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Testing the crew of the USN aircraft carrier – Theodore Roosevelt that is disabled by Covid-19 confirms that 60% of covid-19 cases are asymptomatic and gives even more weight to the need for the universal wearing of face masks.
Yes, everything changes. My old home town has been taken over by the Welsh! When I was young no-one spoke Welsh within 50 miles (including the valleys) now everyone does.
The lady having her hair done.
Something I think we will be hearing more about is Rt, the effective rate of transmission. Ro is an absolute historical number whereas Rt is a predictive number, The maths is somewhat hard for those without a background in stats, but it uses the same sort of Bayesian predictors that your GP uses when making a diagnosis or prognosis. In this case however, Rt is sort-of like a moving average on which a curve is fit to make a prediction of whether controlling measures are working and can be relaxed. It also could be used to have different rules (say) in London and the North of England. Rt also has value in cutting through the medical BS we hear each night about it being difficult to know where we are until its all over and the quick cull decision makers long and safely retired.
If you are familiar with Python, this link shows how it can be used for US data, and is documented enough to give insights on how the program works and how it could be modified to use the ONS data (section 10 would need the URL changed and the data format modified to suit the spreadsheet data)
The Asians in general have closed their wet markets. In fact China did this once before with the SARS outbreak but it did not ‘stick’. I do agree that it would be constructive of Western Powers to ask China and others to support a UN ban on the eating of non-food animals (Incidentally Asia is not the only place this happens – African/Caribbean ‘Bush Meat’ is just as dangerous, maybe even more-so as it usually includes Chimps etc.
Maybe this will happen, but I suspect we will have to weather this crisis first.
John sometimes those decisions were made in an absence of sufficient data.
Although the press will be full of the ‘shocking’ jump in deaths it may be worth speculating on possible causes. If you look at the ONS death data then you have to remember that the cause was four to six weeks in the past.
You also have to consider where the big jumps have taken place (mostly in the Midlands and North). Based on that, and looking what happened in late February to Mid March, Liverpool hosted Madrid, City played in Spain, Newcastle played in Southampton, all subsequent Covid hotspots, Based on that, I could make an argument that we should have banned all football matches from mid February. We didn’t because both the WHO and our scientific advisors completely dismissed evidence from China on asymptomatic spreaders and evidence that aerosol infection was possible. However had our Government made such a decision at that time and in the environment of that time, the lynch mobs would have been out in the streets! It is only a short time ago, but both VFM and I were being dismissed as scare mongers by some forumites, so it would have been a big ask of any Government to take such unpopular action.
That said, I agree that the Government must at some stage be held to account for its lamentable failures on ventilators, testing and health worker PPE. There are no excuses for any of these and the Government and Mushroom Matt has spun a lot of porkies without getting a grip on the situation.
False economy John – having lived and worked in China you would be surprised just how many ‘top name’ electronics brands other than Apple are manufactured there. Most have standardised manufacturing processes and QC.
Same goes for clothing except substitute Dhaka Bangladesh sweat shops for Shenzen and they are often homes for High Street equivalents of both Primark and Prada, and are often in the same building and on the same floor and use the same workers! The only difference is that sometimes better materials are used, and they sometimes use different QC metrics.
Covid-19 questions that have been bugging my brain (probably one for Steve). If the whole world is in a covid economic poo, is no-one really in the poo? Who has lost and who has gained?
Shenzen (China) is pretty much back to work, so if you do not mind waiting (freight is an issue) and do not mind a quality gamble, then it may be worth looking at Alibaba for SSDs.
You will need to do your own research on the brands. While Alibaba itself is a reputable company to deal with, getting RTM guarantees may result in you paying more in freight than the product is worth. This is an area where Buyer Beware holds good, and why UK middlemen need a large mark-up.
NZ is known by the natives as ‘GodsOwn’ for very good reason. Lovely place, great people but be careful of mouthing off about sporting matters – they take it really seriously. However if you feel like taking a dig at Ozzies they will join in with glee.
Lee, I suspect if you set up a web page that is separate from the Forum they would be happier. One way to do this would be to use such an advertising area as the landing page for forumites that has to be accessed before using the Forum. That would separate the Forum with its limited controls from an area over which you have complete control.
The impressive thing about the game of life is that just a few rules applied to three or four blocks can result in quite complex outcomes. In its small way it demonstrates that complex objects or activities can result from the application of just a few rules. You can now see that principle being applied in many different areas such as AI or games.
Forget the Downing Street BS and pabulum from Mushroom Matt, Iceland has REAL data on covid-19 as they have tested 10% of their total population. This is a number that is statistically significant and you can pretty much say that the findings from this little country are universally applicable. (other than genetic differences which may be a significant risk factor)
First: Approximately half of people testing positive for covid-19 are asymptomatic. This is a pretty scary number as it means that there is no way of judging if a person has the virus. Everyone has to be treated as potentially a carrier. Temperature testing etc is a useless test, other than to judge if the person has a fever. It means that all people coming into a covid-free zone must be quarantined. It is a good argument for enforcing mask wearing by everyone even if these masks are of the home-made variety. link
Second: Unlike the UK, Iceland invested early on in testing, and uses rigorous testing and contact tracing to ‘flatten’ their infection curve. We tried to do it on the cheap, Iceland did not, and has been able to have a degree of normality in daily life, with most shops and businesses remaining open.
Third: Despite containing the virus, only about 0.5% of the population have had the virus, so they cannot let up on social distancing, testing and contact tracing.
Unfortunately, our Government bet heavily on herd immunity at the cost of many deaths and possibly having to live with restrictions and their economic consequences for a longer time than other countries.
You can bet that our Government is going to want to share responsibility for their huge mistakes by ensuring that the other political parties have a role in where things go from now on.
I suppose as a Forum you are not wholly responsible for its contents.
John Conway the inventor of the popular ‘Life’ computer game has apparently been one of the victims of the virus.
This edit did not work, I wanted to add that he could try escalating to the Customer Services Manager who is probably working from home, and if that does not work try Resolver
Sounds like it is ‘not fit for purpose’, which is a legitimate claim and in this case a contract break point.
You were correct Steve, it was slightly over a year ago that this happened. El reg resuscitated it as the official report has just been released.
If you have Dettol, put a glug on a piece of kitchen towel and that will kill the virus. Bleach will also do but it is a bit viscous on your skin. Ideally you should also be spraying/wiping your Amazon parcels, I open them and carry the packing out to the bin, clean door handles as above then wash my hands being careful not to touch my face in the mean time. I leave the contents of the parcel for 24 hours before handling again. (according to US research the virus can stay alive for weeks on hard surfaces but only 14 hours on cardboard as the virus dies when it dries out).
If I see the contents are shrink wrapped, I treat at the same time as the Amazon packaging, and leave the contents on the floor.
I suggest using Task Manager to go through and clean out some of the memory leeches that just sit in the back ground. Gog Galaxy plus the Epic Games launcher can use 10% of your memory and are not needed. Even Mailwasher uses 5%, while Kaspersky grabs another 5%.
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