I had one solo post for The Athletic subscribers this week, something out of the ordinary: To participate in the site’s Book Blitz, I gave 25 recommendations for non-sports books, five apiece in literary novels, sci-fi/fantasy, detective/mystery, non-fiction, and short story collections. I also joined the site’s Authors Roundtable, answering some questions on the book-writing process.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Floor Plan, a new roll-and-write from Deep Water (publishers of Welcome To…) that is quite easy to learn, but where the theme and the strategy don’t work together.
My second book, The Inside Game, is out now, and you can buy it on bookshop.org through that link, or find it at your local independent bookstore.
And now, the links…
- Vulture‘s interview with Thandie Newton is a must-read for her unbelievable candor, speaking about racism and sexism on set as well as some lousy experiences with Tom Cruise.
- Patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 and recover can face weeks or months of delirium, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and physical and cognitive deficits.
- The Washington Post looks at how the pandemic has made the struggle working moms face impossible for employers to ignore, as we’ve seen with the recent backlash to bizarre decisions by Florida State and Georgia Tech.
- The new invite-only audio app Clubhouse is paying a price for omitting any protections for users against harassment. Given what this Verge article says about the app I’d have zero interest in participating in it.
- The Paris Review explains how Neapolitan cuisine became synonymous with Italian food.
- Human rights lawyer Derecka Purnell explains why she became a police abolitionist, the first of three links this week from the Atlantic. The crux of her argument is the lack of accountability for officers who commit violence against civilians.
- Ed Yong continues his tremendous work for the Atlantic on the pandemic, writing about how the experts trying to help hospitals and policymakers are getting burned out, while the pandemic is exacerbating issues of gender equity in the field, and charlatans from outside of epidemiology are trying to make names for themselves with shoddy research.
- Also in the Atlantic, why death rates haven’t risen even as cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. Hint: it’s not necessarily good news.
- A new study published in The Lancet found that antibody levels were extremely low in populations in COVID-19 hotspots, meaning that herd immunity isn’t coming any time soon.
- Axios explains how public health efforts have to step up their efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation.
- This tweet showing average new cases per day of COVID-19 along with Trump’s comments on the pandemic is rather damning.
- NPR looks at how crowdfunding has changed the board game industry in the wake of the RPG Frosthaven, the sequel to Gloomhaven, taking in $12.9 million in its Kickstarter run.
- A Minnesota State Senator, who is also a physician, is now under investigation after spouting nonsense conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media. He has a history of voicing anti-vaccine sentiment too.
- This isn’t exactly news, but a new study showed that anti-vaxxer parents are fraudulently using state religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their kids. With no penalty for doing so – and minimal enforcement – they’re not going to stop until this loophole is closed.
- Mental Floss has nine possible uses for sourdough starter discard.
- I included this last week as well: There’s a petition online to demand the removal of the Conferederate flag and monument to Confederate soldiers at the Nutter Marvel Carriage Museum in Georgetown, Delaware. It’s a private institution, so unlike the statues and flags coming down in public spaces, the state and local governments can’t just remove the offensive objects.
- Meanwhile, everything is fine in Poland, where the state TV station is warning that the opposition candidate for President will “fulfil Jewish demands” if he wins.
- Board game news: Marvel Villainous, a new standalone game in the Disney Villainous series that introduces some new rules and five new villains to play, is available for pre-order at Target.
- Bézier Games has announced an upcoming Kickstarter for Ultimate Werewolf Extreme, an expanded and upgraded version of their popular Ultimate Werewolf game.
“Men in blue shirts skate aimlessly while waiting for a timer to go off.”
I spent way too much time thinking about what your favorite sports moment could be. Is it one of the Cup finals (I think the Islanders won the Cup on the road against Vancouver)? Is it the Easter Epic against Washington (not sure if you were still awake to watch)? Is it in 1993 when the Isles beat the Lemieux Penguins in game 7 (not sure if you were still following the sport by this point)? Inquiring mind would like to know.
Correct me if I’m wrong Keith, but I assumed you were referring to the 1980 Olympic hockey team beating the Soviets.
I mean it’s gotta be the Miracle on Ice, right?
I was referring to the 1994 Rangers, but it turns out they were wearing white jerseys. I don’t actually remember the 1980 Olympics from that year, although I was 6 and I’m sure my parents had it on TV.
“ Also in the Atlantic, why death rates haven’t risen even as cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. Hint: it’s not necessarily good news.”
It’s also not… bad news.
Assuming it’s not mostly a time lag from infection to deaths, it’s certainly far better than rising deaths. Considering the rate of potentially long-term complications, I would frame the rising cases without rising deaths as bad news that could be a whole lot worse.
Considering deaths are currently going up, particularly in Flordida, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, and California, I think it is bad news.
Taken together, rising cases and rising deaths is bad.
But deaths rising more slowly than cases is good.
Cases are rising. Bad.
Deaths are rising. Bad.
Deaths seem to be rising more slowly than cases. IF that is true, it is good insofar as it is better than any alternative.
Tl;dr: Framing matters.
Death rates are rising again.
Also, death rates rising more slowly (or not at all) than case rates could be bad in and of itself, if it means that more young people are getting the virus. They’re less likely to die from COVID-19, and less likely to show symptoms, but they can still spread it. In that scenario, the rising case rates would presage an acceleration in the increase going forward, because more people have it and don’t know it.
I would think deaths need to be compared to recoveries, as once you are admitted into the hospital those are the only two outcomes. Of course, deaths are only the worst negative outcome as even getting the virus seems to have some long term health consequences. In my state, cases have almost doubled in the last month, but hospitalizations haven’t spiked (perhaps yet). And the positive test rate has been steady as well. So is that somewhat good news if it holds?
I guess my thinking is that, if we take as a given that cases are rising (they are, though we shouldn’t take as a given that they have to rise, as we can take action to slow the spread), then fewer deaths is preferable to more deaths.
Deaths are never a GOOD thing, but fewer deaths is a better thing than more deaths. And if these stats demonstrate that the CFR is indeed lower than initially believed, that too is a bad thing.
But more cases is undoubtedly bad, even if they are milder or less likely to be fatal.
From a scientific communication standpoint, I hesitate to use the words “good news” on the death rate because I am afraid that especially at-risk people will let down their guard. The CFR could be lower than initially believed due to better treatment in hospitals, but it could also be because new infections are strongly skewed younger. I would need to see data suggesting that outcomes across age cohorts are better before concluding that CFR is now lower overall. And even then, unless the CFR (and morbidity) are revised to be substantially lower for high-risk persons, we need to stay on message and do our best to protect those individuals.
Can you explain your take on CFR a bit more? As I understand it, CFR is simply a number. You seem to be implying it could be “skewed” by more cases in younger cohorts. But isn’t the opposite true? The CFR was probably skewed high because we had limited data and were only catching the most serious cases which were concentrated in higher-risk groups? Now, you’re right that an individual’s risk of dying is not the same as the CFR… but the CFR ultimately is what it is*?
I agree 100% that CFR data can be politicized or weaponized. We’ve seen this both ways. Some folks are still claiming CFRs north of 4% because they’re simply dividing known/probable deaths by positive tests. It sure as heck ain’t 4%. On the other end, we shouldn’t just be unleashing the at-risk groups because the CFR is going down. Again, risk is not evenly distributed.
But I have to insist that a lower CFR is better than a higher CFR. Weaponizing it is negative but that doesn’t make the facts/data itself a negative.
Where I have no disagreement is the need to remain vigilant in combating the virus, particularly for those most vulnerable.
* With the caveat that CFRs always require some degree of estimation because we never find every case nor every death, and our estimates of a novel virus are likely going to be less accurate.
My take on CFR is that it’s a pretty badly abused statistic when used as an average across a population. My reasoning is that because COVID-19 cases are not necessarily randomly distributed across different age cohorts (and co-morbidities), our estimates of CFR across the country may change over time without any fundamental change in actual mortality rates within age groups. So, your point about whether we may have “over-sampled” higher-risk groups earlier is well taken. Current CFR may indeed be converging on a lower value than initial estimates because of that. But if our CFR estimates for within age cohort mortality are not changing, then the fundamentals have not really changed. Now if CFR was going down across all age cohorts because our treatments have gotten better, that would be good news.
And just to clarify, CFR (case fatality rate) is calculated using actually diagnosed COVID-19 cases in the denominator (i.e. only people with a positive test who were symptomatic). Johns Hopkins has that number at 4%, but that doesn’t mean that 4% of people infected with COVID-19 would die. That number is estimated using IFR (infection fatality rate), which includes everyone infected in the denominator (thus including undetected, mild, and/or asymptomatic cases). Based on serology testing, that IFR looks to be in the ballpark of 0.5%. IFR is harder to estimate, but is what we need to know if we want to estimate, for example, how many would die if 40% of the US was infected.
Thanks, Salty. I was definitely conflating IFR and CFR. Sloppy on my part.
You point makes sense and I appreciate your explanation. Both CFR and IFR matter but in isolation, they’re only so valuable. My sons, myself, and my parents don’t have the same risk from Covid. Assigning a single number to that is of limited use.
But if I am understanding you, the IFR is pretty important insofar as thinking on the big picture. If we’re thinking about global or national spread, we’ll probably see a pretty evenly distributed spread and knowing what that means is hugely important.
What I’m seeing folks do — maybe intentionally, maybe not (I made my own mistakes with CFR/IFR) — is saying, “Well, if 50% of Americans are infected, that is 6M deaths because 4% are dying.” That ain’t right and it ain’t helpful.
Similarly, saying it’s ONLY .5% so just go back to normal also ain’t helpful.
Something to note about the Clubhouse app: it’s still in closed beta, hence the invite only thing. I don’t think that’s the plan when it’s officially released. It also gives them time to correct things like what’s outlined in the article. It is worrying that there’s harassment going on in a closed beta though. Usually closed beta testers tend to stick to the intentions of an app or game or whatever much more closely than when the public gets it since they don’t want their access revoked.
The King Arthur Sourdough English Muffins are fantastic. I’ll never eat store bought again.
There’s *lots* of uses for discard! I use the King Arthur recipe for sourdough pizza dough and (sometimes) English Muffins. Both turn out fantastic. I usually freeze half the dough (it makes two 12″ crusts) and half the cooked muffins. The muffins work both on the griddle (preferred) or in the oven. I’ve also made sourdough rolls from both King Arthur and Red Star Yeast.