Will COVID also create a golden age?

Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages: “If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?”

Robots, computer programs and a vaccine

Kai-Fu Lee Gives AI a B-Minus Grade in the Covid-19 Fight: Robots and computer programs can help with social distancing and food delivery, but have been less helpful in developing a vaccine.

Tracing. Testing. Tweaking. | China

Tracing. Testing. Tweaking.: China is battling a new Covid-19 outbreak, in Beijing. At the beginning of the year, the Chinese government was quick to deploy data-driven solutions in the battle against the virus – and quick to declare its approach a model for others to follow.

The R-number

Lockdown and the R-number: is Neil Ferguson right? This explains the very similar epidemic curves for all countries in Imperial College’s latest report regardless of interventions, and explains why (as Bristol's Simon Wood points out in an excellent recent paper) you will look in the charts in vain for any convincing evidence that lockdown turned our tide. By tweaking an assumption you can move the peak of my graph forward or back a few days – but you cannot change its general shape. And that general shape, drawn from observed data, poses an utterly different view of Covid than that used as a basis to declare lockdown.

It’s 2022. What Does Life Look Like?

It’s 2022. What Does Life Look Like? It will be a new world, with a reshaped economy, much as war and depression reordered life for previous generations.

Collective and Augmented Intelligence Against COVID-19

Collective and Augmented Intelligence Against COVID-19 (CAIAC)

Mask resistance during a pandemic isn’t new – in 1918 many Americans were ‘slackers’

Mask resistance during a pandemic isn’t new – in 1918 many Americans were ‘slackers’:There’s a clear consensus that Americans should wear masks in public and continue to practice proper social distancing. While a majority of Americans support wearing masks, widespread and consistent compliance has proven difficult to maintain in communities across the country. Demonstrators gathered outside city halls in Scottsdale, Arizona; Austin, Texas; and other cities to protest local mask mandates. Several Washington state and North Carolina sheriffs have announced they will not enforce their state’s mask order.

 

I’ve researched the history of the 1918 pandemic extensively. At that time, with no effective vaccine or drug therapies, communities across the country instituted a host of public health measures to slow the spread of a deadly influenza epidemic: They closed schools and businesses, banned public gatherings and isolated and quarantined those who were infected. Many communities recommended or required that citizens wear face masks in public – and this, not the onerous lockdowns, drew the most ire.