[FRIAM] Fwd: [NICAR-L] AP/Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data

Wed Apr 8 23:47:06 EDT 2020

Steve?

I like the very specific reflections on travel timing at the bottom of what is below.

I've lost track entirely of whose reflections they were, but I am grateful for them. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 7:12 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [NICAR-L] AP/Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data

I think there are two issues...  what your risk of becoming infected and what is your contribution to the larger risk of infecting others.  The first is linear with the number of people you encounter, the percentage of the population currently infected and the amount of de-coupling your various measures provide.
> My guess would be parka, hood, glasses, 6' distance, and limited trips will go first because they have very limited effect. If you doubt masks have an effect, then these should be so doubtful as to be silly. But sanitation and aerosol/spittle measures have clear support. 

I agree that parka and hood are much lower on the list than even glasses which is lower on the list than 6' distances.  Limited trips are pretty much linear with the number of trips, dwell time and how congested your destinations are.  

An observant person will notice that in the right light (my favorite is early morning and late afternoon sunshine coming through a window into a dark room) how much we all "Spray it when we Say it".   Just today I tried working on my laptop on my outdoor deck and as the sun began to
*hit* my screen I realized acutely how many thousand of microdroplets had hit my screen... *probably* many of them while I was "spraying it"
into my Skype/Zoom chat sessions this last few weeks.  So I *do* think 6' distance (especially while talking animatedly to one another) is a good idea...   unless the speaker has some kind of mouth covering. 

> The conversation you forwarded seems to reduce the complex vector space of transmission into some kind of coarse, unidimensional forcing function. (Isolation and quarantine are anything but unidimensional. So, the analogy between them and dampening is stretched.) But if we were to do that, then limited trips would be the most salient, I think. My guess is an periodic driver (and measurement) of stay-at-home orders would be reasonably effective. What we've done so far with "essential businesses" is too coarse. E.g. I can go to the liquor store, but my arborist can't come prune my trees ... way more than 6' away from any other human. I can go to a restaurant and order a tossed salad to take home, but can't go play frisbee with a dog in a public park.
Our Governor just closed liquor stores (but you can still buy liquor at the grocery)...  and I was left wondering if she couldn't have re-opened drive-through windows.   We shut ours down recently enough (<20 years?) that many still have the windows, though probably currently stacked over with cases of liquor.     I'm not sure if "coarse" is as relevant as improper dimension for binning?  
> Many businesses already have particular days of the week they're open. It seems reasonable to relax the closures periodically, say everything's open on Fri and Sat, but closed every other day. That driving signal would surely show up in the number of confirmed cases.
I'm not sure why you imply reducing the number of days would reduce infections?   I wondered if maybe opening grocery stores 24 hours a day might reduce the average number of encounters between customers and give those with a low risk-tolerance better times to shop (e.g. 6AM) I do know that some big-box stores reserve the first couple of hours of opening for the elderly++ which makes sense to me...  overnight sanitizing cleaning and a more homogenous population more likely to be careful and less likely to be asymptomatic?
>> I walk a mile or so a day in the neighborhood, designating one 
>> “clean” hand (for adjusting my glasses, etc.) and one “dirty” hand for touching anything outside my own person, on those rare occasions that I have to.  I scrub both hands when I get back.  I go once to the store a week (at most).  I put on a parka, hood, glasses, face mask, wear gloves, and I carry alcohol with me for rubbing down any surface I touch and sterilizing the gloves afterwards.  I back off from any encounter with a human being closer from 6 feet.  Assume that all members of my pod follow these same rules.  Which of these rules do you see us relaxing after the bent curve?

Nick -  I like your use of Pod vs Herd or Pack...  

I think  you will find that as time goes on there will be more confidence in what to do to fly safely.   Masks and hand hygiene (gloves and/or washing) would go a long way.

  I think waiting for two things is key:  1) wait until the numbers on this end go down... until the peak of new infections has passed... but maybe not until the general restrictions have relaxed...   2) waiting until your destination is ready to recieve your pod IF you get infected in the process.... don't be showing up just as they are trying to figure out which parking lot or church to put new cases into. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/new-mexico   is a good resource for seeing when the "estimated peak resource-use" is which correlates with "acute infection"...   two gestation-periods (2
weeks?) after a peak might be a safeish time to travel (unless everyone else uses the same calculus)?   Symptomatics will be isolated or under care (still) and it might still be too soon for relaxed isolation to be yielding a fresh peak?   Don't take my (specific) word for it, but maybe you get the gist?

You might also consider driving as an option?   If your Pod can "graze on groceries" for the few days and trust the limited open motel rooms you will need (2-3 nights?) to be sanitized, that *might* be less exposure than a couple three airports/planes with hundreds of travelers from all-over the place?   I suspect fuel nozzles contaminated with gasoline and in the air/sun are more "safe" than most things you could touch...   bathroom stops include access to soap/water, backed up with alcohol wipes in the car?    One way car rentals may be available... there are even one-way RV (relocation) rentals (still?!) afoot, though they won't get you all the way to your destination... just the longer part of the haul...

I'm not sure when you normally try to migrate, but my estimates above imply early May may be a "dip"?   Again, I'm just winging it here for example, not as a strong recommendation.

- Steve

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