No, senator, science can’t do away with models
Here’s why Senator John Cornyn’s critique of modeling is misguided.

 haresfur wrote: 
That thought went through my mind too, surely a few samples of the general population would give us at least some indication within certain confidence intervals. At the moment I haven't heard a thing in any country of how many of the general population have already been infected. The video Miami posted today refers to an extrapolation by the Imperial College that infers (based on hard data) that between 2 and 7 % of the European population has already been exposed.  (edit: This is not survey based but a bottom-up calculation from the number of deaths, transmission rates and fatality rates.) That would be fantastic news if true. 

I hope they get the new sero-surveys up and running soon. Might make everyone calm down a bit.

Scientists have found "dense" communities of creatures living deep beneath the sea, in a discovery that gives hope that similar life could be found on Mars.

 rgio wrote:
 
And that's my problem with the medical profession viewpoint. They, rightly deal with individuals and want to know exactly what is going on with their patients. But statistics are powerful tools for dealing with populations. If we had good data on a sample of people, along with whether they felt they had symptoms and their body temperature, we would have a very good estimate of how many people had been affected.

 haresfur wrote:
 
I believe the original suggestion is a test for everyone, not a sample.  It's impossible to know who's experienced the virus if we didn't allow testing for everyone with symptoms, let alone to the numbers of asymptomatic people that may have antibodies and don't know they have them.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 
I disagree with this, if I understand correctly. A random (or as close to random as you can practically get) sample of the population, performed through time would give you a good estimate of the infection rate and how it is changing. Since the rate is high, your sample size doesn't need to be huge to find the infected %. It's hard to estimate one in a million, but not so hard to estimate one in a hundred. That's why they can get away with a poll of only a few thousand people to decide how many people think Trump is a weaponized plum.

A good estimate of the infection trends, now, will allow a back estimate of the people who have been infected.

I think I posted about how we have started testing one in five people who present at the hospital for any reason. I'd prefer they go out and test in the community, but even that will give good numbers. Certainly better than we have had.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
I'm worried about the rebound second wave more than right now myself.  People will get complacent and sloppy again quickly after the first round is on the wane.  They'll think I must be doing things right or I wouldn't still be here and relax, too much.  I don't know what my job will be like when we get back open and start dealing with humans again up close and personal.

Are we as opticians, going to be in masks and gloves indefinitely ?  I would have to be pretty stupid to not wear the stuff.  Handling all of the frames and keeping them sanitary and everyone safe ?  Are people going to keep themselves away when they aren't feeling good for the benefit of others they may come into close contact with ?

It's really going to depend on how fast we get a vaccine up and running.  Right now the only ones who can be even somewhat comfortable at all are the recovered.  Getting there is the problem.  And we still don't know they cannot get reinfected although its a pretty good chance they won't.

Like you were thinking earlier ... about getting deliberately infected.  Our FDA just approved the Chloroquine / Zpack treatments.  I just got out of the hospital and being in the high risk group that i'm in, pretty healthy (for me) and stable at the moment.  Infect myself now before the hospitals get really slammed and be pretty sure of a bed and the stuff needed to get me over the hump ?  There is a real short window of opportunity here before the hospitals around here get maxed out and it'll be luck of the draw of being admitted into a good place with a good chance of walking out upright instead of under a sheet.  Replacement PPE's are about to be restocked, it'll never be a better chance than soon.   I've already had to make that choice once.  Yeah, this is selfish at least and stupid at worst.  But it is what is going through my mind right now.  I'd rather take myself out than get randomly infected by some dummy who still thinks hygiene is a kind of denim pants.  Back in the 90's when I first got into this bidnez, I was working for WalMart.  I dared to refuse to help a young woman with a little kid who had snot literally dripping out of his nose and onto his shirt asking her to please come back another time.  I got "coached" about that ...

 R_P wrote: 
That's an excellent article. 

A mate of mine (health advisor to the UN in Geneva) basically put everything down in a couple of sentences: "The only reliable way to get true estimates of what percentage of a population has been infected is from a population-based sero prevalence study, which gives you the denominator you need to accurately estimate death rates. Given the huge differentials in deaths by age cohorts, you need a huge sample size for your sero-prevalence survey."  

The problem with this is that antibody testing is only just coming on the market AND we need to test vast numbers of people.
What is known, is that a sizeable number of people die from the virus, so letting it rage uncontrolled is not an option at this stage. 

Ergo:  policy should err on the side of caution until we work out an exit strategy.

I am more worried about a second or third peak of the pandemic coming. People's tolerance of social distancing is already wearing thin.. hard to see it lasting the distance, or maybe it just becomes the new normal.

 

The Mathematics of Predicting the Course of the Coronavirus
Epidemiologists are using complex models to help policymakers get ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the leap from equations to decisions is a long one.

In the past few days, New York City’s hospitals have become unrecognizable. Thousands of patients sick with the novel coronavirus have swarmed into emergency rooms and intensive care units. From 3,000 miles away in Seattle, as Lisa Brandenburg watched the scenes unfold—isolation wards cobbled together in lobbies, nurses caring for Covid-19 patients in makeshift trash bag gowns, refrigerated mobile morgues idling on the street outside—she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: “That could be us.”

It could be, if the models are wrong.

Until this past week, Seattle had been the center of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. It’s where US health officials confirmed the nation’s first case, back in January, and its first death a month later. As president of the University of Washington Medicine Hospitals and Clinics, Brandenburg oversees the region’s largest health network, which treats more than half a million patients every year. In early March, she and many public health authorities were shaken by an urgent report produced by computational biologists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Their analysis of genetic data indicated the virus had been silently circulating in the Seattle area for weeks and had already infected at least 500 to 600 people. The city was a ticking time bomb.

The mayor of Seattle declared a civil emergency. Superintendents started closing schools. King and Snohomish counties banned gatherings of more than 250 people. The Space Needle went dark. Seattleites wondered if they should be doing more, and they petitioned the governor to issue a statewide shelter-at-home order. But Brandenburg was left with a much grimmer set of questions: How many people are going to get hospitalized? How many of them will require critical care? When will they start showing up? Will we have enough ventilators when they do?

There’s no way to know those answers for sure. But hospital administrators like Brandenburg have to hazard an educated guess. That’s the only way they can try to buy enough ventilators and hire enough ICU nurses and clear out enough hospital beds to be ready for a wave of hacking, gasping, suffocating Covid-19 patients.

That’s where Chris Murray and his computer simulations come in. (...)

https://scitechdaily.com/new-i...
Quote:

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a device that uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air, a new technology they say could have significant implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change and in the future of medicine. As reported today in Nature, the laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an “Air-gen.” or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter. The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere. “We are literally making electricity out of thin air,” says Yao. “The Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7.” Lovely, who has advanced sustainable biology-based electronic materials over three decades, adds, “It’s the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires yet.” ... The Air-gen discovery reflects an unusual interdisciplinary collaboration, they say. Lovley discovered the Geobacter microbe in the mud of the Potomac River more than 30 years ago. His lab later discovered its ability to produce electrically conductive protein nanowires. Before coming to UMass Amherst, Yao had worked for years at Harvard University, where he engineered electronic devices with silicon nanowires. They joined forces to see if useful electronic devices could be made with the protein nanowires harvested from Geobacter. Xiaomeng Liu, a Ph.D. student in Yao’s lab, was developing sensor devices when he noticed something unexpected. He recalls, “I saw that when the nanowires were contacted with electrodes in a specific way the devices generated a current. I found that that exposure to atmospheric humidity was essential and that protein nanowires adsorbed water, producing a voltage gradient across the device.” In addition to the Air-gen, Yao’s laboratory has developed several other applications with the protein nanowires. “This is just the beginning of new era of protein-based electronic devices” said Yao.

interesting stuff


Moderna eyes $500M secondary offering on upbeat coronavirus vaccine update — almost ready for the clinic

Among the army of biotechs that threw themselves into the gold rush for 2019-nCoV vaccines or therapies, Moderna emerged as one of the most legitimate contenders: The NIH had signed it on as a partner, demonstrating confidence in its messenger RNA platform to produce a vaccine rapidly.

That has given the Cambridge, MA-based biotech a nice bump on its unicorn valuation. And CEO Stéphane Bancel is seizing it.

Moderna, whose $604 million IPO set a record for the industry, is offering more stocks on the public market in hopes of raising another $500 million to fund clinical development and drug discovery, as well as expand its mRNA tech platform.

Researchers at @distributedbio are developing Centivax, a new kind of universal vaccine.

The vaccine has shown promise against 39 viral strains of influenza spanning the last century, including all the big pandemic strains to hit the world http://bit.ly/37ZqeKM

Nuclear fallout exposes fake 'antique' whisky

If you've fantasized about dropping a few thousand dollars on a bottle of rare Scotch, you might want to re-think that investment. Scientists have found that half of the bottles of aged single malts they tested were not as old as their labels suggested.

Rare bottles of vintage Scotch whisky are highly prized by collectors and connoisseurs, and command outrageous prices. As such, counterfeit single malts have become a problem. Enter an unusual solution: Fallout from nuclear bomb tests conducted during the 1950s and 1960s could help experts to detect fake antique whisky.

Nuclear bombs that were detonated decades ago spewed the radioactive isotope carbon-14 into the atmosphere; from there, the isotope was absorbed by plants and other living organisms, and began to decay after the organisms died. Traces of this excess carbon-14 can therefore be found in barley that was harvested and distilled to make whisky. (...)

2.229 billion years: Scientists date world's oldest meteor crater

A crater in western Australia was formed by a meteor strike more than 2.2 billion years ago and is the world's oldest known impact site, new research published Wednesday shows.

The study marks the first time that the Yarrabubba crater has been precisely dated, at 2.229 billion years old, and means it is 200 million years older than any similar site known on Earth.

The revelation also raises the intriguing possibility that the massive impact could have significantly altered the Earth's climate, helping end a period of global "deep freeze".

Scientists had long suspected that Yarrabubba, in a remote part of the outback, dated back several billion years.

 success wrote:
 

Time for another 'are you still here' question?

 R_P wrote:
 

Ok, you can shhh now then.

 success wrote:
 
Don't hold your breath.