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https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/
A friend pointed me at that.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last year and almost a half. Every step of the way, uncertainty has made decision making hard and confidence impossible. On display has been all the things people do to find comfort in the midst of uncertainty and when feeling a lack of confidence in their own decisions.
I had, over the years, seen a lot of versions of the It Spreads By Touch theory, and mostly thought it was bunk. But people were really sure of it, so, you know, *shrug*. It’s nice to see that someone has tracked that particular error to its birth. The story if reminiscent of Antibiotics and Ulcers (there was this one idiot who completely destroyed all knowledge of the efficacy of abx against ulcers for like, 40 years, until the Aussies finally got that point through again). It is _also_ reminiscent of the Cancer Is Not Contagious / Cancer is Not an Infectious Disease Process (again, absolute bullshit). These bits of unproven (because you _can’t_ prove them — they are false!) certainty that are weaponized against marginal participants in academia and public institutions and which persist until either the perpetrator dies or a crisis forces people to change tack. But in this case, it took All Of the Above, because institutions. Maybe reinventing the wheel, maybe losing institutional memory is not the Bad Thing I tend to think it is.
It’s a lot smoother all around when, I’m Looking at You Not-A-Planet Pluto, the perpetrator of the bunk dies. Shouldn’t we be looking at _why_ the people who push this crap live so long, tho? I feel like they epitomize so much about longevity: you’ll live long if you have energy, and satisfying work, and power over others.
But if you have energy and satisfying work and power over others, you are probably going to do a lot of damage. Loyalty to that, to the institutions that can behave like the individuals, is really a problem.
As nice as it has been to have so many wonderful clean, public spaces as a result of persistently worrying about touch transmission, when airborne was our reality, I would rather we had spent the time and energy on better ventilation _and clear documentation of same_. I’ll be paying attention to upcoming flu seasons to see if I can tell whether ventilation really was improved; if it was, we may be reaping the benefits of that for decades to come.
A friend pointed me at that.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last year and almost a half. Every step of the way, uncertainty has made decision making hard and confidence impossible. On display has been all the things people do to find comfort in the midst of uncertainty and when feeling a lack of confidence in their own decisions.
I had, over the years, seen a lot of versions of the It Spreads By Touch theory, and mostly thought it was bunk. But people were really sure of it, so, you know, *shrug*. It’s nice to see that someone has tracked that particular error to its birth. The story if reminiscent of Antibiotics and Ulcers (there was this one idiot who completely destroyed all knowledge of the efficacy of abx against ulcers for like, 40 years, until the Aussies finally got that point through again). It is _also_ reminiscent of the Cancer Is Not Contagious / Cancer is Not an Infectious Disease Process (again, absolute bullshit). These bits of unproven (because you _can’t_ prove them — they are false!) certainty that are weaponized against marginal participants in academia and public institutions and which persist until either the perpetrator dies or a crisis forces people to change tack. But in this case, it took All Of the Above, because institutions. Maybe reinventing the wheel, maybe losing institutional memory is not the Bad Thing I tend to think it is.
It’s a lot smoother all around when, I’m Looking at You Not-A-Planet Pluto, the perpetrator of the bunk dies. Shouldn’t we be looking at _why_ the people who push this crap live so long, tho? I feel like they epitomize so much about longevity: you’ll live long if you have energy, and satisfying work, and power over others.
But if you have energy and satisfying work and power over others, you are probably going to do a lot of damage. Loyalty to that, to the institutions that can behave like the individuals, is really a problem.
As nice as it has been to have so many wonderful clean, public spaces as a result of persistently worrying about touch transmission, when airborne was our reality, I would rather we had spent the time and energy on better ventilation _and clear documentation of same_. I’ll be paying attention to upcoming flu seasons to see if I can tell whether ventilation really was improved; if it was, we may be reaping the benefits of that for decades to come.