That was scary

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:31:38 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 4:10:29 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:46:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 10/04/2020 17:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:16:42 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:20:51 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 20:41:33 +0200, David Brown

Yes, because as we all know, the immune system consists of nothing but
saliva.

That never occurred to me. How do you know that?


Or perhaps you are just talking drivel again.

I feel compelled to mention that an archaic use of the word "drivel" is as a verb to mean "let saliva or mucus flow from the mouth or nose."

So, maybe he really is just talking drivel.

I consider possibilities, given a lot of noisy data. Some people
reject the possibilities they don't like.

Really, a lot of people enjoy disasters and hope they will get worse.
Anything less than a catastrophic projection offends them. And a lot
of people want crisies to exploit.

I take business away from people who don't allow themselves to
consider all the options.


"Considering all the options" is usually a good idea.

Maybe you do that in your electronics business. Maybe you are good at
that - you certainly claim to be, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

But in other fields, you are highly ignorant. And you then fill in the
gaps in your knowledge with any old crap that springs to mind. That is
not "considering the options", it is idiocy.

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

No. Some people - like you - are so highly ignorant you don't even
understand what you are ignorant about. Others know a great deal more.
No one knows everything, and there are lots of aspects that no one yet
knows.

Various experts and Top
Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different
projections. They would be hilarious if things weren't so serious.
Test density is increasing exponentially but case rates are not
adjusted. My guesses are as good as anybody else' now.


It is that last part it is so absurd. No, your guesses are /not/ as
good as anybody else's. That is the whole point of letting experts make
/qualified/ guesses. When there is a gap in scientific knowledge, that
does /not/ mean that any twit with an imagination and no common sense
can fill in that gap.

System dynamics and waveforms and measurement and problem solving are
my life, and not always electronics. We don't just design electronics,
we manufacture and sell it. The patterns here are interesting. The
dynamics could well be similar to 1918. Or to the usual winter cold.


If you are scientific about your electronics design, you'll understand
the concepts of interpolation and extrapolation.

Yes, I have been told that I don't understand exponential growth.

If you think you don't understand these growth rates now, just imagine
how much you won't understand them a few days from now!

Grins,
James

Go ahead and smirk. In a few days we'll all be dead.

I keep thinking I see a new case curve that's a Gaussian impulse, or
maybe a half-sine, 3-4 weeks FWHM. It's more visible in a few small
european countries, less shapely in some others.

First-wave 1918 regional infections were like that, 4-6 weeks wide
bell curve. But far more lethal.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:44:57 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 4:27:33 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:09:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 2:24:49 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:29:19 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 11:06:30 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I do start threads about electronics. This crowd seems uninterested in
electronics.

I'm having a great creative spurt during this Red Death. I'm
frustrated, as often, in that it would be great fun to share,
but sharing wouldn't be fair to the people who've hired me.

Here's a seemingly-trivial circuit that's actually pretty cool:

0.05 5
------+---Rs1---+-----Rs2---+----------//--
| | Q2 |
| +--. . .----+
| | | ^ | |
.-. R1 | - - - .-. R3
| | 10k .--------- | | 100
'-' | | '-'
range | | | Q3 | |\
------------+ '--. . .----+----|+\ TLV333
| | | ^ | | >--.
| | - - - .---|-/ |
| '--------- | |/ |
+----------------------' |
| |
'>| |
Q1 |------------------------------'
BC857C /|
|
+--------> Vout = 2.5V/A, 2.5V/10mA (low)
|
R2 500k
|
GND

The circuit monitors battery consumption over uA to ~0.5A,
in two ranges to please a 12-bit a-d.

Absolute accuracy isn't particularly critical, otherwise
a FET or a Darlington could replace Q1.

The op-amp is a zero-drift unit with microvolt offset.
The FETs are 50-100 milliohm-ish Rds(on).

The dual FETs solve the problem of wanting to short out the
'low' range sense resistor to reduce its insertion drop,
with minimal measurement error, using FETs whose Rds(on) would
otherwise produce unacceptable error. At full scale, merely
shunting Rs1 with a 100 milliohm FET produces a 100mV error,
double the 50mV Rs1 signal. The R3 - Q3 divider reduces Q2's
Rds(on) measurement error contribution by a factor of about
one thousand.

Cheers,
James

You might also use one small sense resistor

Can't. 10uA through a 50 milliohm sense resistor is 500nV.

and gain-switch a zero-offset opamp.

That is a zero-offset R-R opamp. But at these low signal levels,
switching the input signal rather than the opamp gain is
calculates furiously> a bazillion times more accurate.

It's just a battery monitor, so maybe not range switch at all?

Not enough resolution that way. I need to tabulate the total
energy while we yank out 500mA for a handful of seconds, and
also while we idle at 30 or 50uA for hour after hour.

Sounds a bit compulsive to me. Is it a tiny battery?

It's demanding, but it's vital to know the state-of-charge. Which
is sort of a pain when much of the time-integrated discharge
comes from Iq. But that's why we get the hard stuff, right?

How consistent are batteries? From unit to unit, over time and
charging history, over temperature? Nasty wet things.

Given a 12-bit ADC, 2.5V/A => 244uA per lsb. That's not nearly
good enough. (That's with 12uV/lsb at the sense resistor.)

The switchable sense resistor arrangement improves the resolution
to 2.44uA per lsb, which seems pretty reasonable. And the sense
voltage stays large enough that I won't have to fret thermocouple
voltages everywhere.

I don't suppose you could tolerate a diode drop.

faints> <Thunk!

No cause for getting all huffy over this.

What you need is a good DCCT. PPM accurate and no voltage drop.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:06:30 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

Not true, of course; the genome, for instance, was available months ago.

Various experts and Top
Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different
projections.

Because they are projecting with different human actions in their models?
In any case, that isn't 'about this virus' information, it's about handling
human response in a fast-acting disease spread.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:57:36 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:06:30 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

Not true, of course; the genome, for instance, was available months ago.

The gene sequence is like a book that contains all knowledge, in a
language you can't read. If we understood how the virus works, we'd
start up an antibody factory overnight. Some day, we will be able to
do that.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com> wrote in
news:0426ab09-57dd-40dd-86c6-55bd70a1e0c0@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:06:30 AM UTC-7,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

Not true, of course; the genome, for instance, was available
months ago.

Various experts and Top
Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different
projections.

Because they are projecting with different human actions in their
models? In any case, that isn't 'about this virus' information,
it's about handling human response in a fast-acting disease
spread.

America's great freedoms have caused us to slowly get so casual
about things, we allowed ourselves to get casual about education.

The fact that kids are not raised learning proper manners and
etiquette, etc. have played into this lack of a response. IF we were
all 'more refined' we would have repsonded to this much better.
Actually, were we better educated, we would have vetted the dangerous
buffooon putting folks' lives at risk. Donald John Trump is guilty
of negligent homicide, and so are his supporters.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 1:06:30 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:16:42 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:
On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:20:51 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 20:41:33 +0200, David Brown

<snip>

Maybe you do that in your electronics business. Maybe you are good at
that - you certainly claim to be, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

But in other fields, you are highly ignorant. And you then fill in the
gaps in your knowledge with any old crap that springs to mind. That is
not "considering the options", it is idiocy.

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

You are a great deal more ignorant than most, and great deal more ignorant than you seem to realise.

> Various experts and Top Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different projections.

The different projections test different assumptions. That's what simulation are good for. The fact that they project widely different outcomes helps nail down which assumption matter.

> They would be hilarious if things weren't so serious.

Your incomprehension of what's going on might be hilarious if you weren't in the business of rubbishing useful advice because you don't know enough to realise that it is useful.

Test density is increasing exponentially but case rates are not
adjusted. My guesses are as good as anybody else' now.

John Larkin's guesses are based on some remarkably ignorant delusions. His guess about what his guesses are worth is clearly one of them.

System dynamics and waveforms and measurement and problem solving are
my life, and not always electronics. We don't just design electronics,
we manufacture and sell it. The patterns here are interesting. The
dynamics could well be similar to 1918. Or to the usual winter cold.

As an insight into the fatuity of your thinking, this might be useful.
Nodbody sane would take it seriously.

What's real is that people who need evaluations and surgeries can't
get into empty hospitals. There's a front-page article in today's SF
Chron about a guy who was scheduled for brain surgery, but now doesn't
know when it might happen.

About 600K people die of cancer in the US every year, out of about 1.8
million diagnosies. They are not being diagnosed now. Do the math.

Why would you think that they weren't being diagnosed now? You might have hard time getting an appointment in New York right now, but most of the rest of the country hasn't yet been inundated.

> The damage to our economies is not in doubt either.

True. But the economy is there to keep people alive. It can recover too.

Again, people who don't like my thoughts respond with personal
insults, not reasoned discussion. Insults are all they have.

It's difficult to comment on persistent and dangerous inanities without sounding censorious. Post something that deserves a positive response and you might do better.

My only objection to stupid insults is that it shows that one more
member of the group is unwilling to think. We need more people capable
of calm reasoning and intelligent discussion.

You could raise the porportion of them in the group by shutting up for a while.

I do start threads about electronics. This crowd seems uninterested in
electronics.

You don't start threads about particularly interesting electronics, and a lot of what you post is about re-inventing the wheel.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 2:28:25 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:57:36 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:06:30 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

Not true, of course; the genome, for instance, was available months ago.

The gene sequence is like a book that contains all knowledge, in a
language you can't read. If we understood how the virus works, we'd
start up an antibody factory overnight.

No, that would require a perfect model of the antibody's side effects.
You can have lots of knowledge and still not have a magic bullet.

Succesful attacks on this disease have been quarantines.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 4:10:34 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 11:46:30 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

The German health system has run an antibody test in one of the hottest
spots on the planet and found that only 14% of the population has
actually got antibodies to the virus at present.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/

Observations:
a) That's a huge figure. OTOH, it's not close to being everybody, which
bespeaks a finite transmissibility.

Only to a cock-eyed optimist.

What it more likely means is that the town got locked down hard as soon as the Covid-19 infections got noticed, and the remaining 85% of the population didn't get a chance to get infected.

<snipped one more deluded claim that there were people running around the US with with Covid-19 in January who mysteriously failed to start the epidemic in the US at the time >

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 6:10:29 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:46:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 10/04/2020 17:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:16:42 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:20:51 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 20:41:33 +0200, David Brown

<snip>

If you are scientific about your electronics design, you'll understand
the concepts of interpolation and extrapolation.

Yes, I have been told that I don't understand exponential growth.

You clearly weren't taking it into account in you comments about current and future Covid-19 numbers. It was bizarre,

These are valid ways
of estimating a gap in your data, when there is enough known data to
form a reasonable hypothesis of the pattern. An entirely /unreasonable/
way would be to ask someone who hasn't seen any of the known data to
pick a number. Yet that is what you seem to be espousing in other fields.

It's a discussion group. You seem to say that no-one is allowed to
have an opinion or an observation unless they are "an expert."

They do get discouraged from posting utterly fatuous nonsense. There's a long gap between "an expert" and Skybuck Flying, and you do seem to performing close to his level when it comes to opinions about Covid-19.

What's real is that people who need evaluations and surgeries can't
get into empty hospitals. There's a front-page article in today's SF
Chron about a guy who was scheduled for brain surgery, but now doesn't
know when it might happen.


Of course that's a problem. That is one of the reasons for wanting a
lockdown, so that the Covid-19 pandemic does not overwhelm the medical
services.

We have hospitals that are a few per cent full.

Very expensive ones, at a guess. If they see their job as being there immediately for billionaire with hangnail, they won't be saving the lives of the less well-off. Naomi Klein had a car-accident when she was reporting on Katrina in New Orleans, and got patched up immediately in a place like that while the regular hospitals were maxed out.

About 600K people die of cancer in the US every year, out of about 1.8
million disgnosies. They are not being diagnosed now. Do the math.


Have you any idea of how many people would die if there wasn't a
lockdown?

No, I don't. Neither do you. The lockdown may well result in net
deaths. What happens when the lockdown is over and people emerge? Are
they somehow immune from being isolated?

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

Four 14 days after the last detected case.

> How do we feed and take care of people meanwhile?

Australia seems to be managing fine.

<snip>

Looks like the USA may be near peak at a bit under 2000 deaths per
day. If it is as awful as people say, it will run out of old people to
kill.

John Larkin in full pig-ignorant Pollyanna mode.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

All the curves are rising steadily, except the new cases to day which has been sitting at around 30,000 per day for a week now. Each new case has an appreciable chance - 4% - of ending up dead. The older they are, the more likely the are to end up dead, but young people are ending up dead too.

I'm not terribly interested in analogue electronics. I'm not much good
at it - it's simply not my field. I like digital electronics, because
it's easy, and my main job is programming microcontrollers. So I
sometimes join in threads if these turn up.

Oh, a coder. Code does not involve science or causality, and
especially doesn't require any understanding of math or system
dynamics.

What a bizarre misconception. Coding itself may not require that kind of insight, but creating the process being coded usually does.

I have heard that English majors make good coders. Maybe because they
type well.

They are also taught to think about what they typing, which can come into it.

Constructing an argument does involve putting the phrases - and the information they convey - into a sequence which will have a particular effect on the reader.

The average central processor is a good deal simpler than the average reader (though this may not be true here) but the idea of ordering the words to get the desired effect may be helpful.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 3:01:23 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 16:46:23 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 10/04/2020 16:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:

<s

Test density is increasing exponentially but case rates are not
adjusted. My guesses are as good as anybody else' now.

No. You are woefully ignorant and *very* determined to remain so.

The German health system has run an antibody test in one of the hottest
spots on the planet and found that only 14% of the population has
actually got antibodies to the virus at present.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/

That's a useful bit of data. Prefacing it with "willfully ignorant"
isn't. I didn't deliberately avoid seeing the German data.

But there's zero chance you would have come across it on your own.

I have said for some time that we need general-population antibody
studies to understand the dynamics.

This seems to be coupled to the fatuous idea that lots of people have already had it and failed to notice.

> The usual response was to ridicule me for suggesting that antibody studies would be worthwhile.

Quite correctly. There is other information we need more urgently

Now you ridicule me because an antibody study has been done. Please explain
that.

Please explain why you see what he posted about that as insult. The comment about woeful ignorance is factual, but you see it as an insult. The German test exposes an example where your claim that lots of people had got it and hadn't noticed it doesn't seen to be true, but that's fact - not an insult.

The next thing to estimate is what fraction of the population would
catch it if exposed.

There's a widely help opinion that says "almost all of them". You've imagined that this might not be true - an opinion based on rather poor evidence. Not everybody on the "Diamond Princess" caught Covid-19, but they were isolated from one another early on. Not as perfectly as they should have been, but well enough that it isn't any kind of useful test for natural immunity.

The current opinion is that "no-one has natural
immunity to coronavirus" but there are counter-cases.

Cite. And lay off the "Diamond Princess". It isn't a useful example for you case.

> If 25% can get it and 14% have had it, R0 is down about half.

And if wishes were horses beggars would ride.

> So it may peak and decline soon, as it seems to have done in many places, especially in europe. Austria and Luxembourg are nice tight test cases. Australia had a nice bell peak of new cases a couple of weeks ago, with a total of about 6K confirmed cases so far.

And fierce social distancing, and a lot of contact tracing and telling people to stay at home if they've been anywhere near anybody who turned out to be infected. China and South Korea demonstrated that this approach works.

Not every country has been able to implement it as well.

Let the insults flourish.

At this rate the infection will continue to cause serious problems for
at least another 6 multiples of 2 months or until a viable vaccine is
developed and deployed. Or governments realise that saving every
possible life now at any cost is nothing like an optimal strategy.

That's one common prediction: the virus will be a serious cause of
death for another year or more and nothing short of a vaccine will
ever stop it. Noted health scientists like Bill Gates have told us so.

Actually, people who know what they are talking about think that new cases can be brought down to very low levels by contact tracing, and isolation of potential carriers. There will be some deaths before we got a vaccine, but jumping on each new centre of infection as soon as it is detected should let us stop any new epidemic outbreaks - at least in advanced industrial countries (maybe only in ones more advanced than the US).

System dynamics and waveforms and measurement and problem solving are
my life, and not always electronics. We don't just design electronics,
we manufacture and sell it. The patterns here are interesting. The
dynamics could well be similar to 1918. Or to the usual winter cold.

You clearly don't know what you are talking about but say it anyway.

The damage to our economies is not in doubt either.

Whilst I agree with this point. I do not agree with your Pollyanna
approach to laissez-faire pandemic control on a wing and a prayer.

Cite my saying anything like that. I have no power over the situation
and hence no "approach." I have mostly considered possibilities of the
dynamics. I have suggested that fear and panic are not productive.

But ill-informed optimism isn't helpful either.

> I do predict a massive surplus of cheap never-used ventilators.

You might be lucky. The US numbers aren't promising.

The UK has purchased an antibody test that appears not to work well
enough to be remotely useful in the field (and are presently trying to
get their money back). Wired has dissected the problem quite well:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-antibody-tests-uk-accuracy

There seems to be a lot of hostility to antibody testing.

There's always a lot of hostility to wasting money on products that turn out not to deliver what they promised.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 10/04/2020 19:10, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 11:46:30 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

The German health system has run an antibody test in one of the hottest
spots on the planet and found that only 14% of the population has
actually got antibodies to the virus at present.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/

Observations:
a) That's a huge figure. OTOH, it's not close to being everybody, which
bespeaks a finite transmissibility.

No. It says only that they locked down hard enough to limit the spread
to that small proportion by a hard lockdon. It is likely that it will
resurge when they try to loosen the rstrictions.

The proportion that truly have had Covid-19 might even be lower than
that since we don't know what proportion of false positives and false
negatives the antibody test is giving (and indications are that the one
the UK bought is so unreliable as to be useless).

One that is accurate 90% of the time would result in that 14% figure
really consisting of 4.5% false positives and 10.5% true positives.

If we assume the false negative rate is the same then the true number
would be 10.5/0.9 % = 11.6%. It is likely that the false negative result
is rarer since they will have made a great effort to detect it reliably.
Snag is that it may not be as specific as the DNA methods (and could be
even less reliable as a home testing kit used incorrectly).

People tested who think incorrectly that they have antibodies and are
immune will be left at considerable risk of infection in the future.

b) One of my buddies, exposed to Chinese nationals returning from China,
almost certainly had this beast in January, before even the U.S.'
first known case. ISTM there's a high probability Peking Lung was on
the loose in the U.S. population weeks before anyone recognized it.

You would have seen some higher death rates in vulnerable populations if
that were really the case. I expect a tiny number of early cases did
slip through without being noticed but once there was an alert the
medics were pretty much on the ball at contact tracing in the UK.

c) If the New York physician's video I posted in the "80% of NYC"
thread is accurate, then we can stop transmission fairly
effectively with simple hygiene.

Soap and water is remarkably effective at killing the virus.

I think on this you might be right here - at least for people who are
chemical or NBC trained and disciplined enough not to touch their face.

People watching in various long queues I reckon about half the
population cannot go for more than fifteen minutes without doing so.
Those with a phone clamped permanently to one ear almost invariably have
one or more fingers in contact with their face.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[David Brown]

On 10/04/2020 22:10, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:46:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 10/04/2020 17:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:16:42 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:20:51 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 20:41:33 +0200, David Brown

Yes, because as we all know, the immune system consists of nothing but
saliva.

That never occurred to me. How do you know that?


Or perhaps you are just talking drivel again.

I feel compelled to mention that an archaic use of the word "drivel" is as a verb to mean "let saliva or mucus flow from the mouth or nose."

So, maybe he really is just talking drivel.

I consider possibilities, given a lot of noisy data. Some people
reject the possibilities they don't like.

Really, a lot of people enjoy disasters and hope they will get worse.
Anything less than a catastrophic projection offends them. And a lot
of people want crisies to exploit.

I take business away from people who don't allow themselves to
consider all the options.


"Considering all the options" is usually a good idea.

Maybe you do that in your electronics business. Maybe you are good at
that - you certainly claim to be, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

But in other fields, you are highly ignorant. And you then fill in the
gaps in your knowledge with any old crap that springs to mind. That is
not "considering the options", it is idiocy.

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

No. Some people - like you - are so highly ignorant you don't even
understand what you are ignorant about. Others know a great deal more.
No one knows everything, and there are lots of aspects that no one yet
knows.

Various experts and Top
Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different
projections. They would be hilarious if things weren't so serious.
Test density is increasing exponentially but case rates are not
adjusted. My guesses are as good as anybody else' now.


It is that last part it is so absurd. No, your guesses are /not/ as
good as anybody else's. That is the whole point of letting experts make
/qualified/ guesses. When there is a gap in scientific knowledge, that
does /not/ mean that any twit with an imagination and no common sense
can fill in that gap.

System dynamics and waveforms and measurement and problem solving are
my life, and not always electronics. We don't just design electronics,
we manufacture and sell it. The patterns here are interesting. The
dynamics could well be similar to 1918. Or to the usual winter cold.


If you are scientific about your electronics design, you'll understand
the concepts of interpolation and extrapolation.

Yes, I have been told that I don't understand exponential growth.

You certainly demonstrated problems with that concept.

These are valid ways
of estimating a gap in your data, when there is enough known data to
form a reasonable hypothesis of the pattern. An entirely /unreasonable/
way would be to ask someone who hasn't seen any of the known data to
pick a number. Yet that is what you seem to be espousing in other fields.

It's a discussion group. You seem to say that no-one is allowed to
have an opinion or an observation unless they are "an expert."

When discussing gravity, you can have an opinion like "I am not
convinced by the Dark Energy theories, and think Modified Newtonian
Gravity looks more promising". You can't have an opinion "I think
bricks fall because the fairies push them".

Your ideas are usually not quite /that/ bad, but many of them are still
quite absurd. And an "opinion" that contradicts clear, known facts is
not an opinion, it's just ignorance.

What's real is that people who need evaluations and surgeries can't
get into empty hospitals. There's a front-page article in today's SF
Chron about a guy who was scheduled for brain surgery, but now doesn't
know when it might happen.


Of course that's a problem. That is one of the reasons for wanting a
lockdown, so that the Covid-19 pandemic does not overwhelm the medical
services.

We have hospitals that are a few per cent full.

Look at the spread of the virus in the USA. Sure, you have hospitals
that have plenty of space - they are not in the areas hard hit by the virus.

About 600K people die of cancer in the US every year, out of about 1.8
million disgnosies. They are not being diagnosed now. Do the math.


Have you any idea of how many people would die if there wasn't a
lockdown?

No, I don't. Neither do you. The lockdown may well result in net
deaths. What happens when the lockdown is over and people emerge? Are
they somehow immune from being isolated?

There is a lot we don't know, I agree.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

That won't happen.

How do we feed and take care of people meanwhile?



Vastly more than those 600K people would die directly from
Covid-19 - it would likely be millions (we are just talking about the
USA here). Common estimates (and they are only estimates) are that you
need 60% infected to get herd immunity (though there is now severe doubt
about how immunity you get after recovery). And with a totally
overwhelmed health service, between 5% and 10% will die. So without
working hard to limit the spread of this virus, it would be unsurprising
to see 10 to 20 million people die in the USA alone.

Let's remember that number for later.

Let's hope we don't have to. There are perhaps some crackpots who think
death and disaster is a great thing, but I am not one of them. (I
haven't heard much from the "second coming" loons who think climate
damage is a good thing because it means Armageddon is around the corner.
I wonder if they are cheering on this pandemic?)

Looks like the USA may be near peak at a bit under 2000 deaths per
day. If it is as awful as people say, it will run out of old people to
kill.

It is not just old people that die. They have a higher proportion of
deaths, and they die first, but young people die too. And remember, the
deaths will continue long after the rate of infections goes down.

I'm not terribly interested in analogue electronics. I'm not much good
at it - it's simply not my field. I like digital electronics, because
it's easy, and my main job is programming microcontrollers. So I
sometimes join in threads if these turn up.


Oh, a coder. Code does not involve science or causality, and
especially doesn't require any understanding of math or system
dynamics.

Really? So programming is another field that is completely outside your
area of knowledge?

I have heard that English majors make good coders. Maybe because they
type well.

I am a mathematician by education.

(That doesn't mean English majors won't make good programmers - there
are many aspects to programming.)

 

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 14:04:21 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 10/04/2020 22:10, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:46:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 10/04/2020 17:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:13:15 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 08/04/2020 21:03, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:16:42 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:20:51 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 20:41:33 +0200, David Brown

Yes, because as we all know, the immune system consists of nothing but
saliva.

That never occurred to me. How do you know that?


Or perhaps you are just talking drivel again.

I feel compelled to mention that an archaic use of the word "drivel" is as a verb to mean "let saliva or mucus flow from the mouth or nose."

So, maybe he really is just talking drivel.

I consider possibilities, given a lot of noisy data. Some people
reject the possibilities they don't like.

Really, a lot of people enjoy disasters and hope they will get worse.
Anything less than a catastrophic projection offends them. And a lot
of people want crisies to exploit.

I take business away from people who don't allow themselves to
consider all the options.


"Considering all the options" is usually a good idea.

Maybe you do that in your electronics business. Maybe you are good at
that - you certainly claim to be, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

But in other fields, you are highly ignorant. And you then fill in the
gaps in your knowledge with any old crap that springs to mind. That is
not "considering the options", it is idiocy.

Everyone is highly ignorant about this virus.

No. Some people - like you - are so highly ignorant you don't even
understand what you are ignorant about. Others know a great deal more.
No one knows everything, and there are lots of aspects that no one yet
knows.

Various experts and Top
Scientists with Computer Simulations are making wildly different
projections. They would be hilarious if things weren't so serious.
Test density is increasing exponentially but case rates are not
adjusted. My guesses are as good as anybody else' now.


It is that last part it is so absurd. No, your guesses are /not/ as
good as anybody else's. That is the whole point of letting experts make
/qualified/ guesses. When there is a gap in scientific knowledge, that
does /not/ mean that any twit with an imagination and no common sense
can fill in that gap.

System dynamics and waveforms and measurement and problem solving are
my life, and not always electronics. We don't just design electronics,
we manufacture and sell it. The patterns here are interesting. The
dynamics could well be similar to 1918. Or to the usual winter cold.


If you are scientific about your electronics design, you'll understand
the concepts of interpolation and extrapolation.

Yes, I have been told that I don't understand exponential growth.

You certainly demonstrated problems with that concept.


These are valid ways
of estimating a gap in your data, when there is enough known data to
form a reasonable hypothesis of the pattern. An entirely /unreasonable/
way would be to ask someone who hasn't seen any of the known data to
pick a number. Yet that is what you seem to be espousing in other fields.

It's a discussion group. You seem to say that no-one is allowed to
have an opinion or an observation unless they are "an expert."


When discussing gravity, you can have an opinion like "I am not
convinced by the Dark Energy theories, and think Modified Newtonian
Gravity looks more promising". You can't have an opinion "I think
bricks fall because the fairies push them".

Your ideas are usually not quite /that/ bad, but many of them are still
quite absurd. And an "opinion" that contradicts clear, known facts is
not an opinion, it's just ignorance.



What's real is that people who need evaluations and surgeries can't
get into empty hospitals. There's a front-page article in today's SF
Chron about a guy who was scheduled for brain surgery, but now doesn't
know when it might happen.


Of course that's a problem. That is one of the reasons for wanting a
lockdown, so that the Covid-19 pandemic does not overwhelm the medical
services.

We have hospitals that are a few per cent full.


Look at the spread of the virus in the USA. Sure, you have hospitals
that have plenty of space - they are not in the areas hard hit by the virus.

Look at the NUMBERS.

Hospitals everywhere have plenty of space. That's because they won't
let ordinary people with the usual needs in, and don't have many C19
cases.

Even New York is doing OK and admissions to hospitals are flattening.
They have about 15% as many beds occupied as they expected. We have
special virus wards here that are 10% occupied.

About 600K people die of cancer in the US every year, out of about 1.8
million disgnosies. They are not being diagnosed now. Do the math.


Have you any idea of how many people would die if there wasn't a
lockdown?

No, I don't. Neither do you. The lockdown may well result in net
deaths. What happens when the lockdown is over and people emerge? Are
they somehow immune from being isolated?


There is a lot we don't know, I agree.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?


That won't happen.

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

How do we feed and take care of people meanwhile?



Vastly more than those 600K people would die directly from
Covid-19 - it would likely be millions (we are just talking about the
USA here). Common estimates (and they are only estimates) are that you
need 60% infected to get herd immunity (though there is now severe doubt
about how immunity you get after recovery). And with a totally
overwhelmed health service, between 5% and 10% will die. So without
working hard to limit the spread of this virus, it would be unsurprising
to see 10 to 20 million people die in the USA alone.

Let's remember that number for later.


Let's hope we don't have to. There are perhaps some crackpots who think
death and disaster is a great thing, but I am not one of them. (I
haven't heard much from the "second coming" loons who think climate
damage is a good thing because it means Armageddon is around the corner.
I wonder if they are cheering on this pandemic?)

Looks like the USA may be near peak at a bit under 2000 deaths per
day. If it is as awful as people say, it will run out of old people to
kill.


It is not just old people that die. They have a higher proportion of
deaths, and they die first, but young people die too. And remember, the
deaths will continue long after the rate of infections goes down.


I'm not terribly interested in analogue electronics. I'm not much good
at it - it's simply not my field. I like digital electronics, because
it's easy, and my main job is programming microcontrollers. So I
sometimes join in threads if these turn up.


Oh, a coder. Code does not involve science or causality, and
especially doesn't require any understanding of math or system
dynamics.

Really? So programming is another field that is completely outside your
area of knowledge?

I've written three compilers, three preemptive RTOSs, and designed one
CPU using TTL gates. I wrote the random-number generator for a DEC
language because the one they had was so bad; I got named in their
source code. Scores of embedded apps. Lots of filtering and signal
processing in software. I still code engineering programs for my own
use, but I have a small army of c and Python and VHDL programmers now,
so I mostly do architectures and hardware design, and tell the kids
what to code.

When I did more realtime programming, I generally knew how long it
would take for a chunk of code to execute. Kids these days haven't the
faintest idea, and are afraid to push interrupt rates or state machine
rep rates. Sometimes I have to get an oscilloscope and show them how
fast a 600 MHz dual-core ARM can really compute. We got some
interesting numbers on the Zynq+Linux.

I have heard that English majors make good coders. Maybe because they
type well.



I am a mathematician by education.

(That doesn't mean English majors won't make good programmers - there
are many aspects to programming.)

Coal miners make good programmers too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XXrRZlkVo



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> Look at the NUMBERS.

OK, that's probably good advice.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

That won't happen.

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits, but are ready to accept a suggestion that (to my knowledge)
no government on Earth wants to implement.

And the ONLY QUESTION you think needs asking, is 'when does COVID-19 become
extinct'.

The illogic offends me.

 

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 10:44:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Look at the NUMBERS.

OK, that's probably good advice.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

That won't happen.

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits, but are ready to accept a suggestion that (to my knowledge)
no government on Earth wants to implement.

Not every state or country has mandatory lockdowns now.

Hospitals are not saturated - they are almost empty - so the
flatten-the-curve thing was overdone.

How long can we keep everyone confined to their homes and not working?
Until we have a vaccine in a year or so?

Iceland is a good test case, a small country with a lot of test data
and no mandatory lockdown. They look well past peak now.

And the ONLY QUESTION you think needs asking, is 'when does COVID-19 become
extinct'.

When it burns itself out like all other cold and flu viruses. We can
change the curve a little, at huge costs.

The illogic offends me.

What illogic?





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Ricky C]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 1:44:55 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Look at the NUMBERS.

OK, that's probably good advice.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

That won't happen.

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits, but are ready to accept a suggestion that (to my knowledge)
no government on Earth wants to implement.

And the ONLY QUESTION you think needs asking, is 'when does COVID-19 become
extinct'.

The illogic offends me.

With the current information we have on this virus there is no reason to think it will "burn itself out" without killing many, many people that aren't our older, "worthless" members. Clearly this disease has the potential for a single case to spread throughout communities of older people leaving many deaths in the wake. So there is not likely to be a point that we can say it has "burned out" allowing us to resume all of our previous activities as if nothing had happened, UNLESS, we literally contain this virus like we would Ebola and have zero new cases.

The poster child for being able to do this is China having reached zero new infections in Wuhan and starting to release from lock down. But people say their numbers are fake and we should not believe them. So, so then look at South Korea where the high water mark for the last five days has been 53 cases per day.

Clearly it is possible to deal with this virus and not allow it to ravage the population as it "burns out". Others are doing it. Why are they so much better at dealing with this than the western countries?

Why does the USA in particular need to be a second class country when it comes to dealing with a pandemic?

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

søndag den 12. april 2020 kl. 00.41.02 UTC+2 skrev Ricky C:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 1:44:55 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Look at the NUMBERS.

OK, that's probably good advice.

How long do we lock down until every single virus is gone?

That won't happen.

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like....
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits, but are ready to accept a suggestion that (to my knowledge)
no government on Earth wants to implement.

And the ONLY QUESTION you think needs asking, is 'when does COVID-19 become
extinct'.

The illogic offends me.

With the current information we have on this virus there is no reason to think it will "burn itself out" without killing many, many people that aren't our older, "worthless" members. Clearly this disease has the potential for a single case to spread throughout communities of older people leaving many deaths in the wake. So there is not likely to be a point that we can say it has "burned out" allowing us to resume all of our previous activities as if nothing had happened, UNLESS, we literally contain this virus like we would Ebola and have zero new cases.

a new case a few days ago ...

https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1248632476639117315

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 11:14:56 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 10:44:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits...

Hospitals are not saturated - they are almost empty - so the
flatten-the-curve thing was overdone.

No, the flatten-the-curve thing was (in many localities) was successful.
One wants to "fail safe", and this is a fine indication of success.

Tell Italy and Spain your 'overdone' theory; do it from a safe distance, folk
might get angry.

The illogic offends me.

What illogic?

The void that ought to be filled with reasoning based on comparison of outcomes
is a despicable lack of logos, discourse, careful and prudent consideration of alternatives.
That lack of logic is illogic.

 

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 18:31:37 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 11:14:56 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 10:44:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits...

Hospitals are not saturated - they are almost empty - so the
flatten-the-curve thing was overdone.

No, the flatten-the-curve thing was (in many localities) was successful.

But you don't know that.

>One wants to "fail safe", and this is a fine indication of success.

But what will happen when people come out from under their beds? From
boredom or hunger. They will be just as suceptable and there will
still be plenty of viruses around.

The South Korea data is a suggestion. The total case count had a steep
rise in early Feb, and jumped from near zero to about 6K. Then they
locked down and the slope went way down, but now it's over 10K and
still rising. So did the lockdown do anything but change the shape of
the curve? Can isolating people for any practical amount of time keep
them from getting infected, or just delay when it happens?

Bill Gates and Ezekiel Emanuel and other virus experts have the
answer: lock down for a year or 18 months until we can vaccinate
everyone. Thanks.

Tell Italy and Spain your 'overdone' theory; do it from a safe distance, folk
might get angry.

The illogic offends me.

What illogic?

The void that ought to be filled with reasoning based on comparison of outcomes

The data is so bad it's impossible to determine causalities. The
economic effects are not in doubt.

is a despicable lack of logos, discourse, careful and prudent consideration of alternatives.
That lack of logic is illogic.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 12:09:40 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 18:31:37 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 11:14:56 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 10:44:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 8:21:51 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Then let's go back to work, suggest voluntary measures, and let it
burn out. Try to protect old people for the duration. The sooner it
burns out, the lower their risk.

The time has come to take your advice. The numbers are looking like...
another WW II. You didn't offer any numeric estimate of the costs, nor of
the benefits...

Hospitals are not saturated - they are almost empty - so the
flatten-the-curve thing was overdone.

No, the flatten-the-curve thing was (in many localities) was successful.

But you don't know that.

You had just said exactly that, so he was at liberty to accept it. Granting your grasp of reality, it might not have been a wise choice.

One wants to "fail safe", and this is a fine indication of success.

But what will happen when people come out from under their beds? From
boredom or hunger. They will be just as suceptable and there will
still be plenty of viruses around.

Susceptible to what? There's only one virus around at the moment that is creating any kind of public health risk - Covid-19 - and effective lock-down and contact tracing can isolate any last carrier until they've either died or their immune system has cleaned out the virus.

The South Korea data is a suggestion. The total case count had a steep
rise in early Feb, and jumped from near zero to about 6K. Then they
locked down and the slope went way down, but now it's over 10K and
still rising. So did the lockdown do anything but change the shape of
the curve? Can isolating people for any practical amount of time keep
them from getting infected, or just delay when it happens?

South Korea - like China - has a problem with infected people coming back from over-seas. They get tested and quarantined when they arrive, but they do become part of the total case count, and the can infect the people look8ing after them in quarantine.

You really do ought to think about what the numbers you are reporting represent. Your processing capacity doesn't seem to be up to that.

Bill Gates and Ezekiel Emanuel and other virus experts have the
answer: lock down for a year or 18 months until we can vaccinate
everyone. Thanks.

That's a simple answer which would work. It's not what China and Korea are doing.

Tell Italy and Spain your 'overdone' theory; do it from a safe distance, folk
might get angry.

The illogic offends me.

What illogic?

The void that ought to be filled with reasoning based on comparison of outcomes

The data is so bad it's impossible to determine causalities. The
economic effects are not in doubt.

John Larkin can look at the data and fail to see cause and effect. That doesn't mean that more competent people can't do better.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney