Dance like no one is watching. Someone, of course, is watching. Someone’s always watching. Someone’s watching you right now even as you read this. But do yourself a favor and forget about that for a second. Especially since someone will be watching regardless of whether you think about it or not. Let joy and abandon be the gift you give yourself. Let a moment’s carelessness and vulnerability be the gift you give your pursuers. Most importantly, let The Dose be the gift I give you.
In today’s news: a COVID-19 update and a lizard I want to talk about for the fuck of it.
COVID-19 Update
Many States Fall Short of Testing Recommended For Public Reopening
A new analysis done in collaboration between STAT and Harvard researchers has shown that many states are far under the recommended testing levels needed to justify reopening public places and relaxing safer-at-home orders after May 1st.
The analysis is of particular importance right now, as several states have announced plans to ease safer-at-home orders in the coming weeks by reopening public spaces—most notably Georgia and Florida, both of which would need to be able to do over 5,000 more tests per day than they are currently doing. These gaps in the number of tests being done per day vs. the number of tests needed to be done to reasonably consider relaxing public space restrictions are also deeply significant for states such as New York, New Jersey, and California, all of which would need to be doing tens of thousands more daily tests to reach satisfactory levels, with New York especially being over 100,000 tests per day short of what experts recommend.
Researchers from Harvard’s Global Health Institute also cautioned that daily testing levels and capacity are not the only mitigation strategy necessary to consider when reopening public spaces, and other factors such as how quickly tests are can be returned, how quickly and accurately public health workers can identify and contact potentially exposed people, and levels of preparedness in terms of personal protective equipment for health workers in the event of new waves of outbreaks, all should be taken into heavy consideration when states contemplate relaxing exposure mitigation efforts.
Experts also caution decision-makers at the state and federal levels not to apply the recommended levels broadly or outside the context of an individual state’s outbreak size, and to take into consideration the virus’s ability to propagate within each individual state’s distribution and population. As Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute says in STAT's analysis, “You can’t just take the national number and scale it to states by their population.”
The analysis comes at the heels of President Trump’s words at a White House briefing last Thursday wherein he said “No, I think we’re doing a great job in testing,” in response to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci’s attestations that we are not at the testing levels we would need to be at to reasonably consider reopening segments of the economy.
You can read the full analysis and the methods used to develop the projections in STAT here.
A Lizard I Want To Talk About For The Fuck Of It
Normally I wouldn’t do this because it’s not “news”, but honestly I’m just gonna say it: fuck news. The world is in chaos and I wanna talk about this lizard I like.
credit: Lindsey Swierk
This is him, this is my reptilian son. His name is Anolis aquaticus which is a perfect name that is beyond reproach, which goes perfectly with his perfect face that is also beyond reproach.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “look at his HAT look at his adorable little BUBBLE HAT!!” and you’re right to think that and we should look at it. Also, it’s not just a hat, it’s his scuba tank. HIS LITTLE LIZARD SCUBA TANK!
According to a study headed by Lindsey Swierk published in the March 2019 edition of the Herpetological Review, this boy, this perfect little baby boy can breathe underwater for up to 16 minutes by using his wittle bubble hat to recycle oxygen.
Swierk posits that the little bubbly babies dive underwater mainly to escape the notice of predators (given that they’re not very quick-footed on land), but given that she also found aquatic insects in my buoyant boy’s stomach, they might use their so-called “bubble breathing” for hunting as well.
Though we’ve seen cases of underwater scuba-like breathing mechanisms in invertebrates such as diving beetles and diving-bell spiders, the water anole (as my son is also sometimes called) marks the only case in which this behavior has been observed in vertebrates. Wow, look at you go Anolis, making history. I’m so proud of you. You bring me nothing but joy. I don’t know a better person.
And that’s all folks. I have no personal news other than the fact that I made gnocchi tonight and it was delicious. It had basil and chives and green peas in a butter sauce. Whoo boy it was good.
Anyways, tell the people and lizards that you love how much you love them. The lizards don’t speak English so they won’t know what you’re saying but maybe they speak bubble. Blow bubbles at lizards, guys. Live a little. K bye love ya nerds xoxo
HE IS SO CUTE OH MY GOD