'We Won't Remember Much of What We Did in the Pandemic' (ft.com) 77
Tim Harford, writing for Financial Times (not paywalled): Last spring, I returned from the holiday of a lifetime in Japan, and reflected on the richness of the memories it had generated. Time flew by while I was there, but in hindsight 10 days somewhere vividly new had produced more memories than 10 weeks back home. I likened the effect to the compression of a film. Instead of storing each frame separately, video compression algorithms will start with the first frame of a scene and then store a series of "diffs" -- changes from one frame to the next. A slow, contemplative movie with long scenes and fixed cameras can be compressed more than a fast-moving action flick. Similarly, a week full of new experiences will seem longer in retrospect. A month of repeating the same routine might seem endless, but will be barely a blip in the memory: the "diffs" are not significant enough for the brain to bother with. After months of working from home, I now realise that there was something incomplete about this account. New experiences are indeed important for planting a rich crop of memories. But, by itself, that is not enough. A new physical space seems to be important if our brains are to pay attention.
The Covid-19 lockdown, after all, was full of new experiences. Some were grim: I lost a friend to the disease; I smashed my face up in an accident; we had to wear masks and avoid physical contact and worry about where the next roll of toilet paper was coming from. Some were more positive: the discovery of new pleasures, the honing of new skills, the overcoming of new challenges. But I doubt I am alone in finding that my memory of the lockdown months is rather thin. No matter how many new people or old friends you talk to on Zoom or Skype, they all start to smear together because the physical context is monotonous: the conversations take place while one sits in the same chair, in the same room, staring at the same computer screen.>
The Covid-19 lockdown, after all, was full of new experiences. Some were grim: I lost a friend to the disease; I smashed my face up in an accident; we had to wear masks and avoid physical contact and worry about where the next roll of toilet paper was coming from. Some were more positive: the discovery of new pleasures, the honing of new skills, the overcoming of new challenges. But I doubt I am alone in finding that my memory of the lockdown months is rather thin. No matter how many new people or old friends you talk to on Zoom or Skype, they all start to smear together because the physical context is monotonous: the conversations take place while one sits in the same chair, in the same room, staring at the same computer screen.>
Keeping a diary? (Score:2)
Is anyone making a diary of what they experienced, thoughts in real time by the hour or day, and all the shit that happened? Don't lie or make up stuff but make it readable please, because in probably one hundred years from now, some poor grad student will have to read it and their professor will have to make up some false conclusions about us. Can you imagine having to pore through all the media -- tweets, video clips, news, etc.?
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Diary is the leading advised method. There's other ways to fight it but keeping a diary is still the most efficient, if you do it right. As a bonus, a diary is also a lot more useful to other people after you're dead than say, abstract paintings of the sources of your torment, or an epic saga in interpretive dance, or an entire room filled with bottles of your own pee, for example.
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Oh great, what am I going to do with all of these bottles of pee now?
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Mike: Can you get sick from drinking piss?
Roy: Yeah, I think you can.
Mike: Even if it's your own?
From "Kingpin".
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Leave them dotted around your state for randonauters to find.
https://theoutline.com/post/78... [theoutline.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/rando... [reddit.com]
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"Is anyone making a diary of what they experienced, thoughts in real time by the hour or day, and all the shit that happened? "
Yes, those of us not trusting any stupid Bluetooth app from Apple and Google.
We write down every person we come in contact with and the date and time and location.
Not because we are special, but when the back-tracers come calling to follow up on an infection, we know when and where we were.
And we don't want to risk people's lives.
Because, we forget.
Because we're old fucks.
And now ge
I already don't. (Score:3, Interesting)
This year has been stressful.
There are a few years I don't remember well in my life. The year my father died and my longtime girlfriend left me is a complete blur. The year a previous longtime girlfriend dumped me over the phone when I was out of town isn't much better.
2020 will be one of those years. I'll remember that it was bad. I won't remember the details. And I'm fine with that.
Is there a Fast Forward button? (Score:2)
Does this include the economic fallout which may last longer than the pandemic?
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we're killing more with the shutdown than the virus has and will. The absurd degree to which the shutdown was done benefited some large corporations, their competition from small and medium business eliminated.
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we're killing more with the shutdown than the virus has and will.
Also note that we spent WAY more fixing that Y2K bug than the damage the bug has and will cause.
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we're killing more with the shutdown than the virus has and will
Are you sure about that? If you are just looking at the economic damage, realize that the virus does more than just kill. It can cause major internal damage to lungs and just about every organ in the body. So don't just look at the number of deaths (right now Covid is the #3 cause of death in the US, behind cancer and heart disease despite infecting a relatively small minority of the population). There will be a lot of long-term damage to those who got it which, economically, costs a lot.
Also, there are a l
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you do know that colds and flu do that to for some people? let's not get hysterical over typical things viruses do.
I am complaining about the degree to which lockdown done, not arguing against safeguards smart places doing. Very bad to say a business that is supporting a family is "non-essential", it's more essential than big corp that can take a hit for a while.
1918 flu much worse than this thing, by the way.
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I will agree the cost/benefit analysis is sticky. I don't know that the shutdown is actually "killing" more, but it does have big psychological, sociological, and educational implications.
However, a lot of the business loss is just people avoiding going out as part of their own decision. Even if local gov't didn't have bans, a lot of customers would simply not show up anyhow.
Let's say 1/3 of the population is "at risk". About 2/3 of them will avoid restaurants, while about 1/3 of the non-at-risk population
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There is a movie that explored that: Click
The protagonist finds a remote control for his life, including a fast-forward button that is an important part of the plot. Not a great movie, but not terrible either.
It's typical (Score:2)
Meh. 10 days at home working vs 10 days in the office working - both unmemorable! The reason a vacation stick out is because a vacation is normally a special event that doesn't happen all the time. A vacation overseas is a rare event for most people.
I mean... (Score:2)
Re: I mean... (Score:2)
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But what will you remember: shooting it or how tricky it was to get it to put them on?
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Make stuff! (Score:2)
I don't care if you consider yourself a "creator" or not: if you want to remember a moment, make something at that moment. It could be a flower made out of pipe cleaners. It could be an origami bow tie. It could be a poem or a song. The point is simply to create a tangible thing you can refer back to and remember the circumstances under which it was created.
routine is always forgettable (Score:3)
I think any time that is routine will blend together. Of course.
If the COVID times were monotonous, you won't remmeber much because your brain can simplify.
For me, I had more Dad time in a few months than I was able to have the previous year put together. No commute, no work travel, schools closed... it was hard to be sure, but the silver lining for me was family time and new memories I will always cherish.
If your days were novel, you will remember them. If not, you won't.
alcohol (Score:4, Funny)
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Fill them up with antidepressants. Hey, that's what they did with the people who didn't go out before to make them more "outgoing", let's see if it works better on them.
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Its not over (Score:2)
The Douchebag author is writing as if the pandemic is over. its just getting started. The fun really starts when we finally accept the fact that most people who are recovering are only having antibodies for 2 months meaning a vaccine will also be pretty useless (2 shots over 28 days which gives you 2 months of immunity) means a shot every 3 months. Most Amercans wont do that so this thing will be around for years if not decades.
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that is false information, the majority consensus is that immunity lasts much longer. T cell responses even occur in people who have had a very mild infection with no remaining antibodies. You biology 101 understanding isn't enough to understand the immune system
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]
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he fun really starts when we finally accept the fact that most people who are recovering are only having antibodies for 2 months meaning a vaccine will also be pretty useless (2 shots over 28 days which gives you 2 months of immunity) means a shot every 3 months
Seriously? What other virus since the history of the world began has gotten people sick every three months? That's not a thing that happens.
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Oh let me see? The common cold which is.... wait for it.... another coronavirus.
Re: Its not over (Score:5, Informative)
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Seriously? What other virus since the history of the world began has gotten people sick every three months? That's not a thing that happens.
Norovirus (stomach flu) gets close: "After infection, immunity to the same strain of the virus â" the genotype â" protects against reinfection for between 6 months to 2 years.[56]"
Norovirus is also extremely infectious (foodborne, airborne, and fomites). There have been outbreaks with R0=14. Fortunately, it doesn't have Covid's stealthy asymptomatic transmission and simple hygiene measures are effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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I'm agreeing with the others here, anti-bodies are only half the equation, it doesn't matter if they disappear, the T-cells remember the virus and will get the body to generate more anti-bodies. And luckily this virus doesn't mutate much, I seriously wish the US would get it's act together though because the more people who get the virus the more chance it has to mutate into something more deadly.
Still though, it's not over until safe vaccines are administered population-wide. And I mean safe, half the popu
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Antibodies are generated by B cells not T cells. T cells kill infected cells (T stands for terminator) while antibodies prevent cells from being infected. T cell immunity may mean you get a milder form of it but you still get infected and are infectious and can spread it to other people.
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Is the duration of natural immunity necessarily the same as the duration of vaccine induced immunity? If we have to get boosters every two months... well I can't see that lasting long.
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It is believed that your body remembers how to make the antibodies, so not having them is not proof you are not immune. At least that is kind of what I hope, I am pretty certain I had it (AWFUL btw!) but 3 months later got a negative anitbody test. Considering I have not gotten sick again I do feel the immunity is working.
PS: It is really really awful, though short-lived. You don't want it. And if you think you somehow got immune without getting any symptoms because you are special, I guess, you need to thi
VRChat (Score:1)
Only if you stopped living (Score:2, Insightful)
Some of us have had a VERY eventful pandemic.
My family had a relative move in with us to ride out the lockdowns. Next a young foreign relative came to stay with us through the summer, between college semesters. We saw the crowded beaches first-hand. We were there when the churches began to re-open, only to re-close. We went out to eat on the second day the restaurants re-opened. We met a close friend for dinner out, who works with COVID patients in a hospital, and dared to hug her. We say hello to people we
Re:Only if you stopped living (Score:4, Insightful)
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You forgot "we probably infected 10 or 20 other people, and some of them may have died".
And given the high percentage of asymptomatic carriers, you may have as well without ever thinking you were sick: https://www.kron4.com/health/c... [kron4.com]
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I'm pretty sure none of those asymptomatic spreaders were people who _already had_ the disease and recovered from it.
Re:Only if you stopped living (Score:4, Insightful)
My father, who is 80, started going to church after it reopened. My brother and I said to him, "You could get sick and even die from someone coming without a mask!" His answer: "I'm going to have to die of something, sometime. I'm not going to stop living because I'm afraid!"
Re:Only if you stopped living (Score:5, Insightful)
My father, who is 80, started going to church after it reopened. My brother and I said to him, "You could get sick and even die from someone coming without a mask!" His answer: "I'm going to have to die of something, sometime. I'm not going to stop living because I'm afraid!"
You should have pointed out to him that your he might also infect several other people, some of whom might be permanently injured or die.
This is a point I have to make to my brother-in-law all the time. COVID would almost certainly kill him and he's okay with dying, which is his right, but his cavalier and self-centered attitude ignores the fact that he would likely kill or injure others in the process.
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Go on and live in the fear my friend. Something to remember, if you're afraid of getting sick, then YOU should isolate. Don't bother telling others what to do. I totally agree with this 80 year old man, who I'm assuming has lived a bit more life than all of us. You can get a different perspective.
Also, lets be real and stop spearing the fear. COVID would almost certainly kill him. IF he has some kind of condition then he would have a much higher chance of dieing. If not, then this statement is totall
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You apparently did not read the post you responded to. Or else you're just completely incapable of understanding that your choices impact others.
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"I'm going to have to die of something, sometime. I'm not going to stop living because I'm afraid!"
That would be bold talk from someone who hasn't had the opportunity to live a full life. I only hope that next time he's suicidal he jumps of a bridge rather than trying to spread an infectious disease onto others who may not have made it to 80.
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So basically you have been flaunting risk. Beaches, churches, dining in.
You are the reason why the pandemic is still a pandemic.
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For every person who has gotten sick, lockdowns have put 30 out of work.
We could eliminate car accident deaths and injuries by outlawing cars. Are you ready to live that way?
When the cure is worse than the disease, it's not a good cure.
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For every person who has gotten sick, lockdowns have put 30 out of work.
In a real country with a real government there would be mitigations in place to protect those people, so that they could stay home, and the pandemic could be over sooner.
We could eliminate car accident deaths and injuries by outlawing cars. Are you ready to live that way?
We should replace cars with PRT on rail, starting in city centers (ranked by population) and working outwards. Yes, I'm ready to live that way.
When the cure is worse than the disease, it's not a good cure.
The cure is not worse than the disease. The failing model of government is.
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You clearly have no understanding of the vast scale of the United States. There is no way mass transit would reach the many rural inhabitants of this country. But that's really beside the point. Mass transit has its accidents too, and people die as a result. Will you stop riding? No, life goes on, while we work to reduce risk.
The United States has its flaws, to be sure. But Europe didn't escape the pandemic unscathed. As much as you socialists would like to pretend otherwise, money has to come from somewhe
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Selfishness personified says, "I believe masks are important, so you must wear one too." or "I believe it's important to stay 6 feet apart, so you must do so too."
I'm not telling you what to do. Stay holed up in your house to protect yourself! By all means! Then you won't even encounter me or my kind in public places. But don't impose your beliefs on me!
The shutdowns have disproportionately impacted the poor among us, those who can't work remotely, and whose jobs were locked down, while those of us who are
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The true proof of "selfishness" is the apparent inability to even acknoledge which way the mask protects people. You wear the mask to protect others, idiot.
Re: Only if you stopped living (Score:1)
Because... (Score:2)
What's there to remember? (Score:2)
For me, it's just business as usual. Though I will remember fondly how I could work from home and didn't have to go to work.
The science of memory (Score:3)
Looks like someone's been reading about the science of memory. It's an extremely simplified & somewhat misleading description of some of the features of memory but basically right: New experiences make it feel like time has passed more slowly in retrospect while lack of change, lack of new experiences have the opposite effect.
Something else that we might be reaching for to explain why we feel so different in these strange times is that we require rich interpersonal interactions with people, e.g. face to face conversations, spending time with each other, & being around groups of people while they interact (situations in which we perceive whole arrays of rich social cues), in order to maintain our sense of self. Zoom, Skype, etc. are heavy filters of the kinds of social cues that we need to do this. They're glorified phone calls because, for example, you can't make eye-contact, which is an essential cue in interpersonal communication - you're either looking at the screen or the camera, not both at the same time - so that moment of contact never happens. Another example is microexpressions, which are tiny unconscious changes in our facial expressions that we 'read' in others while we interact with them. Even very high resolution cameras don't capture these in way that are meaningful to human viewers.
To illustrate how important this is, think about the most severe punishments that are used against prisoners. They're almost always social isolation, e.g. denying visits from family & friends or solitary confinement. Prolonged, extreme social isolation is officially classified as torture (& yes, this means that by this definition, American prisoners are routinely tortured). Prisoners who've been subjected to it find it very difficult to recover from & may well suffer from PTSD & other forms of mental illness (disintegration of the self).
The social isolation we're experiencing because of the pandemic is mild in comparison but it'll still more than likely have some kind of effect. Those of us with active, intense social lives will be better able to cope with it, i.e. we're mentally fitter to start with & so can endure more isolation. This is one of many reasons why there's so much speculation from psychologists about what effects the pandemic may be having on our minds. There's no way to predict since it'd be an unethical thing to study. What we know about extreme isolation is from what we've learned from torture programmes & abuse victims after the fact (e.g. the Nazis in WWII & the CIA). Nobody would ever officially get approval from an ethics board for research into this & to publish such research should result in criminal charges so we're pretty much in the dark about it.
Try to catch it (Score:2)
So if you are bored, you could try to catch the virus. With some luck you will see some very memorable new events.
Loved it - It should never end. (Score:1)
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Worked. I worked. (Score:1)
I'll be remembering (Score:2)
Monotony (Score:1)
Symptom of Depression (Score:2)
Most people are experiencing some degree of depression, which inhibits the formation of memory. We are wired to forget the excruciating texture of pain, remembering it only in vague terms of intensity. As we become unable to feel good, we become unable to remember. The minutes seem interminable but the months, and for some, years, pass in a blink. For those of us with chronic, life-long depression, this is just a particularly irksome bout of it--same old syndrome, different day.
Those who have never felt it
nonsense, if you did special stuff (Score:2)
Work was (is) a madhouse, I did home office for the first time, got called in after 6 weeks, during which I figured out how to invest in the stock market, made a decent start there, sold my first company sto
Maybe, but... (Score:1)
Maybe, but I'm sure we won't remember this guy's article.