Sure. I just thought it was worth drawing a distinction between “level 1 happens, but not always and often commingled with other levels” (which is true) and “level 1 never happens” (which is a one-way ticket to cloudcuckooland, but which many people seem to believe anyway). If you find yourself in a situation where nobody ever operates at level 1, you should leave.
Jay Molstad
Karma: 323
Sure they do. If you ask a random stranger “where is the toilet?” or “when does the event begin?”, you will probably get a level 1 answer.
If you are saying that no one operates exclusively on level 1, then I agree with you. I would even agree that communication often happens on multiple levels at once. But level 1 communication definitely happens; we often communicate actual, literal facts. In cases where there isn’t any real emotion involved, like giving directions to strangers, we may operate only on level 1 for a moment.
I think that’s basically it. Medical research uses an extremely strict regime for patient safety, and that sort of research is much too risky to pass muster.
Analysis of COVID-19 superspread events (linkpost)
The SARS-1 virus has been known for 15+ years now, and vaccine trials resulted in vaccine-induced infection aggravation (see also here). There is some reasonable concern that vaccination for COVID could trigger the cytokine storm effect. It doesn’t help that the novel coronavirus is already mutating, which ” raises the alarm that the ongoing vaccine development may become futile in future epidemic if more mutations were identified.” Coronaviruses are hard to fight.
People commonly reach into the little pockets behind seats for the in-flight magazines/barf bags/headphones/etc. People commonly secure things under their seats or in the luggage compartments. Armrests and seatbelts are commonly used for the stated purpose, and their geometry makes UV sterilization rather complicated. You may be underestimating the practical issues.
If you’re mainly concerned about viruses in the air, ventilation is probably a better solution (while the plane is unoccupied on the ground).
Your link seems to be dead. But I’m not too worried about that; an ordinary person will respond to uncomfortable levels of visible light by squinting, looking away, wearing sunglasses, etc. without expert intervention.
If your flux is 1,558 times that of sunlight, that’s definitely alarming. At that point, the wavelength might not matter very much; you might be dumping enough energy to sterilize surfaces by heating.
The paper indicates that the treatment generally works by stimulating porphyrins in bacteria or fungi of interest. Humans can have light sensitivity due to porphyrins, a condition called porphyria, but it’s fairly rare. Unless the novel coronavirus has porphyrins in its chemistry, I wouldn’t expect to this effect on the virus, as the paper notes. The reported data indicate that the effect is dependent on other elements of the mixture; something else in the solution may break down under the flux and attack the virus.
My reasoning was basically similar to this sentence from the paper: An alternative mechanism of inactivation when FCV is suspended in MM may be associated with the LED emission spectrum extending slightly into the UVA region, meaning the virus is exposed to very low-level UVA photons (~390 nm).
Remember that airplanes and taxis have lots of shadowed places. Elevators less so, so I’d expect that to work better. Sticking a UV lamp in a plane’s ventilation (away from people) might help quite a bit, though.
DNA has an absorption peak at 254 nm. Light of that wavelength or below causes chemical changes to DNA that are fatal to any organism.
This is also (very nearly) the maximum absorption of the ozone molecule. The formation of the ozone layer seems to have been a prerequisite to non-aquatic life.
But 405 nm shouldn’t be a significant issue, especially with LEDs. That’s within the visible spectrum, and if visible light was going to kill us we’d have noticed by now. If the flux is alarmingly high, sunblock and sunglasses should do it.
If you’re not good at discernment, how will you choose whom to follow? There are many lousy leaders to be followed.
There are other apes, including Washoe and Kanzi, who have been observed to use language.
Admittedly, they weren’t very good at it by human standards.
I’ll add that Section 4 of the 14th amendment of the US Constitution makes it unconstitutional for the US government to default on its debt. However, the US government is currently printing money at prodigious rates; the possibility that the dollar may not hold its value is a realistic concern. Naturally this would impact the value of dollar-denominated bonds.
Well, we can say that 27⁄30 (90%) patients improved. With a very high level of confidence, we can say that this disease is less fatal than Ebola (which would have killed 26 or so).
I’ve definitely seen this in the academic literature. And it’s extra annoying if the study used a small sample; the p-values are going to be large simply because the study didn’t collect much evidence.
OTOH, chemotherapy isn’t a very good example because there are other factors at work:
Chemotherapy has serious side effects. There are good reasons to be cautious in using extra.
There are also not-as-good reasons to avoid using extra chemotherapy. Medical care is highly regulated and liability-prone (to varying extents in various areas). In the US, insurers are notoriously reluctant to pay for any treatment they consider unnecessary. Departing from standard practice is likely to be expensive.
I’ll add that this is a cycle; Stage 5 is Stage 1. People operating in Stage 4 are paying very little attention to objective reality. Accordingly, their objective situation is usually deteriorating; competitors operating at lower levels gradually eat their lunch without them really noticing. The cycle restarts when objective conditions deteriorate to the point that they can no longer be ignored and the complicated games of social signaling are abandoned. To extend Strawperson’s comment:
Level 1: “There’s a lion across the river.” = There’s a lion across the river.
Level 2: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I don’t want to go (or have other people go) across the river.
Level 3: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I’m with the popular kids who are too cool to go across the river.
Level 4: “There’s a lion across the river.” = A firm stance against trans-river expansionism focus grouped well with undecided voters in my constituency.Level 5/Level 1: “There’s a lion right here” = There’s a lion right here (We really should have been paying more attention to the actual lion and focus groups no longer seem important).
I was curious about how much we could rely on that safety, and it turns out there are threshold limit values (see the sixth slide) for UV-C. Between 200 and 220 nm the TLVs are .02 to .08 J/cm^2 (200 to 800 J/m^2), according to the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. At 5W/m^2 (your suggested irradiation) that gives you 40 to 160 seconds of reasonably safe human exposure.
My major worry is that around week 15 (if not earlier) empty store shelves will become a more pressing emergency than the virus.
True, but there are some anti-assembly laws being passed and enforced anyway. They’re clearly unconstitutional and, if left in place very long, will be struck down. Emergency actions are often more political than legal; if you do something illegal but the people who could check and balance you decide not to (hopefully because your actions make sense), you can get away with a lot.
There are limits; the perceived benefit of the action has to overcome the insult to legal propriety in the relevant minds. Banning meetings for a few weeks will probably fly, especially if the internet can substitute.
How would you settle the bet?