Is SeN Putting Utah At Risk For The Corona Virus?

[_Dr Exiled]

If it is best that we avoid big groups, then so be it. I guess we might have a another bankruptcy wave coming.

[Guest]

There is a difference between airborne transmission and transmission in droplets from a cough or sneeze. Is Rogan’s expert claiming the former or the latter?

You made a definitive statement that it is not transmitted via the air. So, I thought you had some evidence. Anyway, here is what the CDC website says ..... they are still trying to figure it out ..... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission.html

Note that the CDC does not list airborne among the routes of transmission. And please do not strawman me. I did not make the definitive statement you put in my mouth. I said two things. Please go back and read them.

This is what dumbifies America. Joe Rogan interviews an outlier expert and people take it as gospel.

[_Dr Exiled]

Note that the CDC does not list airborne among the routes of transmission.

K, but they say they are still trying to figure it out. So, perhaps airborne transmission isn't yet ruled out. Whatever. Let's not fight over this. I am worried about my parents who are in their 80's and want to find out the truth, but, realize that panic infects like the virus does. If keeping indoors, avoiding crowds is the correct response, let's do it and get this over with. If we are going to be exposed no matter what, then perhaps continuing to live normally, with precaution is the best.

[_Res Ipsa]

Note that the CDC does not list airborne among the routes of transmission.

K, but they say they are still trying to figure it out. So, perhaps airborne transmission isn't yet ruled out. Whatever. Let's not fight over this. I am worried about my parents who are in their 80's and want to find out the truth, but, realize that panic infects like the virus does. If keeping indoors, avoiding crowds is the correct response, let's do it and get this over with. If we are going to be exposed no matter what, then perhaps continuing to live normally, with precaution is the best.

The latter would be a very bad thing to do, even if there were airborne transmission. Google “flatten the curve” and “social distancing” to find any number of sources.

[_Dr Exiled]

Here is an article that refers to a study recently put out by the NIH:

https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/03/12/new-tests-indicate-coronavirus-can-survive-in-the-air/

The study says the corona virus can remain viable in the air for 3 hours and certain surfaces for 2 to 3 days. Looks like widespread infection is inevitable regardless, if this study is correct.

[_Res Ipsa]

Here is an article that refers to a study recently put out by the NIH:

https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/03/12/new-tests-indicate-coronavirus-can-survive-in-the-air/

The study says the corona virus can remain viable in the air for 3 hours and certain surfaces for 2 to 3 days. Looks like widespread infection is inevitable regardless, if this study is correct.

That’s not what the study says. What the scientists did is create an aerosol containing the virus, and then measured how long it took to decay. That’s helpful information. But it doesn’t purport to mimic transmission in droplets from coughing or sneezing. So, another piece to be examined is to what extent does a cough or sneeze result in the types of aerosols generated in the experiment. Note that the experiments found similar rates of stability in SARS and acknowledge that the primary mode of transmission was contaminated surfaces.

But you don’t need this study to predict widespread infection. We already expect that to happen regardless of the mode of transmission. My parents are in their 80s, and I’m worried about them, too. We’ve pretty much given up containing this bug, so their best hope is to isolate as much as they can and for the rest of us to social distance so that the virus spreads as slowly as possible. That way, if they need hospital care, they can get it. And we have a chance to develop treatment and, eventually, a vaccine. Or if they can avoid it long enough, maybe herd immunity develops. That’s it.

If we don’t do all of this social distancing stuff, then what is happening in some Italian hospitals will happen widely through the US. Hospitals will be forced to triage partners, providing support to the youngest and healthiest infected, and leaving the old and the sick to die in the hallways. People with other conditions needing emergency care won’t be able to get it. And, in the worst case, health care workers will run out of the protective equipment they need. They’ll get sick and the hospital could become a source of transmission. In the Seattle area, we have a metric buttload of hospitals. They have An emergency network that they activated in January to plan for how to cope with the surge of cases. I don’t know what rural hospitals will do. Hopefully, we will peak here before peaks in other areas and can start diverting resources to where they are needed.

[_Maksutov]

Mormonism is a debilitating mind virus.

[_Physics Guy]

This was great but it was too fast. I want to do a slow-motion replay just to let it sink in.

And sure, the consensus isn't always right. We wouldn't have breakthroughs if the consensus wasn't challenged.

This is true and it's the standing paradox of science. Everybody's trying to be a rebel, so most of the time everybody's conforming to yesterday's image of rebellion. The most iconoclastic memes become the icons. That sounds cynical but it might just be a recipe for getting the best of both worlds of conservatism and creativity. Up to a point it's hard to get an audience for something new, but only up to a point. Past that point, the parade falls in behind you.

Some stretches are bigger than others, and many scientists are a few hundredths of a second in front of their competitors with their big discovery.

I think it's a truism of the history of science that nothing ever began, because the real beginning was always something earlier. In Einstein's theory of relativity, for instance, it's hard to point to anything at all that Einstein wrote that hadn't already been written, yet also hard to point to anything at all before Einstein that had a clue what it meant. Tiny things can mean a lot; that's the nature of meaning.

Thinking of the small intellectual capstone that changes everything is the upside, however. The downside is that when everyone is a wannabe Einstein, we're paying huge superstar premiums just to get tomorrow's breakthroughs by late tonight. How many times is the thought that wins an MIT professor the Nobel prize actually the same thought that was going to occur to a hundred people within the next two years, anyway? Is it really smart to invest all it takes to support those MIT professors, mostly just in selecting them, instead of simply waiting those two years?

How many discoveries were totally without precedent? It would be quite unreal if a list of ten or so things treading in the territory of science that science ignores or denies, all turned out to be real.

Whatever the surprising truth may turn it to be, it probably won't be nearly so surprising in hindsight, because there will have been dozens of voices suggesting that we should be looking in that direction. The solid consensus of orthodox science may not be sure to be right, but the surrounding halo of scientifically respectable speculations is damn near sure to include the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be—plus a lot of sheer nonsense.

The belief in such a list of ten things pretty much paints science as incompetent; cartloads of cash left piled all over the floor that nobody picks up.

It's a game of statistics. Bet against the consensus on one thing, okay, maybe you get even odds. Betting that the consensus is dead wrong on ten things is a really long shot.

And sure, it's possible that one-off scientists who come up with theories in their area of expertise friendly to their religious beliefs are right and everybody else is wrong. If someone of faith cites these works, supposing themselves a champion of science and not an apologist or ideologue, then I'd like to see less credential trumpeting and more details on why the science is compelling.

Amen.

Freeman Dyson died recently. He wasn't related to the vacuum cleaner Dyson but he did important work in quantum electrodynamics. His name is frequently mentioned in advanced physics lectures, and Star Trek once showed a Dyson Sphere. I heard him give a colloquium once, in which he described his then-current work on eactly where comets must originate in the solar system.

In a lull in the question period after, I threw up my grad student hand and observed that his earlier work had been about basic principles but now he seemed to be working on details. Realizing belatedly that this wasn't a question, I blurted out, "Which is better?" Dyson kindly welcomed my awkward question as a good one and answered that neither was better, "because God loves the details."

I don't think it was really a theologically sectarian answer, because every physicist could easily translate it as meaning, "God must love the details, if God exists." That's a theologically neutral statement about nature, I think, but I think it has implications for how theists should think. If God prefers to make the details of nature more salient than God is, then far be it from believers in God to treat the details of nature as mere proofs of God.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Wow. God forbid that Dr. Peterson should have to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus, just like all the rest of us. Just look at him bellyaching--a classic case of "first world problems":

If you’re anything at all like me, you’re growing a little bit tired of a news cycle that is becoming “All COVID-19, all the time.”

(Was this morning’s Utah earthquake an attempt to change the subject and to give us something else to talk about? I think that it may have awakened me, by the way, but I didn’t feel it. Despite growing up in southern California only a few miles from Caltech [the birthplace and original home of the fabled Richter Scale], I have somehow managed never to have felt an earthquake. I’ve always been away from home, or in an airplane, or asleep, or something of that sort. I freely confess, though, that that’s not a gap that I feel any great need to fill.)

Despite my coronavirus-induced ennui, however, I offer these links as having potential interest and insight:

Among the links is a "think piece" from the National Review entitled, "There Is No Such Thing as Price Gouging: Denying that a thing is worth what another person is willing to pay for it is like denying gravity.”

That's just terrific: not only is the coronavirus pandemic a problem for DCP because it's boring[!!!] to him, he's also plugging an article that argues that it's okay to exploit the situation for maximum financial gain. The level of dismissiveness and insensitivity to the gravity of the situation is astonishing--so much so that even the hardcore TBM Sam LeFevre, the Chief of Operations for the Utah Department of Health, is lecturing DCP for minimizing the seriousness of the situation:

I was just getting ready for our morning briefing when the 7:09 hit. I ended up trying to do operations first from my car, and then from home, trying to respond now to two emergencies. But this evening is quiet.

I understand that the media fetish on COVID is getting tiresome, especially when the big world has lots of things going on. Just one reminder, COVID is about real people, real sons and daughters of God who are suffering.

Imagine, being in self-isolation because you tested positive for COVID. Maybe you are sick, maybe not. Suddenly your home is declared uninhabitable and you are ordered to leave. The Red Cross is providing shelter for everyone else but you can’t go there. What do you do? You end-up sheltering in your car, scared, wondering where you can go to eat, where you can go for bathroom facilities, what will the night bring. Its still cold outside.

Not a fictional story. Part of what we were dealing with today.

Oh, I don't minimize the cost and suffering imposed by COVID-19. Not even slightly. And I'm very grateful for your efforts. You and your associates are in our prayers. Literally. I just think that people need and want to hear other news, as well. And preferably news that's upbeat and encouraging . . . or funny.

I guess it's too bad, then, that "Mormon Interpreter" is about as far from "funny" as one could hope--at least, "funny" in a meaningful way (and not unintentionally funny, which it is). Incidentally, Dr. Peterson has been trying to peddle "Mormon Interpreter" as an actual respite from the pandemic. Sure, Dr. Peterson: go ahead and try to profit from this global disaster. While millions are being laid off, you can go ahead and continue to rub your hands together with glee at the prospect of more donations flowing into "Interpreter"'s coffers.