The Pandemic Duality

The Pandemic Duality

Byrichard

There are currently two societies. On one side we have those who believe what they are told and take everything at face value. On the other side we have those that look at the bigger picture, that follow international news, and look at the big picture.


The society that believes what they are told without asking questions believes that the pandemic is over and that life is back to normal. They believe that there is no longer a need for masks, and that big events with plenty of people are without danger once again. Paradoxically the behaviour of the virus will give these people their moneys’ worth because it will not make them sick instantly. There is always a nice calm, before a wave of new infections. People will have normal lives of insouciance for a while. Eventually though, by mid September or later a new pandemic wave will hit and those that danced with the sirens will fall victim to their songs.


On the other side you have those that are looking at the big picture, that are seeing in international news that the pandemic doesn’t just end, by some miracle. We see that China and New Zealand make a massive effort to keep the pandemic under control. Shanghai went into full lockdown. Beijing is currently busy testing everyone, to see whether there is a problem, and if there is they are willing to react instantly.


In South Africa we see another wave, similar to the one from last year, but with reports of “The death rates may have been under-reported last year. The aim of this blog post is not to document every article and idea I saw, but rather to give a global view of what I remember to provide people with some context.


Every summer the number of sick drops down, so every summer in Europe would be the ideal time to work towards Covid zero, but people never do. This means that for year after year we live in pandemic insecurity, knowing that spending time indoors, with too big a group, will result in a mass-spreader event.


You may think “But you’re an idiot to worry so much, it’s just a little virus, plenty of people are fine.” and you’d be partially right. The problem is that there is a “what if?” element. When you’re hiking, climbing, diving or doing something dangerous you always ask “what if” and you assess whether the risk is too high to go ahead or not.


I was going to list all the organs that Covid could affect but instead I will simply refer to the tweets we see often that say “I went from training for my 11th marathon to struggling to shower” to “my resting heart rate is 120” to “my spouse died of Covid” to “my child is unable to attend school due to long covid”. The problem is serious enough for people with Long Covid to be dispensed from the GCSE exams. This is not nothing, and self isolation is for a valid reason.


Do I feel good or smart about isolating? Am I overfilled with joy? No, I feel like an idiot in certain circumstances. I feel sad that I don’t socialise at the moment. Is being this cautious worth it in the end? Of course the answer is no, until you fall sick with Long Covid, and you’re one year into your recovery, wishing you could finally be well enough to walk for 10 minutes without getting tired.


The emotional yoyo only goes up when I am reminded of the life I am not living. When I am in solitude I feel fine. When I study I feel fine. When I cycle and when I walk I feel fine, until I cross people not walking in solitude.


How young people felt during this pandemic in Switzerland


The table above shows how people have felt during this pandemic and what you see is that the young people have felt the worst about this pandemic but that for the first wave they were not happy but they seemed okay. I see this data and I believe that it shows that society could have coped with a prolonged soft lockdown to get to Zero Covid. With Zero Covid the second wave and the obligatory certificate would have been unnecessary.


It’s interesting to see how the 30-50 year olds joined together in mysery by December 2021.


Before I conclude this post I think that it’s worth looking at what New Zealand, Italy and Covid Zero countries are doing because they will suffer less from Long Covid, once the pandemic is over, twenty two years from now. I mention Italy because they have decided to keep masks at least until summer, if not longer. I would love for Switzerland and other countries to do the same. We are sleep walking into the next wave, but we are also missing yet another opportunity to get to Covid Zero.


SARS CoV-2 in wastewater


That is it for now.

Recycling Without A Mask
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Recycling Without A Mask

Byrichard

Yesterday I went to recycle. Two weeks ago when I went, everyone was wearing a mask. Yesterday when I went all the masks are gone. I was the only person wearing one. Within the last day or two the Swiss government has told people that they can walk around without a mask, and enjoy summer. They said this at the same time as there was an increase of new COVID-19 cases. Today the number of new infections has clearly started to rise. This is true of England, France, Spain and other countries.


European leaders decided to relax COVID restrictions just at the time when countries like Switzerland were getting within easy reach of COVID-zero. COVID-zero would mean zero infections for two weeks in a row. This would give us back real freedoms. Unfortunately, the Swiss government, and others, do not care about eradicating the disease. They care about not being booted out of power.


On the RTS website, written in French they wrote that the Delta variant is increasing quite strongly.


After weeks of new cases per day dropping the number of new cases has started to increase again.


https://twitter.com/mvankerkhove/status/1412330474014490625
WHO information about the increase in new cases globally and by region.


For weeks now I have been tweeting the pandemic isn’t over, as I see people behave as if it was. It is frustrating to see how people feel that the pandemic can be turned off from one day to the next. Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted: The Pandemic is not over, Be Smart, Play safe.


https://twitter.com/mvankerkhove/status/1412330488367357953


The pandemic, that I thought would be over in June 2020 is alive and well in July 2021 and people, who could have learned lessons from the last 470 days of pandemic seemed to have learned nothing. Add to this that governments are not bothered with eradicating the virus, and we are in a bizarre scenario, where people falling sick is acceptable. We are in an absurd scenario.

The COVID-19 Dynamic European Restriction Map

Byrichard

COVID-19 rules, restrictions and regulations are dynamic and changing much like drone rules. In Europe before you fly you should visit the local flight rule maps, to see where current restrictions are.


Information ranges from “You need third party insurance with coverage for up to two million in damages” or “In a town you are allowed up to this altitude, outside of a town, to that altitude, and in these regions you have a military flight corridor, thus a flying ban.


COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving situation so it would make sense to keep a Google Maps layer up to date with current information.


This information could be


  • prevalence of the virus
  • whether the number of cases is rising or declining
  • whether there are barriers or restrictions to entry
  • What are the curfew hours
  • What establishments are authorised to open
  • Where are the closest COVID-19 testing locations
  • Where are the closest Vaccination points
  • What is the hospital bed situation for COVID-19 situation


The demand for such a service is currently world wide and long lived. The motivation for such services may last for at least a few more months, if not seasons and years.


Google, Apple, Facebook, and maybe even Amazon, should work on creating such a service.

2020 – The Golden Opportunity to Be A Recluse

Byrichard

2020 – The Golden Opportunity to be a Recluse. If you’ve ever wanted a reason not to be social then open society’s behaviour, in regards to the COVID-19 virus, has provided us with a fantastic opportunity to enjoy being reclusive.


During a normal Spring and Summer I would be driving to the mountains to hike, climb and enjoy via ferrata with people but this year those plans have been destroyed. This year we can’t share the same room as others to sleep. We can’t even eat within two meters of other people.


There are no handshakes, no hugs and no “bises”. This year if you live alone you’re without physical contact. This year, the more solitary you like to be, the stronger the appeal of such a year.


In a normal year if you were single or below a certain age you’d be pressured to go out and be social, rather than staying at home to work on projects, read books or otherwise be solitary. This year there is no pressure to go out on Thursday and Friday night, and there is no pressure to go out to do group activities during the weekend.


With its single minded desire to reopen too early society has destroyed any chance of a normal summer being possible. Until the 21st of June it looked as if Switzerland was three or four weeks away from the pandemic being over, or at least wonderfully under control. There was a brief window with just 10-20 infections a day.


Speaking as an idealist I believe that we were so close to Switzerland getting to tens of new cases a day but recently the seven-day average is back to 100 cases a day.


Silver Linings


Source: https://www.corona-data.ch/


One of the silver linings is that the number of ventilated people declined to zero for several days, the number of intensive hospital cases is staying low and finally, that the number of regular COVID-19 patients was in decline, until two days ago.


At its maxium number of active infections Switzerland was at 98 percent of ICU capacity. Two more percent and triage would have been required.


Depending on whether you work for the airport or think as an environmentalist Geneva airport expects to be at 19 percent of capacity this summer, due to so few people travelling at the moment. It’s great for the environment, but a shame for jobs.


Societal Self Harm


Speaking from a strictly theoretical point of view we have centuries of pandemics to look back on. We have books such as La Peste by Camus, to turn back to. In theory, we know what to do in the case of pandemics, and how to avoid them. We also know how to control them.


We know that in Medieval times villages would shut down to the outside world for weeks or months at a time. We know that ships were quarantined offshore. In some cases, places of infection were marked.


As we watch the current pandemic we get the impression that lessons were never learned. We get the impression that people never studied plagues and other epidemics and pandemics. We get the impression that people are flying blind. This is a shame.


It’s a shame because we are in the 21st century. We live in an age where we have thousands of hours of documentaries about plagues, disease and epidemics. We live in an age where people can get advice and information straight from medical health professionals. We live in an age where everything can be ordered online. We live in an age where being trapped at home does not mean having conversations has to stop. We live in an age where many of us are information workers.


In light of all of this it seems illogical that we would live through the worst pandemic in human history.


I have seen a lot of discussion about rights but responsibilities have been skirted. The responsibility to wear a mask, the responsibility to keep human to human interactions to a minimum, the responsibility to avoid people rather than expect them to make the effort to be safe.


The self-sacrifice of not going on holiday, the self-sacrifice of not going to sit in a park half a meter from others…


With everything that society, as a whole knows, it is a shame that the pandemic coalesced into such a serious problem because we had the tools and knowledge to ensure that it would be dealt with as swiftly as the epidemics we have already lived through, in our own lifetimes.


At its core Switzerland, until the 21st of June Switzerland was doing everything right, and to a serious degree it is still doing the right thing, with the number of ventilated people being at zero and the number of serious cases also dropping.


At it’s core my only issue is with having a third summer with limited opportunities to meet new people. As long as the pandemic is around it seems more logical to give in, and use dating apps, to meet new people, instead.


The Up-Skilling opportunity.


A few weeks ago I sad that I would try to create my own WordPress theme, but I overshot that goal by learning CSS and redesigning my entire website. I have learned to create a CMS from scratch using PHP and MySQL. Now I’m learning Ruby On Rails and it’s going well. Ruby on Rails looks like an intuitive framework to work with. I’m working on changing my career path.

Day 72 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – British Anger At The Wrong Thing
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Day 72 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – British Anger At The Wrong Thing

Byrichard

I want to write about British anger at the wrong day today. As Switzerland gets closer and closer to zero cases and zero deaths per day it’s dangerously easy to think it will be over soon only to find out that it isn’t. I thought that by April 19th we could be back to normal but we weren’t. I thought that when the soft lock down was lifted we’d be able to do group activities. Of course we still can’t and I don’t want to get my hopes up anymore.


I speak about hope because from Thursday to Saturday or so there were no deaths in Switzerland linked to COVID-19 and then three in the last day or two. We seem to be even further along the long tail of the virus.


If you look at twitter, and what the Brits are tweeting about you see that they’re angry about Cummings 240 mile drive when people are not meant to go more than five miles from their homes. Guy Verhofstadt is saying:


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Day 61 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – World Community Grids Pandemic work units.

Byrichard

World Community Grids OpenPandemic work units are now ready. With your laptop or desktop, you can help find a cure for COVID-19.



As a World Community Grid volunteer, you download a secure software program to your computer. And when your computer is not using its full computing power, it will automatically run a simulated experiment in the background which will help predict the effectiveness of a particular chemical compound as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

Research: 
OpenPandemics – COVID-19: Project Overview


Downloading and installing the software and creating an account is quick and easy. Once you have done this, and once the application is running your laptop or desktop will help in the effort. It costs us little effort and we can still use the computer as usual.



The idea is not a new one. My laptops and desktops have been contributing to such efforts for decades now. I was introduced to this concept back in the late 90s to early 20th century. My first glimpse of this was the Seti@Home research project back in 2002.


With Grid computing, you don’t need to purchase or develop supercomputers. Instead, you rely on a networked cluster of computers to work together to process data. Instead of requesting and waiting for slots to become available on supercomputers scientists have access to thousands of machines to help them work through the data. Every work unit is worked on by at least two or more computers and verified.



World Community Grid has 650,000 individual contributers and 460 organisations helping in the effort. They have contributed to 31 research projects to date. This has resulted in 35 peer reviewed papers.


A graphic representation of the candidate being evaluated.


Over the years my computers have contributed 356 days of computing power. They have generated over a million points for mapping cancer markers. They have contributed to the Microbiome Immunity Project, FightAIDS@Home Phase 2, OpenZika, Outsmart Ebola Together, Genome Comparison, Help Defeat Cancer, Fight Aids@Home, and Smash Childhood Cancer.


My contributions so far.





Although Folding@Home gave people the power to help in the search to beat COVID-19 sooner I prefer the World Community Grid application because it runs in the background without me hearing the fans running. When you’re using a laptop that you want to keep using for years this is important.


I will leave you with this short video.





See you tomorrow.

Day 42 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Few Minutes of Rain
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Day 42 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Few Minutes of Rain

Byrichard

Today at around lunchtime we had a few minutes of rain for the first time in weeks but it didn’t last long. By the time I went out for my daily walk the ground was dry, as if it hadn’t rained at all. There was no mud to walk through so I came back as clean as when I left.


Untitled


The daily walk is a good part of my day because it forces me to have some AFK (Away from Keyboard) time. That’s the thought I had when starting the walk. For two hours a day I spend time looking at the landscape, at how the plants and fields are changing day to day and more. I notice how paths are being worn where they would not be worn in normal times.


New trails are forming in some places. As people attempt to discover the area around them, and stay away from cars a new set of trails is emerging. Yesterday I was not even appalled by a woman showing off about walking with an umbrella in the mountains. Solitary confinement makes me long for the day when I can go back to hiking with people.


Untitled


On today’s walk I went to see the cows quickly and tried to get a few seconds of them mooing but they were uncooperative so I have several seconds of cows just staring. Some people think of them as sentient beings that shouldn’t be eaten but the cows I looked at today didn’t seem to have much intelligence. They certainly don’t have the same character as cats.


Cascading Style Sheets and Website Improvements.


I thought that the Latin page I have would take hours to make mobile friendly so I put it off for a few days as I took time to think of a solution. Today I used the viewport meta tag and CSS table options to make that page more modern. What I thought would take hours took minutes.


I went back to my first blog post and worked my way forward from there making twenty to thirty pages AMP ready. In the process I added tags to those pages as well as quickly corrected typos, dead links and related problems.


I also started porting my old “Surfing the World Wide Waves (WWW)” blog to this installation of Wordpress. My reasoning is that since it’s a blog it makes sense to combine two generations. When enough of the content is ported across to the blog I will use content views to provide a more contemporary looking interface.


These are time consuming tasks but now that I’m unable to use Facebook or Twitter due to the lack of social interactions in the physical world I feel no choice but to avoid them. Avoiding Facebook and Twitter has had a positive effect. The less time I spend on either the more I have to show for the day.


It was interesting to read blog posts I wrote as a uni student and articles I wrote as a school teenager. It’s interesting to see how things have changed today.


Having said that I really like the For You tab on Tik Tok. I get recommendations like these. I like these recommendations because they make me thing forward, towards the future, rather than feel negative about the present.


@freeridewtour

Hugo Hoff going to the speed of light! ##FWT20 ##ski ##freeride ##challenge ##foryou ##foryoupage

? Blinding Lights – The Weeknd

Day 39 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Taking Portraits of Cows

Day 39 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Taking Portraits of Cows

Byrichard

I spent a few minutes taking portraits of cows during my afternoon walk today. Cows were standing by the barrier so it was easy to go up to each one and take their portraits. It’s not as if our vibrant social lives enable us to take portraits of people when we’re self-isolating. It’s day 39.


Daily walk day 39


Mobile First Website


This morning for three hours or so I continued working on making webpages mobile first and resubmitted them for indexing by Google. In the process I thought about how I have images that I could use to illustrate some of the points about geography, rock formations and other topics.


In the process I realised that some pages have been online for their fourth decade now. They were uploaded in the 90s, the navigation style was changed in the 2000s, they were dormant in the tens, and now in the 20s they’re mobile compliant. A side effect of this is that they now have a page load score of 100.


Day 38 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Contact Sports
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Day 38 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Contact Sports

Byrichard

By May we may be able to go back to doing sports in groups as long as they are not “contact sports” in Switzerland. For me this means hiking, running cycling and other related sports. For me climbing is a contact sport because we touch the same hand holds as everyone else climbing the routes, we use the same ropes and we share quickdraws and belay devices.


This being said I also have no desire to do sports like climbing at the moment because they require us to stand around and socialise and I haven’t really socialised in at least 38 days. I need to ease back into the world of the extrovert. Hiking is a good way to do that.


Visual Studio Code


Today I started watching a course on Linkedin learning about using Chrome for webmastering but got distracted with the idea of installing a server on my mac book pro. I then got even more distracted by Visual Studio Code.


I like this piece of software because it’s free, intuitive to use and quick. A few days ago I had spent hours playing with another html editing tool and the process was so laborious that i wasted a lot of time. With Visual Studio Code it’s fast and I’m getting through the task of making the old part of my website mobile friendly.



The process is interesting. The more pages I optimise the more experience I gain and the more efficient I become. I found that if I remove some bits of code the page is mobile compliant within two or three steps and I can move on to the next page, and the next one after that.


In theory these pages should always have been mobile friendly because they’re light. There is no CSS or other clunk. Images are also small as bandwidth was an issue in those days. It still is, but we have a firehose rather than a syringe today.


Webmastering is great because time really flies when you’re working on a website. You can easily spend ten or more hours a day working on something and still have a few more hours of work. That’s why some professions look so busy compared to others. Of course it’s time consuming because I am still perfecting the work flow. By the time I’ve optimised every page I’ll be proficient at an updated skill.


TikTok


Last night I was unable to focus so I installed TikTok and looked at plenty of videos to clear my mind enough to be able to think about dinner. I must have been in the right frame of mind because I enjoyed quite a few of the videos and flooded my facebook timeline with examples. Don’t worry though, out of the flood I only got one like. It seems that no one saw the flood so it didn’t happen.


1SE – One Second Every Day


More in character with me is the One Second Everyday app. I created a compilation for every day of quarantine so far but I won’t share the video too frequently because it will be most effective when it has at least sixty more days.


That’s it for today. Time to think about dinner.