[AKN #20] COVID policy recs and accidental Renaissance photos
another krappy newsletter #20
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Reporting to you live from the metaverse. I live in the cloud now. As you know, physical geography is increasingly meaning less and less as we all transition to a digital utopia. Soon we can remove all in person interactions and then we will have truly reached the apex of…
Lol. Fuck that. Whenever I read something that sounds like the above, I have to stop and ask myself what that person has been doing for the last 9 months. Anyone who thinks “heaven” is the complete replacement of human contact with Zoom is a moron.
The bifurcation of the population into Team Metaverse and Team Reality is the latest bizarre example of tribalism to play out on Internet forums. If you exclusively spend time online (like me), you would think that you have to be in either camp. But meanwhile, back on Earth, the large consensus of mortals I have spoken to simply want some hybrid future.
“Would be cool to only have to go into the office three days a week”
is more prevalent than
“Can’t wait to upload my consciousness to the BotNet and transcend into digital immortality.”
But we choose the latter since it is sexier and it passes the minimum novelty bar required to penetrate our thalamus. Entertaining always wins in the battle for attention. Which is why every cool science thing gets co-opted by some stupid futurist who knows nothing about the technology, but knows how to say interesting stuff.
Whatever. I am still holding out hope that:
Virtual reality ends up being cool
My introduction was jarring enough to warrant your thalamus’s attention.
On to the 20th edition of the newsletter!
Table of Contents
What would you do if you were in charge of COVID policies?
Accidental Renaissance photos
1. What would you do if you were in charge of COVID policies?
Following my closing outdoor dining tirade, I have received a lot of comments from readers telling me how they would rather the government operate this way than some other way. The readers without children asking me “what would you do to make sure we are safe?” and the readers who are parents asking me “well what would you do if your son was at home?”
Well. First of all, if my son was at home, I would obviously listen to the wisdom of City High and sleep with a man for a little bit of money. Secondly, I would take on COVID in a structured first principles oriented way. Cause for me this is what I call life…mmmm.
Here is the roadmap I would take to address the rise in cases.
Note: I am open to feedback on how you think my thought process or recommendations could improve. But my main point is that treating this virus with a lockdown akin to the March lockdown is asinine.
Kevin mansplains how to mitigate COVID spread outline
Understand the transmission mechanism.
Set up clear guidelines around how to mitigate against transmission.
Root cause analysis when people get sick under the recommended guidelines.
Adjust policies to reflect reality.
1. Understand the transmission mechanism
The transmission mechanism is aerosol droplets. I have covered it before. These droplets are sent out of a person’s mouth/nose, drift through the air, and get breathed in by other people. That is how people get infected. Not saying you should go start licking door knobs again, but we do know that people get this by breathing it in.
But let’s deep dive how we know this and what this means by looking at actual science for a second.
As highlighted by Zeynep in the following post, there are a couple takeaways we have from good contact tracing done post some COVID outbreaks.
Aerosol droplets can spread hella far inside. Like way farther than 6 feet. Thus, you can get COVID whilst maintaining 6 feet of distance if you are indoors, not wearing a mask, and there is not proper ventilation.
STUDY 1: July 2020
Very early on, this study highlighted the risk of indoor dining.
On January 24th 2020, in a restaurant in Guangzhou, one person on the cusp of becoming symptomatic infected 10 other people (out of a total 91, including the initial case). It was confirmed that due to the airflow in the restaurant, people were infected at far greater distances than 6 feet, two meters.
notice how only the people downstream of the air conditioner or facing the infected person (A1) get infected STUDY 2: November 2020
A follow on study follows the transmission chain in a restaurant in South Korea. To summarize the findings:
One person (Case B) infected two other people (case A and C) from a distance away of 6.5 meters (~21 feet) and 4.8m (~15 feet). Case B and case A overlapped for just five minutes at quite a distance away. These people were well beyond the current 6 feet / 2 meter guidelines of CDC and much further than the current 3 feet / one meter distance advocated by the WHO. And they still transmitted the virus.
I recommend reading both of these studies. It is a masterpiece of contact tracing that is only possible in places with questionable morales around surveillance of their citizens. They have minute by minute tracking of these people, took airflow measurements to understand how far the droplets could travel, and they walked away with a strong understanding of how and when each person did or did not get infected. It is insane. The magic of having the government track your every move and actual scientists do science!
Now let’s not freak out about the spread conclusions drawn by the studies above without understanding the context. In the first study, we saw that where you were seated mattered a lot due to airflow and ventilation.
Likewise in the second study:
Only the visitors (cases A and C) sitting in the air flow path of case B were infected with COVID-19, while other visitors (V2, V3) closer to the infector for a longer period of time but in the absence of direct air flow did not become infected. In addition, the visitors sitting at tables with cases A and C (V1, V6, and V7) were not infected with COVID-19 because they faced away from the infector’s face.
again, notice how people downwind from the ventilation source are infected, but not those with backs turned or upwind So our major takeaways from the indoor restaurant use case:
Having a lot of people indoors is a terrible idea especially if you have bad ventilation and no mask on.
Indoor restaurants with poor ventilation are cause for concern because people spend large amounts of time without a mask on at restaurants.
Talking, yelling, and singing makes spread worse.
The Skagit County choir case was a superspreader event in Washington. Basically some people came in to do some innocent choir and walked out infected with COVID.
According to Zeynep:
The initial report and a follow-up examination document an unusually high “secondary attack rate”—the number of people infected by what was almost certainly a single case. (Supplemental information is available here).
52 people (out of 61 total, including the initial case) were infected in one choir practice in March, in Skagit County, Washington. It was after the outbreak had become public, so there were some precautions taken, like putting hand-sanitizer around and restricting hugging and handshakes.
Crazy! But the crucial part:
A massive outbreak occurred almost certainly because the people were singing! It was a choir practice!
As an avid karaoke guy, this is devastating. But singing is high risk.
Research has confirmed that singing generates more tiny droplets than talking or breathing. But it also confirmed that we have a way to take that risk and bring it back down to a simple talking level. All you have to do is wear a mask!
So our takeaways for the singing use case and follow on studies about the spread:
Aerosol droplets can be spread long and far distances if people yell, sing, scream
A simple face mask reduced the amount of generated aerosol particles from singing to a level similar to normal talking!
So given what we know about the transmission mechanism being aerosol droplets, our main concern should be how do we put measures in place to reduce the spread of aerosol droplets.
2. Set up clear guidelines around how to mitigate against transmission
Given what we know about the mechanism, it is pretty clear how you can mitigate the transmission of it in several different contexts.
Stop the spread of aerosols at the mouth.
Masks. These dampen the emission of droplets/aerosols from the infected person and can reduce your intake of droplets/aerosols.
Shut the fuck up. Seriously. I am not being rude. I am just believing science. Countries like Japan are taking measures such as discouraging conversations and singing in public areas. It would behoove us to be like the Puritan town in Footloose and disallow singing, dancing, and fun for a bit.
Stop the spread of aerosols if they have already left the mouth.
Eliminate high risk events entirely. Large gatherings of people indoors simply cannot happen unless the proper ventilation and distancing are set up.
Ventilation + masks + distance = very low probability of transmission
Outdoors: Anything outside should be fine provided you are at a distance.
Indoors: As long as the room has proper ventilation, distance is maintained, and people are wearing masks, spread should be mitigated. This report covers all of the options available to make indoor activities possible which include:
Purifying air
Improving ventilation
Managing airflow
3. Root cause analysis when people get sick under the recommended guidelines
One thing you might notice is that we are being advised to do most of the things that I mentioned above. But there is still a large spread. So whats going on?
Well. Thats where we now have to take our scientist hat off and enter the wonderful world of human behavior.
In looking at New York State’s data on contact tracing COVID patients between September and November, we can get a glimpse into how people are actually getting this virus:
74% of the spread is coming from Household/Social gatherings.
You know. Things that are already actively discouraged under the CDC guidelines…
Let me say, that I for one am SHOCKED that the vast majority of the spread is coming from people who aren’t following the rules!
Who would have thought that people would be skeptical of a government that has done such a bang up job with messaging on how the virus spreads, what we can do to protect ourselves, and why lockdowns are necessary?
It is very difficult to regain trust when the experts made the mistake of confidently saying things like:
But that is the conditions we find ourselves in now. Just have to move forward.
4. Adjust policies to reflect reality
To solve the spread, the biggest domino to knock over is the 74% of the spread coming from people gathering indoors at Households/ Social gatherings.
You can attack this in two ways:
Provide safe outlets to see people. There is clearly an unmet human desire to see people right now. So I think it is worth thinking through the question “how can we see people safely?” Ways to do this:
Open up outdoor restaurants or indoor restaurants with appropriate ventilation.
Provide small business loans or rebates to businesses for getting updated ventilation systems. This will increase the number of businesses which are safe to enter.
Punish people for not following the rules. This one I don’t like as much, but I would imagine that putting disincentives in the right place would change people’s behavior. Such as:
Fine people who throw large social events without appropriate precautions in place.
Arrest people who throw events that result in large spread events.
To solve the other 26% of spread in the above graphic, you would be well suited to come up with creative ways to get more people to stay home or follow the mask guidelines.
A few ways that you can accomplish that are:
Making PPE available for free by sending it to homes and handing them out at local pharmacies.
Giving debt flexibility or outright payments to businesses so that you can slow the need for them to make money immediately.
Giving people outright emergency payments to avoid having to go to work to make bills work.
I am sure there are plenty of other options we could use here to get our desired result. Look, this is complex. I get that. You get that.
But what is not complex is how fucking silly it is to shut down the following activities:
Playgrounds
Outdoor restaurants
Businesses where people can follow all of the appropriate regulations like barber shops and salons
Outdoor family entertainment centers
But that is what we did in California. Those are policies that you enact when you are trying to cover your ass and you value running for mayor or president one day over the mental/financial health of the people you serve. You don’t do those things when you believe science.
Closing note: This is a work in progress so I am open to learning from you all about additional ways to control the spread. Let me know if you have any other ideas!
2. Accidental Renaissance Photos
This is such an incredible idea. The author finds modern photos and matches them up to similar looking Renanaissance art.
I think my favorite one is of Ted Cruz and these soccer players:
But the entire collection is incredible.
Find more here:
Closing time
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