2021-12-30
Big spike in new COVID cases.
A couple of days ago we set a record with 313,000 new daily cases in the United States. Now it is 465,000. This could be a reporting delay due to the holiday causing more cases to be lumped into a single day. It will be interesting to see the numbers over the next few days. Right now, 165,000 out of every million people in the United States have COVID, which is pretty impressive considering that around 70% of the population has had at least one vaccine, and around 60% are fully vaccinated. We also have 41 million recovered people.
2021-12-28
Fwd: secure border
OM HOMAN: I hope the American people pay attention because it is shocking for me to say this: I have worked for six presidents starting with Ronald Reagan and every president had their opinion on how to secure the border. But, every president wanted a secure border. Now, understand this. We have the first president in the history of this nation when Joe Biden who came into office and systematically dismantled the most secure border we've ever had. No president has ever done that.
Him [sic] with the help of Secretary Mayorkas have dismantled every successful border enforcement strategy that Donald Trump created in his administration. We went from the lowest illegal immigration, 35-year low, illegal immigration down 83%. We went from the most secure border I've seen in my career to the historic numbers. This past year, 2.3 million–that's historic.
2021-12-27
2021-12-22
Fwd: Disney+
FYI.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey
To: Larry
From: John Coffey
To: Larry
I still recommend getting just a month of Disney+ for $8. (They will try to sell you a more expensive bundle.) It gives you access to all the Marvel films and TV shows, along with the same for Star Wars. The Mandalorian is worth the price of admission. I recommend the animated series in this order: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and The Bad Batch.
You would need a month's vacation to watch it all.
You would need a month's vacation to watch it all.
I haven't written a review yet, but I just watched the Amazon movie "Becoming the Riccardo's". Fantastic biopic about Lucile Ball and Desni Arnez.
2021-12-21
Omicron variant and booster COVID-19 vaccines - The Lancet Respiratory Medicine
The original strain of SARS-CoV-2 has an R0 of 2·5, while the delta variant (B.1.617.2) has an R0 of just under 7. Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (London, UK), reckons omicron's R0 could be as high as 10. In the UK, cases of omicron are doubling every 2–3 days, which puts it on track to supplant delta as the dominant variant in the country by mid-December. It also complicates control efforts. "Contact tracing works well if you have about a week between one infection and the next", explained Hibberd, "But it is almost impossible to make it work if you only have 2 or 3 days between infections.
2021-12-19
2021-12-16
2021-12-15
2021-12-14
2021-12-13
How do we know if something is true?
Let's talk about how do you know if something is true? At some point, we have to trust experts, but it becomes a question of which experts to trust? Much comes down to how much evidence they have or claim to have. We can't look at all the peer-reviewed papers out there, although I have looked at a few. It is possible to verify some of the evidence for ourselves. Much of that verification depends upon trusting the sources that we see, but when the overwhelming number of people in the scientific community back a position we can have some confidence that it is true. Still, it is good to try to verify the claims being made.
I have been trying to understand the motivation behind the conspiracy theorists which seems to me to be closely tied to the anti-vaccine movement. If a person believes that X, regardless of what X may be, is actively trying to harm us or take advantage of us, then any claim that this is the case is going to trigger a person's confirmation bias. It is going to be seen as proof that the conspiracy theory is correct, regardless of how absurd or unverifiable the claim may be.
An example of this is a friend who is pro-vaccine telling me that Pfizer, i.e. "big pharma", is trying to profiteer off of the pandemic by recommending a booster shot, and possibly a different shot for the Omicron variant. I argued that those who gave us this miracle vaccine deserve to profit from it, and we have always known that vaccine immunity may wane. We have also always known that variants may come up that might need a different vaccine.
I'm going to argue that this is not how rational people think. When you have a worldwide pandemic that has killed over 5 million people then this is a serious problem. When a vaccine is created that is almost a cure for the pandemic, it is not rational to reject it unless you have really good evidence that the vaccine is worse. When claims are made against the vaccine, a rational person would make a really strong effort to verify those claims and compare those claims to what the rest of the scientific community believes.
I have been trying to understand the motivation behind the conspiracy theorists which seems to me to be closely tied to the anti-vaccine movement. If a person believes that X, regardless of what X may be, is actively trying to harm us or take advantage of us, then any claim that this is the case is going to trigger a person's confirmation bias. It is going to be seen as proof that the conspiracy theory is correct, regardless of how absurd or unverifiable the claim may be.
An example of this is a friend who is pro-vaccine telling me that Pfizer, i.e. "big pharma", is trying to profiteer off of the pandemic by recommending a booster shot, and possibly a different shot for the Omicron variant. I argued that those who gave us this miracle vaccine deserve to profit from it, and we have always known that vaccine immunity may wane. We have also always known that variants may come up that might need a different vaccine.
I'm going to argue that this is not how rational people think. When you have a worldwide pandemic that has killed over 5 million people then this is a serious problem. When a vaccine is created that is almost a cure for the pandemic, it is not rational to reject it unless you have really good evidence that the vaccine is worse. When claims are made against the vaccine, a rational person would make a really strong effort to verify those claims and compare those claims to what the rest of the scientific community believes.
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2021-12-12
2021-12-10
2021-12-08
2021-12-07
Omicron, global exposure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxAGb1Lv7k
The prediction that everyone in the U.K. is going to be exposed by Christmas does not seem remotely realistic. That is like two weeks from now. We don't yet know the reproductive rate or the incubation time.
In the United States, we only have a small number of cases that we know of. I'm sure that this will change.
We also don't know the case fatality rate, which so far seems very low.
This does not take into account mitigation efforts.
I am hearing that the symptoms tend to be different from regular COVID. It might more resemble a cold. Unvaccinated people have more severe disease with much worse headache.
2021-12-06
2021-12-05
Re: Omicron COVID-19 variant found in 11 states as Delta variant cases are rising
That is fine. I'm not trying to evoke panic. I was just commenting on how quickly it is spreading. If history repeats itself, it will be all over the country by month's end. If this proves to be a milder version of the virus as some are saying, then this could be a problem that solves itself. Everybody will get the milder but more contagious variant and aquire immunity. Then the virus will turn into a seasonal disease like the flu.
In March of 2020, COVID-19 went from just a few places in the United States to all over the country by the end of the month.
I have been feeling slightly sick for two days. I am hoping that it is allergies. I have repeatedly had times where allergies made me feel bad.
On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 5:14 PM Albert wrote:
News such as the omicron variant gets primarily two responses: panic or apathy. I say bring it on. We will all do fine.On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 3:01 PM John Coffey wrote:
2021-12-04
2021-12-03
Civilian labor force participation rate
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
I'm going to guess that the overall trend is due to an aging population. For example, I retired in 2014.
2021-12-02
2021-12-01
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