The Classic Trio: Emotion, Logic, Action

There’s a classic trio in literature. An advisor offers the emotional reaction. Another advisor offers the logical, rational reaction. And the main character takes action based on the input from those two sides.

You see it really clearly in the original Star Trek series and movies. Captain Kirk is the main character, the man of action. Bones, the doctor, offers the emotional side—but he’s also a scientist, so he’s not purely emotional. Spock, the Vulcan, offers the logical, rational side—pretty much devoid of emotion.

Star Trek cover art, found here

The purpose of literature is to show us patterns for our lives—so that we learn by experience vicariously, without having to go through everything the hard way personally.

We may each have tendencies that are more emotional, or more rational, or maybe a very confusing mix. But we are each the main character—the “man of action”—in our own story.

So, what we need to do is take in some input from the emotional, human side, while also taking a heavy dose of logic and rationality, and then find the right balance to make the wisest decision we can on how to move forward.

Maybe we can apply this to the current Covid-19 pandemic. How should we be dealing with questions about personal behavior, and about sharing scarce resources and business shutdowns?

Emotions are plentiful. Social media is full of that input. So are many regular media outlets. The input from that side is: We should worry! We should be fearful! We should take extreme protective measures! Lives are at stake! Even one life lost is too many! We’d better go out right now and stock up on anything we think we might run out of or be unable to get in the future! What about my job? How will I pay my bills? What will I do if I run out of food? Why isn’t everyone else taking this seriously? How can I deal with this all alone? Or cooped up with my crazy kids?

I think we’ll never have a shortage of emotion surrounding a worldwide pandemic. The word itself is enough to instill apocalyptic images.

That’s why we need plenty of logical rationality to temper that. But the rational side requires data.

A week ago, one of our movie choices was an old Star Trek movie, the one where they save the humpback whales from extinction. There’s a point when Kirk needs a recommendation from Spock, but Spock is reticent, because he doesn’t have enough data. But timing is urgent. Kirk tells him to just guess. He has to order him to guess, because otherwise Spock won’t do that. The story turns out all right—because it’s fiction.

But, here we are, without enough data, being forced to guess.

Here’s what we need to know:

·       How virulent is the virus? That is, how likely to cause severe illness or death to any given person who contracts it.

·       How contagious is the virus? How is it spread, and how easily? And how likely is a person to get it from various levels of contact?

We’re acquiring data. We know a lot more now than we did a month or two ago. But there are some sub-questions that it would be very handy to know:

·       Who in the population has antibodies and is now safe from the virus? These people could be used to help develop a vaccine. They could also feel free to go to work without fear of contracting the illness or spreading it.

·       Who in the population has the virus and could spread it, whether they show symptoms or not? These people need to self-quarantine, completely avoid contact with anyone else who does not yet have the virus. If symptoms appear and they need medical help beyond what they can handle at home, then they get help from hospitals equipped to safeguard medical personnel while treating the patient.

If we knew the answers to these “who” questions, we could wipe out the disease. Literally.

What we need is enough testing to provide data on those two questions. Then the decision-makers, the Captain Kirks of their communities, states, or nations, can advise accordingly. Everybody who is immune, you’re free to go about your lives. Just be careful not to track germs to someone not immune.

Everybody who tests positive, you’re in quarantine. Expect to be there for at least two weeks—enough time to have come down with the virus if you’re going to. If you do come down with symptoms, then your quarantine continues until you’re over symptoms and no longer “shedding,”—that’s the word I’ve learned for when you can spread the virus to others before, during, or after exhibiting symptoms. The practice has been to get at least two consecutive days of virus-free tests following the end of symptoms. Then you’re free to roam about the world with the other immune people.

Everybody who tests negative, you’re dependent on how well the others do their quarantining duty. If you’re concerned because you’re at high risk, then you might want to wait things out by sheltering at home as much as you can. If you’re not at high risk, then weigh the risks.

But what we haven’t had is population-wide testing. At least not here.

Scientists in NY have developed test for
Covid-19 immunity, photo credit:
Jacob King/Press Association via AP Images,
found here

Dr. Richard Epstein talks (also here) about how nationwide testing could happen, and that, if used correctly—quarantining anyone who accurately tests positive—you could wipe out the virus within weeks, without the need of a vaccine or even a cure. You would deprive the virus of new hosts, which means it would be eradicated. Assuming the rest of the world does this protocol as well. Which is a big “if.” But he thinks such testing ability is on the horizon. 

In the meantime we have cities and countries and economies being shut down. These bold steps are understandable, but they’re based on insufficient data—because we don’t know who has the virus.

There’s nevertheless some data worth looking at.

My son, Political Sphere, put together a spreadsheet concerning cases per million population and deaths per million population. Without full testing, we won’t know exactly how many cases there are, so we won’t know death rate, or virulence. But we can learn some other things.

New York City has the most cases/million population recorded worldwide, with 3,663 (a number going up daily, but this is yesterday’s snapshot). New York State as a whole is next, with 2,751. PS gathered data for the top 69, but here are the top 20. Note that some of these are countries (shaded green), and some are jurisdictions within a country (shaded blue).

Rank	Country/State	Cases/mil pop
1	New York City	3,663
2	New York State	2,751
3	Switzerland	1,642
4	Spain	1,567
5	Italy	1,533
6	New Jersey	1,252
7	Austria	929
8	Belgium	793
9	Louisiana	711
10	Germany	694
11	Massachusetts	613
12	France	569
13	Washington	566
14	Netherlands	564
15	District of Columbia	485
16	Michigan	471
17	Connecticut	427
18	Iran	426
19	USA	379
20	Colorado	358

It looks like New York is in terrible shape. Worse than Italy, which we’re all fearful of becoming. But let’s add another piece of data: deaths per million population:

Rank	Country/State	Cases/mil pop	Deaths/mil pop
1	Italy	1,533	166
2	Spain	1,567	128
3	New York City	3,663	80
4	New York State	2,751	43
5	Netherlands	564	37
6	France	569	35
7	Switzerland	1,642	31
8	Belgium	793	31
9	Iran	426	30
10	Louisiana	711	29
11	Washington	566	25
12	Vermont	338	19
13	New Jersey	1,252	16
14	United Kingdom	256	15
15	Michigan	471	11
16	Connecticut	427	9
17	Colorado	358	8
18	Austria	929	8
19	Georgia	230	7
20	USA	379	7

Italy and Spain move to the top, above New York. In fact Italy doubles NYC’s rate. Dropping out of the top 20 entirely are Germany, Massachusetts, and District of Columbia. New to the top 20 are Vermont, United Kingdom, and the state of Georgia.

Some of this data will change as cases move past active to recovered or deaths. So PS plans to update the data weekly. But for now we can at least ask some questions about what we’re seeing:

·       Do the areas with higher death rates have more vulnerable populations?

·       Do the areas with higher death rates have overwhelmed resources making them  unable to treat some patients?

·       Can we learn from areas with lower death rates what practices are working best?

Italy has an older population, which means probably more vulnerable. As overwhelmed as NYC is, their hospitals are still only at 80% full, with the hospital ship USS Comfort arriving. Greater resources. Those details can make a difference.

In areas with more cases per million population, the harder hit areas, we have other questions:

·       Do areas with higher prevalence have certain characteristics? Population density, use of public transit, colder climate?

·       Did areas with higher prevalence wait longer to take precautions?

I’ve been wondering about that last question. President Trump cut off travel from China at the end of January. His usual detractors accused him of xenophobia. And there were areas that insisted he was overreacting. New York City went ahead with Lunar New Year celebrations, encouraging big crowds, more than a week after that travel restriction.

These two tweets were posted on a friend's
Facebook page, with speculation about
NYC's serious virus breakout.

Time has been passing kind of slowly this month. But here in Texas, where we had no known cases, things were going on through February and early March fairly normally. The first big cancellation was SXSW in Austin, a combination technology and music festival, cancelled March 6th, a week ahead of the ten-day event. 

Meanwhile the annual 20-day Houston Rodeo kept going. These are different events in that SXSW had major companies, from elsewhere, that withdrew, so there wasn’t much choice about it. The Houston Rodeo is made up of a whole lot of smaller vendors and contestants, some of whom make much of their annual income during that month. So it would take a lot to convince all those people to shut down. But the rodeo did shut down, 11 days early, as of March 11th.

At the time the Greater Houston Area, with more than 4 million people, had only a handful of cases, all related to a particular travel group to Egypt, all of whom were immediately quarantined. The number of cases has been growing now, but not as fast as many other places. It may be that the social (physical) distancing, followed up with the more recent stay-at-home directive, were done early enough—based on how many cases there were—to prevent spreading.

Maybe New York already had too many unknown cases before they began discouraging social gathering.

Church that had a Covid-19 breakout among choir members
image found here

There’s a church choir in Washington State, in a county that had no known cases when they went ahead with a rehearsal on March 10^th, although there had been other cases in Washington State, about an hour north in Seattle. Schools and businesses were still open, and large gatherings were still permitted.

They used hand sanitizer on the way in and refrained from hugging and shaking hands. They thought they were being prudent without being reactionary. But within days they learned it was the wrong decision. Sixty people attended—half of the total choir. Now, three weeks later, 45 have tested positive for Covid-19 or are exhibiting symptoms (without yet being tested); two have died and at least three have been hospitalized.

Here in Houston I participated in a church choir just a week and a half before that. As far as I know, we’re all still fine. But at that point I think we hadn’t had any local cases yet. I feel blessed to have gotten in all the socializing I did, safely, before we had to take precautions. But in the interactions we had that last week before being shut down, we were also trying to be prudent without being reactionary.

It’s not usually a matter of stupidity; it’s a matter of not knowing enough. Until we know who actually carries the virus, we’re stuck making deductions based on insufficient data.

I’ve been following this interactive map. It has raw numbers, but not per population info. 

Interactive map of Covid-19 worldwide
screenshot from here

The Houston Chronicle has provided this map more relevant to just Texas, also raw numbers without population info. 

Interactive map of Covid-19 in Texas,
screenshot from here

The more data the better. I have to make decisions for myself, balancing the emotional and the rational. I naturally lean more toward Spock than either Bones or Kirk. But when there isn’t enough data, more emotion creeps in than I’d prefer. I don’t like to just guess. I am, however, pretty comfortable staying home; that has always been true. But there’s a lot of anxiety surrounding things as mundane as grocery shopping. I could do well with some going back to normal.

May God bless the researchers and innovators. We could use more testing—quick and easy and cheap for absolutely everyone. We could use more equipment—ventilators, protective equipment. We could use medicines that work to treat this. And we could use more data to help with wise decision-making.

Innovation

One of the characteristics of a free civilization is innovation. Finding new solutions to problems that come up. In fact, in a free society, new problems are an opportunity. If you can come up with a solution—a way to help people with a given problem—then you get shown appreciation for that, often in the form of payment to represent the value. But, regardless of immediate payback, innovation happens, because free people have an attitude of looking for ways to meet the needs of others.

That kind of thing has been going on during this pandemic crisis.

There have been calls for the president to invoke the war powers act, which technically he has done. But, as he says, and as the Surgeon General has reiterated, you don’t have to order people to do what they’re doing anyway.

Here are some of the solutions to problems that have been offered.

Ford Motor Company—also GM and Tesla—offered to build ventilators to meet the shortage. Because of air conditioning, heating, and circulation systems they build into cars, they just need to do a bit of retooling. 

What’s interesting is that it’s something they knew about their industry, when they recognized society’s need, that a central government planner would not have known. If government had needed to choose an industry to gear up and make more ventilators, it probably would have turned to the obvious—the manufacturers already building those things. But those companies are probably already functioning at near their capacity, which was built on what had been the demand for their supply. They would have had to build new factories from the ground up. Auto manufacturers just have to retool their existing manufacturing, to adapt toward producing the needed ventilators. No new buildings necessary. They offer, and the President says go for it, and thank you.

It’s a win-win. Rather than shutting down their facilities, because shutdowns caused by the virus had led to fewer people buying cars, the automakers can keep people working to produce something considered essential.

New Dyson-invented ventilator
image from here

Dyson, the vacuum cleaner manufacturer, also went into innovation mode. In just ten days they invented a new ventilator—adapted from the air-moving machine they already know so well—and are set to produce 15,000. Thank you, vacuum cleaner people; government hadn’t thought of you. 

Innovation is underway everywhere. In hospitals, where ventilators are in use, Dr. Alain Gauthier, an anesthetist in Ontario, Canada, thought, “What if this one ventilator could be adapted to serve more than one person at a time? Does it produce enough air pressure?” The answer was yes. With ten minutes of “evil geniusing,” he turned a single ventilator into one that could serve nine patients.   Dr. Gauthier brought the knowledge to bear, but he didn’t invent it; he watched a YouTube video that showed how two Detroit doctors reworked the machines back in 2006. Not all machines can provide that much added capacity; nine is an ultimate. But even doubling or tripling the usefulness of a single machine is a significant improvement.

tweet from a coworker of Dr. Gauthier
found here

Another problem in need of a solution is a shortage of surgical masks. I checked online the first day I heard about the virus spreading—back in January. Amazon was sold out. They let you put a note on your account to be notified when they become available again. So far they haven’t. That’s OK for me; I’m not a medical professional. In a pinch, I think we’re good with a few painting masks in the garage—which, by the way, are being used now by hospitals, since that is a perfectly adequate new source in a shortage.

A high school friend is a quilter, and posted
these masks on her Facebook page.

Someone came up with the idea of sewing surgical masks, and they put out a pattern. They may not be as safe for healthcare workers as the N-95, but they will be better than running out and may be adequate for less critical care. Quilters and crafters have been using their fabric scraps and sudden abundance of time to fill the demand for face masks—with color. And they’re using social media to find sources to get them where they can get used.

Just setting your mind to a problem is a way toward solving it. Back in 2017, here in Houston, we were using a whole lot of N-95 masks when mucking out flooding homes, to keep from breathing in mold spores and other illness-causing things. Our church was one of many to send out work teams, and our worldwide relief efforts supplied a lot of supplies. (We still have a generator at our house, supplied by the Church, from Hurricane Ike, for example.) And they continue to do that worldwide. 

Anyway, a stake president (leader over around ten congregations) in College Station, about an hour and a half from Houston, remembered that they had stored a box of supplies at the church building after Harvey relief. Our churches aren’t really set up for storing things, but many of them do have yellow Helping Hands shirts and a few leftover supplies in a box because of frequent disasters in the Gulf Coast region. That box came to mind when he became aware of the N-95 mask shortage. And, sure enough, there was a good supply of several hundred he was able to donate to local hospitals.

The way a free society is set up, people tend to think in terms of solving people’s problems. It’s what we do. And I’m happy to see that, so far during this pandemic, that’s what people are up to. If we keep it up, we’ll be out of this soon, and back to our regular lives—with maybe a little better appreciation for the innovators and problem solvers. And our free lives.

Crisis Legislation

When a crisis comes up in your world, who do you turn to?

I turn to God, who has all power.

Some people turn to government, which has all the power—that is, all the power we people had already, that we granted to government to do for us—plus all the power it usurped from us.

Neither God nor government is a wish-granting service.

I plan to continue turning to God for what is actually essential. And I’ll keep an eye on government because of its power-usurping propensity.

One of my concerns during this pandemic is government response. Will it be enough to do what we need for protection of life, liberty, and property? Or will it be an interference that will do the opposite of the life-liberty-and-property-preserving goal?

CDC Coronavirus illustration, found here

We’re in the middle of things, and there’s so much we don’t know that I can’t clearly predict. But I want to have a way of looking at things that is principle based, which means it will apply even in these unusual circumstances.

Should everyone not in a critical job be staying home, working from there if possible, or just waiting things out and hoping to recover economically later? I think so. We’re doing that. We worked from home beforehand, so it’s our non-work life that is largely affected. That doesn’t mean we’re not economically affected. It has been scary.

And what about all those little businesses, working so very hard to make a success of things? This isn’t their fault. This isn’t—as the crisis in 2008 was—the result of a whole lot of really bad business decisions. This is more like Hurricane Harvey, where a disaster came upon us. Some businesses got wiped out. Others held on and slowly worked their way back up.

In that case, the rest of the economy—outside the flood zone—was doing pretty well. This time, there is no outside unaffected zone.

I think a government disaster response is appropriate in this case—to preserve life, liberty, and property. So now it’s a matter of what response is appropriate.

This past weekend the Senate put forth a bi-partisan relief bill, of almost $2 trillion. There have already been two other bills; this is a phase 3. The purpose is to keep businesses and individuals afloat so that, after the crisis has passed, the economy can naturally get back into full production. If there’s mass bankruptcy, that will greatly hinder a bounce back.

However, the Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, put the kibosh on it.   It wasn’t to her liking. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is angry. My Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, is angry—and as a veteran specially trained to take strategic action rather than give in to emotion, anger is not common for him. 

I think I have questions we can ask about what might be acceptable in such a relief bill:

·         Does this mitigate economic damages to businesses and individuals caused by the virus and our response to it?

·         Does this help preserve businesses so that recovery will be possible faster following the end of the crisis?

That’s pretty simple, in theory. If we have such a bill, it should help individuals get by for now, while they may not be able to work for no fault of their own or their employer’s, so that they can continue to have food and housing necessities. And it should help businesses who would otherwise face bankruptcy or massive downsizing (job losses)—not because of their bad decisions, but because of the pandemic’s effect on supply and demand—so that those businesses still exist and can keep people hired, or hire people back on, following the crisis. Without businesses available to hire people, it will be a longer, harder time to get back on our feet economically.

But the House Majority Whip James Clyburn let slip their real reason for refusing to accept, reject, or even discuss the bipartisan Senate bill that was sent to them: “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Similar to Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, referencing basic Marxist theory when he said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

House Majority Whip James Clyburn and Speaker Nancy Pelosi
photo credit Greg Nash, image found here

In the Spherical Model, we can see that it’s a tyranny approach: use the fear people have during chaos (create the chaos, if you need to), so you can offer them security if they will just grant you power over their freedoms. You move from chaotic tyranny to statist tyranny, because they’re really close together.

As a result of the Democrat stonewalling, the market dropped this morning. If the procedural vote had gone the other way, chances are good the market would have had a bit of a rally.

Rep. Crenshaw sent out examples of what the bipartisan Senate bill would have done:

·         Provide immediate relief to businesses large and small. Payroll, rent, and utility expenses FORGIVEN for small business loans.

·         ‪Put cash in the hands of Americans in need with direct payments.

·         ‪Bolster unemployment benefits for people out of work.

·         Limit relief money from going to CEO compensation or stock buybacks.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw post, from Facebook

Then he passed along examples of what the Democrats put in their 1,119-page alternative emergency relief bill: 

·         Conduct risk-limiting audits of results of elections.

·         Bail out the US postal service from its current debt.

·         Compare pay among racial and ethnic minorities.

·         Require early voting nationwide.

·         Require same day voter registration.

·         Protect collective bargaining and official time for federal employees.

·         Require airlines to fully offset their carbon emissions.

·         Improve consumer information regarding release of greenhouse gases from flights.

·         Modify minimum funding standards for community newspaper plans.

While this wasn’t on the list he sent out, I heard from The Blaze that Pelosi was trying to put an abortion slush fund into the coronavirus relief bill. And Guy Benson added in a tweet, expansion of wind and solar tax credits.

Apply the questions. Pelosi fails to convince me that postal debt, same day voter registration, taxpayer-funded abortions, or alternative energy tax credits will help mitigate damage to anyone, businesses or individuals, who might be suffering economic damage caused by the virus and our response to it.

Earlier today on the STA Money Hour, the guys were talking about this game-playing by the Democrats, on a show that is rarely political: 

This is an illness, a global pandemic that came from some other part of the world that ultimately infected our country, and now we have to deal with this. And we have told businesses and people to just shut it down. Close your doors. Stop coming in. So there is the demand shock, and then there’s the supply shock, because you can’t get anything made, can’t get anything bought, unless it’s just generally the essentials.

And that’s what these payments are for. To vote that down because ultimately it didn’t provide things that they wanted longer term is unbelievable to me.

They agreed that, with all the gains of the first three years of the Trump presidency wiped out suddenly, while not his fault, the recession we’re probably already in will cause political difficulty for his reelection. However, the obvious game playing by Democrats in this time of crisis is shameful and ought to cost them politically as well.

At the Spherical Model, we have a general list of questions about whether a policy is a proper role of government, or will be an interference that will cause unintended consequences, likely the exact opposite of the stated purpose. These are the questions:

·         Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government? 

·         Does the policy infringe in any way on natural right, including but not limited to those enumerated in the Bill of Rights?

·         Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, as enumerated in the Constitution?

My reflex is to say, if there’s an economic problem, government should do nothing but get out of the way. So I’m definitely skeptical that whatever is in the $2 trillion Senate relief bill answers those general questions the right way. But, if something indeed should be done this time, then, under difficult circumstances—time pressures, and legislators themselves being quarantined—we won’t get “perfect,” and may have to settle for “acceptable for now.” We’re doing damage control—for our economy and, probably later, for our Constitution.

At least I see reason to trust my Congressman to be asking these questions and applying them to policy. And I’ve been pleased with our president’s approach of involving the free market, rather than dictating to it.

What I don’t trust are Democrat legislators who see this crisis as leverage to purposely go against our Constitution, against the proper role of government, and against the good of the American people.

via GIPHY

Look to Literature

With a global pandemic going on, if you’re spending more time at home than usual and wondering what to do, maybe it’s time to read a book or two, or ten.

We’re in the middle of this pandemic, so maybe there’s some literature to enlighten us. I’m avoiding The Hot Zone or I Am Legend for now. I’m less interested in the fear, looking more at the strategic and moral questions and how they’ve been handled.

cover image from here

Last week, I think it was the very day we were directed to avoid gatherings of ten or more people, I was in the middle of Brandon Sanderson’s The Hero of Ages, third in the Mistborn Saga. That series is made up of two trilogies, the first three from an earlier age, and the second three of a later age—early industrial age, with trains and guns, but still the semi-magical aspects of the earlier trilogy. I’ve read them all, mostly out of order. This is the last one for me, the third in the earlier trilogy.

One of the main characters in The Hero of Ages is a leader named Elend. He’s now the emperor, after the defeat of the Lord Ruler in the previous book—which ended up setting free an evil force that is wreaking havoc in their world.

There are a couple of significant oddities in their world: mist and ash. The dark mist comes out at night. People have been superstitious about it for centuries, worried it can harm them. But the ones with the special powers know the mist is safe, just a part of nature. Until now.

Now the mists are starting to kill people. Also, the mists are coming earlier, before dusk, and staying later, after dawn, encroaching on the day and shortening the time the sun is out for crops, so the food supply is threatened. It’s further threatened because of the falling ash, possibly from some distant volcano. This ash is very black, not a normal ashy gray, and the growing ashfall has to be shoveled off paths and crops each day, also threatening the food supply.

So, in this natural disaster, Elend is trying to gather forces to fight off the evil. I don’t know how all of that is going to go yet. But he’s moving an army toward a nearby city state that has some particular resources they will need. The plan is to negotiate if possible, but fight if necessary.

Meanwhile, the mist is attacking villages, and anyone out and about. It is like a plague. It doesn’t strike anyone indoors, even inside a tent such as the soldiers are housed in during their trek. So the soldiers can safely stay inside until the mist passes. But that is getting later and later in the day.

The mist seems to arbitrarily attack some and leave others. And among those attacked, some are killed that very day, while others remain ill and then recover—leaving some of their cohorts worried that they are cursed somehow. But once the mist has passed over someone, they’re impervious to any future mist attack.

Elend realizes that they can’t get into a battle while his troops are hiding in their tents until the mist passes. They could be attacked by an army of mist survivors. What he realizes they have to do is purposely expose themselves. All of them. While they are far enough out from the city to be safe from attack.

He knows he will lose men. He is calling on them all to risk their lives: follow his order and probably survive to become inoculated soldiers, but possibly die. These are healthy men, so he hopes that will be in their favor. But he thinks long and hard before giving the order.

By the way, an exact 16% die. To the man. Of those attacked with illness, they remain ill for exactly 16 days. Something weird is going on. But now they have data to work with.

OK, so that is one approach: mass exposure, acceptable casualty rate—with the survivors becoming an immune population.

I’m looking at the ways various countries are handling this Wuhan novel coronavirus known as COVID-19.

Elend’s way looks something like Italy or Iran. His 16% is a pretty high casualty rate—ours is unknown because exposure is unknown, but will probably turn out to be more like 1-3%. But we live in an age where wiping out even one or two of every group of a hundred we participate in looks pretty ugly. Also, Italy has an older population, which seems to be more susceptible to serious illness. And serious illnesses require hospital beds, ventilators, and other resources that aren’t usually required in such high numbers. Italy’s leaders are making the tough decisions about who gets those resources. And the world looks on horrified as they decide not to treat people over age 80, but just let them die. 

Korea has been possibly the most successful. To start with, they knew not to trust the Chinese government. With their first case, they caused “social distancing,” as we’re doing here. And they tested widely. Anyone who tested positive was put in absolute quarantine. Having testing resources was a huge bonus for them, which we are just ramping up to here.

Other countries have been trying other methods. Quarantine the elderly and immune-system compromised, while others can go about their lives almost as normal. Denmark is trying this; we’ll get data from them that can be used in future decision-making. If it works, it’s less financially devastating than semi-quarantining everyone—or totally quarantining everyone, as China has had to do. Great Britain was on the Danish path but found casualties too high and moved toward more general lockdown.

We’ve had a more general lockdown in the US, getting more and more strict as the virus spreads. The plan here is to lengthen the time frame for people to get the virus, so that the supply of beds and ventilators and other resources does not get overwhelmed. To “flatten the curve,” as they say, based on this graph:

image from here

People have been spreading a meme that says, “Hey, remember when everyone rushed to the store to buy toilet paper at the same time and it ran out before the supply could be restocked and everyone freaked out? Now imagine the same thing at your local hospital. But instead of TP that’s out, it’s beds and ventilators. That’s why everything is cancelled. That’s why you should stay home.”

Another book that came to mind during this crisis is Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith. It’s about a doctor/researcher. It has been too long since I last read it, but I remember a couple of things about Martin Arrowsmith, the main character. He is pretty flawed. He has some idealistic reasons for researching cures for plague outbreaks. But there is also a lot of excitement at the chance to take on a real life problem, to have personal purpose. Arrowsmith wants to find out who he is, and be more than he has been. And he needs to be better. His wife, Leora, and his mentor, Dr. Gottlieb, give him support in that quest. Gottlieb describes their world in religious terms:

To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of very obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith (p. 267).

Often Arrowsmith is restless and dissatisfied. Then comes the excitement of a real outbreak in the West Indies. Bacillus pestis among rats, spreading to people, thought at first to be just a flu. He has the opportunity to experiment. And the ethical dilemma of experimenting on people. But he goes. And he makes what he thinks is likely to be a cure. Tragedy strikes. And guilt. And resolve. Go ahead and read it.

The book, from a century ago, is way behind the science of today. But it’s probably still worth reading, because it’s more about the life inside this man’s mind than it is about science (although a scientist did help Lewis with the writing of it).

I watched a video a couple of weeks ago, on body language, looking at a CNN interview with Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the CDC. Mandy, the bombardsbodylanguage.com commentator/instructor, points out how his face lights up, and he smiles, talking about what we would normally consider bad news. But this man is a scientist, with responsibility over outbreaks such as this. His work has suddenly gotten very exciting. He’s not thinking about the mass casualties or economic disasters about to befall us; he’s thinking about what energizes him: the opportunity for new and exciting discovery. This might not seem like a normal human response, but it is normal for a type of person who does a specific type of work—and we need people who do that work. 

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield
screenshot from here

There are actual people out there, doing research, working for a response to this virus as fast as they can. Just this morning Glenn Beck interviewed a man named Gregory Rigano, Stanford Advisor to SPARK, and Project Lead for Clinical Trials for COVID-19 prevention, who was reporting that two drugs—I think working together, but both are also being studied separately—anyway, these drugs have been shown to cure the disease 100% of the time in six days. He referred to an immunologist from France, so I think that’s where this combination has been tried. He’s was asking for healthcare professionals to join in the open-data clinical trial. 

He hoped that within a couple of months, the treatment could be widespread. He still calls for social distancing, so we don’t overwhelm the available resources. But these drugs may give us time for other remedies and possibly vaccines to be developed in a year or two—without the world economy having to shut down until then.

The drugs he mentioned are generics that have been around for several decades. One is hydroxychloroquine, which was developed shortly after WWII for treating malaria, and has also been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The other is azithromycin, the antibiotic often referred to as Zithromax, or in its package called a Z-pak. The FDA has already approved these drugs; they just have to approve them for this off-label use.

Later today President Trump held a press conference announcing the FDA’s allowing for hydroxychloroquine and a couple of other drugs (I didn’t catch all the names, but azithromycin wasn’t among them, so there are additional ones) to be used for the off-label purpose of treating COVID-19. This is a very hopeful development. 

The FDA Commissioner, speaking alongside the President, said that, when he was a cancer doctor and researcher, he knew how important it was to offer a patient hope. Not false hope, but real hope. He believes the announcement today, along with other efforts to combat this illness, offers real hope. I think he’s right. I’m much more hopeful today than I was even yesterday.

We live in interesting times. My Utah friends and family lived through an earthquake, and its aftershocks, yesterday morning. One meme started referring to all that’s been going on as “apocalypse bingo,” and the card is filling up.

Our literary friend Gandalf had this conversation with Frodo over such times:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”        —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

image found here

From Home

Schools here are shut down. At first it was a week extension of spring break. Then it was another two weeks or so. Then there was this headline:

“Large numbers” of Texas kids could miss rest of school year, education commissioner warns.

This is part of the attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19 to avoid overwhelming healthcare resources. Our churches are also closed. Political conventions (probably any other convention as well) are being postponed. What had been a request to avoid gatherings over 100 went down to 50, and earlier today the President and team announced we should avoid gatherings over 10.

Here at the Spherical Model household, we were already working at home. But that didn’t mean staying home all the time. So, apparently to enforce his need to abide by the directive, Mr. Spherical Model went and broke his ankle over the weekend. Ouch! Looks, as of today, that no surgery will be needed, so it will just be a temporary adjustment. Been there, done that. Healing happens—eventually. So, anyway, we’re staying home.

But, about those schools. What do families do when the government fails to educate their children as promised?

Homeschool.

That's the realization that hit me when someone offered this helpful schedule:

Found on Facebook; don't know original source

I thought, "That looks like a homeschool schedule." Not exactly ours. I knew homeschoolers who scheduled out the entire day in 15-minute increments. Ours was much less structured, but there was always an underlying schedule or expectation. It turns out there isn’t a right or wrong way: there is just your way, which will look different from everybody else’s way.

By the way, there was a followup to that graphic, with some humorous reality:

But what does it take for education to happen? It doesn't require anything that looks like a classroom reproduced in a home. Instead, it requires acting intentionally. Following through. And enjoying it together. Improved relationship means learning happens better. There’s evidence that learning can actually be undone in a negative environment—like a public middle school or high school where a child faces bullying or lack of social acceptance.

Here’s the thing: the government has been failing to adequately educate our children for quite a long time. This pandemic is just getting everybody’s attention.

I’m not the only one thinking along these lines as we hunker down in our virus-free homes. Andrew Klavan said this in his podcast today:

Maybe we can use this moment to think about what an even better future might look like….

Now that children are staying home from school and workers are telecommuting, maybe this is a moment to wonder: do we really need to send our kids to government facilities where teachers’ unions keep dangerous incompetence in place, spouting leftist gender horse manure? Couldn’t more moms work from home so that kids could be schooled in the values of their families? It’s worth wondering, anyway, if our new technology could bring back some of the home industries.

Maybe this is a moment when we solve the college debt problem by not sending kids to crappy colleges where they learn to hate their native land by reading communist histories by guys like Howard Zinn. Maybe this is the moment when places like Hillsdale can teach the truth in beauty online, and that’ll count as a college education.

Many more people could homeschool than thought they could. Here’s an opportunity to find out whether you can. And the world is adjusting to help you out.

I’m about to share a bunch of memes that we homeschoolers are getting a kick out of. Then I’ll share with you some of the links that have popped up just this week to help you out. The first has been around a while; I don't know the origin. The others were passed along by a homeschool friend; they were listed as posted by Leah Hovey (whom I don't know; she may have created them or just passed them along). 

OK, here are the links for you online learning enjoyment:

Scholastic releases free daily courses for kids stuck home amid coronavirus school closures

Over30 Virtual Field Trips with Links

Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden Home Safari Facebook Live each weekday at 3pm EDT

Stuck at Home? These 12 Famous Museums Offer Virtual Tours You Can Take on Your Couch

Paris Museums Put 100,000 Images Online for Unrestricted Public Use

  

75+ Entertaining and Educational Activities for When You’re Stuck Indoors

  

LUNCH DOODLES with Mo Willems!

Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence at Home

LearnInColor.com

Not long ago, I posted about some of the various online resources for free or nearly free.

So, think about this: if it’s possible to do this for free, from home, do we need public schools? Is their main purpose just to house our students as a daycare facility? Or worse, to indoctrinate our kids with things we’d never want them to be taught if it were up to us?

Because it is up to us.

So, let this be your experiment. Take this sudden break from how things are always done. Use it. Choose to enjoy this crazy time with the family. Read aloud together. Talk about things that interest you, and what interests them. Use these great online resources. Do some online exploring every day. Do some play-learning together every day. And see if their appetite for learning goes up. See if yours does.

Maybe you were meant to be your kids’ main teacher all along.

From the Other Quote File

The last post was long and arduous. So I wanted something of a respite today. Occasionally on such days I do a quote file post. I have a very large quote file related to the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres. Enough for a book.

But I also have another quote file. More personal. Related to things of interest to me, rather than specifically related to the Spherical Model. I haven’t shared these before. But today’s a good day for a sampling. This quote file tends toward the religious, but also just things I want to save because they’re well said. I hope you can take a moment away from the news of the day and enjoy these, for respite.

_________________________

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.—Blaise Pascal

Albert Einstein
(image from Getty Images)

We should take care not to make the intellect our God; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.—Albert Einstein

Keep studying the scriptures, keep doing the things that build your faith in Jesus Christ and then notice the wise choices you are naturally drawn to make.—Russell M. Nelson

When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.—Zig Ziglar

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.—C. S. Lewis

It’s a lot easier to change your beliefs about the world than it is to change reality itself.—Rob Scott

It’s a problem when words like Turnt, Fleek or Bae are more understandable than actual words like Ethics, Morals, Respect and Integrity.—Will Smith, “House of Leaders”

If you think you’ve blown God’s plan for your life, rest in this:

You, my beautiful friend, are not that powerful.—Lisa Bever

You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.—Warren Buffett

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.― Emma Donoghue

Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay…small acts of kindness and love.

—Gandalf (Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien)

Gandalf, from Lord of the Rings movie
image found here

There is more individuality in those who are more holy. Sin, on the other hand, brings sameness; it shrinks us to addictive appetites.—Neal A. Maxwell

God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools…. And He has not been disappointed…. If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.—Justice Antonin Scalia

The biggest mistake in communication is assuming that it has taken place.

—Jon Erwin

Do not overpack the luggage you plan to take with you when you leave this world, for we simply cannot get most mortal things by celestial customs; only the eternal things are portable.—Neal A. Maxwell

Endurance is patience concentrated.—Thomas Carlisle

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

—Mahatma Ghandi

You do not have to believe everything you think.

(seen on Mindvalley Facebook page July 21, 2019, original reference unknown)

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than it is about courageously and relentlessly doing God’s will.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
image from Brittanica

 The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer