Willful Ignorance

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by Lisa
Somehow, in the past month, the number of Republicans who view SARS CoV-19 (COVID-19, ‘coronavirus’) as a threat has decreased. Commercial news needs to address the desire to be misinformed because it makes you happy. My one grandfather used to watch the weather on each of the broadcast TV channels — hit ABC at the top of the hour, CBS for the main weather forecast at 15-past, and head over to NBC for the quick recap just before the end of the show. He went with whichever forecast made him the happiest (e.g. garden getting dry? Go with the one that had a higher chance of rain tomorrow.). This was innocuous — firstly because the three forecasts didn’t have that much variance, but also because he was completely aware of what he was doing. Wasn’t like he’d refuse to water his garden today because channel 9 promised it was going to rain last night.
 
It seems like a lot of people have taken this approach to news in general. Without awareness of their choice, and without a willingness to concede reality. There’s no difference between willful ignorance of the impact pollution has on the environment that allows you to support harmful policies (or the disingenuous belief that the invisible hand will guide companies away from polluting actions) and willful ignorance of dangers posed by this virus. In both cases, you aren’t just harming yourself. You’re harming *everyone*.

Office 365 Feature Scale-back

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by Lisa
Microsoft is adjusting some non-core features to save capacity while the number of remote workers increased dramatically. This won’t impact core services (signing on, viewing/sending messages, uploading/downloading files), but don’t be concerned if you’re getting replies where the person seemingly didn’t type, presence updates seem slow, avatars aren’t showing up next to someone’s name (or yours in the upper right-hand corner of Teams), etc.

COVID Break Educational Activities

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by Lisa

In addition to a Science Experiments For Covid19 Break, lots of e-books from the local libraries, the free learn-at-home program from Scholastic, and a handful of new physical books, I’ve got four daily educational activities for Anya during this school not-a-break:

10:30    Cleveland Science Center Curiosity Corner    Experiments            https://www.youtube.com/user/GreatLakesScience
11:00    Cleveland Metroparks Zoo                                Animal info              https://www.facebook.com/ClevelandMetroparksZoo
13:00    The Kennedy Center / Mo Willems                  Drawing                   https://www.youtube.com/user/TheKennedyCenter
15:00    Cleveland Metroparks                                        Naturalist                 https://www.facebook.com/ClevelandMetroparks

There are two get-moving videos that we’ve checked out … but it’s maple sap season so most of our physical activity is “hike in the woods and collect sap” 🙂

Wednesday @ Noon, https://www.clevelandinnercityballet.org/  does a virtual ballet lesson
Daily, not live, https://www.facebook.com/DominiqueMoceanuGymnasticsCenter/  has mini-workouts

Republicanism

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by Lisa
“School superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners have taken it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president.“
Reading this, I cannot help but think the response to this pandemic is playing out according to a fundamental tenant of Republican philosophy. Push power down closer to ‘the people’. Each school district, city/township, county, and state gets to decide how to respond to this virus. In other words, it’s a feature not a bug.
Personally, I think it’s important to have a strong federal government to coordinate things that impact everyone — environmental regulations, educational concerns, energy efficiency, public health. I hope people who push for decentralized government think about how chaotic our response is and extrapolate to how their preferred form of governance can react to other important situations, whatever those may be.
 

Web Meeting Platform Capacity Comparison

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by Lisa

I’ve had several situations now where a group is looking to start an online video meeting. To eliminate platforms that don’t support the number of people required, I put together this quick list. Teams and Zoom are, unfortunately, something home users are less apt to be familiar with … but it really is “click to join the call” easy.

Microsoft Teams (300)
Zoom (100)
Facebook Messenger (50)
Skype (50)
FaceTime (30, but limited to Apple products)
Google Hangouts (10)

Hangout Meet has a 250 person limit, but only if it is part of the gSuite subscription. It’s not part of our school district’s education package. Not sure if it’s part of our Township’s government package. Update: Google is now offering paid Hangout Meet features for free through 01 June.

SARS CoV-2 Data

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by Lisa

Visualization from Johns Hopkins Uni Center for Systems Science and Engineering: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Testing Stats: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing-in-us.html

Interesting combination of data — there have been 13,624 tests (although the data points for the past few days is currently incomplete) and 1,663 infections. That means like 87% of the people who have been tested weren’t infected. Which could be that they’ve been tested before they are infected enough, or it could be that there are a LOT of uninfected people getting tested. Since the actual number of tests is going to be higher, the percent actually infected is lower.

School’s Out

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by Lisa

Governor DeWine announced today that school will be out starting Monday — I guess I understand the need for some logistical wrangling, but it seems a bit odd to say “there’s a public health emergency that requires us to close down all of the schools …. next week”. I wonder how many people will be absent for the rest of the week. It seems like — if there’s enough spread to require schools to be closed, we shouldn’t be going in tomorrow.