Partial Unlock for COVID-19-Like Epidemics Can Save 1 - 3 Million Lives Worldwide

Background: A large percentage of deaths in an epidemic or pandemic can be due to overshoot of population (herd) immunity, either from the initial peak or from planned or unplanned exit from lockdown or social distancing conditions. Objectives: We study partial unlock or reopening interaction with seasonal effects in a managed epidemic to quantify overshoot effects on small and large unlock steps and discover robust strategies for reducing overshoot. Methods: We simulate partial unlock of social distancing for epidemics over a range of replication factor, immunity duration and seasonality factor for strategies targeting immunity thresholds using overshoot optimization. Results: Seasonality change must be taken into account as one of the steps in an easing sequence, and a two-step unlock, including seasonal effects, minimizes overshoot and deaths. It may cause undershoot, which causes rebounds and assists survival of the pathogen. Conclusions: Partial easing levels, even low levels for economic relief while waiting on a vaccine, have population immunity thresholds based on the reduced replication rates and may experience overshoot as well. We further find a two-step strategy remains highly sensitive to variations in case ratio, replication factor, seasonality and timing. We demonstrate a three or more step strategy is more robust, and conclude that the best possible approach minimizes deaths under a range of likely actual conditions which include public response.

Emergence of Objective Reality in an Irreversible Friend Thought Experiment

Recently some photon models of a Wigner’s friend experiment have led investigators to suggest that objective reality does not exist, and to publish articles with such claims. The public is not equipped to evaluate the severe limitations of these experiments. The separation of Wigner from the experiment and use of only reversible coherent processes for the friend allow operations that are not possible in ordinary reality according to the latest quantum research. We suggest directly testing the implied claim that objective reality, including incoherent objects with irreversible non-destructive memory, can be held in superposition. We suspect that it will fail, but provide for a graduated approach that may discover something about the conditions for superposition collapse. To this end, we design a thought experiment to model the objective world, investigating under what conditions experimenters in the same world (ensemble member) will be able to record a result and find it does not appear to change. This is not an investigation of hidden variables. To model the objective world, incoherent and irreversible processes must be included. To test for superposition, coherence has to be established. These seem to present a contradiction. The thought experiment suggests new places to look other than size for the origin of objective reality, casts doubt on the Many-Worlds interpretation, and provides a method of testing it.

Internet of Things Behavioral-Economic Security Design, Actors &Cyber War

Using security incident history we identify threats to and using the IoT and other ubiquitous devices emerging since 2012, gaining widespread recognition in 2016, and only lightly addressed in either IoT security literature or the press. We show the IoT has likely already been used in cyber war between major powers. The new threats, most notably “hijack,” are larger than previous threats combined, but only mildly affect suppliers, and only a few clients. Using a successful behavioral-economic model we show that traditional mitigation places responsibility on un-affected parties and likely will not work. For suppliers, there are profit-conflicted motives, as the new threat rides on a profit vehicle. The new threat circumvents conventional security architecture at a behavioral level. We analyze each actor-target pair and evaluate technical strategies. More effective technical strategies are suggested where old ones are overmatched by the budgets, technical prowess or regulatory power of hostile actors, or the technical nature of the threats. Consolidated action may be needed, but regulation is difficult because of conflicts of interest within the national security community.

Space-Time Diagrams Lead to False Paradoxes

This paper provides a clear analysis of how hypothetical concepts not allowed in Special Relativity should be treated and exposes hidden assumptions in space-time diagrams used on YouTube, where some prominent physicists have taken to publishing on popular topics that may not survive peer review. Such casual graphical treatment conceals the fact that space-time diagrams provide only for the Einstein synchronization convention for all observers, not the many other valid synchronization protocols, and also obscure that relativity’s equality of reference frames is rebutted if concepts outside relativity, such as instant communication, are introduced. These omissions of unconscious assumptions have been used to “prove” the existence of block time and time travel or time paradoxes. We will show the contradictory assumptions amount to assuming time travel, rather than the more mundane need to adjust synchronization conventions. We further show a new result that the use of the space-time diagrams as proposed by these “explainers” leads to discontinuities in which a differential change in communication speed leads to a sudden jump from present to long-past arrival time, strongly suggesting invalidity of the method.

On Dynamics in a Quasi-Measurement Field

A general theory of inertia tends to be circular because momentum and therefore inertia are taken as assumptions in quantum field theories. In this paper we explore instead using position uncertainty to infer inertia with mediation by quasi-measurement interactions. This method avoids attachment to the reference frame of the source masses and is thus completely relativistic, overcoming a conflict between historical theories of inertia and relativity. We investigate what laws of motion result, and whether natural explanations for equivalence and dark energy emerge.