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Some recent virology and aerosol science research[1][2] might support an ever-so-slightly higher real cost of atmospheric and, more practically, an even stronger case for ventilation indoors with respect to biosecurity and pandemics.
Basically, ambient concentrations have a direct effect on the duration that aerosolized droplets containing SARS-COV2, and probably some other pH-sensitive viruses, remain infectious. This is due to the presence of bicarbonate in the aerosol, which leaves the droplet as . Consider the following equation[2] and then recall or review Le Chetalier's principle from chemistry.
More in the surrounding air shifts the equilibrium to reduce the net loss of from the aerosol, slowing the rate at which the pH increases, thereby slowing the rate at which the aerosol loses its infectivity (this virus doesn't do well in a high-pH environment).
For getting an idea of the magnitude of the effect, Figure 2B[2] and its caption are simple and illustrative: "The effect that an elevated concentration of CO2 has on the decay profile of the Delta VOC and original strain of SARS-CoV-2 at 90% RH. Inset is simply a zoom-in of the first 5 min of the x-axis. Elevating the [] results in a significant difference in overall decay assessed using a one-sided, two-sample equal variance, t-test (n = 188 (independent samples)) of the Delta VOC from 2 min onward, where the significance (p-value) was 0.007, 0.027, 0.020 and 0.005 for 2, 5, 10 and 40 min, respectively." Other figures show differing results for other variants which seem to have different levels of pH-sensitivity.
![The effect that an elevated concentration of CO2 has on the decay profile of the Delta VOC and original strain of SARS-CoV-2 at 90% RH. Inset is simply a zoom-in of the first 5 min of the x-axis. Elevating the [CO2(g)] results in a significant difference in overall decay assessed using a one-sided, two-sample equal variance, t-test (n = 188 (independent samples)) of the Delta VOC from 2 min onward, where the significance (p-value) was 0.007, 0.027, 0.020 and 0.005 for 2, 5, 10 and 40 min, respectively.](https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/n6aBPjJ9XXbaGphys/ra6e08sz3aynreeqrbpb)
This acts in addition to - and is not to be confused with - the generally more important (as far as I know) fact that indoor readings serve as a proxy for proportion of rebreathed air and thus aerosol concentrations in the absence of active air filtration.
An interesting research direction would be to look at likely future pathogens and try to make predictions about how likely they are to be pH-sensitive in a way that would make them extra vulnerable to better indoor ventilation. Apart from that, there's no big call to action here other than the afformentioned small update to your mental model of indoor ventilation.
I think there hasn't been enough research on iota-carageenan nasal sprays for prevention of viral infection for things more infectious than common colds. There was one study aimed at COVID-19 prophylaxis with it in hospital workers which was really promising: "The incidence of COVID-19 differs significantly between subjects receiving the nasal spray with I-C (2 of 196 [1.0%]) and those receiving placebo (10 of 198 [5.0%]). Relative risk reduction: 79.8% (95% CI 5.3 to 95.4; p=0.03). Absolute risk reduction: 4% (95% CI 0.6 to 7.4)."
There was one clinical trial afterwards which set out to test the same thing but I can't tell what's going on with it now, the last update was posted over a year ago. So we have one study which looks great but could be a fluke, and there's no replication in sight.
The good thing about carageenan-based products is that they're likely to be safe, since they're extensively studied due to their use as food additives and in other things. From Wikipedia: "Carrageenans or carrageenins [...] are a family of natural linear sulfated polysaccharides. [...] Carrageenans are widely used in the food industry, for their gelling, thickening, and stabilizing properties." See this section of the article for more.
If it really does work for COVID and is replicated with existing variants, that's already a huge public health win - there's still a large amount of disability, death and suffering coming from it. With respect to influenza, theres's some evidence for efficacy in mice and the authors of that paper say that it "should be tested for prevention and treatment of influenza A in clinical trials in humans."
If it has broad-spectrum antiviral properties then it's also a potential tool for future pandemics. Finally, it's generic and not patented so you'd expect a lack of research funding for it relative to pharmaceutical drugs.
Curated and popular this week
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[Cross-posted from my Substack here]
If you spend time with people trying to change the world, you’ll come to an interesting conundrum: Various advocacy groups reference previous successful social movements as to why their chosen strategy is the most important one. Yet, these groups often follow wildly different strategies from each other to achieve social change. So, which one of them is right?
The answer is all of them and none of them.
This is because many people use research and historical movements to justify their pre-existing beliefs about how social change happens. Simply, you can find a case study to fit most plausible theories of how social change happens. For example, the groups might say:
* Repeated nonviolent disruption is the key to social change, citing the Freedom Riders from the civil rights Movement or Act Up! from the gay rights movement.
* Technological progress is what drives improvements in the human condition if you consider the development of the contraceptive pill funded by Katharine McCormick.
* Organising and base-building is how change happens, as inspired by Ella Baker, the NAACP or Cesar Chavez from the United Workers Movement.
* Insider advocacy is the real secret of social movements – look no further than how influential the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was in passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 & 1964.
* Democratic participation is the backbone of social change – just look at how Ireland lifted a ban on abortion via a Citizen’s Assembly.
* And so on…
To paint this picture, we can see this in action below:
Source: Just Stop Oil which focuses on…civil resistance and disruption
Source: The Civic Power Fund which focuses on… local organising
What do we take away from all this? In my mind, a few key things:
1. Many different approaches have worked in changing the world so we should be humble and not assume we are doing The Most Important Thing
2. The case studies we focus on are likely confirmation bias, where
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I speak to many entrepreneurial people trying to do a large amount of good by starting a nonprofit organisation. I think this is often an error for four main reasons.
1. Scalability
2. Capital counterfactuals
3. Standards
4. Learning potential
5. Earning to give potential
These arguments are most applicable to starting high-growth organisations, such as startups.[1]
Scalability
There is a lot of capital available for startups, and established mechanisms exist to continue raising funds if the ROI appears high. It seems extremely difficult to operate a nonprofit with a budget of more than $30M per year (e.g., with approximately 150 people), but this is not particularly unusual for for-profit organisations.
Capital Counterfactuals
I generally believe that value-aligned funders are spending their money reasonably well, while for-profit investors are spending theirs extremely poorly (on altruistic grounds). If you can redirect that funding towards high-altruism value work, you could potentially create a much larger delta between your use of funding and the counterfactual of someone else receiving those funds. You also won’t be reliant on constantly convincing donors to give you money, once you’re generating revenue.
Standards
Nonprofits have significantly weaker feedback mechanisms compared to for-profits. They are often difficult to evaluate and lack a natural kill function. Few people are going to complain that you provided bad service when it didn’t cost them anything. Most nonprofits are not very ambitious, despite having large moral ambitions. It’s challenging to find talented people willing to accept a substantial pay cut to work with you. For-profits are considerably more likely to create something that people actually want.
Learning Potential
Most people should be trying to put themselves in a better position to do useful work later on. People often report learning a great deal from working at high-growth companies, building interesting connection
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James Özden and Sam Glover at Social Change Lab wrote a literature review on protest outcomes[1] as part of a broader investigation[2] on protest effectiveness. The report covers multiple lines of evidence and addresses many relevant questions, but does not say much about the methodological quality of the research. So that's what I'm going to do today.
I reviewed the evidence on protest outcomes, focusing only on the highest-quality research, to answer two questions:
1. Do protests work?
2. Are Social Change Lab's conclusions consistent with the highest-quality evidence?
Here's what I found:
Do protests work? Highly likely (credence: 90%) in certain contexts, although it's unclear how well the results generalize. [More]
Are Social Change Lab's conclusions consistent with the highest-quality evidence? Yes—the report's core claims are well-supported, although it overstates the strength of some of the evidence. [More]
Cross-posted from my website.
Introduction
This article serves two purposes: First, it analyzes the evidence on protest outcomes. Second, it critically reviews the Social Change Lab literature review.
Social Change Lab is not the only group that has reviewed protest effectiveness. I was able to find four literature reviews:
1. Animal Charity Evaluators (2018), Protest Intervention Report.
2. Orazani et al. (2021), Social movement strategy (nonviolent vs. violent) and the garnering of third-party support: A meta-analysis.
3. Social Change Lab – Ozden & Glover (2022), Literature Review: Protest Outcomes.
4. Shuman et al. (2024), When Are Social Protests Effective?
The Animal Charity Evaluators review did not include many studies, and did not cite any natural experiments (only one had been published as of 2018).
Orazani et al. (2021)[3] is a nice meta-analysis—it finds that when you show people news articles about nonviolent protests, they are more likely to express support for the protesters' cause. But what people say in a lab setting mig
Some recent virology and aerosol science research[1][2] might support an ever-so-slightly higher real cost of atmospheric CO2 and, more practically, an even stronger case for ventilation indoors with respect to biosecurity and pandemics.
Basically, ambient CO2 concentrations have a direct effect on the duration that aerosolized droplets containing SARS-COV2, and probably some other pH-sensitive viruses, remain infectious. This is due to the presence of bicarbonate in the aerosol, which leaves the droplet as CO2. Consider the following equation[2] and then recall or review Le Chetalier's principle from chemistry.
More CO2 in the surrounding air shifts the equilibrium to reduce the net loss of CO2 from the aerosol, slowing the rate at which the pH increases, thereby slowing the rate at which the aerosol loses its infectivity (this virus doesn't do well in a high-pH environment).
For getting an idea of the magnitude of the effect, Figure 2B[2] and its caption are simple and illustrative: "The effect that an elevated concentration of CO2 has on the decay profile of the Delta VOC and original strain of SARS-CoV-2 at 90% RH. Inset is simply a zoom-in of the first 5 min of the x-axis. Elevating the [CO2(g)] results in a significant difference in overall decay assessed using a one-sided, two-sample equal variance, t-test (n = 188 (independent samples)) of the Delta VOC from 2 min onward, where the significance (p-value) was 0.007, 0.027, 0.020 and 0.005 for 2, 5, 10 and 40 min, respectively." Other figures show differing results for other variants which seem to have different levels of pH-sensitivity.
This acts in addition to - and is not to be confused with - the generally more important (as far as I know) fact that indoor CO2 readings serve as a proxy for proportion of rebreathed air and thus aerosol concentrations in the absence of active air filtration.
An interesting research direction would be to look at likely future pathogens and try to make predictions about how likely they are to be pH-sensitive in a way that would make them extra vulnerable to better indoor ventilation. Apart from that, there's no big call to action here other than the afformentioned small update to your mental model of indoor ventilation.
The dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 infectivity with changes in aerosol microenvironment
Ambient carbon dioxide concentration correlates with SARS-CoV-2 aerostability and infection risk