(CNN) Vaccinated Americans allowed to taste freedom. The article also contains an interview with Dr. Wen, who thinks CDC should have loosened more. In the past 12 hours, (Nature) Antibody Resistance of SARS-CoV-2 Variants B.1.351 and B.1.1.7 has brought The Outer Limits to your browser. It becomes suddenly urgent to do another napkin calculation. 

A napkin calculation was presented in Misplaced Hopes for COVID Herd Immunity; Napkin Calculation, with the implication that classic herd immunity, when COVID would drop down to occasional events, is not likely to happen any time soon.

(Reuters) ‘When will it end?’: Reuters vs. CNN vs. Intel9 explores why COVID reportage seems mired in platitudinous wishful thinking. Part of it stems from the difficulty for news teams of qualifying experts.  Dr. Wen of the video, former Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, has proven competence  at executing public health policy.

A keen intuitive connection with numbers is another affair. Not working spreadsheets and designing budgets, but the kind of innate, intuitive sense that the best modelers, mathematicians, engineers, and scientists have. When you have a serious disease, you look for a specialist.  The same goes for numbers. Clinical and administrative experience does not imply expertise in epidemiology, which is a highly mathematical sport.

Let’s do another napkin calculation, which will solidify (The Lancet) An action plan for pan-European defence against new SARS-CoV-2 variants.When you’re done, don’t wipe your chin with it.  Hold onto the napkin and show it around.

R_o, the basic reproduction number, is  the average number of new infections caused by a single infected individual, in a naive population, before public health interventions.  R (without the 0) is the number after interventions. From (NCBI) Time-Varying COVID-19 Reproduction Number in the United States,

… For the entire United States, the reproduction number declined from 4.02 to 1.51 between March 17 and April 1, 2020. We also found that the reproduction number for COVID-19 has declined in most states over the past two weeks which suggests that social isolation measures may be having a beneficial effect.

Why the sudden drop of R ? People got scared,  stopped  “going in your face”, and shaking hands.  That’s how variable it is.  R_o and R are weak concepts, useful to conceptualize, useless for prediction. The numbers vary too much with social activity. February tends to be an unsocial month.

Some conservative statements:

• No matter what, vaccination is personally beneficial.
• Vaccination benefits society. Only how much is in question.
• If, having been vaccinated, you still catch COVID, vaccination could reduce your infectivity.
• Then again, it might not. Asymptomatic cases are infectious.

The CDC goal is to reduce R to less than 1. Then, according to the prevailing bullshit, COVID will almost vanish. The goal is supposed to be accomplished by vaccination. Now try to swallow this pill, which assumes a worst-case vaccine efficacy of 60%, which avoids the assumption that vaccines are perfectly on target:

• The current value of R = 1.51
• Vaccination is 60% effective at preventing disease. 40% experience vaccine failure and contract COVID.
• Assume that this is equivalent to reduction of R to R*0.4 which isn’t supported by anything. If this looks sloppy, too bad. This is what hope looks like when you put it under the microscope.
  
• After the public has been vaccinated, R becomes (1-0.6)*1.51 = 0.4*1.51 = 0.604,  less than 1. COVID goes away!

Hold onto that napkin, even if the pill didn’t go down. In March 2020, R was 4.02. All it takes to be there again is bars, restaurants,  sports, choirs, and all the things we love to do.  It doesn’t even need French kissing. Then R after vaccination becomes 0.4*4.02 =   1.608, disaster!  Would a 75% effective vaccine fix this? To avoid catastrophe requires more than 75% protection against clinical disease. It requires the same number for infectivity.

We didn’t cook the numbers by use of  an efficacy 95% for “original COVID.” U.K. B.1.1.7 has been deemed manageable, but the South African variant,  B1.351,  is already here. Darwin’s selection decrees that B1.351 will become dominant; all the strains for which effective vaccines exist will vanish. See (The Lancet) An action plan for pan-European defence against new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Quoting,

…epidemiological data suggest they have a higher admissibility than the original variant…These viral properties could increase the effective reproduction number R in the population. In the case of B.1.1.7, estimates suggest R could increase from 1 to about 1.4 with no change in population behavior. If true, many countries that have succeeded in reducing R to 1 or less will be confronted with a novel wave of viral spread despite the current measures.

When B1.351 is vanquished, other variants will compete for dominance, with each other, and with vaccine makers.  Ad infinitum.  Ground Hog Day. Is this certain?  No, but to assume otherwise is wishful thinking.

Now you know why CDC doesn’t want you to fly. Statements from government are colored by awareness that many Americans have reached  the brink of madness. There seems little appetite in the press to dig. In normal times, the Reuters article  would not be exceptional. Now it is.

Now march your two napkins around the office, or show them on Instagram.  If someone tries authority,

(Reuters) ‘When will it end?’: How a changing virus is reshaping scientists’ views on COVID-19. Quoting,

 “I couldn’t sleep” after seeing the data, Murray, director of the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told Reuters. “When will it end?” he asked himself…

…data in recent weeks on new variants from South Africa and Brazil has undercut that optimism. They now believe that SARS-CoV-2 will not only remain with us as an endemic virus, continuing to circulate in communities, but will likely cause a significant burden of illness and death for years to come.

Murray’s thoughts align with mine. Quoting from Misplaced Hopes for COVID Herd Immunity; Napkin Calculation,

With anticipation of widespread SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 and other mutations, the factor of 1/2 could imply we are currently, not at 40%, but  20% immunity. … The implies herd immunity in November/December, not August….This is possible, not factual, if COVID doesn’t have more tricks up its sleeve. It takes influenza A about 25 years to cycle through its range of antigen permutations.

Even with the not-quite promise of herd immunity, COVID-19 is likely to remain a nasty, prevalent disease,  sparing only those with lucky genes,  and those who are exposed as children.

Contrast with (CNN) US could reach herd immunity by summer through vaccinations alone, CNN analysis finds. Quoting,

But experts generally agree that somewhere between 70% and 85% of the population must be protected to suppress the spread, a range that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has recently cited.

You have enough to compare the two predictions, by Chris Murray at University of Washington, Intel9, and CNN. Look at these points:

• Which argument has the most visible logic?
• Which article asserts a consensus of experts?
• Of the two predictions, how many supporters? How many dissenters?
• Which article cites an authority figure for support?
• Which article lays claim to authority as an argument in itself? Hint: Look at the title.
• Which articles emphasize COVID variants? Which mentions in  a minor closing remark?
  

Your comparison could be completely subjective, in which case, ask yourself, “What kind of a thinker am I?” Or you could apply (Decision Science News) Benjamin Franklin’s rule for decision making.

What do you come up with? You could just “pass”, but it’s a good exercise.

This continues March 4: QAnon Mythology and CNN: The Flat Earth Conspiracy, a Darker Core? Part 1.

Intro

Walter Lippmann, a candidate for “most influential journalist” of the 20th century, and advisor to 6(?) presidents, explored the intersection of political science, social philosophy, and communications in a series of books. The centerpiece, Public Opinion, remains controversial, challenging the foundations of democracy. He  got away with his huge reputation intact. Today, cancel culture might X him off.

Lippmann’s world is unpleasantly at odds with the the myth of informed decision of the electorate. His ideas are vulnerable to exploit by the dictator.  So why look? The answer will come in a bit. We should examine the epochs of Lippmann’s life to  understand his freedom to write.

If I were to advocate Public Opinion as a solution to the fragile state of U.S. democracy, my minuscule reputation might be extinguished. Nor  would it be good advice.  But we should be free to  find points of inspiration. Perhaps we don’t have to repudiate the myth; instead of calling informed decision of the electorate fact, call it aspiration.

Lippmann’s World

 America is a much kinder place than it used to be.  All the old cruelties are still around, but they tend to hide in the corners and run from the light. More people accept  that for a significant proportion of Americans, their heritage is  oppression and victimization.  Still, for the majority, this is  not the preferred way to remember the past.

We prefer to remember the past for elegance, fine diction, natty attire, the piano, clever lyrics with inside jokes, speakeasies, and cigarettes that didn’t kill, hard-bound best sellers, and movie stars of aristocratic bearing. (That’s fine for memories; I wear tee shirts, and shoes with holes.)

America had social mobility, but to rise meant to join a business elite, or the one centered around the Ivy League. Inevitably, the two merged, so that by 1920, a classical elite was joined to the political establishment, vying with trade union organizers and ward heelers. The Progressive Era had been gone for a few years.

Walter Lippmann wrote Public Opinion in 1922. As background for thought, the year was perfect. Still young, Lippmann had seen the rapid evolution of U.S. politics: Diminished domination of the big city ward,  rise of Big Labor, and the still-current Dem-pro/GOP-anti union  alignments.

This was the era of grand social experiment. Intellectuals still had the untainted choices of capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, syndicalism… Fascism was an  infant, though the seed came from Nietzsche, celebrated in music by Wagner.  Racism itself had intellectual legitimacy, in the works of many authors we have not bothered to cancel. The poisonous fruit  was huge, in war and civil strife, that lasted through and beyond the world wars. Public Opinion was written when ideologies were mostly innocent coffee house conversation, long before the terrible costs were understood.

Future historians may mark the beginning of modern America with the  Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Equality is promoted by enlightened laws, but remains elusive in the last mile, the real world. Cancel culture tackles the last mile. In Lippmann’s time, cancel culture did not exist. Lippmann was one of the elite, with little contact with the blue collar majority. If cancel culture had existed in 1922, it would not have applied to him.

With that freedom from cancellation, which no longer exists, Lippmann sought to undermine the electoral myth, and improve the durability of democracy. It sounds very suspicious. Can we suppress the urge to cancel long enough to see if there is any inspiration for our current situation? A significant portion of the electorate is having a psychotic episode.

To be continued shortly.

(CNN) Hear why QAnon supporters believe Trump will be president on March 4th.

In light of tomorrow, have a look at CNN: The Flat Earth Conspiracy, a Darker Core? Part 1. which finishes with

The Age of Reason was supposed to herald the end of baloney.  Why Flat Earth, Now? What are the consequences for politics?

I’ll be back, to discuss saving U.S. democracy.

Herd immunity is all the rage. (NYT) When Could the United States Reach Herd Immunity? It’s Complicated. According to charts like these, the future is predictably bright. Not so fast.

When I saw the Penn and Teller  magician duo  show in Vegas, Penn began by insulting the audience (paraphrasing): “If you knew any math, you wouldn’t be in Vegas.” The audience laughed. Since you haven’t paid a hundred bucks to read this, and can X the tab any time you want, I’ll try to be more polite.

After all we’ve been through since Feb 2020, you really shouldn’t give the NY Times chart, or Alabama’s in-state projection, any credence. But, you argue, it is the product of experts? Epidemiologists are honorable scientists who are experts at many sub-specialties and technical tools of the science of epidemiology. One thing they are not experts at  is COVID prediction.

Expertise implies accuracy.  We have only trends, which like fads, continue for a while, ending unpredictably. Legend has J.P. Morgan on the stock market: “It will fluctuate.” Governor Cuomo already knows this. (CNN) Gupta: I’m stunned Gov. Cuomo said this about health experts; Sometimes You Just Have to Lie.

These reports directly challenge the NY Times chart:

• (CNN) Researchers find worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City
• (CNN) Experts worry variant-fueled Covid-19 surge may be weeks away but cases will likely fall again by summer, which contains another vague, unfounded prediction.

So why is the NY Times chart so beguiling? Are we sucked in by an attractive graphic, even though it offers no accounting for mutant strains? Perhaps, like propaganda, it works in the absence of accessible alternative information.

The alternative will come in the form of a napkin calculation. The result will not be fact, but an alternative to the chart, which, in our ignorance, has equal weight. Refer to (Nature) Fast-spreading  COVID variant can elude immune responses. Quoting,

Pseudoviruses with the full package of 501Y.V2 mutations were fully resistant to convalescent serum from 21 out of 44 participants, and were partly resistant to the vast majority of people’s sera, Moore’s team found.

Quoting from (BioRxiv) SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma,

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2, a novel lineage of the coronavirus causing COVID-19, contains multiple mutations within two immunodominant domains of the spike protein. Here we show that this lineage exhibits complete escape from three classes of therapeutically relevant monoclonal antibodies. Furthermore 501Y.V2 shows substantial or complete escape from neutralizing antibodies in COVID-19 convalescent plasma. These data highlight the prospect of reinfection with antigenically distinct variants and may foreshadow reduced efficacy of current spike-based vaccines.

Let’s get a number out of these citations. The number will be plausible, not factual. It will be on a collision course with the NY Times chart. The number is 1/2.  With respect to the entire population of the U.S., and the number of silent cases, administered vaccines, recovered-diagnosed: divide this sum, the NYT orange line, by half.

The NYT chart orange line of total immunity implies an increase of community immunity from a current 40% to 75% in six months.. This is an increase of  6% per month, which we use to correct the NYT graph. With anticipation of widespread SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 and other mutations, the factor of 1/2 could imply we are currently, not at 40%, but  20% immunity. To make up the difference of 20%, at 6% per month, we need 3+ more months.  The implies herd immunity in November/December, not August.

This is possible, not factual, if COVID doesn’t have more tricks up its sleeve. It takes influenza A about 25 years to cycle through its range of antigen permutations.

Even with the not-quite promise of herd immunity, COVID-19 is likely to remain a nasty, prevalent disease,  sparing only those with lucky genes,  and those who are exposed as children.

“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Mark Twain et al.

Say Kaddish for the 500,000 Americans who have perished from  COVID. You don’t have to be a believer; the gesture is open to all, for what they remain, threads of the timeless fabric of humanity.

(Click to enlarge.)

Climate change is real. Carbon neutral is vital to survival of humanity. But news coverage has recruited the Texas power crisis to support issues general to climate change, including pros and cons of renewable energy, and the threat of disasters in other geographic areas. This is misdirection; this disaster was made in Texas and stays in Texas.

Refer to (Climate Central) The Fuel You Use For Heating Depends on Where You Live. In the southeast, which includes Texas, electric heating is most common. In all other areas, fossil fuel predominates. Texans prefers electric heating because:

• It is cheap to install.
• The need is occasional, so  in the south, resistive electric heating, the most wasteful method of heating short of setting your house on fire, can be justified.
• In areas further from the Gulf coast, at minimal additional manufacturing cost, an air conditioner can also function also as a heating device, a “heat pump.”

Let’s do some environmental arithmetic.  Electricity is energy, just like heat, except for one crucial difference: The entropy of electricity is zero, which means it can be converted into heat with 100% efficiency. The reverse is not so. At a fossil fuel power station, fuel is burned to create heat, which is a form of energy. In Texas,  natural gas is the fuel.  The average efficiency of a gas plant is 45%, held down by steam turbines. Newer internal combustion gas turbines from GE and Siemens hit 63%. (IEEE Spectrum) Gas Turbines Have Become by Far the Best Choice for Add-on Generating Power.

The industry standard approximation for transmission loss to your home is 6%.  Resistive electric heating is a climate change nightmare. When you plug in a resistive electric heater, when sometimes you can see a coil glow cherry red, you are burning almost twice as much fossil fuel as a  home gas heater.  Not exactly twice, because home gas heaters lose some energy in vented exhaust gases. In the 1960’s, half the heat went up the flue. Now the loss of home gas heat is down to about 15%.

Any Texan who can afford A/C buys an A/C heat pump  combo. Heat pumps have a trick. By reversing the Carnot cycle, a heat pump appears to produce more heat than the energy equivalent of the electricity required to run it. Down to an outside temp of 40F, this can be 3X as much. This neatly balances out the almost 2/3 losses of converting fossil fuel to electricity and transmission to your home.

As the outside temperature drops, the heat pump loses efficiency. At 5F, a non-specialty A/C heat pump combo supplies only as much heat as the electricity equivalent required to run the compressor. As the temperature continues to drop, the demand on the power grid exceeds summertime peaks. At extremes, a resistive electric heater actually becomes more efficient!

North of Oklahoma, which participates in the U.S. national grid, the climate is too severe for an A/C-heat pump combo. Specialty cold weather heat pumps can work far north, but make sense mostly where there is no gas grid. So the Texas Power Grid Disaster is unique to Texas. Disasters occur everywhere, but the only lessons we can take are general. Those that apply everywhere:

• Safety culture.  Boeing, FAA, Space Shuttle Challenger, Richard Feynman, and Safety Culture. And then meditate on:
• Reliance on centralized systems. Texas isolated their grid, and it bit them. But the Texas grid is itself a centralized system.
• The statistical long tail, showing up from time to time as an unusually deep PolarJet, which set the whole thing off.  While the cold snap is not by itself as rare as a Black Swan, the coincidence of other factors, including COVID-19, is very swanish. Catastrophe Theory for Dummies Part 1 and Catastrophe Theory for Dummies Part 2.
• Inevitable human contribution, the Energy Reliability Council of Texas, which by free-market competition shaves supplier spare capacity. ERCOT comes last, because the entire Texas system compounds the consequences of irresponsibility, including the human kind.

Why the Texas disaster is special:

• An isolated grid subject to wintertime electricity consumption peaks that can exceed summertime.
• Circumstances that almost uniquely favor electric heating in a region of climate extremes. In Texas, part of Tornado Alley,  warm Gulf flows and cold  fronts driven south by the jet stream are in constant opposition.

If you’re outside of Texas and looking for lessons, pick from the first list and ignore the second. Now what about climate change? (UCAR Center for Science Education) Why the Polar Vortex Keeps Breaking out of the Arctic states

Typically, a large difference in temperature between the air of the polar vortex and the air in the mid-latitudes drives the polar jet stream. However, the Arctic is warming faster than other areas of the planet… “Ironically and counterintuitive to many, the strong polar vortex can be linked, in part, to warmer temperatures.”

It’s probably true, yet due to the  complexities of turbulent systems, it’s not good for argument.   Ignorant rebuttals are just too easy:

• Great Hurricane of 1780, likely the strongest hurricane for which any records are available.
• Great Blizzard of 1888, the most severe to affect the eastern U.S.
• Tri-State Tornado of 1925, the most deadly U.S. tornado. NOAA summary.

Texans have a saying, “Don’t mess with Texas.” This did not stop the Fickle Finger of Fate.  What can the rest of us distill?

• Everywhere in the U.S., we rely on systems that rely on heroics, or at least diligence, to avoid disaster.
• Highly redundant systems can hold the Fickle Finger at bay, maybe long enough to fix the problem before disaster.
• Vulnerabilities are tied to locale. There are no general solutions.

Since I live in the mid-Atlantic, I have a specific insight for gas heat. When Hurricane Sandy struck, we were without power for 3 days.  Our home gas heat hot water system requires about 500 watts of electricity to run the pumps, fans, thermostats, relays, and microprocessor. No electric, no heat. I made it through with a generator.

A Stirling engine is a sealed system that requires only a hot surface and a cold surface to work. A typical furnace room has both. The engine could be part of a furnace setup, turning a small electric generator. With a compatible furnace, a Stirling engine could produce enough power to run a  heating system at reduced output.

Stay warm. Some like it hot.

(CNN) Perseverance rover lands on Mars.

A triumph for all seekers of scientific truth, which is where I live when not consumed by grotty human problems.

Let all seekers of truth be inspired to dream by NASA’s triumph.

(CNN) With coup label, Capitol rioters join communist party in plotting against USA, university project says. Quoting,

The Coup D’etat Project, an initiative of the University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Advanced Social Research, has determined the insurrection that unfolded at the Capitol on January 6 fits its definition of an attempted dissident coup.

The only other American entry in its global database is placed in 1948, in which members of Communist Party USA conspired to violently overthrow the government. They talked about it in their living rooms, and wrote plans.

This is a ludicrous comparison. The 1948 “coup attempt” survives in the public record only from the  trials of 11 members of the Communist Party of the U.S.A.,  Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders, between 1949 and 1958. According to specific criteria of the Coup D’etat Project, this results in a single line in their .xls spreadsheet.

You may despise communism, as I do.  But Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black explains the difference in his dissent opinion for  a 1951 Smith trial, Dennis v. United States:

These petitioners were not charged with an attempt to overthrow the Government. They were not charged with overt acts of any kind designed to overthrow the Government. They were not even charged with saying anything or writing anything designed to overthrow the Government. The charge was that they agreed to assemble and to talk and publish certain ideas at a later date: The indictment is that they conspired to organize the Communist Party and to use speech or newspapers and other publications in the future to teach and advocate the forcible overthrow of the Government. No matter how it is worded, this is a virulent form of prior censorship of speech and press…

In the immediate postwar period, in the U.S. government as in Britain, there was a significant presence of Soviet moles. This sensitized Hoover’s FBI to the negligible threat of visible, self-identified communists who did share a vision of revolution. To put into perspective the efficiency with which the FBI nullified the CPUSA, from 1957-1977, the party paymaster, Morris Childs, was an agent for the FBI.

What benefit derives from comparison with the sacking of the Capitol, while advocating murder with weapons in hand, egged on by a sitting POTUS? If you’re running an academic project, which is not without value, it gets you news coverage for the wrong reason.

The most powerful fact was ignored: The Capitol Insurrection was powered by hate speech which incited violence. In the Free World, the U.S. is the only country that constitutionally protects hate speech.

Is hate speech now an unaffordable luxury, or can doctoring social media diminish the now rampant forces of hate?

(CNN) Defense Secretary dismisses hundreds of members of Pentagon advisory boards including late Trump picks.

Some, though not all of the appointments of the previous administration had a strong tinge of the political, and, going beyond that, personal loyalty, demanded by then-POTUS. This deprived DoD of the best possible civilian expertise.

If DoD were a civilian organization, uniform members would be the  point-men/women. Most officers have advanced degrees. But modern warfare is so complex, it is beyond the capacity of these individuals to have more than concentrated  knowledge. Command, strategy, and tactics are the consuming occupations. By themselves, they make a life.

A recent Pentagon study has a startling conclusion, that in some cases, forces within the military don’t know how to accomplish their assigned missions.  This is exemplified by at least one massive failure in procurement, the littoral combat ship, with two deficiencies:

• The first four, virtually new ships are to be retired, due to construction defects that cannot be economically remedied.
• Conceived when the Philippines was considered a stalwart ally, these lightly armed chameleons  would have  had thousands of miles of coastline to evade the Chinese Navy. They are not now survivable ships.

East Asia has changed, so the mission must change as well. In the near future,  relative strengths will be determined by cruise missiles, torpedoes, and logistics, followed later by directed energy weapons. Logistics may be the second most daunting problem. The most serious problem is erosion of U.S. soft power.

Since the advisory boards were  involved in defining this mission, it makes sense to reach  out for fresh thought.  We can aspire to ideals, but we must not let them dictate.

There  is likely one more reason of sinister necessity. In arrests from the Capitol insurrection, military veterans are over represented. If insurrectionist sentiment had any representation in the advisory committees, it could have facilitated subversion of the military chain of command. The preservation of it  is vital to defense of the Constitution.