The Experts are Now Certain that COVID Infection is Rare Via Surface Contamination

The evidence, we are now told, is strong that COVID infection through surface contamination is rare. How long now before we repurpose some of those surface sanitizers and double down on better ventilation? But not so fast . . .

Do you remember some of those early videos where doctors warned that we "must" wipe down all of our groceries with sanitizer or let them sit for three days? I know it was all well intended, but looking back, it is striking that this expert advice, like so much other advice we've heard from the "experts" on COVID and the economy, was delivered earnestly, confidently and (now we know) wrongly. In short, bad advice looks a lot like good advice. The experts rolled out for public presentations are always confident that they are correct. I suspect that this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

That said, the following excerpt is from a Feb 2, 2021 article in Nature, "Coronavirus is in the air — there’s too much focus on surfaces: Catching the coronavirus from surfaces is rare. The World Health Organization and national public-health agencies need to clarify their advice":

A year into the pandemic, the evidence is now clear. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted predominantly through the air — by people talking and breathing out large droplets and small particles called aerosols. Catching the virus from surfaces — although plausible — seems to be rare (E. Goldman Lancet Infect. Dis. 20, 892–893; 2020). Despite this, some public-health agencies still emphasize that surfaces pose a threat and should be disinfected frequently. The result is a confusing public message when clear guidance is needed on how to prioritize efforts to prevent the virus spreading.

This lack of clarity about the risks of fomites — compared with the much bigger risk posed by transmission through the air — has serious implications. People and organizations continue to prioritize costly disinfection efforts, when they could be putting more resources into emphasizing the importance of masks, and investigating measures to improve ventilation. The latter will be more complex but could make more of a difference.

I'm still going to wash my hands after being in a public place. I'll do that because It's such a simple measure and there are other germs out there in addition to COVID, but I'll be doing it with increased suspicion that this effort is unnecessary. I'm also looking forward to getting a vaccine--I've registered with the City of St. Louis and with two hospitals, but I'm not a priority. I'll probably be waiting for many months. I hope anyone reading this has better luck with getting the vaccine . . .

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The Many Dangers of Loneliness

For months, I have been contemplating the destructiveness of the COVID pandemic, including the pain many people are feeling from loneliness. How dangerous is loneliness? Tonight I spotted this quote by Dr. Vivek Murthy:

During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness. Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity. Loneliness is also associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly.

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Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying Urge Further Scientific Investigation Regarding the Coronavirus “Lab Hypothesis”

I thought the lab hypothesis was debunked based on many articles I've seen over the months, but here are two people I respect (based upon their Darkhorse Podcast), Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, suggesting that the lab hypothesis needs to be rigorously investigated because they've noticed more than a few red flags. They further argue that until now, the lab hypothesis has been debunked based on social stigma rather than scientific investigation.

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What You Should be Thinking as You Fill Out Your Paperwork at the Doctor’s Office

When you arrive at the doctor's office to check in with the receptionist, you are often handed a small pack of paperwork to fill out. Until that moment, you have probably been focused on your own ailment or your own medical worries. Luckily, for most of us--most of the time--our own health concerns will more or less resolve and life will more or less go on.

For all of us, however, that typical pack of doctor office paperwork contains a magic page that has the power to boost our happiness through the roof, if only we employ the correct frame of gratitude.  I'm referring to the page that looks something like this:

This page gives us the opportunity to breathe a cosmic sigh of relief that we do not have most of those ailments on that list.  That's how I try to see it as I check off all most of those boxes with a "no." Thank goodness I don't have most of those medical problems. And this is merely the beginning of what I'm proposing as a journey of gratitude.

Instead of thinking about my own health problem, instead of being frustrated that my own body is not operating perfectly, the above page is a reminder that my body is an extraordinarily complex adaptive system--lots of little parts have self-organized into something so complicated that it seems miraculous. No humans could possibly make a tongue or an eye or a liver as high functioning or as elegant as the natural versions.

Imagine that humans in the distant future worked very hard and came much closer to making a reasonably functioning robotic human. Then imagine their supervisors sending down a new work order to make sure that this robot is also sentient.  Imaging the groaning you would hear from the engineering team! Then imagine that the supervisors send down another new work order to make sure that this artificial human could also repair itself if it became damaged!  Imaging louder groaning, especially when the supervisors remind the team that this self-repair must respond to hundreds of millions of microscopic threats and do it as well as the human immune system. 

Then imagine that the supervisors send down yet another work order advising the team that they must design their human so that it runs on almost anything that it puts in its mouth.  Even louder groaning.  Mutiny is threatened.

Finally, thousands of years later, when millions more engineers (and their great great great great grand-engineers) have successfully created a passable artificial human, the supervisors call down with one more new request:  Make sure that these artificial humans can create tiny artificial humans the size of a pinpoint that will grow, within the body of one of the robots, into large artificial humans who become wise through their interactions with any of dozens of environments.  Then imagine all the engineers quitting their jobs.

At the doctor's office, our question should not be "Why doesn't my body work perfectly?"  We shouldn't even complain that we sometimes have one or more of those ailments on the long checklist handed to us by the doctor's receptionist. A better question is "How is it possible that the actions of countless individual molecules self-organize into trillions of cells that result in emergent coordinated macroscopic behaviors such as the ability to walk into a doctor's office?"  Even more simply, the first question should always be "How is it possible that human bodies work at all, ever?"

Answer not forthcoming.

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