Two Minds Blog

The logic of wearing masks to prevent coronavirus infection is confusing. Despite some equivocal early results , a recent study found that facemasks reduce transmission of the virus even when the masks are not completely effective in preventing droplets from passing through them, as long as the percentage of people wearing facemasks in public settings is in the 50-60% range. The trick to understanding these recommendations is that the type of cloth mask that most people are wearing has relatively limited benefits for the person wearing the mask. The benefit is really for other people in the room, and may be most helpful early in the course of infection when the mask-wearer is not yet showing any symptoms: Although people seem to be most contagious in the 1-3 days after symptoms begin, a substantial number of cases were spread by people who didn't yet know they had the virus . Mask-wearing is no substitute for having people who are sick stay at home, but presymptomatic transmission

Francisco Goya, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.”  Los Caprichos , print #43. “You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.” “I’m sleepwalking through life today.” “Let me sleep on it and get back to you.” “I‘m sorry, I must have slept through that part.” These and other sayings highlight the positive and negative roles of sleep in our everyday lives. On one hand sleep is a behavior — you can observe someone doing it, count the amount of time that it lasts, and ask people to rate the quality of their sleep. On the other hand, it’s a biological process with its own heart and breathing patterns, in which you can even quantify the amplitude of brainwaves at different stages. Sleep also provides our most common experience with an altered state of consciousness, in dreams that are generally experienced as outside of conscious control yet often vivid and compelling. Because the conscious, Narrative mind is shut down, many people experience sleep as “non-productive” or even distr