drugs that might lessen its power Modest improvements in treatment could make a big difference. [economist.com, paywall, h/t Gary]

[added, 27-Mar] Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand [Ferguson, et. all., imperial.ac.uk]

[added, 27-Mar] Why Was It So Hard to Raise the Alarm on the Coronavirus? [David Wallace-Wells, nymag.com]

[added, 27-Mar] How the Pandemic Will End The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out. [Ed Yong (see also, “Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful”), atlantic.com]

[added, 26-Mar] Can You Become Immune to the Coronavirus? It’s likely you can, at least for some period of time. That is opening new opportunities for testing and treatment. [Apoorva Mandavilli, nytimes.com]

[added, 25-Mar] ‘All Of This Panic Could Have Been Prevented’: Author Max Brooks On COVID-19 [Terry Gross, npr.org, h/t Mike]

[added, 25-Mar] Can We Put a Price Tag on a Life? The Shutdown Forces a New Look President Trump and others have asked if halting normal life and commerce to fight the coronavirus is worth the cost. Here’s how economists figure it. [Eduardo Porter & Jim Tankersley, nytimes.com]

[added, 24-Mar] This Is the One Thing That Might Save the World From Financial Collapse Amid everything else, there’s a deeper economic crisis underway. [Adam Tooze, nytimes.com]

[added, 24-Mar] Covid-19’s Impact on Libraries Goes Beyond Books Shuttering public libraries puts a strain on communities—even if it’s the only way to keep people safe. [Boone Ashworth, wired.com]

[added, 21-Mar] Live tracker: How many coronavirus cases have been reported in each U.S. state? Using data from the COVID Tracking Project, we’re following how each state is responding to COVID-19. [Beatrice Jin, politico.com, h/t Zach]

The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming – Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus—but first, we need lots more testing. [Steven Levy, wired.com]

Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful – We’ve known about SARS-CoV-2 for only three months, but scientists can make some educated guesses about where it came from and why it’s behaving in such an extreme way. [Ed Yong, theatlantic.com]

The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming – Will the world now wake up to the global threat of zoonotic diseases? [Kevin Berger (no relation), nautil.us]

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data. [John P.A. Ioannidis, statnews.com]

Not All Movement Is Progress

I was having a conversation with a friend recently. We both work in “Big Tech.” Both our employers are sensitive to employees making remotely public statements – and his in particular is pretty notorious for over-reacting. So in an abundance of caution I’ll point out that this rambling represents neither of our companies – just a conversation between two people who’ve been in tech “a fair while.”

We were talking about the most recent operating system released by a Big Tech company that runs on their fruit-themed hardware.

The release has caused a bit of a kerfuffle – it no longer runs a set of applications that were supported by its predecessor. Like other transitions in this company’s past, this one was deliberate and foreshadowed across a couple years. If a customer depends on an application that this OS won’t run, they find an alternative, convince themselves they don’t really need that application, or they don’t upgrade. This last is problematic. Not in the short term – they’ll still get critical updates for their old operating system for a while – but eventually. And if they need to buy new fruit-themed hardware, that new hardware likely won’t run that old operating system. So those customers are one hardware failure away from running out of options.

It’s also generally been a bit of a bumpy release. The initial release had more than its fair share of issues, and even after a couple minor releases there are ongoing sources of customer pain and breakage. I’ve encountered some of these bumps personally, and I reached out to this friend – on a personal basis – to relate my anecdote.

I think it’s safe to say that most tech consumers don’t have personal contacts inside “Big Tech.” They can potentially contact support if they have a problem, but that’s where it ends.

“I don’t expect you to fix this,” I started, “I just want you to hear the unfiltered voice of your customer.” I went on to explain the problem, and how I thought they could have given their customers more options – as they had during past large technology transitions.

I pointed out that, from my perspective, this transition was different from the big transitions in the past. In the past, I argued, customers saw a difference, and that visibility made the changes – even the unwelcome ones – easier to understand. During the transition from their “classic” operating system to their NeXT (sic.) generation operating system in c. 2001, everything looked different. When they changed the CPU their machines were built around in c. 2006, customers bought new computers. Those changes were moments of transition – painful transitions for some customers – that enabled new things.

This time, a customer who “upgrades” their software gets to do less. And it’s pretty hard to explain to a customer how being able to do less enables new things.

That got me thinking about the idea of progress in computing, and software. This is a case where we’re “improving” a computing systems by making it do less than it could do before – and that feels like not progress.

Maybe I’m just old. Part of me can’t give up the Apple ][ that I could open the cover on, and basically understand from the component level up.

That’s not computers anymore.  And as magical as carrying the internet around in my pocket, or on my wrist, is – and it is – I think we’ve lost some valuable things along the way.

…but a whimper

So the Senate acted as expected – voting along party lines to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of congress and leave him in office.

To paraphrase my favorite TV shepherd “I’m not even sure I think they were wrong.”

Trump is undoubtedly guilty of the offenses he was charged with. Mitch McConnell is undoubtedly a toadying ass. And Mike Pence is undoubtedly more adept at manipulating the US political establishment than his boss, and thereby likely even more dangerous.

“If you strike me down, he shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine.”

“I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit…”

That Pence is not in charge is cold comfort.

There was no winning move. To not impeach Trump was tacit approval of his behavior. To impeach Trump mandated giving the Republican controlled Senate control over the outcome.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,”

The odds of the Republicans breaking ranks and removing Trump from office – regardless of the charges, or the evidence – were basically zero from the outset.

Democrats fall apart. Republicans fall in line.

Well, save Mitt Romney, it turns out. And his behavior over time has made it really difficult to think about his actions in any rational way (or maybe difficult to think about his actions in any way other than a rational actor).

Basically, McConnell was correct in saying “If this was all about politics, and it was, at least at the moment I think it is fair to conclude that we won and they lost.”

Take a second to unpack “we” and “they.” “We” is pretty clearly the Republican party. “They,” as far as I can tell, includes the Democratic party, rule of law, and whomever tries to reign in presidential power in the future.

Including “American Democracy” in that list feels like hyperbole. Just because something’s hyperbole doesn’t mean it’s false.

As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight gives Sanders nearly even odds of gaining a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic primary. A self-described socialist that has or will alienate moderate voters, regardless of which side of the aisle they lean toward.

I’ve been saying it since he was elected, and I see no reason to amend it now – “If he [Trump] runs again, he wins again.”

I don’t think it’s likely that Trump wins the next election – I think it’s nearly guaranteed that the Democrats lose it.

Please, America.

Prove me wrong.

What I’ve Been Reading

I had given up on RSS for a fair while after Google killed Reader. Some months ago I decided to try again, using Feedly* and to be more selective about the feeds I followed.

When I occasionally send articles to potentially interested parties, they often ask “where do you find this stuff?”

So I figured I’d answer.

I’ve roughly divided my feeds into topics, and provided a link to a sample article.

If this list suggests other blogs I might want to follow – drop me a line with a pointer to a good sample article. I’d welcome the reccomendation.

General Interest:

Economics:

Tech:

Security/Crypto:

* I’ve since switched to self-hosting miniflux, but you probably don’t care.