My life as a scientist

We're at a rather strange place in American society--I don't need to belabor recent current events, but the idea that any of us can be in the kind of physical shape we have been in the past has fallen by the wayside in the midst of this pandemic, as it should.  The primary goal everyone should have at this point is getting through the pandemic as safe and as healthy as they possibly can.  So, my blog post today isn't about triathlon or exercise--I'm out of shape, but I'm doing what I can to limit how out of shape I am.  Today, however, I'm writing about the pandemic.

I watch what's happening and live through what's happening with my own unique perspective of this time, out of what must be countless unique perspectives from everyone else in the world.  I think we all have something valuable to add to this discussion. I'm a scientist. I live almost exactly on the border between a very liberally-biased LA County and a very conservatively-biased Orange County, in the middle of what is one of several hot spots of this pandemic in our nation.

I had a discussion this week that centered around the concept that the ideals that precipitated the birth of our nation are potentially going to be the things that cause the unraveling of our nation.  We were born a nation of people that fled from an oppressive government.  Our constitution contains wording that is meant to keep that kind of oppression in check, even if it is imperfect in preventing it entirely. We are a nation of citizens that is taught to question authority, in particular when that authority creates a situation that puts our freedoms at risk.

When looked at it in this context, it's fairly easy to see how a story that COVID-19 is a hoax gained a foothold, and the way our local and state governments are reacting to it is rooted in oppression and governmental overreach, and that became an accepted storyline for people to advance.  They were trained to question heavy handed edicts from government.  They were trained to stand up and voice their opinions when their freedoms were being taken away.  They were trained to scream bloody murder when what went along with the government's actions resulted in taking away their livelihoods. They were trained to think for themselves, and that is not a bad thing.

From when I was very young, I gravitated towards math and science, and ultimately spent my formal education in aerospace engineering, and went on to spend 20+ years (and counting) of my career working as an astrodynamicist.  I spent my younger years learning about the scientific method, studying what giants who had come before me had discovered, and enthralled by the knowledge of the universe.  While my degrees are not in virology, or public health, or any form of medicine for that matter, one of the things that binds the scientific community together is a deep respect for how the process works across all of our fields.

We all learned early on that nothing is certain.  The great truths are things that are theories, and those theories evolve over time, when more evidence is discovered that either bolsters the theory or casts doubt on it.  That great story that we all learned about Sir Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree and discovering gravity led to an entire branch of science referred to as Newtonian Physics.  Years later when we got a little older in school, we learned about Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, and how that theory actually pokes holes in Newton's work, but only for specific scenarios.  The great revelation you're supposed to have when learning this is not about the details of either Newton's work on gravity or Einstein's work on relativity, but how even theories that are well accepted and assumed to be facts of the universe may have to evolve.  There's no shame in that.  Nobody discredits Newton for not discovering what Einstein did.  It was simply more information.  We know that modifications to Newtonian physics have to be made when objects approach the speed of light, but Newton's equations are still very much in use for everyday scenarios.  If you need to predict the path of Mercury around the sun, relativity matters because Mercury is going really damn fast.  If you want to predict the path of Earth around the Sun, it doesn't really, so Newton's laws apply.  It's just a modification to a really robust theory.

I grabbed a few texts for reference while
working from home during lockdown.  They
really don't have any relevance to this post, but
 the book by Prussing and Conway has a really
cool word in it:  syzygy.  Look it up, use it at
brunch, if we can ever go to brunch again.

In this process of becoming a scientist, you read...a lot.  Over time, you become comfortable with never knowing for sure.  You learn that the most important thing you can do is to never have a preconceived conclusion that you're looking for evidence to support.  You learn to treat all of the evidence equally.  You learn to revise your conclusions based on the evidence, and you learn to accept it if you thought you were right but you weren't, because it isn't about who's right and who's wrong. It's about finding the solution, and there is no greater impediment to a solution than an arrogant scientist who can never be wrong.

Over the course of a lifetime, you also become skilled at reading and understanding work you are unfamiliar with, and applying what you do know to the context of those topics. My topic-specific knowledge of what's important about the Earth's geopotential for determining the path of satellites really doesn't apply to the pandemic, just as my doctor's topic-specific knowledge of how my kidneys function doesn't apply to me writing software for my job.  But members of either of those professions would certainly be adept at determining what's important in studying a problem.  They can certainly tell when things are flawed, when scientists created a study with an invalid set of assumptions, or when ideas are just ideas, and they are not bolstered by evidence.

As scientists, we're all comfortable with the idea that things have to change as you learn more about them.  Perhaps that's why the evolving guidance on face coverings for limiting disease transmission doesn't seem at all shocking to us.  Scientists sometimes get things wrong, and sometimes they get things just not quite right, which is what is happening with these face coverings. At the start of the pandemic, the general public believed that if you didn't wear a face covering at all times, you would most certainly encounter the virus that causes COVID-19 and be infected by it.  But the guidelines that were issued were that masks were not effective at preventing you from getting infected, unless the mask has a highly effective filter (an N95).  As time went on, this guidance altered to reflect the situation at the time and the growing body of knowledge on the topic, which is that in geographic regions that face coverings were required to be worn at all times had lower incidences of viral spread, and were more successful at arresting their outbreaks.  The guidelines in the United States changed from no recommendation for a mask to a recommendation to wear one.  However, with a cloth face mask, air leaks out of the edges toward your ears and toward your eyes and nose.  Anyone who puts one on knows immediately that all of the air they're breathing outward does not pass through this mask.  They also know that all of the air they're breathing in doesn't pass through it.  "Mask Deniers" latch on to these things as "proof" that masks don't work.

It would be really easy to say that:  "Masks don't work. I breathed in air and it didn't go through the mask.  Next."  But that's not at all where this story ends.

The problem is that what it takes to be infected by a virus is much more complicated than having to inhale one copy of that virus. Because of the way the human body works (because of things that are way the fuck over my head), it takes a certain amount of virus to infect someone, and that amount of virus has to enter the individual within a certain amount of time for it to accumulate enough to infect a single cell, and then enough to cause a person to be infected.  Mask wearing doesn't prevent all the virus from reaching you.  It reduces it, and based on the science and the observations, it reduces it enough to prevent a lot of infections. 

Masks reduce the amount of virus reaching a healthy individual by a number of mechanisms starting with a very straightforward, "This spitty-talking person no longer has a path that his saliva can directly enter my mouth when he's talking to me."  Additionally, masks on infected people reduce the amount of droplets they project when exhaling, causing them to either be caught by the mask, or simply drop to the ground more quickly because their velocity is reduced by the mask. Most significantly, it is now believed that the primary mechanism of transmission for COVID is through inhaled aerosolized particles, which are simply smaller droplets that float in the air longer.  When an infected person wears a mask, the barrier causes the air to collect at their face for a longer period of time and more of those droplets fall out of the air rather than being spewed into the air an uninfected person might breathe.  Aerosolized particles still happen--they just happen less.  Masks on uninfected people reduce their chances of becoming infected, but they are far from perfect.  Because of aerosolized virus, and the fact that the masks are not effective at removing aerosolized virus as you breath it in, spending time in an enclosed room with an infected person may result in an infection, regardless of whether those peoples are using masks.  Give it enough time, with two people breathing the same air, and eventually the uninfected person is going to inhale enough of the aerosolized partices that were not trapped in the infected persons mask.  This is why being outdoors is preferable--the aerosolized virus can't build up, but inside, there isn't ventilation to change out this air, at least not anything near the ventilation that occurs from being outdoors with even the slightest breeze.

Wear a mask.  Have fun with it.
Make a statement.

I've gotten used to modifying my understanding over time, and adapting it to new information.  I can completely understand how people might get really pissed off over the changing mask recommendations from the government and simply declare that this is a bullshit governmental overreach that's forcing them to do something that doesn't work.

However, it does work, and you should do it.  It's just that the science about masks evolved based on the fact that countries like China, Germany, and many other nations that required them early on successfully reversed their outbreaks.  Scientists didn't blindly accept these things and push them forward.  They understood the mechanisms that leaky cloth masks actually do remove virus from the air, and the real world results in those countries back up the understanding of those mechanisms.

I'd like to understand why people are so against this simple step, but at the same time, I get it that when people scream at me, "The virus is a hoax," that they're saying something much larger than calling a disease a hoax--they're saying they're fed up to the point that they won't entertain the possiility of a modification to their belief.

That's the real problem that we have.  People need to seek to understand.  I do it every day.  I believe our experts--our virologists, our epidemiologists, our frontline health care workers.  I'm sorry, but I do not believe the mask-denying guy the other day who said "The virus faithful are strong in their conviction" and "Throw away your mask and live life."  These are the words that immediately put you into the bucket of "conspiracy theorist" and "science denier."  Don't be that person.

Though, if you can back those words up with facts and data, as well as a valid theory, my ears and eyes are wide open.