I was looking at some maps for a future article and saw something interesting about Italy.
The Po River Valley is the richest and highest-density area because it's the most fertile.
But then there's this line of cities. That's so weird. Why?
So I turned to look at what's there, and a bunch of cities are on a near perfect line! From Piacenza to Rimini through Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna or Forli.
They're all connected by the E45. So I wondered: What's the history of E45?
Turns out it was the Via Aemilia that Romans built to control the Po Valley.
They built it on the mountainside of the Appenine Mountains, as straight as they could for efficiency, and then built cities along its way! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aemil…
In fact this can still be felt in other places.
Look at the roads in Spain
(Made a gif from @xruiztru 's images)
The main concern I'm hearing right now: What if new COVID variants keep evolving so much that vaccines can't keep up and we end up in a situation like the flu?
It's possible, but I think it's unlikely. Here's why:
The flu has 2 advantages: 1. Other animals can be reservoirs, so even if you stop it in humans it could go back from them,
Do you remember avian flu? Swine flu? Animals that carry the flu include ducks, chickens, pigs, whales, horses, birds.. cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/v…
Meanwhile, so far COVID has only been witnessed to easily jump between humans and minks AFAIK. There's not much data on this yet, but it's very hopeful
1. 60% higher transmission rate 2. 30% higher fatality rate 3. 35% more vaccines will be needed 4. The herd immunity threshold goes from 60% to ~75% 5. A few more months before everybody is faccinated 6. ~60% stronger containment measures are needed to stop it
Vaccines won't arrive in time to stop it. So we need to prepare for another wave.
Instead, the effect will be really felt this summer: between immunity through infections, through vaccines, and outdoors activity, the pandemic will die down btw June and September
I introduce the "Scary Virus Paradox":
"After clearing a threshold, the less deadly a virus is, the more it will kill."
(Deadliness here defined as R0 * IFR)
(log-log graph)
This is obviously caused by society's reaction: the deadlier a virus, the scarier, and the more society acts in unison against it, like for Ebola or SARS.
Nobody cares (cared?) about the flu, so it kills ~350k ppl a year.
Measles antivaxxers, covidiots, antimaskers and the like are therefore a predictable reaction to a virus' deadliness.
1. Disrespectful and polarizing
He calls us "lockdowners" as if he was trying to demean us. That does not sound like a productive way to have a fact-driven conversation (which he claims to support).
2. His understanding of what he criticizes is shallow.
I'm not a "lockdowner". I hate lockdowns. They have a very specific use in some cases, but Western countries have used them nilly-willy. Their failure was to not use the right tools (fences, test-trace-isolate..)
What countries turned around their strategy?
Several. My favorite is Singapore:
It failed with its Fences and its test-trace-isolate programs in dormitories, but updated them and was able to control the virus