October 26, 2020 - Monday
Our family's weekend entertainment highlight was the new Sascha Barron Cohen movie, Borat Subsequent Movie Film. Admittedly there were moments when I questioned the wisdom of having my teenage sons watch it with us. Once you got past the feelings of discomfort, the movie is a fantastic reminder that who you are when no one is watching is the best measure of how you are as a person. I also found it remarkable how 14 years after the first film (and in an age of ubiquitous video recording), so many people did not more aggressively question Cohen's characters. But, I suppose, that is the point.
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing more than 65,000 new cases per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at >800 deaths per day (7-day rolling average). The absolute daily numbers are even larger and available on the NY Times website.
Global-View:
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Nationally:
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usco&cumulative=0&logScale=0&perMillion=1&values=cases
Also, look at https://covidtracking.com/data
The US Regionally - NY. Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
About the data:
https://covidtracking.com/about-data/visualization-guide is the best resource to understand data visualization and data integrity.
----
The COVID tracking project weekly blog had an in-depth analysis of last week's data. Hospitalizations are rising in many places. Remember, irrespective of death rates, hospital saturation keeps other medical events from happening (elective surgery, people with other illnesses stay home). Hospitalizations from coronavirus yield excessive but potentially avoidable morbidity and mortality. Full stop.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-oct-22
And thanks to this article about how to use federal relief funds granted to North Dakota, I get to include the word fracking in my email newsletter on coronavirus. I have never fully come to terms with fracking, both as a means of extracting oil and from an etymologic standpoint. It sounds and appears to be very dirty.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2020-10-22/north-dakota-seeks-to-repurpose-coronavirus-aid-for-fracking
Johns Hopkins published this review of primary care events during the early months of the pandemic vs. 2018. Even with telemedicine, the frequency of cholesterol checks and blood pressure checks dropped during the second quarter of 2020, implying telehealth visits are not inherently equal to in-person office visits.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2771191
comments
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2020/study-highlights-shortcomings-in-telemedicine-despite-large-increases-in-remote-consults-during-covid-19-pandemic.html
More for the thought experiment and critical analysis than the paper itself, Carl Bergstrom offers a thoughtful review of a recent article in PNAS on the co-evolution of viruses and humans from the lens of SARS-CoV-2.
https://twitter.com/ct_bergstrom/status/1319424455626485765?s=10
Infographic of the day: Updated Swiss Cheese Respiratory Virus Pandemic Defense (spelled defence thanks to the graphic's Australian origins).
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368/photo/1
--- Bonus Round - Weekend Discovery
One of the by-products of moving over many weeks is listening to hours of podcasts. Revisionist History season 5 was out over the summer, and I am now just catching up. Malcolm Gladwell dedicates four episodes to General Curtis LeMay and napalm, both of which I did not find as compelling as I suspect Gladwell did. However, episode 8 was classic Gladwell - a beautiful walk through a twisting trail of ideas filled with audio marginalia worth exploring. One such side note was a comment about how Gladwell has a deep appreciation of the economist Albert O. Hirschman. I did not know about Hirschman until about 1 pm EST yesterday. Now you can learn about him too.
-Born in Berlin to a family that converted to Protestantism from Judaism, he trained in economics in Paris and London in the 1930s.
-Fought in the Spanish Civil War
-Was on OSS officer during WWII and worked with Varian Fry (you can google him one on your own); he helped shepherd thousands of refugees out of France, including Hannah Arendt and Marc Chagall.
-He led parts of the Federal Reserve, then onto a long academic career, writing four books about developing economies, political economy, and the complexity of human interactions.
-Noted for his observational analysis and rejection of dogmatic thinking, he is a noted intellectual hero for numerous reasons. He contributed by saving many of the 20th-century thinkers from the Nazis and added his thoughts to the world.
There is a very detailed New York Review of Books article highlighting so much of what I enjoyed learning. To be sure, Hirschman was a nexus of ideas, people, and politics of the 20th-century. You can see why I find him so interesting.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/05/23/albert-hirschman-original-thinker/
There is a well-reviewed biography of him on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosopher-Odyssey-Albert-Hirschman/dp/0691155674/ref=sr_1_1
Here is the Revisionist History podcast, which mentions him:
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/49-hamlet-was-wrong
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
Our family's weekend entertainment highlight was the new Sascha Barron Cohen movie, Borat Subsequent Movie Film. Admittedly there were moments when I questioned the wisdom of having my teenage sons watch it with us. Once you got past the feelings of discomfort, the movie is a fantastic reminder that who you are when no one is watching is the best measure of how you are as a person. I also found it remarkable how 14 years after the first film (and in an age of ubiquitous video recording), so many people did not more aggressively question Cohen's characters. But, I suppose, that is the point.
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing more than 65,000 new cases per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at >800 deaths per day (7-day rolling average). The absolute daily numbers are even larger and available on the NY Times website.
Global-View:
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Nationally:
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usco&cumulative=0&logScale=0&perMillion=1&values=cases
Also, look at https://covidtracking.com/data
The US Regionally - NY. Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
About the data:
https://covidtracking.com/about-data/visualization-guide is the best resource to understand data visualization and data integrity.
----
The COVID tracking project weekly blog had an in-depth analysis of last week's data. Hospitalizations are rising in many places. Remember, irrespective of death rates, hospital saturation keeps other medical events from happening (elective surgery, people with other illnesses stay home). Hospitalizations from coronavirus yield excessive but potentially avoidable morbidity and mortality. Full stop.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-oct-22
And thanks to this article about how to use federal relief funds granted to North Dakota, I get to include the word fracking in my email newsletter on coronavirus. I have never fully come to terms with fracking, both as a means of extracting oil and from an etymologic standpoint. It sounds and appears to be very dirty.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2020-10-22/north-dakota-seeks-to-repurpose-coronavirus-aid-for-fracking
Johns Hopkins published this review of primary care events during the early months of the pandemic vs. 2018. Even with telemedicine, the frequency of cholesterol checks and blood pressure checks dropped during the second quarter of 2020, implying telehealth visits are not inherently equal to in-person office visits.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2771191
comments
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2020/study-highlights-shortcomings-in-telemedicine-despite-large-increases-in-remote-consults-during-covid-19-pandemic.html
More for the thought experiment and critical analysis than the paper itself, Carl Bergstrom offers a thoughtful review of a recent article in PNAS on the co-evolution of viruses and humans from the lens of SARS-CoV-2.
https://twitter.com/ct_bergstrom/status/1319424455626485765?s=10
Infographic of the day: Updated Swiss Cheese Respiratory Virus Pandemic Defense (spelled defence thanks to the graphic's Australian origins).
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368/photo/1
--- Bonus Round - Weekend Discovery
One of the by-products of moving over many weeks is listening to hours of podcasts. Revisionist History season 5 was out over the summer, and I am now just catching up. Malcolm Gladwell dedicates four episodes to General Curtis LeMay and napalm, both of which I did not find as compelling as I suspect Gladwell did. However, episode 8 was classic Gladwell - a beautiful walk through a twisting trail of ideas filled with audio marginalia worth exploring. One such side note was a comment about how Gladwell has a deep appreciation of the economist Albert O. Hirschman. I did not know about Hirschman until about 1 pm EST yesterday. Now you can learn about him too.
-Born in Berlin to a family that converted to Protestantism from Judaism, he trained in economics in Paris and London in the 1930s.
-Fought in the Spanish Civil War
-Was on OSS officer during WWII and worked with Varian Fry (you can google him one on your own); he helped shepherd thousands of refugees out of France, including Hannah Arendt and Marc Chagall.
-He led parts of the Federal Reserve, then onto a long academic career, writing four books about developing economies, political economy, and the complexity of human interactions.
-Noted for his observational analysis and rejection of dogmatic thinking, he is a noted intellectual hero for numerous reasons. He contributed by saving many of the 20th-century thinkers from the Nazis and added his thoughts to the world.
There is a very detailed New York Review of Books article highlighting so much of what I enjoyed learning. To be sure, Hirschman was a nexus of ideas, people, and politics of the 20th-century. You can see why I find him so interesting.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/05/23/albert-hirschman-original-thinker/
There is a well-reviewed biography of him on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosopher-Odyssey-Albert-Hirschman/dp/0691155674/ref=sr_1_1
Here is the Revisionist History podcast, which mentions him:
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/49-hamlet-was-wrong
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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