Monday, November 9, 2020
The most challenging portion of moving homes is not the unpacking but the workflow. Efficiently navigating the kitchen, determining how to store stuff in different closets, and navigating new room layouts in the dark are all surprisingly taxing. I disproportionately contributed to the "138 million hours of sleep lost" last week*. But moving demands a minuscule amount of change relative to the new roles other people in our country will take on. I am eager to see us, collectively, get to work. There are quite a few creaks in our floor.
*138 million hours of lost sleep is an extrapolation from a health tracking device company - but a great example of how to relate events to aggregated measured outcomes in the IoT age.
https://blog.ouraring.com/sleep-during-election-night/
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing an all-time high number of new cases ~96,000 per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at about 960 deaths per day (7-day rolling average). No plateau in sight as of now.
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.
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing an all-time high number of new cases ~68,000 per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at about 800 deaths per day (7-day rolling average).
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.
----
There is a lot to catch up on, but let's start this week with a few basics to remind ourselves of where we are in the pandemic:
The November 5 COVID tracking project blog covered the data from last week in detail. It isn't pleasant. Hospitalization and death rates, lagging indicators, are now clearly reflecting the increased case burden. And testing is not accelerating to meet the demands of the pace of spread.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-nov-5
In light of the likelihood of new recommendations, it is good to remind ourselves of our current best practices. Stay-at home orders, contact tracing, mask-wearing correlate with a significant drop in COVID-19 incidence. MMWR published this article detailing the impact of Deleware's interventions on November 6.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945e1.htm
I found this pre-print and not yet peer-reviewed article worrisome and provocative. The data in this study suggests "individuals who recovered from suspected or confirmed COVID-19 perform worse on cognitive tests in multiple domains than would be expected given their detailed age and demographic profiles." More indication of under-appreciated consequences to coronavirus infection, even mild disease.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.20215863v1
Our soon-to-be COVID-19 transition advisory board has a lot of familiar and comforting names. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-harris-launch-covid-19-transition-advisory-board/story
Infographic of the day: The biochemistry of stress and anxiolytics.
https://twitter.com/compoundchem/status/1323927321116553218/photo/1
-----Bonus Round - A morbid fascination with bureaucracy
I have a smoldering affection for old military manuals. They are declarative, bureaucratic, and fact-filled. Someone wrote them, likely on a typewriter, compiling enormous amounts of "best practices" combined with a working knowledge of an endless array of specific equipment. While I own a few, the number of manuals available electronically is astounding.
Over the weekend, I found the January 1945 US War Department's THE HOMING PIGEON, TM-11-410.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55084/55084-h/55084-h.htm
I learned the US Military had pigeoneers. I learned that the US military purchased pigeon watering fountain PG-37-C for placement in the mobile military homing pigeon loft, PG-68/TB (figure 8). Homing pigeons were dropped, via parachute, to front line troops for delivering messages back to centralized locations (figure 34) in PG-100/CB, a collapsible cylinder with 4-bird capacity and attached to a 6-ft. parachute with quick release clip. Someone somewhere wrote up requirements for each of these items, found one or more suppliers, contracted on behalf of the military, and kept track of all of this equipment. The manual is profoundly mundane and yet represents an enormous amount of labor and knowledge.
The not-so-riveting introduction of this manual captures the mundanity - "This manual provides instructions for proper breeding, care, and training of the homing pigeon, and for the selection and training of enlisted pigeoneers. With certain modifications, this information can be used by all pigeon units serving field forces, both in theaters of operations and in the zone of the interior. Instructions in FM 24-5 for units using the homing pigeon in communication have not been repeated. The mission, function, and operation of a signal pigeon company and the tactical employment of pigeons are described in FM 11-80." Hemingway-esque, right?
All of this reminded me of the entertaining articles on the US Military's brownie specifications from a few years back.
https://reason.com/2010/05/17/how-to-make-brownies-pentagon/
This article included the beautiful word, organoleptically. Google on, friends!
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
The most challenging portion of moving homes is not the unpacking but the workflow. Efficiently navigating the kitchen, determining how to store stuff in different closets, and navigating new room layouts in the dark are all surprisingly taxing. I disproportionately contributed to the "138 million hours of sleep lost" last week*. But moving demands a minuscule amount of change relative to the new roles other people in our country will take on. I am eager to see us, collectively, get to work. There are quite a few creaks in our floor.
*138 million hours of lost sleep is an extrapolation from a health tracking device company - but a great example of how to relate events to aggregated measured outcomes in the IoT age.
https://blog.ouraring.com/sleep-during-election-night/
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing an all-time high number of new cases ~96,000 per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at about 960 deaths per day (7-day rolling average). No plateau in sight as of now.
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.
-----Latest Data---
The US is now diagnosing an all-time high number of new cases ~68,000 per day and rising (7-day rolling average). The death rate is increasing, and now at about 800 deaths per day (7-day rolling average).
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.
----
There is a lot to catch up on, but let's start this week with a few basics to remind ourselves of where we are in the pandemic:
The November 5 COVID tracking project blog covered the data from last week in detail. It isn't pleasant. Hospitalization and death rates, lagging indicators, are now clearly reflecting the increased case burden. And testing is not accelerating to meet the demands of the pace of spread.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-nov-5
In light of the likelihood of new recommendations, it is good to remind ourselves of our current best practices. Stay-at home orders, contact tracing, mask-wearing correlate with a significant drop in COVID-19 incidence. MMWR published this article detailing the impact of Deleware's interventions on November 6.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945e1.htm
I found this pre-print and not yet peer-reviewed article worrisome and provocative. The data in this study suggests "individuals who recovered from suspected or confirmed COVID-19 perform worse on cognitive tests in multiple domains than would be expected given their detailed age and demographic profiles." More indication of under-appreciated consequences to coronavirus infection, even mild disease.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.20215863v1
Our soon-to-be COVID-19 transition advisory board has a lot of familiar and comforting names. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-harris-launch-covid-19-transition-advisory-board/story
Infographic of the day: The biochemistry of stress and anxiolytics.
https://twitter.com/compoundchem/status/1323927321116553218/photo/1
-----Bonus Round - A morbid fascination with bureaucracy
I have a smoldering affection for old military manuals. They are declarative, bureaucratic, and fact-filled. Someone wrote them, likely on a typewriter, compiling enormous amounts of "best practices" combined with a working knowledge of an endless array of specific equipment. While I own a few, the number of manuals available electronically is astounding.
Over the weekend, I found the January 1945 US War Department's THE HOMING PIGEON, TM-11-410.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55084/55084-h/55084-h.htm
I learned the US Military had pigeoneers. I learned that the US military purchased pigeon watering fountain PG-37-C for placement in the mobile military homing pigeon loft, PG-68/TB (figure 8). Homing pigeons were dropped, via parachute, to front line troops for delivering messages back to centralized locations (figure 34) in PG-100/CB, a collapsible cylinder with 4-bird capacity and attached to a 6-ft. parachute with quick release clip. Someone somewhere wrote up requirements for each of these items, found one or more suppliers, contracted on behalf of the military, and kept track of all of this equipment. The manual is profoundly mundane and yet represents an enormous amount of labor and knowledge.
The not-so-riveting introduction of this manual captures the mundanity - "This manual provides instructions for proper breeding, care, and training of the homing pigeon, and for the selection and training of enlisted pigeoneers. With certain modifications, this information can be used by all pigeon units serving field forces, both in theaters of operations and in the zone of the interior. Instructions in FM 24-5 for units using the homing pigeon in communication have not been repeated. The mission, function, and operation of a signal pigeon company and the tactical employment of pigeons are described in FM 11-80." Hemingway-esque, right?
All of this reminded me of the entertaining articles on the US Military's brownie specifications from a few years back.
https://reason.com/2010/05/17/how-to-make-brownies-pentagon/
This article included the beautiful word, organoleptically. Google on, friends!
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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