Edit: Dr. Fauci’s remarks in KHN interview.

(CBS) COVID-19 vaccine will be made available “on the basis of science and data,” FDA commissioner says.

Suspicion says Hahn is under pressure to approve a vaccine before completion of Phase 3 trials. I have been writing articles about caution with new vaccines. This is about the other side of the coin.

Clinical trials are supposed to safeguard reason with the power of statistics. In the minds of the public, and possibly you, they are a complete replacement for something they have no understanding of. This is natural. It’s also a kind of intellectual poison.  There is no replacement for intellect, except to rely entirely on expert judgment, which you might fear is caving to political pressure.

In a court of law, expert witnesses for the prosecution and defense compete for the minds of the jury. We think this works better than the alternatives. It could work better here.

If you are interested in Hahn’s decision making process, how he thinks, you have to go beyond trials-phase 1,2,3. Plans, procedures, and  statistics cannot replace human reason.   Human intelligence connotes adaptation to circumstances as they evolve. You have to understand Hahn’s intelligence, which requires a little more about vaccines than the media provide.

With apologies to Reuters, look at Scientists see downsides to top COVID-19 vaccines from Russia, China. Quoting,

Researchers have experimented with Ad5-based vaccines against a variety of infections for decades, but none are widely used. They employ harmless viruses as “vectors” to ferry genes from the target virus – in this case the novel coronavirus – into human cells, prompting an immune response to fight the actual virus.

This sounds informative, but it leaves out a crucial safety question, discussed in Why I Would Not Take the Russian or Oxford – AstraZeneca Vaccines – Part 2. Quoting the nut of it,

After a while, we’re ready to harvest the culture medium for the virus we want, the Kamikaze, purifying it of the helper virus. We don’t want the helper virus in our vaccine, because it  does not contain the code for the spike protein, and it can replicate…

Very small quantities of live, helper, adenovirus are present in the finished vaccine product.  Supporters of these vaccines make these claims:…

Don’t trust me. Read the abstract of (PubMed) Evidence of frequent recombination among human adenoviruses. With elisions so you can see the point:

Genome stability is a prerequisite for the production and use of adenoviruses for therapy of genetic diseases and cancer….Our results suggest that recombination among circulating adenoviruses is very frequent and plays an important role in shaping the phylogenetic relationships of adenovirus genomes.

This line of reasoning now presents:

• For adenoviruses to be used, they must be stable.
• Adenoviruses frequently recombine. Hence they are not stable.
• Adenoviruses must not be used.

This is similar to unsafe. Maybe this makes you uncomfortable; you’d like to disengage. It’s not your specialty, you don’t know anything about it, so you’d rather rely on experts, who you don’t trust either. But you can’t disengage, because you are a juror in the court of public opinion.  With or without you, there will be a verdict, You may as well help it be a good one.

So how do you use the above? It’s  an argument, not a fact. You can show it around to prospective “experts”. And like a juror, you might see something in a face, a tone, or a gesture that inclines you to doubt. Or you might find their reasons  unconvincing.

A while back, I’m embarrassed to say, I cited the Thorotrast debacle as preventable by thorough clinical trials. It is actually exactly the opposite. It’s an example of a disaster that could have been prevented only by human reason, because the cancers produced by Thorotrast take 20+ years to develop.

The only way the Thorotrast disaster could have been prevented is by recognition, in radioactivity introduced into the body, of similarity to unsafe. In this phrase, we stumble on what a court would call professional expertise. An expert should have the ability to recognize  two basic similarities:

• Similarity to unsafe. “It looks dangerous.”
• Similarity to safe. “It looks safe to me.”

Similar to unsafe should require extensive, prolonged, exacting investigation in every avenue of potential hazard. Novelty enhances this similarity. Familiarity, or precedence of use, reduces it.

Some novelties remain similar to unsafe, because the current state of knowledge does not resolve the difference. (PubMed) Evidence of frequent recombination among human adenoviruses offers no more foundation than quicksand.

Similar to safe requires another faculty embedded in professional expertise, using what we call good judgment to abbreviate investigation. Influenza strains mutate yearly. But vaccines manufactured by established processes do not repeat clinical trials. They are accepted as similar to safe.

By now, you should have one  takeaway: Vaccine safety is not served by a mechanical process, 1,2,3.  That process is a theme with variations, working in concert with expertise, which unlike the scientific method, still resists bottling.

What are Commissioner Hahn’s choices? The nearest term options are controversial ones, to approve a vaccine that has completed:

• Phase 2 or 3, but highly novel, with a similarity to unsafe.
• Phase 2,  but less novel, with less or no similarity to unsafe, with high immunogenicity.
• Phase 2 or 3, which appears inherently safe, but less immunogenic, and hard to store and transport.

Hahn knows that within 6 months of the above, more and probably superior options, free of traces of live virus, will have completed phase 3. During the wait, people will die.

Dr. Fauci has another criteria. (Kaiser Health News) There’s a legitimate way to end coronavirus vaccine trials early, Fauci says. Quoting,

The Data and Safety Monitoring Board could say, “‘The data is so good right now that you can say it’s safe and effective,'” Fauci said.

Yet  numbers do not replace  judgment and ethics.  A vaccine could reduce fatalities, with unapparent change in average severity. What of  the risk that the trace helper virus of an adenovirus vaccine does something horrible long after clinical trials? Are ethics served by immediate need or unknown risk?

With a little effort, and a little help from the media, you can think along with Hahn. And maybe, when he makes a decision, you won’t have to cry “foul!” The jury is still out, and you’re on it.

Will the media step up? These are tough times for the inquiring mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a continuation of Russia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Part 1, in the form of a brief note which  will be followed up in depth.

Traditional vaccines inject antigen into the body to  cause an immune response. The Russian and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines belong to a new breed, which harness your own cells, at the site of the injection, to make antigen.

This requires that cells at the injection site, most likely your arm, are fooled or forced to take in foreign DNA or RNA, and convinced to make the antigen you want, in this case the spike protein of COVID-19. Of all the schemes to do this, the one employed by the Russian and Oxford-AstraZeneca contain the most novel hazards. From Russia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Part 1,

• Both the Russian and Oxford vaccines contain novelties.
• Novelties can contain surprises.
• Surprises can be bad.

The method these vaccines use to penetrate your cells is an adenovirus vector, engineered in the lab to carry a payload of DNA for the COVID spike protein. Most of the genetic code of this carrier virus has been ripped out. It cannot replicate. Like a Kamikaze pilot, it has one mission, to crash into the side of one of your cells, penetrate the cell membrane, and release the payload. Since that’s all it does before it is destroyed, it must be harmless, right?

To understand the hazard, we have to go back to the lab, where we grow the stuff.  All viruses require live medium to grow. Since this special carrier adenovirus cannot replicate, it won’t  grow even  in the warmest, juiciest cell culture medium.

The trick is to use a helper virus, also an adenovirus, which co-infects the cells of the culture medium. Unlike our kamikaze, the helper virus can replicate, and while it does, it also makes copies of the Kamikaze vector.

After a while, we’re ready to harvest the culture medium for the virus we want, the Kamikaze, purifying it of the helper virus. We don’t want the helper virus in our vaccine, because it  does not contain the code for the spike protein, and it can replicate..

The various but related methods of purification are all called chromatography. It has nothing to do with color. The problem with it is that the result is not 100% pure Kamikaze-vector-adenovirus. Because the Kamikaze and the helper are so similar in size, shape, and weight, the helper can’t be completely purified out. Try as you might, you can only make it more pure, not completely pure.

Very small quantities of live, helper, adenovirus are present in the finished vaccine product.  Supporters of these vaccines make these claims:

• The helper virus has been chosen to be harmless.
• The helper virus will stay harmless. The theoretical basis for this has recently been shown to be false. There is an absence of fact, pro or con.
• Safety can be proven with trials over periods short relative to the human lifespan.
• The impurity of helper virus is very small. (With something that can grow, what’s small?)
• Clinical experience with adenovirus vectors  in therapies for several thousand of the severely ill has been positive.

If you get a shot of the Russian or Oxford-AstraZeneca, you’re also getting a little bit of live, helper virus along with it. Will it grow? Will it remain harmless? There is absence of fact, practical or theoretical.

Should you get this shot? Life is a gamble to which there are no sure answers. Guidance is hard to come by.  If the approval process is allowed to complete without political interference, consider your own situation. Only 24.5% of Russian doctors would accept it. (Reuters) Russian doctors wary of rapidly approved COVID-19 vaccine, survey shows. Quoting,

A survey of 3,040 doctors and health specialists, conducted by the “Doctor’s Handbook” mobile application and quoted on Friday by the RBC daily, showed 52% were not ready to be vaccinated, while 24.5% said they would agree to be given the vaccine.

I am waiting for a better vaccine. Although I myself would not receive these vaccines, personal risk factors tilt the balance of risk/reward. The CDC page on risk factors lacks authority that is years down the road.

Since medical advice that embodies meaningful professional knowledge is not yet available, these are my personal opinions:

• Diabetic, take it. The consequences of COVID are too severe.
• Obese, BMI>30, maybe you should take it.
• Uncontrolled hypertension, maybe. Or maybe you should have it treated.
• First responder or infectious disease healthcare worker, maybe.
• If you’re one of the 2.8 million in the U.S. who are Immunocompromised, run the other way. The helper virus might grow in you.

For the rest of us, it’s a great big unknown-unknown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(RFE) Kremlin Critic Navalny ‘In Coma’ After Suspected Poisoning.

The last time this happened was just a year ago. Alexei Navalny, Poisoned?  noted how remarkable it was he was still alive. This directly translates to the present tense.

In Russia, poisoning politicians is nothing new. The modern syndrome, specifically applied to politicians in post-breakup Russia, may date no further back than 2015, with the first poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza. Poisoned again in 2017, he was allowed to seek medical treatment abroad. Forced emigration may have been the poisoners’ objective. See Kim Jong Nam & Vladimir Kara-Murza; All About Poisons; Novichok.

The modern syndrome is near-death, prolonged illness, partial recovery, and prolonged or permanent disability. It is characterized by stealth and extreme precision,  a sub lethal dose of a  substance so poisonous it completely evades standard toxicology. Vil Mirzayanov revealed the existence of the Novichok family of nerve agents in 1992, but hope for a “new Russia” delayed assessment of the threat.

With the poisoning  of Sergei and Yulia Skripal,  Charlie Rowley and the death of Dawn Sturgess, it became apparent that Novichok A-234 is not simply a Russian ace-in-the-hole, but an operational device.

The Russian arsenal also includes agents of embarrassment, such as the dioxin TCDD, used against Viktor Yushchenko in 2004. In July 2019, Navalny asserted he was “poisoned” in his Moscow jail cell.  (Reuters) Kremlin critic Navalny says he may have been poisoned. The nonlethal swelling and skin irritation could have been caused by urushiol, the cause of poison ivy. A subtle warning?

In the case of Kara-Murza, the onset of symptoms occurred in places where the actual exposure was unlikely to have occurred. This implies a time-release preparation, which was first seen in the poisoning of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov with ricin in 1978. Time-release can be accomplished with a  carrier pellet, or by the composition of the poison itself. A-234 is not the most potent Novichok; solid forms that dissolve slowly exist that are far more lethal.  A grain a few tens of microns diameter, fired at speed into exposed skin, might suffice.

It’s not hard to kill a man. The gem of the Russian technique is the ability to precisely dose for severe illness without actually killing the victim. In the case of Navalny, we do not yet know the Russian intent, which will become clear only on his death or recovery.

Limited tolerance of political opposition in what is essentially a one-party state  keeps opponents of the regime visible and controllable, and provides an escape valve for dissent. In the best of times, the rein is easy. When the going gets tough, the reins tighten. Navalny currently positions himself as a pro-Western democratic nationalist. At intervals he has expressed an ethnocentric view of Russia, and associated with the extreme right-wing. This is a threat to the  Russian state, which like the Soviet Union,  is multi ethnic. See Alexei Navalny, Poisoned? for details.

But why must Navalny be silenced now? Navalny has recently positioned himself as a pro-Western democrat, but his history includes association with the ultra-right. While his impulsive rants are harmless to the Kremlin, Navalny-the-strategist is the ultimate of danger:

• He  advocates an end of subsidies to the Caucasus, risking a third Chechen war, and worse.
• To a  Russian nationalist, Belarus is part of Russia. A Russian politician has free license to import Belarusian trends for political purpose. In this case, the trend is revolution.
• Navalny’s on-off association with the ultra-right could presage a combination, against Putin, with virulent right-winger Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose party governs in Khabarovsk Krai.
• Should Navalny appropriate the Khabarovsk protests, which are turning into a lasting feature of Russian politics, a breakdown of authority could result with some features from the Caucasus. This is the greatest danger.

The above is mechanism. Now let’s look to the points of a compass:

• In the west, Belarus threatens the  importation of 9 millions who want to join the West.
• In the south, the Caucasus, part of which is claimed by Iran, could break away. Immune to cultural absorption or genuine pacification, loyalties of Islamic quasi-states are bought with expensive subsidies, considerable autonomy, and the threat of crushing military power. There was nothing civil in the two Chechen wars.
• In the far east, political unrest  is  seeded by Khabarovsk over the entire region. An historical fact has recently come alive, with the first signs of China revanchism: parts are claimed by China, as unjustly ceded by the Unequal Treaties.

Only in the north is Russia secure. Cold comfort for the bear. The Kremlin’s anxiety:

Will the center hold?

 

 

 

 

Have a look at Moderna Partial Results Part 1. This is in the same theme.

Russian confidence in their vaccine is based on 40 human study participants. It did not take long for U.S. researchers to realize that the Russians had tested the vaccinated volunteers with live COVID-19 virus.  It could have been a death sentence for some.  Judging by their tone, they won their gamble – for now.

So we have to imitate!  (NBC) U.S. to make coronavirus strain for possible human challenge trials. Putin is right; this truly is a Sputnik moment. Then it was the space race; now the germ race. Quoting,

Such trials are typically done when a virus is not widely circulating, which is not the case with COVID-19. Many scientists consider human challenge trials of the novel coronavirus unethical because there are no “rescue therapies” for those who fall ill.

There is no situation of “typically done.” Someone is trying to open the door a crack.

The space race was a test of technological dominance, capitalism-versus-communism, which implied political and cultural superiority of the winner.  The Germ Race requires innovation of ethics. Quoting,

Van Hoof said such trials would offer a testing option in case the virus stops circulating widely, but the company would only move forward with such trials if the ethical issues are resolved and an effective treatment is available.

If there were an effective treatment, there would be no need for desperate measures, but let us not be distracted from our goal, which will be conveniently defined by a combination of need, greed, and momentum.  Someone is prying at the door.

We must rise or sink to the occasion. Groucho Marx, said “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” Facetious, of course. This is  a Nathan Hale moment for the study volunteer, who might say “‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country on a ventilator.”

Should Russia be condemned for risking 40 lives?  Absolutely not. In the West, there are already indications of viable vaccines for every need. Take your pick: speed of production, immunogenic potency, shelf-life stability. Russia is not the West. Outside Moscow, it is a poor country that cannot afford the parallel efforts of the West. Their vaccine has to work.  

Should Russia be condemned for exaggerated claims? The propaganda is irritating, but they don’t have to worry about lawsuits.

Should we congratulate ourselves for appropriating Russian ethics? I think not.  Though if he were he alive today, Dr. Str_____  would pronounce the Russian move an astonishingly good idea. If the Russians have an unethical protocol, we have to have one too. This is as race to the bottom we cannot afford to lose. There must be a bottom. How low can you go? We cannot let the Russians get to the bottom first.

We’ve been there already. The history of Western medicine is replete with studies that make the Russian study innocuous. The atrocities are not limited to the likes of Nazi Josef Mengele or Japan’s Unit 731.

We can find it close to home. The U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, on black males without knowledge or consent, ran from 1932 to 1973.  Even in the 30’s, syphilis could be treated with difficulty. After World War II, a single shot of penicillin was curative in stage 1, while all but those who had progressed to tertiary  syphilis could have been treated.

While the Tuskegee study is a powerful statement about racial bias, the  human radiation experiments conducted by U.S. Public Health Service and the Atomic Energy Commission between 1944 and 1947 apply the same ethical flaw to the weak, sick, old, and disabled.

Operation White Coat,  bio-warfare experimentation on consenting participants is the bookend of questionable U.S. human challenge studies. Conducted at Fort Dietrich on enlisted volunteers  between 1954 and 1973, there were no deaths. Some participants report persistent health problems.

Like the Russian vaccine trial, the White Coat experiments were challenge studies of no benefit to the participants. You might insist there is a difference between military bio-warfare research and protection of civilians.  But much of the work at Fort Dietrich was defensive in nature, and COVID is a potential bio-warfare agent. It has already disabled an aircraft carrier. The line between bio-warfare and plagues does not exist.

This was the country of our fathers. We have progressed beyond with the strength that comes from reckoning with ugly truth. In 1978, the  Belmont Report attempted to fix our little ethical problem (pdf original document).  Wikipedia makes a nice abstract from these quotes:

1. Respect for persons: protecting the autonomy of all people and treating them with courtesy and respect and allowing for informed consent. Researchers must be truthful and conduct no deception;
2. Beneficence: the philosophy of “Do no harm” while maximizing benefits for the research project and minimizing risks to the research subjects; and
3. Justice: ensuring reasonable, non-exploitative, and well-considered procedures are administered fairly — the fair distribution of costs and benefits to potential research participants — and equally.

This reads like the collapse of the St. Francis Dam in LA.. It was built by the William Mulholland of Muholland Drive.  LA must have had a critical street name shortage. The foundation of the Belmont Report is self-levitating prose. Lacking the force of gravity, the push for human trials of the deadly COVID-19 virus will level the Belmont Report.  The rubble will consist of a few paperclips.

Quoting from NBC,

NIAID said it is continuing to prioritize field trials to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates, but it opened the possibility to challenge trials for future generations of vaccines or treatments.

This is not a possibility we should be open to. We should fight it tooth and nail.  If you are a decision maker, tempted in a weak moment, consider this. The Russian human challenge trial shows efficacy, but not safety.

• Both the Russian and Oxford vaccines contain novelties.
• Novelties can contain surprises.
• Surprises can be bad.

We’ve finished this segment with  Russian doll logic. Fitting? This will be followed by  the “unknown unknowns” of Donald Rumsfeld that may exist in both the Oxford and Russian vaccines.

Sometimes fear has no name.

I’m going to look into recreational submarines so I can follow this underwater-Sputnik- germ race to the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blog is open to everyone to read, or scrape for your internal server. A problem arises when you  instruct your bot to scrape as fast as possible, as 104.155.44.100, which claims to be Google, was just  doing. It impedes access by others.

Please limit your bots to one hit per minute.  Otherwise, you may be blocked.

No need to hurry. We’re not going anywhere.

The official explanation for the Beirut explosion is that fireworks caused explosion of ammonium nitrate.

Beirut Explosion; Bomb Maker’s Delight? has been revised to express my skepticism of this explanation, based upon:

• Lack of support in technical literature for fireworks as an initiator.
• The requirements of an explanation acceptable to Lebanese politics.

 

Edit 8/05 1:40 p.m., to include the fireworks theory, of which I am skeptical. Read down.

If you’re a chemist, you are probably already familiar with the content of these papers:

• The mechanism of the spontaneous detonation of ammonium nitrate in reactive grounds.
• A Russian paper: Spontaneous explosion of ammonium nitrate in a contact with an active clorine-containing organic substance. (spelling not corrected)
• Thermal Decomposition of Ammonium Nitrate Based Composites.

The papers indicate that ammonium nitrate can do many things, and not all of them have been exhaustively studied.

This is for the nontechnical reader. Ammonium nitrate is not burnable. It acts to oxidize something else, meaning to burn it by supplying oxygen. The CNN video has clues:

• The orange color of the initial reddish-brown plume is typical of  nitrogen dioxide, (NO2) which gives color to smog, It is produced by decomposition of ammonium nitrate mixed with not-enough of another substance to be oxidized. This is the trigger explosion.
• The white “dome” that appears a second after the plume is composed of water vapor and N2O, nitrous oxide, also known as “laughing gas”. This is  decomposition of pure ammonium nitrate, without oxidizing another substance.

The video suggests an initial trigger reaction that caused the subsequent explosive decomposition of the bulk of ammonium nitrate at the site. The orange plume of nitrogen dioxide, left-over oxidizer, indicates that the ammonium nitrate was not mixed in correct stoichiometric ratio for an explosion. Hence, if terrorism was involved, the explosion was accidental.

In pure form, ammonium nitrate is not  explosive, except for spontaneous decomposition in the event that it is heated to greater than 170C = 338F. When used to make an explosive mixture, it serves as the oxidizer, mixed with something combustible, like fuel oil. Lacking signs of combustion, such as orange glow, an infrared pulse, or flames, the white dome in the video goes against this. The white dome resulted from  decomposition of pure ammonium nitrate, triggered by an actual explosion.

The official explanation is that fireworks provided the trigger. This is not an explanation, though it could be part of one.  Have a look at (Wikipedia) Ammonium nitrate disasters. All of them involve one or more of

• industrial processes, where intimate mixing of ammonium nitrate with other substances has occurred
• High explosive trigger. Fireworks are not high explosives.
• Accidental intimate mixing of hazardous materials.
• Confinement in a container that concentrates heat and pressure, such as fire in the hold of a ship.

What fireworks can and cannot do:

• Fireworks are not high explosives; they are low explosives. They do not detonate to produce supersonic shock waves. Fireworks contain black powder, which just burns rapidly, in deflagration.   This rules out one mechanism. Although ammonium nitrate can be detonated by a supersonic shock wave, fireworks do not produce them.
• Ammonium nitrate usually survives intense fires, unless confined in a hard container and heated for for some time. But in the video, everything happens in a few seconds.
• Perhaps for these reasons, the fireworks theory lacks support in the literature. Fireworks would be the lowest energy addition to the Wikipedia disaster list.
• Fireworks could ignite a bomb under construction.

The Russian paper suggests that in an explosion in France, broken  bags became mixed with a modern disinfectant containing chlorine. This creates a complete explosive, oxidizer + something combustible. The size of the initial orange plume suggests the rare trigger powerful enough to cause the bulk ammonium nitrate to explode.

For the chemical detective, there is a natural question. In the initial explosion, what material mixed with the ammonium nitrate to produce the orange nitrogen dioxide plume? Was somebody trying surreptitiously to make something useful to someone?

• Ammonium nitrate/fuel oil is a terror favorite for large projects. The explosion could have been a bomb maker’s accident. The port was a convenient place to make car bombs since the ammonium nitrate was already there. The fuel oil to make bombs is easily sourced within the port. The colored plume suggests bombs under construction.  A complete bomb would have a cleaner burn.
• For the sake of completeness,  broken bags accidentally mixed with a common household/industrial cleaner, in the course of some illicit manufacturing enterprise.
• The official theory, initiation by fireworks, is inconsistent with known ammonium nitrate disasters. This is not the same as impossible.

Lebanon is governed in a power sharing  arrangement that includes groups known for bomb making. An explanation that implicates them, such as bomb construction, is politically unacceptable. A politically acceptable fireworks theory, which lacks support in literature or experiment, can easily be sold to the public by confusion of low explosives with high explosives.

With Beirut’s history, the bomb maker’s factory is more attractive.

 

 

In the U.S., government is the activity of the political establishment Politics is not the only establishment.  Dr. Fauci is a member of the scientific establishment.

The start of The  Enlightenment is marked by some as the year 1637 with René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method. Thus begins the genesis of modern thought, and the growth of these establishments towards the forms they have today. Descartes wrote Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.  With this single sentence, he freed the human mind from the bondage of belief.

If you value freedom of thought, if you are engaged with the scientific method, you are a spiritual heir of René Descartes. If you prefer to follow or believe, your roots are elsewhere. Dr. Fauci, as a research physician in the modern mold, is one of Descartes’ heirs.

• In politics, people are the problems and also the solutions, more so than even ideas. People are the currency of politics. Organizational charts take on the illusion of fundamental reality.
• In science,  personalities hardly count. What counts is a kind of naked truth  never found in politics, which would be a lie if it did. Such were the lies of fascism and communism.
• The two establishments  tolerate each other from mutual need. Science values truth and needs money. Politics can’t sell truth to voters; it needs deliverables.
• Politics tends to look at science as a label for job programs.
• When “technocrats”, meaning scientific types, have attempted to apply science to problems of government, the results have been mediocre or worse.

Since the U.S. response to COVID-19 became a mess, it is natural for politicians to think of it as a people problem.  It would be a mistake to think of  it this way.  Everybody who has said anything about COVID has been wrong. This does not imply universal incompetence.

Blame the virus. In all their years of planning, nobody in the whole wide world planned for a pathogen with  the COVID characteristics of:

• Contagiousness
• Severity
• Stealth

Never was it imagined that one bug could combine the three. There are sound scientific reasons for this, which we will explore with the Astrodome experiments: COVID Resurgent: Of Hares and Foxes; Primer for Policy Makers, Part 3.  Had COVID been Ebola, a different combination of contagious and deadly, the public health systems would have been less stressed. Shortcomings in response would have been noted as glitches, not catastrophes.

Blame epidemiology the subject, long on retrospection and short on predictions for novel pathogens. It lacks the mathematical tools for modeling all but the most simple scenarios. If it is possible to develop better models, it will require individuals who have looked at a lot of data for a very long time. Besides impersonal data, clinical experience is key.

COVID has  outrun the competencies of epidemiology. To advance the competencies requires the best and most prepared minds.  Louis Pasteur,  one of the fathers of  epidemiology,  said, “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Dr. Fauci has been working at NIH for 52 years, with many achievements of distinction. He is a rightful heir to “Cogito, ergo sum “. That’s preparation.

“Cogito, ergo sum .” Try it, you’ll like it.

We continue from COVID Resurgent: Of Hares and Foxes; Primer for Policy Makers, Part 2.

The Houston Astrodome is ideal for what scientists call a controlled experiment. With the entrances sealed, it becomes a world unto itself.  We can study a situation analogous to the relationship between communicable disease, and the people, or animals, that are infected.  This experiment will help us explore five questions:

• How can a virus appear to have an intelligent strategy, when it isn’t even alive? Does Darwin’s theory of natural selection play a role?
• What drives virulence, and what holds it back?
• Public health policies can influence a pandemic. Can we also influence the evolution of the virus itself?
• Why has most of the early advice and predictions been so wrong?
• (NY Times) Europe Said It Was Pandemic-Ready. Pride Was Its Undoing describes the failure of models that predict the course of a pandemic. Are better models possible?

Our Astrodome experiment is arranged like this:

• Underbrush and hay cover the floor, which is also stocked with rabbit feed.
• A few hundred hares are let loose, and allowed to make themselves at home.  Then the dozen foxes are let loose.
• The keepers return each night to tidy up and restock the rabbit feed.

In the natural world, hares eat plants. If the plants are overgrazed, the hares destroy their food supply, and starve to  death.  To better mimic the natural world, we add this twist:

• If the keepers discover that the hares have eaten all the feed, they do not replace it. The replacement feed is proportionate to the amount that remains.

The mortal combat between foxes and hares has these constraints:

• Hares can eat only rabbit feed. If the hares run out of feed, they all die.
• Foxes can only eat hares. If there are no more hares, the foxes all die.
• The more numerous the hares, the harder it is for them to hide, and the easier for foxes to catch.
• When there is more food for foxes, the foxes produce more baby foxes. The population of foxes skyrockets.
• All those foxes eat more rabbits, until fox food become scarce and lots of foxes starve to death.
• If all the foxes die, the hares overpopulate, eat up all their feed, which is then not replaced, and directly starve to death, or die of disease from starvation.

If we run this experiment for a few years, we find that:

• The populations of foxes and hares see-saws back and forth. This situation was first described in math by the predator-prey equations of Lotka-Volterra  in 1925, and have been verified as reasonably representative of real situations involving wild animals.
• If either hares or foxes dies out completely, the food supply of the surviving species dies out too.  So neither foxes nor hares can exist without the other.
• Usually, neither the foxes or rabbits die out completely. This is the balance of nature.

The predator-prey equations are ancestral to epidemic modeling. They are not used directly, but inspire the present. There is a correspondence:

• COVID is the fox, and you are the hare. Rather than eaten, you are infected.
• You could die,  but you most likely become immune, which still means you are not available to the “fox” as food.
• If your immunity wears off, you again become an edible “hare.”
• Unlike the hare, you are not dependent on COVID for survival.

If you are a decision maker, the above could replace:

• A blank feeling about how things work.
• Emotionalizing as if we’re fighting an opponent:”We beat back the virus.” The equations and the virus don’t care.
• Hoping “This too will pass.” The Lotka–Volterra equations say the pendulum will swing, until science makes it stop.
  

This describes the basic situation. With elaboration, we will use this framework to address the five initial questions.

How should we think about COVID-19 ?

Let Kingsfield be your guide.

 

We continue from COVID Resurgent: Of Hares and Foxes; Primer for Policy Makers, Part 1. Of relevance,

(CNN) Kazakhstan denies Chinese government report that country has ‘unknown pneumonia’ outbreak more deadly than Covid-19

(The Diplomat) China Missteps With Wild Allegation of a ‘New’ Deadly Pneumonia in Kazakhstan, Certain of total falsification, the article blames aggressive diplomacy.

So is  “unknown…more deadly pneumonia” reliably false? Quoting CNN,

In a statement later on Friday, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of “viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology,” but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown.

Condensed and paraphrased, this is “We don’t know what they/it are but they/it aren’t new.”   But if they don’t know what it/they are, how can “authorities” authoritatively know it/they aren’t new? The political penalties of admitting or denying anything related to COVID-19 are huge. When we stir it all together, a disquieting soup emerges:

• The existence of a  more deadly pneumonia in Kazakhstan cannot be completely discounted. China’s loudmouth ambassador may have actually noticed something. Anecdotal evidence is one of the doors to the scientific method.

Companion thoughts:

• Whoever writes an article will focus on what they know. For The Diplomat, it’s diplomacy.
• As  Dr. Fauci has remarked, we are still in the first wave of a pandemic.  (CNN) US is still ‘knee-deep’ in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Fauci says.
• A second wave, which has not yet occurred,  has a very specific character: an initial geographic focus, spread along travel routes, with some change in symptoms and outcome.
• Pandemics of the past had second waves of increasing virulence.
• Kazakhstan has all the characteristics of a place where a second, more deadly wave would start.

While the medical community has learned a lot about COVID, there are still places in the halls of power where knowledge is scarce. So I’ve come up with a dramatic demonstration. We’ll need to rent the Houston Astrodome. It should be cheap, because it’s practically falling down. There is a phone number on the web. Also, pick up a few hundred hares or rabbits, a dozen foxes, lots of hay and loose underbrush, and a year’s supply of rabbit feed.

When you’ve got it all set up, with the lease signed, preferably by later today, get back to me and we’ll continue.

It should be most enlightening.