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Weekend Reads 4/4/20

Security tips every teacher and professor needs to know about Zoom, right now

As disruptive and offensive as it is, Zoom bombing is a useful reminder of just how fragile privacy can be in the world of online conferencing. Whereas usual meetings among faculty members, boards of directors, and employees are protected by physical barriers such as walls and closed doors, Zoom conferences can only be secured using other means that many users are unversed in using.

Handwashing Technique Is Surprisingly Controversial

“Hand-washing isn’t magic. It doesn’t magically sterilize your hands,” Schaffner told me. And that’s an important thing to understand, because it helps explain one of the numerical oddities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says to wash your hands for 20 seconds. The World Health Organization says hand-washing should take 40 to 60 seconds. Who is right? And why? Oh, that’s easy, Schaffner said. The answer is neither. And both. It’s complicated.

Welcome to the fake recession

Consumers didn't stop spending or lose confidence because they were afraid for their jobs. They were (rightly) told to stay home. Up until just last month, consumers were the ones in the driver’s seat, enjoying a historically tight job market and spending, spending, spending. They want to keep spending, but right now they have nothing to spend on because the shops and restaurants are closed. This is not real, and you and I both know it.

What is epidemiology?

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates is considered the father of epidemiology. Living between the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., when most treatments and medicine relied on superstition, Hippocrates was the first to use rational thinking to attribute health problems to environmental or natural causes. He suggested treatments such as surgery, dietary modifications and herbal remedies.

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