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Daily Archives: October 4, 2020

How to Protect Yourself from the Aerosol Spread of Covid-19

Kottke.org: “A group of scientists who believe that WHO and the CDC are being too slow in acknowledging the role of aerosol transmission in spreading Covid-19 have written up a Google Doc of advice for the public: FAQs on Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission.

The goal of these FAQs is to provide information to the general public in an efficient manner about how to prevent aerosol transmission of COVID-19, with the hope that this will allow more informed decision making by individuals or organizations. All of this information has been posted in Twitter and other forums, but can be difficult to find. Having multiple experts working together, and having the ability to update this information also improves its quality. These FAQs represent our best understanding at this time, and should always be similar or more stringent than information provided by CDC, WHO, and most regional & local health authorities. If your authority has a more stringent guideline than discussed here, follow that more stringent guideline.

MIT Technology Review’s Charlotte Jee interviewed Jimenez about the FAQ document.

We update the document all the time. We’re effectively having to be a little WHO or CDC. We’re saying the things that they should be saying. This is frustrating, but it’s the situation we find ourselves in. These organizations have been flat-out refusing to consider if aerosol transmission is important, which leaves people unprotected. So we feel it’s our duty to communicate directly with the public.

Right now, in my opinion as someone who has done a ton of reading about Covid-19, the most best accessible information on how individuals and societies can protect themselves and others during the pandemic (and why) is available in Jimenez’s Time article, Aaron Carroll’s NY Times piece about how to think about risk management, Zeynep Tufekci’s piece in the Atlantic about dispersion and superspreading, and now this Google Doc by Jimenez et al.

Google research lets sign language switch ‘active speaker’ in video calls

TechCrunch: “An aspect of video calls that many of us take for granted is the way they can switch between feeds to highlight whoever’s speaking. Great — if speaking is how you communicate. Silent speech like sign language doesn’t trigger those algorithms, unfortunately, but this research from Google might change that. It’s a real-time sign… Continue Reading

Recording International COVID-19 Government Responses

Cheng, Cindy, Joan Barceló, Allison Hartnett, Robert Kubinec, and Luca Messerschmidt. 2020. COVID-19 Government Response Event Dataset (CoronaNet v1.0). Nature Human Behaviour (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0909-7. “The CoronaNet Research Project compiles a database on government responses to the corona virus. Our main focus is to collect as much information as we can about the various fine-grained actions… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 3, 2020

Via LLRX – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish… Continue Reading

What if all covid‑19 deaths in the United States had happened in your neighborhood?

Washington Post article and simulation – “Find out what would happen if your neighborhood was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States [by entering your address]. At least 207,468 people have died of covid-19 in the United States. It can be difficult to comprehend the loss of all these lives in a… Continue Reading

CRS – The Fundamentals of Military Readiness

CRS report via The Fundamentals of Military Readiness, October 2, 2020: “Each year the Department of Defense (DOD) requests and Congress authorizes and appropriates billions of dollars in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding to support what the DOD calls readiness. Additionally, other types of defense appropriations may be used to contribute to producing, sustaining, or… Continue Reading

Unemployment Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: In Brief

CRS report via LC – Unemployment Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: In Brief, Updated October 2, 2020: “The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant effect on unemployment in every state, industry, and major demographic groupin the United States. This report provides information on which groups have experienced the largest increases in unemployment… Continue Reading

The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the threat on academic integrity

Mohamed Abdallamsa, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto and Moustafa Abdalla, Harvard Medical School. The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the threat on academic integrity. 28 September 2020. Cornell University, arXiv.org. “As governmental bodies rely on academics’ expert advice to shape policy regarding Artificial Intelligence, it is important that these academics not… Continue Reading

Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign

Benkler, Yochai, Casey Tilton, Bruce Etling, Hal Roberts, Justin Clark, et al. Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign, 2020. Harvard University. “The claim that election fraud is a major concern with mail-in ballots has become the central threat to election participation during the Covid-19 pandemic and to the legitimacy of the outcome of… Continue Reading

2019 Hiscox Ageism in the Workplace Study

2019 Hiscox Ageism in the Workplace Study – “By 2024, workers age 55 and older will represent 25% of the nation’s workforce, with the fastest annual growth rates among those aged 65-and-older. This evolving workforce presents business owners and C-suite leadership with unprecedented challenges, an array of new risks and some unique opportunities. The 2019… Continue Reading

Quote Investigator

Quote Investigator – “This website records the investigatory work of Garson O’Toole who diligently seeks the truth about quotations. Who really said what? This question often cannot be answered with complete finality, but approximate solutions can be iteratively improved over time. Who uses this website? Articles on the Quote Investigator® website have been cited by… Continue Reading