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mitigation vs suppression strategy Covid19

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legg

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Mar 22, 2020, 1:45:40 PM3/22/20
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jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 2:57:51 PM3/22/20
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On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:50:49 -0400, legg <le...@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

>
>
>https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>
>RL

Looks like the do-nothing case grows without limit, to trillions of
infections. That's exponential growth for ya.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"



Rick C

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Mar 22, 2020, 4:00:43 PM3/22/20
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On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>
> RL

This guy does a great web page.

Pity government leaders don't read it.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 4:18:27 PM3/22/20
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On 3/22/2020 2:57 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:50:49 -0400, legg <le...@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>>
>> RL
>
> Looks like the do-nothing case grows without limit, to trillions of
> infections. That's exponential growth for ya.
>
>
>

I've been looking over the patents for the Bird ventilator in my spare
time, by Forrest Bird who was born not far from me in Stoughton, MA.
Don't know if he was related to the other Bird family in this area which
has been an asphalt roofing shingle manufacturer since the late 18th
century.

It's a fascinating device and very clever in its relative simplicity
using two chambers of differential pressure and a sensitive
magnetically-clutched valve and venturi-system to sense back-pressure as
the lungs fill and regulate inhalation volume accordingly, and continue
to deliver pressure even if a leak develops in the system. No
electronics, runs on 50 psi source air pressure, almost no springs or
contacting moving parts to wear out.

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 4:20:16 PM3/22/20
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It's sort of like one of those supercharger fuel-management gizmos, in
the patent it says a similar valve design could be used for
fuel-management to supercharged aircraft engines.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 4:43:12 PM3/22/20
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On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>
> RL

That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:13:25 PM3/22/20
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The max theoretical mutation rate of a propagating RNA virus is about
proportional to the inverse of its genome size; it doesn't have
error-correction ability so any faster than that and the number of
sequence alterations that are rapidly lethal quickly goes up and it
doesn't live long enough to spread.

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:28:39 PM3/22/20
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Nowadays, a small uP could do a better job. It could be interfaced,
too.

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:35:24 PM3/22/20
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On 3/22/2020 4:43 PM, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
I don't follow his argument that mitigation/social distancing would make
novel infectious mutations more likely to cause problems down the road,
genetic drift happens from random sampling as the virus moves from
person to person. social distancing would be expected to increase
pressure from genetic drift I'd think, genetic drift tends to decrease
population diversity not increase it.

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:35:53 PM3/22/20
to
Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.

Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.

But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
offspring.

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:46:17 PM3/22/20
to
On 3/22/2020 5:35 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>>>
>>> RL
>>
>> That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
>
> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
>
> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.
>
>
>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift>

Random sampling. The "fittest" virus that's just the "right" combination
of lethal and contagious doesn't always "win." if it did routinely we'd
probably all be done for a long time ago.

bitrex

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:54:16 PM3/22/20
to
On 3/22/2020 5:35 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>>>
>>> RL
>>
>> That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
>
> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
>
> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.
>
>
>

Genetic drift drives populations towards uniformity over time, there
isn't really infinite variation there's a hysteresis-effect where
alleles get fixed and lost with certainty through the whole population
past thresholds of rarity or common-ness.

Rick C

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Mar 22, 2020, 5:56:59 PM3/22/20
to
Much of what you say is true and Tomas Pueyo does not know, is in fact WRONG! 99% is not a valid number for survival and there are a portion of the survivors who are permanently scarred. Even if the death rate is only 1%, that's no small number.

His web page is factual without being sensational, clear and highly informative. It's a pity that so many of the public are not capable of appreciating it.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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Rick C

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Mar 22, 2020, 6:02:58 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>
> Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.

Which has nothing to do with modeling.


> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.

But all mutations take time. A low lethality rate (~1-3%) doesn't impact the ability to replicate very much, so there isn't a strong selector to eliminate it. I doubt that aspect of this virus is going to change any time soon.


> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.

Uh, that makes literally no sense. A mutation exactly works by one virus mutating and passing the trait to the offspring. I assume you are trying to be cute somehow?

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 6:17:53 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> >>
> >> RL
> >
> >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
>
> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
>
> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.

The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 6:31:19 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:56:59 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > >
> > > RL
> >
> > That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> Much of what you say is true and Tomas Pueyo does not know, is in fact WRONG! 99% is not a valid number for survival and there are a portion of the survivors who are permanently scarred. Even if the death rate is only 1%, that's no small number.

Columbia school of public recently published results from China showing that a full 86% either don't know they have it or the symptoms were too mild to seek medical treatment. Their infections were not even recorded iow. This fact reduces the early hysterical mortality estimates by 86%.
Then the hysterical MSM is now publishing misleading headlines like 10,000 NEW CASES IN NEW YORK. When they should be saying 10,000 more cases uncovered as testing expands.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 6:34:33 PM3/22/20
to
That's right. It has to be that way or the virus would have no hosts left and die out.
Mutations are not considered a serious threat because they tend be unable to compete with the wild strain for replication. There might be a small smoldering subpopulation, but it's dwarfed by the wild strain population and unlikely to be transmitted.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 6:38:56 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>
> RL

There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.

Clifford Heath

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Mar 22, 2020, 7:14:03 PM3/22/20
to
On 23/3/20 9:38 am, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.

Death of the human race (loss of the genome) is not likely, not from
this, and not from climate change.

It's the loss of human civilisation that's at risk here.

Some argue that the USA never had it anyway, of course :P.
"straight from barbarism to decadence" or something like that, I recall.

CH

noname

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Mar 22, 2020, 7:15:18 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>
> RL

thank you for this link
M

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 22, 2020, 7:26:39 PM3/22/20
to
We have, must have, enough genetic diversity that no single pathogen
can kill all of us. Species without that diversity are extinct.

There is some evidence that a majority of people can't get the C19
virus. And of the ones that do, half get no symptoms. But there are
lots of other viruses around to get us.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/22/influenza-update-23000-u-s-deaths-more-children-18-49-year-olds-hospitalized-than-during-2009-h1n1-pandemic/

"CDC estimates that so far this season [in the US] there have been at
least 38 million flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000
deaths from flu."

C19 has killed 414 in the US, last count, and no children. It's a bit
player so far.

With hundreds of different viruses around, presumably all growing
exponentially like neutrons in an atom bomb, it's impressive that
we've only had 38 million infections. We have more diversity than all
the viruses can muster.

Rick C

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Mar 22, 2020, 7:27:39 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 6:17:53 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.

Actually, it doesn't.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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Rick C

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Mar 22, 2020, 7:32:00 PM3/22/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 6:31:19 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:56:59 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > >
> > > > RL
> > >
> > > That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> >
> > Much of what you say is true and Tomas Pueyo does not know, is in fact WRONG! 99% is not a valid number for survival and there are a portion of the survivors who are permanently scarred. Even if the death rate is only 1%, that's no small number.
>
> Columbia school of public recently published results from China showing that a full 86% either don't know they have it or the symptoms were too mild to seek medical treatment. Their infections were not even recorded iow. This fact reduces the early hysterical mortality estimates by 86%.
> Then the hysterical MSM is now publishing misleading headlines like 10,000 NEW CASES IN NEW YORK. When they should be saying 10,000 more cases uncovered as testing expands.

Even if that is true, it doesn't change the 3,200 dead before they got it under control in China.

Why not focus on meaningful information? The disease overwhelmed the medical system in parts of China, killed thousands of people, put large areas in total lock down and cost many millions/billions of dollars. Who cares if there were a lot of infected who didn't matter other than the fact that they caused a lot of infections?

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

mpm

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Mar 22, 2020, 11:36:55 PM3/22/20
to
This just in from my sister-in-law (Belgrade, Serbia).
I'll have to paraphrase since it's a long email.

1) Persons over 65 prohibited from leaving their home.
2) From 5PM to 5AM, only people are the streets are police, Serbian army, and ER vehicles.
3) City streets washed with Chlorine every night.
4) Stores open: Grocery & pharmacies only. Shoppers allowed in one-by-one, long lines.
5) Entering shops: Must have gloves and facemasks, and keep 2 meter distance to all other people (in line or operating store)
6) Grocery stores are well-stocked. (Which I presume means, "well-stocked" for Serbia.)
7) Anyone with a salary or pension already received 16 pounds (her words) heavy package with basic food and hygienic products.
8) All schools closed for rest of the school year. Students returned home.
9) All transportation closed (buses, rail and air).
10) All external borders are closed.
11) Air Serbia still operating limited flights (to New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Moscow and Doha) to collect all Serbians who want to come home.
12) #11 to include Bosnians, Macedonians, Kosovars, Montenegrians and anyone else from the Balkans.
13) All health services are free (for Serbians, and all foreigners who step foot on the soil during the crisis).
14) All arrivals (regardless of citizenship: Mandatory 14 days quarantine in Army barracks.
15) Every night: People clap their hands on their balconies for 5 minutes in tribute to healthcare workers, and sing the national anthem.

Bill Sloman

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Mar 23, 2020, 12:11:20 AM3/23/20
to
Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.

Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.

Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Rick C

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Mar 23, 2020, 12:17:43 AM3/23/20
to
I don't get the need for the Army, but ok. I don't get the chlorine wash at all. Does anyone suggest that might help???

Otherwise these measures sound like they want to keep this under control. If they combine it with lots of testing they should be in good shape.

I wonder where they got all the face masks? We couldn't do that here.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Rick C

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Mar 23, 2020, 12:27:20 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:17:53 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > > On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> > > bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > >>
> > > >> RL
> > > >
> > > >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> > >
> > > Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> > > spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
> > >
> > > Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> > > interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
> > >
> > > But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> > > together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> > > offspring.
> >
> > The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.
>
> Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.

Exactly that has been discussed in the literature. Any organism that is infected with two diseases at the same time would produce exactly this result.

He seems to be confused in thinking it has to do with mixing of the animals unless by "mixing" he means keeping them alive in close quarters. Clearly two different viruses can infect a single organism without either of them being from a different species of host.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Bill Sloman

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Mar 23, 2020, 12:39:37 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 10:26:39 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 15:38:52 -0700 (PDT),
> bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> >
> >There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.
>
> We have, must have, enough genetic diversity that no single pathogen
> can kill all of us. Species without that diversity are extinct.

This is wishful thinking. Most of thespecies that ever existed are now extinct.

Genetic diversity helps, but it doesn't guarantee survival.

> There is some evidence that a majority of people can't get the C19
> virus.

Where ?

> And of the ones that do, half get no symptoms. But there are
> lots of other viruses around to get us.
>
> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/22/influenza-update-23000-u-s-deaths-more-children-18-49-year-olds-hospitalized-than-during-2009-h1n1-pandemic/
>
> "CDC estimates that so far this season [in the US] there have been at
> least 38 million flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000
> deaths from flu."
>
> C19 has killed 414 in the US, last count, and no children. It's a bit
> player so far.

But with loads of potential to do a lot more damage - a fact that John Larkin seems to find it diffuicult to get his head around.
>
> With hundreds of different viruses around, presumably all growing
> exponentially like neutrons in an atom bomb, it's impressive that
> we've only had 38 million infections. We have more diversity than all
> the viruses can muster.

Our genetic diversity doesn't do us any good against new viruses. We do have a system that can cook up antibodies to any virus we know about (HIV excepted since it destroys the immune system). Sadly we have to be exposed to the virus - or a reasonable facsimile in a vaccine - before we can cook up the antibodies.

Covid-19 kills a couple of percent of the population who can't cook up the necessary antibodies fast enough. This capacity diminishes with age, and Covid-19 seems to kill about 10% of 70-80 year-olds, and 15% of people who are older than that.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 12:47:52 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 3:27:20 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:17:53 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> > > > bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > > >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > > >>
> > > > >> RL
> > > > >
> > > > >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> > > >
> > > > Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> > > > spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
> > > >
> > > > Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> > > > interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
> > > >
> > > > But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> > > > together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> > > > offspring.
> > >
> > > The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.
> >
> > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
>
> Exactly that has been discussed in the literature. Any organism that is infected with two diseases at the same time would produce exactly this result.

Only if the two different RNA sequences were exposed in the same infected cell at the same time.

If one virus infected the right lung and another infected the left lung it wouldn't happen.

> He seems to be confused in thinking it has to do with mixing of the animals unless by "mixing" he means keeping them alive in close quarters. Clearly two different viruses can infect a single organism without either of them being from a different species of host.

The point is that the new virus has to be able to infect a new host - in this case us. If a virus capable of infecting humans evolved in a place where there weren't any humans, it wouldn't be a useful capability.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 12:48:59 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 8:35:53 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> >
> >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
>
> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
>
> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.

That would be impressive if it happened. It doesn't.

Mutation is always a one individual at a time thing. It has to be one single virus mutating, passing on it's slight;y less lethal genome to it's descendants, whose victims live longer to infect more people before their immune systems clear the virus away.

Quite how John Larkin could be so ill-informed as to make this claim escapes me.

He claims that other people don't believe in evolution, but he clearly doesn't understand it at a fundamental level.

--

Bill Sloman, Sydney

Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 1:02:45 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:47:52 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 3:27:20 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > >
> > > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
> >
> > Exactly that has been discussed in the literature. Any organism that is infected with two diseases at the same time would produce exactly this result.
>
> Only if the two different RNA sequences were exposed in the same infected cell at the same time.
>
> If one virus infected the right lung and another infected the left lung it wouldn't happen.

So what is your point? Are you suggesting viruses always communicate and invade separate lungs??? WTF!


> > He seems to be confused in thinking it has to do with mixing of the animals unless by "mixing" he means keeping them alive in close quarters. Clearly two different viruses can infect a single organism without either of them being from a different species of host.
>
> The point is that the new virus has to be able to infect a new host - in this case us. If a virus capable of infecting humans evolved in a place where there weren't any humans, it wouldn't be a useful capability.

Sometimes you get a freebie! Soil organisms can kill humans even though they almost never have anything to do with them since humans don't live in the soil. Can you say opportunistic?

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 1:41:44 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 4:02:45 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:47:52 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 3:27:20 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> > > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
> > >
> > > Exactly that has been discussed in the literature. Any organism that is infected with two diseases at the same time would produce exactly this result.
> >
> > Only if the two different RNA sequences were exposed in the same infected cell at the same time.
> >
> > If one virus infected the right lung and another infected the left lung it wouldn't happen.
>
> So what is your point? Are you suggesting viruses always communicate and invade separate lungs??? WTF!

The point was that the viral particles have to be reproducing at the same time in the same cell in order to swap genome segments.

In the same organism is a necessary - but not a sufficient - condition, and one that is a lot more likely to happen.

> > > He seems to be confused in thinking it has to do with mixing of the animals unless by "mixing" he means keeping them alive in close quarters. Clearly two different viruses can infect a single organism without either of them being from a different species of host.
> >
> > The point is that the new virus has to be able to infect a new host - in this case us. If a virus capable of infecting humans evolved in a place where there weren't any humans, it wouldn't be a useful capability.
>
> Sometimes you get a freebie! Soil organisms can kill humans even though they almost never have anything to do with them since humans don't live in the soil. Can you say opportunistic?

The word you were looking for was "opportunist", and the organisms you are talking about are bacteria or fungi, rather than viruses. This is John Larkin level misapprehension.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

plastco...@gmail.com

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Mar 23, 2020, 2:41:28 AM3/23/20
to

Rick C

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Mar 23, 2020, 3:15:07 AM3/23/20
to
You are being very tedious trying to make minute distinctions with no point. You can't seem to make any point about viruses infecting the same cell, you just keep saying they have to infect the same cell... yes, we know that and it happens. I guess you are just being Bill Sloman.

Have a nice day.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Mikko OH2HVJ

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Mar 23, 2020, 4:34:44 AM3/23/20
to
In the case of RNA virii you should check antigenic drift. Genetic drift
requires sexual reproduction, IIRC.

--
mikko

Mikko OH2HVJ

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 4:46:05 AM3/23/20
to
bitrex <us...@example.net> writes:

> The max theoretical mutation rate of a propagating RNA virus is about
> proportional to the inverse of its genome size; it doesn't have
> error-correction ability so any faster than that and the number of
> sequence alterations that are rapidly lethal quickly goes up and it
> doesn't live long enough to spread.

Here's a nice article about coronavirus mutations and different strains
going around:

https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/

--
mikko

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 5:31:45 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 6:15:07 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 1:41:44 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 4:02:45 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> > > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:47:52 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > > > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 3:27:20 PM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
> > > > >
> > > > > Exactly that has been discussed in the literature. Any organism that is infected with two diseases at the same time would produce exactly this result.
> > > >
> > > > Only if the two different RNA sequences were exposed in the same infected cell at the same time.
> > > >
> > > > If one virus infected the right lung and another infected the left lung it wouldn't happen.
> > >
> > > So what is your point? Are you suggesting viruses always communicate and invade separate lungs??? WTF!
> >
> > The point was that the viral particles have to be reproducing at the same time in the same cell in order to swap genome segments.
> >
> > In the same organism is a necessary - but not a sufficient - condition, and one that is a lot more likely to happen.
> >
> > > > > He seems to be confused in thinking it has to do with mixing of the animals unless by "mixing" he means keeping them alive in close quarters. Clearly two different viruses can infect a single organism without either of them being from a different species of host.
> > > >
> > > > The point is that the new virus has to be able to infect a new host - in this case us. If a virus capable of infecting humans evolved in a place where there weren't any humans, it wouldn't be a useful capability.
> > >
> > > Sometimes you get a freebie! Soil organisms can kill humans even though they almost never have anything to do with them since humans don't live in the soil. Can you say opportunistic?
> >
> > The word you were looking for was "opportunist", and the organisms you are talking about are bacteria or fungi, rather than viruses. This is John Larkin level misapprehension.
>
> You are being very tedious trying to make minute distinctions with no point.

If you haven't bothered to make a distinction you clearly should have, it becomes minute and has no point.

Wahtever John Larkin has got, you do seem to be catching.

> You can't seem to make any point about viruses infecting the same cell, you just keep saying they have to infect the same cell... yes, we know that and it happens.

You talked about infecting the same organism, which is a step on the way to infecting the same cell, but don't feel like going far enough to get it right.

> I guess you are just being Bill Sloman.

Picky. It happens to be a necessary condition for putting gear to together that works.

> Have a nice day.

Difficult. Australia's politiicans have finally recognised the need to go into lock-down, but the country is full of people who can't see the point, and aren't bothering. The next couple of weeks are going to be depressingly exciting.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

David Brown

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 6:52:04 AM3/23/20
to
On 22/03/2020 22:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
>
> But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> offspring.
>

Did no one tell you that Plague, Inc. is a /game/, not a scientific
model of pathogens and pandemics?

mpm

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 7:37:11 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)

What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.

But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.

John S

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 7:49:15 AM3/23/20
to
Very interesting and great detective work! Thanks for the link.

David Brown

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 8:17:40 AM3/23/20
to
On 23/03/2020 12:37, mpm wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>
> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>
> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
> She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.

Almost certainly it would be chlorine bleach rather than chlorine gas!

It is very effective at destroying the virus particles. Whether
spraying the streets is an effective way to reduce the spread is another
matter.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:32:48 AM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:17:53 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > > On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> > > bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > >>
> > > >> RL
> > > >
> > > >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> > >
> > > Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> > > spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
> > >
> > > Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> > > interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
> > >
> > > But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> > > together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> > > offspring.
> >
> > The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.
>
> Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.

The human genome is a 98% match with that of the common mouse.

Any other questions?

>
> Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.
>
> Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.

What's not reliable is the Chinese data. It is CCP data and therefore full of inconsistencies and fabrications.

"As physicians and researchers have seen since the start of the outbreak, many infected people never become sick. As few as 14% of people in Wuhan with early coronavirus infections were being detected, said epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led a study published on Monday in Science on undocumented coronavirus infections."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/


>
> --
> Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 10:25:24 AM3/23/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 12:32:48 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:17:53 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> > > > bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > > >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > > >>
> > > > >> RL
> > > > >
> > > > >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> > > >
> > > > Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> > > > spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
> > > >
> > > > Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> > > > interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
> > > >
> > > > But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> > > > together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> > > > offspring.
> > >
> > > The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.
> >
> > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
>
> The human genome is a 98% match with that of the common mouse.

And enormously larger.

> Any other questions?

What made you think that this might be of any relevance?

> > Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.
> >
> > Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.
>
> What's not reliable is the Chinese data. It is CCP data and therefore full of inconsistencies and fabrications.

This is claimed from time to time. The claim even less reliable than the Chinese data - basically a conspiracy theory fabrication.

> "As physicians and researchers have seen since the start of the outbreak, many infected people never become sick. As few as 14% of people in Wuhan with early coronavirus infections were being detected, said epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led a study published on Monday in Science on undocumented coronavirus infections."

They got better a picking them out as the cases accumulated.

> https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/

Jeffrey Sharman isn't listed as an author on the paper you seem to be relying on.

Not yet peer-reviewed and dated February 13, 2020, written by people a rather long way away from the actual patients

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7#author-information

is the published version that came out on the 19th March.

It seems to drag in a lot of non-CCP data, and makes it clear that it is based on a lot of assumptions (which are spelled out).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

bitrex

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 11:35:55 AM3/23/20
to
Why? all it requires is random sampling. if one person who has an
infection stays home and doesn't transmit their population to anyone and
someone else spreads their case around that's effectively random
sampling. virus doesn't have any control over that.

Jeroen Belleman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 11:36:24 AM3/23/20
to
On 2020-03-23 15:25, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 12:32:48 AM UTC+11,
> bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
[Snip!]

>>
>> The human genome is a 98% match with that of the common mouse.
>
> And enormously larger.
>

Not that it matters, but all mammals have a genome size of
roughly 3G base-pairs. Mice and humans are pretty close.
The really big genome sizes are found in some plants and
fish, with up to ~130 Gbp.

I was about to draw a parallel with modern software, but
I'll refrain.

Jeroen Belleman

Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 12:31:46 PM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 7:37:11 AM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>
> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)

Chlorine is easy to tell from the smell. Typically saying "Chlorine" means bleach, sodium hypochlorite. Don't we all know what bleach smells like? Hard to mistake.


> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?

I have no idea why a government would be spraying the streets at all. Do you? I've not heard anyone (credible or not) say the infection is spread in the street.


> She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.
>
> But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
> Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.

The culture of people and their relationship with their governments seems to be playing a major factor in this disease. The far east is more hands off with the populace not asserting their rights above the authority of the government as much as here. So the government is able to act in times of extreme danger and resolve issues more easily. Seems to have worked.

We may lose millions of lives to this disease in the US, but at least we'll still have our guns! We need to protect our right to complain about the hand sanitizer dispensers at Walmart.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

mpm

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 1:35:48 PM3/23/20
to
You know, if it were "just me", I could take offense.
I've owned guns my whole adult life (never shot anybody).
Now comes the Coronavirus and gun stores across the country, including huge swaths of the distribution chain, are sold out in under two weeks!!

You don't strike me as the "bandwagon" type, but have you considered that you might be an outlier on gun ownership at this point?

I just tried to Skype her in Serbia but couldn't reach her. English is not her first language, or even 2nd (she speaks five), so I really don't know what she meant by "Chlorine". But yes, clearly not Chlorine gas!! (Even I know that - but could have been more precise with my vocabulary). I suspect it's just bleach, or whatever is cheap enough to be able to pour on the street.

But No, I don't know why they'd be spraying the streets?
Maybe just to keep people off of them?

Or - IF the Coronavirus really can survive on the pavement until well after nightfall, then we here in the USA are completely screwed!

Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 1:55:40 PM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 1:35:48 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:31:46 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> >
> > We may lose millions of lives to this disease in the US, but at least we'll still have our guns! We need to protect our right to complain about the hand sanitizer dispensers at Walmart.
> >
>
> You know, if it were "just me", I could take offense.
> I've owned guns my whole adult life (never shot anybody).
> Now comes the Coronavirus and gun stores across the country, including huge swaths of the distribution chain, are sold out in under two weeks!!

I can't think of a single reason why you should not take offense. I am trying my best to ridicule your opinion with a dry humor. Should I make it a bit more obvious?


> You don't strike me as the "bandwagon" type, but have you considered that you might be an outlier on gun ownership at this point?

Irrelevant. I have made a lot of money being right when the rest of the stock market was wrong. I've been right about many things when popular opinion was wrong and I relish that. I don't give a rat's ass about following the herd. If the coronavirus situation becomes one where having a gun matters one whit, we are all fucked so hard the gun will ultimately not matter.


> I just tried to Skype her in Serbia but couldn't reach her. English is not her first language, or even 2nd (she speaks five), so I really don't know what she meant by "Chlorine". But yes, clearly not Chlorine gas!! (Even I know that - but could have been more precise with my vocabulary). I suspect it's just bleach, or whatever is cheap enough to be able to pour on the street.
>
> But No, I don't know why they'd be spraying the streets?
> Maybe just to keep people off of them?
>
> Or - IF the Coronavirus really can survive on the pavement until well after nightfall, then we here in the USA are completely screwed!

Who cares if the CV can survive on the sidewalk after nightfall??? I don't lick the sidewalk. I don't shake hands with the sidewalk. We don't know for sure how this virus is transmitted, but no one has talked about sanitizing your shoes before removing them. Whatever. This is silly. I guess one of the down sides of a more authoritarian government is less push back when they do silly things. But at least they are doing things rather than asserting the authority to do things and then doing nothing. Yup, we got a President who has asserted his authority to do nothing.

--

Rick C.

+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 23, 2020, 2:14:42 PM3/23/20
to
On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 10:35:40 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmi...@aol.com>
Virus drama. SPEND MONEY! DO SOMETHING!



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"



Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 2:22:33 PM3/23/20
to
Yes, John. We all know you are a drama queen. Now, it's time to get off the stage and take off your makeup and that garish wig.

--

Rick C.

+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

David Brown

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 3:23:36 PM3/23/20
to
On 23/03/2020 17:31, Rick C wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 7:37:11 AM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
>> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>>
>> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean
>> that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>
> Chlorine is easy to tell from the smell. Typically saying "Chlorine"
> means bleach, sodium hypochlorite. Don't we all know what bleach
> smells like? Hard to mistake.
>
>
>> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap
>> and effective?
>
> I have no idea why a government would be spraying the streets at all.
> Do you? I've not heard anyone (credible or not) say the infection is
> spread in the street.
>

I can think of two possibilities.

One is that virus particles (from coughs, sneezes, etc.) will fall to
the ground during the day. The next day, they may be blown back into
the air by wind, air flow from cars, people walking and kicking up dust,
etc. This will get the virus back into the air again. (But don't ask
me if this is a significant effect, or if spraying bleach will stop it -
I really have no idea.)

The other theory is that it keeps people off the streets at night, as no
one wants to get sprayed.


jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 23, 2020, 4:00:54 PM3/23/20
to
Third idea: it's very visible and dramatic action.

John S

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Mar 23, 2020, 4:34:19 PM3/23/20
to
On 3/23/2020 11:31 AM, Rick C wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 7:37:11 AM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
>> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>>
>> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>
> Chlorine is easy to tell from the smell. Typically saying "Chlorine" means bleach, sodium hypochlorite. Don't we all know what bleach smells like? Hard to mistake.
>
>
>> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
>
> I have no idea why a government would be spraying the streets at all. Do you? I've not heard anyone (credible or not) say the infection is spread in the street.

Do you know the lifestyle in Serbia? Maybe they relieve themselves in
the streets from time to time.

John S

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 4:35:56 PM3/23/20
to
On 3/23/2020 12:35 PM, mpm wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:31:46 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 7:37:11 AM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
>>> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>>>
>>> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>>
>> Chlorine is easy to tell from the smell. Typically saying "Chlorine" means bleach, sodium hypochlorite. Don't we all know what bleach smells like? Hard to mistake.
>>
>>
>>> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
>>
>> I have no idea why a government would be spraying the streets at all. Do you? I've not heard anyone (credible or not) say the infection is spread in the street.
>>
>>
>>> She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.
>>>
>>> But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
>>> Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.
>>
>> The culture of people and their relationship with their governments seems to be playing a major factor in this disease. The far east is more hands off with the populace not asserting their rights above the authority of the government as much as here. So the government is able to act in times of extreme danger and resolve issues more easily. Seems to have worked.
>>
>> We may lose millions of lives to this disease in the US, but at least we'll still have our guns! We need to protect our right to complain about the hand sanitizer dispensers at Walmart.
>>
>
> You know, if it were "just me", I could take offense.
> I've owned guns my whole adult life (never shot anybody).
> Now comes the Coronavirus and gun stores across the country, including huge swaths of the distribution chain, are sold out in under two weeks!!

You have to have very good aim to shoot a virus.

dagmarg...@yahoo.com

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Mar 23, 2020, 8:46:35 PM3/23/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> >
> > RL
>
> That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.

The exponential model ignores people's limited social networks, and
assumes they will continue to infect new people at the same rate,
ad infinitum.

But only 20% of the Diamond Princess' sardines got WuFlu, inconsistent
with simple exponential growth. And only 3% of Wuhan's population were
ultimately infected.

Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
behaviors.

I found this report useful--
Active Monitoring of Persons Exposed to Patients with Confirmed COVID-19 — United States, January–February 2020
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909e1.htm?s_cid=mm6909e1_w

<quote>
Among the first 10 patients with travel-related confirmed
COVID-19 reported in the United States, a total of 445 persons ...
who had close contact with one of the 10 patients on or after the
date of the patient’s symptom onset were identified...

Active symptom monitoring of the 445 close contacts ... for 14 days
following the last known exposure to a person with confirmed COVID-19,
was conducted by local health jurisdictions. During the 14 days of
active symptom monitoring, 54 (12%) close contacts developed new or
worsening symptoms deemed by local public health authorities to be
concerning for COVID-19 ... and subsequently were tested for SARS-CoV-2.
Two persons who were household members of patients with confirmed
COVID-19 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. This yielded a symptomatic
secondary attack rate of 0.45% (95% confidence interval [CI] =
0.12%–1.6%) among all close contacts, and a symptomatic secondary
attack rate of 10.5% (95% CI = 2.9%–31.4%) among household members.
Both persons with confirmed secondary transmission had close contact
with the respective source patient before COVID-19 was confirmed and
were isolated from the source patient after the patient’s COVID-19
diagnosis.

No other close contacts who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 had a positive
test... An additional 146 persons exposed to the two patients with
secondary COVID-19 transmission underwent 14 days of active monitoring.
Among these, 18 (12%) developed symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and
were considered PUIs. All tested negative, and no further symptomatic
COVID-19 cases (representing tertiary transmission) have been
identified.
</quote>

Cheers,
James Arthur

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:06:52 PM3/23/20
to
On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:46:29 -0700 (PDT), dagmarg...@yahoo.com
wrote:

>On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>> > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>> >
>> > RL
>>
>> That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
>The exponential model ignores people's limited social networks, and
>assumes they will continue to infect new people at the same rate,
>ad infinitum.
>
>But only 20% of the Diamond Princess' sardines got WuFlu, inconsistent
>with simple exponential growth. And only 3% of Wuhan's population were
>ultimately infected.

Probably a minority of people can ever catch the virus. 20% is likely
in the ballpark.

>
>Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
>behaviors.

The exponential growth can only continue early on in an infection. All
flus start exponentially. Exponential growth always stops being
exponential. Even in simulation you run out of floating point range.

Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:19:51 PM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 8:46:35 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > >
> > > RL
> >
> > That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> The exponential model ignores people's limited social networks, and
> assumes they will continue to infect new people at the same rate,
> ad infinitum.

No, it doesn't ignore anything. It acknowledges that different people are in contact with others at different rates and durations, so it works off the average.

Nothing will be ad infinitum since it has to end at 100%. But clearly as the number of infected becomes a significant fraction of the population the rate of further infection has to drop off. We aren't talking about that point. We are talking about a much lower level of infection where the exponential growth model is still very accurate. We don't have to have a significant fraction of the population sick from this disease before the hospitals are overcrowded and the limited resources are exhausted meaning people with other diseases can't get treatment. Overall with an infected population of just 1 million we can expect to see massively overwhelmed hospitals and ICUs. They will have trouble just performing triage on all the patients.

With the present actions being taken in a handful of states we may find the exponential rate dropping off somewhat, but until we do what they did in China I can't see the infection rate dropping. But maybe "social distancing" will be enough. It mostly depends on how frightened people become I think. This may be a time when fear is a good thing.


> But only 20% of the Diamond Princess' sardines got WuFlu, inconsistent
> with simple exponential growth. And only 3% of Wuhan's population were
> ultimately infected.

Try hard to understand. Once they detected the disease they isolated everyone. I believe the crew, who still had to circulate to do their job, was more infected than the passengers.

In Wuhan they enacted extreme isolation procedures relatively early on. They worked. We aren't doing that.


> Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> behaviors.

Yes, precisely. Or more accurately, they won't change their behaviors in time. I still say we are going to reach 1 million infected by the first week of April, but I can't be certain because I don't really know how others are taking the recommendations. From my window I see water and trees. I can't see if people are still out shopping and getting together or not. We had a couple of nice days this weekend. I'm guessing people went out.
If I understand correctly, they only tested 54 of the 445. So considering that some people don't display symptoms but still carry the disease (it's been reported, not sure how accurate that is) 391 people who could have had the disease were not tested? I believe they repeated the same flawed process with the close contacts of the two who found to be infected from the initial group.

I would also point out the definition of "close contact" includes "100 (22%) were community members who were exposed** to a patient in a health care setting; and 222 (50%) were health care personnel" Don't health care personnel typically use reasonable measures to prevent infection like hand cleansers? I know when I leave a hospital I use the cleaning stations. So I would not expect many infections in that group. It's actually hard to imagine being significantly exposed to 22 people when you visit a healthcare facility. That's a LOT! I expect the included everyone who walked by.

Doesn't sound like much of a rigorous study. In the Italian city Vo where everyone was tested they found 3% of the population infected even though few or no one displayed symptoms.

In the study you cite, did they draw any conclusions about the transmission rate of this disease in general or did they simply report their results without drawing a conclusion about the disease? No, they just reported their findings and don't expect anyone to take one report too seriously.

Clearly this disease is easy to transmit. That's why the infected count rises from a few dozen to 10's of thousands in a few weeks. How else can it be explained? Is North Korea exposing out population to the disease on the subway?

--

Rick C.

++- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:23:22 PM3/23/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 11:46:35 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > >
> > > RL
> >
> > That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
>
> The exponential model ignores people's limited social networks, and
> assumes they will continue to infect new people at the same rate,
> ad infinitum.

Not exactly. It recognises that even limited social networks overlap. and once a new network gets it's disease carrier, it too will start contributing.

> But only 20% of the Diamond Princess' sardines got WuFlu, inconsistent
> with simple exponential growth. And only 3% of Wuhan's population were
> ultimately infected.

The Diamond Princess was supposed to be on lock down, with individual passengers isolated in their cabins. The ships crew weren't trained in looking after isolated patients, and the isolation wasn't anything like as good as it should have been. It's not great example.

> Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> behaviors.

They do seem to resist it, and it only takes one carrier to infect a lot of other people.-
The South Korean religious cult that went in for three hour shoulder-to-shoulder church services managed to spread the virus from one carrier to some 900 people before the authorities got on top of it.
They were in self-isolation, and were known to be potential carriers of a dangerous disease.

They won't have been exhibiting typical behaviour. Active symptom monitoring would have reminded them that they were a potential threat to public health.

I'm sure that you found the report useful to confirm your existing opinion. You are expert at finding confirmation where less partisan commentators would find none at all.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Rick C

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:38:52 PM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:06:52 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>
> The exponential growth can only continue early on in an infection. All
> flus start exponentially. Exponential growth always stops being
> exponential. Even in simulation you run out of floating point range.

It is amazing that JL understand the issue so well. Yes, this disease will stop growing exponentially. I recall in a college class it was pointed out that Petri dish cultures grow exponentially for a time, then maintain at a level for some time, then crash exponentially. In an actual Petri dish the exponential growth ends about the time the dish is around half full because the waste products start to kill off cells. Typically a disease will not spread that widely in a population. We might see as high as 10% or 20% if we do nothing further to contain it.

The significance of the exponential growth in the early stage is that it IS exponential and so reaches a high value very quickly, much more quickly than someone might expect. Even when the numbers were in the low thousands the course of this disease was very clear. Unfortunately we did far too little to stress the urgency of the situation and now we have very little time remaining (if any) to prevent a massive overrun of our medical facilities.

--

Rick C.

+++ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 9:42:18 PM3/23/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 12:06:52 PM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:46:29 -0700 (PDT), dagmarg...@yahoo.com
> wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >> > https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

<snip>

> >But only 20% of the Diamond Princess' sardines got WuFlu, inconsistent
> >with simple exponential growth. And only 3% of Wuhan's population were
> >ultimately infected.

The Diamond Princess passengers were supposed to isolated from one another on the ship. The crew managing the isolation were not well-trained in doing that, but it's not evidence about what happens in real life.

Wuhan got put into lockdown after enough people had gotten sick to get the attention of the authorities. That's what limited the infection rate to 3%.

> Probably a minority of people can ever catch the virus. 20% is likely
> in the ballpark.

There's absolutely no evidence to support this fatuous suggestion.

> >Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> >behaviors.

Of course it does. It wouldn't be a plain exponential model otherwise.

Italy does demonstrate that it can be remarkably difficult to get people to chance their behaviour. Australia has just been put into drastic lock-down because large swathes of the population had decided that they didn't need to practice social distancing

> The exponential growth can only continue early on in an infection. All
> flu starts exponentially. Exponential growth always stops being
> exponential. Even in simulation you run out of floating point range.

Actually, you run out of people to infect first.

The problem is that the usual limiting mechanism - herd immunity - requires lots of people to have had the disease, recovered from it, and become immune.

Covid-19 isn't as infectious as the measles, and about 60% herd immunity would reduce R0 below one.

But Covid-19 kills an appreciable proportion of those it infects - roughly ten times as many as seasonal flu - so getting that level of herd immunity kills a lot of people

Like the flu, it kills more elderly people than young people, but it kills a lot more young people than the flu does.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

mpm

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Mar 23, 2020, 9:59:11 PM3/23/20
to
Hot damn!
Bill finally says something I can understand. :)

Stay safe!

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 10:37:51 PM3/23/20
to
On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 10:13:57 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no....@please.net> wrote:

>On 23/3/20 9:38 am, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>> There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.
>
>Death of the human race (loss of the genome) is not likely, not from
>this, and not from climate change.
>
>It's the loss of human civilisation that's at risk here.
>
>Some argue that the USA never had it anyway, of course :P.
>"straight from barbarism to decadence" or something like that, I recall.
>
>CH

Speak for yourself. The chicken and dumplings and cheesecake were a
peak of civilization.

USians design the best electronics, too.

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 11:02:44 PM3/23/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 1:37:51 PM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 10:13:57 +1100, Clifford Heath
> <no....@please.net> wrote:
>
> >On 23/3/20 9:38 am, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

<snip>

> USians design the best electronics, too.

John Larkin would think that - he's a USian, and he thinks he designs electronics.

People with a better grasp of reality would note that Allan Dower Blumlein did rather well, despite the fact that he wasn't American.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

whit3rd

unread,
Mar 23, 2020, 11:38:43 PM3/23/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 6:06:52 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> Probably a minority of people can ever catch the virus. 20% is likely
> in the ballpark.

There's no basis for assigning that probability. There have been no
other variants of COVID=19 in past circulation, so NO ONE has immunity.
Mild cases that pass, extreme cases that require hospitalization (or a morgue),
and asymptomatic carriers are all known. Persons who are immune
a priori, are NOT known. You've just made up a lie that
calls most of the human race immune.

Ever hear of 'ghost shirts'?? That's a variant that only got hundred or so people killed.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_shirt>

Don't underestimate the enemy, you only get one chance in a lifetime that way.

Martin Brown

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 4:18:41 AM3/24/20
to
On 23/03/2020 11:37, mpm wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>
> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>
> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
> She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.

My tame biologist tells me it is most probably Virkon and that it mostly
street theatre the way it is being used. Chlorine would damage fabrics.

http://virkon.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2017/11/VirkonTM-S-USA.pdf
>
> But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
> Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.

UK is now in lock down after 2030 last night. I doubt if it will make
any difference now. The population of London took it upon themselves to
spread the virus far and wide over the recent sunny spring weekend.

Remote Snowdonia had its busiest tourist day *EVER* and many National
Trust places were overwhelmed with visitors all ignoring the advice not
to join large crowds. Go figure what that means for virus transmission
rates - we will see the spike in one incubation period from now.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 4:52:56 AM3/24/20
to
I think you will find that the Diamond Princess figures are pretty much
exactly consistent with exponential growth in a finite population.
Daily increase in cases is running at approximately 1.4x so.

1.4^20 ~ 840

They were starting to get to the point where the virus transmission was
being partly limited by the number of uninfected people remaining on the
ship. As the proportion p that have had the virus increases a factor of
(1-p) multiplies the exponent in the later stages.

> Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> behaviors.

That seems a pretty good assumption to me. People were out in the spring
sunshine doing everything they could to spread the virus last weekend :(

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-51995945/coronavirus-people-urged-to-stay-away-from-snowdonia

Many beauty spots had their busiest day ever. Utter madness!

Londoners fled to their second homes in the country bringing the virus.

> I found this report useful-- Active Monitoring of Persons Exposed to
> Patients with Confirmed COVID-19 — United States, January–February
> 2020
> https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909e1.htm?s_cid=mm6909e1_w
>
> <quote> Among the first 10 patients with travel-related confirmed
> COVID-19 reported in the United States, a total of 445 persons ...
> who had close contact with one of the 10 patients on or after the
> date of the patient’s symptom onset were identified...

US testing is complete crap and unreliable. The UK has done more tests
to date than the entire of the USA (we are way behind best practice).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 7:24:49 AM3/24/20
to
That was a statement about the model, not the process being modelled.

It takes work to get people to change their behaviour.

It may finally have happened in Italy, but if it has, it took a while for message to get through.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Jasen Betts

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Mar 24, 2020, 8:32:42 AM3/24/20
to
On 2020-03-22, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
>>
>> RL
>
> There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.

global warming isn't likely to kill off the very rich, which is
probably why they are not worried by it.


--
Jasen.

Jasen Betts

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Mar 24, 2020, 8:32:42 AM3/24/20
to
On 2020-03-23, mpm <mpmi...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
>
> Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
>
> What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
> She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.

yeah, sodium hypochlorite solution seems more likely than chlorine
gas... if you go to the pool shop and ask for "chlorine", this is the
stuff the sell you.

> But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
> Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.

Ah, the old argument that USA is too big to do something sensible.
is the root cause a disproprotionate lack of resources or a disproportianate
lack of sensible people?

--
Jasen.

Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 8:45:33 AM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 11:32:42 PM UTC+11, Jasen Betts wrote:
> On 2020-03-23, mpm <mpmi...@aol.com> wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:17:43 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> >
> > Just because my sister-in-law claims it to be Chlorine doesn't mean that it actually is. (Although I suspect it is.)
> >
> > What else would governments use to spray down streets that's cheap and effective?
> > She might mean chlorine bleach? IDK, haven't spoken to her yet.
>
> yeah, sodium hypochlorite solution seems more likely than chlorine
> gas... if you go to the pool shop and ask for "chlorine", this is the
> stuff the sell you.
>
> > But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
> > Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.
>
> Ah, the old argument that USA is too big to do something sensible.
> is the root cause a disproportionate lack of resources or a disproportionate
> lack of sensible people?

Neither. It has a decidedly primitive political system, and people with money have a lot more influence than they do in other advanced industrial countries.

The rich make choices that look sensible to them, and the rest of the population has to work very hard to get them altered, with the rich spending some their money to make the process as difficult as possible.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Gerhard Hoffmann

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Mar 24, 2020, 8:59:04 AM3/24/20
to
Am 23.03.20 um 12:37 schrieb mpm:

>
> But, Serbia is more locked-down than the US.
> Of course, it's a much smaller country, and they're quite literally used to war.
>

Since 1776 - 17 years without war. Beat that!

The 17 years include the big recession; war could not be
prefinanced then, probably.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 24, 2020, 10:39:08 AM3/24/20
to
On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 10:25:24 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 12:32:48 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:11:20 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > > On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:17:53 AM UTC+11, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 13:43:08 -0700 (PDT),
> > > > > bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > >On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > > > >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> RL
> > > > > >
> > > > > >That guy doesn't know much about epidemiology and more importantly immunology. For instance the idiot thinks mutation is a function of susceptible population size. The idiot has no idea of the fact that each replication presents an opportunity for mutation, and within just a single individual there are billions if not trillions of replications. A lot of his graphs are dated. He doesn't know much about mathematical modeling of infectious disease, he ignores the fact that 99% of people recover and the course of illness is relatively short, 99% of these people don't require hospitalization, therefore his death estimates are wildly inflated. His education is in business, he's an ignorant sensationalist looking to make a buck somehow. It's a waste of time reading his stupid crap. This misinformation belongs in the same toilet as the chloroquine and vaccine will be ready in 12 months fiction.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sure, you can have all sorts of fun with a math model. Or a
> > > > > spreadsheet. But the chloroquine might help, seems to help.
> > > > >
> > > > > Flu viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal. It's not in their
> > > > > interest to quickly kill the hosts that spread them.
> > > > >
> > > > > But what impresses me is that an entire planet worth of viruses mutate
> > > > > together. No one virus mutates and passes the less-lethal trend to its
> > > > > offspring.
> > > >
> > > > The people who study these things think this one we have now is some kind of hybrid of two wild strain corona viruses that exist naturally in nature. This would strengthen the theory that mixing up the animals in wild meat markets created the virus. Probably a bat/pangolin merger, or interspecies zoonosis.
> > >
> > > Covid-19 is 96% identical with the ancestral bat corona virus. How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred.
> >
> > The human genome is a 98% match with that of the common mouse.
>
> And enormously larger.
>
> > Any other questions?
>
> What made you think that this might be of any relevance?

It's sarcasm in response to your statement "How this hydbridisation between what would have to be two closely related viruses might have happened needs to be discussed - they'd both have had to infected the same cell at the same time for any RNA mixing to have occurred."

There are two ways in which a new strain of an RNA virus develops: 1) mutation and 2) recombination.

Mutation refers to an error in the transcription of the RNA into DNA for integration into the host cell nucleus. Corona has been found to be fairly stable in this regard.

Recombination is when two separate strains have infected the same host cell, both end up integrating DNA into the host nucleus simultaneously, causing progeny with mixed RNA from the two different strains. This becomes more likely as you mix up infected animals in close proximity as in those "wet" wild meat animal markets. Virologists are able to do very accurate PCRs on the resulting virus and identify the gene mixing exactly, and not just look at percentage overlaps of gene sequences. You can end up with very bad results like, and this really a mainly in this case, a brand new strain that now infects humans even though the two parent strains either did not infect humans or were harmless.

You might apprise yourself of the rudiments of the basic science before you make more statements as crazy as your vaccine development hysteria.



>
> > > Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.
> > >
> > > Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.
> >
> > What's not reliable is the Chinese data. It is CCP data and therefore full of inconsistencies and fabrications.
>
> This is claimed from time to time. The claim even less reliable than the Chinese data - basically a conspiracy theory fabrication.

It's not conspiracy theory, the CCP are compulsive liars even when there's nothing to cover up. No point in going over the ocean of history that justifies this characterization.

>
> > "As physicians and researchers have seen since the start of the outbreak, many infected people never become sick. As few as 14% of people in Wuhan with early coronavirus infections were being detected, said epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led a study published on Monday in Science on undocumented coronavirus infections."
>
> They got better a picking them out as the cases accumulated.
>
> > https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/
>
> Jeffrey Sharman isn't listed as an author on the paper you seem to be relying on.
>
> Not yet peer-reviewed and dated February 13, 2020, written by people a rather long way away from the actual patients
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7#author-information
>
> is the published version that came out on the 19th March.
>
> It seems to drag in a lot of non-CCP data, and makes it clear that it is based on a lot of assumptions (which are spelled out).

Epidemiological estimates tend to be logarithmic. It's not physical chemistry. There is too much variability to begin to formulate anything approaching the status of a scientific "rule."

There are other scarier developments unfolding. Something called antibody-dependent (disease) enhancement ADE is a big one, and a studied factor in the lethality of MERS, another corona virus.

This thing is going to around for the rest of our lives. Life will NEVER return to normal, and 1) people lose immunity after about a year or so, and 2) second time around infection /can/ be much worse due to this ADE phenomenon, and of course damage accumulated from a previous infection.


>
> --
> Bill Sloman, Sydney


legg

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Mar 24, 2020, 11:08:56 AM3/24/20
to
Per capita comparisons are interestion.

The Wuhan event resulted in virus detections per capita
in the 50ppm range for the country as a whole, at the
end of present containment excercises. The resources of
the rest of the country were applied in this exercise.

In Italy, Spain and Iceland, it's over 1000ppm, at present,
without containment.

China would have had to have had 20 Wuhans, to match this.

So, the US and other countries, currently at a 3day doubling
rate of detection, should be ready for the 20x Wuhan effect
on it's resources, as no containment is possible at this
late date.

Every case doesn't need to be detected - that's just an
indicator of the development.

RL

Rick C

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Mar 24, 2020, 11:34:28 AM3/24/20
to
China locked down the affected cities in total. Here in the US we are doing a half-ass approach to "social distancing" which so far has not been measurably effective at all.

I don't believe it is too late to contain this virus, but we are literally at the cusp. If we were to lock down the affected areas of the country in total we might be able to prevent a Wuhan collapse of our medical system. But for that requires literally action right now. We are at the point where if all new infections were prevented we will still be testing the limits of the medical systems in many areas of the country.

So yeah, you are most likely right, containment is not possible.

In lieu of full lock down the only other way to contain this virus is the Vo approach, massive testing to isolate anyone with the virus. However, we already know that isn't possible from lack of test capability.

--

Rick C.

---- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
---- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 24, 2020, 11:38:42 AM3/24/20
to
On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 7:14:03 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
> On 23/3/20 9:38 am, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> >> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
> > There're only a few things that can kill off the entire human race: a massive high speed asteroid strike, a cataclysmic mantle eruption, and global warming, to name a few. The bio stuff doesn't come close.
>
> Death of the human race (loss of the genome) is not likely, not from
> this, and not from climate change.
>
> It's the loss of human civilisation that's at risk here.
>
> Some argue that the USA never had it anyway, of course :P.
> "straight from barbarism to decadence" or something like that, I recall.
>
> CH

Lynn Anderson called it over 50 years ago. Little did she know she would be a voice for Mother Nature. Global Warming will most definitely wipe the slate clean of the is scourge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eclUz-RYI

mpm

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Mar 24, 2020, 2:22:55 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 8:32:42 AM UTC-4, Jasen Betts wrote:

> Ah, the old argument that USA is too big to do something sensible.
> is the root cause a disproprotionate lack of resources or a disproportianate
> lack of sensible people?

No, it's just 50x bigger and therefore more difficult.
But since you brought it up, the total population of Serbia is about 7 Million +/-. We probably have 7 million CRAZY people here.

Some would argue 7 million + one, if you include Trump.

mpm

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 2:33:54 PM3/24/20
to
You're getting there.... just slowly. :)

Eventually, you're going to realize that the government isn't equipped to handle this. At best, they'll play catch-up, too late and after-the-fact for all those who died.

Starting to sound a lot like one of the arguments for gun-ownership (for self-protection), when you realize the police are only ten minutes away, but the need is NOW. Sound vaguely familiar yet?

That's not saying a gun will kill the virus.
But if there's rioting and lawlessness, I don't see the benefit in waiting around for industry to supply enough batons and police vehicles to keep the peace on a massive scale (if it comes to that - hopefully it won't)

I guess I'm just saying: Don't rely on the government to protect you.
They truly aren't up to the task, as evidenced by the ongoing outbreak.
Or, if you affirmatively choose to rely on them, at least be prepared for a let down or two.

dagmarg...@yahoo.com

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Mar 24, 2020, 3:25:54 PM3/24/20
to
Wiki's article on this says the Diamond Princess was more complicated
than I realized -- new cases were being continually removed from the
plague ship, for one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_on_cruise_ships#Diamond_Princess


> > Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> > behaviors.
>
> That seems a pretty good assumption to me. People were out in the spring
> sunshine doing everything they could to spread the virus last weekend :(
>
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-51995945/coronavirus-people-urged-to-stay-away-from-snowdonia
>
> Many beauty spots had their busiest day ever. Utter madness!
>
> Londoners fled to their second homes in the country bringing the virus.

My area's normally-busy streets have been empty the last two weeks.
No trucks, no workmen, no construction. Children don't play, cars
are rare, restaurants and other businesses are closed. Schools are
closed. Meetings cancelled. Events rescheduled for August.

The still-open businesses cut their hours, grim-faced employees
patrolling with bleach-spray phasers, nuking suspicious surfaces.

I went for a walk yesterday & saw two neighbors talking from opposite
sides of the street, keeping their distance. They looked afraid.

I'd count that as "people changing their behavior."

> > I found this report useful-- Active Monitoring of Persons Exposed to
> > Patients with Confirmed COVID-19 — United States, January–February
> > 2020
> > https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909e1.htm?s_cid=mm6909e1_w
> >
> > <quote> Among the first 10 patients with travel-related confirmed
> > COVID-19 reported in the United States, a total of 445 persons ...
> > who had close contact with one of the 10 patients on or after the
> > date of the patient’s symptom onset were identified...
>
> US testing is complete crap and unreliable. The UK has done more tests
> to date than the entire of the USA (we are way behind best practice).
>
> --
> Regards,
> Martin Brown

The U.K.'s tactics got the U.K. a massive dose of WuFlu. Prompt
travel restrictions helped the U.S. tremendously -- that got us
a very-valuable few weeks compared to the U.K. -- but it's here
and of course it will spread.

Who cares about testing? That didn't save a single country. The
data will be useful after. But you can't test your way out of a
plague.

Corona and rhinoviruses also cause the common cold. We've never
stopped either virus. Nor have we ever tracked one in real-time
on social media, for that matter.

Cheers,
James Arthur

Rick C

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 3:26:32 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 2:33:54 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
>
> You're getting there.... just slowly. :)
>
> Eventually, you're going to realize that the government isn't equipped to handle this. At best, they'll play catch-up, too late and after-the-fact for all those who died.
>
> Starting to sound a lot like one of the arguments for gun-ownership (for self-protection), when you realize the police are only ten minutes away, but the need is NOW. Sound vaguely familiar yet?

I'd like a heavy duty weed whacker which would have a MUCH higher probability of every actually being used. Do they make gas powered semi-autos?


> That's not saying a gun will kill the virus.
> But if there's rioting and lawlessness, I don't see the benefit in waiting around for industry to supply enough batons and police vehicles to keep the peace on a massive scale (if it comes to that - hopefully it won't)

Oh, so true! But Trump won't allow that to happen. It might hamper the economic comeback.


> I guess I'm just saying: Don't rely on the government to protect you.
> They truly aren't up to the task, as evidenced by the ongoing outbreak.
> Or, if you affirmatively choose to rely on them, at least be prepared for a let down or two.

I'm mainly concerned about protection FROM the government and there are no arms to help with that. As big as mine might be, their would be bigger and they've got a lot more of them.

If my neighborhood breaks out in rioting then there's nothing I could do either way. The neighbors are all much better armed than I would be too. I'll just go ahead and toss the toilet paper out the window to them.

--

Rick C.

---+ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
---+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Rick C

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 4:15:44 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 3:25:54 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> Wiki's article on this says the Diamond Princess was more complicated
> than I realized -- new cases were being continually removed from the
> plague ship, for one.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_on_cruise_ships#Diamond_Princess

I bet they didn't say anything about the semi-auto gunfire exchanges! That's what killed a lot more of the octogenarians than the virus.


> My area's normally-busy streets have been empty the last two weeks.
> No trucks, no workmen, no construction. Children don't play, cars
> are rare, restaurants and other businesses are closed. Schools are
> closed. Meetings cancelled. Events rescheduled for August.
>
> The still-open businesses cut their hours, grim-faced employees
> patrolling with bleach-spray phasers, nuking suspicious surfaces.

All that is probably from the knowledge of the extreme gun sales during this crisis. Who would go out on streets so heavily armed? It would be like walking down the main street of Hadleyville at high noon.


> I went for a walk yesterday & saw two neighbors talking from opposite
> sides of the street, keeping their distance. They looked afraid.

Afraid of not knowing if the other had guns on them I'm sure.


> I'd count that as "people changing their behavior."

As Mao said, "from the barrel of a gun".


> The U.K.'s tactics got the U.K. a massive dose of WuFlu. Prompt
> travel restrictions helped the U.S. tremendously -- that got us
> a very-valuable few weeks compared to the U.K. -- but it's here
> and of course it will spread.

Huh? Then why is our infection count seven times higher than in the UK? Our bumbling government not leading/acting for the nation and leaving it up to each state has cost us terribly. Our infection growth rate is significantly higher than in the UK and the travel restriction did nothing measurable to help.


> Who cares about testing? That didn't save a single country. The
> data will be useful after. But you can't test your way out of a
> plague.

Not sure what you mean by "save". Widespread testing is one reason why South Korea has done so well in spite of their early infection. By the beginning of March they were over their hump without even reaching 1000 new infections per day and a total so far of only 100 deaths. I believe it was at least in part the widespread testing that *has* saved South Korea.

The one I'm wondering about is North Korea. It is not at all unlike them to send people into the south with the infection. Meanwhile we hear nothing about how badly they have the virus.


> Corona and rhinoviruses also cause the common cold. We've never
> stopped either virus. Nor have we ever tracked one in real-time
> on social media, for that matter.

We've never tried to stop any of these viruses because there is not sufficient benefit. We did take extreme measures to stop Ebola when it came into the country. If that started to spread should we not lock down the affected areas? Of course we would because of the high mortality rate. CV19 isn't Ebola, but it's not the flu either.

--

Rick C.

--++ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
--++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

mpm

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Mar 24, 2020, 5:11:30 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 3:26:32 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

Do they make gas powered semi-autos?
>

Sort of.

There is thing called gas piston technology in several popular AR-15 rifles.
(as opposed to direct impingement).

Link: https://info.stagarms.com/blog/bid/297530/The-difference-between-Gas-Piston-and-Direct-Impingement-technology-for-an-AR-15

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 24, 2020, 6:15:26 PM3/24/20
to
On Tue, 24 Mar 2020 12:25:47 -0700 (PDT), dagmarg...@yahoo.com
wrote:
This is amazing if true:

https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

After half the population has has it, you're not going to get many
more doublings.

Lasse Langwadt Christensen

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 6:23:51 PM3/24/20
to
then all firearms are gas powered, they accelerate a projectile using gas
generated by burning a propellant

Rick C

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 7:30:21 PM3/24/20
to
"Tis true, tis pity. And pity tis, tis true."

However, that's not a very useful consideration even if it is true. A early lock down would have greatly reduced the present state of infections in the severely infected countries which are now looking at overwhelmed hospitals. That's the numbers to focus on.

We have reached the point of our healthcare systems being affected and we can't mitigate that. But if this Oxford study is not right, then continuing the lock down and strengthening it will result in less impact on our healthcare systems and potentially lives saved. That is very obvious.

The new data for today is not up yet. We'll see if any impact is visible in today's numbers.

--

Rick C.

-+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

dagmarg...@yahoo.com

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 8:04:25 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 6:15:26 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >The U.K.'s tactics got the U.K. a massive dose of WuFlu. Prompt
> >travel restrictions helped the U.S. tremendously -- that got us
> >a very-valuable few weeks compared to the U.K. -- but it's here
> >and of course it will spread.
> >
> >Who cares about testing? That didn't save a single country. The
> >data will be useful after. But you can't test your way out of a
> >plague.
> >
> >Corona and rhinoviruses also cause the common cold. We've never
> >stopped either virus. Nor have we ever tracked one in real-time
> >on social media, for that matter.
>
> This is amazing if true:
>
> https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9
>
> After half the population has has it, you're not going to get many
> more doublings.

Amazing, and definitely hysteria-worthy -- once that many people have
it it'll accelerate to tripling and quadrupling!

We'll need more toilet paper. Lots more.

<ducking for cover>,
James

Bill Sloman

unread,
Mar 24, 2020, 8:51:21 PM3/24/20
to
Since what you have just said is pretty exactly what I said, you haven't actually pointed out any difference in our apreciations of the basic science.

> before you make more statements as crazy as your vaccine development hysteria.

There's nothing "hysterical" about pointing out that a number of people are looking at new ways of creating vaccines, particularly when the one that proposes inject DNA to get our cells to synthesise viral proteins for our immune system to generate antibodies too has already been injected in it's first human guinea pig.

Your claim that the only we would get get a working vaccine is via one of the traditonal routes may not be hystrical but it's clearly irrational.
>
> > > > Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.
> > > >
> > > > Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.
> > >
> > > What's not reliable is the Chinese data. It is CCP data and therefore full of inconsistencies and fabrications.
> >
> > This is claimed from time to time. The claim even less reliable than the Chinese data - basically a conspiracy theory fabrication.
>
> It's not conspiracy theory, the CCP are compulsive liars even when there's nothing to cover up. No point in going over the ocean of history that justifies this characterization.

Particularly when it doesn't actually exist.

> > > "As physicians and researchers have seen since the start of the outbreak, many infected people never become sick. As few as 14% of people in Wuhan with early coronavirus infections were being detected, said epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led a study published on Monday in Science on undocumented coronavirus infections."
> >
> > They got better a picking them out as the cases accumulated.
> >
> > > https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/
> >
> > Jeffrey Sharman isn't listed as an author on the paper you seem to be relying on.
> >
> > Not yet peer-reviewed and dated February 13, 2020, written by people a rather long way away from the actual patients
> >
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7#author-information
> >
> > is the published version that came out on the 19th March.
> >
> > It seems to drag in a lot of non-CCP data, and makes it clear that it is based on a lot of assumptions (which are spelled out).
>
> Epidemiological estimates tend to be logarithmic. It's not physical chemistry. There is too much variability to begin to formulate anything approaching the status of a scientific "rule."

Twaddle.

> There are other scarier developments unfolding. Something called antibody-dependent (disease) enhancement ADE is a big one, and a studied factor in the lethality of MERS, another corona virus.

Except that Covid-19 isn't MERS, and a lot less lethal.

> This thing is going to be around for the rest of our lives.

Probably.

> Life will NEVER return to normal,

It will as soon as we get an effective vaccine.

> and 1) people lose immunity after about a year or so, and

How could anybody possibly know that? The first recognised patient got the disease on the 1st December 2019, so nobody has been immune for longer than four months. Most people retain immunity to most diseases for life - RNA viruses mutate fast enough that this doesn't always help.

> 2) second time around infection /can/ be much worse due to this ADE phenomenon, and of course damage accumulated from a previous infection.

Again, how could you possibly know that? Hystericak speculation isn't actually evidence, and your grasp of what might be credible seems to have evaporated entirely.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 9:07:21 PM3/24/20
to
On Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 5:33:54 AM UTC+11, mpm wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 11:34:28 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 11:08:56 AM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > > Per capita comparisons are interestion.
> > >
> > > The Wuhan event resulted in virus detections per capita
> > > in the 50ppm range for the country as a whole, at the
> > > end of present containment excercises. The resources of
> > > the rest of the country were applied in this exercise.
> > >
> > > In Italy, Spain and Iceland, it's over 1000ppm, at present,
> > > without containment.
> > >
> > > China would have had to have had 20 Wuhans, to match this.
> > >
> > > So, the US and other countries, currently at a 3day doubling
> > > rate of detection, should be ready for the 20x Wuhan effect
> > > on it's resources, as no containment is possible at this
> > > late date.
> > >
> > > Every case doesn't need to be detected - that's just an
> > > indicator of the development.
> >
> > China locked down the affected cities in total. Here in the US we are doing a half-ass approach to "social distancing" which so far has not been measurably effective at all.
> >
> > I don't believe it is too late to contain this virus, but we are literally at the cusp. If we were to lock down the affected areas of the country in total we might be able to prevent a Wuhan collapse of our medical system. But for that requires literally action right now. We are at the point where if all new infections were prevented we will still be testing the limits of the medical systems in many areas of the country.
> >
> > So yeah, you are most likely right, containment is not possible.
> >
> > In lieu of full lock down the only other way to contain this virus is the Vo approach, massive testing to isolate anyone with the virus. However, we already know that isn't possible from lack of test capability.
>
> You're getting there.... just slowly. :)
>
> Eventually, you're going to realize that the government isn't equipped to handle this. At best, they'll play catch-up, too late and after-the-fact for all those who died.

The Chinese government was equipped to handle it, and the US government knew what was going on before they started to have to handle it.

The Trump factor does get in the way of the US response, and more people will die than should have, but it's unlikely that even Trump can engineer a less effective response than Italy managed.

> Starting to sound a lot like one of the arguments for gun-ownership (for self-protection), when you realize the police are only ten minutes away, but the need is NOW. Sound vaguely familiar yet?
>
> That's not saying a gun will kill the virus.
> But if there's rioting and lawlessness, I don't see the benefit in waiting around for industry to supply enough batons and police vehicles to keep the peace on a massive scale (if it comes to that - hopefully it won't)
>
> I guess I'm just saying: Don't rely on the government to protect you.

Your capacity to protect yourself against a virus epidemic is so much better than anything any government could offer. You could also single-handedly repel a Russian invasion or a Mafia take-over.

> They truly aren't up to the task, as evidenced by the ongoing outbreak.

Some governments have done a lot better. Electing a clown like Trump wasn't a good move.

> Or, if you affirmatively choose to rely on them, at least be prepared for a let down or two.

Always good advice. More necessary when you chose to rely on people like Trump and Pence.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 9:18:54 PM3/24/20
to
On Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 6:25:54 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 4:52:56 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
> > On 24/03/2020 00:46, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 4:43:12 PM UTC-4,
> > > bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >> On Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 1:45:40 PM UTC-4, legg wrote:
> > >>> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

<snip>

> Wiki's article on this says the Diamond Princess was more complicated
> than I realized -- new cases were being continually removed from the
> plague ship, for one.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_on_cruise_ships#Diamond_Princess

Every news report I saw mentioned that - they'd tell you how many people had been carted off to a Japanese hospital for treatment.

It's well known that Covid-19 victims infect people before they become symptomatic.

> > > Also, the plain exponential model assumes people won't change their
> > > behaviors.
> >
> > That seems a pretty good assumption to me. People were out in the spring
> > sunshine doing everything they could to spread the virus last weekend :(
> >
> > https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-51995945/coronavirus-people-urged-to-stay-away-from-snowdonia
> >
> > Many beauty spots had their busiest day ever. Utter madness!
> >
> > Londoners fled to their second homes in the country bringing the virus.
>
> My area's normally-busy streets have been empty the last two weeks.
> No trucks, no workmen, no construction. Children don't play, cars
> are rare, restaurants and other businesses are closed. Schools are
> closed. Meetings cancelled. Events rescheduled for August.
>
> The still-open businesses cut their hours, grim-faced employees
> patrolling with bleach-spray phasers, nuking suspicious surfaces.
>
> I went for a walk yesterday & saw two neighbors talking from opposite
> sides of the street, keeping their distance. They looked afraid.
>
> I'd count that as "people changing their behavior."

The question is are they changing it enough, and are enough people changing their behaviour? In Australia the party-going 20-30-year-old kept on heading off to the beach, and tend to dominate the numbers of the newly infected.
>
> > > I found this report useful-- Active Monitoring of Persons Exposed to
> > > Patients with Confirmed COVID-19 — United States, January–February
> > > 2020
> > > https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909e1.htm?s_cid=mm6909e1_w
> > >
> > > <quote> Among the first 10 patients with travel-related confirmed
> > > COVID-19 reported in the United States, a total of 445 persons ...
> > > who had close contact with one of the 10 patients on or after the
> > > date of the patient’s symptom onset were identified...
> >
> > US testing is complete crap and unreliable. The UK has done more tests
> > to date than the entire of the USA (we are way behind best practice).
>
> The U.K.'s tactics got the U.K. a massive dose of WuFlu. Prompt
> travel restrictions helped the U.S. tremendously -- that got us
> a very-valuable few weeks compared to the U.K. -- but it's here
> and of course it will spread.
>
> Who cares about testing? That didn't save a single country. The
> data will be useful after. But you can't test your way out of a
> plague.
>
> Corona and rhinoviruses also cause the common cold. We've never
> stopped either virus. Nor have we ever tracked one in real-time
> on social media, for that matter.

Neither of them kill anything like as many of the people they infect, so nobody has been motivated to damage the economy by imposing enough social isolation to do it.

Wuhan managed it with about two months of social isolation. As we get better at setting up social isolation we may be able to get R0 into the 0.1 range or lower, which would eliminate the infection in fewer cycles of infection.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

mpm

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Mar 24, 2020, 9:22:03 PM3/24/20
to
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 6:23:51 PM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

> then all firearms are gas powered, they accelerate a projectile using gas
> generated by burning a propellant

I stand corrected.
Didn't even think of that aspect. :)

mpm

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Mar 24, 2020, 9:25:12 PM3/24/20
to
Perhaps, but even more so if you rely on people like Hillary and Kaine!

DecadentLinux...@decadence.org

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Mar 24, 2020, 10:39:25 PM3/24/20
to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen <lang...@fonz.dk> wrote in
news:20e4eb01-504c-4701...@googlegroups.com:
An "air rifle" or "pellet gun" used compressed air in a quick
release reserve chamber to power a pellet up the barrel and out.
They can get up to some pretty quick muzzle velocities.

"firearm" refers to a powder actuated device, which is a gun that
relies on the burn of a specific "load" of flammable or "explosive"
propellant, with originally black powder now 'smokeless powder' "gun
powder" for the load. The projectile is driven by the gas pressure
release of the burn of the propellant load.

So, a tennis ball, can and lighter fluid is not a firearm.

The method by with a semi-auto or automatic repeating fire gun is
its "action", and that is by blowback or gas operation, both
utilizing energy of the exploding propellant load. One relying on
the inertia the projectile's mass presents at the moment of firing to
send the shell casing back firmly while said projectile is traversing
out the barrel all in the same instant(s).

Not many gas operated pistols. A: no fucking reason for it. B:
bulky. C: no fucking reason for it. d: leaky, gotta cleam the gun
all the time... yada yada E: they have made them for show look on
youtube

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Mar 24, 2020, 10:40:41 PM3/24/20
to
On Tue, 24 Mar 2020 17:04:18 -0700 (PDT), dagmarg...@yahoo.com
No, we just need more people.

Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 10:57:19 PM3/24/20
to
> No, we just need more people.

When the current policy is producing a rapidly increasing - if so far fairly small - number of deaths.

If Trump can be confined to pontificating, and kept well away from the levers of power, you may be able to get the US into the kind of lockdown where each new infection infects less than one other person before they start to show symptoms and get bundled into isolation.

The idea that this is what you are aiming to do doesn't seem to be articulated all that often.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney


Bill Sloman

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Mar 24, 2020, 10:57:25 PM3/24/20
to
Mpm would probably have been disappointed by the kind of rational foreign policy that Hillary Clinton would have pursued if she'd become president.

She'd been Secretary of State for a few years and knows a bit more about the subject than Trump or Pence. This would more or less preclude doing the sort of silly stuff that Trump went into to appeal to right-wing nitwits like mpm.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Lasse Langwadt Christensen

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Mar 25, 2020, 10:36:29 AM3/25/20
to
onsdag den 25. marts 2020 kl. 03.39.25 UTC+1 skrev DecadentLinux...@decadence.org:
> Lasse Langwadt Christensen <lang...@fonz.dk> wrote in
> news:20e4eb01-504c-4701...@googlegroups.com:
>
> > tirsdag den 24. marts 2020 kl. 22.11.30 UTC+1 skrev mpm:
> >> On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 3:26:32 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
> >>
> >> Do they make gas powered semi-autos?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Sort of.
> >>
> >> There is thing called gas piston technology in several popular
> >> AR-15 rifles. (as opposed to direct impingement).
> >>
> >> Link:
> >> https://info.stagarms.com/blog/bid/297530/The-difference-between-G
> >> as-Piston-and-Direct-Impingement-technology-for-an-AR-15
> >
> > then all firearms are gas powered, they accelerate a projectile
> > using gas generated by burning a propellant
> >
> >
>
> An "air rifle" or "pellet gun" used compressed air in a quick
> release reserve chamber to power a pellet up the barrel and out.
> They can get up to some pretty quick muzzle velocities.
>

generally subsonic


> "firearm" refers to a powder actuated device, which is a gun that
> relies on the burn of a specific "load" of flammable or "explosive"
> propellant, with originally black powder now 'smokeless powder' "gun
> powder" for the load. The projectile is driven by the gas pressure
> release of the burn of the propellant load.
>
> So, a tennis ball, can and lighter fluid is not a firearm.

that is a definite maybe, it burns propellant so if it is intended
to be a weapon and not just fun it might be considered a firearm and
since it is more than 0.5" bore it would be a destructive device



DecadentLinux...@decadence.org

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Mar 25, 2020, 11:06:03 AM3/25/20
to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen <lang...@fonz.dk> wrote in
news:f003ad71-eb8f-40e0...@googlegroups.com:
That would make it a "firetoy" not a fireARM. If someone made a
tennis ball can 'gun' as a weapon, he should then use it on himself
while standing at the edge of a very tall building.

And a tennis ball is hardly "destructive".

There was a man a hundred yards up the road from our riverfront
trailer lot, and when the Delta Queen would come up or dow the river,
he would get out his little 1/2 bore black powder cannon and light it
off to get the Queen to start playing the caliope that sits at the
back of the historic paddle wheeler.

Well, that was not good enough for my brother. We took a 3 inch by
8 foot gas pipe, and welded a steel plate onto the bottom of it. We
would lean it up onto a picnic table pointed out over the river. He
would cut up two of the real, legacy railroad torpedos and drop them
in, and then drop one of the old, real, legacy M-80s from the '70s.
When that went off, it dwarfed the sound the old guy's cannon made,
and one could see an 8 foot flash come out of the already 8 foot long
barrel.

No permits required. No projectile. Not a gun.

It would fire a nice 3 inch red rubber ball shoved into the top
about a half mile up and out and over the Ohio river, all the way
into Kentucky about a quarter mile away.

bloggs.fred...@gmail.com

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Mar 25, 2020, 11:16:19 AM3/25/20
to
They don't "inject" DNA into our cells. They use an innocuous virus vector to do the "injecting." The headlined trials of the Moderna vaccine are using the rhinovirus. It's a class of vaccine known as a DNA vaccine. They have been in development for at least 25 years that I know of. How come you don't know that? And what makes you think the technology will suddenly be a uncharacteristically massive success just because we have this perceived crisis? You're becoming completely hysterical. he real world rarely to never offers happy endings.

>
> Your claim that the only we would get get a working vaccine is via one of the traditonal routes may not be hystrical but it's clearly irrational.

I made no such claim. You're going loony.


> >
> > > > > Quite why it might have seemed sensible to hypothesise isn't made clear either.
> > > > >
> > > > > Fred isn't good at getting hold of reliable data. The Wuhan data listed 20% of those infected as being seriously or critically ill so his 99% not requiring hospitalisation is a very odd figure.
> > > >
> > > > What's not reliable is the Chinese data. It is CCP data and therefore full of inconsistencies and fabrications.
> > >
> > > This is claimed from time to time. The claim even less reliable than the Chinese data - basically a conspiracy theory fabrication.
> >
> > It's not conspiracy theory, the CCP are compulsive liars even when there's nothing to cover up. No point in going over the ocean of history that justifies this characterization.
>
> Particularly when it doesn't actually exist.
>
> > > > "As physicians and researchers have seen since the start of the outbreak, many infected people never become sick. As few as 14% of people in Wuhan with early coronavirus infections were being detected, said epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led a study published on Monday in Science on undocumented coronavirus infections."
> > >
> > > They got better a picking them out as the cases accumulated.
> > >
> > > > https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/
> > >
> > > Jeffrey Sharman isn't listed as an author on the paper you seem to be relying on.
> > >
> > > Not yet peer-reviewed and dated February 13, 2020, written by people a rather long way away from the actual patients
> > >
> > > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7#author-information
> > >
> > > is the published version that came out on the 19th March.
> > >
> > > It seems to drag in a lot of non-CCP data, and makes it clear that it is based on a lot of assumptions (which are spelled out).
> >
> > Epidemiological estimates tend to be logarithmic. It's not physical chemistry. There is too much variability to begin to formulate anything approaching the status of a scientific "rule."
>
> Twaddle.

Fact. Try upgrading your understanding of the science.

>
> > There are other scarier developments unfolding. Something called antibody-dependent (disease) enhancement ADE is a big one, and a studied factor in the lethality of MERS, another corona virus.
>
> Except that Covid-19 isn't MERS, and a lot less lethal.

They're both corona virus, and CoViD-19 does in fact have nearly the same mortality for vulnerable people.

>
> > This thing is going to be around for the rest of our lives.
>
> Probably.
>
> > Life will NEVER return to normal,
>
> It will as soon as we get an effective vaccine.
>
> > and 1) people lose immunity after about a year or so, and
>
> How could anybody possibly know that? The first recognised patient got the disease on the 1st December 2019, so nobody has been immune for longer than four months. Most people retain immunity to most diseases for life - RNA viruses mutate fast enough that this doesn't always help.

Virologists have been studying corona virii fr the past 50 years. They know quite a bit about them, and this was one their findings.

>
> > 2) second time around infection /can/ be much worse due to this ADE phenomenon, and of course damage accumulated from a previous infection.
>
> Again, how could you possibly know that? Hystericak speculation isn't actually evidence, and your grasp of what might be credible seems to have evaporated entirely.

Findings observed from a half century of dealing with these things.

>
> --
> Bill Sloman, Sydney

mpm

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Mar 25, 2020, 1:51:10 PM3/25/20
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On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 10:57:25 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

Hillary is lucky she is not in PRISON.

mpm

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Mar 25, 2020, 2:06:38 PM3/25/20
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On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 10:57:19 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

> If Trump can be confined to pontificating, and kept well away from the levers of power, you may be able to get the US into the kind of lockdown where each new infection infects less than one other person before they start to show symptoms and get bundled into isolation.

I was on a construction site this morning in South Florida.
There were at least 200+ construction workers present, and I really didn't see a whole lot of social distancing. A few (20%) were wearing at least some kind of face mask, and there were big bucket hand sanitizer dispensers at the main entrances to the site, but that's about it. (Broward County).

In short: Ripe conditions for Covid-19 spread.
If this is what constitutes "lock-down", we are screwed.

I should have taken a picture of the hand sanitizer dispensers: They were heavy-duty (designed for long term, many thousands of uses before refill needed). Manual operation - no batteries. Admittedly, overkill for an application like Walmart.

mpm

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Mar 25, 2020, 2:11:37 PM3/25/20
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On Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 11:06:03 AM UTC-4,
There are guns that shoot tee-shirts into the crowds at concerts.
And some that shoot tennis balls.

I know that the ones that use a cartridge (ammo) are indeed classified as firearms and you still need to pass a background check to own one.

Also: And I originally thought this to be a bit weird, but I'll throw it out there in case some folks aren't aware:

There are some farm tractors that you start using a shotgun shell.
You put the shell in, and smack it with a hammer. The force of the propellant is what turns over the engine. (Later, I learned the same was true for certain aircraft.) Neither one however is considered a "firearm".

Something else, but it will have to wait. (Can't remember the name of it.)
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