Some More Observations

 This virus and the "science" we are doomed to obey have some cracks. Let us address a few issues.

First regarding the spread, we have had a multiplicity of academics create simulations of spreaders. However, when consider aerosols:

1. Newton's laws apply, namely F=ma, everywhere in the macro world we live in

2. If the aerosol were solid and a density less than air then like the tower of Pisa or any cannon ball from HS physics the path would be a parabola downward.

3. But they are not solid, they are air filled spheres, aerosols, and the air inside is usually at higher temp than ambient and thus less dense

4. Now think Archimedes, these less dense small balloons float, a bit, for a while, then drop

5. Combine Newton and Archimedes and you get a longer, but not real long a path

6. Now add Brownian motion, namely particle collide exchanging momentum/energy, some lose some gain and thus the cloud become non-uniform

7. Also consider electrostatic charge on surface, modest but creates a cloud stickiness

8. now this model can get good first order solution in one page, really

9. I did this with a smashing pumpkins experiment for grandsons freshman HS class, attache helium balloon to pumpkin and drop it, does it go up or down and if down will it smash?

 Second, we still really do not how it spreads or how much exposure is critical. Thus:

1. we really do not have a clue as to what the viral load received must be to get infected...1,000, 1 million, 1 billion virions?

2. we really do not have a clue as to how they are transmitted, for example how many people are coughing or sneezing?

3. the "experiment" was a fix, it did not represent any reality

4. "evidence" and "science" are the new "divine law" requirements

5. i see locals holding parties for kids and groups as large as 40+

6. but the mortality rate is now down to 0.2%!

7. equal to a bad flu season

8. should we ban all human contact in such a low risk situation? 90% surgical procedures have higher mortality rates! so stop surgeries? bide has a higher chance of pulmonary embolism from cracked ankle!

 Other than these things Mrs Lincoln how did you enjoy the play?

Proteins are Complex, but Powerful

 I recall sitting in a lecture a few decades back discussing proteins and their ability to bind "stuff". Some of the stuff are receptors, and some are ligands, some control pathways, and some control the extracellular matrix. To go from the amino acid sequence, which we can readily get from the DNA to a complex folded protein molecule with binding properties I thought was straightforward. Not really, the more I looked.

But now a Goggle entity as noted in Nature uses a neural net to perform the task. They note:

Overall, teams predicted structures more accurately this year, compared with the last CASP, but much of the progress can be attributed to AlphaFold, says Moult. On protein targets considered to be moderately difficult, the best performances of other teams typically scored 75 on a 100-point scale of prediction accuracy, whereas AlphaFold scored around 90 on the same targets, says Moult. About half of the teams mentioned ‘deep learning’ in the abstract summarizing their approach, Moult says, suggesting that AI is making a broad impact on the field. Most of these were from academic teams, but Microsoft and the Chinese technology company Tencent also entered CASP14.

 The challenge however is that proteins are not static. They can change their conformation based upon their environment, such as pH. But this is a workable first step.

Some Observations

 Just a few observations:

1. The daily number reports seem to be grossly inaccurate, changing one day from the other. Example, data showed Morris increase well over 200 but stated was under 150. So what do I believe, the summary of my lying eyes?

2. Driving through the neighborhood saw crowds gathering at various homes, kids running in and out, adults socializing as if there were no issues.

3. With the vaccine being shipped tomorrow in anticipation of release on 10 December we have no idea what to expect or do. Clueless! Par for the course. Aircraft flying in from Frankfurt, dry ice enough to start another Ice Age, excepts it is carbon dioxide, and UPS/FEDEX all set to deliver, but no one knows who has been invited no less where the party will be.

An we expect this to improve with some more of the same characters if not worse, if such be the case.

NJ 2020 11 27

 Things continue to get worse. One expects further degradation after this holiday. However the death rate is still below 0.5%

But diubling is back at peak

State incidence is back at peak

As is the County

Deaths are increasing but not as in April

But we are still losing LTC occupants, why!

Incidence in town and county seems explosive

With town prevalence back to near peak!

But the target towns remain with no attention being paid

Finally!

 Of my several attempts at languages my French is always workable, except in Paris. From Normandy dow to Nice, I can be understood and can understand. But in Paris, Oh well.

Now the Guardian reports:

In France, it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it. When the prime minister, Jean Castex, opens his mouth, he is often accused of being “a bit rugby” – he comes from the south-west, where the sport is popular. Others with regional accents sound like “they should be reading the weather”. Now the French have not only come up with a word for this kind of prejudice - glottophobie - but a new law banning it. The Assemblée Nationale has adopted legislation making linguistic discrimination an offence along with racism, sexism and other outlawed bigotry. The legislation, approved by 98 votes to three, was the subject of acute debate in the house. Among those who voted against was Jean Lassalle, a former presidential candidate, the head of the Libertés et Territoires..

Years ago I found this out in a bar in Paris. I tried to have a conversation while awaiting my wife coming from London. My fellow drinker told me my French sounded like I was from Mauritania. Now just how bad an insult I do not know. One of my bakers was from Quebec, the Province not the city, and had a country accent. He tried to order lunch in Paris but to no avail. They allowed me in my broken French. But alas this is now a thing of the past.

I can now mumble my way through France with no fear of being mis-identified.

Happy Thanksgiving

 From an isolated hut near the Canadian border high on a mountain side, I bring greetings from my local neighbors. They are maskless, not practicing any form of social distancing, and are not coming for dinner!

Contact Tracing: NOT

 The NY Times now recounts the futility of contact tracing. They note:

Dr. Nirav Shah, who heads Maine’s coronavirus response, explained how his state would scale back its ambitions: Contact tracers would touch base with each new patient only once, and not through the course of their illness, to make sure they were well and quarantining....New Hampshire last week said that it would only trace cases of people connected to outbreaks or in specific at-risk age or racial groups... Minnesota’s Itasca County this month said that it was abandoning contact tracing, advising the public that, “if you are in a group setting, just assume that someone has Covid.” ... In North Dakota, state officials said last month that they could no longer have one-on-one conversations with everyone who may have been exposed. 

 We said all of this more than six months ago, and most likely billions of dollars ago. As we noted then the dynamics of the virus transmission, which frankly we still do not understand despite the Government's Science etc, make it such that tracing is near impossible. Add to that the fact that no one answers their phone any more, despite an alleged law making scam call illegal, this time the FCC incompetence in addressing the problem, there is no way to even start.

Contact tracing is an academic exercise taught by ivy tower ideologues. In real life one need just look at how real NYC detectives work a single crime. My grandfather was a Lieutenant in charge of Homicide in the 6th Precinct in New York. It demands a lot of foot work, bad memories, strange people and the like. Contact tracing was doomed from the start, but that is the real world versus "science".

To Ct or Not to Ct

 Now this can be a bit complex. But let's try. The PCR test, stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction. Now what this is is a multiplication of DNA by a heat, reverse transcriptase, double, and repeat type process. A simple but brilliant idea. When we do this test for COVID we take a sample, if the RNA is present we turn it back into DNA, then PCR it multiple times, or cycles. Ct is the number of cycles needed to get a positive reading.

Thus it would seem logical if we need say a Ct or 15 as compared to say Ct of 30 we have a lot more virus at the Ct of 15 since to get to the same threshold we had to double the multiplications. Remember each time we double and so ten times is about a 1,000 and 15 times is about 250,000. Thus Ct 15 is 250,000 more infected than Ct of 30. I know it may be a bit complex but follow me here. There was a piece in Science describing this.

Now here is where the fun begins. In the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases the authors have the following Figure.

This is a very complex and possibly confusing chart. Now let me try to deconvolve.

They did tests on a batch of patients.

1. Test 1 was at one week

2. Test 3 at 2 weeks

3. Test 3 at 3 weeks

4. Cell culture test (a Gold Standard, namely "truth")

Now the results are shown where we have number of samples testing positive by Ct. Remember that Ct was the number of doublings needed to get a reading of positive. By the way, if it was still not positive at 35 they said you were negative.

Now the paper shows however that the negatives grew exponentially and that the correlation between "truth" and PCR tests was weak at best! What does this mean? Simple, PCR can be problematic with extremely high false positives.

Science is a b...h is it not!

I have then taken the data and plotted the percent positive at a specific Ct value by time of test. The top blue line is first encounter.  This is the ratio of those tested positive at Ct level specified to all tested at that level. The same for the other examples. Now what this shows is that at the beginning the very sick are very sick, Less so as the Ct increases. By week 1 we have a small drop. By week 2 and 3 we see few still being infected. This is an interesting chart.

NJ 2020 11 21

 More cases low death rates. And they are focused on small clusters. When is a pandemic not a pandemic? Simple, when it is clustered not uniform. So who cares about the facts, just assume it is a pandemic....

Here is the daily incidence.Town is higher but seems to bounce. County reflects the cluster effect.

Here is town prevalence. Starting to really peak

Here are the clusters. The 3 highest are all adjacent as we had discussed. In the old days they would send Public Health teams there to mitigate, even quarantine. But today we all get to suffer!

Mortality is still low

Doubling time puts us back in late April.

Incidence in State makes that clear.

Incidence in County dominated by 5 sq mi cluster.

Deaths are slowly starting up again.

Masks Redux

 The Annals of Internal Medicine report a study on the efficacy of masks:

Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting. It is important to emphasize that this trial did not address the effects of masks as source control or as protection in settings where social distancing and other public health measures are not in effect. Reduction in release of virus from infected persons into the environment may be the mechanism for mitigation of transmission in communities where mask use is common or mandated, as noted in observational studies. Thus, these findings do not provide data on the effectiveness of widespread mask wearing in the community in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections. They do, however, offer evidence about the degree of protection mask wearers can anticipate in a setting where others are not wearing masks and where other public health measures, including social distancing, are in effect. The findings also suggest that persons should not abandon other COVID-19 safety measures regardless of the use of masks. While we await additional data to inform mask recommendations, communities must balance the seriousness of COVID-19, uncertainty about the degree of source control and protective effect, and the absence of data suggesting serious adverse effects of masks.

Is this science? Well it is peer reviewed and published. 

Just a bizzare thought. What would happen is you fined everyone who got the virus a fine of $10,000 or ten days in jail? It turns control into an economic issue. The you allow people to sue others who are spreaders, say $50,000 per person spread to. Just a strange thought. But economics does work. It is not the nutty "nudge" idea of the far left whackos but a simple free market approach.

Yield Curve

 The following are current data on the yield curve. We had a brief negative yield but it seems to have returned to some normalcy.

However if you compare them for the past decade we see a low and flat yield.

This is the longer term spread

and the more recent spread with the negative value. We are back positive again and no inverted yield. I suggest this is worth following through any form of transition.

Carpet Bombing vs Strategic Bombing?

 The infectious disease expert in DC has now recommended massive carpet bombing to deal with the current pandemic. The expert states:

“We need some fundamental public health measures that everyone should be adhering to, not a disjointed, ‘One state says one thing, the other state says another thing,’”

Frankly we are in this conundrum for several reasons. First and foremost as we have noted repeatedly the CDC has managed to do its job with at best called gross incompetence in my opinion. Second, this has been a fast moving target and one where we frankly still have major questions regarding transmission. Despite the words of the wizards of DC we really do not know fully how it is transmitted. The issue of aerosols is a significant factor. Masks are a centuries old method to hopefully mitigate but if the aerosols are 30-90 nm in diameter then we may not have great mitigation. The dynamics of aerosols is quite complex as we have noted and simple hots do not really do it justice.

Each state has some means to deal with its own peculiarities. Even more so based upon our analysis of New Jersey we clearly have clustered, well defined demographic and most likely psychographic clusters. These cluster vary dramatically from region to region.  Thus having a multiplicity of approaches leads to a strong and useful database to better understand.

 For example do we use the same strategy in Dover that we used in Lakewood. Hardly. The ethnic differences are substatial as are the means to control spread. 

Washington has for the most part failed in their responsibility and duty. The expert continues:

“We’ve got to get public health issues out of the realm of political divisiveness — this is not a political issue,” he said. “We’ve got to do everything we possibly can to pull together as a nation.” He said that public health measures, like mask wearing and social distancing, would still be required, albeit to a lesser degree, while the public is vaccinated. If a sizable majority of Americans do get a vaccine, “we could be quite close to some degree of normality” by the fall of 2021, he predicted.

 The vaccine progress has been significant. It is the result of our free enterprise system and NOT the Government. One should remember that our expert has been working on a similar problem in HIV for almosy 40 years with littl progress. In contrast the Administrations broad approach has paid off, thusfar. The execution will be critical and there is some General incharge. Yet he is no General Groves. The challenge is to get the vaccine  from manufacturere to distribution point such as a Walgreens. The Moderna is much more robust and was backed directly by funds mandate by the Administration. 

Let us hope that a change in Administration does not set us back years. It did with H1N1. The same folks then as we may be next, so beware. We can readily snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. So beware of "experts" who like time in front of cameras.

Drugs Before Vaccine?

 Just heard the NJ Gov state that he will not allow the State's citizens to have access to the COVID vaccine until he personally thinks it is safe. But one can now get what was illegal drugs in New Jersey which apparently do not save any lives while life saving vaccines will be banned until he personally approves them. He is a Harvard MBA of course and they, I gather, are all knowing....

As I noted earlier the State Plan is problematic at best, confusing at least, and useless at worst. Now add to that refusal to even get the vaccine until through some personal enlightenment we are permitted to save lives.

One could never envision this. Now I know how Kafka must have felt.

New Jersey "Plan"

 New Jersey has issued what it calls is a plan, Now frankly it is a long and confusing mix of history, alleged facts, and providing not a single bit of implementation. In my opinion based upon my experience this is a grossly useless plan. We have a system now with flu shots. Why now introduce dentists and midwives! One wonders between this and the change in Washington how many lives will be lost due to political incompetence.

Numbers and Nonsense

 The Georgia Tech has a web site that allegedly gives you the risk of getting infected at Thanksgiving. First they note:

The risk level is the estimated chance (0-100%) that at least 1 COVID-19 positive individual will be present at an event in a county, given the size of the event. Based on seroprevalence data and increases in testing, by default we assume there are five times more cases than are being reported (5:1 ascertainment bias). In places with less testing availability, that bias may be higher. We are evaluating the inclusion of lower ascertainment biases based on increased testing.

 That is they state the prevalence is 5 times what is measured. Now the prevalence measured in Morris County is 0.3%. Now assume we believe these academic wizards. (Remember the old song, "I am a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech but a hell of an engineer" The remember the head of AMTRAK was from Georgia Tech, NOT). Thus the chance you get infected by one person is 1.5%. and if there are 5 people it is 8%. They say 11%, close but not good enough for an engineer. 

It is a shame in my opinion and in my experience that so many academics are prognosticating on things for which they have no competence. I guess anything to get in the Press.

What is Wrong with this Picture?

 Look at these graphs. What do you see?

First is the new infections per town. If you were to put these on a map you see clusters. Namely Dover-Wharton-Victory Gardens. Effectively all in a 5 mile diameter. What does that say, axe or scalpel?

Now the total incidence per PoP. Dover again! Also Wharton and Victory Gardens. This is a cluster. We know it so what do we plan to do after 9 months at this problem. Lakewood was remediated promptly why not this cluster?

This is the total stats since we started counting. Parsippany is high but it is a large population with many apartment complexes. Morristown is the same.

We now have the data to target, the means to target, but somehow the State and County are clueless.

2020 11 14

 Not so good. It would really help if the Wizards of Trenton let us know the viral vectors. This is the 21st century folks! Unless they just want to shut things down again. 

First the county town daily incidences. They both are exploding.

The town prevalence bounces around 20. We have about 10,000 people and 20 are clearly contagious.

Mortality is up to 1% Not clear why.

The doubling time metric puts us in early May time frame

State new infections nearing old peak

Likewise for the county.

It would really be nice to know why.

As a note, a detailed discussion of these statistics and the upcoming vaccine and its implementation has been posted. Note, however, the biggest risk will be the massive political infighting in terms of execution. All States were to have their plans in and approved by the CDC by now. They have not. New York apparently refuses, New Jersey is bumbling around getting nowhere, and the list goes on. The New England states are trying to coordinate but that make the Balkans look like a local tea sitting club.

So let us not expect our State Governments to accomplish anything and the vaccine may very well just be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Betcha!

Observation

 My mail in ballot was received 3 October. As of today, 10 days after the election my ballot has yet to be counted. If it ever will be! But, all the winners have been announced. Told you all!

Some Insight

 Let us first look at the doubling time, a good metric to assess intensity. We are now back into the April time frame of concomitant high mortality.

 

Now look at the current mortality. It is two orders of magnitude lower for identical conditions. Why?

First race does play a role. Asians are low and Hispanics are high. One could assume it is the work and living conditions but that is at best a guess.

Now look at age. Here we have the over 80 bracket showing the highest but as noted before they are all dead now.

Thus what we face now is NOT what we faced seven months ago. We know who is infected, where and we no longer can kill off the older folks.

Now an observation on the Pfizer vaccine announcement. First the timing is in my opinion purely political, and that is a shame. Second, the FDA Expert Panel Review is always a deal breaker or deal delayer. My guess is they will vote to delay again for pure political reasons. People will die as a result but alas it is politics. The book on this will take another fifty years so no one will be at fault.

Another observation on the new COVID Task Force, well they are in my opinion all political so again no surprises. I suspect we will see a four to six month delay in the process due solely to the politics. The result will be more deaths and worse a collapsed economy. Pity.

From Big Box to Shopping Mall to Bazaar

 Back in the early 80s I was a Group President at Warner Communications responsible for the design, development and implementation of the first two way video on demand home shopping, information and entertainment system, called TIES. Our goal was to build on the QUBE system but using improved two way protocols and high speed systems. We designed the system to be an electronic shopping mall, facilitating existing companies to expand to the electronic media. Needless to say we were a bit early.

Our paradigm was to be an electronic mall operator facilitating existing packagers and distributors. We would be in the background and the relationship was between the customer and the retailer. We would never take a role in the process. 

Come some twenty years later is Amazon. Their initial model was not Electronic Shopping Mall operator but Big Box store. Amazon advertised, sold and completed the transaction by delivery. 

The early Amazon model was brilliant, people learned  to trust Amazon. If you had any problem they solved it. You got things quickly and reliably.

Now Amazon has become the electronic shopping mall operator, with third parties selling off their site. Quality has dropped, delivery is uncertain, remedies are non-existent, and the overall experience is rant with uncertainty and shabby merchandise. They make the dollar store look like upscale Fifth Avenue in the 1950s.

This is in my opinion and in my experience a recipe for disaster. Sooner than later the customers will revolt. I have personally moved back to directly dealing with the primary seller, more reliable and frankly often cheaper. Plus I have a trust in what a purchase.

But it also appears that Amazon is taking a further step to being the Bazaar operator. It is like Istanbul and the Grand Bazaar, every purchaser for themselves perhaps?

One wonders what Amazon's game plan is. Lose trust and well you know the result!

Some Demographics

 Here are some demographics as of yesterday:

The infections seems a bit unbalanced

By gender seems equal. But below is by ages per total

But below we have normalized it by actuals:

We get the above. Namely from 19-79 the numbers infected, not dead, are flat, then they explode. The LTC decision by the Gov did this one. On the other hand look at school age individuals, massively low incidence. Why? Perhaps same infection rate but no symptoms or really less are infected. Unfortunately we will never know due to the incompetent testing program.

Past is Prologue?

 Just an historical note. Before Claudius, the old feeble emperor, we had Caligula,

Then Claudius, whose reign as viewed a bit mixed.

The we got Nero, and Rome burned.

History has a strange was of doing things. Just an observation folks.

NJ 2020 11 07

 The bad news is the increase the good news is the massive drop in fatalities. First the incidence in town and county. Clearly the town is flat but the county is increasing.

  

The town prevalence s less than 20 and decreasing. It seems to go through cycles of about 5 weeks. This cyclic behavior is no where in any of the alleged "models".

The county total stats are shown below. Clearly we have a massive cluster in Dover and in Parsippany. These clusters dominate the increase and perhaps can be mitigated if someone does something. It also demonstrates that a State wide or worse National band would be grossly counter productive. Hopefully the new Administration has some wisdom but I doubt it, after all they come from the same ilk.

The per day incidence shows a hot spot in Morris Township, on the outskirts of Morristown. One would assume contact tracing would work but it must be communicated to all. Keeping it under wraps is grossly counter productive.

Death rates remain at 0.5%. Unlike the earlier period we see a much more indolent disease.

However the doubling time has moved to the April time frame numbers.

New infections state wide are approaching the previous peak

As they are county wide.

But total deaths are low as noted above.

Yet we still see LTC deaths. Also one must remember the data is very noisy so the numbers may be wrong as well as the dates.

Finally we have the infections per PoP per county. The hot spots are Essex, Union, Hudson, Passaic, Camden and Atlantic. Focus, focus, focus, use a scalpel not a hammer.