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Showing posts from April, 2020

Addendum: Flattening the Curve and other Meaningless Phrases

The previous post was made in the context of Australian restrictions on movement and activity. The American System seems much more ridiculously restrictive with people arrested for exercising in a field for exercising or waiting in line for the food bank. To that I say there should be protest and resistance against senseless restrictions especially of non-constitutional.

Flattening the Curve and other Meaningless Phrases

"Flattening the Curve" is catchy and it has meaning for the people that developed and promoted it but over the last weeks it has become evident that although everyone knows the phrase, many people don't understand the implications. Math is hard. Calculus is harder, and most of us don't find it intuitive. Without novel treatments such as a vaccine (which is at least a year away) the number of people who get infected (represented by the area under the curve) will be the same whether we flatten it or not. The time course is what we are attempting to change. "Everyone will get this virus, we are just trying to make sure everyone doesn't get the virus at once" This is a gross oversimplification but I think it gets at the heart of what "flattening the curve" means. Everyone is sacrificing a lot by going into home isolation but I think it will be easier to endure if we understand the reasons why. There have been pictures of hospital wards that are...

Going Viral: A Med Student Dismantles Covid-19

I am currently on Easter Break right now and as I pick through my YouTube subscriptions and read comments I have seen so much evidence of misinformation and opinion based in misapprehension regarding the virus which shall not be named. I have hit a tipping point in realizing that once upon a time (3 lifetimes ago) I had a job taking complex, abstract concepts and presenting them to children and teenagers. Everyone knows the buzz words of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve" but in conversations with friends and time on the internet I have realized that there is a lack of understanding of the finer nuance surrounding some of the crisis that we are enduring. As with all of my writing these posts are as much about getting my thoughts out so that I can stop ruminating so the exercise is valuable even if there is no value added for the general audience. For those of you new to my blogs Gleaning is aimed more towards kernels of Spiritual Insight as I am given ...