Monday, April 13, 2020
I spent part of my weekend delving into photography, trying to keep my mind occupied. But that is hard with the ever-persistent unsettled feeling of disruption. I found my mind wandering toward our discussions on data and truth. Specifically, I spent some time thinking about the bias and fallacies introduced by photos, even before the age of digital. What occurred to me is, due to the absence of words, photos have a harder to detect bias. But it is there. Nevertheless, photos offer an inevitable truth that is not matched by words - it was what the photographer saw through their lens at that moment. (Why they were there at that moment and what was outside the field of view is a different story.) I'm sure there are much more robust and articulate writers on this subject, but it once again got me thinking about the problems with uncertainty and points of view.
---
FT data. The Daily Confirmed Cases(3rd big graph) for the US appears to be plateauing.
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
Here is another way to look at this data
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-deaths?country=USA
Last week I mentioned that the pathophysiology of COVID was more complicated than simple ARDS +/- pneumonia. Here is an ICU doc in Atlanta who is trying to communicate this complexity with infographics
https://twitter.com/VectorSting
https://twitter.com/VectorSting/status/1249155522470830084/photo/1
MUST READ - My colleague David Roer offered up an excellent NYT article on working in a world of so many unknown unknowns. It captures the tension and stress caused by physicians (and all healthcare workers) who must do something (or not) in the setting of incomplete data sets and knowledge that better answers may come in time. It touches on a lot of how we know what we know and understanding data I have discussed on numerous occasions. I think the only thing not touched upon in this article is the fact that communicating uncertainty takes time and energy, both of which are in constant short supply.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/science/coronavirus-uncertainty-scientific-trust.html
This operating in uncertainty is captured very well in this opinion piece from yesterday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-hospitals-bronx.html?referringSource=articleShare
and this twitter thread
https://twitter.com/laxswamy/status/1249618017635491840
Wired offers some thoughts on the assumptions and problems of cell phone data use during COVID. My take is the long-term privacy implications are more problematic than the fact that cell phones are not ubiquitous in rural, older, and poor populations and may (and thus diminish the value of the data sets).
https://www.wired.com/story/big-data-could-undermine-the-covid-19-response/
Unintended consequences are the fear of so many in healthcare. "First, do no harm," has a broader meaning than just about the patient you are treating. The degree to which you are obligated to think about resource usage and societal impact is debatable, but cannot be ignored.
http://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/save-hydroxychloroquine-people-like-me/609865/
Science and tigers and COVID, oh my! More on the backstory of the COVID+ Bronx Zoo tigers
https://www.wired.com/story/tiger-coronavirus-bronx-zoo/
--- Bonus Round: Ephemera from Adam's bookshelves edition
Having time to re-explore my books has been a small pleasure of being stuck at home. Here are my two favorite "re-discoveries" of the weekend.
Fascist Germany Explains by Celia Strachey and Joh Gustav Werner. A 1934 British book which contains only headlines from German newspapers that contradict each other. (The analog equivalent of certain twitter feeds that demonstrate contradictions between today's politician's prior and more recent statements.) There is no commentary, there is nothing but a headline, source and date on each page. It is a fascinating look at what was knowable about all manner of Nazi German policy and action before 1933.
I have never found biographies of the authors or any real detail as to why the book was published.
https://books.google.com/books?id=78k-AAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Google knows all (sort of)! Celia Strachey maybe Celia Simpson, the second wife of British leftist politician John Strachey. This adds some clearer motivation to the "why" this was published. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Strachey_(politician)#cite_ref-Matthew_2004_pp1004-6_1-17
and https://books.google.com/books?id=c8_nAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=Celia+Simpson+fascist&source=bl&ots=yES7fojBmo&sig=ACfU3U3kvqLbxHiESg_kB3egJFxEGk7gtg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje97WipeXoAhVblnIEHRBECrkQ6AEwAHoECAwQKA#v=onepage&q=Celia%20Simpson%20fascist&f=false
)
The Ashley Book of Knots is something that I treasure. I have no worldly use for it, but the notion that someone spent an enormous amount of time gathering, illustrating, and organizing 3854 different types of knots has been endlessly fascinating to me. My children make fun of me for this book. Endless puns playing with the idea of having a big book of "nots" (get it - knots is a homophone of nots) have been uttered in dad-joke fashion in our house. Nevertheless, both the book and the man who wrote it (Clifford Ashley) have my admiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Warren_Ashley
Clean hands and sharp minds
-AW
I spent part of my weekend delving into photography, trying to keep my mind occupied. But that is hard with the ever-persistent unsettled feeling of disruption. I found my mind wandering toward our discussions on data and truth. Specifically, I spent some time thinking about the bias and fallacies introduced by photos, even before the age of digital. What occurred to me is, due to the absence of words, photos have a harder to detect bias. But it is there. Nevertheless, photos offer an inevitable truth that is not matched by words - it was what the photographer saw through their lens at that moment. (Why they were there at that moment and what was outside the field of view is a different story.) I'm sure there are much more robust and articulate writers on this subject, but it once again got me thinking about the problems with uncertainty and points of view.
---
FT data. The Daily Confirmed Cases(3rd big graph) for the US appears to be plateauing.
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
Here is another way to look at this data
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-deaths?country=USA
Last week I mentioned that the pathophysiology of COVID was more complicated than simple ARDS +/- pneumonia. Here is an ICU doc in Atlanta who is trying to communicate this complexity with infographics
https://twitter.com/VectorSting
https://twitter.com/VectorSting/status/1249155522470830084/photo/1
MUST READ - My colleague David Roer offered up an excellent NYT article on working in a world of so many unknown unknowns. It captures the tension and stress caused by physicians (and all healthcare workers) who must do something (or not) in the setting of incomplete data sets and knowledge that better answers may come in time. It touches on a lot of how we know what we know and understanding data I have discussed on numerous occasions. I think the only thing not touched upon in this article is the fact that communicating uncertainty takes time and energy, both of which are in constant short supply.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/science/coronavirus-uncertainty-scientific-trust.html
This operating in uncertainty is captured very well in this opinion piece from yesterday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-hospitals-bronx.html?referringSource=articleShare
and this twitter thread
https://twitter.com/laxswamy/status/1249618017635491840
Wired offers some thoughts on the assumptions and problems of cell phone data use during COVID. My take is the long-term privacy implications are more problematic than the fact that cell phones are not ubiquitous in rural, older, and poor populations and may (and thus diminish the value of the data sets).
https://www.wired.com/story/big-data-could-undermine-the-covid-19-response/
Unintended consequences are the fear of so many in healthcare. "First, do no harm," has a broader meaning than just about the patient you are treating. The degree to which you are obligated to think about resource usage and societal impact is debatable, but cannot be ignored.
http://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/save-hydroxychloroquine-people-like-me/609865/
Science and tigers and COVID, oh my! More on the backstory of the COVID+ Bronx Zoo tigers
https://www.wired.com/story/tiger-coronavirus-bronx-zoo/
--- Bonus Round: Ephemera from Adam's bookshelves edition
Having time to re-explore my books has been a small pleasure of being stuck at home. Here are my two favorite "re-discoveries" of the weekend.
Fascist Germany Explains by Celia Strachey and Joh Gustav Werner. A 1934 British book which contains only headlines from German newspapers that contradict each other. (The analog equivalent of certain twitter feeds that demonstrate contradictions between today's politician's prior and more recent statements.) There is no commentary, there is nothing but a headline, source and date on each page. It is a fascinating look at what was knowable about all manner of Nazi German policy and action before 1933.
I have never found biographies of the authors or any real detail as to why the book was published.
https://books.google.com/books?id=78k-AAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Google knows all (sort of)! Celia Strachey maybe Celia Simpson, the second wife of British leftist politician John Strachey. This adds some clearer motivation to the "why" this was published. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Strachey_(politician)#cite_ref-Matthew_2004_pp1004-6_1-17
and https://books.google.com/books?id=c8_nAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=Celia+Simpson+fascist&source=bl&ots=yES7fojBmo&sig=ACfU3U3kvqLbxHiESg_kB3egJFxEGk7gtg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje97WipeXoAhVblnIEHRBECrkQ6AEwAHoECAwQKA#v=onepage&q=Celia%20Simpson%20fascist&f=false
)
The Ashley Book of Knots is something that I treasure. I have no worldly use for it, but the notion that someone spent an enormous amount of time gathering, illustrating, and organizing 3854 different types of knots has been endlessly fascinating to me. My children make fun of me for this book. Endless puns playing with the idea of having a big book of "nots" (get it - knots is a homophone of nots) have been uttered in dad-joke fashion in our house. Nevertheless, both the book and the man who wrote it (Clifford Ashley) have my admiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Warren_Ashley
Clean hands and sharp minds
-AW
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