"We have purposely avoided directly confronting the issue of masks because it is such an emotional and political issue. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull, the topic elicits strong emotions which overwhelms

We wear a mask in the hospital and don a N95 mask, gown and gloves when we see a patient known to have COVID-19. Masks are used for source control when patients are admitted with various types of infectious respiratory diseases

2/
After the visit, we dispense of the gown, gloves and change into our regular surgical mask to continue patient rounds. In public, we wear a cloth mask to comply with executive orders and as a courtesy to others who feel afraid and uncomfortable.
3/
Like most of you, we rarely wash the mask, we stick it in our pockets, pick it out of the glove compartment or off the floorboard when we need it.

In truth, we wish masks worked. If they did, it would be a cheap, and easy way to control the spread of Covid.

4/
The idea that they protect not only their wearer, but also those people around them seems noble. We wished masks worked because citizens are spending billions of dollars on them.

5/
We wish masks worked because most Americans wear them now. Telling them it was unnecessary will not make them happy. We wish masks worked because they have become a symbol for virtue and social responsibility.

6/
Anyone who doubts their utility is personally attacked; as though they don’t believe the viral pandemic is real, or don’t care about those who die from it.

7/
We wish masks worked, because they distract from other important Covid related issues such as: school closings, lack of access for non COVID related illness, increased mental illness, elderly dying alone, missed youth experiences,

8/
, substance abuse, suicides, increased poverty and homelessness, suppression of free speech, censorship of science, disruption of supply chains, government agencies used to oppress small businesses, restriction of religious gatherings, travel disruptions, isolation protocols, 9/
modeling over actual data, quarantines, lockdowns, contact tracing, and global harm of the economy that most impacts the working class, vulnerable and poor.

10/
We wish masks worked.

But they don’t.

More from Science

An interesting thing about carp is that they can go into anoxic hibernation and switch to an anaerobic metabolism based on converting glycogen to ethanol.

The waste ethanol is diffused out the gills

https://t.co/V3D1umHf04

Carp can switch over to an anaerobic metabolism and quietly exhale booze until the situation gets better.

They basically evolved the same metabolic pathway as yeast, independently.

In theory, if you spent a few thousand years breeding carp for it, you could use them to make booze.

They'd be enormous, almost entirely glycogen deposits with a fish added as an afterthought.

The really interesting thing about anaerobic carp, is that they can go 4-5 months without oxygen by relying on liver glycogen.

You, a human, have only about 100 grams of glycogen in your liver, about 400 more grams in your skeletal muscles. Call it 500 grams total.

In humans, glycogen is also burned for energy. This is where the marathon runner's bonk comes from: you only have about 2,000 calories worth, and running a marathon burns those 2,000 calories.
Ever since @JesseJenkins and colleagues work on a zero carbon US and this work by @DrChrisClack and colleagues on incorporating DER, I've been having the following set of thoughts about how to reduce the risk of failure in a US clean energy buildout. Bottom line is much more DER.


Typically, when we see zero-carbon electricity coupled to electrification of transport and buildings, implicitly standing behind that is totally unprecedented buildout of the transmission system. The team from Princeton's modeling work has this in spades for example.

But that, more even than the new generation required, runs straight into a thicket/woodchipper of environmental laws and public objections that currently (and for the last 50y) limit new transmission in the US. We built most transmission prior to the advent of environmental law.

So what these studies are really (implicitly) saying is that NEPA, CEQA, ESA, §404 permitting, eminent domain law, etc, - and the public and democratic objections that drive them - will have to change in order to accommodate the necessary transmission buildout.

I live in a D supermajority state that has, for at least the last 20 years, been in the midst of a housing crisis that creates punishing impacts for people's lives in the here-and-now and is arguably mostly caused by the same issues that create the transmission bottlenecks.

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