Per the Atlantic's A 'Death Train' is Haunting South Florida:

According to Federal Railroad Administration data, the Brightline has been involved in at least 185 fatalities, 148 of which were believed not to be suicides, since it began operating, in December 2017. Last year, the train hit and killed 41 people—none of whom, as best as authorities could determine, was attempting to harm themselves. By comparison, the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter line in the country, hit and killed six people last year while running 947 trains a day. Brightline was running 32.

Trains running people over is obviously bad, but people also die from being hit by cars. Reading the article I was wondering: are we making a big deal about Brightline because it's big and new, but actually we're better off overall now that there's a train because fewer people are driving and so fewer people are dying? And is this actually counterproductive fearmongering? Nope! Brightline is just really deadly, not just for a train, but even relative to driving.

While Brightline is of course much safer for occupants than driving, what I care about is the overall social impact: are there more or fewer deaths than in a non-Brightline world? This means counting everyone, including occupants, drivers, and pedestrians. Ideally we would compare fatality rates directly: how many deaths are there per passenger-mile for Brightline vs cars? These stats don't exist, but we can get decent estimates:

I help organize a contra dance in a crowded dance hall, and we've been considering using far UVC to clean the air, reducing infection risk from COVID, flu, and other airborne pathogens. We recently polled the group, and far UVC was very popular, so I think it's likely we'll roll it out. But how should we position the lights?

When I first looked into this, with help from UV researcher Vivian Belenky at the Columbia Center for Radiological Research, they used the OSLUV modeling tool to estimate the efficacy of four lamps on portable 10ft stands, one in each corner. As I started looking into the logistics of setting this up, however, having tall stands on the dance floor seemed difficult to do without some combination of taking up a bunch of floor space and providing a tripping hazard.

Instead of putting them in the corners, a single tall stand in the middle of the stage would be a lot more practical logistically. But would having four lamps so close together be an exposure risk? And how much air cleaning efficacy would we lose?

I've had a lot of people reach out to me who are interested in working on biosecurity, but have a background in software engineering / computer science. A lot of these conversations have looked something like:

A: I'd be really excited to work on biosecurity, it seems really important and relatively neglected. Are you hiring for software engineers at SecureBio?

Me: I wish we were, you seem really great! But I don't know when we will be, depends on funding and some strategy questions.

This has now changed, and SecureBio is now hiring for two different software engineering roles that don't require a biology background:

• NAO: Bioinformatics Engineer. An in-person role on the project I lead, developing a metagenomic biosurveillance system to detect stealth pathogens.

• AI: Software Engineer, AI Safety and Biosecurity. A remote role on the project Seth leads, evaluating frontier AI systems, with a focus on biosecurity and misuse risk.

Consider applying?

Happy to answer questions!

An honest attempt to describe what you're technically supposed to do if you follow the posted policies. I don't think anyone actually expects you to do this!

Great to hear that you've decided to attend your first contra dance! It's really easy to get started, they're a lot of fun, and it's a friendly and welcoming community. You just show up, the caller tells you what to do, and in a few minutes you're dancing. It's got the best learning curve out there!

There's one minor exception, however, which is that some dances are "fragrance free". For these you'll need a little prep: plan to start getting ready about three weeks before your first fragrance free event. I know this can be a bit more time than you were expecting to invest before learning whether this is an activity you'd enjoy, but trust me: it's worth it!

The situation in the contra dance world with "fragrance free" is a mess. Many dances have very strict policies, but they don't emphasize them. Which means they're not dances that work for people who need the strict policies, but at the same time are putting attentive and careful people through a lot of work in avoiding common scented products.

For example, if you look at the Concord Thursday homepage or FB event there's no mention of a fragrance policy. At the end of their Code of Conduct, however, there's:

Consider: We are a fragrance free event. Please do not wear scented products.

This isn't just asking people not to wear perfume or cologne: products not explicitly marketed as "fragrance free" generally have at least some scent. Trying to pick some very ordinary products that don't mention that they're scented on the front, when I read the ingredients they all list both "fragrance" and several scented ingredients (camphor, limonene, benzyl salicylate, etc):

A dance organization I help run, BIDA, recently ran a survey. Several of the questions asked how folks felt about using far UVC and glycol vapors to reduce risk from COVID, flu, and other airborne pathogens. There were 208 respondents, which is pretty good!

When asked how their attendance would change if BIDA used these interventions, the response was: