health

COVID-19: what health experts could and could not predict | Nature Medicine
Devi Sridhar in Nature: “Nearly a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, it is time to look back and assess what could have been predicted by health experts.”
(tags: science covid19 pandemic medicine)
I thrived on the tension and drama of British politics. Then I had a heart attack | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian
“I lived for the nerve-shredding rollercoaster of Westminster. But the stress got under my skin, and into my blood”
(tags: twitter Politics brexit journalism health)
I’d love to ignore ‘Covid sceptics’ and their tall tales. But they make a splash and have no shame | Media | The Guardian
Neil O’Brien on the fantasies of those in the media, and beyond, who oppose lockdown. There have been a few articles like this recently, hopefully it marks a tide rising against the loonies.
(tags: covid19 science lockdown pandemic)
Rise of the Coronavirus Cranks – Quillette
Another demolition of the smiley face crew.
(tags: twitter pandemic covid19 science)

Covid: The War We Never Fought – Consumer Surplus
“England is about to go into a second lockdown, along with lots of other European countries. It’s possible that the second wave of Covid infections we’re experiencing was inevitable, but we didn’t really try to avoid it either.” Contains a handy list of all the failed predictions from cranks like Toby Young and the Great Barrington backers.
(tags: health covid19 medicine Politics)
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020
The full text of the SI. This looks a lot more tightly drafted than the previous ones I’ve seen (and so is a fair bit longer).
(tags: law covid19)

Covid fears have stopped social dancing in its tracks. – The Washington Post
“Some day, we’ll hit the dance floor again. And it will be glorious.”

Books mention “hope”. What *was* “hope”?
(tags: covid19 dancing lindy-hop swing)

Cluster of Coronavirus Disease Associated with Fitness Dance Classes, South Korea – Volume 26, Number 8—August 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC
“During 24 days in Cheonan, South Korea, 112 persons were infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 associated with fitness dance classes at 12 sports facilities. Intense physical exercise in densely populated sports facilities could increase risk for infection. Vigorous exercise in confined spaces should be minimized during outbreaks.”
(tags: dance health covid19)
Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism | The New Yorker
The Vienna Circle
(tags: empiricism philosophy)

Expert reaction to unpublished paper modelling what percentage of the UK population may have been exposed to COVID-19 | Science Media Centre
It’s an interesting paper but consensus seems to be that it’s not a good reason to give up lockdown (it’s ancient history from back in March now, but some discussion going on on UnHerd after they interviewed one of the researchers).
(tags: covid19 model mathematics)
James Hay on Twitter: “A recent analysis from Oxford presented a range of model scenarios consistent with observed COVID death counts. I’m going to reproduce their analysis here and then present some slight modifications to provide a conservative (if te
A good thread on what that Oxford team did.
(tags: covid19 model mathematics bayesian)
Staying alive: background tracing the NHS COVID-19 app – Reincubate
How’s the NHSX contact tracing app going to stay alive in the background on IOS? How does it work?
(tags: nhs health covid19 app nhsx android ios Bluetooth)
Knight Rider for 8 cellos – YouTube
Yay!
(tags: tv music knight-rider)
Do any Covid-19 ‘cures’ actually work? – UnHerd
All studies so far flawed, including the flaw of eliminating dead people from the stufy. Tom Chivers continues to be one of the few worthwhile things on UnHinged.
(tags: covid19 science drugs tom-chivers)

The Boston Tea Party – DANCE EVENTS AND DEALING WITH INFECTIOUS ILLNESS
Some good thoughts from this event on how they’re dealing with COVID-19 in the period where schools and offices are still open.
(tags: dancing covid19 health)
Dance in the time of Corona: A primer and suggestions on the novel Coronavirus and social dancing – The Dancing Grapevine
“The Author, Dr. Hsu, is a physician actively practicing in both community and acute care hospital settings. She has spoken extensively with a Public Health specialist physician about this matter, particularly how the Novel Coronavirus will interact with our dance communities”
(tags: dancing covid19 health infection disease)

Imaginary Positions – Less Wrong
One I’d missed: Yudkowsky’s post on rounding to the “nearest cliche”.
(tags: cliche nearest eliezer-yudkowsky rationality)
The world is not falling apart: The trend lines reveal an increasingly peaceful period in history.
Steven Pinker argues we should look at trend lines rather than headlines.
(tags: statistics war politics violence world steven-pinker)
A Pasta Sea: Elijah and the Apologist of Baal
1 Kings 18 re-imagined as if Baal had a William Lane Craig on his side. Fun times. “A Pasta Sea” is a good name for an ex-Christian blog, too.
(tags: bible apologetics ahab baal elijah funny parody)
A&E in crisis: a special report – Telegraph
“As the NHS faces its worst winter in years, Robert Colvile provides an in-depth, first-hand account of the pressures facing the health service.” Interesting: combination of people unable to see a GP quickly enough and hospitals unable to turf old people to social care quickly enough. Targets sometimes provide perverse incentives.
(tags: nhs health healthcare medicine hospital)
Free exchange: Nice work if you can get out | The Economist
Why the rich now have less leisure than the poor. Via WMC on FB.
(tags: leisure work economist)

How Corpses Helped Shape the London Underground
Gruesome but interesting.
(tags: underground history death burial corpses tube)
Why we need to sleep in total darkness
Blue light at night is bad. Any light is probably a bit bad. Time to get some blackout curtains (although I think they make it harder to wake up).
(tags: health light sleep blue melatonin)
Reading Genesis 1 “Literally” | Scribalishess
Susan Pigott, a professor specialising in the Old Testament, gives her literal reading of Genesis 1, and shows how it both borrows from and reacts against other cosmologies which were around at the time. Via Unreasonable Faith.
(tags: genesis creation old-testament hebrew cosmology)

Ambidancetrous: The Blog — “We don’t want to make people uncomfortable.” (aka, “What about teh menz?!”)
"Ultimately, some of the worry that some straight guys will be uncomfortable dancing with other men (or being led by a woman) may be justified." Het guys: you lost the oppression Olympics, so your comfort and consent about who touches you is less important than our plan to build a utopia through dance. PROBLEMATIC. Well, OK, that bit rubbed me up the wrong way. But seriously, I think an "ambidancetrous" dance scene would be less "problematic" if the expectations (and how they differ from pretty much every other scene) were made clear up front. What I expect would happen then is that if you insisted every lesson was ambidancetrous, you’d never get enough people to make a viable community. Maybe it’d work as an option within an established scene, though.
(tags: lindy consent gender feminism lindyhop dance)
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/march/1361848247/karen-hitchcock/fat-city
A doctor writes about the difficulties of dealing with obesity: dealing with a social problem, and applying epidemiology to individuals. Via Metafilter.
(tags: food fat obesity medicine health)
On the stupidity of asking, “but where’s the evidence we need evidence for things?”
"it’s a mistake to think that if someone thinks maybe you should have some evidence for a particular thing you believe, they are therefore committed to a sweeping philosophical doctrine about needing evidence for absolutely everything."
(tags: evidence philosophy epistemology)
Online Child Porn – What the Papers Aren’t Telling You.
Could Google really block it? (Hint: no)
(tags: google porn filtering internet)
Ukip Activist Marty Caine Provokes Fury by Branding Drummer Lee Rigby’s Family ‘Idiots’ – IBTimes UK
Looks like the old "the EDL are the provisional wing of UKIP" joke is actually true.
(tags: edl lee-rigby islam racism ukip)