Posts Made By: James Brown

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

This isn't about mocking Christianity.  It is about the appointment of Pence to be involved with a Medical situation for which he has zero qualifications or experience.  He is spectacularly unsuitable for the position.....

Get a Christian M.D. in there or a Christian Scientist - well not a 'Christian Scientist' per se their being about as anti-medicine as you can get  - but a scientist who happens to be a Christian.  Important distinction....

Or do you think prayer is a reasonable methodology to deal with the Corona Virus?   

Do you think Trump's cuts to various Federal Medical programs over the past two years will improve the situation with this outbreak?   Trump Cuts

Dave
 

Dave:

I'm not persuaded - your original post was an anti-Christian and anti-conservative troll, so most everyone ignored it.  But now you say that Pence is "spectacularly unsuited" to manage this crisis.  You should have stopped at mere Christian baiting.  

Managing public crisis is what politicians do.  According to most, Pence was a good manager when he was governor of Indiana, which is a particularly well-managed state.  Pence received accolades for his management of the AIDS outbreak according to relatively unbiased accounts. 

Pence's religiousness is somewhat anachronistic in 2020.  But still, the men and women who made both the USA and Canada great used to open every public meeting with prayer.  Did that diminish their legion of accomplishments?  Do you reckon that the allies didn't gather in group prayer before they boarded the landing craft at Normandy? Even so, did any of them leave their guns behind through trust in God?  A public servant can pray for guidance and still effectively manage the scientists, doctors, nurses, industry, and distribution chains that must be mobilized to meet a public health crisis. 

Pence is a good choice to manage our public response to Covid-19.  Nonetheless, there will be many cases and many deaths, for which the administration will be blamed by the opposition.  Such is politics.

Jim

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Jim,
Is it patented?!

Nope, in the spirit of the day, any original ideas that I might have (there were none) are free and open to all my comrades!  

Jim

Originally Posted by Brian McFarland

I have a roll-off about an hour drive from my house under dark skies. It's really nice to be able to just open the door, roll the roof off, and get going with a scope that's polar aligned and ready to go.  You're going to love it.  That's a very nice setup you have there.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Crazy awesome. Thanks for sharing it with us. My job has gone completely nuts, and I'm working more now than I ever have. This coronavirus outbreak is killing the airline business, but we are still busier than ever cranking out new services and features. I never seem to have time to make it outside anymore. Well, work and that my wife and I are dancing more than we ever have before both contribute. We will be attending the Texas Hoe-Down in Fort Worth, Texas, this year for the first time. It's our prelude to starting to compete. I just got back from voting in the primary today, too as well. Who has time for star-gazing anymore? Maybe once I retire.

Hi James:

Competitive dancing!  Sounds pretty cool, for me it would be a good way to terminally embarrass myself! My mail-in primary vote was just "obsoleted" when Klobuchar suspended her campaign.

Or, another way of looking at it is that my vote for "not-Biden" or "not-Bloomberg" was actually a vote for Sanders, assuming he carries Colorado.   That would be a crummy unintended consequence.  

I'm looking forward to getting back into imaging and the occasional regular observing session.  About four or five years ago, when kid #2 went to college, we moved into a tiny place in the city.  I love our city place, it is close to Denver University, for music, hockey and lots of walk-to restaurants, right on a great bike trail network, no yard to maintain etc. but impossible for telescopes!  I've never been a drive to the remote dark sky site observer...

In the meantime, we built our future retirement/dream home in the mountains, which took forever. During the building process, I upgraded some of my astro gear, like that new (used) TEC 180, in anticipation of this observatory.  I've viewed through my little refractor on a Teegul mount and tripod a few times at the mountain house site, it is very dark, but all of my imaging gear has been on mothballs for several years.  I never gave up arguing on this forum though!  Go figure...

Jim

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Israel has a five step plan to combat the spread:
1 Repetitive disinfecting of all public assets: Buses, bus terminals, railways, airports and the like.
2  Screening tests of the population on an industrial scale.  
3 Directing the air force to distribute supplies throughout the country
4 Provide a line of credit to businesses pressured by the global outbreak.
5 Coordinate efforts with other countries to resolve the issue

That's their plan, where the hell is ours?

Here's some reasonable suggestions:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-business-response.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/index.html

Originally Posted by Russ Carroll

Your contrarian indicator record is still perfect, Richard! PLEASE let me take you to Vegas!!


Congressional doctor predicts 75-150 million U.S. coronavirus cases

https://www.axios.com/congressional-physician-predicts-75-150-million-us-coronavirus-cases-fec69e77-1515-4fbc-8340-c53b65c22c53.html

AND

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/11/21156325/coronavirus-pandemic-who-declares-covid-19-outbreak-global-h1n1

Hi Russ:

I have a few PhD contacts in biotech.  For several days now they have been predicting over 100 million cases in the US, since it is apparent that many folks, especially younger people, are able to contract and transmit the disease without anything beyond minor cold-like symptoms.  These scientists are concerned, but not overly concerned because they suspect that the lethality of the disease will ultimately turn out to be "flu-like", way way less than 1%, once we appreciate how much it has spread.  In other words, the denominator of the deaths/infections ratio is going to be huge once this has made it's initial run through the world population.  

Of course the deaths will be focused in populations that are old or compromised, just like the flu.  This sucks for the old and compromised, but it is not unusual.  

Of course, we don't really know yet.  Should know in a couple of weeks.  According to a PhD I just spoke with a few minutes ago, the social distancing your blogger mentioned will slow down the spread, and maybe help us avoid a sudden spike in infections.  Social distancing will not stop the spread though.  I think the data the blogger used from China to support his point that China has successfully clamped down on new cases is likely to be crap.  So, interestingly, I think that the spread of the disease will be much greater than the blogger suggested, even with social distancing, but I also think that the blogger's more dire consequence predictions if we don't employ mandatory social distancing (people dying in the hallways...) are somewhat hysterical.  The blogger's conspicuous lack of credentials was noticed.

There are plenty of open questions.  Actual lethality is one of course.  Also, will this new version of coronavirus be seasonal like the common cold and flu, or will it continue to infect when summer comes around?  Will it go away like the initial SARS outbreak many years ago, or is it now part of the human viral disease landscape for the next 1000 years?  What is the extent and mechanism causing the apparent mildness of this disease for children vs. old folks?  Lots of open questions, but we ought to have some pretty good answers fairly soon.

In the meantime, I'm washing my hands more than I used to, but I can't stop touching my face.  My eyes itch too often in the dryness of winter.    I'm traveling by plane to California this weekend.  I'm not stockpiling anything, and I do think that too many folks are overreacting.  Time will tell if I am right or wrong about that!  

Jim

Hi Russ:

This chart is somewhat comforting to me.  The flu side is prepared from CDC records that incorporate annual data documenting something like 30,000,000 (30 million) influenza infections and 40,000 deaths each year.  The China-based coronavirus side of the chart is based (I believe) on Wuhan data concerning 72,000 suspected and 45,000 confirmed cases.  Of those confirmed cases, 208 of 1408 patients over age 80 died, that is 14.8%, so I think I have the right data set.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130

Wuhan is a densely packed city of 11 million people.  No quarantine was imposed for several weeks.  If there were in fact only 72,000 or 45,000 total cases, then coronavirus is not that infectious - but we know that is not true.  It is plenty infectious.  It is likely that there orders of magnitude more infections that did not get tested or documented because they were minor.  Presumably nearly all of the deaths were documented.  

If the actual but undetermined infection rate was 10 times higher than the documented infection rate, spread proportionately across all age groups, the lethality of coronavirus for the over 80 set would be 1.4%.  That would still only be 450,000 infections (of which 14k were over 80) in a city of 11 million that was caught entirely unaware.  I bet there were far more infections than that.

I'm not as cavalier as some, and I sure don't think this is a hoax, but I think, based upon the experts I have spoken with and read, that the over age 80 kill rate will ultimately be determined to be less than 1% and much less for other demographics, just like the flu.

We'll know in a few weeks.

Jim

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says COVID-19 is ten-times more lethal than the flu. Dr. Brian Mohan, the attending physician of the US Congress and the Supreme Court, briefs Senate Staff that he expects 70 to 150 million people in the US to contract the coronavirus.

Hi James:

It may not be necessary, but I feel compelled to put in a preamble.  I do not think this is a hoax, and I do not think it is an insignificant event.

After the data comes in, I doubt that the coronavirus will ultimately be determined to be 1% lethal (ten times more lethal than the flu).  That might equal US deaths of up to 1.5 million people.  I certainly hope that is not correct. 

One of the better analytical pieces, in my opinion, is this article examining the Diamond Princess situation published several days ago in Richard's favorite lefty e-zine Slate.  The author is an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.  The numbers have been updated periodically.  As explained in the article a cruise ship with 1 infected person at the start is the perfect laboratory for studying a new disease.


https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html


Jim

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I certainly hope it's not true either. My oldest son lives in Seattle, which is now an epicenter of the outbreak. He and his family are certainly feeling the effects of the epidemic. My son works for Amazon in operations and has to go into work still since they work on a closed network (no VPN access). He says the commute has never been better, but it still leaves him more exposed. My second oldest son is currently on the USS Eisenhower in the Red Sea while his wife and young children are weathering all of this alone back in Virginia. If my daughter-in-law does get sick, they will fly him home, but it's still quite a hardship for her. It just feels personal to me.

Understood.  My family is maybe in a bit better situation, but it is still worrisome.  Son #1 is a 911 first responder on an ambulance crew in Billings Montana.  So far no cases there, but it is a matter of time, he'll certainly be exposed, but he is 26 and should be OK.  I expect that he will be working around the clock shifts, but he tends to do that anyway.

I'm more worried about son #2.  He is a senior at the Colorado School of Mines in engineering.  They just announced this afternoon that classes are canceled next week, and then spring break.  After that all classes for the rest of the semester will be via Zoom meeting.  This sucks, the spring of senior year is supposed to be a good time.  What I'm worried most about is that he is in the heart of his job search right now.  Obviously this will impact the engineering firms and departments hiring decisions...

Jim

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Do you consider that a ridiculous bit of PANIC Jim.  I'm just curious.  

Yes all of the Colorado colleges will finish the semester using on line teaching, Zoom meetings, that sort of thing.  Personally, I think it is an overreaction, given:

* the limited number of cases
* the relatively lesser symptoms for young people
* the undeniable fact that students are going to gather anyway.  I have not heard that they are closing the dorms or Fraternities for instance.

I do not think it is a  PANIC.  It is natural to be cautious in the face of an unknown disease.  I think that the college administrators are in a very difficult place.  Have you heard Gov. Polis's speeches.  I know that he is not our cup o' tea politically, but he seems to be very good at articulating and implementing a reasonable public health response.

Jim