The Berlin Files #76: labyrinth builders
Home labyrinths, the *movie* Labyrinth, vaccine progress, and much more on hopeful signals, quarantine life, and radical transformations
Hi all! Eric here. I hope you're staying safe and enjoying the summer as much as is possible.
Programming note: I'll be taking next week off but will see you right back here, same Berlin Files time, same Berlin Files (e-mail) channel in two weeks.
Hopeful Signals, Quarantine Life, & Radical Transformations
Vaccine & Prevention Progress
As you may know if you've been reading The Berlin Files for a spell, I'm very interested in figuring out how COVID-19 spreads as most of us are, and I'm particularly obsessed with how ventilation and airflow can be managed in indoor spaces to potentially prevent transmission.
Short of an effective vaccine and beyond the very clear and reasonable precautions we should all be taking when out and about (masks mask masks, wash your hands, social distancing, and some more masks), figuring out how to be safely indoors with other humans seems to me to be a big, big deal.
"How To Make Indoor Air Safer" doesn't magically solve this problem, but it's one of the best explainers on the topic that I've yet read, and lays out options and next steps very nicely.
It starts with looking at "aerosol transmission" from both an outdoor and indoor standpoint:
When people are outside, aerosol transmission is less of a concern because in wide-open spaces, these particles are quickly dispersed and diluted, making it difficult for an infectious concentration to accumulate, Brosseau said. It’s like dropping some food coloring into a river. But indoors, especially if the ventilation is poor, it’s much easier for aerosols to accumulate — more like dropping food coloring into a birdbath.
And then once we're inside, there are two broad options to clean the air:
“You can achieve an air change by one of two ways,” said David Krause, a certified industrial hygienist and the owner of HealthCare Consulting and Contracting. The first is “through the gross changeout of air, bringing in outside air and exhausting air from the room. Or you can achieve it by using high-efficiency filters that effectively remove virus-containing particles from the air.”
Finally, we get into the details, the good stuff. The MERV:
To catch the tiny aerosols that might be carrying the coronavirus, filters need a high enough MERV — yes, MERV. Surely you’ve heard of the minimum efficiency reporting value before, no? A filter with a MERV rating of 1, for example, will capture less than 20 percent of particles that are 3 to 10 microns across. As the MERV rating increases, so does the number of particles it captures, along with the amount of force an HVAC system needs to push the air through the fine filter.
To effectively neutralize indoor transmission of the novel coronavirus, you’d need a MERV of at least 13, according to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).
There's a lot more of this kind of detail packed into the piece, including recommendations from Krause to "have any illusions of sending kids back to school."
Meanwhile, while it's hard to claim any flat out good news in the U.S. in terms of new case numbers, there are some signs that the national curve has plateaued since mid-July.
The reality though is that we pretty much know how to keep transmission levels extremely low. I'll let Andy Slavitt take it from here.
And there are five coronavirus vaccine trials either underway (NIH-Moderna collaboration) or poised to kick off over the next few months (Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and Pfizer). Let's all hope that the promising news stemming from this research eventually translates into preventing the spread of COVID and ultimately saving lives in the months ahead.
Quarantining
I've heard and read lots of things relating to people working more on their homes during the Great Quarantine due to some combination of not having as many places to go to and running out of things to do to keep busy on the home front, I suppose (and throw a huge caveat in there related to people who are fortunate enough to have time to worry about home front upgrades).
I mention this because apparently "U.S. labyrinth builders" are doing quite well these days.
I'm partial to Mike Isaac's reaction here.
Of course, as we know there's only one true Labyrinth.
As a complete aside, because a) why not? b) we're off the rails already and c) it's The Berlin Files so let's file away, shall we? I very randomly listened to some of David Bowie's Labyrinth soundtrack recently and it's got some bonkers amazing 1980s-ified fantasy film background music on it.
Finally, I always have time for stuff like this.
The Music Club
I'm an insanely huge fan of the HBO show, Succession. It's an incredibly rare show that works as both drama and comedy, at moments a scathing and hugely hilarious satire of outrageous wealth and entitlement and at others a gripping portrait of a family pretty messed up and broken largely due to a ferociously manipulative and exploitative Rupert Murdoch-like patriarch. It's one of the very best shows on all of television, along with the likes of Atlanta, Barry, and Better Call Saul.
Nicholas Braun plays Greg on the show, often known as Cousin Greg, and occasionally known as Greg the Egg. His performance is as amazing as the show is. Braun also put out a music video called "Antibodies (Do You Have The)" recently, which is kind of funny and compelling and catchy and weirdly of the moment all at once. See if you agree.
Slight forewarning that I caught one cuss-type word near the beginning, if that kind of thing bothers you. (And if it does bother you, definitely do not watch Succession, like ever).
Bruan notes on the YouTube page:
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, I have partnered with PLUS1 to support those most at risk from the pandemic, through Partners In Health and The COPE Program. Text ANTIBODIES to 50155 or visit http://doyouhavetheantibodies.com to donate!
The Comedy Club
I'm a huge, huge fan of director Edgar Wright (here's his Twitter feed, which is wonderful). If you don't know who he is offhand, he's helmed such movies as Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, and, more recently, Baby Driver. And for TV nerds out there, he directed the brilliant and ahead of its time BBC comedy, Spaced.
Wright also directed one of my favorite movies of all time: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Based on a popular series of graphic novels, the film is an zany joyride of comedy and action that often makes you feel like you're inside of a graphic novel, a throwback video console game, or both.
I stumbled into learning that Wright and the cast -- including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, and many others (but no Kieran Culkin, tying back to The Music Club above, who is possibly even more brilliant in Pilgrim versus Succession, if that's possible, which may not be possible) -- of the 2010 movie reunited recently for a virtual table read to help promote the charity Water for People.
It's really fun to not only see Wright and the reunited cast laughing and reacting to the reading, but they do a great job too of integrating music and storyboards and custom drawings to stand in for the many action-y bits.
Speaking of Pilgrim and music, there are a number of original songs written by Beck (who, if you've been following along, is one of my favorite artists) in the movie, performed by the fictional band Sex Bob-omb. "We Are Sex Bob-omb" becomes one of the great songs to kick off a movie of all time.
So that's to all to say: next time, I'll be deadly serious next time.
Election 2020
Biden is eating into Trump's rust belt base
Vice President Joe Biden at 50% to President Donald Trump's 41%. This is just the latest Pennsylvania poll to show Biden with an advantage. A mid-July Fox News poll put Biden's margin at 11 points.
According to Five Thirty Eight and others, Pennsylvania is likely to be the "tipping point" state, meaning the state most likely to put either candidate over the top to secure the 270th Electoral College vote and therefore the presidency.
I'm reminded that there was a lot of talk about "electability" during the Democratic primary. Some were great believers in it, though there was a great deal of argument about what exactly electability even means. Both through circumstances and background, we're seeing what that means in 2020 by way of Biden's current standing in the polls. Don't forget too that Joe Biden is from Scranton, Pennsylvania (also the locale of the U.S. version of The Office, as an aside) and represented Pennsylvania-adjacent Delaware in Congress for decades.
On top of everything else going on, my view is that Pennsylvanians know Joe Biden pretty well and are unlikely to dramatically change their minds on the whole between now and the election.
Tweets of the Week
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And one last time…