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Monday, September 14, 2020

The Social Consequences of Online Learning

"The district isn't sure exactly what the issue is. A district spokesperson said they are trying to figure out if the low attendance during the "Strong Start" days has to do with connectivity issues or if there are other problems."  from "Half of Seattle students haven't logged into remote learning system this fall"

Imagine that schools in the wealthy and tech savy city of Seattle, WA are having such troubles with online learning and student participation. Most probably, Seattle schools are doing better than many others. The low participation numbers are just probably an example of Seattle school district's ability to monitor its students. Most probably, students across the nation are simply logging off and finding something else to do with their day than online learning. Few epidemiologists I read seem to have the ability to calculate the damage lack of school attendance may create in American society.  ( One of the few who seems to understand is Anders Tegnell, the Swedish chief epidemiologist .). But I will weigh in from my east Oakland youth:  If your local school district doesn't keep track of your children, the narcotics trafficking industry will.  Let us all pray and hope that online learning doesn't lead to exacerbated wealth gaps, increased drug and arms trafficking and extended social chaos.

I am sure the Seattle schools are working hard to solve technical problems and that local press around this issue is simply another example of how King County and Seattle residents care about their community. I would bet most remote school districts nationwide not only don't track those that drop out but don't have a method to do so. That may sound harsh to you. Go ahead and ask your local SD what their attendance and drop out numbers are and how they determine that information. More links below the break.

Monday, September 7, 2020

US States Over 7M in population: Covid-19 Cases and Deaths as of September 07, 2020

Above: History of daily Covid-19 cases and deaths in the United States to September 07, 2020. Click to enlarge the charts.

 Covid-19 cases and deaths march on in the United States. These charts below contain the daily cases and daily deaths from states with over 7 million in population as of September 7, 2020.  Data accessed with NCoVUtils @ https://github.com/epiforecasts/NCoVUtils . Click to enlarge the charts! 

Sunday, August 9, 2020

US States Over 7M in population: Covid-19 Cases and Deaths as of August 09, 2020

Covid-19 deaths march on in the United States. These are the cases and deaths from states with over 7 million in population as of August 9, 2020.  Data accessed with NCoVUtils @ https://github.com/epiforecasts/NCoVUtils . Click to enlarge the charts!  Note that some retroactive one days totals for cases and deaths are unmitigated outliers.   

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Palantir is now in charge of US and Britain Covid-19 data

I missed the news cycle that put Palantir in charge of the US and Britain's Covid-19 data. Some links below:

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Should Schools Reopen?

"I think this is another foul-up on the part of the baby boomers. I am a real baby boomer — I was born in 1947, I am almost 73 years old — but I think we’ve really screwed up. We’ve caused pollution, we’ve allowed the world’s population to increase threefold in my lifetime, we’ve caused the problems of global warming and now we’ve left your generation with a real mess in order to save a relatively small number of very old people. "  Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt from Unherd. com

Weekly Covid-19 Hospitalization Rates/100K: 18:29 years and 65+ years
from https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html Click to enlarge the Chart.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

US States Over 7M in population: Covid-19 Cases and Deaths as of July 14, 2020

Did Covid-19 reach a peak and start a 'HIT' ("Herd Immunity Threshold") decline? Does SARS-CoV-2 "run out of targets" as Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt's Stanford group attempts to demonstrate? Or have the premature re-openings, massive BLM riots and aerosolized spread of SARS-Cov-2 created a oncoming massive second wave? These are the cases and deaths from states with over 7 million in population as of July 14, 2020.  Data accessed with NCoVUtils @ https://github.com/epiforecasts/NCoVUtils . Click to enlarge the charts! 

Monday, July 13, 2020

WA State Deaths from Covid-19 and all deaths from CDC Provisional Death Counts as of 07/04/2020

You can get provisional death counts for WA state with graphs and tables(click on graph for table) from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/. They are provisional because (among other statistical reasons) there is always a delay in CDC reception of death certificates. The screenshot picture attached is age ranges sorted by gender for (top) All Deaths WA 2020 to date and (bottom) Covid-19 deaths WA 2020 to date (e.g. through July 4, 2020). Note that (at a minimum) no male has died of Covid-19 in WA state under age 35. No female has died under age 45. Click to enlarge the charts and tables:

Friday, June 5, 2020

US States Over 7M in population: Covid-19 Cases and Deaths as of June 04, 2020


Did Covid-19 reach a peak and start its decline? Did it run out of targets? Or is "re-opening" going to lead to a second wave now that states are in various phases of 'lockdown removals?' These are the cases and deaths from states with over 7 million in population as of June 04, 2020.  Data accessed with NCoVUtils @ https://github.com/epiforecasts/NCoVUtils . Click to enlarge the charts!

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

State Cumulative Death Data for 06.01.2020



Cumulative Death Totals for US, VA, WA as of 06.01.2020

Data from NCoVUtils @ https://github.com/epiforecasts/NCoVUtils
Click to enlarge the chart. More state data after the break. 

Sunday, May 31, 2020

More thoughts on Masks for Infection Prevention for the General Public

I am no longer quite sure how I feel about mask use for the general public. I present some links below for your information. I definitely can not medically vouch for anything in my links or my advice. There is quite a lot of information pro and con about mask use.  I think the following four pieces of advice could be generic enough to be universally recognized as important:

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Asthma and Covid-19

The research and comments on Asthma and Covid-19 seem confusing and somewhat contradictory. I was terrified when the Coronavirus and (allergic) Asthma season seemed to arrive simultaneously here in the United States. I figured I was going to get caught warding off upper respiratory infections all late spring, summer, and early fall. After reading the existing research, I have to wonder whether those of us who conscientiously treat our (allergic) Asthma with whatever techniques we have found useful are somehow doing more to prevent Covid-19 than others. My general thoughts on Covid-19 preventative treatment: Take care of your immunological and respiratory health.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Thoughts on Masks for the General Public

Masks for the general public possess a real danger to spread infection which is why so many smart minds and researchers are against them. In clinical/hospital uses they are indispensable but only if they are the correct equipment that is used and disposed of properly which is generally after one potentially infectious use! Otherwise it is absolutely dangerous and potentially an infection spreading practice to use a mask in the general public. Here are are some authoritative voices on the dangers of masks for general public use:

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Mask Wars

Under Construction 10:40 AM 5/13/2020 -RMF

I think the use of PPE by the general American public will lead to a national infection disaster with increased morbidity thereof. I am hardly alone in my worry about this. I don't think most of the American general public is capable of mastering infection protocols for PPE (e.g. masks and gloves). I doubt that many will take the time to do so even if they can procure the appropriate PPE to help stop Covid-19. Most Americans will use PPE (masks and gloves) without care or thought to infection control and even those who would like to use PPE with infection control will need training and practice their communities probably won't provide for them. But if you are going to use cloth masks or gloves anyway, below the break are some possible links for PPE training. Your county, state, local hospital or  medical university may have specific instructions for your locality. Search and question them as needed. Keep in mind this is a subject of much debate and often reissued guidance since the CDC issued what are essentially novel guidelines on the use of PPE  (e.g. cloth masks) by the general American populace. Links may change or update.

We all mindlessly and uncritically do whatever the hell we want these days in America: Angry gun owners bring AR-15s to capitol steps to demonstrate for their rights and freedom. Hapless 'virtue signalers' fetishize their low efficiency homemade masks like their minds have been psy-oped. Please try to remember that a mask or gloves used to prevent infection *are simply inanimate tools*. They don't confer any virtue upon you, especially if you use your contaminated PPE to transmit infections to others. If you use PPE improperly and without careful infection protocols, you will kill many more people than the gun owners with AR-15s currently demonstrating without any PPE on our state capitol steps.

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Posts on SARS-CoV-2, Predicting Coronaviruses and "Gain of Function" Viral Research

“We’d done a lot of research on coronaviruses, so we knew they were a clear and present danger,” he told me. “High mortality, no drugs or vaccines in the pipeline, with new variants that could still be emerging.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/magazine/pandemic-vaccine.html
“The intelligence community has warned about the threat from highly pathogenic influenza viruses for two decades, at least. They have warned about coronaviruses for at least five years,” Kaufman said in an interview. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/covid-military-shortage-pandemic/
"It’s been EcoHealth Alliance’s position for the past 15 years that coronaviruses present a clear and immediate threat to our safety. That seems clearer now than ever before. The research that the National Institutes of Health terminated aimed to analyze the risk of coronavirus emergence and help in designing vaccines and drugs to protect us from COVID-19 and other coronavirus threats. This research was reviewed by independent scientists, considered extremely high priority, and funded in 2019. The goals of our work address all four strategic research priorities of the NIH/NIAID Strategic Plan for COVID-19 Research, released just this week. More importantly, international collaboration with countries where viruses emerge is absolutely vital to our own public health and national security here in the USA." https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2020/04/regarding-nih-termination-of-coronavirus-research-funding 

Monday, April 27, 2020

Graphs, Stats on Age and Covid19, Pneumonia,All Deaths



These are graph and stats on age and Covid19 US deaths from the CDC as of April 28, 2020 from weeks 2/1/2020  - 4/25/2020.   The CDC repository depends on death certificates. There are delay in recording. My code is here.  Density plots are from R density function. I am not quite sure why COVID19.Deaths, Pneumonia.Deaths, All. Deaths line up like stackable objects when portrayed by default R density plotting. There are very high positive correlations between those three death measures as defined by Age Groups.  Click to enlarge the charts and screenshots.

Saturday, April 25, 2020

role of HVAC systems ... potentially airborne virus (e g. SARS-CoV-2)


Click on the image to enlarge. Engineer menu items from the author's heating system showing system capacity cubic foot per minute for the heat pump on low (right image) and 'upstairs' zone cubic foot per minute capacity.
**Under Construction: First Test Post**
** This is from a letter (edited) I sent to BPS and other school administrators **
** Will update  this post soon with footnotes **