March 29, 2020

Some good news for a change...

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/489808-peeps-candy-halts-production-due-to-coronavirus

Peeps candy halts production due to coronavirus

March 29, 2020

123k is about 1 in every 2700 people

Of known cases, that is.

Obviously, the probability of any particular person being infected depends on where you might be.

Nationally, it would be 1 in 2700.

In NY state it would be (53k/20M) : 1 in 377.

But a lot of that is concentrated in the NYC metropolitan area (31k/8.7M) : 1 in 280.

March 27, 2020

French Chloroquine Researcher Manipulated Data

This article is rather extensive. It turns out, the French researcher whose work is most cited in support of chloroquine appears to have a long history of dodgy data....

https://forbetterscience.com/2020/03/26/chloroquine-genius-didier-raoult-to-save-the-world-from-covid-19/



The study was not randomised, ethically approved only after it already began, and it was not really controlled: the 16 control patients were treated in different clinics.

After some adjustments (patients removed, data points guessed), a preprint was published simultaneously with a paper in a peer reviewed journal Raoult basically controls. Next, a lawyer with whom Rault partnered with pitched the miracle cure to Fox News, which is the TV channel US president Donald Trump watches all day to get all his information.

...

In fact, the authors never showed the results of day 14 either. They also refused to share their secondary endpoint data, namely “the clinical effectiveness of treatment on time to apyrexia, normalization of respiratory rate, and average length of hospital stay and mortality”. Basically, it is none of anyone’s business to know if the therapy had any clinical benefit for the patients.

March 26, 2020

Microwave ovens and common viruses

This publication addresses using a standard microwave oven (Sharp R-772(W)M - 900 Watts) to destroy several types of virus:

Infectious bronchitis (IBV)

Avian pneumovirus (APV)

Newcastle disease virus (NDV)

Influenza virus (AIV)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0307945042000205874

Replicate swabs were dipped in each virus suspension and allowed to dry. They were then returned to their sheaths without sealing and placed either in the autoclave or microwave oven. Six swabs each were treated at intervals of 5, 60, 120, 180 or 240 sec.

...

Microwave treatment from as little as 5 sec was effective in eliminating virus infectivity for APV, IBV and NDV, but 20 sec was needed for AIV.

...

The results obtained from the experiments reported here showed that autoclave treatment using the standard conditions was sufficient to kill APV, IBV, NDV and AIV, which was to be expected. However, it was also shown that very short exposure to a domestic microwave was equally effective in inactivating these viruses. Despite this, both types of treatment allowed the survival of nucleic acids of APV and IBV so they could be detected by RT-PCR. It seems probable that PCR products of NDV and AIV would also have been detectable under these conditions, but that was not the purpose of the work.

Microwave treatment, in particular, has the advantage of convenience, since we have shown that inactivation can be done with a simple domestic microwave oven and the treatment time required is very short. Furthermore, this treatment does not involve the use of unpleasant inactivating fluids, so that the samples can be dispatched dry, with consequently simpler and safer packaging.

March 26, 2020

Rudy Giuliani was told not to touch his face

So, Lev has to do it for him.

March 24, 2020

Didn't take much math? A visual introduction to what "exponential" really means

If you didn't take a whole lot of math, but you are handy with a ruler, this is what exponential actually means. The word gets abused a lot in casual conversation, but it's become clear that many more people can say the word, but may not have learned what it means in any real sense.

Have a look at this graph:



Because it shoots up so much, it is best visualized on graph paper where each vertical tick is a factor of ten:



It becomes a straight line. A straight line is a lot easier to understand.

Notice that the time it takes to go from one factor of ten to the next factor of ten is the same for each factor of ten.

In other words, you go from 10 to 100 in roughly the same amount of time as from 100 to 1000, etc.

Now, deaths lags behind cases by several days. In other words, you don't go from being a "case" to being "dead" instantly. So, even if everyone were in perfect solitary isolation, there would be no impact on the death rate for a fair way into the incubation period for the disease.

So, we can do the same visualization for deaths.

From this:



To this:



Anywho, if you mosey on over to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ you can get a regular reality check on what "exponential" means, and why so many people you hear these days are completely full of crap.

March 23, 2020

US Government Implements Mail-In CV19 Testing

March 23, 2020

Stayin Alive In The Wall

March 23, 2020

Louisiana - notice it climbing the chart

Worldometer watchers no doubt have noticed the after-effect of Mardi Gras by now.

March 22, 2020

If for some crazy reason, you are ever passing through Dover, Delaware...

Delaware gets a lot of traffic through a northern sliver of the state along I-95, but there's little reason for most people to drive the length of it - all 110 miles or so. You can, of course, ride your bike across it, since it's about 25 miles wide at some parts.

But, NASCAR fans do drop into Dover once in a while, and just south of Dover is the Dover Air Force Base, home of the 436th Airlift Wing.

And you can't miss that if you spend any time in the area, since they seem love doing touch-and-go's all day long in their amazing C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft - the largest transport aircraft the US has.

It's hard to visualize just how freaking huge they are, and how much they can hold. But, you don't have to imagine since, just south of the base, is the Air Mobility Museum. Among their collection of historical transport aircraft is a decommissioned C-5 that you can walk into and get a feel for just HOW FREAKING CAVERNOUS they are inside.



The nose of that monster on the right flips up, and you could play football in there:



If I was the Commander-in-Chief of the US military, and I had a hankering to get a whole bunch of something from one place to another, I think I'd give Dover a call.