The Enz are from across the ditch. — Banno

Surprised they aren't from across the billabong

Ha, almost no one actually uses the word billabong here. I think the clothing company has a stronger association with it than actual ponds.

I like Barnett, but I think she relies a bit more on her charm and #relatability than her songwriting. My fav Aussie album from last year - probably my fav album from last year straight up - is Two People's First Body. Phone Call is just gorgeous:



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But on topic: Fox News still sucks balls.

Fangin' for a Fosters froth dog

Yes, I'll put it this way, on the information we have to date, lockdowns appear justified and appear to be working. But there are too many variables to make definitive conclusions. If we find more evidence of huge numbers of people with antibodies, indicating a much higher proportion of asymptomatic cases than originally thought, for example, that would suggest when we come off lockdown, in the absence of a vaccine, we're going to end up in herd immunity territory anyway and the Swedish model of mostly voluntary distancing might look like a better idea than a straight comparison with its neighbours currently suggests.

Agreed, but what I was trying to quantify was connectedness, but in a manner which included urban sprawl (so hub distances or connectivity measures wouldn't quite capture it). Voronoi meshes will take into account the open spaces, but it will do so in a way which biases in favour of accounting for network links (roads and railway). A single road connecting two urban areas will double the number of meshes relative to the same area without a road. — Isaac

That makes sense. The UK population is very concentrated in its urban areas though. I mean, the population density and road density is not particularly even distributed over the landmass; averaging over the landmass is thus going to give a non-informative picture when relating it to coronavirus spread. The county I grew up in in Scotland has a population density of 24 people per km^2, only about twice that of Norway, whereas the metro area of Glasgow has a population density of 3365 per km^2.

There's also huge variance in the density of roads over the country:



Huge areas have virtually nothing in them. So I'm not so surprised that the UK is weird on a landscape fragmentation measure.

I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but I think the impact of a single road captures connectivity in a way which outweighs the bias toward open space. If it didn't, then France (good network but low population density) would come out lower than UK (higher population density but crap networks).

It might just be a case of the UK screwing with how the measure interacts with open space.

The measure's also very local; it's not going to measure international connectivity or commuting/travel intensity within or between countries.

Have you got any ideas as to how we might better capture the degree of connectedness? — Isaac

Something based on a population movement network, maybe?. The virus spreads along the interaction networks of people, so a decent connectivity measure for covid probably wants to track an interaction network rather than something that reflects land geometry. I can tell you my speculations of what would be a decent measure of population connectivity/percolation, but I don't know how useful they would be for quick comparisons. There's this cool database on UK travel/commuting that could be leveraged for it, I'd imagine other states keep similar data but can't say for certain. If I were Google I'd probably have a gigantic inter-and-intra national population flow database that spanned the globe and had second to second resolution. And I'd be keeping that quiet.

If we find more evidence of huge numbers of people with antibodies, indicating a much higher proportion of asymptomatic cases than originally thought, for example, that would suggest when we come off lockdown, in the absence of a vaccine, we're going to end up in herd immunity territory anyway and the Swedish model of mostly voluntary distancing might look like a better idea than a straight comparison with its neighbours currently suggests. — Baden

Yes. The results from the widespread prevalence testing in Iceland suggest about 50% of those testing positive (for active disease) were asymptomatic. This tallies with quite a number of other smaller studies, such as the Vo’Euganeo one from Italy. Finding 50% asymptomatic at testing increases the liklihood that a considerably greater number will have antibodies (as we have to also include those who were symptomatic but did not seek treatment).

The key issue, I think is that, like it or not, there's an inevitable trade off between immediacy of lockdown measures and severity of lockdown measures. The less severe the lockdown needs to be, the easier it is going to be to implement it quickly next time. The more severe the lockdown measures need be, the higher the threshold of certainty that will be required to act - and that delay could prove fatal.

As I said way back, I think we need timely, targeted and confident action next time. To achieve that we need good, accurate data and - more importantly - people willing to follow good accurate data wherever it leads.

The trouble is people have already become so emotionally invested in flag-waiving for their favoured course of action (and who can blame them, given the stakes), that I don't have much hope that the politically expedient course will match the data.

Huge areas have virtually nothing in them. So I'm not so surprised that the UK is weird on a landscape fragmentation measure. — fdrake

Yeah, smaller countries tend to have higher indices of fragmentation because open space is at such a premium. I guess the CPRE must be a lot more powerful than anyone gave them credit for. 'God save the village green!'

The measure's also very local; it's not going to measure international connectivity or commuting/travel intensity within or between countries. — fdrake

Yeah. I hadn't thought of that because we were comparing countries, but of course you're right, a country's exposure to other networks will make a huge difference to the progress of the epidemic.

Something based on a population movement network, maybe?. The virus spreads along the interaction networks of people, so a decent connectivity measure for covid probably wants to track an interaction network rather than something that reflects land geometry. — fdrake

I agree, but I think for something like a global pandemic we need static measures, which means leveraging the inference within static networks to imply responses in the dynamic ones... Or, I suppose we could just use 'snapshots' of dynamic networks as a proxy. I like your idea of using flow models rather than network models though. I might see what data there is on that.

If I were Google I'd probably have a gigantic inter-and-intra national population flow database that spanned the globe and had second to second resolution. And I'd be keeping that quiet. — fdrake

Yes, all this proxy data analysis is obviously moot since Google know where all of us are in real time (as well as what we're doing, who we've met, and when we last bought a sandwich)! We could just ask, but then it wouldn't surprise me if Google cooked this whole thing up just to market some tracing app they'll bring out next year (obviously with help from the CCP, Huawei, the illuminati, the lizard people from the centre of the earth, and Uri Geller - who are all in on it together.... Now where did I put that tinfoil...? ).

My gym just reopened, so kickboxing begins again today. They are going to spread out the bags to provide more distance between people. The jujitsu classes are going to resume as well, although they will be without physical contact for a while.

Getting back to work. We'll see what happens.

I'm also hearing that testing for the antibodies is starting to pick up. We'll get a better feel for how widespread this whole thing has been. Many have convinced themselves that they were infected a long time ago after remembering back to the various illnesses they have had since early last year. Doubtful, but maybe.

My prediction has been that everything will be back up and running by June 1, and we're well on our way for that, damn the torpedoes.

kickboxing with a mask on? This virus can be transmitted "airborne", so by little water droplets that float on air currents.

Can't you kickbox at home until they have a vaccine?

kickboxing with a mask on? This virus can be transmitted "airborne", so by little water droplets that float on air currents.

Can't you kickbox at home until they have a vaccine? — frank

You don't have to wear a mask as far as I know. They are separating the bags by a greater distance is what I'm told. I'd also guess attendance will be down. I'm not suggesting this is totally safe, just that they've created some rules to somewhat reduce the risk of spread.

You can kickbox at home whenever you want at home. Sometimes I kick my son as he rounds the corner, so I know it can be done.

DHS report: China hid virus’ severity to hoard supplies

Not classified but marked “for official use only,” the DHS analysis states that, while downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, China increased imports and decreased exports of medical supplies. It attempted to cover up doing so by “denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data,” the analysis states.

The report also says China held off informing the World Health Organization that the coronavirus “was a contagion” for much of January so it could order medical supplies from abroad — and that its imports of face masks and surgical gowns and gloves increased sharply.

Those conclusions are based on the 95% probability that China’s changes in imports and export behavior were not within normal range, according to the report.

China informed the WHO of the outbreak on Dec. 31. It contacted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Jan. 3 and publicly identified the pathogen as a novel coronavirus on Jan. 8.

Chinese officials muffled doctors who warned about the virus early on and repeatedly downplayed the threat of the outbreak. However, many of the Chinese government’s missteps appear to have been due to bureaucratic hurdles, tight controls on information and officials hesitant to report bad news. There is no public evidence to suggest it was an intentional plot to buy up the world’s medical supplies.

French doctors are now saying they found a coronavirus patient in December, which suggests the coronavirus was circulating among the European population a month before they started reporting it.

There's new evidence that the coronavirus may have been in France weeks earlier than was previously thought.

Doctors at a Paris hospital say they've found evidence that one patient admitted in December was infected with Covid-19. If verified, this finding would show that the virus was already circulating in Europe at that time -- well before the first known cases were diagnosed in France or hotspot Italy.
"Covid-19 was already spreading in France in late December 2019, a month before the official first cases in the country," the team at Groupe Hospitalier Paris Seine in Saint-Denis wrote in a study published Sunday in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

The first official reports of Covid-19 in France were reported on Jan. 24, in two people who had a history of travel to Wuhan, China.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/health/france-coronavirus-december-death-intl/index.html

Fox is televised excrement lol. Like, if you put an actual, live picture of a freshly laid out warm turd on TV and labelled it 'Fox', you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. — StreetlightX

I would have gone for a decaying foetid turd, although I'm not sure if even the swine would gobble it up.

Yesterday, the IHME model (the one Trump keeps quoting) was predicting 75,000 total deaths in the US from COVID by August. Today, it's at 135,000.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Then there's this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/04/coronavirus-update-us/

@ssu

I'm starting to wonder if we're going to slide into a great depression.

Thoughts?

WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-random-test-of-500-in-afghan-capital-one-third-has-virus/2020/05/03/b1fe13da-8d42-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html
reports that in a random test of 500 persons in Kabul, Afghanistan, about one third tested positive for Covid-19. I think maybe this genie is out of the bottle, or this toothpaste is out of the tube. For all of us at the moment. A vaccine may bring us back, but that's not now. And it's not all of us.

That is, I think it's realistic for every human on the planet to anticipate being exposed, and what happens, happens. Time for everyone to look to their affairs. Not a bad exercise in any case, but for possibly one billion or more people, a timely and necessary exercise.

:up:

Time for everyone to look to their affairs — tim wood

Not for me, thanks. I'm not French.

Daily reminder that the US is a terrible place:

Pay for Medicare for All through short-term loans from the Federal Reserve. Brilliant. Why has no one thought of that?

Finally a version of socialism republicans will accept: take money from the poor and redistribute it directly to the rich.

I mean, if the rich people go away, whose ass-hole are our goods and services going to trickle down and out of???

Pay for Medicare for All through short-term loans from the Federal Reserve. Brilliant. Why has no one thought of that? — NOS4A2

idk probs because certain people are too busy sucking the dicks of the rich.

The same reason why America remains one of the last remaining developed nations to have a universal health care system; or better, remains a third world country when it comes to healthcare - which is why its citizens are dying by the tens of thousands.

I think the Chinese manufactured the virus to kill as many Americans as possible. That's why it targets fat people.

Why wouldn't the PEOPLE want a healthcare system optimized to make profits for insurance companies that costs twice as much as one optimized for providing healthcare? The PEOPLE are smart. They value FREEDOM.

Ah, but insurance companies are people.

People on the other hand, are inputs and outputs.

Yes, our friends the insurance companies value FREEDOM too. All AMERICAN FREEDOM. :death:

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Moneyness.

I'm starting to wonder if we're going to slide into a great depression.

Thoughts? — frank

We already have slid to an economic downturn, a depression.

We just won't call it a "great depression" as that is basically a historical term. Even the economic depression after the 2007-2008 financial crisis is called now "The Great Recession".

Just think for a moment. From very low unemployment the US bounced up to high unemployment. In Europe there are estimated about 40 million unemployed. Here the unemployment is like 12% now. That has a huge effect on aggregate demand.

Then think about the pandemic. Even if the quarantine is lifted, social distancing continues. The pandemic wil continue. Hence people are going to be timid. That means this is here to stay, even if an idiot Trump thinks that people will flock back to spending and the economy will recover and he won't lose to sleepy Joe. I think a Minnesota study released now think the pandemic will be for two years (see article). WHO is now looking at Sweden as the model for going forward.

Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO's top emergencies expert, was asked about Sweden's strategy of shunning lockdowns and allowing most schools and businesses to remain open, told a virtual news conference on Wednesday: "If we are to reach a 'new normal', in many ways Sweden represents a future model."

That means basically means that we are in for a long haul, at least a year I guess. A year with downsized demand (as people continue social distancing) and with unemployment and the threat of unemployment guarantees a severe economic downturn.

And finally, we have still all the problems of the 2007/2008 crisis unresolved as the speculative bubble was artificially kept afloat. The private sector will deleverage and downsize.

Hope you made it great economically in the 2010's. At least the start of this decade will suck.

That Minnesota University report gave interesting scenarios. Was widely noted even here with the local authorities agreeing with it. Interesting to see how it works out in reality.

Scenario 1: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a series of repetitive smaller waves that occur through the summer and then consistently over a 1- to 2-year period, gradually diminishing sometime in 2021. The occurrence of these waves may vary geographically and may depend on what mitigation measures are in place and how they are eased. Depending on the height of the wave peaks, this scenario could require periodic reinstitution and subsequent relaxation of mitigation measures.

Scenario 2: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter of 2020 and one or more smaller subsequent waves in 2021. This pattern will require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. This pattern is similar to what was seen with the 1918-19 pandemic. During that pandemic, a small wave began in March 1918 and subsided during the summer months. A much larger peak then occurred in the fall of 1918. A third peak occurred during the winter and spring of 1919; that wave subsided in the summer of 1919, signaling the end of the pandemic. The 1957-58 pandemic followed a similar pattern, with a smaller spring wave followed by a much larger fall wave (Saunders-Hastings 2016). Successive smaller waves continued to occur for several years. The 2009-10 pandemic also followed a pattern of a spring wave followed by a larger fall wave.

Scenario 3: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a “slow burn” of ongoing transmission and case occurrence, but without a clear wave pattern. Again, this pattern may vary somewhat geographically and may be influenced by the degree of mitigation measures in place in various areas. While this third pattern was not seen with past influenza pandemics, it remains a possibility for COVID-19. This third scenario likely would not require the reinstitution of mitigation measures, although cases and deaths will continue to occur.

Whichever scenario the pandemic follows (assuming at least some level of ongoing mitigation measures), we must be prepared for at least another 18 to 24 months of significant COVID-19 activity, with hot spots popping up periodically in diverse geographic areas. As the pandemic wanes, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate in the human population and will synchronize to a seasonal pattern with diminished severity over time, as with other less pathogenic coronaviruses, such as the betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1, (Kissler 2020) and past pandemic influenza viruses have done.

“But muh bailouts!”

The Fed’s $1.5 trillion loan injection, explained
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