During World War II, an amazing amount of innovation, including radar, reliable torpedoes, and code-breaking, helped end the war faster. This will be the same with the pandemic. I break the innovation into five categories: treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing, and policies for opening up. Without some advances in each of these areas, we cannot return to the business as usual or stop the virus. Below, I go through each area in some detail.
The U.S. Navy plans to put a laser weapon on a warship by 2021. The High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, or HELIOS, is a defensive weapon system designed to burn boats and shoot down unmanned drones. The weapon will go to sea with a guided missile destroyer assigned to the Pacific Fleet in two years’ time, the Navy says.
The service placed an order for HELIOS in January 2019. The $150 million contract, awarded to Lockheed Martin, calls for the company to deliver two systems. According to a company press release, one will go to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for testing. USNI News says the Navy will install the other on a Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
👽 Facial recognition and Covid 19 in Moscow, Russia.
Fyodor R.
MOSCOW – The Russian capital is home to a network of 178,000 surveillance cameras. Thousands of these cameras are already connected to facial recognition software under a program called “Safe City.” Police claim the technology has helped arrest more than 300 people.
Now, as part of the response to COVID-19, authorities are trying to bring every surveillance camera into the facial recognition network. This Orwelian step is supposedly to catch people breaking quarantine.
At the end of January, before Moscow had any confirmed cases of coronavirus, the city purchased the latest version of NTechLab’s facial recognition software.
They claim their software can identify a face even when 40% or more of it is covered. We tried it, and even in a balaclava it still recognized a face.
When asked, Co-founder Artyom Kukharenko failed to make the connection between his powerful software and mass surveillance.“Why should it be used for mass surveillance I don’t understand?”
“When the system becomes more transparent to the majority of city residents, this fear will go away” he continued.
A version of this story was first published by COVID-19 Waterblog. Read the original.
There has been quite some talk about SARS-CoV-2 shedding in faeces and what that might mean for the water industry. Here, Susan Petterson provides a snapshot of the current data.
As I see it, there are two aspects to this conversation: the first is a concern that sewage may contain infectious SARS-CoV-2 viruses; and the second relates to the more theoretical potential of using SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in sewage as a public health surveillance tool.
It is urgent to understand the future of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. We used estimates of seasonality, immunity, and cross-immunity for betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 from time series data from the USA to inform a model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. We projected that recurrent wintertime outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 will probably occur after the initial, most severe pandemic wave. Absent other interventions, a key metric for the success of social distancing is whether critical care capacities are exceeded. To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022. Additional interventions, including expanded critical care capacity and an effective therapeutic, would improve the success of intermittent distancing and hasten the acquisition of herd immunity. Longitudinal serological studies are urgently needed to determine the extent and duration of immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Even in the event of apparent elimination, SARS-CoV-2 surveillance should be maintained since a resurgence in contagion could be possible as late as 2024.
The ongoing severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has caused nearly 500,000 detected cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) illness and claimed over 20,000 lives worldwide as of 26 Mar 2020. Experience from China, Italy, and the United States demonstrates that COVID-19 can overwhelm even the healthcare capacities of well-resourced nations (2–4). With no pharmaceutical treatments available, interventions have focused on contact tracing, quarantine, and social distancing. The required intensity, duration, and urgency of these responses will depend both on how the initial pandemic wave unfolds and on the subsequent transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2. During the initial pandemic wave, many countries have adopted social distancing measures, and some, like China, are gradually lifting them after achieving adequate control of transmission.
What’s small, fast, and is launched from the bottom of a fighter jet? Not missiles, but a swarm of drones.
U.S. military officials have announced that they’ve carried out their largest ever test of a drone swarm released from fighter jets in flight. In the trials, three F/A-18 Super Hornets released 103 Perdix drones, which then communicated with each other and went about performing a series of formation flying exercises that mimic a surveillance mission.
