Coronavirus, science literacy, math, and behavioral psychology

A number of people have shared around that New York Times article of a few days ago that claims the COVID19 version of the coronavirus could kill as few as 200,000 Americans. Over the hours today, I've done some mental gestating, and realize that people need to think this through better. (And no, I'm not linking to the story, for several reasons, some of which will become apparent below.)

First, reactions to the story illustrate two things.

One is that Homo sapiens as a species is NOT "rational" by nature. Our australopithecine ancestors weren't and we didn't involve any hugely greater degree of rationality. Nor, contra the hopes and claims of some philosophies like Stoicism, has cultural evolution promoted a much greater degree of average rationality growth. That's simple fact.

Two is that the basic principles of behavioral psychology, per Dan Ariely's excellent book of that name, that show humans are "Predicably Irrational," are quite, quite true.

Specifically, per it and its related behavioral economics, humans do (on average, this is a social science) show predicable — and predictably irrational — behaviors in many scenarios. One of these is loss aversion. That means that we tend to overreact to many of our fears of losses. A related behavior is "loss attention." And, obviously, death is a loss. A huge loss, whether it's our own medical diagnosis or a statistical estimate.

With that, let's dig in.

(Update: Let's have some common sense while you're out shopping and other things, too, folks.)

First, you may say, "I heard about a New York Times story that coronavirus could kill as many as 10 million Americans."

That's the same story.

But, because of your loss aversion and related psychology, you noticed the 10 million. And probably read past the 200,000.

I also noticed the 200,000.

I had already, previously, based on estimates of both the virulence and lethality of COVID19, estimated 250,000 deaths.

That's not nothing, of course.

But PUBLIC health is about social statistics, not individual anecdotes.

Since seasonal flu kills an estimated 50,000 Americans a year, that puts this into some context.

Turns out I am not the only one spreading the "lessen the alarm" stance. Georgetown U. psychology prof Dr. Jelena Kecmanovic has some good stuff. She includes: Accept uncertainty, don't underestimate resilience, and, per what I've said, don't overestimate threats.

Further context?

Alcohol, from DWI fatalities to workplace fatalities to suicides to liver cancer to other cancers and ultimately to cirrhosis, kills almost 100,000 Americans a year. (That's more than all illicit drugs combined, and that number may be low; I suspect it is.)

Cigarettes kill almost 500,000.

So?

If you're overreacting to COVID19 while either smoking a Marlboro or else drinking one too many Buds or shots of Jack Daniel's, I don't want to hear from you. (And, in case you're wondering? Exact numbers are even harder to come by, but stroke, heart attack and other similar deaths, the numbers of them preventable from better diet and exercise, slot between alcohol and tobacco. So, if all the exercise you do is walking out the door to your car, I don't want to hear from you, either.)

Let's continue.

There's one other thing many Americans don't know about the experts estimating death rates of between 200,000 and 10 million. They probably think that means an average of 5.1 million. And they'd be wrong.

But, if they think of a simple brainteaser that stumps many of them, they'd maybe think they're wrong without knowing what the actual median might be, which I'll tell you in a minute.

That brainteaser is a simple one.

If bacteria in a petri dish double every minute, and the dish is filled in one hour, when is it half filled?

Most people divide one hour in half and say "30 minutes."

The correct answer, of course, is "59 minutes." It's half full in 59 minutes and in one more minute, with another doubling, it's full.

Many growth, or decline, and change issues in the natural sciences work by this "geometric progression" that involves multiplying growth, rather than an "arithmetic progression" that involves additive growth.

This is how half-lives of radioactive elements work.

It's also an issue in social sciences, as it's how compound interest works.

The geometric mean between 200,000 and 10 million is 1.4 million.

NOT 5 million.

That is still a lot of people. But it's a lot less than 5 million.

Personally, I think odds are less than 10 percent the US even hits 1 million, for a variety of reasons. That's still a lot of people. But it's a lot fewer than many people will expect.

But, I'm promoting your loss aversion.

So, let me give you MY geometric mean estimate. I think there's a 50 percent chance COVID19 deaths in the US stay below 400,000.

==

There are other factors at work.

Globally, elected politicians, once they see a critical mass on coronavirus worries in elective democracies, are going to tilt toward overreaction.

In the US, there's also an ignorance of population densities and population demographics.

If one takes the "Acela Corridor" and extends it 100 miles inland, that part of the US is as densely populated as the Benelux countries.

Elsewhere? Even at 327 million people? Not so much. Nationally, the US population density is about the same as Venezuela. See here. Cut out the Acela Corridor and, though more sprawled, the Southland of SoCal, but to be fair, whack Alaska as well. The rest of the "lower 48" is probably about the same as Peru on average.

Per state rankings, Texas is about the same as Columbia. East Texas is about the same as Iran, which has had some worries, yes. Or maybe halfway between Iran and Spain. But it's far below Italy, far far below Northern Italy where the coronavirus worries hit there, and WAY below South Korea.

OK, the biggies? Since both have densely populated coastal areas, but lost of mountains and deserts? US at 34 people per square mile vs China at 145 people per square mile? No contest. Going more granular? Wuhan itself is 8 million people or so and the metro area is 19 million and it's more densely populated than US metro areas, with the possible partial exception of a NYC or Bay Area. It's in Hubei province, which at 78,000 square miles is about 12-13 percent bigger than Oklahoma, but with 58 MILLION people. Understand?

Population density is no guarantee in offering a measure of protection, and of course, I'm not claiming that it offers anywhere near full protection. But, in much of less-populated America, it DOES offer a measure of protection, in my guesstimate.

===

Update: Per a Facebook discussion which I just exited, this is part of why it's not totally fair to compare "the West" to "Asia." The person is, for now, still a FB friend but he's been moved to "acquaintances."

As far as Asian countries controlling it well? China's been lying since the start and I wouldn't trust its numbers. Singapore and Hong Kong are city states, one still semi-authoritarian and the other under the thumb of Beijing. South Korea is, it seems, doing a good job, but it's the size of Indiana with 50 million people. Taiwan is the size of Maryland. So, that alone isn't fair.

Nor is looking at only the US and Italy and saying that's "the West." As I told said person before exiting the conversation, that ignores countries like Germany that are handling it well.

Where have all the bugs gone?

Yes, Friday Night Lights two weeks ago was swarmed by moths and crickets. That was due to unseasonably warm and unstable weather, even for the end of late summer in North Texas. The weather wasn't normal, nor was seeing that many bugs.

More and more research over the past few years indicates that more and more insects are disappearing from our world, especially in developed areas.

Now, a lot of this research has at least mild "anecdote" problems. Even when bugs/square centimeter are being done on a particular patch of land, we don't always have a control vs. 10 years ago on that same patch of land, same time of year. Even if there are cases when we do that, it's tough to control for different weather (not climate, down wingnuts and more on that in a minute).

Some research doesn't even have that degree of control.

Nonetheless, many scientists and philosophers of science related to this accept that there is a moderate to large degree of truth behind this.

We still don't know why. I'll tackle that more, too

I'm first adding my purely anecdotal, longitudinal observations.

Like many other non-scientists who have noted this, I've seen fewer and fewer bugs on my windshield over the years. And, the rate of decline seems to be decreasing.

I have spent 13 of the past 21 years within 100 miles of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and another three years in North Central Texas, just a little bit out of that circle to the south.

It's bug area. Mild winter, warm spring and fall, warm to hot summer, fairly high humidity, lots of lakes, etc.

In the summer, in years and years past, during their namesake month, June bugs coated the windshields of night drivers, especially in rural parts of the area I describe. Moths did so throughout the summer months. Especially in later summer, grasshoppers and crickets might make a late additional late afternoon addition.

No more.

That critter at left was a friendly rider from a county road, then on to a farm road, then on a brief stretch of U.S. highway that I tried not to travel too fast, on my driver's window. (Background scuzz is old tinted window film with bits of separation, glue, etc.)

I don't think a grasshopper that big has hit my windshield, or either of my headlight shields, the whole summer.

I think, on memory, I've probably only had a few like that in the past four or five years. Moths are more an irritant than a real problem.

So why?

Is climate change on the heat side screwing up insect gestation stages?

Is climate change on the heavier and more intermittent rain screwing up insect egg laying?

Are farm insecticides causing too much damage beyond farm and field?

Some combination of all of the above?

Other factors?

Yes, possibly other factors. The Guardian suggests light pollution is one.

Other factors  plus one or more of the original three listed possible causes?

Will we soon be aping Pete Seeger?

Where have all the insects gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the insects gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the insects gone?
Farms have killed them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

WE have killed them every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

==

Not for a long time, perhaps. Science notes we've killed an estimated 3 billion birds in North America since the 1970s, although those numbers and what they mean may have been both overstated and massaged.

GRACKLES INVADE NORTH TEXAS!

But, it's not QUITE "Children of the Corn."

But ...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

If this is your lead story, as a pullout, with not one but two photos on the front page, you're at a small daily paper that should either
A. Consider running a Trib partnership story on the front, if you have to
B. Consider an AP story if you have a membership (that issue may be "open" per what I know) or
C. Consider going non-daily.

Knowing the cut-rate chain ownership?
B. May be iffy because of what is in parenthesis in combination with occasional inside content
A. Might turn up corporate noses, but if you do a story below just the grackles lead photo as wild art, why not
C. Will never be done as long as an Alabama dime can be milked.

If you're the shorthanded editor, whether or not you're familiar with the reality of end of summer/start of fall great-tailed grackles in North Texas, I'm sorry for your situation. I'm also sorry per other things.

As for that reality?

Grackles as an "urban invader" will find some swarming spot in any town of more than 5,000 people.

And, no, they don't just swarm at cheap places, or high food-litter places, like Walmart.

When I lived in the Metromess, one of their top swarms was along Oak Lawn, most heavily near the intersection with Turtle Creek Boulevard. In the Best Southwest, they semi-swarmed DeSoto's Town Center area because of the Tom Thumb across the street and the proximity of Ten Mile Creek.

Oh, north Texas newspaper? Those aren't common grackles. They're great-tailed grackles.

And bird experts or semi-experts, whether for small newspapers or Aggie state Extension pages? Stop calling them things like "pests" just because, like ravens, they're smart enough and opportunistic enough to massively expand their urban range.

Finally, said person who wrote this is not only the editor but also the general manager of this daily paper. The Peter Principle runs deep.

You're far more than your genes

Herding Hemingway's Cats: Understanding how our genes work by Kat Arney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Throw out what you thought you knew about genes, DNA, etc.

Several great things here.

First, the book explains in good detail things I've already known about how genes can code for proteins for various things, whether in combination with one, two or ten or more other genes.

Second, it explains in good detail what I've known about non-gene "control switch" areas of DNA, including how they usually act more like dimmer switches than on/off straight up/down switches.

Third, it revealed a lot I didn't know.

First, the DNA near the center of the nucleus is generally more "active." Arney talks about this, the relation to histones in positioning segments of DNA and more.

Second, coding areas on DNA evolve much more rapidly than genes themselves and are usually the primary driver of evolutionary change.

Third, epigenetics, while not all wet, probably needs more skepticism than it's gotten at times. She gives some detailed insight into this, and the exceptions to it.

Fourth, after splashing cold water on epigenetics, she brings to a boil something I wasn't aware of — micro-RNA. Apparently this has at least as much effect on inheritance as the biggest touters of epigenetics have claimed for it in the past. For example, sperm cells appear to have micro-RNA, and are NOT, therefore, just a load of DNA and that's it.

Also note that there are multiple different types of micro-RNA.

Fifth, although these discoveries aren't quite "Lamarckianism," nonetheless (and she barely touches on prions, speaking of) they put "genes" in a whole new context.

In short, the Human Genome Project and similar likely won't be in that much better position to tell us that much more about "you" and "me" twenty years from now than it is today.


View all my reviews

A national monument in Waco? And why does Bill Flores play games with it?

Columbian Mammoth at Waco Mammoth Site. Photo by
Larry D. Moore at Wikipedia page.

Waco, Texas, red-stateish, but not quite as red-state as you think (a majority of county commissioners in McLennan County, as well as the Waco City Council, asked Rick Perry to do the Medicaid expansion part of Obamacare; the county as a whole went 64-34 Romney in 2012), is now turning to the federal executive department for other help.

Waco civic leaders, having repeatedly asked Congress for action and gotten nowhere, are asking President Obama to use his Antiquities Act powers and make the Waco Mammoth Site a National Park Service system National Monument.

First, the previous history:

Congress in 2001 ordered the National Park Service to study the site’s suitability for the national park system. In 2007, the agency reported that the site met all criteria for inclusion. 

A bill sponsored by then-U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, to add the site to the national park system passed the U.S. House in late 2010 but died in the Senate. A bill by Edwards’ successor, Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, passed the House in 2012 but never came up for a vote in the Senate. 

Flores’ bill stipulated that the mammoth site would be added to the system but without federal funding. The National Parks Conservation Association at the time decried the bill, saying it set a bad precedent and would prevent the National Park Service from exercising its necessary oversight.

Bill Flores

Gee, shock me that Flores would stipulate that.

That said, knowing how much of a tea partier Flores is, this doesn't surprise me. (Unfortunately, his only opposition is a Libertarian on a shoestring budget and a Democrat who doesn't even have a website.)

Meanwhile, Flores doubled down on the dishonest:

In an interview Monday, Flores said his legislation wouldn’t have prohibited the National Park Service from exercising routine oversight or promoting the site.
“I think that’s a straw horse,” he said. “The folks in the Senate want parks to be totally federally funded so the federal government has complete control.”

 I don't think that's a straw man at all. The National Park Service, as part of its federal dollars, creates websites, creates brochures, and does other marketing and informational work. "Without federal funding" would include "without (THAT) federal funding." 

Gloria Young, treasurer of the Waco Mammoth Foundation, calls him out on it, too:

“Major funding at this time is not required, and that’s the point we’ve tried to make to Washington,” she said. “What killed us is that they put in a phrase that no funding ever could take place. How can we agree to no funding ever? We don’t know what’s in the future. If we make a phone call to the National Park Service to ask a question, or if they should check to make sure it’s maintained as it should, that’s an expenditure.” 

Exactly.

Beyond that, Rep. Flores, there's this thing called the Interwebz. It has your bill online. Including this:

(d) Prohibition of Use of Federal Funds.--No Federal funds may be  used to pay the costs of--     
(1) carrying out a cooperative agreement under subsection (b)(1);     
(2) acquiring land for inclusion in the Monument under subsection (b)(2);    
(3) developing a visitor center for the Monument;     
(4) operating or maintaining the Monument;     
(5) constructing exhibits for the Monument; or     
(6) developing the general management plan under subsection (c).

I presume that Subpoint (10) would rule out even an NPS system website or the trifold brochures. If you had wanted any of that excepted from the prohibition of federal funds, you could have said so.

It was, after all, your bill.

And, it had other faults, like barring the creation of a buffer zone, barring the use of federal money for land acquisition and other things. At just 100 acres, it's possible that more mammoths, or remains of other life from the same era, might be preserved outside its current boundaries.

And, that all means tourism, and tourism $$$. That's something the allegedly capitalistic tea partiers always overlook in their anti-environmental type hate. People spend money on tourism. And, rough estimates are that each dollar of tourism spending has a $1.50 multiplier. That's not trickle-down, but trickle-through, economics.)

However, many of the red-state portion of Waco and McLennan County will continue to vote for Flores even as he continues to work against their best interests. The "good people" of West will vote for Greg Abbott, similarly, even as he supports not letting people in their situation readily find out how safe, or unsafe, fertilizer plants in their back yards are. Or worse, since the ilk of these West-haters are the likes of people who cut Abbott big campaign checks.

4 strands of biology, sociology, economics, philosophy connect

The four strands? Competitiveness in general, capitalism, Pop Evolutionary Psychology and social Darwinism.

Regular readers know that I’ve recently written about No. 4, including listing one candidate most wouldn’t put there. I’ve regularly written about Pop Ev Psych and its largely unscientific, occasionally pseudoscientific claims; I’ve been wary of it even when less liberal than I am now, so this is not driven by political issues.

I am that liberal, though … left-liberal of a sort for America, at least. So, in various ways, I’ve definitely written about No. 2, capitalism?

No. 1, competitiveness, somewhat ties all the others together.

Evolution by natural selection does involve a degree of competitiveness, to be sure. However, that competitiveness is usually against members of other species, more than members of one’s own species. To the degree there is intraspecific competition, it’s often sexual selection that’s the driver. That said, at the same time, group selection can be a driver for collaboration with other members of the same species.

So, that’s biology. Pop Ev Psych is sociology, primarily in what it says about its adherents. Ditto for social Darwinism (the fourth modern variety of social Darwinism, New Atheism, has many libertarian adherents, and yes, adherents is the right word). Capitalism is obviously a matter of economics.

Philosophy? Trying to extrapolate from the biological basis of and need for competitiveness to the other three gets us to Davie Hume’s famous is-ought distinction. (It’s worth noting that, in my opinion, many people who claim that Hume’s comments on this are misconstrued, misinterpreted, wrongly implied, etc., have personal reasons for stating this; see ox, whose and goring.)

Just because we have to fight to escape a lion (or per the old joke, run faster than a companion also seeking to escape it) doesn’t mean that Wall Street plutocracy, Pop Ev Psych “just so” stories and the beliefs behind them, or the social Darwinism of either New Atheism or old-time religion has to be that way.

Because it doesn’t.

And, this is part of why the American education system is problematic, and not just K-12 education.

I don’t think I am overstating matters when I say 90 percent of Americans are unfamiliar with Hume’s is-ought distinction. And that’s sad. Hume is one of the most “approachable,” largely non-technical, philosophers in modern, or even modern plus ancient, philosophical history.

Neuroscience roundup - brains, guts, meds

Antipsychotic drugs could be shrinking brains. A large study seems to offer a fair degree of confirmation. I think, among other things, we should look more carefully at off-label use of these drugs. Smaller brains may not be bad, but ...

Meanwhile, about 50 percent of people prescribed antidepressants are off-label users. It's stuff like this that leads to "Big Pharma" cries.

You not only have a "second brain" in your gut, but your intestinal microbes may influence both that and the actual brain, through effects on neurotransmitters. Woo-ers running wild with this aside, how could this affect antibiotics prescriptions? What is antibiotic resistance going to do to this?

Science briefs - mitochondria and prions, climate change, more

So, mitochondria are implicated in prion formation, which then may have connections to the aging process. This sounds like news that's going to unfold for years to come, no pun intended.

A millennium of climate change ahead? That's what one new computer model says. Egads. A millennium of denialism, too?

One test to determine pre-conception more than 400 childhood diseases? Exciting, but, yes, with a huge psychological burden.

You really DON'T forget how to ride a bike

Or, maybe, at least, your muscles don't forget how they developed, if you were a serious biker. Our muscles actually gain some sort of memory from regular exercise and don't totally lose it.

Your age – the eyes have it

If you try lying about your age, or other numeric factors, your eyes may give you away.

Abortion: It happens in the animal world too

And, "deliberately," to the degree you can attribute will to the pipefish, a relative of the sea horse. And, not for deformations, but purely for attractiveness reasons.

The researchers showed that a male pipefish will absorb some of his developing offspring — effectively eating some of his unborn young. This highlights a conflict of interest between the two sexes: the females surrender their eggs to the males in the hope that they will all be supported, but the males instead may support only a fraction of the brood. ...

The fact that male pipefish are selectively judging the fitness of their mate both before and after copulation is surprising because, in general, most animals judge the quality of their mates before sex or, in some species, after sex.

Verrrry interesting. Read the full article.

That said, per someone asking me on Facebook about the "tarted-up" headline, let me provide a lot more backstory to the issue.

Really, the headline isn't "tarted up."

First, as for the facts, and their relevance to humans? Much more often than most people know, and many might like to admit, a woman will, in the same way, absorb a fetus early in pregnancy. Or in the case of twins, especially identical ones, one fetus will actually absorb the other. This is how people can have multiple blood types and such. The technical term for the "absorbed fetus" in the adult survivor is a "teratoma." Fof a non-Wiki, real-world description of a teratoma, go here.

That said, in a more narrow scientific point of view, I believe "abortion," not miscarriage is the correct term.

And, using abortion but excluding "reabsorption," in humans, 25-35 percent of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, usually 6-8 weeks in.

Reproduction is a lot more fallible of a process than many people know. Or might like to accept, if they did know.

Is it callous to use the word "abortion" in the header when "redistributing" this information to a general audience? That's not my intent, I can say that, at least. Is it meant to be "shocking" in the sense of "eye opening"? Yes.

It's meant to get people to realize that reproductive "oddities" and "fallibilities" are relatively "normal" throughout the animal world, just as homosexuality is. And that, then, for some people who don't want to look at that, ties directly to claims of "intelligent design."

For more on this issue, namely teratomas and other reproductive fallibilities vs. intelligent design, go here.

That said, on the issue of abortion myself, I am not at the left-hand edge of abortion rights. I believe the trimester system should be junked for a bimester one, with Medicaid funding required in the first bimester, but states' rights to regulate abortion as open in the second bimester as they are now in the third trimester, or maybe even a bit more so.

Amoeba got kin!

Even more exciting than the "Clams got legs" cry from the cartoon B.C., is this finding, that amoebas favor genetically similar creatures and can even form multicellular clusters.

No, it's not conscious "kin" in the first instance, nor is it multicellular "organisms" in the second, but it is all new behavior.

Forest murmurs are all the same temperature

In a biological shocker, scientists have discovered that all sorts of trees, from a Texas red oak to a birch in Michigan, all keep their leaves at the same temperature — about 71F/21C. No matter the ambient temperature around the leaves.

Beyond the wow factor, scientists say this may have implication for how tree rings have been used, and are used, to analyze weather and climate from the past. Here’s why:

For decades, scientists studying the impact of global warming have measured the oxygen isotope ratio in tree-rings to determine the air temperature and relative humidity of historical climates.

Oxygen atoms within water molecules evaporate more or less quickly depending on the number of neutrons they carry, and the ratio between these differently weighted atoms in tree trunk rings has been used as a measure of year-to-year fluctuations in temperatures and rainfall.

“The assumption in all of these studies was that tree leaf temperatures were equal to ambient temperatures,” lead researcher Brent Helliker told AFP. “It turns out that they are not.”

Read the full story for more details; especially to prepare yourself for the James Imhofes of the world who will likely use this to argue against the reality of anthropogenic glocal warming.

On the more serious side, researchers did not indicate how much this might force past paleoclimate measurements to be recalibrated or in what ways.