And don’t forget to pick up a copy of Katie Mack’s “The End of Everything” — one of my favorite reads* of the pandemic era.
*P.S. If you do read Mack’s book, whatever you do, do NOT overlook the frequent footnotes!
Category: science and tech
Airborne Transmission
From the Washington Post today:
Nature Journal’s COVID-19 Modeling Forecasts
Nature, first published in 1869, describes itself as “a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions.”
Its Nature Medicine article published yesterday, October 23, 2020, entitled “Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States” presents a fascinating and sobering (and perhaps somewhat terrifying) forecast. The idea was to explore the potential outcomes from differing levels of social distancing and mask usage. The article is lengthy and demands close attention to its rigorous scientific detail and presentation (and I haven’t finished the whole thing, even after studying it for over two hours), but an overall conclusion states, in part:
“Projections of current non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies by state—with social distancing mandates reinstated when a threshold of 8 deaths per million population is exceeded (reference scenario)—suggest that, cumulatively, 511,373 (469,578–578,347) lives could be lost to COVID-19 across the United States by 28 February 2021. We find that achieving universal mask use (95% mask use in public) could be sufficient to ameliorate the worst effects of epidemic resurgences in many states. Universal mask use could save an additional 129,574 (85,284–170,867) lives from September 22, 2020 through the end of February 2021, or an additional 95,814 (60,731–133,077) lives assuming a lesser adoption of mask wearing (85%), when compared to the reference scenario.”
Wear your masks, people.
Update – 9:43pm: I see that Twitter is talking about this report.
Amazon Phishing Email Scam
One of the latest email scams as reported by the How-To-Geek: https://www.howtogeek.com/697176/psa-watch-out-for-this-new-amazon-email-phishing-scam/
Walter Predicts
Short clip from the March 12, 1967 episode of the CBS show “The 21st Century”:
The Social Dilemma
What If the Big Bang Was Actually a Big Bounce?
A Wired piece tells us of the emergence of a new theory …
Coronavirus Diary: April 24, 2020
On the matter of masks… My formula today: two layers of T-shirt material between which is a chunk of blue shop towel material (alternatively, two pieces of standard paper towel). See these research findings for some of the latest on the efficacy of various DIY mask ingredients. Note to self: wear only with one of my black turtlenecks.
Coronavirus and Climate Change
Anticipating Earth Day this coming Wednesday, we listen to this week’s exceptional episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour:
Or go directly to the website.
How-To Geek and Adriene
How-To Geek was one of our favorite go-to tech sites for several of my colleagues and me during the many years I worked for an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Going beyond the usual bounds of tech, today the site posts “How to Make the Most of Free Time at Home” for those of us who are not first responders/health care workers/essential industry workers/etc. and are self-isolating and social-distancing.
And, as it turns out, among How-To Geek‘s suggestions is Adriene (see our previous misspelled post, “Adrienne Comes Through“), with which I heartily concur!