Category Archives: Web Article Review

Noam Chomsky on coronavirus

Here’s Noam Chomsky on coronavirus:

Describing the US president as a “sociopathic buffoon”, Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, “it’s worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that’s happened in human history.

“Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we’re facing – one is the growing threat of nuclear war … and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming.”

While the coronavirus can have “terrifying consequences, there will be recovery”, said Chomsky, but regarding the other threats, “there won’t be recovery, it’s finished”.

Al Jazeera

In other words, our government knew a major pandemic would eventually happen, and in fact was certain given enough time. Our experts told our government and political system what it needed to do to prepare and respond. It did next to nothing, and now we are in crisis.

Like he says, this crisis will pass, though not for those of us who don’t survive it. But the climate crisis will not pass. It is certain, and we know what to do, and we are not doing it. We are not preparing, and we will not be able to respond when the worst happens. This is the major lesson of the coronavirus – there is not some secret plan or agency that is quietly and competently preparing to meet the threat when there really is no choice.

Just to review, here’s a short list of things we need to do.

  • Secure the long term food supply.
  • Protect most of our coastal population centers, while possibly strategically and gradually abandoning some areas.
  • Ramp up innovation.
  • Do our fair share to bring down global emissions.

As for nuclear weapons, they are the acute crisis to make all other acute crises seem trivial by comparison. We need to lead by example, and also reengage with international institutions to work on the problem.

AI and rural jobs

This Wired article is written by a Microsoft executive originally from the southwest corner of Virginia, which is where I happen to be originally from. He gives a few examples of how technology can transform old jobs and create new jobs in out of the way places.

  • Running “automated” farming equipment requires some combination of mechanical fix-it ability and IT help desk ability.
  • Keeping the books at a nursing home chain requires some fairly advanced database skills.
  • Precision plastic parts can be molded locally by technicians trained at community college, rather than ordered from abroad.

Comet ATLAS

And now for something fun and, by definition, not coronavirus related. Not that some people won’t see this as a concurrent sign of the apocalypse. But there is an unusually bright comet called ATLAS out there, and we might be able to see it with the naked eye sometime in April or May.

As to how bright Comet ATLAS will get, that’s anybody’s guess. It might become faintly visible to the naked eye under dark sky conditions by mid- or late April. By mid-May, when it disappears into the bright evening twilight, perhaps it will have brightened to second magnitude — about as bright as Polaris, the North Star.

Space.com

I thought I remembered seeing Halley’s comet in the 1990s, but after reading up on it, I probably remember people talking about Halley’s comet in the 1980s (when I was in elementary school) and then saw either Hyakutake or Hale-Bopp in the 1990s (when I was in college). I live in a brightly lit city now, and am not allowed to leave my house, but back then I lived in Central Pennsylvania and if I drove for 10 minutes in any direction it would get pretty dark.

Anyway, Atlas is supposed to be visible in the North to Northwest sky. I wouldn’t mind learning to read star charts if I ever get the time, but I recently discovered that there are a ton of astronomy apps out there. I’ve been using Sky View, and it’s great but just one of many. You just point your tablet at the sky and it labels whatever is there for you. You can convince yourself it is accurate just by pointing it at the moon. It actually works just fine in the daytime, on a cloudy night, or if you point it down at the ground and want to know what a person looking up at the sky in the Australian outback might be seeing. Space is predictable like that, and GPS works that well on the average device owned by the average Joe. Pretty neat.

And as for the Apocalypse, nobody is suggesting this thing is actually headed anywhere near earth. This article says it will be 273 million miles from the Sun. The Earth is about 90 million miles from the Sun, so that is only three times the distance, but I don’t know if the Earth is on the same side as the comet right now, so it might be more. It’s far and we have plenty of other things to worry about here on our little blue dot.

Joint Task Force – National Capital Region

The Joint Task Force – National Capital Region is the unified military command responsible for Washington, D.C. and surrounding regions if they become a “battlefield”. In other words, if there is an armed attack, or if all hell breaks loose for whatever reason, and civilian government functions break down. According to Newsweek, it has been activated.

JTF-NCR is responsible for what the military calls “homeland defense”: what to do in the face of an armed attack on the United States, everything from guarding Washington’s skies to preparing for the civil unrest that could occur if a nuclear weapon were detonated in the capital. But most immediate, JTF-NCR is charged with facilitating continuity of government, particularly moving civil and military leaders to secret locations were the order given to evacuate the city.

Newsweek

You would assume that the commander in chief has command over the commander of this unit, which would be comforting in even remotely normal times. But the commander of this unit does have the authority to take whatever steps he or she (it’s a he) deems necessary if there is no civilian oversight available.

It seems unlikely there are any missiles inbound. It seems entirely likely that the Covid/election season could be the time a foreign enemy could try a cyberattack or attack critical infrastructure like the electric grid – kick your enemy while they are down. Hopefully we are ready for that.

Newsweek was the first “main stream media” source of news I paid attention to when I became aware of current events sometime in middle school. I don’t know if it is still the credible source of information I considered it back then (or if I was right back then.) One questionable claim did catch my eye – “Federal officials in the nation’s capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government.” Taking a look at that claim on the University of Washington modeling site, it doesn’t hold up. The entire Boston-to-DC corridor is in fact hard hit, but the death rate and hospital utilization rates in DC are peaking right about now (I’m writing on Saturday April 18, the Newsweek article is from Thursday April 16) and both are projected to start falling. Hospitals in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia are busy but not expected to be overrun like they were in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. So it’s not clear what evidence the “federal officials” cited above would lead to a projected “New York-like epidemic…that could potentially cripple the government”. Perhaps some of these officials are used to working from home anyway, like in a white house for example.

the next crisis

In the thick of the Covid-19 crisis, it’s hard to think about the next crisis. But how many articles are there right now talking about all the research, all the warnings, all the reports and studies and past evidence pointing to something like this being inevitable? So if I were President (or anyone in charge of anything at any level), I would be asking what the ten or so biggest risks are out there that we need to be preparing for. We will probably be prepared if another coronavirus or flu pandemic somewhat similar to this one comes along. But what about an even more horrifying disease, or god forbid one created on purpose in a laboratory? That dark day may come.

Nuclear terrorism, war or accidents would certainly be on the list. We spend a lot of time thinking about this and a fair amount of effort on prevention and preparation, but still it seems like this day may come.

Earthquakes, like disease outbreaks, just happen – small ones happen a lot, big ones less often, catastrophic ones very rarely. A big earthquake or volcanic eruption should be on our list.

A major food crisis should be close to the top if not at the top of our list. We are closing in on 8 billion humans on the planet and have managed to feed most of them most of the time with some to spare. Dwindling groundwater, melting glaciers and snowpacks, heat and drought and floods depressing crop yields especially in the tropics, and the collapse of fisheries all have the potential to change this. Disease outbreaks can also affect crops and livestock, and the less genetic variety in our crops and animals the more susceptible they may be. Habitat loss and other unknown factors are devastating insects, which pollinate our crops and form the base of the food chain. What if one or more of these factors strike at once, and/or a volcano or nuclear exchange blocks out sunlight for years on end?

“Climate change” is real, but part of the problem in building public support to actually deal with it is that it is too broad and too vague. I would try to break it down into concrete things that are going to affect people like the loss of coastal cities, floods, fires, droughts, famines, hurricanes, etc. People should be able to understand how those are going to affect them.

Our complex financial, communication, energy, water, and transportation systems can just melt down if they are not carefully planned, maintained, renewed and continually invested in. External threats like cyberattacks and climate change do not make these challenges easier to deal with, or even easy for the experts to understand and explain well enough to build support for action.

And there is always good old fashioned war.

At the same time, I would want to know how many of the citizens I am accountable to are dying of preventable causes like car accidents, air pollution, diabetes, drug overdoses, homicides and suicides. Maybe the cost of these is such that they should be on the list above some of the existential threats.

Elect me and I won’t promise to solve all these problems, but I will promise to at least make a list of them! Then I’ll figure out how to attack the top 2 or 3, and maybe add one each year for the duration of my administration. I’ll also work on health care, child care, education, infrastructure, research and development. Doesn’t that all sound pretty good?

more from Bill Gates on coronavirus

You can still decide for yourself if Bill Gates is someone we should listen to on coronavirus. But he sounds cautiously optimistic, at least when it comes to developed Asia and the U.S.

[Someone asking Bill a question on Reddit: ]I read the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team report as well as this explanation in a historical context. Essentially, it says that by doing nothing, 4 million Americans die. Through the mitigation strategy—i.e. social distancing and “flattening the curve”— it says that 1.1-2 million Americans will die. However, it also says that the suppression strategy, or “shutting everything down for 18 months”—will lead to only a few thousand people dying...

[Bill’s answer: ]Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. The experience in China is the most critical data we have. They did their “shut down” and were able to reduce the number of cases. They are testing widely so they see rebounds immediately and so far there have not been a lot. They avoided widespread infection. The Imperial model does not match this experience…

China is seeing very few cases now because their testing and “shut down” was very effective. If a country does a good job with testing and “shut down” then within 6-10 weeks they should see very few cases and be able to open back up…

Gates Notes

more coronavirus tracking

This massive data analysis entry from Our World in Data is a pretty good example of how to take a data set and beat the crap out of it from every angle.

I like what they did. Since it’s by country, it allows interesting comparisons across countries but is not meant to provide local or regional-specific information. Countries are pretty big. My favorite trackers that are most relevant to my situation are still the City Observatory analyses of U.S. metro areas and the University of Washington simulations of available hospital capacity. The latter are by state.

could coronavirus lead to food shortages?

The coronavirus is a worldwide tragedy, but for the moment at least, most of us seem to have a reliable supply of water, energy, and food (at least, those of us who normally have these things – some people in the world clearly do not and that is not equitable or fair in the best of times).

But could the coronavirus situation somehow lead to food shortages? Well, there are a few ways. One is if countries that normally export food decide to stop doing so, at least temporarily. This would hurt countries that import a significant amount of food – small, densely populated nations come to mind, as do populous nations in inhospitable environments like deserts. Bloomberg says there are some indications this process has started, but only on a small scale so far.

Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest shippers of wheat flour, banned exports of that product along with others, including carrots, sugar and potatoes. Vietnam temporarily suspended new rice export contracts. Serbia has stopped the flow of its sunflower oil and other goods, while Russia is leaving the door open to shipment bans and said it’s assessing the situation weekly.

Bloomberg

The problem would not be an absolute lack of food, but a possible lack of workers to pick specific crops at specific times. Then there could be supply chain problems as the crisis impacts truck drivers, warehouse workers, grocery store workers, etc.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization maintains a food price index, updated monthly. At the end of February, the index was a relative low indicating ample supply and smoothly functioning trade and supply chains.

So it sounds to me like the food supply may weather this particular storm unless we are unlucky enough to have major droughts, storms, floods, heat waves, etc. in key food growing regions at the same time.

When it comes to electricity, Wired says the U.S. supply is safe for the time being. One concern there is that mostly automated power plants are run by a relatively small number of highly skilled people, and if significant numbers of them were to get sick at the same time it would cause problems. Add to this the possibility of severe weather putting further strain on the system, and again we need a certain amount of luck to get through this.

Relying on luck is not the hallmark of robust, resilient, long-lasting systems.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average of End Times Activity

On this Easter morning, you can check the Rapture Index here.

The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index/

The Rapture Index stands at 186, “Fasten your seat belts”.

an immunity test for Covid?

This article raises the possibility that maybe an immunity test for Covid-2 could be rolled out faster than a vaccine. The concept is that people who have had the disease and recovered, thereby developing some immunity (which is still being studied and not 100% confirmed that it is long-lasting), could be identified and allowed to resume their normal routines before people who have not been exposed and/or are at high risk.