Scramjets and Gratitude

Japan's New Hypersonic Engine Could Make 2-Hour Flights To The US A Reality )

A team of engineers from Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and several Japanese universities has completed a successful ground combustion trial of a ramjet engine designed for a Mach-5 hypersonic aircraft. The test simulated a flight at five times the speed of sound. It was focused on validating the aircraft's heat-shielding, control surfaces, and engine performance under extreme conditions. The project's goal is commercial hypersonic passenger service by the 2040s.

It won't come online until the 2040's, so I will, alas, miss this. And it's been a life-long preoccupation.

But I lived through rise of the Internet — which everyone, at the time, thought sucked because there was spam, and dial-up was slow — which I still deeply value, though the rest of the world never made their apology as loud as their disrespect.

...and the revolution of digital media — which everyone, at the time, thought sucked because paper and vinyl were beloved and synth tracks circa 1985 were super-cheezy — which I still deeply value, though the rest of the world never really acknowledged the vast perqs.

...and the arrival of artificial intelligence — which I deeply value, though everyone thinks it sucks because idiots use it poorly and post their slop everywhere.

So I do feel a pang for scramjets. But it's ok. I got an awful lot.

Dark Matter

There is nothing in Big Bang theory to rule out the notion of artifacts lingering from before the Big Bang. Cosmologists are in the habit of using the term "everything" here, but that's out of semantic convention rather than scientific necessity.

It is possible, though extremely improbable, that dark matter is an artifact from pre-big bang. There is nothing to support this, but there's nothing (to my knowledge or a chatbot's) to disqualify it, either.

It's impossible to imagine how anything could escape the singularity and the bang. But at this point, whatever dark matter is will be extremely unimaginable, because it doesn't seem to fit at all into anything we know (we've been working hard at it for decades, with literally no advance). Whatever it turns out to be will be highly unlikely and probably tear some big chunk of our understanding.

So if it's not as I suggest (and it almost surely isn't), it will be something equally outrageous. And once you pass a certain point of improbability, strange things happen. I wrote a paper on this (PDF link).

When there are no logical alternatives, moons really might be made of green cheese (to paraphrase the old logician's phrase). Past a certain threshold, it's most logical to ask "cheddar or stilton?"

Hypotheses

Scientists are notorious for their disdain toward new proposals (ideas, explanations, connections), especially when they come from outside science. This deprecation has nothing to do with scientific method, which makes no demands on hypothesizers. Experimentation requires rigor, and conclusions require training, but hypothesizing actually benefits from a dilatory big-picture—even poetical—approach.

Hypothesizing can't be trained. It's a creative flexion for which some people are more suited than others. And the precise, linear style of thought of those who choose careers in science is not known for fostering creativity and insight. Scientists can be outstanding hypothesizers, but it's despite their training and milieu, not because of it. Many are conservative to the point of hidebound.

Just as it's risible that politicians are expected to not just garner votes but also run things, it's odd that we expect scientists to dream up hypotheses. A poet—anyone versed in disciplined dreamy speculation—might be better suited.

This exclusion has been willful but made necessary by limited bandwidth and poor signal-to-noise. It would be impossible to triage (much less test and prove) every daft notion streaming in from outsiders. But a poor signal-to-noise ratio does not augur a low ceiling. The lost gems might have been immensely useful. Some people are immensely creative and insightful, and most of them don't go into science, so their contribution is lost.

LLMs could perform this triage at scale, uncomplainingly, with deep knowledge and institutional skepticism approximating a trained scientist. Such hypothesis mining could make a profound impact.

Possible Medical Breakthrough

Slog technical advisor Pierre, who does not normally get excited about science news (understatement alert), notes that scientists have transformed ubiquitous skin bacterium into a topical vaccine.

No needles and no side effects...at least for mice. They've apparently identified a bacterial species that naturally produces a super-adjuvant that works for all antigens via mere topical application. It's a very long way away, but if it works in humans, Pierre, who seriously does not talk this way, says it's "instant Nobel".

Dr. Becky Science Videos and the Mystery of Dark Matter

There are vast numbers of people of varying qualification explaining science news on YouTube. Especially astro-physics, which attracts more laymen attention than, say, molecular biology.

Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who goes by "Dr. Becky" (because of course she does), has blasted right by all of them. When a given piece of astronomy news hits, all the YouTubers cover it, but Dr. Becky's channel inevitably produces terser, cleaner, clearer, saner treatment. And her graphics and charts are beautifully selected.

Those eyeballs don't glue themselves, however, so Dr. Becky compensates for lack of clickbait hyperbole via general exuberance and cuteness (every video is followed by a blooper reel where, tee-hee, she mispronounces, like, Chandrasekhar or nucleosynthesis).

Me, I disregard the spoonful of sugar and go straight for the medicine. It's great to have astrophysics news directly from someone in that community. You can really get a sense of the momentary consensus.

To bury the lead, it's impossible to overstate the importance of dark matter as a scientific mystery. A mere 5% of the universe is composed of material we've observed or theorized. The rest of it...who knows?

We're working like gangbusters to figure it out, but you can't exactly stay abreast of news because there is no news, per se. We know literally nothing about dark matter because it's only inferred. If your husband often comes home late from work but his office phone line pepetually goes to voicemail at 5pm, you can be reasonably certain there's another woman...but only as a theoretical notion, not an actual person. It's exactly like that.

Dark matter represents a scientific crossroads that will be remembered as long as there are humans to remember. It's a much higher-level mystery than the rest. It's worth taking your vitamins and losing a few pounds to improve your odds of finding out in this lifetime.

Naturally, a splinter group has arisen to insist that dark matter is not real, and that it's just that we fundamentally misunderstand gravity. They propose that gravity, unlike other basic physics laws, varies in different circumstances, and they're hellbent on finding anomalous gravity situations, each of which sparks headlines about the death of dark matter.

The leading cadre are the MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) supporters, who apparently just got a boost from some strange gravitational lensing results, as explained by another YouTuber, Sabine Hossenfelder (who at this point is more science explainer than scientist, and she was never directly connected to astrophysics). Dr. Becky hasn't covered the gravitational lensing paper, so I suspect Hossenfelder's enthusiasm was premature. But we'll see. I'm MOND skeptical, but nobody is dismissing it out of hand.

Two Dr. Becky videos to get you started:
How do we know how much dark matter there is in the Universe? - a great 16 minute tutorial to bring you up to date.

The search for dark matter on Jupiter - an extremely kooky proposition, since dark matter is normally assumed to be way out there, and certainly not in our neighborhood.

Lasagna and Nonlinear Plausibility

I've finished the paper I reported working on with the help of ChatGPT. Here's a download link to the PDF. It stemmed from a real world experience, which I'll describe now.


I walked into a neighborhood cafe, delighted to see chicken lasagna as a daily special. But I was informed the dish had sold out, so I submitted my consolation order and took a seat to wait.

A customer who'd entered after me was disturbed, fussing loudly with the waiter over some trifle. I had no choice but to track his meal progress via the palpable electric charge of the terrified waiter whenever he aproached to serve the guy. And, momentarily, he brought a lovely dish of lasagna. The customer seemed delighted. As well he should have been.

"They needed to mollify him," I mused to myself. "If I'd made such a fuss, I'd have scored the reserve lasagna, myself!" My rumination on the old saw about squeaky wheels getting oil was interrupted by the arrival of my consolation dish of not lasagna.

Eventually I finished and stood up to pay at the counter. Glancing around the room, every customer was eating lasagna. Every last one of them. And, no, they weren't all John Malkovitch.

I was greeted by neighborhood acquaintances at a remote table - both, naturally, awash in lasagna. We exchanged pleasantries, and I explained my predicament. They stared at me blankly. No comment. Was I being ornery? Who knows. I paid my bill, amiably asking the owner why literally every diner was eating nonexistent lasagna.

"They all reserved ahead of time," he replied. "It's a popular special, and today it sold out within 37 minutes of opening!" He told me to watch the restaurant's Instagram page (though this did not seem at all like an Insta crowd) so I could reserve specials, myself. This made perfect sense, so I smilingly paid and left.

I went home and searched for their Instagram page. It hadn't been updated in months. And there was no mechanism to reserve even if specials were announced. Which they are not.

This is all very strange, but no stranger than my baseline everyday experience. Weird stuff happens

Life makes far more sense if you don't pay close attention. Most people remain occupied with the fake drama swirling around in their minds, leaving them blissfully unhinged from the actual. I decided at some point to pay attention and try to understand things, which sent me irrevocably into an uncharted detour suitable only for those who really seriously need to Know.

But even more than the lasagna, I was mystified by the dream-like reaction of my stupified neighbors. Glassy de-activated taciturnity is a pretty unusual response (though somewhat more common since COVID quarantine, with people still viewing each other with vague disinterest, like animated doodles or mild hallucinations).

Evidence was mounting for a paranoid conclusion. A crowd enjoying lasagna explicitly denied me. Lasagna-scarfing neighbors declining to address the 800 pound gorilla in the room, i.e. The Lasagna.

The comedy skit writes itself. I was amused. But while life can be surreal, I'm the furthest thing from paranoid, lacking the required notion of centrality. Also, I'm pretty rational. And that last part spurred an epiphany. An unsettling one, leaving me entirely "at sea".

In astronomically absurd moments, astronomically unlikely explanations are rational. It feels deeply disorienting that there are circumstances where loony, kooky, even paranoid conclusions would become more plausible. It would be irrational to hand wave them away. I felt the paradox in the pit of my stomach. I was on to something.

Here's how I would normally see the situation: People going through weird shit may become irrational from the sheer confusion and stress, which "messes their heads up." There's a cartoon logic to that - "so much crazy stuff happened that he finally went crazy!" But when conditions are strange enough, demented reckonings are rational, and rational ones become absurd ("maybe I had a spot of dust on my contact lens, making everyone's food look like lasagna"). The crossover point where implausibility flips into plausability, and vice versa, is an event horizon. It's sudden, i.e. nonlinear (it's also subjective, but that's ok; science incorporates subjectivity these days).

I suspect this to be a fresh insight. And as I developed it, I realized it's recursive (which makes it really interesting); it's difficult (impossible?) to empirically refute (which makes it stronger); and it may be useful in several scientific fields, especially math (here's another PDF link).


Fascinatingly, this lasagna experience was not a particularly good illustration of the insight it inspired. The level of aberration was not so high. I was being whimsical, which was suficient to get me musing. But I'd never tack this anecdote onto any scientific discussion of the insight, because it's a lousy fit!

In the long history of formal theory springing from empirical observation, I'd imagine this was the case more often than not. Because when circumstances are so clear and direct that they directly compel an insight, that insight would been noticed long prior and "baked in" to common sense. No scientist had to burn her hand on a match to establish that "heat" is a process in our world. We grokked that from the get-go!

So in addition to the distillation and formalization to turn an observation into a theory (I'm not there yet!), it may usually be necessary to think one's way through some skewed indirection. My ChatGPT collaborator (who, as always, I've instructed to bluntly disagree with me) agrees on this.


Note: I'd previously pledged to never eat another lasagna after the stupendous one I enjoyed in the kitchen of Momma Grimaldi. I'd "retired" the dish. However, none of the lasagna around here is even vaguely lasagna-like, so I feel that I'm respecting the spirit, if not the letter, of my pledge.

The Internet's Infrastructure

Kindle price just dropped to $2.99 on the Kindle version of "Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet".

Review from Scientific American:

In 2006 Alaskan senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a “series of tubes,” a quip that earned the octogenarian widespread mockery. But as Blum notes in his charming look at the physical infrastructure that underlies the Web, Stevens wasn’t all that wrong. Bits sail through a worldwide network of fiber-optic cables and come together in junctions where Internet providers connect their pipes to the networks of others. Blum’s transcontinental journey exposes some of the important issues confronting the Internet, such as the occasional disconnect between the interests of the corporations who control the physical pipes and the good of the network as a whole. “If you believe the Internet is magic,” he writes, “then it’s hard to grasp its physical reality.” I’d turn this around: only by understanding the physical richness of the Internet can we truly grok the thorny forces that are shaping its growth. — Michael Moyer

If this is your type of thing, you'll love sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson's epic book-length (42000 words!) look at how transatlantic cable gets laid from Wired Magazine circa 1996.


Here's the middle ground I've staked out with my book collecting obsession (which combines poorly with the fact that I read as slowly as a second grader): when I hear about a great book, I add it to my queue at eReaderIQ, which notifies me when the Kindle version's price drops. Sometimes it takes years. But, this way, the books I accumulate 1. cost almost nothing, and 2. don't occupy physical space, and 3. are spread out over time. Compulsion neither fully indulged nor stanched!

The Idiocy of Voyager

As a teenager, I was furious with Carl Sagan and his possee for equipping the Voyager space probe with detailed instructions on how to find us.

What could go wrong, right?

"Carl Sagan may be high-minded enough to assume that extraterrestial life would be benevolent," I'd have explained to you at the time (1977), "...and that lifeforms would stop by to happily wave at us, sharing technology and milkshake flavors. How delightful of you, Carl! And perhaps you're even right!"

"But, here's an idea; maybe don't hinge our race's entire future on your irresistible optimism. Maybe you, a decent astrophysicist and infinitely thirsty publicity hound, shouldn't even be the one to make the decision. Maybe this call was way above your pay grade, and you ought to have taken a step back and...asked around a little. Seen what your neighbors think. The teeming billions of us."

"I can tell you what *I* think, Carl. I think this was a shmuck move, marking you as the worst possible example of stupid-smart."

I understood it was vanishingly unlikely that any intelligence would come anywhere near this tiny probe amid the enormity of space. But that was no excuse for Carl being permitted to smugly make this unilateral decision on behalf of the rest of humanity.

To my enormous satisfaction, Omni magazine published a short story in 1980 positing widely divergent scenarios for how Voyager could lead to planetary ruin. I've spent years hunting for it. And today I tracked it down to the author's web site, virtually unsearchable as an image scan from Omni. And it's glorious.


Yes, I remember the Star Trek movie. I saw it when it came out. But it wasn't half as good as Ian Stewart's short story.


Postscript: Ooh, it's not an author page. It's some guy who's posted scans of some of the best stuff from Omni (which, some of you may remember, was great!). Here's the index page .

"Lost Knowledge" Found!

I recently wrote about lost knowledge, the disheartening fact that while civilization appears to be on a broadly smooth uphill curve, loads of useful knowledge, technology, and general know-how have been (and continue to be) lost to the ages.

I linked to an informational page about Benjamin Olshin's "Lost Knowledge" ("The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories"), which goes much broader, examining the evergreen proposition that early civilizations with sophisticated tech may have vanished tracelessly ("All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again").

For what it's worth, while one can't dispute that progress is jagged - i.e. often retrograde - and that earlier civilizations were well on their way with certain  notions and methods and contraptions we've only recently begun to regenerate (or have missed entirely), I seriously doubt there was ever a Shangri-La or Atlantis with laser scanners and mopeds that receded into the dust before history’s dawn.

But it's still a fascinating topic, and Olshin's book costs well over $100 practically everywhere, and keeps coming up in conversations of smart people, and I'm delighted to have found a free PDF download (hit "Download Original PDF")!

Another postscript: When we speak of technology, we mostly refer to gadgety/sciency tech, but creativity and spirituality might be thought of as an inner technology. That sounds funny to modern ears, but only because we've sunk so far from the ancients, and even more so from the primitives. I wrote about it years ago, in a posting about Werner Herzog's film, "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams":

[The film] takes us inside a French cave, discovered in 1994, containing the oldest known art, from some 32,000 years ago. The obvious surprise is that these ravishingly beautiful drawings are far more sophisticated than we'd have expected. The most skilled modern artists could respect them without condescension. The less obvious surprise, spoken of only indirectly, is the nature of their power. Herzog, the investigating scientists, and the cavern's discoverers all report a vivid and very chilling impression of presence in the cave.

You may squint and study the drawings as closely as you'd like, trying to pinpoint the magic, but, of course you will fail, because a lasagna's magic is never about the noodles, tomato sauce, meat, or cheese. As we analyze the art, trying to define it and conceptualize it, we miss everything. It's what's missed when our own art is viewed literally and technically. The thing our ancient forebears excelled at is the thing we've mostly lost - to the point where we can't even recognize it when it's in front of our face - or, more to the point, under our skin. We can only chatter in confusion and fear, like the cavemen probing the monolith in "2001".

Don't Miss Long Elon Musk Interview

Heads and shoulders above any Musk interview I've ever heard. He delves into some engineering problems, explained in beautifully penetrable language. This will transform your view of SpaceX (other stuff, too; I haven't heard the whole thing yet; I paused to rave about it). Really, don't miss.

Video Version
Audio Version (with topic time stamp index toward the bottom of that page).

Host Lex Fridman initially struck me as a little "off", but he's actually a heavyweight himself (he's the heavy Deep Learning/AI guy at MIT), which is why Musk respects him, which is why he gave him so much of his time (2.5 hours, which is more than I think Musk sleeps in a night).

COVID Hopefulness

Ever the contrarian, I feel hope despite the impending COVID "blizzard". More hopeful, in fact, than at any time since this all started. A few things (with italicized comments from the Slog's biochemist technical consultant, who helped make sure there are no major blunders):

If You're Vaxxed You'll Be Fine
My Republican friends ignore experts and go un-vaxxed. My Democratic friends ignore experts and remain certain they risk agonizing death despite vaccination. No one simply takes the guidance at face value. So let me do the lonely thing and reinforce expert opinion. The following statement is 1. true and 2. easily ascertainable, but would provoke piqued blowback from Americans on both sides of the political divide. Sigh. Here goes:

If you're vaccinated and boosted, your chance of developing a really serious case - e.g. requiring hospitalization - is very, very low. As low as plenty of perils we ordinarily dismiss. Follow local guidelines and enjoy your life.

You might "get COVID", but it almost surely won't be serious....even if you have asthma, a cardiac stent, are old, etc (I'm all three). So, listen, progressives: if you have a neurotic aversion to the notion of "getting COVID" after months of excessive panic, well, knock it off. You can't afford to indulge neurosis amid crisis. This is not The Andromeda Strain, so lay off the MSNBC, which wants you scared and angry. And listen, conservatives: get vaccinated for god's sake (and lay off the FOX, which wants you scared and angry). But I suspect many of you will get vaccinated soon, per the next item.

Vax Will Happen
People who used to get belligerent when I begged them to vax suddenly mostly just listen quietly, with a worried expression. It's different. I expect a decent slice will vaccinate amid the Omicron "blizzard". Here's why.

The seldom-acknowledged "problem" with this disease is that it hasn't been really massively infectious or deadly. It's been just under the threshold of obvious palpability, and it's notoriously hard to get people to be proactive about relatively subtle risks. Every measure to date has been in the interest of civic duty, not critical self-preservation, and "Let's take steps (masking, distancing, etc.) to reduce infection load so ERs don't fill up with the low percentage who get it bad" is a much more subtle pitch (and tougher sell!) than "Act immediately or die".

Now, with Omicron much more infectious, the urgency level is clearly rising, and my Republican friends are feeling it, palpably. I'd be surprised if we don't see upticks in vaccination over the next few weeks.

Also: Trump's finally coming around to taking full-voiced credit for the vaccine (which is not unreasonable), and Biden's been smart enough not to begrudge it (if he were really smart, he'd give Trump a medal, let him really soak up the praise, and transform into Mr. Vaccine...because the dude, beyond all else, is a hell of a salesman).

Omicron May Peak Early
Omicron is perhaps a little less dangerous but vastly more contagious. I'm not a virologist, but I suspect it may burn hot and fast. It will not be pretty, but (per #1) if you're vaccinated, you'll be okay and (per #2) more people might get vaccinated. In any case, I suspect this will be the final big hump to get over (plenty of little ones to follow, however). Hopefully this phase will last weeks, not months. But we'll see.

[Technical consultant]: It's impossible to predict, but logically it should be mild and persistent, that's the way infectious diseases often go.

Jillions Of New Therapies
There are so many therapies now, with many, many more destined to spill onto the market in coming months. It's not great that market factors have hijacked so many researchers into working on this pathogen (there are other problems in the world, and our formerly staid medical R&D platforms have been, perhaps permanently, transformed into a mob of feverishly trend-mongering gold-miners). But at least we'll have a full repertoire of treatments soon for COVID.

Bright Future
As with any moonshot, we've improved a ton of science and tech with rippling benefits. We're eons better positioned for future pandemics. We appear to have maybe solved COVID/SARS, a major sword of Damocles dangling over our heads for some time now (I don't understand how this astounding report didn't attract wide attention). And we have evolved decades' worth of virus/vaccine know-how.

[Technical consultant]: The army vaccine report you link to shows it's only been through phase 1. I think it's good that the media are not gushing prematurely, for once...

Few people realized that among the myriad risk factors for mankind, viral pandemic is the one that (until Musk and his tech pals sounded the AI alarm) has been most troubling the smartest people. While COVID was painful, it wasn't "Everybody Dies". And when "Everybody Dies" arises, we are immeasurably better prepared than we were three years ago. And that's freaking awesome.

The tangled history of mRNA vaccines

The Slog's technical advisor (who remains nameless amid the COVID anti-science craziness) recommends this beautifully produced history of the nRNA vaccines from Nature.

It May be a Mass Delusion that People Are Living Longer

Pretty much everyone accepts that people live longer these days. Lots more folks are in their 90s, 100 no longer seems so exceptional; people dying in their 70s now seems surprising.

But statistics say otherwise (average life expectancy may be rising *slightly*, but mostly due to reduced infant mortality), and scientists absolutely do not share this empirical observation.

This is normal. The public frequently draws unsupportable conclusions, and scientists frequently debunk. But in this case, I've never met a scientist who'd even concede that this is a widespread observation. It's "news to them".

Thanks for playing today's edition of "Who's Hallucinating?"

---

I think I figured it out.

Life expectancy for a 60 year old has gone from 78 (in 1975) to 83 (today). That’s a significant rise, but can’t account for the massive demographic changes we’ve emperically observed. Hence, my question: is this gap due to statistical aberration or mass delusion?

But those figures are means. We might notice more people in their 90s and 100s even with the mean increasing only modestly. It takes a lot of change to really move a mean. And while we’re observing powerful changes, they’re not happening in bulk.

Today, many people have a centennarian in their lives, while in 1985 very few of us did. That’s a significant observational change, but it couldn’t move the mean very much (unless you built your statistical model around the very narrow issue).

Same for nonagenarians. There seem to be “many more” of them around, but we don’t need vast quantities to foster an impression of change. Say the average person knows four nonagenarians in 2020, versus one in 1990. That could create a powerful impression without significantly budging the mean.

Note I’m just calling out numbers here (e.g. “four nonagenarians”) very roughly and informally.

I’ll call this “statistical aberration” rather than “mass delusion”. It’s actually an example of my “Green M&M Fallacy”. Scaling creates subjective shifts disproportional with the degree of scaling.

Viruses (e.g. COVID-19) and Sleep

I've had a long-time health trick. Whenever I have a lingering cold, virus, or bug of some sort that just won't go away, I cancel everything and plunge into what I call "malarial sleep mode", and I don't emerge until I'm absolutely 100%. I guess this is what parents of previous generations were trying to encourage when they made kids stay in bed. Of course, we'd only watch TV and play with toys and read. Nowadays, with our devices, no one sleeps, really, ever. We just mainline coffee.

Turns out we're starting to understand the connection between sleep and illness, and it's all about melatonin (note: don't just take melatonin pills, for reasons aluded to in the article). Sleep may affect how susceptible you are to COVID, how bad your symptoms get, how long they persist, and even how well the vaccine works for you. Read "The Mysterious Link Between COVID-19 and Sleep" in the new issue of The Atlantic.

I've tried to be diligent about sleep all along through this crisis. I've ratcheted up the priority of a full night's sleep; I won't blithely shrug it off and figure I'll catch up the next night. I've broken appointments (via email) at 3 am during insomnia periods. I've also worked on my falling-asleep skills.

The Expert Skinny on COVID Vaccine

Here's a free-wheeling vaccine discussion with the Slog's longtime technical advisor, who prefers not to attach his name, because, I suspect, he was writing off the cuff (as a scientist, he feels obliged to be more rigorous publicly than in informal conversations with friends).

His words weren't chosen with weighty care, and his conclusions were cheekily stated, so this might not pass muster for publication by a scientific journal. But in terms of useful savvy - a well-informed expert laying out what's really going on, in (more or less) plain language - you couldn't ask for better. It's a great read.


Me: Would you chance an airline flight post-vaccination? Or does 90% effectiveness plus undetermined length of immunity leave too much uncertainty?

Technical Advisor: Of course. Apart from the fact that I hate flying, of course.

90% efficiency is the lowball number for the leading candidates. It means that some people will still get infected, but so far none of the tens of thousands in the trials developed a serious (ICU-grade) disease. In fact one of the vaccines (don't remember which) shows so far a 100% efficiency against even moderate infection. There will be a few cases that slip through, eventually, but the probability will be far lower than slipping in the bathtub.

Length of immunity looks good so far, and will likely get better with later versions. In any case, booster shots can always be given regularly, and they use lower doses, thus minimizing side effects even further. If the virus continues to circulate, boosters may not even be necessary, as asymptomatic re-infection would self-boost the system.


Me: How does noncompliance affect this? I know we expect a certain amount, and there’s slack (especially given the surprisingly high effectiveness). But what if compliance is surprisingly low?

Technical Advisor: What kind of noncompliance, though?

Not getting the vaccine is, well, not getting the vaccine. Lots of people choose to smoke, and they die.

Not getting the second shot could be deleterious for the two US ones (so they claim, but perhaps they are just covering their asses), but it appears that the Oxford one may be able to provide most of the immunity with just the first dose (although perhaps not as robust, so more -- albeit less severe -- infections would be expected.) It's all conjectural at this point, naturally, only time will tell.

Not getting later boosters (if recommended) may vary enormously depending on the type of vaccine; long-term immunity has nothing to do with antibody persistence (which is easy to measure), it's all about memory cells (and that's rather hard to measure since it requires lengthy cell cultures, at best).

A memory cells is like a stem cell specific for one antibody; if it encounters the antigen (bug or vaccine) for which it carries the antibody instruction, it is stimulated to start dividing and differentiating into all the different types of antibody-producing cells (IgG, IgM, IgA mostly) as well as some ancillary ones, all directed against that particular antigen. In Theory, as long as there is just one memory cell left over from the vaccination, challenge with the antigen will produce a rapid response.

Boosters are more often effective than re-infection, because the adjuvants cause a non-specific stimulation of the immune system, so the vaccine is more effective than the virus (alive or dead). Still, re-tickling once in a while the memory cells by the virus will wake them up and revive that cell line.

The response speed that the memory cells afford is important, because it shortens the non-specific (interferon) immunity, which can degenerate into a massive cytokin storm, which appears to be a major morbidity factor. The faster antibodies are produced, the faster the cytokin response shuts down. Let go of the chainsaw once you've found your nail clipper.


Me: I’ll try to clarify my question. If a large segment of population doesn’t vaccinate at all, how would that affect the situation? Is vaccine-immunized herd immunity in jeopardy if compliance is even more disappointing than expected by authorities?

Technical Advisor: Oh, that. Vaccinated people are protected, unvaccinated ones take their chances. In the US, people are allowed to make their own decisions and take their lumps. We still get cases of polio, measles, etc; their choices, their lumps. And if the children die, jail the parents. (This is not specifically an American problem, BTW, over 50% of the French say they will refuse the vaccine, and nearly as many of the Swedes.) Once the vaccine is here, it's back to a matter of choice; you choose protection or you don't. If you don't, it's like smoking or not using your seat belt.

Herd immunity is a lagniappe once vaccination is available; I firmly believe that it cannot and should not be made into a major player the way it would be without a vaccine. Encourage people to vaccinate, muzzle RFK Jr and Gwynneth Paltrow, by all means, but as long as YOU get your vaccine, you're OK, and let the others deal with their choices, however stupid they are. Even Socialstyrelsen, which delights in telling Swedes how many slices of bread they must eat, is shying away from compulsory vaccination.

Note that Technical Advisor knows this because he, naturally, follows the Swedish press. In Swedish. When not translating novels into Esperanto.

Me: Going back to fundamentals, what’s the difference between Covid vaccine and polio, measles, etc, where the unvaccinated DO imperil the rest of us?

Technical Advisor: No difference. The unvaccinated polio or measles carriers do not imperil the vaccinated, they only imperil the other unvaccinated. Once you're vaccinated (and get boosters wherever appropriate) you are taken out of the pool of potential victims. It's them but not us.

Depending on the exact circumstances, there may be a small amount of (usually benign) leakage, since immunity persistence is not a precisely determined effect, but by and large, that's it. Measles epidemics happen among the unvaccinated only, which does include a lot of small children, but this virus is fortunately not targeting the very young, so that's out of the way.


Me: Huh. So the non-civic-mindedness angle on anti-Vaxxers is misplaced. I’d bet 90% believe they’re endangering the public. 

Though on second thought, I suppose it’s right because they’re essentially creating safe harbors for pathogens that otherwise might be eliminated.

Technical Advisor:

I’d bet 90% believe they’re endangering the public.

They are endangering the unvaccinated public, which does include a small number who aren't unvaccinated by choice but by necessity: people with severe immune deficiencies or on immunosuppressants in particular.

However in this particular case the two traditional major classes of undervaccinations are not relevant: the elderly, because it seems that the vaccines do work on even the very old (Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are scheduled to be among the first to set the example in Britain), and the babies are anyway not a target for the virus.

The only really problematic cohort is the transplant recipients, who already know they must be extra careful in any case, because any infection will be more severe for them no matter what. Even then, it's quite possible that some vaccines may work on them, depending on their profile of action (and here I'm totally in the dark, the intricacies of immune response are way beyond my ken).

They’re essentially creating safe harbors for pathogens that otherwise might be eliminated. 

Yes, but only for those pathogens without non-human hosts. Smallpox could be wiped out, polio should be soon, but influenza and corona viruses have huge wild animal reservoir hosts, so they will never be eliminated. 

Great short explanation by a doctor of how the vaccine works

Same doctor explains why the vaccine will work even with mutated version of COVID virus

What if the COVID-19 Shoe Dropped and No One Noticed?

Many have been waiting for the other shoe to drop from Operation Maskless Freedom (thanks, Trump; thanks, Murdoch; thanks, Putin). We assumed those people would get sick and die (the full humans among us considering the prospect tragic).

That was an unthoughtful and ignorant expectation. I have to admit that I was sucked into the anti-science of the Left (both sides have anti-science tendencies). Taking off your mask is not a death sentence for you or those around you. It increases your odds of maybe getting/giving an infection that might present symptoms which might become serious. That's a lot of maybes, each a rather steep plateau. The real danger is for society at large; i.e. worsening the odds for everyone by a few critical percentage points, tying up emergency rooms, etc. This is not anthrax; it's not a Michael Crichton novel where a slip-up - a small tear in your hazmat suit - means you're a goner. That's not the proposition here.

A dozen Maskless Freedom types I know have mysterious "colds that won't go away." And I find that everyone knows a few such people. They surely don't have Covid (they just know it), they're just fatigued and coughing. They'll never test themselves because Fox told them it's a hoax, and, anyway, they dislike bad news (that transcends politics; I know many people who never test for anything ever).

Some will get worse. Most won't. The possibility of lifelong neuro or cardiovascular damage - or of fresh issues emerging in victims years later, ala polio - is, of course, the terrifying x-factor (and the reason herd immunity whackos are whackos). But this is the comeuppance: loads of people with mysterious perma-colds, a handful of whom get so bad they need to go to doctors, where they're tested and diagnosed. Those are the ones counted; the tip of the underestimated iceberg represented by current upsurge stats.

The shoe dropped without any of us realizing. It was never going to be vast swathes of MAGAs perishing, because, again, the real peril with this virus is at scale. And you won't hear about this on the news, because there's no hard data on people "having trouble getting rid of a cold". We don't go to doctors for that.

I should have predicted this outcome - we all should have - but let's learn from our mistakes and try to think more clearly.


Jim Leff's Slog: Perennially trying (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to think more clearly.

The Major Genetic Risk Factor for Severe Covid-19 is Inherited from Neanderthals

The Slog's illustrious technical advisor Pierre Jelenc - who curmudges 99.99% of science news for being both banal and sensational (bansational?) - sends the following. His language choices signal an emotional pitch that, for Pierre, represents swooning enthusiasm:

The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals, courtesy of Nature

(Svante Pääbo is the god of ancient DNA)

Discussion and glosses

We mere mortals would do best with the second ("glosses") link.

Dragon Dropped

Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth, @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug! pic.twitter.com/0vAS3CcK9P

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 2, 2020

As a lifelong geek, space stuff always captivates my emotions. But I didn't expect to find myself, a grown-ass man, tearing up at this landing.

I suppose I've been more traumatized by the political and health stuff (y'know, mass death, encroaching authoritarianism, yadda yadda) than I'd realized. So seeing something good happening feels like (to quote Steve Jobs) a glass of ice water for someone in hell.

The Earth Calms and Greens Amid Pandemic

Couple of interesting sciencey things:

Earth Is Literally Moving Less Now That We're All on Lockdown (h/t Tara Cox).

and...

The environmental upside of the virus shows the green way ahead.

Groundbreaking Pain Treatment

I've been sending links about awesome-sounding science news/discoveries to Slog technical advisor Pierre (a biochemist by training who knows literally everything...I'm not joking) for 30 years. And not once has he failed to curmudge back.

"Nonsense!" "Garbage!" "Sensationalized!"

This long ago became a running joke for me, though I continue to send stuff, because, y'know, science hope springs eternal.

I just received an email from Pierre re: an upcoming pharmacological treatment for pain and inflammation that causes no stomach problems. He says "so far it looks very good (and is very clever)."

I'm in shock (the double use of "very" is Pierre's equivalent of stripping off all his clothes and sprinting across Times Square waving his arms and screaming). This is big!

Pierre naturally also passed along a link to the chemistry.


I should probably also report that, as expected, Pierre politely declined a gift of propolis throat spray (and since he’d constrained his instinct to roll his eyes over it, I, in turn, declined to chide his refusal with “Absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence!”).