Steve,
I like your long wind. I am grateful for your attempt to imagine a world in the interim between the wave and the vaccine. Has china actually eliminated the virus from the population and the are merely putting out sparks that have blown in from other places? Nick Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 11:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] RedState/BlueState OneState/TwoState Nick - I wrote (yet) another long-winded answer but am trying to give you the most succinct version I can: I think you are nearly correct. First: Yes, "community transmission" is somewhat another name for our ignorance... but it is a critical threshold. As soon as you have one case you don't know where it came from, it is very likely that you have more, and for each of those, you will have yet more... so it isn't quite as benign as simple "ignorance" implies... Second: The virus will spread exponentially until we reduce the average number of people to be infected by a given infected person. This is what is called R0. As people get infected and recover and therefore become (very likely) immune, the number of susceptible individuals in the population goes down, and the R0 with it. If you encounter 10 people a day on average, and have a 20% chance of infecting them but half of them are immune, then your R0 becomes 10*.2/2 = 1.0 ! When R0 drops to 1.0, the exponential growth flattens to linear and anything below 1.0 leads to an eventual dying out. A widely deployed vaccine allows you to skip the step of having to become infected, survive, and recover. In the meantime (before sufficient herd-immunity is reached naturally, augmented by vaccines eventually) we need to practice some amount of social distancing to keep R0 down. As we learn more about the modes of transmission, add early detection (through widespread testing, and possibly wide-spread citizen-reporting) then our best hope is significant social distancing. Meanwhile, more severe social distancing protects our most vulnerable (elderly and those with conditions known to go badly with COVID19). We will see properly vetted/tested anti-virals and symptom-reducers (e.g. cytokine storm prevention) before a vaccine which will reduce the number of people needing hospitalization as well as mortality. And lastly, antibody/plasma transfusions may help some of the more at-risk or critical workers have temporary immunity while they wait for a vaccine. Right now, many of us are isolated at the individual, the couple or possibly the nuclear family unit. In principle, once we believe we have isolated sufficiently well to not have much risk of contagion and sufficiently long to have either had symptoms or to have been infected asymptomatically but recovered. This might mean, for example, that if you and your wife and your children and their children have all remained separated but isolated, then you might be safe reuniting with them as long as NONE OF YOU are mixing with a larger population. But like with the STD issue, all it takes is one promiscuous (outside the group) person at the orgy to ruin the "safe space". The larger the (extended) group, the more chance someone will defect and bring it into the group unexpectedly. So yes, much of what you call tourism will be blunted/modified... so will casino gambling, church attendance, public transit, etc. I believe that buses are still running some places, but most passengers are likely wearing gloves/masks, sitting one per seat-row and the staff is wiping down hand-rails and other surfaces often. Airlines will probably stand back up under similar restrictions soon. Churches and maybe sporting events, and theater as well. But probably not for (many?) months... I still remember when auditoriums and movie theaters had ashtrays in the backs of seats... we will probably remember fondly when seats were packed side-by-by side and our great grandchildren will ask "grandpa... why are there all those holes in the floor between the seats? People didn't *really* sit so close did they? Don't they know that isn't safe?" and "why weren't you wearing your masks in all the old pictures?". Hope this helps a little? - Steve Steve (Smith), I have always assumed that “community transmission” is one of those bullshit terms that refers to our own ignorance. If we were unable to find out how it got transmitted then it was an instance of “community transmission”. Am I wrong about that? So, community transmission is just the residue after we have failed at contact tracing. My assumption is that until we have a vaccine, we have to maintain sufficient social distancing to make rigorous contact tracing (and isolation) possible. In other words, I have to have contacted so few people (because of social isolation) that when I get sick, all the people I have contacted can be isolated for two weeks. Such a policy might permit the reopening of offices on a alternative shift basis and the re opening of some stores with policies equivalent to those the food stores are adopting, but it wont permit reopening of entertainment venues, hair dressers, concerts, churches, lecture halls, bars, festivals, large scale air travel, and other activities that we think of when we think of “tourism”. I WANT to think different, and therefore I am interested in the fact that you seem to disagree with me on this point. Nick Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 6:07 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [FRIAM] RedState/BlueState OneState/TwoState Steve, Perhaps we might talk about this on Friday. I guess the questions are, “Can we eliminate community transfer?” By this, I assume you mean the "crypto" transfer where the *source* of infection isn't recognized even in retrospect? The conventional/modeling wisdom is keeping R0 (the number of people each infected person infects... or the *exponent* of the exponential growth) below 1.0... and, if so, “At what level of social distancing do we have to maintain in order to make sure that a program of testing, vigorous contact tracing and isolation is assured?” I would claim that the *quality* of social distancing is very important... but those "qualities" haven't been determined yet. In principle, keeping Not clear how to do that in the blue states if the red states are still going exponential. Re: Balkanization I speculated in another thread (another forum?) that if the Red States continue to be reluctant to self-isolate, they will pay the price in a tall curve, mitigated somewhat by the lower population densities and "enclave" nature of many small towns... compared for example to big cities connected by a carpet of suburbs mixing commuters from multiple urban centers in every neighborhood. And then that Blue States might manage to flatten their curves more quickly but aggravated by the nature of denser urban/suburban landscapes. In the end, the Red States may have more (percentage) infections and deaths, but what goes with that is higher herd-immunity. So Blue States might want to close their borders to Red States during the first wave, but then the Red States might want to close them the other direction when "infiltrating" Blues are more likely to be crypto-infected? I didn't like that Zombie Apocalypse series that was so popular a few years ago because I felt it promoted xenophobia and rapid dehumanization of "the other"... a "friend" can become a "dangerous enemy" at the drop of a splash of blood (or spittle in this case)? Or maybe we can follow @POTUS lead and "vote by tweet"? then the battle will be between Russian, Chinese, and Anonymous Bots stuffing the @USElectionBallotBox ;) ? Also, I would like to hear a lot of wisdom about how we arrange and conduct an election during this mess. I think this is not so much a technical problem as a social one. FOX and their most famous audience in the White House are already making sounds against the idea of voting by mail as A) Unamerican; B) likely to be cheated (only Democrats cheat of course). I don't think it is an insurmountable technical problem (vote by mail). Expanded "early voting" can help a lot, as can absentee ballots. The scene in Wisconsin today is a good advanced test-case of how refactoring the mechanics of an election (timing, absentee, mail, etc.) will be politicized immediately. I'm hoping that the remaining Democrat primaries and the Convention will serve as a lightning rod to bring some of that out *before* the main elections which will be much more controversial. I am hoping that we collectively have a much better handle on things by then and the problem becomes *mostly* moot... though I can imagine there will be more demand for early/absentee voting in all venues. - STeve N Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 9:16 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] SFI virtual workshop: After the Wave SG I found Meyers' talks from the Fall which preceded (presaged?) this and thought you had just linked those! I'm glad to see our "big siblings on the hill" are on this with full attention. Did anyone else watch this 2 hour presentation? I'm working my way through it now in the background. SS I mentioned this on the close of Virtual Friam today: https://santafe.edu/news-center/news/after-first-wave-virtual-workshop-covid-19-pandemic The first wave of COVID-19 is well underway, and social distancing will hopefully bend the curve downward (after far too high a price is paid). But what comes next? Under what circumstances and in what way can we lift quarantine? On March 31, five speakers from epidemiology and economics discussed strategies for both public health and economic recovery and answered questions from the SFI community. This was the first of multiple “lightning workshops” that will be convened to address this crisis. Speakers: Lauren Ancel Meyers, Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin; SFI Sara Del Valle, Los Alamos National Laboratory Caroline Buckee, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Rajiv Sethi, Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University; SFI Glen Weyl, Microsoft and RadicalxChange Foundation _______________________________________________________________________ [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> CEO, Simtable http://www.simtable.com <http://www.simtable.com/> 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505)995-0206 mobile: (505)577-5828 twitter: @simtable zoom.com/j/5055775828 <http://zoom.com/j/5055775828> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... / --- ..-. / ..-. .-. .. .- -- / ..- -. .. - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom meeting Fridays 9:30a-12p Mountain USA GMT-6 https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ..-. . . -.. / - .... . / -- --- .-. .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... / . .-.. --- .. 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