Greetings from an undisclosed location in my hotel room. It has been 261 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. Housekeeping note: No in-depth today; just some headlines on various topics. Glossary terms are bolded words with links to the running newsletter glossary.
On the note of socially distanced and relatively safe vacations, my family and I have been exploring state and national parks near my home in Maryland. We've been hiking the C&O Canal Trails, and recently we took a weekday trip to a beach in a state park along the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake beaches tend to be less crowded in general than our seaside beaches, and since it's in a park there's no restaurants, mini-golf, etc etc, just parkland. We also went on a Monday right before a hurricane was scheduled to come up the coast (and were even able to watch the storm's approach across the bay -- don't worry, we left well before it reached us)
I think for me personally, the hardest part has been that I'm sheltering in place with my parents, and much as I love my parents, I'd desperately like to see someone who isn't them. I'm trying to see if I can't organize a responsible and properly distanced kayak trip on the Potomac with friends, where five of us each rent an individual sea kayak. I'm hoping that masks, open air, and enforced distancing by way of "we're in freakin boats" could create a safe way to get out and about with people.
Also, if you've got further suggestions for the DC area, *especially* places where it's possible to go swimming in a socially distant way, I'm all ears. Swimming is about the only exercise I actually enjoy, and I miss it, but swimming pools are (rightfully!) closed.
I would like to thank you for your blog. Not only is it useful, it is also comforting to find that sources of unbiased fact-based, apoliticial, non-divisive information are still available, and that people like yourself are willing to make the effort to produce it.
Having said that, I would like to make an observation. This is not in any way a criticism or a suggestion, as I do not have a useful suggestion to offer. I have lived through a number of traumatic events, including 9/11, Superstorm Sandy, and surviving COVID-19 after nine days in the hospital. I have come to recognize PTSD in myself. I now notice that as I leave shul each morning, I feel relief and calm, having completed a "normal" daily ritual during these "abnormal" times. At that moment, I have subconsciously put aside thoughts of all the stressors that now surround us. Then, I light up my phone, and see your daily post in my Inbox. That causes an immediate, though minor, panic attack, as your helpful blog unfortunately reminds me that things are not normal. Then, I get a grip, force myself to open the email, and read your post. It always starts off with your "Greetings from an undisclosed location in my ..." That tiny bit of humor is really helpful, and, for some reason, I am still not tired of it. I then go on, and read your informative and helpful missives.
I am not asking you to respond to or act on this. I just wanted you to know.
Another aspect of my PTSD is that I tend to spend an unacceptable amount of time responding or commenting to posts and articles. For example:
Regarding "Ed Yong's autopsy of the American COVID-19 failure"
Although Yong makes a number of very valid observations, he unfortunately loses some credibility points by using about half the article as a platform to passionately (using a number of very non-objective adjectives) attack the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic, while ignoring previous administrations' culpability for critical issues such as defunding of critical medical equipment stockpiles (though, he does mention stockpiles as a general issue), or state and local governments' failures. Yong points to the excessive length of time it takes to produce a vaccine, but fails to mention the likely successes of the Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed". I am not a fan of Trump, but it would be nice (and much more helpful to society in general) if people with valid information and advice would stick to the science, and avoid the politics. That is one of the really nice things about your blog. (I hope this comment is not seen as political or divisive).
Yong also loses some credibility by jumping on the currently fashionable "systemic racism" bandwagon. There is no question that Black communities suffered from the pandemic disproportionately. The author makes an excellent argument that long past systemic racism contributed to the current suffering. However, he fails to make a factual or scientific case that systemic racism exists today and is a substantive contributing cause to the pandemics disproportionate effect on Black communities.
Finally, I take issue with the author's claim that "Diagnostic tests are easy to make". I admit they are easy to make (putting aside supply chain issues), however, as we have seen, they are not easy to make accurate or indicative of useful information, nor are they easy to process in a timely manner once administered on a large scale (see an earlier post of yours).
Robert, thank you for this thoughtful comment. I agree with you that it's extremely difficult to get out of the disaster mindset and associated trauma while we're still living within it--this is one of the reasons that I try to include some humor in the newsletter, and also the purpose of the "Pandemic Life" section. We live in this situation now, and I do think it's important that we all find ways to support each other.
I agree that Yong goes a little too far in some of the political aspects of his analysis; his biases show clearly in his article. However, I find it hard to fault the conclusions to which his biases carry him. On the other hand, I do have to stand up for his pointing to systemic racism within medicine as a cause of the disproportionate deaths of minorities from COVID-19. While I agree he does not present the evidence for this very well, there is a great deal of evidence that biases and racism within the healthcare system as a whole directly have negative impacts on the life expectancies and quality of care received by Americans of color. If this were within the newsletter topic, I might address it, but I feel it's a little far afield from what I usually cover.
My bigger issue with the piece, though I still agree with it overall, was the emphasis on Trump the man instead of Trump the administration. This failure is owned by a large number of people, all of whom collaborated to leave the US unprepared. Trump is responsible for some of the problems--but he is not the only contributor. Regardless, I don't want to get too political in this venue and I'm glad you appreciate my commitment to that. The newsletter will remain a source of information that is free of political commentary to the extent possible. I'm trying to follow Tony Fauci's lead in that respect.
Re:diagnostic tests, I think it's remarkable that it has been so difficult to create accurate diagnostics and I think Yong is right to suggest that incompetence, not genuine structural obstacles, are why we ran into challenges with deploying tests. As a high school student, I was able to create and validate a 400-gene human identification technology over the course of a brief summer in a laboratory. This was in the dawn of the genomic era, when the tools to create sequences and diagnostics were practically stone aged by comparison to what we have today. If a 16 year old with no prior experience was able to create something like that at that time, why is it so hard to detect a single gene, effectively, and at scale, in 2020?
I must conclude that the development pipeline has been mishandled, either by accident or by malice--I won't suggest which, because I don't have evidence of either. What I do know is that under the playbook that was used by biodefense experts in the 2009 influenza pandemic, a national surveillance network was deployed immediately and without error. Fast forward 11 years and somehow we have lost the capability to accomplish this task. There is truly no excuse for that.
Anyway, just to close, thank you for reading and I am glad you are finding value in the newsletter. I will do my best to try to continue to live up to the compliments you've given.
I'm not sure entirely. One thing we can do is completely stigmatize such irresponsibility and shame people who engage in it, though, and that might help.
On the note of socially distanced and relatively safe vacations, my family and I have been exploring state and national parks near my home in Maryland. We've been hiking the C&O Canal Trails, and recently we took a weekday trip to a beach in a state park along the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake beaches tend to be less crowded in general than our seaside beaches, and since it's in a park there's no restaurants, mini-golf, etc etc, just parkland. We also went on a Monday right before a hurricane was scheduled to come up the coast (and were even able to watch the storm's approach across the bay -- don't worry, we left well before it reached us)
I think for me personally, the hardest part has been that I'm sheltering in place with my parents, and much as I love my parents, I'd desperately like to see someone who isn't them. I'm trying to see if I can't organize a responsible and properly distanced kayak trip on the Potomac with friends, where five of us each rent an individual sea kayak. I'm hoping that masks, open air, and enforced distancing by way of "we're in freakin boats" could create a safe way to get out and about with people.
Also, if you've got further suggestions for the DC area, *especially* places where it's possible to go swimming in a socially distant way, I'm all ears. Swimming is about the only exercise I actually enjoy, and I miss it, but swimming pools are (rightfully!) closed.
I wish I knew the DC area better! But I would be happy to put out a call for suggestions in a future issue :)
I would like to thank you for your blog. Not only is it useful, it is also comforting to find that sources of unbiased fact-based, apoliticial, non-divisive information are still available, and that people like yourself are willing to make the effort to produce it.
Having said that, I would like to make an observation. This is not in any way a criticism or a suggestion, as I do not have a useful suggestion to offer. I have lived through a number of traumatic events, including 9/11, Superstorm Sandy, and surviving COVID-19 after nine days in the hospital. I have come to recognize PTSD in myself. I now notice that as I leave shul each morning, I feel relief and calm, having completed a "normal" daily ritual during these "abnormal" times. At that moment, I have subconsciously put aside thoughts of all the stressors that now surround us. Then, I light up my phone, and see your daily post in my Inbox. That causes an immediate, though minor, panic attack, as your helpful blog unfortunately reminds me that things are not normal. Then, I get a grip, force myself to open the email, and read your post. It always starts off with your "Greetings from an undisclosed location in my ..." That tiny bit of humor is really helpful, and, for some reason, I am still not tired of it. I then go on, and read your informative and helpful missives.
I am not asking you to respond to or act on this. I just wanted you to know.
Another aspect of my PTSD is that I tend to spend an unacceptable amount of time responding or commenting to posts and articles. For example:
Regarding "Ed Yong's autopsy of the American COVID-19 failure"
Although Yong makes a number of very valid observations, he unfortunately loses some credibility points by using about half the article as a platform to passionately (using a number of very non-objective adjectives) attack the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic, while ignoring previous administrations' culpability for critical issues such as defunding of critical medical equipment stockpiles (though, he does mention stockpiles as a general issue), or state and local governments' failures. Yong points to the excessive length of time it takes to produce a vaccine, but fails to mention the likely successes of the Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed". I am not a fan of Trump, but it would be nice (and much more helpful to society in general) if people with valid information and advice would stick to the science, and avoid the politics. That is one of the really nice things about your blog. (I hope this comment is not seen as political or divisive).
Yong also loses some credibility by jumping on the currently fashionable "systemic racism" bandwagon. There is no question that Black communities suffered from the pandemic disproportionately. The author makes an excellent argument that long past systemic racism contributed to the current suffering. However, he fails to make a factual or scientific case that systemic racism exists today and is a substantive contributing cause to the pandemics disproportionate effect on Black communities.
Finally, I take issue with the author's claim that "Diagnostic tests are easy to make". I admit they are easy to make (putting aside supply chain issues), however, as we have seen, they are not easy to make accurate or indicative of useful information, nor are they easy to process in a timely manner once administered on a large scale (see an earlier post of yours).
Robert, thank you for this thoughtful comment. I agree with you that it's extremely difficult to get out of the disaster mindset and associated trauma while we're still living within it--this is one of the reasons that I try to include some humor in the newsletter, and also the purpose of the "Pandemic Life" section. We live in this situation now, and I do think it's important that we all find ways to support each other.
I agree that Yong goes a little too far in some of the political aspects of his analysis; his biases show clearly in his article. However, I find it hard to fault the conclusions to which his biases carry him. On the other hand, I do have to stand up for his pointing to systemic racism within medicine as a cause of the disproportionate deaths of minorities from COVID-19. While I agree he does not present the evidence for this very well, there is a great deal of evidence that biases and racism within the healthcare system as a whole directly have negative impacts on the life expectancies and quality of care received by Americans of color. If this were within the newsletter topic, I might address it, but I feel it's a little far afield from what I usually cover.
My bigger issue with the piece, though I still agree with it overall, was the emphasis on Trump the man instead of Trump the administration. This failure is owned by a large number of people, all of whom collaborated to leave the US unprepared. Trump is responsible for some of the problems--but he is not the only contributor. Regardless, I don't want to get too political in this venue and I'm glad you appreciate my commitment to that. The newsletter will remain a source of information that is free of political commentary to the extent possible. I'm trying to follow Tony Fauci's lead in that respect.
Re:diagnostic tests, I think it's remarkable that it has been so difficult to create accurate diagnostics and I think Yong is right to suggest that incompetence, not genuine structural obstacles, are why we ran into challenges with deploying tests. As a high school student, I was able to create and validate a 400-gene human identification technology over the course of a brief summer in a laboratory. This was in the dawn of the genomic era, when the tools to create sequences and diagnostics were practically stone aged by comparison to what we have today. If a 16 year old with no prior experience was able to create something like that at that time, why is it so hard to detect a single gene, effectively, and at scale, in 2020?
I must conclude that the development pipeline has been mishandled, either by accident or by malice--I won't suggest which, because I don't have evidence of either. What I do know is that under the playbook that was used by biodefense experts in the 2009 influenza pandemic, a national surveillance network was deployed immediately and without error. Fast forward 11 years and somehow we have lost the capability to accomplish this task. There is truly no excuse for that.
Anyway, just to close, thank you for reading and I am glad you are finding value in the newsletter. I will do my best to try to continue to live up to the compliments you've given.
I’ve been told Ithaca is Gorges.
What more can be done that isn’t already to not have things like the Kosciuszko Bridge rave or the Hamptons party/festival a couple of weeks ago?
I'm not sure entirely. One thing we can do is completely stigmatize such irresponsibility and shame people who engage in it, though, and that might help.