After three mildly stressful days, the results of the PCR jury are in: and I’m clean.
(I was asked to take a test as part of a research study, not because I was symptomatic.)
My four year old daughter has just declared that I am the leader of all journalism in the world, and my wife is the leader of all science.
We have accepted this honour and would like to reassure you that our reign will be benevolent.
Listening to the Independent Sage group talking online, once again I’m struck by how willing the truly smart are to say “I don’t know” or “we don’t know”.
More of this, please.
Three learning byproducts of the current crisis
Things I have learned through reading about Covid-19, which aren’t actually about it:
- I need to have the flu jab in future. Not because I’m at any particular risk, but because I (like many) have under-estimated how serious it it, and want to protect others.
- Vitamin D is way more important to our anti-viral response than I ever imagined. I’m planning lots more outdoors time, when allowed, and supplements in winter.
- I need to understand systems thinking much more than I do.
Generally not a huge fan of Nietzsche, but in thinking about social media and how you should behave and spend your time there, this remains ever-useful:
”Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss the abyss also looks into you."
Oh, dear. Here’s a piece advising SEOs to use fact check markup for marketing purposes. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Or accurate things.
April in 32 seconds and 13 years
So. That was April. It lasted just over 13 years, I only drove the car three times, and those were the only times I left Shoreham Beach.
This was - and is - an historic period but for most of us - the lucky ones - our lives have been incredibly mundane despite that. Even with the anxiety and the homeschooling and the work and financial stress, the time with my wife and children has been a blessing.
The danger of valuing confidence over humility
This is a really key insight in Ed Young’s superb piece The Pandemic Doesn’t Have to Be This Confusing:
A lack of expertise becomes problematic when it’s combined with extreme overconfidence, and with society’s tendency to reward projected confidence over humility. “When scientists offer caveats instead of absolutes,” Gralinski says, “that uncertainty we’re trained to acknowledge makes it sound like no one knows what’s going on, and creates opportunities for people who present as skeptics.”
Lockdown reasons to be cheerful…
Some folks here on Shoreham Beach are being a lot more creative with lockdown than I’m managing…
Me pre-lockdown: Do we even need a printer at home any more?
Me in lockdown, and homeschooling: We need a better printer!
