How Environmental Practices Make Pandemics More Likely

This article from the Vox News site explores the link between environmental issues, particularly habitat loss, and pandemics. They are interviewing Dr. Sonia Shah, author of the 2017 book, Pandemic. From the article:

How Do You Keep a Housefly's Attention?

 Covid-19 is an international problem. It would be helpful if all the nations could unite to fight it. But national leadership, at the moment, is lacking, to put it mildly.

CURVE FITTING UPDATE

Below is an updated chart of the curve that I had fitted after about a week or two of data from the New York times.  Each morning around 6 am I go to their website and take the current figure and credit it as YESTERDAYS number. Since their number each day is constantly updated there is some error in this depending upon when they receive updates and when I check their website. That number goes in the NATIONAL TOTAL ACTUAL COLUMN. (Fourth one over)

I then subtract the previous days number and get the NATIONAL NEW ACTUAL first column of data. When the new numbers were small, less than 200 they had a bar graph that was easily readable so I was able to get  all the new cases back to Thursday March 5 while I do not have the NATIONAL TOTAL ACTUAL FOR THOSE DAYS.

I was then able to fit a curve NATIONAL NEW PREDICTED that closely approximated the NATIONAL NEW ACTUAL. The fit is indicated by the DAYS AHEAD/BEHIND COLUMN. Those numbers are zero for almost two weeks.

By Wednesday March 18th the NATIONAL NEW ACTUAL (2436) exceeded the NATIONAL NEW PREDICTED (1758) so that it slightly exceeded the predicted figure for Thursday March 19th (2312) We were ONE day ahead of prediction.

As you can see the situation became worse. For five days we were TWO days ahead of the curve. We want to be BEHIND not AHEAD of the predictions. HOWEVER, things change on March 25th. I am a little suspicious of the data for this day, but it does mark a consistent change in which THE NATIONAL NEW PREDICTED are either on target OR ONE, TWO, and now THREE days BEHIND target.

The same phenomena is also evident in the relationship between the NATIONAL TOTAL ACTUAL and the NATIONAL TOTAL PREDICTED. Since these are smoothed curves the changes are less pronounced.

Now part of the DAYS AHEAD data might reflect the availability of more tests in some parts of the country which were able to detect more cases.  However the total picture is consistent with the hypothesis that social distancing may be beginning to show its effects, which should become even more evident in the days ahead.

By the way the orange color in the NATIONAL TOTAL PREDICTED was near to the number of cases in China at the time the curve was fitted.

		National	Days	National	National	Days	National
		New	Ahead	New	Total	Ahead	Total
		Actual	Behind	Predicted	Actual	Behind	Predicted
March
TUE	3
WED	4						350
THR	5	50		50			400
FRI	6	80	0	66			466
SAT	7	90	0	86			552
SUN	8	110	0	114			666
MON	9	150	0	150			815
TUE	10	200	0	197			1012
WED	11	260	0	259	1269	0	1271
THR	12	400	0	340	1660	0	1611
FRI	13	440	0	447	2100	0	2058
SAT	14	659	0	588	2759	0	2646
SUN	15	843	0	773	3602	0	3419
MON	16	880	0	1017	4482	0	4435
TUE	17	1399	0	1337	5881	0	5772
WED	18	2436	1	1758	8317	0	7530
THR	19	4075	1	2312	12392	1	9842
FRI	20	5570	2	3040	17962	1	12882
SAT	21	6418	2	3997	24380	1	16879
SUN	22	8638	2	5257	33018	1	22136
MON	23	10481	2	6912	43499	1	29048
TUE	24	15353	2	9090	58852	1	38138
WED	25	9656	-1	11953	68508	1	50091
THR	26	16873	0	15718	85381	1	65810
FRI	27	17255	0	20670	102636	1	86480
SAT	28	20981	-1	27181	123617	1	113660
SUN	29	18378	-2	35743	141995	0	149403
MON	30	21580	-3	47002	163575	0	196405

Workers of the World Unite....

...you have nothing to lose but your respirators!!!  We have all read stories about hedge funds buying up companies, loading them with debt, and ruining a perfectly good enterprise.

Here's a version of that story, but this time it's respirators...."Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address ...one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.The breathing-assistance machines tended to be bulky, expensive and limited in number. The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic.... Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway...." 

And  then. "A multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices bought the small California company that had been hired to design the new machines.....Covidien — a publicly traded company with sales of $12 billion that year — already sold traditional ventilators, but that was only a small part of its multifaceted businesses. In 2012 alone, Covidien bought five other medical device companies, in addition to Newport." Ultimately they cancelled Newport's contract with the government. Why?

They wanted more money....or they wanted to put a company making respirators for less out of business.  New York Times, March 30.

Not that the handmaidens of Marx did much better: "After SARS, Chinese health officials built an infectious disease reporting system to evade political meddling. But when the coronavirus emerged, so did fears of upsetting Beijing."  Same paper, same day.

China, however, seems to have enough respirators. They have sent some to the running dogs of capitalism.  Same paper, same day. 

Entombed

A popular technique for beckoning a person to enter into a Gospel story is to invite him or her to pick a character with whom s/he identifies.  For example: in the parable of the Prodigal Son, am I the younger son, or perhaps the older son?  Or in last week's Gospel reading of the Man Born Blind, am I the cured man, or the man's parents?

It's a bit disquieting that, in this time of COVID-19, we may find ourselves identifying with Lazarus.

Our Parish Had Mass Today

Fifth Sunday of Easter at Ascension...

Our Pastor, Dan Kearney and Deacon, Nelson Falcon....
I am assuming the technicians are eighth graders from Ascension School!
29 minutes, 8 seconds.... unusually short without the usual rambunctious crowd.
Amen!

A Potential Game Changer

From this this article in USA Today:

"CHICAGO – A five-minute, point-of-care coronavirus test could be coming to hospitals next week, and experts say it could be "game-changing."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued Emergency Use Authorization to Illinois-based medical device maker Abbott Labs on Friday for a coronavirus test that delivers positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes, the company said.

Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi Blessing

https://zenit.org/articles/popes-urbi-et-orbi-blessing-in-light-of-coronavirus/
Did any of you catch Pope Francis' "Urbi et Orbi" blessing today? It was televised live at 12:00 pm CST.  It was 6:00 pm in Rome.

It Ain't Necessarily So UPDATE

 For several days now, one of the talking points at Tea Time and Tee Time with The Don & Friends has been that "everybody who wants a test can get one."
 So how do you explain this?  Palm Beach County asked FEMA for a drive-through testing station and was told on Wednesday it would get it. But on Thursday, as Florida blew past 2,400 cases, FEMA changed its mind. The Trump family's new home (wink) can't get drive-through testing. (Sorry about the Post's sloppy Website.)
 As USA became #1 in cases, The Don said we've tested more people in eight days than South Korea did in eight weeks. As FactChck noted, "that ignores the fact that South Korea has a much smaller population. On a per-capita basis, the U.S. lags behind the Asian country, and other nations." It also noted that, on raw numbers, The Don was close but not quite there. South Korea tested a few more.
 The daily press briefing, in which The Don and a chosen cheering section break social distance rules,  preempts the local news on the East Coast and tea time in the Midwest. A lot of people think their local stations shouldn't carry it. They don't collect and show live every word that falls from the lips of Sen.Mitch McConnell and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but those two luminaries are spending more money than The Don knows what to do with. The media just report on that and could report on the press briefings as well. That also would make them shorter.
 The briefing is at least as much a substitute for the rallies The Don loves to preen at as it is an effort to inform the public. And The Don's endless stream-of-consciousness boasting, denying, aspirating (full churches on Easter are "aspirational") and misinforming leave the public addled and confused. (He did 55 solid minutes with many repetitions in one. Not since Fidel Castro have there been such long-winded national leaders.) That hospital ship The Don said a few days ago was on its way to New York City is still in dry dock in Virginia, but a True Believer assured me yesterday that it has been in NYC for several days. Not carrying the rants and raves would, he said, amount to censorship of alternative news.
 Sigh. Anyhow, I couldn't get a test if I wanted one.

UPDATE: Friday, the governor cobbled together a plan for a drive-through testing site in Palm Beach County. The reason he had to do it himself is telling. FEMA told The Post in an email: "The state, county or the private sector (hospital, medical facility, etc.) can establish their own testing sites, and request supplies through the established system."
 The strategy is clear: Praise governors (e.g. Cuomo) when they praise the Trump "effort," and blame the governors (e.g. Cuomo) if something goes wrong. So, in the end, the governors are responsible for everything that goes wrong, including lack of supplies. And The Don acted (as little as possible) brilliantly, gallantly, and may we say, heroically.
 

Let's not end social distancing by Easter - updated (twice)

3/27/2020 4:22 PM CST - added another update so adding a break to the post, with adequate social distance between the two sections.

Sacramental life during this time

On Tuesday, Bishop Ronald Hicks, the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago, sent out a communique to archdiocesan clergy, explaining how the archdiocese is going to handle certain sacramental situations.  What follows is a summary of some of the main points.

Come to the Water

There has been a persistent "water" theme in this week's Mass readings.  First was the Gospel reading on Sunday about the healing of the man born blind, which Jim P. posted about previously, in which the man's healing was completed by bathing his eyes in the Pool of Siloam, at Jesus' direction. 
We have been watching the live streamed daily Mass, which is celebrated locally in one of the parishes in our town.  I was pleased this morning to note that the OT reading was from Ezekiel 47, a lovely imagery of healing water, which is one of my favorite Scripture readings.  I though that the above picture captured the sense of that reading. Unfortunately I was not able to find the artist's name in order to attribute it. The entrance hymn, fittingly, was "Come to the Water".

Shopping with Geezers

 The supermarket opens earlier Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the ancient and compromised. The theory is that everything has had a good cleaning, so the most likely to die from Covid-19 can shop when they are least likely to get it. I arrived at two minutes to 7, and it looked like Friday afternoon in the parking lot.
 There was a line at the door -- a bunch more than a line, in truth; so much for social distance. When the door opened it look for  a minute like Black Friday in November, an event I have spent a lifetime  avoiding. But it only lasted a minute and the mob was in, a few of us stragglers tottering in behind it.
 There was no hand cleaner at the door as their usually is. "We've been out for two weeks," said the assistant manager, like the barefoot cobbler.
 He didn't check ID. I bumped into some people whom I would normally see at the 8 o'clock Mass. We didn't maintain social distance. Two observations:
 About one-sixth of the shoppers were prancing about with clean masks and clean rubber gloves. The implication was "we have plenty more where these came from." Somebody tell Mike Pence, who has been looking for some.
 And more than half of the carts had two, three or four 12-packs of toilet paper. Somebody please tell me how long it would take a geezer or a geezer and her husband to go though 48 rolls of toilet paper. My theory now is that toilet paper is going to replace money as a unit of exchange on the black market. The way the Treasury is printing dollars, those things won't be worth much very long. But toilet paper? Get it while you can. It will be worth its weight in gold bullion.
 I was able to get about half of the things on my list. But one thing I got was a beautiful bunch of romaine. Remember romaine? That was what was going to kill us all just a couple of months ago.

What to do while at home and sick of TV?

This is especially for Jim, who is already going stir-crazy.

I developed a list of possibilities, mostly for extended family.  Information is easy to find on the internet, so just google your interests and see what comes up.  Most of these come from my own subscription email.  Check out your own cathedrals, colleges, universities etc to see what they offer..

Information Systems: The Korean Model UPDATED!

How South Korea Flattened the Curve

Interesting article in the New York Times.  Hopefully it is accessible to all of you  under their policy of giving free access to Corona Virus articles.

South Korea early on developed many cases in a local sectarian and secretive church. It could easily have become widespread. However they were determined to track down all the cases, and have the laws which permit them to use bank information, phone tracing, etc.to do all this. In other words to treat the virus as the war it is.

A key element was that they immediately developed and mass produced tests. They now produce 100,000 a day. And they get results within hours.

They also developed the drive through testing which separates potential cases from their regular medical system.  Their death rate is low. Possibly because their medical system never became overwhelmed. Of course it might also be low because they identified a much larger portion of the population that had the virus. 

A key question is will they be able to maintain this system until we get a vaccine. Not many of their people are developing immunity through exposure to the virus. So it is always possible it may get out of control.  Once half of more of our population develop immunity through exposure that will slow things down at the cost of many deaths.

I spent about 20 years of my life building and using state of the art data systems for the mental heath boards of the two counties where I worked. I spent a lot of time making them useful to clinicians and clinical managers. So this approach appeals greatly to me.  

Much better than shutting down economies and keeping everybody at home.

Of course people who value their privacy may prefer to shut down the economy and stay at home.

UPDATE

  Coronavirus Deaths by U.S. State and Country Over Time: Daily Tracking

The New York Times has introduced a new graph based up the death rate, comparing countries by  starting the chart at a common point, when the 25th death occurred.  Again we find evidence that the course of the epidemic has varied by country with Mainland China, Korea and Japan following different trajectories that Europe and the US.

Covid-19 v. The Framers

 The actual Enumeration, better known as the Census, is already a mess and going to get worse, even though Art.1, Sec. 2 of the Constitution says it must be done.
 The election of the President in November is also on shaky ground. When The New York Times editorial board, conservative columnist Mona Charen and historian Jon Meacham, who is close to the Bushes, all are concerned that someone may decide it shouldn't happen Sec. 1 of Art. 2 may be in trouble, too.
 (When we find ourselves in times of trouble I find myself more attracted to conservative Republicans who have stayed conservative but not Republican -- like Charen and Bret Stephens. And maybe Deacon Jim ;) My current favorite columnist is Michael Gerson, who is an evangelical, to boot. He reads the same authors I do. The people I used to rely on haven't noticed that they ought to explain what they are doing about the trillion-dollar baillout, so there is only The Don's word that they are obstructing it. End of obiter dicta.)
 As to the Census, I filled out our contribution and submitted it today. Our code arrived unheralded. I went to the mailbox, and there it was. Everybody is talking about Covid-19, and there has been putrid advertising for the Census. Maybe the money to advertise went into the futile legal defense for  discouraging brown people from responding by asking about immigration status. Anyhow, it is easy to see a lot of codes going into the trash along with scratch-off tickets with which you may win a car (or not), begging letters from charities that use your contributions to send begging letters and offers to buy your house sight unseen or give you free hearing aids. And most home computers these days are tied up with homework from closed schools and work-at-home jobs.

A brief thought

Here is the thought: the changes and adjustments which COVID-19 is forcing us to make, could turn out to be an excellent dry run for the disruptions and adaptations which climate change will force us to deal with.

My wife was relaying to me that there are sectors of American society that are objecting to being ordered by the government to stay at home.  I suppose those folks will be the sources of the civil disobedience which inevitably is to come. 

I attribute their attitude to stupidity.  By "stupidity", I don't mean a low IQ or low educational attainment.  I mean some combination of unimaginativeness, selfishness and recalcitrance.  COVID-19 presumably hasn't hit most of them yet - they may not know anyone who has been infected, much less anyone who has died.  It might help them to be a bit immersed in the experience coming out of Italy - to hear from the many who have lost parents, spouses, siblings, children to the disease.  There is an American strain of culture which privileges family over all else; if it happens within the family, it's significant; if it happens outside the family, it's not important.  I am guessing that most of these folks will eventually come around to embrace staying at home when COVID-19 becomes more personal to them.

So it could go with climate change.  Once it becomes personal, people will take ownership. 

Plunging into the Sent One during this time of isolation

Now the Jews did not believe
that he had been blind and gained his sight
until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.
They asked them,
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?
How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said,
“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
We do not know how he sees now,
nor do we know who opened his eyes.
Ask him, he is of age;
he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed
that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,
he would be expelled from the synagogue.
For this reason his parents said,
“He is of age; question him.”
(John 9:18:23)

Sunday prayer

The Shalem Institute posted this today on FB.  It is a local spiritual resources group that I first began following about 20 years ago. 

The social safety net is ripping

.. or so seems to be the case in our suburban area.

Okay, out of sync

But I am having a mild attack of pollyanism.

NYCity is not exactly lockeddown, but strong words from Governor (with Mayor mumbling after) about lie low, we're in this together.

But beautiful day, cold and sun shining. People trying for the six-foot spacer (except for people who behave like tourists; how did they get here?). Buses are free. Liquor stores have been deemed "essential service." Also grocery stores. Restaurants (take-out or delivery only). Bakery open. Book stores closed--not essential. Daffodils, Azaleas, Forsythia starting to bloom.

Went to my favorite West Side Market....owner in front of store monitoring the line-up. 
Question: How long to get in?
Answer: When I feel there's too many people in the store, the line stops.
Question: waddaya mean, when you feel?
Answer: I have an instinctive sense of how much is too much.
Question: Well how long would you say this line will be?
Answer: About four minutes, maybe three-and-a-half; couples count for one person!
Checkers all wearing masks and gloves; ditto the deli and fish guys.

So far, so good. Of course, it helps that the sun is shining.

CURVE FITTING

As a planner I often made predictions based on past experience. In the table below I have fitted a curve of predicted new cases and predicted total cases based on the recent performance in which each day the number of new cases goes up by 1.315 more than the previous day.

In the last two days my predicted curve has been exceeded.  Even if things go back to my curve, it is obvious that things are going to get worse very quickly. From this one gets a sense of how Italy became so bad so quickly.

The uptick in the last few days may have been due to more testing. The hope, of course, is that all the social distancing that has been put into place in the last few days will begin to slow this thing down.

		National	National	National	National
		New	New	Total	Total
		Actual	Predicted	Actual	Predicted
March
TUE	3
WED	4				350
THR	5	50	50		400
FRI	6	80	66		466
SAT	7	90	86		552
SUN	8	110	114		666
MON	9	150	150		815
TUE	10	200	197		1012
WED	11	260	259	1269	1271
THR	12	400	340	1660	1611
FRI	13	440	447	2100	2058
SAT	14	659	588	2759	2646
SUN	15	843	773	3602	3419
MON	16	880	1017	4482	4435
TUE	17	1399	1337	5881	5772
WED	18	2436	1758	8317	7530
THR	19	4075	2312	12392	9842
FRI	20	5570	3040	17920	12882
SAT	21		3997		16879
SUN	22		5257		22136
MON	23		6912		29048
TUE	24		9090		38138
WED	25		11953		50091
THR	26		15718		65810
FRI	27		20670		86480
SAT	28		27181		113660
SUN	29		35743		149403
MON	30		47002		196405
TUE	31		61807		258212