Data illiteracy

I never read the news reports about what the virus is doing in my home state. I just look at the data that is posted online and form my own conclusions. I occasionally see something about how the cases are still rising and that there is some kind of spike, but I just dismiss that as yet another attempt to manipulate people to have the desire response. The levels of infection are basically sitting at a pretty consistent level while testing goes up and hospitalizations and death are in a steady decline. 

It's ultimately the hospitalizations and deaths that really matter. The virus will continue to spread. This is something people just need to accept. It's not going to stop spreading anytime soon. We're not talking about huge numbers of people here. A thousand cases a day sounds like a lot, but it's not that many when you're talking about a population of millions. 

Sure there are places where the virus never really gained a foothold and kind of petered out. New Zealand is an example. The prime minister is getting all the praise, but she got a huge boost from the fact that she leads a sparsely populated island nation. The population of New Zealand is very close to Colorado's. The largest city only has a bit of a million people. Iceland gets praised for beating the virus. It's also a sparsely populated island with very little population density. Other places that haven't had much of the virus were probably more lucky than effective managers of pandemics. And most of them will not be able to let people from outside their geographically isolated lands visit without having to pass through quarantine first. It's hard to take a vacation in Hawaii when you have to spend two weeks in quarantine before you can actually visit the island.

The people who claim to have all the answers and know the right answer to all the questions really know nothing. You can't do some math and have all the answers. You have to take reality and what's actually happening into account. Sure, stopping your little bits from interacting will stop the virus from spreading, but real people don't perfectly adhere to the instructions of computer code. We don't know if we're early in the cycle or late. We don't know if there will be a second wave. The way talk of the second wave has shifted shows that people just don't know. The early talk was that the second wave would be even deadlier than the first wave. We know which people are most vulnerable to this virus. We could have a huge second wave of infections with virtually no mortality if we just did a better job of protecting the nursing homes. The riots may trigger a spread of the virus, but it's not likely to trigger a wave of deaths (as long as the protesters stay away from their grandparents). 

There is so much effort on keeping the public in line, there aren't many people talking about ways we could mitigate the effects of the virus without treating everybody like their sick. That may be the best way to prevent the spread of the virus, but doing out best to stop the spread of the virus is not the best tactic at this point. The only way out is through. 

You judge me, I'll judge you

Small differences in fact lead to huge disparities in moral judgments. I'm sure this has been said before, but I don't know by whom and I'm not going to bother trying to find out. I just want a fun way to roll into my latest idea on the coronavirus crisis (how much longer with coronavirus get the squiggly red line?). I've been reading too much speculation on what the next few months look like with the idea of the coronavirus haunting our every move. The correct answer is that nobody has the slightest idea of what the virus will do in the next few months. We know next to nothing about the virus and its behavior. Sure, we know all about its genetic code and how it interacts with cells in vitro but we have no idea how it does its thing in a body. We can see its effects, but how it goes about doing those things are hypothesis and conjecture. 

But all the wise and informed commentators on Twitter and the supposedly more informed writers turning guessing which number will come up when I drop my Plinko chip into serious journalism are quick to tell us that we know plenty about the virus. If you're out there interacting with other people you are putting your life at risk. What? Have they looked at the demographics of the people who have died. It's a bunch of small bars until you get to the 70+ age group. That bar is big. Even that data is a coarse filtering of a very complex data set. The deaths are not random (even though it may feel that way given how the stories are told in the media). The virus exposes a deficiency in the overall health of the victim. Most people will handle the virus with no real issue. 

Now, if you take the view that you are risking death every time you venture out the door, you might not think too highly of somebody going around living their life. How dare they put us all at risk by exposing themselves to the horrors of The Virus! Crowds are frightening. Your death could be lurking in that mass of humanity. All those deadly vapors swirling around! The Horror!

So if you look at the virus as a risk to some but a nuisance to most, you're probably not going to get too worked up about going to the grocery store. Forget the mask (they don't do anything to stop the spread of the virus anyway, the viral particles are way too small) and just do your shopping. I'm not putting the world population at risk. I'm living my life. The reality of the virus is not nearly as dire as our collective angst has elevated it. But that's not listening to science! The virus is going to kill us all! We need to hide from each other until the salvation of the Vaccine is bestowed upon us by the deities who occupy the labs of those horribly corrupt pharmaceutical companies! 

So accepting the dire narrative leads you to judge somebody who has taken a more reflective view of the risks presented by the virus as morally failing. A different view of the facts leads to a decidedly different moral position. I read an opinion piece that it is morally essential to download a tracing app. I will leave my phone at home before I download a tracing app. The writer finds the virus's danger so extreme that we should let companies tell us when we had close personal contact (whatever the hell that means) with somebody who tested positive for the virus. I'm not convinced that the danger of the virus is so extreme that we need to take those measures. It's certainly a danger to a select portion of our population, but ushering in a surveillance state is not worth the trade for feeling like we're not at risk. 

The actions being taken against the virus are psychological measures against fear promulgated by people who claim to know much but know very little. 

Six weeks

I started writing these posts to keep track of what I saw coming and what about this whole experience with COVID -19 came as a surprise. All too much of what has happened has been easy to see coming. I'm slightly pleased with my expectations of technical things.

I told a couple of neighbors soon after this things started that the virus has been here mush longer than what was being reported. Recent reports have indicate that this is indeed the case. It's not like this was some deep insight. You don't go from finding the first case and a few days later have positive results all of the country.

I was doing pull-ups using some bars on the playground at the neighborhood elementary school. My wife was teasing me about touching the bar. I responded by telling her that there was no way that little bundle of genetic material could survive being out in the sun. If we need to wear sunscreen to protect our skin, a virus will not hold up well to exposure to UV light. That looks like that is the case (although that insight is being buried under Trump's reaction to the news).

I think I already mentioned the air pollution link. I've been reminding the wife about the risk that obesity brings, but I can't claim that idea came to me from thinking about what's out in the media. I heard that obesity was a risk on an interview on the Joe Rogan podcast. It made sense and was a consistent feature in pictures of people who have died from the virus. The deaths are sad and unfortunate, but it's frustrating that there is still very little commentary on the risks that obesity brings to people infected by the virus. It's a bigger factor than everything but age.

My drive to emerge stronger from this crazy time has only been reinforced by the link between poor outcomes and obesity. Everything is better when you are at a healthy weight. This is particularly relevant as I get older. I'm looking at 44 in less than 2 weeks. (My birthday will be cancelled by this damn virus.) I have continued to loss weight after the pact with my wife ended. I'm working out everyday, going for long walks, and trying to avoid eating too excessively. I'll stick with it for as long as I can.

I'm not sure what will come next with this saga. We're shifting from the solid facts about the virus and how it effects people into human judgement and decisions. That's so wrapped up in irrational motivations that it's not easy to say how we get back into a semblance of pre-virus life. It's not going to be smooth. I'm not going to wear a mask (they aren't effective, particularly when they aren't worn properly).

Time will tell...

5 Weeks

I started a note on my phone keeping track of different things I've done while the world freaks out about prediction models built with poor and incomplete data. It's a work in progress. It's something to mark progress, keep me focused on something positive rather than succumbing to the pull of absurdity that will define this collective inflection point. I've finally come to peace that logic and reason stand no chance against fear and irrationality feed by misinformation.

My earliest reaction to the closing and cancelling of modern life was that big decisions were being made with very poor data. How do we know that this will be as bad as they say? We were trading a health problem for an economic problem. Were we making a good trade? The last five weeks have me convinced that we are going to regret some choices. Actions were motivated by models predicting millions of people dying. Models are sophisticated ways to guess what's going to happen under a certain set of assumptions. You can't get a good model without good data. COVID 19 is a wonderful illustration of garbage in / garbage out. Decades from now lectures about modelling will caution future modelers with tales of how a sophisticated model informed by garbage data crushed the global economy.

There are no controls in this global experiment. They tell us that all this social distancing is working, pointing to all the deaths that those early models predicted have been averted by locking ourselves away. That's just a story we're being told to keep us compliant. We have no way to know if those early predictions were anywhere close to what would have happened if the virus was allowed to do its thing unopposed. You don't control a virus. You control people to thwart the viruses molecular machinery from making more viruses. Telling people that the initial models were total garbage isn't effective in getting them to stay home.

We've sacrificed more than we realize to avoid a situation that was likely to never become reality. The first few days of this scare felt like a blizzard predicted to drop 2 feet of snow was heading our way but we would end up getting a dusting of snow. There is an argument that it's better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but should we create a bigger problem in preparing for the worst? Yes, people have died. Those deaths are tragic, but virus kill people everyday. More deaths will be called by the problems created by shutting down the economy. Will those victims be part of the final tally?

Three Weeks Deep

The wife and I had a pact to lose weight together. We would hold each other accountable and make good choices together. I aimed for 7 pounds of weight loss in a month. My weight has oscillated around 222 for years. I've been below and above, but I seem to settle right around 222 when I'm not sticking with a reasonably healthy diet and working out regularly. I figured my body would be willing to settle into that familiar weight if I cut the desserts, upped my running mileage, and replaced salty snacks with vegetables. Then this damn virus showed up. 

I was 229.3 when I started the pact. I was 220 when I weighed myself this morning. Lots of walks, consistently running 15+ miles a week, and snacking on fruit and vegetables rather than a handful of chips or crackers (most of the time anyway). The process was easy the first few weeks, but it's getting harder to stick with the plan as I spend more time working from home. The distortion that we've all been feeling is making life feel flat and stale. I'm getting sick of my house. I hate the furniture that we've had for way too long. We need to replace the siding our of house soon. At least the weather is getting warmer. 

We're going to look back on these few months (or however long this twist persists) and question why we shut things down. We're being asked to make profound personal sacrifices with no real indication that they are making a difference. I'm lucky that I can work on emerging from the stasis improved. The gym is closed, but I have a treadmill, a rowing machine, and a bench and dumbbells waiting for me in the garage (I've used them all this week). I have money in the bank. I'm inconvenienced. Too many people are losing everything. We may be saving lives (maybe, this is all really just a theory), but lives are being destroyed at an industrial scale. The wreckage from our response to this virus will haunt us forever.

There is all kinds of talk about controlling the virus. Controlling the virus is an illusion. We are the ones being controlled. Stick us in our houses, take away the most popular diversions and pleasures in life (those things that attract the most people must be the best after all), and cheat a hollow sphere of lipids decorated with proteins a place to release its bundle of genetic material. We take the leaders at their word. The stories of doctors and nurses tending to the worst of the worst cases magnify and amplify the worst that this virus has to offer while its failures feel ill for a day or two and go about their now heavily restricted life. 

It could be worse, it can always be worse. This could be China. The government could put everybody under house arrest and mislead the rest of the world about how effective the virus was in evading their plans to foil its life's work. I could be compelled to wear a mask, which would require shaving my beard, and carry a letter allow me to get groceries or head to work. That would be worse. The chaffing of being stuck in a three mile ring grows everyday, but at least I was free to get Taco Bell for lunch today. 

The Weirdness, early days

People ask me what I think, my scientific training somehow granting me more penetrative insights into how this coronavirus situation is going to unfold over the next couple of months. My thinking is so jumbled and disjointed that I end up saying not much. There's still so much that we don't know. It's going to last longer than we expect. It's a population problem being experienced on the individual level. The honest answer is that I'm not sure what to think about any of this. It's very serious for those people who end up very sick. Why those people get very sick while others have virtually no symptoms is a huge question for me in all of this. How am I to gauge the danger when there is no way to know how bad it will be for you if you catch the virus?

The right answer at the moment is to assume that it's going to horrible for all of us. While that certainly makes plenty of sense at a disinterested rational level and encourages people to do what is best for the group, that doom and gloom perspective rankles my sensibility and exaggerates the true impact of this event. I've read what it's like for people who need to be in the hospital. It's horrible. The doctors and nurses treating the patients are seeing the very worst of this pandemic. Nobody wants to be on a ventilator struggling not to drown from fluid filling the lungs. Should we live in constant fear of that scenario though? We can do so little to control whether or not we get the virus. Restaurants and shops and hair salons and so many other things being closed are only measures to slow the spread of the virus. It's going to be with us for a long time. We may develop a vaccine or effective treatment to make it just another medical thing to deal with, but there's a good chance many of us will get it. And many of those many will deal with some minor symptoms and go on with their life. It will be a huge deal for some people and a major disruption for pretty much nothing for everybody else. Does that make it a big deal or something that is being blown out of proportion? We all have to wait for our answer. 

I have been avoiding the news. The misinformation, speculation, and constant emphasis on the worst case scenarios is too frustrating to watch. I read a column about a kid who got the virus after visiting Disney World and was so frustrated to read that there was a wide spread belief out there that young people couldn't get the virus. Nobody is immune to infection from this virus. That's what makes a novel virus such a huge deal. We're all susceptible. It just seems like young people are less likely to need hospitalization. This particular kid was recovering at home. We're watching people learn about viral infections and exponential growth in real time. It's more than I can handle.

Maybe I could handle it if I wasn't dealing with keeping my life and family pointed in a mostly positive direction while dealing with the challenges of working from home, my kids not having school again until September, and trying to figure out just how much food and other supplies I need to have in the house. My grad school labmate and his wife achieved a modest level of fame with their struggles to conceive. They were on an MTV show and had (have?) a blog very popular among people struggling with fertility issues. They had a Facebook post today describing how they alternate working with teaching their young daughters (both of whom were carried by a surrogate). She works in the morning and swaps with him in the afternoon. They are dealing with a similar challenge, but their kids are much younger than mine. Their posts always have this everything is great even though it sucks tone that is mildly irksome, but the amplification of the proper positioning that so many people are acting out in their social media feeds during this trying time just hit me wrong tonight. I understand the desire to appreciate what you have in this time when so many people are without work, but sometimes you just need to say this sucks and I really wish I didn't have to deal with it.

That's pretty much where I am with this whole shit show. It's terrible on pretty much every level possible. Yes, I'm in a much better position to get through this darkness than many other people, but that doesn't change the fact that this is miserable on pretty much every plane imaginable. It sucks now, and it's going to continue to suck in all kinds of new and painful ways for months and months and months. My life has been flipped inside out through no fault of my own and it pisses me off. I'm trying to keep a positive spin on the situation, but I find it depressing that I'm slowly adjusting to this new way of living. I have to find a way to keep my kids learning and developing while I'm trying to get my job done. I can't lift at the gym, go out to eat, or watch videos of people enjoying Disney World. These sound like mild and petty things but they are important to me and my life. I hate the superiority of people who shame others for going out of their house and doing things. Nobody really knows if all of this social distancing thing is really all that effective anyway. Don't be all mighty about something that you don't really understand. 

I thought I would feel better after writing this, that's why I gave up the time I normally use to decompress with some video game fun to write this post, but I'm actually feeling worse for putting my feelings out there. This is the first time I've really acknowledged how upset and angry this situation is making me. It's been two weeks and I'm already struggling. How will things look for me in a month? I'm trying to focus on using this time to shape my life in new and better ways, but I don't know if I will be able to stay committed to this path for the duration. My health, my relationship with my kids and wife, and an important career transition all hang in the balance. I don't really have a choice but staying strong and focusing on the positives that can come out this disruption. 

Trips to the beach, dinners at restaurants, and a long vacation at Disney World are waiting at the end of this. I just need to keep working and make it to the end of this stronger and more capable then when this all got started. 

Thoughts on Covid 19

I just want to take a few minutes to capture some thoughts on the current COVID 19 crisis. I'm well on my way to acceptance of the challenges and changes that this virus will bring to my life. I was angry and scared of what was coming a week ago. Getting enough food in the house was a primary concern. Running out of food while being lock in was a very frightening idea. I've been buying food all week. We have a bunch of food, not really meals food, but enough stuff around to keep us from going hungry if things get cut off. 

I've moved beyond that initial fear. I know this isn't going to be a short term inconvenience. I've read a couple of papers on social distancing. It's not a very complicated idea. Control the spread of a virus by keeping people separated. It's the only tool a government has to protect the capacity of the healthcare system. It's never really been tested. It's a theory. We're living in an epidemiological experiment. It's going to be a month or two. Things are going to be very intense in the big cities. It will seem like much ado about nothing in most of the country. 

I've decided that I will emerge from this crisis stronger. It would be easy to give into the disjointing shift that the response to this virus has brought to everyone's life. Restaurants are closed. Stores are closing. My favorite breweries have turned to delivery to keep their businesses going. We've never really faced a period of deprivation. It's coming. The getting whatever we want as soon as we want it infrastructure is taking a bit of a vacation. It's going to be reduced choices, making due with what we have on hand, and just getting through to the other side. 

What things look like on the other side is the most terrifying part. The world is changing. Nobody has any idea of what it will look like on the other side of this mess.