Manic of a panic is geopolitical

[Dr Sardonicus]

Followup to this post...

Whistleblower: US failed to prepare, sought quick virus fix

<snip>
Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, alleges he was reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug pushed by President Donald Trump. He said the Trump administration wanted to "flood" hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.
<snip>
Top officials also pressured him to steer contracts to a client of a lobbyist, he reported.

"Time after time I was pressured to ignore or dismiss expert scientific recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections," Bright said in the call with reporters. "In other words, I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government."

[kriesel]

There's a nifty data visualization tool for Covid19 allowing county by county comparison, etc. for countries USA Belgium UK France, seen among the many links at https://research.wisc.edu/uw-madison...s-to-covid-19/

"American Family Insurance Data Science Institute Interim Director Brian Yandell has been developing a tool at brianyandell.shinyapps.io/pandemic. This project was initiated when he could not find certain trend visualization, realizing he could develop it quickly in Rstudio and host it on ShinyApps.io. One new contribution is exponentially weighted estimates of prediction lines for real cases along with estimated doubling times."

[retina]

Originally Posted by kriesel

There's a nifty data visualization tool for Covid19 allowing county by county comparison, etc. for countries USA Belgium UK France, seen among the many links at https://research.wisc.edu/uw-madison...s-to-covid-19/

All I see is a puff piece where they pat themselves on the back for doing stuff.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by retina

All I see is a puff piece where they pat themselves on the back for doing stuff.

https://brianyandell.shinyapps.io/pandemic/

[retina]

Originally Posted by kriesel

https://brianyandell.shinyapps.io/pandemic/

Okay, I tried again and now it has something there.

Although it is another one of those JS controlled pages so nothing works for me.

[storm5510]

A local NBC affiliate station's web site poses a question: "How bad with the 2nd wave of Corona virus be?" It is a really long article which I did not try to read. We shall find out shortly as it might begin in earnest on May 11 when a lot of things begin to open up. My son works at a local factory. He is due to go back to work the same day. I fear for my granddaughter who is eight months old.

[ewmayer]

A new strain has come: Meet Spike D614G, the new & improved coronavirus — RT World News

Fears that the coronavirus would mutate into a more dangerous strain appear to have been borne out, as research has identified that a new, more contagious strain of SARS-CoV-2 has become the dominant form worldwide.

The new strain, which has been dubbed ‘Spike D614G’ has been proliferating in Europe since at least mid-February, and spread to become the dominant form during the month of March. It is far more contagious than the original strain which emerged from Wuhan, for reasons as yet unknown.

Wherever it emerged it became dominant very quickly, and in some countries it became the only common strain within weeks. The paper notes that the rapid global spread of the coronavirus has provided it with “ample opportunity for natural selection to act upon rare but favorable mutations.’’ Furthermore, if the virus does not wane away as the weather warms in summer there will be nothing to stop it mutating into more and more strains.

Warning call

The research, which was carried out by a joint American and British team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been released ahead of peer review as ‘an early warning’ to other researchers. As it stands, scientists studying the coronavirus around the world may be analysing the genetic sequence of the older strain, and therefore it is crucial that they collaborate with this team to get the latest information. “We cannot afford to be blindsided as we move vaccines and antibodies into clinical testing,” the lead author Dr Bette Korber, known for her work on HIV, said.

Because the paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, it has been published online on the server BioRxiv. However, the reputations of the scientists involved suggest that the findings are sound and must be taken with the utmost seriousness — the report is 33 pages long, and short on laughs. “This is hard news,’’ said Korber of the findings.

The scientists’ methodology involved running computer analysis of over 6,000 coronavirus DNA sequences collected from around the world. Although they remark that “observed diversity among pandemic SARS-CoV-2 sequences is low’’ there were no fewer than 14 different mutations in the Spike protein sequences, just one of which is the strain that has everybody worried.

This is the strain with the D614G mutation, which is probably causing the increased contagiousness. The mutation affects the ‘Spike proteins’ on the outside of the virus, which allow the virus to invade human cells. For this reason, these spikes have until now been the main target of those trying to design vaccines or antiviral drugs to combat the virus. There are currently at least 62 vaccines in development, and most of these are focused on the Spike proteins.

The RT article does not link to the preprint in question, here is that.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by kriesel

https://brianyandell.shinyapps.io/pandemic/

"All I see" said retina. Large font size was a joke on a possible vision problem. I considered as an alternative, asking if his eye doctor was due for a swim in the shark pool at the evil lair.

Would not consider such a joke directed at storm5510, who has already posted about his vision Given what he's described, I think his participation is impressive.

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by kriesel

"All I see" said retina. Large font size was a joke on a possible vision problem. I considered as an alternative, asking if his eye doctor was due for a swim in the shark pool at the evil lair.

Would not consider such a joke directed at storm5510, who has already posted about his vision Given what he's described, I think his participation is impressive.

Wow! This thread nearly descended into the fur-ball area. May cooler heads prevail.

Yes, I saw the brilliant red, and large, text a few pages back. It was hard to miss as I now keep my browser magnification set at 120%. My ever worsening visual impairment stems from looking at computer screens since early 1988 on a daily basis for many hours. I do not want the state of my visual capabilities to become fodder for amusement. I would never consider perpetrating this upon anyone. This is a disability. To poke fun at anyone with any type of disability is in extremely poor taste.

Now, let us get back on topic...

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

I grabbed all the data that they had and plotted it. The red is this season, the bold blue line is the mean. I don't think there is anything to it. Just pick limited data and make sure there is a higher than average year in it. (And I am guessing that the drop is principally road deaths. But there is that spike afterward.

I pulled the current data. Plotted the Std Dev for previous years. Took the difference for this year from the average of previous years and plotted it. I left off week 17 as it has incomplete data. Week 16 data is also incomplete (thus low).

[xilman]

Originally Posted by storm5510

To poke fun at anyone with any type of disability is in extremely poor taste.

Anyone wishing to poke fun at any of my disabilities is welcome to try.

My response will range from enthusiastic applause to vigorous and repeated attempts to retaliate as viciously as possible. You have been warned.