Written by: Greg Ellifritz
Since I don’t have TV in my house, I spend a lot more time reading than the average American. I have more than 400 websites programmed into my RSS reader. On the average day I scan about 1200 articles in my feed. I deeply read more than 100. You can guess that my feed in recent days has been almost completely full of Covid-19 articles. I’ve been reading an insane quantity of material with regards to the virus and its likely future consequences.
There are lots of good coronavirus articles out there on the internet. With that said, I don’t want to share the articles that everyone else is sharing, doom and gloom porn, or wild speculations. Instead, I will share the truly unique and valuable pieces I find while scanning the internet.
Check out the links below to learn something new. These are the most informative pandemic resources I have seen in the past few days.
13 Myths COVID-19 Is Shining Its Light On
I like James Altucher’s perspective in this piece.
COVID-19: What’s wrong with the models?
Peter Attia is a medical doctor, health researcher, and one of the smartest people on the planet. Here is his assessment as to why our previous models for the disease were wrong (lack of accounting for levels of uncertainty) and how we are continuing to screw up our response.
“The mistake was not taking the timeout. The mistake was not using our timeout to better understand our opponent. We failed to scale up testing and gather the essential information outlined here that would have helped us create better, more nuanced and hopefully more accurate models, rather than having to essentially guess at our data inputs (and hence at the outcomes). Now, six weeks later, we are still in the dark because we didn’t do the broad testing that we should have done back then. We still don’t know fully how many people contract this virus and come out relatively unscathed.
We still have time to reduce the health and economic damage done by this virus and our response to it, but we can’t waste another timeout sitting around looking at each other and guessing.”
Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2
For all of you sharing the questionable research about “slipstream” and the danger of viral transmission during outdoor exercise.
In as study of 1245 confirmed cases researchers found:
“We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases.”
This virus is not being spread by runners and walkers in an outdoor environment.
Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs have spiked by more than a THIRD
Even though there is very little traffic on the road, the numbers of reported car crashes in the city where I work are still consistent with long term averages. Most of the crashes this month have been people hitting parked cars in residential neighborhoods. I haven’t been able to figure out why these are happening.
This statistic may explain a few things. Wear your seat belt. All these new users of valium and Xanax are likely driving their cars around your city.
The Best Defense Survival – Roundtable #5
I’ve been impressed with every one of the roundtable discussions organized by Michael Bane. This one provides some really valuable perspectives about the entire point of “flattening the curve” to prevent hospital resources from being overwhelmed and how that strategy somehow morphed into a desire to keep as many people as possible from catching this virus. That’s not how it works.
Here’s One Thing Officials Can Do to Make Lockdown Life Better: Stop Being Hypocritical Tyrants
“In these situations officials should think about the harm they can do, even in the name of “doing good,” when they pen these orders to lock everything down. They should think about the first effects, and the second and third order effects too — the lost jobs, the anxiety that follows that, the deep-seated worry that follows that, the shame of not being able to feed your family without a handout, and the sheer annoyance of not being able to go anywhere or do anything to let off a little steam. It’s very hard on free people who are used to being able to do what they want when they want, who had a job one day and thanks to a government decree they don’t have a job the next day. They didn’t ask for any of this, nor did they cause it. When we see Chicago’s mayor ban haircuts, and then get one herself because she’s privileged and you’re not and she imposes a curfew on others for no evident reason, and when we see a Texas county judge apparently violate his own stay at home order, it sends the entirely wrong signal in a republic where the people are supposed to be the government.
It also hints at something a whole lot darker that our dear leaders had better not let fester. And the best thing they can do to prevent that is to stop acting like petty little tyrants.”
An untenable course: the world’s response to coronavirus.
“Experts, by very definition, know more than anyone else about a given topic. Their input should be treated as the primary source of information going forward. Only a fool would assert that we shouldn’t heed Dr. Fauci’s advice. What I do take issue with is the outright dismissal of competing ideas with the solutions recommended by the experts. They don’t have a crystal ball. Their job is to detail for decision makers the potential calamity of this virus. They are not paid to consider the economic pain that is coupled with these measures. Stifling the public discourse about solutions to this virus is unAmerican, and those who would condescend to business owners and furloughed employees airing their grievances probably aren’t living in the pressure cooker that is life for millions of Americans right now.”
Masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data
“Cloth masks are ineffective as source control and PPE, surgical masks have some role to play in preventing emissions from infected patients, and respirators are the best choice for protecting healthcare and other frontline workers, but not recommended for source control. These recommendations apply to pandemic and non-pandemic situations.
Leaving aside the fact that they are ineffective, telling the public to wear cloth or surgical masks could be interpreted by some to mean that people are safe to stop isolating at home. It’s too late now for anything but stopping as much person-to-person interaction as possible.
Masks may confuse that message and give people a false sense of security. If masks had been the solution in Asia, shouldn’t they have stopped the pandemic before it spread elsewhere?”
Will the Fitness Industry Survive the COVID-19 Pandemic? Some Important Things to Consider
Legendary strength coach Mark Rippetoe offers his thoughts on how the virus has affected the fitness industry.
A couple of additional comments before you go…
A few weeks ago I started noticing some strange statistics with regards to this site’s page views and advertising revenues. Page views have gone up dramatically (30%) in recent weeks. Despite the big surge in visits, my ad revenue has taken a massive hit. Almost 50% less ad revenue per day despite many more visits.
What’s going on? I started digging a little deeper. I found out that advertisers don’t want their products to be associated with the coronavirus or COVID-19. Many won’t place ads on pages that discuss anything at all about the pandemic. This article explains some of the advertisers’ thought processes.
My content for the last month has been heavily weighted to providing you all with the best information I can find on the virus. That strategy is killing my ad revenues.
I’m not writing this to complain about the ad money that I am losing. Instead, I want you to understand the consequences of this worldwide issue.
We will see less information coming out about the virus from independent sources in the future. The big news sites aren’t nearly as affected, but many independent bloggers will stop posting content that harms their financial bottom line. I worry that we will lose a prime source of objective information and analysis during a time when we all need that information the most.
I will keep providing good information despite the revenue drop. Please remember to support the people who provide you with the high quality content that you prefer to consume.
