COVID-19 June 26, 2020

It seems that at least some of the criminally negligent state leaders have suddenly become aware of the trends.  Time to hit the pause button on re-opening, they say.  Nope.  Wrong answer.  Today's data is a reflection of the conditions two or more weeks ago.  Pausing simply means that the conditions that allowed for the explosion of new cases will remain in place.  So, we'll tread water for a few more weeks until the situation becomes catastrophic, and then we'll probably see some back-tracking to more restrictive policies.  And even when that happens, we'll have to wait several weeks to see any effect.  And that assumes that things haven't gone so non-linear that reverting to prior lockdown policies are ineffective.  I'm rather concerned that we are nearing the equivalent of critical mass in a nuclear reaction.  Boom.

The exponential doubling rate for new infections went from a little over 18 days yesterday to 17 days today.  The doubling rate is accelerating.  It's been a couple months since we had to deal with exponential growth, but you can do the math.  35,000 new cases today.  70,000 per day in 17 days.  140,000 per day in about a month from now.  At 140,000 per day you would have close to 1.5 million new infections in only 10 days.  And all this assumes the doubling rate doesn't continue to increase.

There is, potentially, a way to slow this down.  It's clear the answer isn't going to come from the state or especially the federal government.  It's going to take collective personal responsibility.  In the U.S. that basically means we're doomed.  Selfishness is a way of life.  Rugged individualism.  There is no greater good.  This is why we don't have universal health care like the rest of the civilized (and even uncivilized) world.  I will say you'll never look as rugged as when you're dead.  Nevertheless, wear a mask and stay as isolated from the rest of the world as much as possible.  I know it's hard to do when you see others behaving like selfish jerks.  Why bother to make (small) sacrifices for others when they won't reciprocate?  Integrity.  Character.  Be a better person.  Like the virus, altruism might be contagious.  Everyone is eventually going to learn what needs to be done.  Some understand it now.  Some will learn the hard way.  But, at the rate we're going the reality of the situation is going to force most everyone to eventually accept that we are all on the same sinking ship.  We either have to bale the water together or we're all going to go down.

I'm angry and frustrated that I've spent the last three months personally doing what had to be done. The curve did flatten and fortunately, the hospitals did not become overwhelmed.  We had the opportunity to not only flatten the curve but squash it, like they did in Europe.  But greed and stupidity were too much.  And now we are right back where we were two months ago.  It's actually worse than that.  Two months ago we were at the peak and the curve was flattening.  Now we are at the same peak and accelerating upwards.  We really are stupid apes.

COVID-19 June 25, 2020

Yesterday's numbers came in stronger than the day before.  This would be good if I were talking about the stock market, sales revenue, or collective intelligence, but I'm not. 

As usual, we need to be very careful about daily numbers, because the weekly oscillation has a strong signal, and yesterday and today are usually near the peak of that oscillation.  Nevertheless, the daily number of new infections yesterday was significant.  It was the highest number reported since the pandemic began.  You could chalk some of that up to increased testing.  We are testing far more than we were back at the end of April when the prior record was set.  However, that explanation must be tempered by the fact that many states are now only reporting confirmed cases and are not counting presumptive cases like they were back in April.  Anecdotally, hospitals in Texas, California, and Florida are reporting a noticeable increase in volume.  These three states are responsible for the bulk of the increase.

While the most populous states are getting attention, don't forget about many other states that are seeing a dramatic rise.  They may not contribute as much in sheer numbers to the national rise, but proportionately they are just as concerning.

None of this should be surprising.  The virus is a simple reproductive machine.  It's reproductive and replication method is straightforward.  If you provide an environment for it to reproduce it will reproduce.  When people come into contact at businesses and other locations, that is a suitable environment for viral transmission.  It's especially suitable if masks are not being used.  The gym I belong to proudly announced they were re-opening a little over a week ago.  You have to wear a mask when coming and going, but not during your workout.  What could possibly go wrong with a bunch of people breathing heavily in close proximity with a virus that is transmitted by respiratory aerosols?

Not only have many states re-opened businesses, which you should more properly think of as a re-opening of the viral reproductive environment, but none of the states have put into place any coordinated plan to deal with the inevitable rise in viral transmission.  The whole thing is tragically idiotic if not criminal.  It's criminal at the state level because the increase in infections was inevitable in the absence of effective policy such as contact tracing and testing. It's criminal at the federal level, because this is a national problem, not a state problem, and the federal government has been purposefully derelict in its primary Constitutional function.  When I say criminal, I mean criminal.  People will unnecessarily die.  People should go to prison for this. 

Back to the numbers...I've added an exponential fit to the 7-day average of the new daily cases.  I started the curve fit at June 9, which is by my eye about when the average started taking off.  As of right now, the doubling rate for new infections is about 18 days. Let's keep an eye on that number.  I expect the doubling time will get shorter.  Individually, California appears to have a doubling time of roughly one week.  Texas and Florida are perhaps a few days more.

 The death rate has not noticeably changed, although there are hints that the long-term decrease is leveling off.  I expect the death rates will eventually rise.  It just takes a while for people to die after they've been infected.  As discussed numerous times before, the death rate over the next few weeks is already baked into the cake.  The people that will die in a couple of weeks from now are already infected.  There's nothing to be done about it.  Have a nice day.

COVID-19 June 24, 2020

I'm back!  Did you miss me?  The data and trends have changed rather substantially since I went on hiatus a little over a week ago.  I won't be able to discuss everything in this post.  Here are some key points that I think most everyone already knows:

1) Infection rates are going back up.  Rapidly. Almost exponentially. I've added the linear best-fit line to the plot of 7-day average of cumulative cases.  You'll note that that line is steeper than the trend in the earlier data, which is to say that the rate of new cases is growing at more than a linear rate.

2) The 7-day average of new cases is very near the peak value that was reached in early April.  All the prior individual and societal sacrifices up to now have been nearly erased, at least in an average, national sense.

3) Many/most states are or have recently switched to counting only verified infections rather than presumptive cases.  Even with this book cooking, the infection rates are going up.  They'd be a lot higher using the prior counting methods.  I try to avoid conspiratorial thinking, but Occam's Razor suggests that the change in accounting is to make the numbers look better than they actually are.  I'm open to considering more parsimonious explanations.

4) Death rates may be showing an increase, but it is not yet obvious.  There should be a lag between infection rates and death rates so this is not entirely surprising.  Give it another week or two.

I'll try to elaborate on these and other points going forward.  I should be able to post almost daily as before, but there may be periods where I miss a day or two due to other pressing obligations.  Statistically, you are more likely to cross paths with an infected person than at any other time in the past. Wear a mask to protect others.  Don't get complacent.

Is Science Communication Always a Good Thing?

(Repost from about 10 years ago)

As scientists, we are constantly encouraged, persuaded, and sometimes coerced into distilling complex results into a format that can be digested by the general public.  We are told, and most if not all scientists I talk to, believe this form of public science communication is a good thing.  Rather than accepting this dogmatic proposition, a critical look at important and recent scientific concepts, notably Global Warming, strongly suggest that the universally accepted belief (and I’ll call it belief, because as far as I can tell, there is little data to support the idea) that communicating simplified science to the public is a good thing can actually be catastrophically wrong.

I’ve given a lot of thought as to why some scientific topics attract strong opinions by those who are least prepared, educated or skilled to exercise any personal judgment whatsoever.  Why is it that the topic of global warming has legions of adamant armchair supporters and deniers who have no training in climate or atmospheric science, while other scientific topics receive little or no attention from the same legions of the uneducated?  For example, most people would find it rather odd and even inappropriate to argue about the details of neuroscience, string theory, or black hole physics.  Yet, armed with exactly the same level of ignorance, these same people hold strong and almost immovable beliefs about Global Warming. 

It must be something about the topic.  My original explanatory hypothesis was that Global Warming elicits strong opinions because everyone is familiar with the weather and climate.  We are surrounded by the atmosphere—without it we would die.  Our experience is shaped by the weather and seasons from the moment we become aware of our surroundings.  We become especially familiar with the weather and climate where we spend most of our life.  We start to recognize patterns, and in that sense, we feel as we have not just familiarity but some level of knowledge about the atmosphere.  This, I hypothesized, is the secret ingredient:  Familiarity, experience, and the false sense of knowledge of those two things impart.  We have zero personal experience about strings (if they exist) or black holes or neuroscience.  Those topics are left to the experts.  But when you feel like you have familiarity with a process operating in the world, that can be mistaken for expertise and knowledge of how that process works, and this in turn provides unjustified confidence in personal knowledge about the actual process.

Lately, I’ve come to accept that my original hypothesis may not be complete.  It does a reasonable job at explaining which topics end up in the realm of non-expert opinionators, and false knowledge via familiarity may be a necessary condition.  But it may not be sufficient.  An additional element may be needed to trigger the realization of latent hubris.

A major trigger that releases the beast of uninformed opinion against the necessary backdrop of familiarity may very well be the sacred but dogmatic cow of public science communication.  The very thing it is held to be universally beneficial and important may actually be not only unhelpful but fiercely malevolent.  That communication may be harmful is partly predicated on the idea that “a little knowledge can be dangerous”.  The more important element is that when scientists engage with non-experts in a discussion about complex scientific topics using watered-down and sterilized concepts, they validate the non-expert's unfounded belief in expertise and further inflate the bubble of hubris.  Furthermore, the discussion can magnify the belief that strong, resolute opinions may be generated without having to invest the time that dedicated experts have.  Stated differently, the conversation fuels the notion that not only is intellectual laziness acceptable, it is on par with intellectual diligence. 

When I’ve engaged with armchair climate change deniers, I have in the past done so at their level.  I don’t speak with them as I would with colleagues, because they don’t possess the knowledge or expertise to communicate at the level of an expert.  I spend what seems like an eternity trying to explain complex concepts using simplified explanations in an attempt to get them to understand why their position is incorrect. And, you’re never going to win, because the knowledge base of the general denier will never be sufficient for them to understand why they are wrong.  I’ve now come to understand that arguing with simplified science is, in many cases, precisely the wrong approach, because it gives the false impression that they have something meaningful and useful to contribute to the discussion.  They don’t.  All this time I’ve been validating their false sense of expertise.  And here’s the bigger problem, this doesn’t happen on just an individual basis, it occurs en masse when scientists try to simplify their science on blogs, or in popular science articles, or in other mass media like popular science television features.  This is all that’s needed to trigger that latent hubris among the primed and predisposed public.

In the future, I will likely no longer engage people that have gone down the Dunning-Kruger path of false expertise.  Instead, when I hear someone say something like, “it makes no sense that a change in a trace gas like CO2 can have such a noticeable effect.  I don’t buy it.”, I’ll respond with something like,

The roto-vibrational absorption lines determined as the eigenvalues of the quantum oscillator model of atmospheric molecules like CO2 interact with specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation emitted from the surface and isotropically from the atmosphere.  The envelope of actual emission follows the black body Planck function, but with spectral features corresponding to the lines of the emitting gas and surface, collisionally broadened.  For radiation emitted from the surface, Wien’s displacement law dictates that the bulk of the emitted energy falls within a few micrometers on either side of about 10 microns.  CO2 absorbs in this wavelength and following from Kirchoff’s law also reemits at that same wavelength, resulting in an increase of downward infrared flux convergence.  The resultant radiative heating is a function of the local atmospheric density and volumetric heat capacity at constant pressure, assuming a collisionally-equilibrium gas with a Maxwellian velocity distribution, and this energy is radiated isotropically, including the 2p steradian solid angle towards the ground.  Some of that radiation often makes it to the surface, where it may be absorbed, but the precise value of heating must be determined by solving the Schwarzchild equation of radiative transfer given known spectral properties of all gases and taking into account Doppler broadening of the quantum emission line.  Which part of this do you disagree with?

The above should do a few things.  First, it should make them immediately aware that they are out of their element.  Secondly, it should chip away at the notion that they have the knowledge and expertise to discuss the problem at any sort of technical level.  Third, it will convey that lazy intellectualism isn’t going to cut it.  If you want to have a discussion, you’re going to have to crack the books and actually invest the time to truly understand the problem and the underlying physics.  I’m not going to argue a complex problem with you at the level of a 3^rd grader.

 

I am not advocating for discontinuation of public science discourse, but I am advocating for a recognition that communicating simplified science can be devastatingly counterproductive.  It’s important to recognize when that might be.  If you are an expert encountering an arm chair expert, rather than validating their inflated sense of expertise, you may be better served by just shutting them down by un-distilling, un-simplifying, and un-watering down your conversation.  Speak as you would to your colleagues or as you would argue in a peer reviewed journal submission. 

 

COVID-19 June 14, 2020

This will be my only post until much later this week as I will have much more pressing and important things to attend to.

All signs point to an increase in the infection rate.  I fully expect that when I return later this week the numbers will be meaningfully higher than they are now.  There really isn't much more to say other than maybe "Science!  It works!".  I'm not aware of a single epidemiologist that thought re-opening was a good idea without having proper testing, tracing, and other infrastructure in place to go along with it.  This is why.

    

COVID-19 June 13, 2020

The news about increasing numbers in many states is mostly accurate. I again urge everyone to ignore the daily numbers. There is a large daily fluctuation and the press loves to sit and wait for that weekly peak to come in.  Even so, the longer-term averages of many states are indicating an increase.  Not surprisingly, many of the states were the first to loosen restrictions.  The virus is a (a)biological machine and its population growth is based on very basic principles.  The more people that are mixing it up the more the virus will spread and reproduce.  So, none of this should be a surprise. 

On the plus side, more and more credible research is coming out that shows that wearing a mask can reduce transmission and this impact on the viral infectious cycle can be important.  This shouldn't be that surprising either.  If virions travel via aerosolization and aqueous droplets then a mask will help minimize the emission of virions from an infected source. It's basic physics.   Wear your mask.

COVID-19 June 12, 2020

Today is a perfect example of how screwed up the data is and how difficult it is to analytically follow the pandemic.  The data from yesterday shows -3926 cases and -87 deaths in Puerto Rico.  Yes, those are minus signs.  As of yesterday PR decided to reclassify how they count infections and deaths.  Only confirmed cases and deaths (i.e., through testing) are now counted and presumptive and likely cases and deaths are not.  Fine.  Do it how you want.  But, they adjusted their numbers in one fell swoop on a single day.  So, what I have now is a series of daily numbers that include confirmed and presumptive cases with no way of knowing which are which.  And then, yesterday, a big adjustment.  What am I supposed to do with this?  How are those 3926 cases and 87 deaths distributed over the prior data?  Who knows.  Well, someone knows, but they aren't telling.

PR is not unique.  These types of adjustments happen periodically in many states and there is insufficient information to go back and retroactively adjust the prior daily numbers.  So, today's case numbers have a big 3926 chunk taken out that isn't reflective of what happened yesterday.  And there are 87 deaths subtracted out.  Obviously, that's going to mess up daily and 7-day trends.  But, there you have it.

PR is one of the states/territories that I've been watching as a potential hotspot.  I try my hardest not to be conspiratorial, especially these days, but it is coincidental that this adjustment is being made right when things appear to be exploding.  Other states like Texas, Florida, Arizona, California, and Utah (this is not an inclusive list) are also starting to see upward breakouts in cases.  This is unlikely to be entirely due to increased testing.