/data/universe/

I’ve been pushing on a time-sensitive work project, which has mostly kept me from reading or thinking too much about the news.

That’s mostly been for the best, as the implications of the current situation are not good.  Despite all of the social distancing efforts, case counts in the US aren’t declining, they are plateauing.  The news seems to be accepting this as a “new normal,” with no real acknowledgement that we could try to find a way forward that is somewhere between “like before” and “total lockdown.”

Gradual (or full) reopenings are happening in some places, though, and somehow folks still don’t grasp that that means that case counts and deaths will increase again over the next month.  It boggles my mind, but it seems like a lot of folks have have become… less informed? about infectious diseases over the last two months.  As the aphorism goes,

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

While thankfully children seem mostly unphased by COVID, they still carry the virus at comparable levels to adults–which has unfortunate implications for school resuming.

A telling profile about what happens when even the best scientists lose their epistemic humility…

Sweden is starting to look worse.   (Though plenty will continue to argue the point on the Internet.)

Some research results are showing promise, which highlights another reason to flatten the curve.  How tragic would it be to end social distancing prematurely, only to have improved treatments become available soon thereafter?

At least this was funny.