Thursday Throughput: Brooding Cicadas Edition

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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11 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    ThTh5: Discovery+ has the show “Chasing Ocean Giants”, where the host swims with sperm whales, the well known hunters of giant squid. They even manage to attach a camera to one and get video of it hunting squid at depth.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    ThTh1: I lived through so many cicada broods as a kid, growing up in WI. Don’t have them out here in WA.Report

  3. Michael Cain says:

    ThTh8: I have read articles suggesting that sharks are not adventurous gourmets. This has been suggested as one of the reasons so many people survive the infrequent shark attacks: the shark mistakes the silhouette of a surfer paddling out for a seal, bites, thinks the shark equivalent of “Ew! That’s not a seal!”, lets go, and leaves.Report

  4. Michael Cain says:

    ThTh3: One of the front pagers over at LG&M has been harping on the hospitalization thing since shortly after vaccination statistics started accumulating: even if you’re only going to think of yourself, vaccination makes the chances of hospitalization very small, and of dying minuscule. Given the numbers, this is the kind of thing that Kaiser Permanent tends to provide to their members for free even when the feds aren’t picking up the tab. You can vaccinate a lot of people for the cost of one person in intensive care for two weeks.

    Buying a billion doses of the J&J vaccine for Africa (for example) is almost certainly faster and cheaper than equipping African countries with the Moderna and/or BioNTech IP (and IP not held by Moderna or BioNTech but necessary to make their vaccines), plus equipment, plus training. It seems obvious to me that the third-world countries demanding those things have no intent of stopping at Covid-19 vaccines. Africa (collectively) is going to go after its own vaccines for Marburg and Ebola and all the other hemorrhagic fever viruses, no matter what the official terms on the IP transfer were.Report

  5. Pinky says:

    ThTh2 – re: “It will be years before we really knew what went right and went wrong during the pandemic.”

    We have to recognize that we’ll never know a lot of what went right or wrong, because so much of it involves probability. It’s like how to win at blackjack. The best strategy is of course not to play, but the second best is to follow a particular set of rules that took a long time to figure out, and don’t ever trust your instinct. But even that strategy is no guarantee. Outcome is not determined by strategy.

    Worse is the fact that there are no good ways to measure adherence to sound hygiene. Maybe some people finally learned that government recommendation or policy X will make some people do X, but many people less than X and many people more than X. It’s probably true that a requirement of X has stronger compliance than a recommendation of X, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

    So it’s like trying to learn blackjack strategy from a distance where you can’t see the cards. And you’re only allowed to watch one hand.Report

  6. Pinky says:

    ThTh1 – A single cicada is viscerally disgusting. Now imagine so many that they’re on everything. Everywhere, a climbing, crawling, flying mass of insects. Then they die in such numbers that you can hardly walk without feeling the crunch of a cockroach beneath your feet. It’s the closest thing to a horror movie I’ve ever been through.Report

  7. North says:

    ThTh2 yeah I’ve seen a lot of science thrown around- especially on the left- where the way it’s being used makes it synonymous with theology. People need to recognize the limits of what science can do.Report

    • Pinky in reply to North says:

      In some corners of the right, I’m seeing too much emphasis on the NY / NJ death stats and on the Danish mask study.Report

      • North in reply to Pinky says:

        In my limited opinion: on the right science tends to be invoked in its proper field but then they push junk science studies that are basically nonsense that says what they want to hear. On the left the science that gets pushed is more often properly done but the interlocuter invokes it to try and resolve questions that science can’t answer or the study in question is purporting to opine on something science probably can’t answer.Report

      • Michael Siegel in reply to Pinky says:

        The Danish mask study is a favorite of theirs because it’s garbage. Self-reported study of people who were just given masks vs. people who weren’t. And done at a time when COVID numbers were low so you couldn’t measure any real effect. The error bars are the giveaway.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Michael Siegel says:

          I’d say a favorite and garbage, but not a favorite because it’s garbage.

          I wish there had been a good study, but I don’t think it’s even possible. Too many behaviours, too much randomness in frequency and extent of exposure.Report