onfocus

"Just as premature reopenings of bars, stores and restaurants ended up causing big Covid outbreaks and hurting business activity in many Sun Belt states, virus outbreaks on campuses could cause a stampede away from universities eroding trust in universities as responsible stewards of young people’s health and safety."

In the face of no good choices, I think colleges should prioritize the health of their communities.

"There are two key mitigation strategies for countering poor ventilation and virus-laden aerosols indoors: We can dilute viral particles’ presence by exchanging air in the room with air from outside (and thus lowering the dose, which matters for the possibility and the severity of infection) or we can remove viral particles from the air with filters."

Time to think about filtration and ventilation.

"Theirtube is a Youtube filter bubble simulator that provides a look into how videos are recommended on other people's YouTube. Users can experience how the YouTube home page would look for six different personas."

What if the YouTube I see is not the YouTube you see? This is a good demonstration of how personalized recommendations work.

"Federal tactical teams that have clashed with protesters in Portland in recent weeks will soon be leaving the city, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon said Wednesday."

Relieved to hear this.

Update: Surprise! Now, not true. Article I linked has been updated to the headline: Federal Agents Agree to Withdraw From Portland, With Conditions. Those Conditions? Never! (Paraphrasing.)

"“As a search engine, Google’s mission is to quickly direct searchers to great information, wherever that information is, as Page went on to explain. At that time, that generally meant to direct people from search results to websites. As search technologies have developed, that’s not always the best way to assist people.”

She did not answer questions about whether those changes present the search engine with a conflict of interest."

It's a meritocracy! Google just happens to make all the best things. AND they decide which things are best. Win-win.

"Fast forward five years and journalists and commentators are still talking about imminent pivots and praising him for always-temporary changes in his tone."

Tiring Trump trope.

Let’s say we threw the kitchen sink at COVID-19 in the U.S. Let’s say we started now with the goal of being open for business in October— meaning schools, in person voting, sports, everything. If we did everything. What would happen?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Nice to see someone write out the logic of a new, stronger lockdown.

"“These were very clear examples that didn't just upset me, they upset Facebook’s employees, they upset the entire civil rights community, they upset Facebook’s advertisers. If you still refuse to listen to all those voices, then you're proving that your decision-making is being guided by some other voice,” she said."

They definitely aren’t guided by their own policies. Facebook just ignores or rewrites them to suit the administration.

"A majority of Americans are concerned that reopening schools this fall for in-person learning will lead to a surge in new coronavirus infections."

Most people realize we can’t wish the virus away. This survey didn’t even ask for opinions about covid-19 testing in schools or how people feel about increasing funding for schools to take on these challenges. I think we should be talking about those.

"Relying on the self-control of young adults, rather than deploying the public-health infrastructure needed to control a disease that spreads easily among people who live, eat, study, and socialize together, is not a safe reopening strategy—and yelling at students for their dangerous behavior won’t help either."

We shouldn’t blame students when campuses start closing. The Oregon Health Authority just warned that test results are taking up to two weeks to come back. We know before opening that we don’t have the testing infrastructure in place to have an accurate, timely picture of spread.

"'I was enraged simply because I did not think they were taking their oath of office seriously or they were compromising their oath of office,' Mr David told The Independent. 'So I actually went down because I wanted to talk to them about it.'"

This is awful. We should all be enraged.

"Critics say the government’s slow response to requests for transparency and the national media’s focus on the most salacious moments of the city’s demonstrations prove both federal officials and national reporters care more about property damage than the physical injuries protesters sustain on the streets."

What life in Portland is really like right now.

Video of windows from around the world. Very nice tour of other people's views.

"...parents and teachers would be wise to reject any invitation to unnecessary heroism. I don’t want educating my kids to be a heroic act of American defiance — I want it to be ordinary. And I’d rather not sacrifice my children’s teachers, either, so that America’s economy can begin humming once more."

Yes to all of this. We are still in a growing pandemic that we can't wish away. There hasn't been enough testing and mitigating infrastructure built to make opening safe.

"While college students may be less likely to suffer severe outcomes from Covid-19, college outbreaks do not stay on campus. They incubate disease and amplify transmission chains that reach and kill members of more vulnerable populations. To allow universities to open without testing is to replicate the error at the root of the feckless and incoherent federal response: ignoring the available evidence, hoping for the best, and planning accordingly."

This is a PDF of an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education shared by the author. It seems like a solid plan for virus surveillance should be a big part of reopening in the current environment, but I haven't seen much about that. Our testing capabilities (at least here in Oregon: Oregon’s COVID-19 struggles: Concerns over testing capacity and week-long waits for results) might not be up to the task.

"On June 3, two weeks after schools opened, more than 244 students and staff were found to test positive for COVID-19.

According to the education ministry, 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have contracted COVID-19, and 28,147 are in quarantine due to possible contagion.

Just in the first two weeks of July, 393 kindergartens and schools open for summer programs have been shuttered due to cases of COVID-19."

This doesn't sound good.

"This work confirms that protective antibody responses in those infected with SARS-COV2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, appear to wane rapidly. Whilst longer lasting in those with more severe disease, this is still only a matter of months," Griffins said.

So much for herd immunity and/or vaccines? Yikes.

"New guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 40% of people infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and the chance of transmission from people with no symptoms is 75%."

Please wear a mask!

"We believe rushing to reopen campuses involves wishful thinking and magical thinking, reflecting the comforts from path dependence and status quo bias. While optimism is admirable, so are honesty and realism. Sometimes, defensive pessimism is more adaptive, appropriate, functional, helpful, and useful than unbridled positivity. We are only in the second inning of COVID-19, with testing extremely confusing and statistically unreliable. Rushing to reopen campuses offers only the illusion of safety. In contrast, offering an effective online alternative provides the reality of safety."

An essay from two law professors critical of plans to open college campuses. I really agree with the point I quoted here about the weakness of the positive thinking that seems to be the driving force behind all covid-19 planning.

"And so, like countless other Americans, my family awaits the unveiling of our district’s plan for bringing kids back to school, which will be delivered over Zoom, because it’s not safe to hold a public meeting."

If we still can't hold public meetings, how in the world can we hold public school? I'm grudgingly coming around to this view. We need teachers and staff to be healthy and that means keeping them away from kids right now. As difficult as it is, I think we need to continue to have kids learn remotely until the virus is under control. I think that means we need an overhaul of work and school expectations but I don't see any movement anywhere that makes me optimistic that will happen in the next month or two.

"New students matriculating at schools offering fully online programs will not receive visas, per ICE. Students who are already enrolled at such schools will be required to transfer or leave the country."

The cruelty is the point.

"Hospitalizations and deaths are both lagging indicators, because it takes time to progress through the course of illness,” Caitlin Rivers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told me late last week. “The recent surge started around two weeks ago, so it’s too soon to be confident that we won’t see an uptick in hospitalizations and deaths."

Interesting look at covid-19 data that seems contradictory at first.

“You shouldn’t have had kids if you can’t take care of them,” is comically troll-like, but has come up so often, one might wonder if you’re supposed to educate your children at night. Or perhaps you should have been paying for some all-age day care backup that sat empty while kids were at school in case the school you were paying taxes to keep open and that requires, by law, that your child attend abruptly closed for the year.

Cathartic read, and no solution in sight as the infection rate ticks up.

"This column — and the deactivation of my account — is my way of cleaning up my world. But to say I am confident that you, Mark Zuckerberg, will do your part to clean up the rest of the world would be something of an overstatement. Facebook’s still high stock price and your complete control over the company means you can and will continue to do as you please."

I already deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I now know less about what my family and friends are up to, but I feel like I have no choice but to be a -1 in some spreadsheet somewhere since engagement is the only thing Facebook cares about.