Posts Made By: James Brown

Originally Posted by Russ Carroll

For anyone following the Dan Zowada Memorial Observatory, I'm very proud to say that the first published article in The Astrophysical Journal using measurements from it was put online in prerelease form today:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.03685.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3BJSqar0UN45L6DEhNIfDxbMGsnjwqPQqjSdbAXr302UeGtnGt77DQ-_4

I return you to your debate already in progress.

Russ

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

What interests me in Georgia and in Florida is the relative lack of restrictions and/or the lack of compliance of them and the relative lack of huge spikes. At first, I couldn't why but now, from further reading on it, the rationale has been advanced: the virus does ok with hot climates and in low humidity conditions but it's inhibited by high temperature high humidity conditions which are typically found in these states. So it makes sense thus far from what we're seeing at this point. OTH, if people start clustering without PPE in air conditioned environments, that could change dramatically...

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

And by the way, you weren't putting out bait, you were just being stupid, trying to pander to the left here as usual, and I noticed it.  

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Be careful what you wish for, Jim. We're likely to start seeing a return of those 2000 plus word rants, taking up considerable bandwidth, thus upping the renewal rates for everyone...

Originally Posted by James Brown

Good point.  But, if I acknowledge your point in a civil tone, am I pandering to the left?

Originally Posted by James Lacey

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Hi Jim,

NextStrain has been compiling all of the data from the genome sequencing of the Coronavirus around the globe. It's quite interesting since you can visually see how the virus is spreading. Go to the North America dataset, move the map, so the US is in the center, then hit play and pause. The first infections show up in the US in early January from China; at the same time, Western Europe is getting infected from China, then in late January, the US starts getting infections from Western Europe too. So, we were getting it on two coasts. In early February, the US starts spreading it back to Western Europe, and later in February, the US is also spreading it back to the East. By early March, it's a merry-go-round where everyone is spreading it back-and-forth. So much for travel bans having worked. The problem is they weren't outright bans. Lots of people traveled to and from China and Europe after those bans went into place. Many were citizens or had exemptions, or they just arrived here from a different stop-over. In any case, travel bans seem to have had little effect in stopping the spread. I'm assuming that if there had been effective screening in place, that could have made a difference, but we will never know for sure.
If I'm reading the data correctly, the vast majority of our infection came from Europe, and the US spread it as much as we received it.

Purple streaks show where the virus was transmitted from China, green and yellow-green streaks show transmission from Europe, and red streaks show transmission from the United States.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Mike Bowen:

"Like Rick Bright said, it's the scientists we need to be listening to, and we are not. That has got to change or more lives are going to be lost."

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Darian,


There have been over 86,000 deaths and close to 1.5Mn infections in four months, and that is with extreme non-pharmaceutical interventions nationwide. No one can reasonably deny that without the stay-at-home orders, school closings, and other social-mitigation efforts that those numbers would be significantly higher. The death-rater from COVID-19 is higher than the only two other biggest killers of Americans cancer and heart disease.

Even if you do choose to ignore or dispute the deaths, it's impossible to ignore the economic damage caused by this world-wide pandemic. It's not a hoax. It's not a liberal-media invention designed to harm Trump. It is doing real harm, and it's frankly a little unbelievable that you seem to think there is no disaster unfolding in front of you.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Here are some updated total daily infection charts - Not really enough time to draw conclusions, but note how the Texas daily infections appear to be on the uptick still.  More about that in the next two posts.  Much conjecture to follow!

Jim