Students will spread a stronger Corona virus (Stronger Immune System in Students)...

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 9:15:00 PM UTC-7, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 2:52:50 AM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:

[about older folk having better mortality in the 1918 flu]

It was the statistics on older folk having a better survival probability than the young.

So it\'s an inference from the statistics long after the event. In order to test that kind of hypothesis it\'s nice to work on only part of the data, so that you can check whether the hypothesis that looks good on the data you\'ve been over in detail, still looks good on data that you haven\'t had a chance to cherry-pick in some way.

You don\'t have to be consciously trying to cheat to do this kind of cherry-picking - your sub-conscious will do it for you.

There\'s no need to pick small data sets for the 1918 flu, the large data sets support the hypothesis.
Statistical analysis is not cherry-picking in the sense of using a small sample, in a pandemic
that generated millions of death records.
It depends what you are looking for. If you keep on going through the data twenty times, you are likely to find one 95% correlation and it will probably be spurious.
Statistical analysis isn\'t done by the sub-conscious.
Picking out what to analyse for - what might correlate with what - does depend on choosing what to look at .
When or if another explanation for the age distribution arises, it can compete with the previous-similar-infection
hypothesis.
Ho hum. And the other hypotheses that you should have though of, but didn\'t.

After a century, there have been lots of hypotheses; this one survived testing. You and I should be so lucky.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 2:44:52 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 9:15:00 PM UTC-7, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 2:52:50 AM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:
[about older folk having better mortality in the 1918 flu]
It was the statistics on older folk having a better survival probability than the young.

So it\'s an inference from the statistics long after the event. In order to test that kind of hypothesis it\'s nice to work on only part of the data, so that you can check whether the hypothesis that looks good on the data you\'ve been over in detail, still looks good on data that you haven\'t had a chance to cherry-pick in some way.

You don\'t have to be consciously trying to cheat to do this kind of cherry-picking - your sub-conscious will do it for you.

There\'s no need to pick small data sets for the 1918 flu, the large data sets support the hypothesis.
Statistical analysis is not cherry-picking in the sense of using a small sample, in a pandemic
that generated millions of death records.
It depends what you are looking for. If you keep on going through the data twenty times, you are likely to find one 95% correlation and it will probably be spurious.
Statistical analysis isn\'t done by the sub-conscious.
Picking out what to analyse for - what might correlate with what - does depend on choosing what to look at .
When or if another explanation for the age distribution arises, it can compete with the previous-similar-infection
hypothesis.
Ho hum. And the other hypotheses that you should have though of, but didn\'t.
After a century, there have been lots of hypotheses; this one survived testing. You and I should be so lucky.

Nobody started generating these kinds of hypotheses until we\'d got a reasonable idea of the way the immune system worked - which was about half a century ago.

When I was a graduate student in Melbourne back then, I lived in a place that also accommodated short term academic visitors to The Walter and Eliza Hall research institute, which had recently switched to working on immunology. Gus Nossal had just taken over as director. He was replaced in 1996 by Sue Corey, who was an exact contemporary of mine (not that I ever met her, but I did hear about her - impressive - undergraduate career from mutual acquaintances, who did more biochemistry than I did). There were some interesting and informative dinner-time discussions about immunology and what then were new insights.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 30/09/2020 16:12, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 4:20:54 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 30/09/2020 00:37, Ricketty C wrote:

So what is this nonsense about screening the \"vulnerable\" from
front line positions???

A very good idea. This disease bounces off 80% of the population
with hardly any symptoms at all. There is however a cohort of about
3-5% who are in extreme danger from it mostly the elderly but not
exclusively.

At the moment there is no way to tell who is in this extreme risk
category but the big data guys are closing in on genetic markers.

The idea sounds good, but is not of much value in the real world.

The way things are we have to use whatever measures can be brought to
bear on the virus. Going into winter it will surely get worse. UK is
experiencing exponential growth again with a doubling time ~ 2weeks.

More important would be to take effective measures to simply stop the
disease. Watching many locations it seems we inevitably become
complacent with our effective measures against the disease and open
up exposure allowing infection rates to rise. The few countries that
mount an effective effort to restrict the spread of the disease are
able to continue to live normal lives. Those in the rest of the
world live in a state of constant partial quarantine dealing with
both restrictions harming the economy and alternately rising and
falling rates of illness and death.

It is far too late to stop the disease. It is now endemic in most
Western countries estimated at 1:200 of the UK population with it today.

Many US governments seem to feel there is a balance between infection
rates and \"opening the economy\". This is a fallacy. Many
individuals feel they don\'t need to practice safety measures to
prevent the spread of the virus. Those are the people fueling the
resurgence of the disease and preventing us from fighting
effectively.

We have got very mixed messages in the UK - the local lockdowns are
complete mess. Some university cities have now got infection rates that
are 13x the must quarantine if you return from a foreign holiday level.
The only saving grace is that the vast majority of them do not get
seriously ill.

The Prime Minister was on TV last night with a message of gloom that was
pretty much \"I will not hesitate to prevaricate on this matter\".

You can talk about the disease mutating into new forms and that may
happen, but the single largest impact on the course of this disease
is basic human behavior. It is that simple. If we treat this
disease like it is dangerous we will be able to get it under control.
If we don\'t it will continue to ravage both our health and our
economy.

It is dangerous but it is not all that dangerous to young people and
university students are inclined to feel immortal. It was utter madness
to repopulate university campuses but the damage is now already done. It
was all too predictable but they did it anyway.

The 10pm pub curfew has amplified bad behaviour rather than helping

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54326730

We have New draconian laws with big fines for meeting more than 6 people
and in some areas for meeting anyone at all indoors. They are however
totally unenforceable in practice and viewed with utter comtempt.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 5:41:19 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:

{about COVID-19}

Since we cannot realistically wipe it out we may have no alternative but
to live with it.

There ARE realistic scenarios where it gets wiped out. A nasal-application
vaccine, for instance, can easily be applied in the field, or at border crossings.

We may have alternatives, by this time next year, and it just takes some will
and planning. Don\'t plan to \'live with it\' and drop the other branches of that
decision tree!

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, October 2, 2020 at 9:29:45 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...Lots of people are hoping that
our legally elected President will die.

I\'m not aware of any. How many fans are there
for a President Pence administration?

One can still hope for the best in the election.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2020 11:51:33 -0700 (PDT), skybuck2000
<skybuck2000@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2020 at 7:18:27 PM UTC+2, Ricketty C wrote:
On Monday, September 28, 2020 at 12:00:01 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:35:23 -0700 (PDT), skybuck2000
skybu...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Skybuck\'s Thoughts on how the Corona Virus situation will develop in The Netherlands where children and students are allowed to go to school/college:

Students have a stronger immune system. This will allow the spreading of a stronger version of the Corona Virus.

When this stronger version of the Corona Virus is transmitted to older persons, more deaths will occur among older persons with weaker immune systems !

The opposite seems to be happening. More cases, few deaths.
Your data is old. The death rate is going back up in the US. Since the end of July the infection rate has dropped by close to half, the death rate has only dropped by a third.

So basically death rate is now higher which seems to confirm my hypothesis the corona virus will find a way to become stronger, especially if given the chance to do so.

You people in the USA should have learned how evolution worked when you tried to exterminate the fire ants.

Your attempts at exterminating these ants just made them stronger =D

The weak ones died, the stronger survived your chemicals, breeding the strong led to even more strong ants.

Toads have become quicker in Australia as well (bigger/larger legs), in an alarming rate which surprised many \"scientist\" HAHA !

And these are no \"simple\" virusses but complex living organisms.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 1:58:32 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:

On 02/10/2020 12:29, Bill Sloman wrote:

... when there are some 150 teams around the world trying to find a virus against Covid -19, the number of experts who think that a virus might be illusory or only marginally effective must be a vanishing small minority.

You just don\'t want to listen to any scientific evidence that conflicts
with your preferred Pollyanna scenario.

Odd, that a \'scientific evidence\' afficianado would make a completely
ad-hominem claim. I detect some hypocrisy here.

Lose the spin; hundreds of scientists working on vaccines aren\'t
channeling a Spyri character, they\'re making progress. The goal is not
yet achieved, but it is certainly not illusory.

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 10:33:48 AM UTC-7, whit3rd wrote:

... hundreds of scientists working on vaccines aren\'t
channeling a Spyri character, they\'re making progress. The goal is not
yet achieved, but it is certainly not illusory.

Oops; Porter wrote Pollyanna.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 05/10/2020 18:33, whit3rd wrote:

On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 1:58:32 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:
On 02/10/2020 12:29, Bill Sloman wrote:

... when there are some 150 teams around the world trying to find a virus against Covid -19, the number of experts who think that a virus might be illusory or only marginally effective must be a vanishing small minority.

You just don\'t want to listen to any scientific evidence that conflicts
with your preferred Pollyanna scenario.

Odd, that a \'scientific evidence\' afficianado would make a completely
ad-hominem claim. I detect some hypocrisy here.

The number of people trying to do it makes very little difference to the
probability of success here - there are about half a dozen basic methods
available for making a vaccine and they are all in play right now.

Lose the spin; hundreds of scientists working on vaccines aren\'t
channeling a Spyri character, they\'re making progress. The goal is not
yet achieved, but it is certainly not illusory.

No they are following the money. Governments are throwing money at this
problem like there is no tomorrow so it is hardly surprising that
everyone and their dog is making a play for it. We might just get lucky.

Thousands of people have tried to make perpetual motion machines too and
until quite recently USPTO would accept them for filing if you paid up.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2107.html
I expect a useful deployable vaccine will *eventually* be found but
just how effective it will be and on what sort of timescale is another
matter entirely. The world record for developing a new vaccine from
scratch is presently 4 years. It is a bit much to expect a safe and
effective Covid vaccine to be produced in anything less than half that time,

It will all be over by Christmas was what they said about WWI - the
difficult question is which Christmas? My money is on 2022 at least.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 8:35:05 PM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:

On 05/10/2020 18:33, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 1:58:32 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:
On 02/10/2020 12:29, Bill Sloman wrote:

... when there are some 150 teams around the world trying to find a vaccine against Covid -19, the number of experts who think that a vaccine might be illusory or only marginally effective must be a vanishing small minority.

You just don\'t want to listen to any scientific evidence that conflicts
with your preferred Pollyanna scenario.

Odd, that a \'scientific evidence\' afficianado would make a completely
ad-hominem claim. I detect some hypocrisy here.

The number of people trying to do it makes very little difference to the
probability of success here - there are about half a dozen basic methods
available for making a vaccine and they are all in play right now.

But the fact that there are a lot of them suggests that most expert opinion doesn\'t think \"that a vaccine might be illusory or only marginally effective\".

Lose the spin; hundreds of scientists working on vaccines aren\'t
channeling a Spyri character, they\'re making progress. The goal is not
yet achieved, but it is certainly not illusory.

No they are following the money. Governments are throwing money at this
problem like there is no tomorrow so it is hardly surprising that
everyone and their dog is making a play for it. We might just get lucky.

Governments are promising to throw money at any vaccine that works. The work started well before any government got around to encouraging it, and
any vaccine that works was always likely to pay off well, but only if it works.

There was quite a lot of effort put into getting a vaccine against SARS, and it stopped when SARS turned out to be less infectious than Ciovid-19 has turned out to be.

Thousands of people have tried to make perpetual motion machines too and
until quite recently USPTO would accept them for filing if you paid up.

Not exactly a parallel case.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2107.html
I expect a useful deployable vaccine will *eventually* be found but
just how effective it will be and on what sort of timescale is another
matter entirely. The world record for developing a new vaccine from
scratch is presently 4 years. It is a bit much to expect a safe and
effective Covid vaccine to be produced in anything less than half that time.

Why? In fact the work on the vaccine against SARS (and vaccines against several other corona viruses) has been co-opted, so we aren\'t starting entirely from scratch.

It will all be over by Christmas was what they said about WWI - the
difficult question is which Christmas? My money is on 2022 at least.

If you aren\'t investing in any of the vaccines, this doesn\'t signify.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Ricketty C]

On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 5:35:05 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 05/10/2020 18:33, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 1:58:32 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:
On 02/10/2020 12:29, Bill Sloman wrote:

... when there are some 150 teams around the world trying to find a virus against Covid -19, the number of experts who think that a virus might be illusory or only marginally effective must be a vanishing small minority..

You just don\'t want to listen to any scientific evidence that conflicts
with your preferred Pollyanna scenario.

Odd, that a \'scientific evidence\' afficianado would make a completely
ad-hominem claim. I detect some hypocrisy here.

The number of people trying to do it makes very little difference to the
probability of success here - there are about half a dozen basic methods
available for making a vaccine and they are all in play right now.

You are directly contradicting yourself. By having all the methods in play, that IS the number of approaches increasing the chances of a fruitful result. Even having more than one team on the same path can mitigate the rapidity of a result if one group stumbles. Remember, it\'s not just about getting a result, it\'s also about how quickly a result is achieved.

Lose the spin; hundreds of scientists working on vaccines aren\'t
channeling a Spyri character, they\'re making progress. The goal is not
yet achieved, but it is certainly not illusory.

No they are following the money. Governments are throwing money at this
problem like there is no tomorrow so it is hardly surprising that
everyone and their dog is making a play for it. We might just get lucky.

That\'s not a very logical argument, more emotional. Sure, research has to be paid for, but no one is getting rich off of the research money. They might well get rich from producing a workable result. We might end up with more than one positive result which may give options where one vaccine works better for one group of people and another works better for another group.

Then there is the matter of some people in the business are doing it because they care. I know, I know, that\'s a crazy thought...

Thousands of people have tried to make perpetual motion machines too and
until quite recently USPTO would accept them for filing if you paid up.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2107.html

That is a non-sequitur if I ever saw one.

I expect a useful deployable vaccine will *eventually* be found but
just how effective it will be and on what sort of timescale is another
matter entirely. The world record for developing a new vaccine from
scratch is presently 4 years. It is a bit much to expect a safe and
effective Covid vaccine to be produced in anything less than half that time,

\"Half that time\" is a made up construct with no support. Your complaint is not based in fact, but emotional. It really doesn\'t matter what you think.. What matters are the facts. Multiple vaccines are in phase three trials now. That\'s pretty close to being ready to deliver.

It will all be over by Christmas was what they said about WWI - the
difficult question is which Christmas? My money is on 2022 at least.

More emotion. Pure emotion.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[whit3rd]

On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 2:35:05 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:

On 05/10/2020 18:33, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, October 5, 2020 at 1:58:32 AM UTC-7, Martin Brown wrote:
On 02/10/2020 12:29, Bill Sloman wrote:

... when there are some 150 teams around the world trying to find a virus against Covid -19, the number of experts who think that a virus might be illusory or only marginally effective must be a vanishing small minority.

The number of people trying to do it makes very little difference to the
probability of success here - there are about half a dozen basic methods
available for making a vaccine and they are all in play right now.

False, of course. The number of people trying isn\'t \'difference\' making,
it\'s \'factor\' making, and it IS important.

Thousands of people have tried to make perpetual motion machines too and
until quite recently USPTO would accept them for filing if you paid up.

Irrelevant; the flaw in that particular fantasy was well-known by the nineteenth
century and \'thousands\' of cranks aren\'t a reasonable match for the
community of vaccine researchers.