The Coronavirus Thread

[rainbow]

There have been no scientific double blind trials.

There have been no scientific double blind trials done on parachutes.

Would you prefer to be pushed out of an aeroplane: with, or without a parachute?
Please show your workings, calculations and references in your answer.

[Brian Peacock]

Placebo parachute.

[rainbow]

October 1st: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 1,652. Belgium removes the mask mandate.
October 27th: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 14,748.

So?

So the number of deaths in the Netherlands is back to the levels seen in April.

Masks work, just suck it up, buttercup.

The cases and fatalities will grow until the Dutch people start to understand the importance of mask wearing and social distancing. Just because your Dutch sisters down south have the same problem, doesn't make the death toll any more defensible.

[rainbow]

Placebo parachute.

[Hermit]

They are mandatory in Belgium but that's the point; they had no obvious influence.

No, they actually removed the mask mandate on Oct 1st.

Obviously it makes no difference.

October 1st: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 1,652. Belgium removes the mask mandate.
October 27th: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 14,748.

So?

So, 27 days after Belgium removed the mask mandate the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases is 9 times higher than on the day the mandate was removed. This may be a coincidence, but what are the odds?

I suppose you'll repeat your obfuscation involving and "double-blind studies" now. Reminds me of the unsupported claim that the sun causes daylight. Nobody has done any double blind-studies on that phenomenon either.

[Scot Dutchy]

There have been no scientific double blind trials.

There have been no scientific double blind trials done on parachutes.

Would you prefer to be pushed out of an aeroplane: with, or without a parachute?
Please show your workings, calculations and references in your answer.

Is parachute a virus?

[Scot Dutchy]

No, they actually removed the mask mandate on Oct 1st.

Obviously it makes no difference.

October 1st: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 1,652. Belgium removes the mask mandate.
October 27th: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 14,748.

So?

So, 27 days after Belgium removed the mask mandate the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases is 9 times higher than on the day the mandate was removed. This may be a coincidence, but what are the odds?

I suppose you'll repeat your obfuscation involving and "double-blind studies" now. Reminds me of the unsupported claim that the sun causes daylight. Nobody has done any double blind-studies on that phenomenon either.

Still no scientific evidence. NOTED.

[Hermit]

Obviously it makes no difference.

October 1st: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 1,652. Belgium removes the mask mandate.
October 27th: 7-day rolling average of daily new cases: 14,748.

So?

So, 27 days after Belgium removed the mask mandate the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases is 9 times higher than on the day the mandate was removed. This may be a coincidence, but what are the odds?

I suppose you'll repeat your obfuscation involving and "double-blind studies" now. Reminds me of the unsupported claim that the sun causes daylight. Nobody has done any double blind-studies on that phenomenon either.

Still no scientific evidence. NOTED.

We have empirical evidence, which is as good as scientific evidence ever gets. As I alluded to, the ninefold increase of the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in the 27 days following Belgium's removal of the mask mandate may have been a coincidence, but the odds of that being so are not all that great. Your obfuscations remind me of the tobacco lobby's efforts to deny that smoking causes lung cancer.

[Tero]

Removing the mask mandate sends a message: it's normal now. People no longer practice social distancing.

[rainbow]

There have been no scientific double blind trials.

There have been no scientific double blind trials done on parachutes.

Would you prefer to be pushed out of an aeroplane: with, or without a parachute?
Please show your workings, calculations and references in your answer.

Is parachute a virus?

No. Neither is a mask.

Are you really as stupid as your remark indicates?

[Brian Peacock]

... Your obfuscations remind me of the tobacco lobby's efforts to deny that smoking causes lung cancer.

Or the 'climate sceptics' denial of global warming because he's just had to put the central heating on.

[Brian Peacock]

Macron just announced a new lockdown from Friday.

[Hermit]

... Your obfuscations remind me of the tobacco lobby's efforts to deny that smoking causes lung cancer.

Or the 'climate sceptics' denial of global warming because he's just had to put the central heating on.

And best of luck with conducting double-blind studies in order to prove evolution.

[JimC]

I think that Victoria has proven that you need a draconian lockdown to defeat the second wave. That remains true even though initial government stuff-ups (and some intransigent socialising by a cluster of large muslim households) were the spark which caused our second wave. We've had a couple of days with no new cases, then a couple yesterday, but they were known contacts, which is less worrying than mystery cases...

Looking forward to November 8, when most of the remaining restrictions will disappear (except for mask wearing, and limits to numbers within public indoor spaces). We'll do a trip to central Victoria, to buy some bread at a magnificent country bakery, and visit Bron's sister who we haven't seen for ages...

[Brian Peacock]

Some interesting modelling: https://nafshordi.com/welcome/covid/

A novel predictive framework for the novel coronavirus

Project Outline
It would be hard to exaggerate the impact that COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, caused by the rapid
spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, has had on human civilization. While thousands of
academic studies have now considered the pathology and epidemiology of this infection, many of
the aspects of this disease remain controversial and shrouded in mystery. Why does the contagion
impact some individuals much more than others? What is the role of asymptomatic spreaders in
driving the epidemic? Do official statistics reflect (or significantly underestimate) the number of the
COVID-19 related infections or dead? What is the Infection Fatality Ratio? We offer a new way of
answering these questions via a dynamical causal model informed by our unusual array of
backgrounds in cosmology, quantum mechanics, and mathematical modeling. In particular,
inference of the large population of undetected COVID infections based on the course of the
epidemic has direct parallels to inference of dark matter and dark energy in cosmology, using their
subtle gravitational impacts that can be seen through cross-correlation of cosmological observables.
Cascading effects from the impact of the pandemic on national healthcare systems, as well as the
shutdown of a large fraction of global socioeconomic activity can further impact the health and
livelihood of the world population and lead to secondary fatalities, as well as shortening and/or
deterioration of lives. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to understand the true dynamics and
efficiency of mitigation strategies, so that a proper, transparent, and balanced response can be
designed and adopted by local governments across the world. For example, the mitigation strategies
in London, Paris, and New York city, are not likely to be the most appropriate ones, e.g., in
Nebraska, Congo, or Saudi Arabia. Given the wealth of data now available on the tracers of the
spread of COVID-19, as well as the availability of social mobility data thanks to prevalence of
cellphones and other geographic and demographic information, we can now examine and dissect
different potential drivers of the epidemic in an unprecedented way, potentially accessing information
that were hard to infer from traditional epidemiological studies or laboratory tests due to small
samples or unknown sampling biases. For example, what is the incubation period for asymptomatic
patients who go largely undetected? ...

[white paper awaiting peer review]