“If you don’t solve the biology, the economy won’t recover”

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This is the best thing I’ve read so far on knowing and avoiding the risks of COVID-19. The author is Erin S. Bromage, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dr. Bromage graduated from the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences James Cook University, Australia where his research focused on the epidemiology of, and immunity to, infectious disease in animals.

Dr. Bromage’s research focuses on the evolution of the immune system, the immunological mechanisms responsible for protection from infectious disease, and the design and use of vaccines to control infectious disease in animals. He also focuses on designing diagnostic tools to detect biological and chemical threats in the environment in real-time.

This short article was packed with useful information. One of my favorites:

“We know most people get infected in their own home. A household member contracts the virus in the community and brings it into the house where sustained contact between household members leads to infection.”

You can download (PDF) the full article here.

Reel-to-reel

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Got a nice jolt of nostalgia from this flickr photo of a reel-to-reel tape. Particularly the reference to speed (7.5 ips = inches per second). The on-air studio at KBOA had a portable Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder wired into the board and one of the requisite skills was “cueing up” a tape while reading the weather or news or whatever.

“Originally, this format (reel-to-reel) had no name, since all forms of magnetic tape recorders used it. The name arose only with the need to distinguish it from the several kinds of tape cartridges or cassettes such as the endless loop cartridge developed for radio station commercials and spot announcements in 1954, the full size cassette, developed by RCA in 1958 for home use, as well as the compact cassette developed by Philips in 1962, originally for dictation.” – Wikipedia

HBO Intro (1983)

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Lots of folks reading this weren’t born in 1972 when HBO launched. Hard to explain why it was such a big deal. If you wanted to watch a movie on TV back then, you waited for one of the networks’ “Movie of the Week” or something from a local affiliate. A cable channel that just showed movies (in those days) was a big deal. Met with a lot of skepticism (“Why would you pay for movies when you can get them for free?!”)

In 1983 HBO introduced a new logo that was revolutionary for the time. I share it because one of the people who worked on it (David Bruce) was from my little town. He did the Stargate effect which would be no big deal when computer generated graphics came along but was very cool in 1983.

Un dead?

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This might be the best subject line ever. There was some kind of Kim Jung Un meme going around on Google+ back in the day and I created the image above to send to my friend in Bisbee, AZ. He recently resurrected it and it went viral (in Bisbee) under the subject line: “Un Dead?”

If someone can see you, mask up.

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Katie Notopoulos, writing BuzzFeed’s How To Plague advice column:

“A good way to gauge the amount of distance where it’s OK to dangle your mask around your neck or off one ear is to imagine your mouth is your asshole. If you were completely alone, it would be fine to let your nude tushy hang out, but you’d want to pull on your pants as soon as you saw anyone coming, even from 100 feet away. Basically, if someone can see you, mask up.”

Custom mask by Tonya Lear.

Why you should wear a facemask

  1. If we all run around naked and someone pees on you, you get wet right away.
  2. If you are wearing pants, some pee will get through, but not as much. So you are better protected.
  3. But if the guy who pees also is wearing pants, the pee stays with him and you do not get wet.