A day has just passed.
Originally, I intended to go for a morning cycle. But the bad skin around my lateral ankles made it a little risky, since cycling required me to wear my Teva sports sandals (I do not own any sneakers/trainers since the end of 2011), and it had a high chance of irritating the already bad skin with abrasion.
So I stayed in and spent time reading Infection Control for Instruments. It is a simple sub-two-hundred-page summary of strategies and associated processes involved in ensuring that musical instruments, their locations, and allied personnel are not a part of the disease transmission process. It was a document that has shown great relevance recently due to the on-going pandemic. It is well thought through and researched, and provides a good framework from which more detailed infection control processes can be enacted.
For those who are too lazy to read the document, the general idea is to ensure good hand hygiene, not share stuff that has ``wet contact'', and ensure that everyone plays a role in shared places to keep it clean, with regular disinfection prescribed within the infection control document. Choices of gadgets, disinfection chemicals, and associated procedures ought to take dressing from the relevant regulatory authorities (CDC, EPA, and FDA within the USA for example), and not be based off anecdotes shared by a friend of a friend. Various management strategies with respect to music instrument handling within ensembles are also suggested---the key idea here is to not overcommit the number of players to avoid sharing of instruments.
I would say that most of the document is full of good common sense, but common sense in a period of uncertainty is definitely lacking. I have heard/seen nonsensical ``measures'' of woodwind players having to wear masks while playing---they achieve the ability to play by cutting holes in the masks so as to allow them to breathe through their [uncovered] noses, and blow through their [uncovered] mouths! The document makes it clear that all parties need to contribute to the conversation to use the best known science to guide the outcome, and not do stupid things like that, mostly based on ``friend-of-a-friend'' anecdote sharing.
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I've taken to replaying Fez again, this time with the full intention of completing it.
I suppose that is all that I would like to write today.
Till the next update, I suppose.
4 comments:
That nonsensical measure is a prime example of "wayanging" - looks flawlessly safe on camera, right?
Actually, it looks even more ridiculous on camera. Such silly pictures should be easy enough to find on the 'net that I will not source for them here.
I want to add a couple of things that come from the future to illustrate the problem of zygzwang, that is, the compulsion to do something even though sometimes the best move is just to not make a move.
A more recent Nature article has pointed out that ``people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient''.
These are the reasons why any experiment that begins with ``humans are rational agents'' is going to have a really bad time when it is time to apply the findings in real life.
Interesting..thanks for the article and introducing the concept of zygzwang. At some level, it is tied to wayang (pardon the partial rearrangement word pun). In a hierarchical organization, some agents find it rational to commit zygzwang for the organization, whether they are aware of its effects or not.
I just want to quickly correct that the word is spelt ``zugzwang'' and not ``zygzwang'' as I accidentally typed.
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