Sunday, April 12, 2020

April 12th Links

  • After it became clear that there was a full-blown epidemic spreading from Wuhan to the rest of Hubei province, why did you cut off travel from Hubei to the rest of China – on January 23 – but not from Hubei to the rest of the world? [Niall Ferguson]
  • The book on winding motors was literally written in 1920, by which time there were people with 30 to 40 years experience. There are motors dating back from the turn of the 20th century still in revenue service. I occasionally visit a 1912 building whose freight elevator has its original DC motor. It has new brushes and bearings but was never rewound. The mercury arc rectifier was replaced in the seventies and microprocessor control replaced the octal based relays in the 1990s. It runs smoother than a supermodel's ass. It will probably outlast the building, which still has the mounts for the EMD standby generator in the basement floor from when it was a WWII telegraph nexus. [Sailer]
  • In the U.S., bickering about an appropriate official name for Covid-19, along with a sequence of bureaucratic blunders that led to dire shortages of diagnostic testing and medical gear, highlight the core competencies of today's media and governmental elites: administrative turf wars and verbal jousting to burnish status in positional games. Even in this high-stakes moment, they cannot abandon unproductive old reflexes. In a strange turn of events, twenty-first-century American elites turn out to resemble the Chinese mandarins of yore, absorbed in intricate intrigues at court to advance their careers while European gunboats prowl the waterways. [link]
  • This process went on for weeks as dozens of people passed through. A handful of folks did present some paperwork, but the numbers didn't add up. I actually sat down with a few applicants and asked them to do a budget. What's your car payment? Truck payment? Vehicle insurance? Student loan(s)? Credit card payments? Child support from a previous relationship? I could see how they never actually did the math on what they could or couldn't afford. I didn't have to reject them. They saw for themselves how this would end in tears. [Granola Shotgun]
  • In Italy, the anticipated "apex"—a discrete high point for infections and deaths, with a sharp slope on either side—turned out to be a *20-day plateau* with infection/death figures going slightly up or down day by day but staying above 4,000 daily infections and 700 daily deaths. In the U.S., the White House has primed us for a single, clear, unambiguous apex, so when infection and death figures went down for one day this weekend, many assumed we were on the post-apex downward slope, and even some officials encouraged that foolhardy view of the situation. Now we're right back up to our highest infection levels—33,000 to 34,500 daily—and the number of fatalities wasn't just higher today than ever before but is projected to continue rising for at least another 9 days. But why do we assume the downward slope thereafter will be steep? We keep getting told that the IHME is using Italy in its modeling now, not just China. Okay, so why does that model not imagine the possibility of an "apex plateau," where our highest rate of infection and death—or in that ballpark—stays with us for 20 days, as happened in Italy? [Seth Abramson]
  • To even propose that there is some kind of "choice" to save the economy at the price of a few old people dying (and its not like the victims are even as clear as you'd like it to be) is a dangerous false dichotomy. There is no way the economy is exiting the lockdown until the disease is under control. The "lockdown" just gives the authorities the ability to go after egregious malcontents that are so socially degenerate they can't obey basic behavioral norms at a time like this. Your workplace would not be open right now even if the government allowed it. Either get the disease under control, or there is no economy. You aren't a clever heartless individual, you're an idiot that wants to seem "tough". [Hsu]
  • Consider one project to make N95 masks — not even a strictly medical product — domestically. The proper agency, a bunch of beautiful humans who call themselves "NIOSH," told the team it would take 45 to 90 days to approve the factory — making the same product, with the same machines, that are already deployed. Meanwhile, ER docs are making their own masks out of bandanas. This is utterly mental and not even slightly surprising. The law is clear. Everything is illegal unless it's perfect. DC slow-rolled testing for two and a half months because it wasn't sure the tests were perfect. It had to make its own perfect tests — which did not work, adding another month. Imagine fighting World War II this way. It is unethical to send American boys to die in an unproven fighter plane. The new F-6 Hellcat cannot be deployed until it never crashes, no one can shoot it down, its engines never wear out, and it is tested against the F-4 Wildcat, the approved standard of war, in a randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial. If even the enemy pilots can tell the difference — your "evidence" is tainted — the study must be rejected. The same applies to antivirals. Remdesivir probably works, and chloroquine might. A foolish person, ignorant of ethics, might think it would be okay to make as much as possible of both, right now, and let doctors make their own decisions as to what they think works. [Moldbug]
  • During a recent conversation in the twenty-sixth-floor apartment that Yujia shares with her husband in Chengdu, in southwestern China, she explained that political pressures are often not stated openly. "The editor doesn't tell me anything about why they are holding out the CIP numbers," Yujia said, referring to the Cataloging in Publication number that the Chinese government requires for any book that is to be published. For the past year, the numbers have not been approved for many American books. Chen Liang, Yujia's editor at Beijing Xiron Books, responded politely but with tactical vagueness to an e-mail inquiry about the delay. The phrase he used was "some accidental factors." [Peter Hessler]
  • I occasionally send survey questions to the people I taught, and in 2017 I asked if China should become a multiparty democracy. Out of thirty respondents, twenty-two said no. "China is going well this way," one former student wrote. Others were more cynical. "We already have one corrupt party, it will be much worse if we have more," one man wrote.[Peter Hessler]
  • For Bob, farms were the "heart of Frenchness." His grandfather had been a farmer. Every one of the friends he would eventually introduce me to were also the grandchildren of farmers. They felt connected to the rhythm of plows and seasons, and were beneficiaries of a knowledge that had been in their families for generations. When Bob described it, he used the word transmettre, with its sense of "to hand over"—something passed between eras. [Bill Buford]

6 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

“Either get the disease under control, or there is no economy.”

There is a frozen chocolate pie in our freezer that I only somewhat jokingly refer to as the chocolate pie of death. I purchased it at a local Target 10 days ago on a Thursday at 7:00am (to avoid any crowds). After I got home, I learned that the virus lasts a lot longer on cold surfaces and can probably survive for a very, very long time in the freezer. It’s not the pie itself that slightly concerns me. It’s the outside of the packaging.

I’m generally much more careful with our groceries lately than most, even though we’re told that we probably won’t catch it from food packaging. Non-perishables go into quarantine at our house. Eggs get carefully removed from the packaging and placed in a bowl. Milk and cheese get wiped down before going in the fridge.

I’m now told that it can live up to 5 days on shoes. I should leave them at the door. That’s my limit. I’m not going to worry about my shoes. If they end up infecting me, I was going to get infected anyway. I would think differently if I worked in a hospital or lived in a busy apartment building, but in the last 2 weeks my shoes have only been in one Target store for 30 minutes. (I did wash my coat when I got home though.)

As for the 6’ social distancing guidelines, I try to stay a lot further away than that. I read an interesting analogy that sunk in for me. I imagine everyone who I meet smoking a cigarette. If I’m close enough to smell the imaginary smoke, then it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit further away. Just because I can’t smell the virus being exhaled, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

It’s good that I am not the typical American. This economy would have crashed a long time ago. I value my free time much more than I value material possessions. I’m still driving a 1996 Camry that doesn’t even have 100k miles on it yet. I’m a saver by nature and not much of a risk taker. We’re told we live in a world where we must consume and take risks though, in order to be prosperous. It’s only partially true. Someone needs to do it to keep the party going, but it won’t be me. It won’t be the rich either. Sure, they’ll consume some and take some risks. They will never take the kind of risk that comes from living paycheck to paycheck while buying a big screen TV or buying that new car with no money down and 0% interest for 84 months. Sigh.

Allan Folz said...

Borrowed time my friend. Borrowed time...

Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By Now

Stagflationary Mark said...

Allan,

You got me. I read the entire article before I realized it was from The Onion. Hilarious!!!!

It’s been a fantastic car. I’ve definitely become a fanboy. It’s my first Toyota and maybe my last. I’m 55. I drive at most 2k miles per year now. Will it last longer than I do? I keep thinking that I should buy a new car at some point but this car has given me no reason to distrust it. At least not yet.

Even the leather steering wheel still looks and feels brand new. And being the lazy bum that I am, I’ve done nothing to properly maintain the leather. The engine still purrs. It’s got a very slow oil pan leak (that I should fix). I never have to add oil between infrequent oil changes. It certainly doesn’t burn any. Never failed an emissions test.

I wish I could say the same about me. I’m getting old. Hair’s starting to thin. Skin isn’t as soft (especially with all this hand washing recently). Engine no longer purrs like it once did. Reduced top speed. Less agile in the turns. My car clearly has the advantage over me. Hahaha! ;)

Anonymous said...

"To even propose that there is some kind of "choice" to save the economy at the price of a few old people dying (and its not like the victims are even as clear as you'd like it to be) is a dangerous false dichotomy. There is no way the economy is exiting the lockdown until the disease is under control. The "lockdown" just gives the authorities the ability to go after egregious malcontents that are so socially degenerate they can't obey basic behavioral norms at a time like this. Your workplace would not be open right now even if the government allowed it. Either get the disease under control, or there is no economy. You aren't a clever heartless individual, you're an idiot that wants to seem "tough"."

SPeaking of false dichotomies, he offered an idiotic one himself. The CDC's data show that mostly retirees need hospitalization, so the victims are plenty clear and have been since the start of this.
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html

Retirees can much more easily self-isolate than the rest of us who need to work. Should we get sick, we develop relatively minor symptoms. In an effort to protect the elderly, we could've stayed away from them while the pandemic runs its natural course through the rest of us. Herd immunity through natural antibodies would've killed the pandemic naturally while now we have to go through this lockdown probably again since a vaccine could take a long time.

Friends in Texas say they've taken a different approach than total lockdown/shelter-in-place and you can see the results on JHU's website: minimal deaths, no where near as bad as NY.

There were obviously more choices than "total lockdown of everyone" and the economic ruin will probably kill far more people.

CP said...

Evidence for a Heritable Predisposition to Death Due to Influenza
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/197/1/18/797348

Inborn errors of anti-viral interferon immunity in humans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3280408/

Tests the hypothesis that severe disease during primary infection can result from monogenic inborn errors of immunity.
https://www.rockefeller.edu/our-scientists/heads-of-laboratories/970-jean-laurent-casanova/

Anonymous said...

What do those links prove relative to the current pandemic?