This seems to suggest we will experience a cyclical pattern to these events. When we transition to a R0 < that .98 we seem to have things under control and will likely start seeing either relaxing any imposed controls or just relaxing our self imposed constraints on interactions. Then we’ll have a few new infections, and R0 then returns to a value above the range so we’re back in the epidemic spread phase again.
Does that seem right from this?
I believe there was also an issue related to glucose levels as well, which then results in worse infection outcomes with this virus.
I just came across the following that might be of interest as well: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/msa-arc022620.php
That was from late February and I’ve not seen anything providing any update on the trials they were starting.
Not sure if that is working as I was thinking, a decoy to get the virus to bind with something other then the cell and so neutralizing it.
Two related “wild” ideas, as I think we probably have the basic technology and knowledge but probably not something we can quite do now.
My understanding is that the virus is attacking the ACE2 molecules. These actually form a gateway between the interior of the cell and the external environment.
If so, in theory, we might be able to create a number of artificial “bodies”—thinking just a lipid bilayer sack with some ACE2 elements attached. Any virus that binds with that will “infect” the dummy cell but have no way of replicating so effectively die and not infect the body.
Similarly, a mask, even one that is not quite as fine filtered as others, which is impregnated with such compounds might prove effective as a filter for this specific virus.
Anyone know of any virological sources that are might be digestible by non-experts that might discuss such approaches?
Hmmmm. I am wondering about the information transmission/propagation process and how that might effect outcomes.
The “experts” are know to be connected with some subject area. When people (particularly media and government) the “experts” are brought in. LW has had at least one thread on this situation and what some of the problems might be.
The “armchair” people are probably two forms—either they are some form of known “celebrity” type of smart person or they are unknowns to the world generally. In either case the utterances from these people run through a different filter before their claims become part of the general information about X.
In this particular context—a pandemic, we don’t have too many real experts in the sense of “I’ve done this before and I have see this playing out”. Yes, we’ve seen outbreak and understand the transmission processes and models pretty well. However, some of this seems to be different than SARS, MERS and similar more contained or localized events.
As someone mentioned, we can find a bunch or pretty silly analysis or recommendation from the armchair side (even that it’s a hoax, just like a cold/flu or only a problem for the really old and already sick not the healthy). We when we make the claim about how the armchair crowd has done much better than the experts I think we gloss over how those good armchair positions came into the general information set. They were the cream of the crop and filters via a number of social filtering mechanisms.
We should not compare the best armchair position against some average expert position (where the experts may in fact not really be experts).
This might however suggest the selection mechanism used by both media and government in situations where we are dealing with something somewhat new may have some weaknesses that we want to review.
I think the line of thinking here is probably to first separate what is internal economic activities and relationships (think the plumber fixing your clogged drain) and what are external activities and relationships (think international supply chain type settings).
The internal relationships will, for the most part be waiting, though expect to see some movement in who and domestic market shares.
The longer any quarantine goes on the more impact will be seen on the external activities and relationship—loss of exports will be picked up by producers outside the quarantine area where possible. Those relationships may persist resulting in changes in structure of international trade patterns.
The other impact will be on the margin between domestic and international. This might be more difficult to tease out.
Perhaps another aspect is about which country or area is quarantined and when. It’s not clear when one says quarantined for X period of time if we’re talking about one country/area or some entire group of related countries. China is coming out of it’s quarantine now but reports are that it is still suffering from the quarantines in other countries in terms of its export potential.
Agreed. I was offering a counter to the proposition that pet ownership increases the empathy towards animals.
I think it is a mistake to think merely because someone is receiving some emotional value from a pet with that person actually caring about the pet (this holds for people as well in all sorts of relationships) beyond the pet’s ability to delivery that emotional satisfaction.
I am not a psychologist but I suspect one can describe most abusive relationships as having filling an emotional need for the abuser, often with little to no recognition of the what the abusee’s true/real needs are.
I want to say there was some study that concluded domestic animals—particularly pets—are stupider than their wild relative.
I’m not sure I agree that one can make the case that increasing pet ownership really does increase empathy for animals in general. I think (and the brief glance at the original article mentions this, at least indirectly if it didn’t dig into it somewhere I didn’t see) too many pet owners seem have pets for personal emotional needs. Often the pet becomes some possession existing to serve as an emotional crutch, becoming a means to some internal emotional end.
I’d like to see some empirical studies on the claim—for instance, how many pet buyers just take for granted the pet is not from some pet farm. When word come out about such places, how many actually change their buying habits? Then, just what does that do for other settings where one might consider the ethics of animal treatment (ranching for instance, or wildlife preserves...). Or maybe even something like the percentage of members of PETA who are pet owners or donors to PETA? (I might think the portions would be different if pet ownership does promote more empathy)
Okay. From a practical point, one thing I’ve found is working remotely from the office introduces two immediate challenges.
First is the loss of the informal information flow—the remote person just quickly drops out of the loop. When the whole team suddenly becomes becomes remote that informal information flow is just gone. New communication patterns might help mitigate that. I now one of the clients I used to work with had a policy that all emails related to work got sent to everyone. That might not be what you need but they strongly felt that insured the corporate distributed knowledge was preserved and in some cases extended—sometimes really good insights came from people not directly working on a particular project; sometimes brand new opportunities were seen because multiple teams notices some common threads.
Avoiding the pressure to micromanage will likely be important. Clear goals statements, progress milestones and probably some good mechanism to raise a hand to point up an emerging problem.
When people get moved from the office to working remotely you will likely find that there were all sorts of things taken for granted that made one more productive—or just made the work easier. Before cutting ties with the office everyone should closely survey their remote work environment to make sure they can do the job remotely as well as in the office from pure procedure steps. Do I really have sufficient desk space or am I trying to work off the kitchen table? With the table work—is the light right? Too many distractions maybe? What about things like screen space? Access to applications remotely—does the VPN really kill the connection so you know it will take twice as long to get results back?
If the organization doesn’t already have experience with operating on a remote basis it really needs a few dry runs to learn what it doesn’t know. So will be the people. Does the organization have time to do that?
Contact lists—yes, everyone has the office directory but that might not be too helpful when everyone is not remote. Does the phone system support call forwarding—and does that functionality expose the number the call is then forwarded to. Is that a problem? How well will everyone work if all they have is a cell phone. What’s the backup plan there—online tools (Skype, Zoom, MS Teams or other tools might be good but also might be problematic based on various security setting or bandwidth to the remote location (I am guessing home—so another twist there is who else is in the house? Does everyone have a work space or will people be trying to work out of their bedrooms in a shared house?)
Most of that is mostly mechanical aspects.
One of the soft aspects is loss of vision—people cannot monitor each other as they do in the office. That will probably lead to some tension over (not too much) time. It’s natural for most of us to see the work we do and see the work not done by others we needed them to do. (I think there have been so posts on LW in that vein of thinking). That’s part of a culture shift moving for the co-located office to everyone remote. How best to minimize that type of dynamic should be considered. Maybe some type of group conference call where everyone can share experiences, what’s working and what is challenging might help keep everyone feeling they are all in the same boat with one another and not a case of multilateral “me-them” feelings.
These are they types of things I’ve see or experienced.
If you are thinking about your own organization my suggestion would be some trial runs. The organization was not setup initially for the remote structure so unlikely to have what is needed to support that. There will be a learning curve.
In terms of how to manage the output and make sure the organizational output keeps getting produced you probably already have most of that. They might be a few things you can think about the are directly observed during the normal course of the day. If they are really important from a “run the company” view what is the proxy in the remote setting? What is the impact of generating that proxy measure on just getting the job done?
I am also interested in hearing any answers people have on this.
I would also think type of organization or nature of the organization’s output and its internal relational structure (how do the teams fit together both within teams and across teams) will have a rather strong influence on any best practices one might implement.
Raemon, do you think the audience here has a good idea of what your organization would be or perhaps a small description of the setting might be good.
Looks like the OurWorldinData has a graph showing a decrease in the total number of reported new cases for the world. Obviously, one observations is nearly meaningless but might be a sign that the curve is starting to flatten.
Life style risk. Perhaps two takes on that.
First, no one is choosing the virus so not a great comparison.
Flip side might be, we don’t pick a lot of things that can randomly happen to harm us given the life we want to live. Why is a virus that much different. Those that want to just keep living as if nothing has changed can, those the see a big risk can then work from home, home school their kids, isolate, interact via a bunch of remote communication tools. The key here then is just what the spill over is—how much danger do the free-wheeling life style put the run-for-the-hills life style at risk?
I think it is an interesting take. One thing I am pretty sure about is that we’re living that old Chinese curse about living in interesting times ;-)
What is actual hospital elasticity? Is there an existing gathering of data on this from previous disasters?
No answer here but a subquestion might be what are the essentials for an effective “hospital bed” for a COVID-19 patient? What are the binding/constraining elements? We know ventilators for critical cases are one. Others? What about those for serious versus critical—if we can treat serious cases well but in some makeshift hospital room (say an empty hotel) does that help us limit the demand for ICU space?
Second thought here. You have investors like Ackman suggesting a slow bleed process may well kill hotel owners. Is there an opportunity to address two things as once? If government (and insurance companies) can support quarantining and treating less serious cases in hotels then the industry gets some relief and society perhaps gets both better allocation of medical resources and improved quarantines.
True but apparently the people there have been, for the most part, been really good about social distancing practices, and I suspect general hygiene practices as well.
The do seem to have a problem with some of their religious groups that want to congregate but perhaps they will get the memo soon too.
But to be clear, I think their example makes clear that the hammer of authoritarian lock-down is not the only solution and the less authoritarian democracies can address the problem within the context of an individual freedom regime.
Does anyone have any reasonably good estimate on what the average incubation period is?
Regarding the Rob Wiblin model, is it possible that the conclusion (though I suspect is based on global numbers) is due to local epicenter events and so not necessarily something that should be generalized without some caveats?
Thanks and that was very helpful and a good level for me.
I do have two questions, one just more a curiosity than really important.
I had been thinking that the spike binding with the ACE2 protein on the cell wall was actually the entry path—perhaps based on a misconception. My (limited) understanding is that the ACE2 protein actually forms a tunnel through the cell bi layer, so serves as a mechanism to allowing both compounds made by the cell’s machinery to exit the cell for external functions and/or allow the cell to allow something in it needs.
However, your description seem to be describing a case where the two lipid bi-layers really merge. Is that what is really happening, the virus is not really using the spike to actually puncture the human cell. It really only hooks on to the ACE2 protein and then the two walls, the human cell and the virus wrapper, just merge into a common wall? Maybe a bit like what happens internally when an organelle buds off from the smooth ER and then links up with the Golgi apparatus?
That was the curiosity question.
I’m still not clear how how the infection is really working here. The virus binds with the cell and so now the nucleocapsid is now inside the cell but still in its protein wrap so the RNA is not really exposed. How is the RNA exposed?