Skip to main content

Home/ TOK Friends/ Group items tagged masks

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
anniina03

Coronavirus: Why some countries wear face masks and others don't - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/world-52015486

psychology bias

shared by anniina03 on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak some places have fully embraced wearing face masks, and anyone caught without one risks becoming a social pariah.But in many other parts of the world, from the UK and the US to Sydney and Singapore, it's still perfectly acceptable to walk around bare-faced.
  • the official advice from the World Health Organization has been clear. Only two types of people should wear masks: those who are sick and show symptoms, and those who are caring for people who are suspected to have the coronavirus.
  • a mask is not seen as reliable protection, given that current research shows the virus is spread by droplets and contact with contaminated surfaces. So it could protect you, but only in certain situations such as when you're in close quarters with others where someone infected might sneeze or cough near your face.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Removing a mask requires special attention to avoid hand contamination, and it could also breed a false sense of security.
  • in some parts of Asia everyone now wears a mask by default - it is seen as safer and more considerate.
  • In mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, the broad assumption is that anyone could be a carrier of the virus, even healthy people. So in the spirit of solidarity, you need to protect others from yourself.
  • In East Asia, many people are used to wearing masks when they are sick or when it's hayfever season, because it's considered impolite to be sneezing or coughing openly.
  • The 2003 Sars virus outbreak, which affected several countries in the region, also drove home the importance of wearing masks, particularly in Hong Kong, where many died as a result of the virus.So one key difference between these societies and Western ones, is that they have experienced contagion before - and the memories are still fresh and painful.
  • Some argue that ubiquitous mask wearing, as a very visual reminder of the dangers of the virus, could actually act as a "behavioural nudge" to you and others for overall better personal hygiene.
  • But there are downsides of course. Some places such as Japan, Indonesia and Thailand are facing shortages at the moment, and South Korea has had to ration out masks.
  • There is the fear that people may end up re-using masks - which is unhygienic - use masks sold on the black market, or wear homemade masks, which could be of inferior quality and essentially useless.
  • People who do not wear masks in these places have also been stigmatised, to the point that they are shunned and blocked from shops and buildings.
  • In countries where mask wearing is not the norm, such as the West, those who do wear masks have been shunned or even attacked. It hasn't helped that many of these mask wearers are Asians.
Javier E

Wine-tasting: it's junk science | Life and style | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-tasting-junk-science-analysis

taste sense perception research

shared by Javier E on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'lifeandstyle'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on guardian.co.uk because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on guardian.co.uk ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } Wor
  • Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.
  • Results from the first four years of the experiment, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, showed a typical judge's scores varied by plus or minus four points over the three blind tastings. A wine deemed to be a good 90 would be rated as an acceptable 86 by the same judge minutes later and then an excellent 94.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine."The results are disturbing," says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. "Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year."Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win."
  • French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of labels in 2001. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57 volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a table wine, the other for a grand cru.The tasters were fooled.When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. When the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely to use negatives such as weak, light and flat.
  • In 2011 Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist (and former professional magician) at Hertfordshire University invited 578 people to comment on a range of red and white wines, varying from £3.49 for a claret to £30 for champagne, and tasted blind.People could tell the difference between wines under £5 and those above £10 only 53% of the time for whites and only 47% of the time for reds. Overall they would have been just as a successful flipping a coin to guess.
  • why are ordinary drinkers and the experts so poor at tasting blind? Part of the answer lies in the sheer complexity of wine.For a drink made by fermenting fruit juice, wine is a remarkably sophisticated chemical cocktail. Dr Bryce Rankine, an Australian wine scientist, identified 27 distinct organic acids in wine, 23 varieties of alcohol in addition to the common ethanol, more than 80 esters and aldehydes, 16 sugars, plus a long list of assorted vitamins and minerals that wouldn't look out of place on the ingredients list of a cereal pack. There are even harmless traces of lead and arsenic that come from the soil.
  • "People underestimate how clever the olfactory system is at detecting aromas and our brain is at interpreting them," says Hutchinson."The olfactory system has the complexity in terms of its protein receptors to detect all the different aromas, but the brain response isn't always up to it. But I'm a believer that everyone has the same equipment and it comes down to learning how to interpret it." Within eight tastings, most people can learn to detect and name a reasonable range of aromas in wine
  • People struggle with assessing wine because the brain's interpretation of aroma and bouquet is based on far more than the chemicals found in the drink. Temperature plays a big part. Volatiles in wine are more active when wine is warmer. Serve a New World chardonnay too cold and you'll only taste the overpowering oak. Serve a red too warm and the heady boozy qualities will be overpowering.
  • Colour affects our perceptions too. In 2001 Frédérick Brochet of the University of Bordeaux asked 54 wine experts to test two glasses of wine – one red, one white. Using the typical language of tasters, the panel described the red as "jammy' and commented on its crushed red fruit.The critics failed to spot that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been coloured red with a flavourless dye
  • Other environmental factors play a role. A judge's palate is affected by what she or he had earlier, the time of day, their tiredness, their health – even the weather.
  • Robert Hodgson is determined to improve the quality of judging. He has developed a test that will determine whether a judge's assessment of a blind-tasted glass in a medal competition is better than chance. The research will be presented at a conference in Cape Town this year. But the early findings are not promising."So far I've yet to find someone who passes," he says.
katherineharron

Trump takes his war on face masks to new lows - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis

shared by katherineharron on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • The simple act of wearing a mask to protect others during a pandemic is now a political and cultural flashpoint, underscoring the polarization afflicting every corner of American life.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, stood firm in his recommendation that people wear masks, telling CNN's Jim Scuitto Wednesday morning he wears a mask "for people to see that's the kind of thing you should be doing."
  • A political storm over a piece of cloth appears even more trivial since it comes at a moment when the United States, after one of the world's most mismanaged coronavirus responses, is on the cusp of passing the threshold of 100,000 deaths with the pandemic worsening in 17 states.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Trump and his White House are mocking presumptive Democratic 2020 rival Joe Biden for wearing a mask in public as conservative commentators brand the practice as elite liberal fear-mongering. Biden, in his first in-person interview since the stay-at-home orders, lashed back at Trump in reply, telling CNN's Dana Bash that the President's "macho" and "falsely masculine" behavior was "stoking deaths" in comments that will only deepen national estrangement on the issue.
  • Many Republican governors who strongly support Trump in most areas are beseeching their fellow citizens to wear masks as they try to balance reopening with a desire to avoid a spike in Covid-19 cases.
  • The battle over masks may inject another heated note into Virginia politics. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said Tuesday that anyone within a public indoor space or who is on public transport in the state would be required to wear a mask.
  • Talk show titan Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday warned that masks have become a "required symbol on the left to promote fear, to promote indecision, to promote the notion that we're nowhere near out of this."
  • In a Quinnipiac University poll last week, 64% of Americans said everyone should be required to wear masks in public. But while 90% of Democrats said Trump should mask up, only 38% of Republicans agreed.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission." It has not recommended Americans wear masks in their homes.
Javier E

The Masks Masquerade - INCERTO - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7

masks pandemic response statistics decision-making forecasting

shared by Javier E on 18 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Highlight
  • First error: missing the compounding effect
  • People who are good at exams (and become bureaucrats, economists, or hacks), my experience has been, are not good at understanding nonlinearities and dynamics.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The WHO, CDC and other bureaucracies initially failed to quickly realize that the benefits of masks compound, simply because two people are wearing them and you have to look at the interaction.
  • Let us say (to simplify) that masks reduce both transmission and reception to p. What effect on the R0(that is, the rate of spreading of the infection)?
  • Simply the naive approach (used by the CDC/WHO bureaucrats and other imbeciles) is to say if masks reduce the transmission probability to ¼, one would think it would then drop from, say R0= 5, to R0=1 ¼. Yuuge, but there is better.
  • For one should count both sides. Under our simplification, with p=1/4 we get R0'= p² R0 . The drop in R becomes 93.75%! You divide R by 16! Even with masks working at 50% we get a 75% drop in R0.
  • Second error: Missing the Nonlinearity of the Risk of Infection
  • we are in the convex part of the curve. For example, to use the case above, a reduction of viral load by 75% for a short exposure could reduce the probability of infection by 95% or more!
  • Third Error: Mistaking Absence of Evidence for Evidence of Absence
  • “There is no evidence that masks work”, I kept hearing repeated to me by the usual idiots calling themselves “evidence based” scientists. The point is that there is no evidence that locking the door tonight will prevent me from being burglarized. But everything that may block transmission could help.
  • Unlike school, real life is not about certainties. When in doubt, use what protection you can
  • Fourth Error: Misunderstanding the Market and PeoplePaternalistic bureaucrats resisted inviting the general public to use masks on grounds that the supply was limited and would be needed by health professionals — hence they lied to us saying “masks are not effective”
  • Fifth Error: Missing Extremely Strong Statistical Signals
  • they fear to be presenting “anecdotes”, and fail to grasp the broader notion of statistical signals where you look at the whole story, not the body parts.
  • evidence compounds.
  • We have a) the salon story where two infected stylists failed to infect all their 140 clients (making the probability of infection for bilateral mask wearing safely below 1% for a salon-style exposure)
  • plus b) the rate of infection of countries where masks were mandatory
  • plus c) tons of papers with more or less flawed methodologies, etc.
  • Sixth Error: The Non-Aggression Principle
  • “Libertarians” (in brackets) are resisting mask wearing on grounds that it constrains their freedom. Yet the entire concept of liberty lies in the Non-Aggression Principle, the equivalent of the Silver Rule: do not harm others; they in turn should not harm you.
  • Even more insulting is the demand by pseudolibertarians that Costco should banned from forcing customers to wear mask — but libertarianism allows you to set the rules on your own property. Costco should be able to force visitors to wear pink shirts and purple glasses if they wished.
  • Note that by infecting another person you are not infecting just another person. You are infecting many many more and causing systemic risk.
Javier E

If We Knew Then What We Know Now About Covid, What Would We Have Done Differently? - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...covid-lessons-learned-9dd5566f

politics us history crisis culture policy trump pandemic response science psychology

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • For much of 2020, doctors and public-health officials thought the virus was transmitted through droplets emitted from one person’s mouth and touched or inhaled by another person nearby. We were advised to stay at least 6 feet away from each other to avoid the droplets
  • A small cadre of aerosol scientists had a different theory. They suspected that Covid-19 was transmitted not so much by droplets but by smaller infectious aerosol particles that could travel on air currents way farther than 6 feet and linger in the air for hours. Some of the aerosol particles, they believed, were small enough to penetrate the cloth masks widely used at the time.
  • The group had a hard time getting public-health officials to embrace their theory. For one thing, many of them were engineers, not doctors.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • “My first and biggest wish is that we had known early that Covid-19 was airborne,”
  • , “Once you’ve realized that, it informs an entirely different strategy for protection.” Masking, ventilation and air cleaning become key, as well as avoiding high-risk encounters with strangers, he says.
  • Instead of washing our produce and wearing hand-sewn cloth masks, we could have made sure to avoid superspreader events and worn more-effective N95 masks or their equivalent. “We could have made more of an effort to develop and distribute N95s to everyone,” says Dr. Volckens. “We could have had an Operation Warp Speed for masks.”
  • We didn’t realize how important clear, straight talk would be to maintaining public trust. If we had, we could have explained the biological nature of a virus and warned that Covid-19 would change in unpredictable ways.  
  • We didn’t know how difficult it would be to get the basic data needed to make good public-health and medical decisions. If we’d had the data, we could have more effectively allocated scarce resources
  • In the face of a pandemic, he says, the public needs an early basic and blunt lesson in virology
  • and mutates, and since we’ve never seen this particular virus before, we will need to take unprecedented actions and we will make mistakes, he says.
  • Since the public wasn’t prepared, “people weren’t able to pivot when the knowledge changed,”
  • By the time the vaccines became available, public trust had been eroded by myriad contradictory messages—about the usefulness of masks, the ways in which the virus could be spread, and whether the virus would have an end date.
  • , the absence of a single, trusted source of clear information meant that many people gave up on trying to stay current or dismissed the different points of advice as partisan and untrustworthy.
  • “The science is really important, but if you don’t get the trust and communication right, it can only take you so far,”
  • people didn’t know whether it was OK to visit elderly relatives or go to a dinner party.
  • Doctors didn’t know what medicines worked. Governors and mayors didn’t have the information they needed to know whether to require masks. School officials lacked the information needed to know whether it was safe to open schools.
  • Had we known that even a mild case of Covid-19 could result in long Covid and other serious chronic health problems, we might have calculated our own personal risk differently and taken more care.
  • just months before the outbreak of the pandemic, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists released a white paper detailing the urgent need to modernize the nation’s public-health system still reliant on manual data collection methods—paper records, phone calls, spreadsheets and faxes.
  • While the U.K. and Israel were collecting and disseminating Covid case data promptly, in the U.S. the CDC couldn’t. It didn’t have a centralized health-data collection system like those countries did, but rather relied on voluntary reporting by underfunded state and local public-health systems and hospitals.
  • doctors and scientists say they had to depend on information from Israel, the U.K. and South Africa to understand the nature of new variants and the effectiveness of treatments and vaccines. They relied heavily on private data collection efforts such as a dashboard at Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center that tallied cases, deaths and vaccine rates globally.
  • For much of the pandemic, doctors, epidemiologists, and state and local governments had no way to find out in real time how many people were contracting Covid-19, getting hospitalized and dying
  • To solve the data problem, Dr. Ranney says, we need to build a public-health system that can collect and disseminate data and acts like an electrical grid. The power company sees a storm coming and lines up repair crews.
  • If we’d known how damaging lockdowns would be to mental health, physical health and the economy, we could have taken a more strategic approach to closing businesses and keeping people at home.
  • t many doctors say they were crucial at the start of the pandemic to give doctors and hospitals a chance to figure out how to accommodate and treat the avalanche of very sick patients.
  • The measures reduced deaths, according to many studies—but at a steep cost.
  • The lockdowns didn’t have to be so harmful, some scientists say. They could have been more carefully tailored to protect the most vulnerable, such as those in nursing homes and retirement communities, and to minimize widespread disruption.
  • Lockdowns could, during Covid-19 surges, close places such as bars and restaurants where the virus is most likely to spread, while allowing other businesses to stay open with safety precautions like masking and ventilation in place.  
  • The key isn’t to have the lockdowns last a long time, but that they are deployed earlier,
  • If England’s March 23, 2020, lockdown had begun one week earlier, the measure would have nearly halved the estimated 48,600 deaths in the first wave of England’s pandemic
  • If the lockdown had begun a week later, deaths in the same period would have more than doubled
  • It is possible to avoid lockdowns altogether. Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—all countries experienced at handling disease outbreaks such as SARS in 2003 and MERS—avoided lockdowns by widespread masking, tracking the spread of the virus through testing and contact tracing and quarantining infected individuals.
  • With good data, Dr. Ranney says, she could have better managed staffing and taken steps to alleviate the strain on doctors and nurses by arranging child care for them.
  • Early in the pandemic, public-health officials were clear: The people at increased risk for severe Covid-19 illness were older, immunocompromised, had chronic kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes or serious heart conditions
  • t had the unfortunate effect of giving a false sense of security to people who weren’t in those high-risk categories. Once case rates dropped, vaccines became available and fear of the virus wore off, many people let their guard down, ditching masks, spending time in crowded indoor places.
  • it has become clear that even people with mild cases of Covid-19 can develop long-term serious and debilitating diseases. Long Covid, whose symptoms include months of persistent fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle aches and brain fog, hasn’t been the virus’s only nasty surprise
  • In February 2022, a study found that, for at least a year, people who had Covid-19 had a substantially increased risk of heart disease—even people who were younger and had not been hospitalized
  • respiratory conditions.
  • Some scientists now suspect that Covid-19 might be capable of affecting nearly every organ system in the body. It may play a role in the activation of dormant viruses and latent autoimmune conditions people didn’t know they had
  •  A blood test, he says, would tell people if they are at higher risk of long Covid and whether they should have antivirals on hand to take right away should they contract Covid-19.
  • If the risks of long Covid had been known, would people have reacted differently, especially given the confusion over masks and lockdowns and variants? Perhaps. At the least, many people might not have assumed they were out of the woods just because they didn’t have any of the risk factors.
sanderk

Coronavirus Tips: How to Protect and Prepare Yourself - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...prepare-for-coronavirus.html

education Knowledge brain science research

shared by sanderk on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, with over 200,000 confirmed cases and at least 8,000 dead. In the United States, there have been at least 8,000 cases and more than 100 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
  • Most important: Do not panic. With a clear head and some simple tips, you can help reduce your risk, prepare your family and do your part to protect others.
  • That might be hard to follow, especially for those who can’t work from home. Also, if you’re young, your personal risk is most likely low. The majority of those who contract coronavirus do not become seriously ill, and it might just feel as if you have the flu. But keeping a stiff upper lip is not only foolhardy, but will endanger those around you.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Avoid public transportation when possible, limit nonessential travel, work from home and skip social gatherings. Don’t go to crowded restaurants or busy gyms. You can go outside, as long as you avoid being in close contact with people.
  • If you develop a high fever, shortness of breath or another, more serious symptom, call your doctor. (Testing for coronavirus is still inconsistent — there are not enough kits, and it’s dangerous to go into a doctor’s office and risk infecting others.) Then, check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and your local health department for advice about how and where to be tested.
  • Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. That splash-under-water flick won’t cut it anymore.
  • Also, clean “high-touch” surfaces, like phones, tablets and handles. Apple recommends using 70 percent isopropyl alcohol, wiping gently. “Don’t use bleach,” the company said.
  • To disinfect any surface, the C.D.C. recommends wearing disposable gloves and washing hands thoroughly immediately after removing the gloves. Most household disinfectants registered by the Environmental Protection Agency will work.
  • There’s a lot of information flying around, and knowing what is going on will go a long way toward protecting your family.
  • Right now, there’s no reason for parents to worry, the experts say; coronavirus cases in children have been very rare. The flu vaccine is a must, as vaccinating children is good protection for older people. And take the same precautions you would during a normal flu season: Encourage frequent hand-washing, move away from people who appear sick and get the flu shot.
  • Unless you are already infected, face masks won’t helpFace masks have become a symbol of coronavirus, but stockpiling them might do more harm than good. First, they don’t do much to protect you. Most surgical masks are too loose to prevent inhalation of the virus. (Masks can help prevent the spread of a virus if you are infected. The most effective are the so-called N95 masks, which block 95 percent of very small particles.)Second, health care workers and those caring for sick people are on the front lines. Last month, the surgeon general urged the public to stop stockpiling masks, warning that it might limit the amount of resources available to doctors, nurses and emergency professionals.
  • Stock up on a 30-day supply of groceries, household supplies and prescriptions, just in case.That doesn’t mean you’ll need to eat only beans and ramen. Here are tips to stock a pantry with shelf-stable and tasty foods
  • No. The first testing in humans of an experimental vaccine began in mid-March. Such rapid development of a potential vaccine is unprecedented, but even if it is proved safe and effective, it probably will not be available for 12 to18 months.
  • If you’re sick and you think you’ve been exposed to the new coronavirus, the C.D.C. recommends that you call your healthcare provider and explain your symptoms and fears. They will decide if you need to be tested. Keep in mind that there’s a chance — because of a lack of testing kits or because you’re asymptomatic, for instance — you won’t be able to get tested.
  • That’s not a good idea. Even if you’re retired, having a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds so that your money keeps up with inflation, or even grows, makes sense. But retirees may want to think about having enough cash set aside for a year’s worth of living expenses and big payments needed over the next five years.
mshilling1

The Psychology Behind Why Some People Refuse To Wear Face Masks | HuffPost Life - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...sks_l_5efb723cc5b6ca970915bc53

shared by mshilling1 on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Reasons vary, but there are some common arguments made by anti-maskers. Below, Abrams, Trunzo and other experts share seven of the most common reasons people refuse to wear a mask. “So much is uncertain right now. It makes me feel in control to choose to go out without a mask.”
  • “When faced with uncertain situations over which we have no control, we tend to exercise it wherever we can, so we feel safe,” he said
  • If the need for control is the driving force for someone not wearing a mask, empathizing with their feelings of uncertainty can sometimes convince them to put one on,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The optics of mask-wearing is an issue for some ― including President Donald Trump. According to The Associated Press, Trump has told aides that he won’t wear a mask in public out of concern that it will project weakness and defeat ―
  • Abrams said that watching what others do is one of the most powerful forms of rapid learning of new behaviors
  • “Wearing a mask wouldn’t just be helpful here; it’s essential to have leaders who are on the same page for guidance and as clear role models, especially when people are hyper-vigilant, have strong hot emotions, and are looking for guidance with an unknown threat and are doubting science
Javier E

How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ting-the-big-things-right.html

role model intellectual independent critical thinking psychology bias

shared by Javier E on 24 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans in January that they didn’t need to wear masks, Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor at the Mayo Clinic and the editor of the Blood Cancer Journal, couldn’t believe his ears.
  • “Here I am, the editor of a journal in a high profile institution, yet I didn’t have the guts to speak out that it just doesn’t make sense,” Dr. Rajkumar told me. “Everybody should be wearing masks.”
  • Ms. Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science with no obvious qualifications in epidemiology, came out against the C.D.C. recommendation in a March 1 tweetstorm before expanding on her criticism in a March 17 Op-Ed article for The New York Times.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The C.D.C. changed its tune in April, advising all Americans above the age of 2 to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Michael Basso, a senior health scientist at the agency who had been pushing internally to recommend masks, told me Ms. Tufekci’s public criticism of the agency was the “tipping point.”
  • Ms. Tufekci, a 40-something who speaks a mile a minute with a light Turkish accent, has none of the trappings of the celebrity academic or the professional pundit. But long before she became perhaps the only good amateur epidemiologist, she had quietly made a habit of being right on the big things.
  • In 2011, she went against the current to say the case for Twitter as a driver of broad social movements had been oversimplified. In 2012, she warned news media outlets that their coverage of school shootings could inspire more. In 2013, she argued that Facebook could fuel ethnic cleansing. In 2017, she warned that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm could be used as a tool of radicalization.
  • And when it came to the pandemic, she sounded the alarm early while also fighting to keep parks and beaches open.
  • “I’ve just been struck by how right she has been,” said Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School.
  • She told me she chalks up her habits of mind in part to a childhood she wouldn’t wish on anyone.
  • Mr. Goff was enthusing about the campaign’s ability to send different messages to individual voters based on the digital data it had gathered about them. Ms. Tufekci quickly objected to the practice, saying that microtargeting would more likely be used to sow division.
  • An international point of view she picked up while bouncing as a child between Turkey and Belgium and then working in the United States.
  • Knowledge that spans subject areas and academic disciplines, which she happened onto as a computer programmer who got into sociology.
  • A habit of complex, systems-based thinking, which led her to a tough critique in The Atlantic of America’s news media in the run-up to the pandemic
  • it began, she says, with growing up in an unhappy home in Istanbul. She said her alcoholic mother was liable to toss her into the street in the early hours of the morning. She found some solace in science fiction — Ursula K. Le Guin was a favorite — and in the optimistic, early internet.
  • Perhaps because of a kind of egalitarian nerd ideology that has served her well, she never sought to meet the rebels’ charismatic leader, known as Subcomandante Marcos.
  • “I have a thing that fame and charisma screws with your head,” she said. “I’ve made an enormous effort throughout my life to preserve my thinking.”
  • While many American thinkers were wide-eyed about the revolutionary potential of social media, she developed a more complex view, one she expressed when she found herself sitting to the left of Teddy Goff, the digital director for President Obama’s re-election campaign, at a South by Southwest panel in Austin in 2012
  • “A bunch of things came together, which I’m happy I survived,” she said, sitting outside a brick house she rents for $2,300 a month in Chapel Hill, N.C., where she is raising her 11-year-old son as a single parent. “But the way they came together was not super happy, when it was happening.”
  • “At a time when everybody was being stupidly optimistic about the potential of the internet, she didn’t buy the hype,” he told me. “She was very prescient in seeing that there would be a deeper rot to the role of data-driven politics in our world.”
  • Many tech journalists, entranced by the internet-fueled movements sweeping the globe, were slow to spot the ways they might fail, or how social media could be used against them. Ms. Tufekci, though, had “seen movement after movement falter because of a lack of organizational depth and experience, of tools or culture for collective decision making, and strategic, long-term action,” she wrote in her 2017 book, “Twitter and Tear Gas.”
  • One of the things that makes Ms. Tufekci stand out in this gloomy moment is her lack of irony or world-weariness. She is not a prophet of doom, having hung on to an early-internet optimism
  • Ms. Tufekci has taught epidemiology as a way to introduce her students to globalization and to make a point about human nature: Politicians and the news media often expect looting and crime when disaster strikes, as they did when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. But the reality on the ground has more to do with communal acts of generosity and kindness, she believes.
  • Her March column on masks was among the most influential The Times has published, although — or perhaps because —  it lacked the political edge that brings wide attention to an opinion piece.
  • “The real question is not whether Zuck is doing what I like or not,” she said. “The real question is why he’s getting to decide what hate speech is.”
  • She also suggested that we may get it wrong when we focus on individuals — on chief executives, on social media activists like her. The probable answer to a media environment that amplifies false reports and hate speech, she believes, is the return of functional governments, along with the birth of a new framework, however imperfect, that will hold the digital platforms responsible for what they host.
Javier E

Opinion | Why Covid's Airborne Transmission Was Acknowledged So Late - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rus-airborne-transmission.html

who cdc transmission Covid-19 Science research psychology bias

shared by Javier E on 08 May 21 - No Cached
  • A week ago, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared that we face a pandemic, a page on its website titled “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19): How Is It Transmitted?” got a seemingly small update.
  • The revised response still emphasizes transmission in close contact but now says it may be via aerosols — smaller respiratory particles that can float — as well as droplets. It also adds a reason the virus can also be transmitted “in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings,” saying this is because “aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 meter.”
  • on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its guidance on Covid-19, clearly saying that inhalation of these smaller particles is a key way the virus is transmitted, even at close range, and put it on top of its list of how the disease spreads.
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • But these latest shifts challenge key infection control assumptions that go back a century, putting a lot of what went wrong last year in context
  • They may also signal one of the most important advancements in public health during this pandemic.
  • If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small particles disperse more easily, as long as you avoid close, prolonged contact with others.
  • We would have tried to make sure indoor spaces were well ventilated, with air filtered as necessary.
  • Instead of blanket rules on gatherings, we would have targeted conditions that can produce superspreading events: people in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, especially if engaged over time in activities that increase aerosol production, like shouting and singing
  • We would have started using masks more quickly, and we would have paid more attention to their fit, too. And we would have been less obsessed with cleaning surfaces.
  • The implications of this were illustrated when I visited New York City in late April — my first trip there in more than a year.
  • A giant digital billboard greeted me at Times Square, with the message “Protecting yourself and others from Covid-19. Guidance from the World Health Organization.”
  • That billboard neglected the clearest epidemiological pattern of this pandemic: The vast majority of transmission has been indoors, sometimes beyond a range of three or even six feet. The superspreading events that play a major role in driving the pandemic occur overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, indoors.
  • The billboard had not a word about ventilation, nothing about opening windows or moving activities outdoors, where transmission has been rare and usually only during prolonged and close contact. (Ireland recently reported 0.1 percent of Covid-19 cases were traced to outdoor transmission.)
  • Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and a member of the W.H.O. committees that craft infection prevention and control guidance, wanted all this examined but knew the stakes made it harder to overcome the resistance. She told The Times last year, “If we started revisiting airflow, we would have to be prepared to change a lot of what we do.” She said it was a very good idea, but she added, “It will cause an enormous shudder through the infection control society.”
  • In contrast, if the aerosols had been considered a major form of transmission, in addition to distancing and masks, advice would have centered on ventilation and airflow, as well as time spent indoors. Small particles can accumulate in enclosed spaces, since they can remain suspended in the air and travel along air currents. This means that indoors, three or even six feet, while helpful, is not completely protective, especially over time.
  • To see this misunderstanding in action, look at what’s still happening throughout the world. In India, where hospitals have run out of supplemental oxygen and people are dying in the streets, money is being spent on fleets of drones to spray anti-coronavirus disinfectant in outdoor spaces. Parks, beaches and outdoor areas keep getting closed around the world. This year and last, organizers canceled outdoor events for the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. Cambodian customs officials advised spraying disinfectant outside vehicles imported from India. The examples are many.
  • Meanwhile, many countries allowed their indoor workplaces to open but with inadequate aerosol protections. There was no attention to ventilation, installing air filters as necessary or even opening windows when possible, more to having people just distancing three or six feet, sometimes not requiring masks beyond that distance, or spending money on hard plastic barriers, which may be useless at best
  • clear evidence doesn’t easily overturn tradition or overcome entrenched feelings and egos. John Snow, often credited as the first scientific epidemiologist, showed that a contaminated well was responsible for a 1854 London cholera epidemic by removing the suspected pump’s handle and documenting how the cases plummeted afterward. Many other scientists and officials wouldn’t believe him for 12 years, when the link to a water source showed up again and became harder to deny.
  • Along the way to modern public health shaped largely by the fight over germs, a theory of transmission promoted by the influential public health figure Charles Chapin took hold
  • Dr. Chapin asserted in the early 1900s that respiratory diseases were most likely spread at close range by people touching bodily fluids or ejecting respiratory droplets, and did not allow for the possibility that such close-range infection could occur by inhaling small floating particles others emitted
  • He was also concerned that belief in airborne transmission, which he associated with miasma theories, would make people feel helpless and drop their guard against contact transmission. This was a mistake that would haunt infection control for the next century and more.
  • It was in this context in early 2020 that the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. asserted that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted primarily via these heavier, short-range droplets, and provided guidance accordingly
  • Amid the growing evidence, in July, hundreds of scientists signed an open letter urging the public health agencies, especially the W.H.O., to address airborne transmission of the coronavirus.
  • Last October, the C.D.C. published updated guidance acknowledging airborne transmission, but as a secondary route under some circumstances, until it acknowledged airborne transmission as crucial on Friday. And the W.H.O. kept inching forward in its public statements, most recently a week ago.
  • Linsey Marr, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech who made important contributions to our understanding of airborne virus transmission before the pandemic, pointed to two key scientific errors — rooted in a lot of history — that explain the resistance, and also opened a fascinating sociological window into how science can get it wrong and why.
  • Dr. Marr said that if you inhale a particle from the air, it’s an aerosol.
  • biomechanically, she said, nasal transmission faces obstacles, since nostrils point downward and the physics of particles that large makes it difficult for them to move up the nose. And in lab measurements, people emit far more of the easier-to-inhale aerosols than the droplets, she said, and even the smallest particles can be virus laden, sometimes more so than the larger ones, seemingly because of how and where they are produced in the respiratory tract.
  • Second, she said, proximity is conducive to transmission of aerosols as well because aerosols are more concentrated near the person emitting them. In a twist of history, modern scientists have been acting like those who equated stinky air with disease, by equating close contact, a measure of distance, only with the larger droplets, a mechanism of transmission, without examination.
  • Since aerosols also infect at close range, measures to prevent droplet transmission — masks and distancing — can help dampen transmission for airborne diseases as well. However, this oversight led medical people to circularly assume that if such measures worked at all, droplets must have played a big role in their transmission.
  • Another dynamic we’ve seen is something that is not unheard-of in the history of science: setting a higher standard of proof for theories that challenge conventional wisdom than for those that support it.
  • Another key problem is that, understandably, we find it harder to walk things back. It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation.
  • The ancients believed that all celestial objects revolved around the earth in circular orbits. When it became clear that the observed behavior of the celestial objects did not fit this assumption, those astronomers produced ever-more-complex charts by adding epicycles — intersecting arcs and circles — to fit the heavens to their beliefs.
  • In a contemporary example of this attitude, the initial public health report on the Mount Vernon choir case said that it may have been caused by people “sitting close to one another, sharing snacks and stacking chairs at the end of the practice,” even though almost 90 percent of the people there developed symptoms of Covid-19
  • So much of what we have done throughout the pandemic — the excessive hygiene theater and the failure to integrate ventilation and filters into our basic advice — has greatly hampered our response.
  • Some of it, like the way we underused or even shut down outdoor space, isn’t that different from the 19th-century Londoners who flushed the source of their foul air into the Thames and made the cholera epidemic worse.
  • Righting this ship cannot be a quiet process — updating a web page here, saying the right thing there. The proclamations that we now know are wrong were so persistent and so loud for so long.
  • the progress we’ve made might lead to an overhaul in our understanding of many other transmissible respiratory diseases that take a terrible toll around the world each year and could easily cause other pandemics.
  • So big proclamations require probably even bigger proclamations to correct, or the information void, unnecessary fears and misinformation will persist, damaging the W.H.O. now and in the future.
  • I’ve seen our paper used in India to try to reason through aerosol transmission and the necessary mitigations. I’ve heard of people in India closing their windows after hearing that the virus is airborne, likely because they were not being told how to respond
  • The W.H.O. needs to address these fears and concerns, treating it as a matter of profound change, so other public health agencies and governments, as well as ordinary people, can better adjust.
  • It needs to begin a campaign proportional to the importance of all this, announcing, “We’ve learned more, and here’s what’s changed, and here’s how we can make sure everyone understands how important this is.” That’s what credible leadership looks like. Otherwise, if a web page is updated in the forest without the requisite fanfare, how will it matter?
clairemann

Why some people like wearing masks - BBC Worklife - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...some-people-like-wearing-masks

psychology science knowledge

shared by clairemann on 26 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Some people welcome face coverings for reasons ranging from the convenient and expedient to the more complex and psychological. But is this a helpful coping mechanism?
  • Since I've been wearing the mask, my awkward interactions with friends and family have significantly reduced,” he says. Now, he goes to the shops whenever he wants, without worrying about whom he might see. He hopes that, even after the pandemic ends, it will still be socially acceptable to wear a mask.
  • Some welcome the way face coverings reduce or change interactions that might otherwise spark social anxiety. But is this a helpful coping mechanism – and what happens when the pandemic comes to an end?
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • They have ditched their old makeup and shaving routines and are saving money, time and stress. Others have discovered that hiding their mouths affords them unexpected freedoms. Some restaurant servers and retail workers say they no longer feel obliged to fake-smile at customers, potentially lifting the burden of emotional labour.
  • “During a pandemic, we’re under severe stress, and whether you’re worrying about your appearance or you’re worried about someone harassing you or whistling at you, the masks can provide a respite from those things that can occupy our mind when we’re out in public. You have more freedom to be meditating or thinking about whatever you want.”
  • “Anonymity carries power,” adds Ramani Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at California State University, Los Angeles. “It can feel like trying on a different ‘role’ and the associated expectations of that role, perhaps freeing us of what can feel exhausting and insincere about smiling (especially when we aren't having a good day).”
  • “For introverts, it can feel great that you don’t have to talk to people you don’t know that well, but in the long run, when you get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself… [you might form] a really fulfilling or positive relationship,”
  • Think back to the last time you failed or made an important mistake. Do you still blush with shame, and scold yourself for having been so stupid or selfish? Do you tend to feel alone in that failure, as if you were the only person to have erred? Or do you accept that error is a part of being human, and try to talk to yourself with care and tenderness?
  • “Most of us have a good friend in our lives, who is kind of unconditionally supportive,” says Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who has pioneered this research. “Self-compassion is learning to be that same warm, supportive friend to yourself.”
Javier E

How our brains numb us to covid-19's risks - and what we can do about it - The Washingt... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

psychology science research bias pandemic risk signaling

shared by Javier E on 22 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Social scientists have long known that we perceive risks that are acute, such as an impending tsunami, differently than chronic, ever-present threats like car accidents
  • Part of what’s happening is that covid-19 — which we initially saw as a terrifying acute threat — is morphing into more of a chronic one in our minds. That shift likely dulls our perception of the danger,
  • Now, when they think about covid-19, “most people have a reduced emotional reaction. They see it as less salient.”
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • This habituation stems from a principle well-known in psychological therapy: The more we’re exposed to a given threat, the less intimidating it seems.
  • As the pandemic drags on, people are unknowingly performing a kind of exposure therapy on themselves, said University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic, author of “The Perception of Risk” — and the results can be deadly.
  • “You have an experience and the experience is benign. It feels okay and comfortable. It’s familiar. Then you do it again,” Slovic said. “If you don’t see anything immediately bad happening, your concerns get deconditioned.”
  • The end result of all this desensitizing is a kind of overriding heedlessness decoupled from evidence — the anti-mask movements, the beach gatherings, the overflowing dance parties
  • One of the best ways to reinforce a certain behavior is to make sure that behavior is rewarded and that deviations from it are punished (or ignored).
  • But when it comes to lifesaving behaviors such as mask-wearing or staying home from parties, this reward-punishment calculus gets turned on its head.
  • With parties, when you do the right thing and stay home, “you feel an immediate cost: You’re not able to be with your friends,
  • while there is an upside to this decision — helping to stop the spread of the virus — it feels distant. “The benefit is invisible, but the costs are very tangible.”
  • By contrast, Slovic said, when you flout guidelines about wearing masks or avoiding gatherings, you get an immediate reward: You rejoice at not having to breathe through fabric, or you enjoy celebrating a close friend’s birthday in person.
  • Because risk perception fails as we learn to live with covid-19, Griffin and other researchers are calling for the renewal of tough government mandates to curb virus spread. They see measures such as strict social distancing, enforced masking outside the home and stay-at-home orders as perhaps the only things that can protect us from our own faulty judgment.
  • But these kinds of measures aren’t enough on their own, Griffin said. It’s also important for authorities to supply in-your-face reminders of those mandates, especially visual cues, so people won’t draw their own erroneous conclusions about what’s safe.
  • “A few parks have drawn circles [on their lawns]: ‘Don’t go out of the circle,’ ” Griffin said. “We need to take those kinds of metaphors and put them throughout the entire day.”
  • “The first step is awareness that sometimes you can’t trust your feelings.”
  • For people considering how to assess covid-19 risks, Slovic advised pivoting from emotionally driven gut reactions to what psychologist Daniel Kahneman — winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for his integration of psychological research into economic science — calls “slow thinking.” That means making decisions based on careful analysis of the evidence. “You need to either do the slow thinking yourself,” Slovic said, “or trust experts who do the slow thinking and understand the situation.”
  • Thousands of us are less afraid than we were at the pandemic’s outset, even though in many parts of the country mounting case counts have increased the danger of getting the virus. We’re swarming the beaches and boardwalks, often without masks.
Javier E

'Follow the science': As Year 3 of the pandemic begins, a simple slogan becomes a polit... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...logan-becomes-political-weapon

science pandemic slogan philosophy implications truth knowledge bias

shared by Javier E on 13 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • advocates for each side in the masking debate are once again claiming the mantle of science to justify political positions
  • pleas to “follow the science” have consistently yielded to use of the phrase as a rhetorical land mine.
  • “so much is mixed up with science — risk and values and politics. The phrase can come off as sanctimonious,” she said, “and the danger is that it says, ‘These are the facts,’ when it should say, ‘This is the situation as we understand it now and that understanding will keep changing.’
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • The pandemic’s descent from medical emergency to political flash point can be mapped as a series of surges of bickering over that one simple phrase. “Follow the science!” people on both sides insisted, as the guidance from politicians and public health officials shifted over the past two years from anti-mask to pro-mask to “keep on masking” to more refined recommendations about which masks to wear and now to a spotty lifting of mandates.
  • demands that the other side “follow the science” are often a complete rejection of another person’s cultural and political identity: “It’s not just people believing the scientific research that they agree with. It’s that in this extreme polarization we live with, we totally discredit ideas because of who holds them.
  • “I’m struggling as much as anyone else,” she said. “Our job as informed citizens in the pandemic is to be like judges and synthesize information from both sides, but with the extreme polarization, nobody really trusts each other enough to know how to judge their information.
  • Many people end up putting their trust in some subset of the celebrity scientists they see online or on TV. “Follow the science” often means “follow the scientists” — a distinction that offers insight into why there’s so much division over how to cope with the virus,
  • although a slim majority of Americans they surveyed don’t believe that “scientists adjust their findings to get the answers they want,” 31 percent do believe scientists cook the books and another 16 percent were unsure.
  • Those who mistrust scientists were vastly less likely to be worried about getting covid-19 — and more likely to be supporters of former president Donald Trump,
  • A person’s beliefs about scientists’ integrity “is the strongest and most consistent predictor of views about … the threats from covid-19,”
  • When a large minority of Americans believe scientists’ conclusions are determined by their own opinions, that demonstrates a widespread “misunderstanding of scientific methods, uncertainty, and the incremental nature of scientific inquiry,” the sociologists concluded.
  • Americans’ confidence in science has declined in recent decades, especially among Republicans, according to Gallup polls
  • The survey found last year that 64 percent of Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science, down from 70 percent who said that back in 1975
  • Confidence in science jumped among Democrats, from 67 percent in the earlier poll to 79 percent last year, while Republicans’ confidence cratered during the same period from 72 percent to 45 percent.
  • The fact that both sides want to be on the side of “science” “bespeaks tremendous confidence or admiration for a thing called ‘science,’ ”
  • Even in this time of rising mistrust, everybody wants to have the experts on their side.
  • That’s been true in American debates regarding science for many years
  • Four decades ago, when arguments about climate change were fairly new, people who rejected the idea looked at studies showing a connection between burning coal and acid rain and dubbed them “junk science.” The “real” science, those critics said, showed otherwise.
  • “Even though the motive was to reject a scientific consensus, there was still a valorization of expertise,”
  • “Even people who took a horse dewormer when they got covid-19 were quick to note that the drug was created by a Nobel laureate,” he said. “Almost no one says they’re anti-science.”
  • “There isn’t a thing called ‘the science.’ There are multiple sciences with active disagreements with each other. Science isn’t static.”
  • The problem is that the phrase has become more a political slogan than a commitment to neutral inquiry, “which bespeaks tremendous ignorance about what science is,”
  • t scientists and laypeople alike are often guilty of presenting science as a monolithic statement of fact, rather than an ever-evolving search for evidence to support theories,
  • while scientists are trained to be comfortable with uncertainty, a pandemic that has killed and sickened millions has made many people eager for definitive solutions.
  • “I just wish when people say ‘follow the science,’ it’s not the end of what they say, but the beginning, followed by ‘and here’s the evidence,’
  • As much as political leaders may pledge to “follow the science,” they answer to constituents who want answers and progress, so the temptation is to overpromise.
  • It’s never easy to follow the science, many scientists warn, because people’s behaviors are shaped as much by fear, folklore and fake science as by well-vetted studies or evidence-based government guidance.
  • “Science cannot always overcome fear,”
  • Some of the states with the lowest covid case rates and highest vaccination rates nonetheless kept many students in remote learning for the longest time, a phenomenon she attributed to “letting fear dominate our narrative.”
  • “That’s been true of the history of science for a long time,” Gandhi said. “As much as we try to be rigorous about fact, science is always subject to the political biases of the time.”
  • A study published in September indicates that people who trust in science are actually more likely to believe fake scientific findings and to want to spread those falsehoods
  • The study, reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that trusting in science did not give people the tools they need to understand that the scientific method leads not to definitive answers, but to ever-evolving theories about how the world works.
  • Rather, people need to understand how the scientific method works, so they can ask good questions about studies.
  • Trust in science alone doesn’t arm people against misinformation,
  • Overloaded with news about studies and predictions about the virus’s future, many people just tune out the information flow,
  • That winding route is what science generally looks like, Swann said, so people who are frustrated and eager for solid answers are often drawn into dangerous “wells of misinformation, and they don’t even realize it,” she said. “If you were told something every day by people you trusted, you might believe it, too.”
  • With no consensus about how and when the pandemic might end, or about which public health measures to impose and how long to keep them in force, following the science seems like an invitation to a very winding, even circular path.
katherineharron

Fanatics used to make MLB uniforms; now they're making medical masks and gowns - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Major League Baseball is teaming up with a sports apparel retailer to help with a national shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers.
  • The shortage is causing health care workers to resort to desperate measures and save supplies intended for a single usage.
  • The first batches were made out of uniforms from the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees. The MLB said as production and distribution grows, they'll use other teams' jersey fabric.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • From there, the masks and gowns will be distributed to hospitals and emergency personnel in Pennsylvania.
  • "We're certainly really excited for baseball and Fanatics to come together and take this incredible factory and manufacture op to a million masks over the next couple of months," Ruben said. "We can make a huge difference."
Javier E

The Real Reason You and Your Neighbor Make Different Covid-19 Risk Decisions - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-19-risk-decisions-11632063600

risk assessment rationality psychology knowledge

shared by Javier E on 20 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • Personality traits that are shaped by genetics and early life experiences strongly influence our Covid-19-related decisions, studies from the U.S. and Japan have found.
  • In a study of more than 400 U.S. adults, Dr. Byrne and her colleagues found that how people perceive risks, whether they make risky decisions, and their preference for immediate or delayed rewards were the largest predictors of whether they followed public-health guidelines when it came to wearing masks and social distancing.
  • These factors accounted for 55% of the difference in people’s behaviors—more than people’s political affiliation, level of education or age.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Dr. Byrne and her colleagues measured risky decision-making by presenting people with a gambling scenario. They could choose between two bets: One offered a guaranteed amount of money, while the other offered the possibility of a larger amount of money but also the possibility of receiving no cash. A different exercise measured people’s preference for immediate versus delayed rewards: Participants could choose a certain amount of money now, or a larger amount later.
  • Study subjects also reported Covid-19 precautions they had taken in their daily lives, including masking and social distancing.
  • with Covid-19, people don’t feel sick immediately after an exposure so the benefits of wearing a mask, social distancing or getting vaccinated aren’t immediately apparent. “You don’t see the lives you potentially save,” she says
  • “People generally are more motivated by immediate gratification or immediate benefits rather than long-term benefits, even when the long-term benefits are much greater,
  • Research has also found being extroverted or introverted affects how people make decisions about Covid-19 precautions. A recent study of more than 8,500 people in Japan published in the journal PLOS One in October 2020 found that those who scored high on a scale of extraversion were 7% less likely to wear masks in public and avoid large gatherings, among other precautions.
  • The study also found that people who scored high on a measure of conscientiousness—valuing hard work and achievement—were 31% more likely to follow Covid-19 public-health precautions.
  • Scientists believe that a person’s propensity to take risks is partly genetic and partly the result of early life experiences
  • Certain negative childhood experiences including physical, emotional or sexual abuse, parental divorce, or living with someone who was depressed or abused drugs or alcohol are linked to risky behavior in adulthood like smoking and drinking heavily, other research has found.
  • Studies of twins have generally found that about 30% of the difference in individual risk tolerance is genetic
  • And scientists have discovered that the brains of people who are more willing to take risks look different than those of people who are more cautious.
  • ambling task had differences in the structure and function of the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in detecting threats, and the prefrontal cortex, a region involved in executive
  • Even people who have the same information and a similar perception of the risks may make different decisions because of the ways they interpret the information. When public-health officials talk about breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals being rare, for example, “rare means different things” to different people
margogramiak

Why people choose to wear face coverings -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...201218165103.htm

shared by margogramiak on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Wearing a face covering in public is dependent upon how often people observe others wearing them, according to recent findings.
  • Wearing a face covering in public is dependent upon how often people observe others wearing them, according to recent findings.
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      In class, we're talking about science, and the trust of science. I'm confused about the beginning of this article, in that I don't think people wearing masks has anything to do with the fact that other people do. I think it has everything to do trust of science.
  • "In this study, we examined what motivators are behind an individual's choice to wear or not wear a face covering in public,
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      I can't think of a reason other than trust of science. I don't understand.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • No evidence was found that a perceived susceptibility to becoming ill and a perceived severity of COVID-19 correlated with an increase in the intent to use a face covering in public.
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      That is so confusing. I guess it doesn't matter people's intentions as long as they wear them though.
  • "Based on our findings, it is possible that messaging strategies that focus on susceptibility to and severity of COVID-19 may not be as effective as targeting actions that influence individual intentions and social norms."
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      Again, I simply don't understand that. I can say with complete honesty that regardless of who I was with or whether they were wearing a mask, I would have one on.
  • months before the vaccine is readily available to all individuals who seek it.
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      Those months have past and the time is now!
  • an essential component in the continuing effort to reduce the virus' transmission
    • margogramiak
      margogramiak on 17 Jan 21
       
      This piece of information should be reason enough to wear a mask. This article made me sort of disappointed in society.
anonymous

Opinion | Why Fox News Is Still in a Coronavirus Bubble - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rump-covid-fox-news-masks.html

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Humans will do figure eights to make facts suit their fictions.
  • Back in the 1950s, the psychologist Leon Festinger came up with cognitive dissonance theory, which can essentially be described as the very human desire to reconcile the irreconcilable.
  • Our brains, he realized, will go to baroque lengths — do magic tricks, even — to preserve the integrity of our worldview, even when the facts inconveniently club us over the head with a two-by-four.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Today, perhaps the best case study of cognitive dissonance theory can be found in the prime-time lineup on Fox News, where Donald Trump’s most dedicated supporters are struggling mightily to make sense of the president’s Covid-19 diagnosis.
  • just as Festinger’s work predicts, they are doubling down on their beliefs, interpreting recent events as incontrovertible proof that they were right from the start.
  • the figure-eight logic we resort to when our stories don’t align with reality.
  • Later in her program, Ingraham even managed to find a doctor who challenged the efficacy of masks.
  • On his Friday show, Sean Hannity was reckoning with his own set of contradictions. He repeated, at almost metronomic intervals, that the president had been admitted to the hospital “out of an abundance of caution.” But in his outrage segment, during which he and his choir of the incensed (rightly) condemned those who wished the president harm, he didn’t blink when Geraldo Rivera said: “I hate when I hear that B.S. cliché ‘an abundance of caution.’ The headline here is that the president of the United States and the first lady of the United States have been diagnosed with Covid disease — a wicked, dangerous, deadly disease that’s already claimed 208,000 American lives.”
  • Everyone reckons with cognitive dissonance.
  • People will do a great deal to justify their belief systems, even if it means tolerating a thousand tiny inconsistencies.
  • And Fox News is especially adept at giving people scripts they can use to minimize their discomfort with bothersome, disconfirming facts.
  • It was notable, I thought, that a few of Trump’s supporters were wearing masks outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
  • But I don’t feel much hope. It requires a pretty thick hide to say you disagree with your former self
  • For those who’ve dismissed or downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, now is a good time to reconsider that position. And for those who’ve prayed for such a conversion, now is a good time simply to be thankful, and not to judge.
Javier E

Virtually Emotional « The Dish - 0 views

dish.andrewsullivan.com/...-manti-teo-hoax-it-gets-better

online virtual romance impersonation

shared by Javier E on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • I don’t see online interaction as easily separable from real-life human interaction any more. We spend more and more time communicating with one another virtually rather than physically. But these communications are still between human beings, with all our foibles and needs and crushes and hatreds and, if we’re lucky, wit and humor. We do not cease being human online; but we do wear a kind of mask, concealing some things, revealing others – whether on a blog or a hook-up app or a list-serv or a Facebook wall. And if you spend more hours a day communicating that way, you haven’t stopped living. You’re actually slowly becoming another person on top of your regular self.
  • This is the current reality for a lot of us. We meet many more people virtually than on the street or in our physical daily lives. We also get to know them more. The anonymity of the web can allow people not just to trash talk in a way they wouldn’t in real life but to sext and love-talk with strangers they’ve only seen pictures of. Some of this may actually be more authentic an expression of ourselves than anything we have the courage to say to someone’s face.
  • the more time we live virtually, the more we will reproduce aspects of our pre-virtual life online. Including love. And this strange, amazing story was about love, not sex. It was about a panicked, conflicted young gay man knowing he would be rebuffed by his straight crush and setting up a fantasy where he could become a virtual woman to have a relationship with him.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Increasingly, we seem to live parallel lives – as a person with a body and as an online avatar. Comedy and tragedy will doubtless ensue. That’s what masks can do.
B Mannke

Why Are Clowns Scary? | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...why-are-clowns-scary

shared by B Mannke on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • But is coulrophobia a real fear? And, for that matter, what is fear?
  • Psychologists believe that this kind of fear may have less to do with clowns and more with the unsettling familiarity. A normal-sized body with a painted face, big shoes, colorful clothes—but what's under there?"People are typically frightened by things which are wrong in some way, wrong in a disturbingly unfamiliar way," says Paul Salkovskis of the Maudsley Hospital Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma in London.Anthropologists may approach the phobia from the clown's perspective. In 1961, Claude Levi Strauss wrote about the "freedoms" that masking oneself allows. A mask gives a clown the chance to adopt a new identity: "the facial disguise," he writes, "temporarily eliminate[s] from social intercourse that part of the body which...the individual's personal feelings and attitudes are revealed or can be deliberately communicated to others."
Javier E

The Price of the Coronavirus Pandemic | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...ce-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic

pandemic profit economic response opportunity financial

shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • “You don’t know anyone who has made as much money out of this as I have,” he said over the phone. No argument here. He wouldn’t specify an amount, but reckoned that he was up almost two thousand per cent on the year.
  • He bought a big stake in Alpha Pro Tech, one of the few North American manufacturers of N95 surgical masks, with the expectation that when the virus made it across the Pacific the company would get government contracts to produce more. The stock was trading at about three dollars and fifty cents a share, and so, for cents on the dollar, he bought options to purchase the shares at a future date for ten dollars: he was betting that it would go up much more than that. By the end of February, the stock was trading at twenty-five dollars a share
  • He quickly put some money to work
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • He shorted oil and, as a proxy for oil, the Canadian dollar. (That is, he bet against both.) Finally, he shorted U.S. equities.
  • Last October, he listened to an audiobook by the Hardcore History podcaster, Dan Carlin, called “The End Is Always Near.” “So I had pandemics and plagues in my head,” the Australian said. “In December, I started seeing the first articles about this wet-market thing going on in China, and then in early January there was a lot on Twitter about the shit in Wuhan.” He was in Switzerland on a ski holiday with his family, and he bought all the surgical masks and gloves he could find.
  • The Australian, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used, is a voluble redhead just shy of fifty.
  • The problem, he said, was that, perhaps more now than ever, Americans lack what he called “social cohesion,” and thus the collective will, to commit to such a path.
  • perhaps the government should reward each citizen who strictly observed the quarantine with fifty thousand dollars. “The virus would burn out after four weeks,” he said. The U.S. had all the food and water and fuel it would need to survive months, if not years, of total isolation from the world. “If you don’t trade with China, they’re screwed,” he said. “You’d win this war. Let the rest of the world burn.
  • I’d been eavesdropping for a week on the friend’s WhatsApp conversation with dozens of his acquaintances and colleagues (he called them the Fokkers, for an acronym involving his name), all of them men, most of them expensively educated financial professionals, some of them very rich, a few with connections in high places. The general disposition of the participants, with exceptions, was the opposite of the Australian’s
  • they expressed the belief, with a conviction that occasionally tipped into stridency or mockery, that the media, the modellers, and the markets were overreacting to the threat of the coronavirus
  • They mocked Jim Cramer, the host of the market program “Mad Money,” on CNBC, for predicting a great depression and wondering if anyone would ever board an airplane again. Anecdotes, hyperbole: the talking chuckleheads sowing and selling fear.
  • it’s hard for a coldhearted capitalist to know just how cold the heart must go. Public-health professionals make a cost-benefit calculation, too, with different weightings.
  • This brutal shock is attacking a body that was already vulnerable. In the event of a global depression, a postmortem might identify COVID-19 as the cause of death, but, as with so many of the virus’s victims, the economy had a preëxisting condition—debt, instead of pulmonary disease.
  • “It’s as if the virus is almost beside the point,” a trader I know told me. “This was all set up to happen.”
  • the “smart money,” like the giant asset-management firms Blackstone and the Carlyle Group, was now telling companies to draw down their bank lines, and borrow as much as they could, in case the lenders went out of business or found ways to say no. Sure enough, by March’s end, corporations had reportedly tapped a record two hundred and eight billion dollars from their revolving-credit lines
  • In a world where we talk, suddenly, of trillions, two hundred billion may not seem like a lot, but it is: in 2007, the subprime-mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, in drawing down “just” $11.5 billion, helped bring the system to its knees.
  • It is hard to navigate out of the debt trap. Creditors can forgive debtors, but that process, especially at this level, would be almost impossibly laborious and fraught. Meanwhile, defaults flood the market with collateral, be it buildings, stocks, or aircraft. The price of that collateral collapses—haircuts for baldheads—leading to more defaults.
  • In New York State, where nearly half a million new claims had been filed in two weeks, the unemployment-insurance trust began to teeter toward insolvency. Come summer, there would be no money left to pay unemployment benefits.
  • As April arrived, businesses, large and small, decided not to pay rent, either because they didn’t have the cash on hand or because, with a recession looming, they wanted to preserve what cash they had. Furloughed or fired employees, meanwhile, faced similar decisions
  • On March 20th, Goldman Sachs spooked the world, by predicting a twenty-four-per-cent decline in G.D.P. in the second quarter, a falloff in activity that seemed at once both unthinkable and inevitable. Subsequent predictions grew even more disma
cvanderloo

Culture matters a lot in successfully managing a pandemic - and many countries that did... - 0 views

theconversation.com/had-one-thing-in-common-152375

research covid pandemic world women egalitarian

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Culture matters more than a leader’s gender in how a nation survives a global pandemic, according to a study I conducted on gender and COVID-19 management, which was published in December in the journal PLOS ONE.
  • We identified no statistically significant differences in deaths based on the gender of the country’s leader.
  • We identified two cultural variables with a statistically significant effect on death rate: individualism and “power distance”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Instead, we found that pandemic outcomes hinged primarily on how egalitarian a country is.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21
       
      egalitarian: relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities
  • Leaders do have important power during a crisis. They can institute emergency policies – from mask requirements to stay-at-home orders – to halt the virus’s spread. But it takes everyone’s cooperation to make these measures work.
  • Egalitarian countries also tend to reject traditional gender roles, so are more likely to elect women leaders. All 16 women-led countries in our study rated as “egalitarian.”
  • Women leaders enjoyed rare latitude during COVID-19 that allowed them to do everything in their power to manage it.
1 - 20 of 89 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page