Science & Technology News

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I don't like the "playbook" at all, however, at least if taken literally as a playbook, because it does not take account of the different circumstances and different possible strategies in different countries.

1. "Early and effective action at borders" -- maybe. The problem with this is that slamming the borders shut is destructive, and if by "early" you mean before we really know whether it's going to be a real crisis or not -- then this is not a good idea. This can be useful ONLY if we have early and effective and accurate evaluation of potential pandemics. We have new viruses every year and more than one; we can't be slamming the borders shut every time a new one is discovered or the world will collapse.

I think we need to invest a lot of money into science, and into planning, and processes, for managing pandemics from early stages, starting with some kind of early warning system for when new viruses can be evaluated to be really dangerous. Then if we have THAT, THEN "early and effective action at borders" can be extremely effective. Without it -- not.

I'm sure that improving the speed and thoroughness of global early outbreak assessment is on everyone's wish list. Imagine if by end of January there was a world-wide clear understanding of the new disease and its infectiousness, and selective measures (see "test, track and trace") were immediately put into place at borders and airports. Instead of just crossing our fingers, which is essentially what many countries did til March 2020.

2. "Test track and trace" only seems to work at certain stages of the pandemic. It has been introduced and abandoned in many more places than used it successfully. This is not an element of all successful pandemic responses. But while we're waiting for the next pandemic, which I hope won't be in another 100 years, we should certainly develop technology, planning, and processes for doing this, and do science on where it can be useful and when to best implement it.

Test, track and trace is essential at the first signs of an outbreak. Where it made less of a difference are the places that COVID had already gotten out of control. So, assuming everyone's on the same page about acting early and hard, then the ability to TT&T should be in the top shelf of every pandemic toolbox.

3. "Welfare support". Again, this can work or not depending on how well thought out the other measures are. And of course assuming that it's even possible considering a country's financial position. If you are going to lock down a country for a whole year, then you are wasting money supporting restaurants -- they will be gone in any case, and it's better that they close at the beginning than halfway through after they've burned through a bunch of subsidies.

The early and fast support is one of the things that most western nations got close to right. Re restaurants and similar businesses... remember that if you let a restaurant fail there's upstream effects: besides a bankruptcy, you have employees let go, a landlord loses a paying tenant, etc. So it's an accounting exercise as to whether it's easier and more effective to simply keep the restaurant treading water, vs letting it fail, the knock-on effects, and a bunch more people unemployed.

And again, an early and hard response can avoid the necessity of a longer and more punishing shutdown.

4. "Protect the elderly" -- this assumes that future pandemics will disproportionately impact the elderly, which has not been true for most others. But yes -- there should be a serious plan for how to do this, in case some future pandemic DOES disproportionately affect the elderly like this one does.

This was such a fail this time around, but senior care (especially for-profit care) has been not optimal in N America for a long time. I hope this area continues to receive more attention... many CFers will be clients in the next 10+ years....

5. "Vaccination" -- yes to this one. We may have been lucky with this one; it could be that future pandemic viruses are not as susceptible to vaccines as this one has been. But in any case -- now that we have these awesome capabilities to develop and produce vaccines at warp speed -- we should monitor and make sure that these capabilities are available, and pre-agree plans with pharma companies and how we will spring into action the next time.

Seconding that - it seems that they were able to bring out effective vaccines in record time, AND the science of vaccination development has also moved forward significantly. Hopefully we will soon see better and more effective vaccines, period, let alone the enhanced ability to create them faster.

[CHAZ]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

- it seems that they were able to bring out effective vaccines in record time, AND the science of vaccination development has also moved forward significantly. Hopefully we will soon see better and more effective vaccines, period, let alone the enhanced ability to create them faster.

Oravax a oral vaccine (pill popping) could maybe change the vaccination landscape


Stay healthy everyone
Martin

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

. . . Re restaurants and similar businesses... remember that if you let a restaurant fail there's upstream effects: besides a bankruptcy, you have employees let go, a landlord loses a paying tenant, etc. So it's an accounting exercise as to whether it's easier and more effective to simply keep the restaurant treading water, vs letting it fail, the knock-on effects, and a bunch more people unemployed...

Absolutely right! It's easy to destroy a business but it can takes years and years for it to come back, and the knock on effects can be huge.



My point, maybe awkwardly stated, was not that you should just let businesses fail, but that you can't just blithely talk about supporting them if you're not counting the money you're willing to spend and counting the days you're willing to close them. In other words: Support is only a solution if the amount of support necessary to save a given business is something which society can afford. You can't shut all the hotels and restaurants of the country for a year and pay them their entire annual income -- it would bankrupt the nation. For example, and an extreme one to make the point.



What has been horribly done this time around is the erratic, uncalculated, improvised, spasmodic policymaking which seemingly has no grasp of the costs involved. What is good is that when this one is over, we will have a mass of data to work through to figure out what we did right and what we did wrong.



My strong guess is that when the dust settles there will be a broad consensus that just shutting things down and making people stay at home is almost never worthwhile compared to other possible measures. That we did it this time out of fear and panic and not knowing what else to do (which is maybe understandable).


I'm thinking:


1. Early response made possible by much better ability to detect a real pandemic in the making.
2. Exclusion as the first line of defense.
3. And aggressive contact tracing which (as you correctly said) seems to work IF you are implementing that early enough, using technology and procedures you FIGURED OUT AHEAD OF TIME (what a concept).
4. Then if you get community spread despite all that, then voluntary social distancing, masking, restrictions of gatherings (the no. 1 most effective measure in several studies), voluntary work at home (companies will work out their own plans), excellent distribution of PPE so that people are wearing N95 respirators and not nose bras. Voluntary measures will work far better if you have done the work ahead of time to educate the public.

5. During all this time, warp speed development of vaccines
6. And BEFORE it happens, thorough planning, preparation, public education, so that there is no need to freak out and improvise next time like we did this time.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

My point, maybe awkwardly stated, was not that you should just let businesses fail, but that you can't just blithely talk about supporting them if you're not counting the money you're willing to spend and counting the days you're willing to close them. In other words: Support is only a solution if the amount of support necessary to save a given business is something which society can afford.

In an affluent country, we should be able to take for granted that there is some reserve capacity to get us through reasonably foreseeable crises. Or else we're doing it wrong.

So we're going to support the people connected to that restaurant in one way or another - by making it possible for the restaurant to hang on or to pivot to other work such as takeout (as many restaurants around here have done), or letting such businesses collapse and just supporting unemployed people. This all needs to be taken into account, and it's not just a financial decision.

My strong guess is that when the dust settles there will be a broad consensus that just shutting things down and making people stay at home is almost never worthwhile compared to other possible measures. That we did it this time out of fear and panic and not knowing what else to do (which is maybe understandable).

"Guess" - or just you projecting your famous dislike of lockdowns again?

But yeah, one hopes that governments have gained some useful insights about what worked or didn't, and the collateral damage associated with different options, so that in future such decisions are easier to assess and make. Or, -gasp- that we act early to avoid broader and harsher measures later.

[GordMay]

SARS-CoV-2 variants are converging & may be settling into a limited set of mutations

Evidence is growing that the SARS-CoV-2 variants, that are evolving around the world, share similar combinations of mutations, writes evolutionary microbiologist Vaughn Cooper.
In the United States, Cooper’s laboratory has found at least seven genetically independent lineages, that acquired a mutation at one particular spot on the virus’s infamous spike protein.
Limiting infections will be key to reducing the virus’s opportunity to mutate, in ways that make it even more dangerous.
“These viral adaptations are already rewriting our biology textbooks on convergent evolution,” writes Cooper. “Let’s strive to limit new material.”

Public Health | Opinion
“The Coronavirus Variants Don't Seem to Be Highly Variable So Far” ~ by Vaughn Cooper
➥ https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...157eb-45020405


See also:

The future of variant-proof vaccines
New data show that people infected with the B.1.351 variant of SARS-CoV-2, first identified in South Africa, develop immune responses that can fend off multiple variants. Scientists want to learn from people who recover from COVID-19, and make antibodies that, over time, become more capable of blocking diverse coronavirus variants.
“Rare COVID reactions might hold key to variant-proof vaccines” ~ by Ewen Callaway
Some people mount an immune response able to fend off a menagerie of coronavirus variants.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d415...157eb-45020405

[SailOar]

Bitcoin’s Climate Problem

• “Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing.” (Bill Gates)
• The carbon emissions from the electricity required to mine and transact Bitcoins are equal to the amount emitted by New Zealand or Argentina
• One Bitcoin transaction is the “equivalent to the carbon footprint of 735,121 Visa transactions or 55,280 hours of watching YouTube"

Bitcoin’s popularity has a downside: It’s an energy glutton that could hurt Earth’s climate, study finds

Why does Bitcoin need more energy than whole countries?

Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA network as of 2020

Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

Why Cryptocurrencies Use So Much Energy

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by GordMay

SARS-CoV-2 variants are converging & may be settling into a limited set of mutations

Evidence is growing that the SARS-CoV-2 variants, that are evolving around the world, share similar combinations of mutations, writes evolutionary microbiologist Vaughn Cooper.
In the United States, Cooper’s laboratory has found at least seven genetically independent lineages, that acquired a mutation at one particular spot on the virus’s infamous spike protein.
Limiting infections will be key to reducing the virus’s opportunity to mutate, in ways that make it even more dangerous.
“These viral adaptations are already rewriting our biology textbooks on convergent evolution,” writes Cooper. “Let’s strive to limit new material.”

Related - the variant of SARS-CoV2 first detected in England may be more deadly.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Related - the variant of SARS-CoV2 first detected in England may be more deadly.

But still overall a lower death rate among all infected than the common strains of annual influenza

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by newhaul

But still overall a lower death rate among all infected than the common strains of annual influenza

No indeed. Dig up the numbers and compare yourself. In the best case it's about 3x (Finland), and in some countries 10x and 15x annual flu deaths.

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

No indeed. Dig up the numbers and compare yourself. In the best case it's about 3x (Finland), and in some countries 10x and 15x annual flu deaths.

Canada's Covid-19 death rate is 10x that of Flu of previous years.

Several examples:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...shaw-1.5843814

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/b-c-has...-flu-1.5255084

https://www.todayville.com/__trashed-4871/

https://globalnews.ca/news/7633055/c...ath-influenza/

[GordMay]

Sea level rise is accelerating in the U.S. Northeast

The global rise in sea-level from melting ice and warming oceans from 1900 to 2000 led to a rate that’s more than twice the average for the years 0 to 1800 – the most significant change, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. [1]
The global rise in sea-level from melting ice and warming oceans from 1900 to 2000 led to a rate that’s more than twice the average for the years 0 to 1800 – the most significant change, according to Rutgers University. [2]

The study for the first time looked at the phenomena that contributed to sea-level change over 2,000 years at six sites along the coast (in Connecticut, New York City, New Jersey and North Carolina), using a sea-level budget.


[2] “Sea-Level Rise in 20th Century was Fastest in 2,000 years Along Much of East Coast” ~ Rutgers University
➥ https://www.rutgers.edu/news/sea-lev...uch-east-coast

[1] “Common Era sea-level budgets along the U.S. Atlantic coast” ~ by Jennifer S. Walker et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22079-2

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Sea level rise is accelerating in the U.S. Northeast

The global rise in sea-level from melting ice and warming oceans from 1900 to 2000 led to a rate that’s more than twice the average for the years 0 to 1800 – the most significant change, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. [1]
The global rise in sea-level from melting ice and warming oceans from 1900 to 2000 led to a rate that’s more than twice the average for the years 0 to 1800 – the most significant change, according to Rutgers University. [2]

The study for the first time looked at the phenomena that contributed to sea-level change over 2,000 years at six sites along the coast (in Connecticut, New York City, New Jersey and North Carolina), using a sea-level budget.


[2] “Sea-Level Rise in 20th Century was Fastest in 2,000 years Along Much of East Coast” ~ Rutgers University
➥ https://www.rutgers.edu/news/sea-lev...uch-east-coast

[1] “Common Era sea-level budgets along the U.S. Atlantic coast” ~ by Jennifer S. Walker et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22079-2

Two words eluded to in the rutgers.edu paper and mentioned in the nature hit piece .

Isotastic adjustment.

[geoleo]

The research article did not mention who was measuring the sea level at the 6 usa locations in the time periods 0 -1800 AD. Was it Pocahantas and Sasquatch??

[geoleo]

The Rutgers news rag assessment of the report says that the largest factor involved was the land sinking (subsidence as they call it) at all six sites. HHHHMMMMMMMMMM

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Two words eluded to in the rutgers.edu paper and mentioned in the nature hit piece .
Isotastic adjustment.

Indeed, and so what {& why] do you conclude, differently.

From the Rutgers synopsis:
“ ... The global rise in sea-level from melting ice and warming oceans from 1900 to 2000 led to a rate that’s more than twice the average for the years 0 to 1800 – the most significant change, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications ...
... They found that regional land subsidence – [isotastic adjustment] sinking of the land since the Laurentide ice sheet retreated thousands of years ago – dominates each site’s budget over the last 2,000 years. Other regional factors, such as ocean dynamics, and site-specific local processes, such as groundwater withdrawal that helps cause land to sink, contribute much less to each budget and vary over time and by location ...”

From the Study Abstract:
“ ... The most significant change in the budgets is the increasing influence of the common global signal due to ice melt and thermal expansion since 1800 CE, which became a dominant contributor to RSL with a 20th century rate of 1.3 ± 0.1 mm yr−1 ...”
Emphasis mine.