Nonsense!

 Again the NY Times blames "old folks" for their lack of computer competence. They ramble along saying:

But booking an appointment has been a technological nightmare. ... cannot afford to buy a computer, and would not know how to navigate the internet in search of a shot even if she could. While members of her family might be able to help her there, she avoids seeing them as a safety precaution. ... Advocates for older Americans, 22 million of whom lack wired broadband access at home, say it is ridiculous that a program mostly aimed at vaccinating vulnerable seniors is so dependent on internet know-how, Twitter announcements and online event pages. ... The coronavirus relief bill passed by the House includes $470 million for supportive services for older Americans, including vaccine outreach. The Administration for Community Living is working with the C.D.C. on a public awareness campaign for seniors, said Edwin Walker, the group’s deputy assistant secretary for aging. But that initiative is still in the planning stage.

Nonsense. Let me start with some bona fides. I started programming in machine language in 1962, well before any of these useless Silicon Valley nerds. I was responsible for the first international connection of the ARPA Net in 1976 from Etam WV to Goohnilly UK and Trondheim, Norway. Protocols and all. I developed and deployed the first two video on demand shopping system on Warner Cable. As COO of what is now Verizon Wireless I deployed the first packet based cellular signalling. Then I built and operated the Internet backbone in 20+ countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Along with my MIT PhD in EECS and 17 books, 250+ papers and the list goes on. But I too have found this grossly incompetent "whack a mole" approach to getting a vaccine appointment an example of the Government gone wild. 

To the folks at the Times, it is not age, not inexperience, it is those ruthless and useless politicians you so laud! I got smallpox and diphtheria in 1944 at a NYC Public Health office. Try and find one now. I got polio vaccine at my grammar school, and the list goes on. But as I had noted some nine months ago, prior planning prevents poor performance. And the Governors have done none. Here in NJ the Gov's advisory board seems to be in y opinion a list of untalented cronies. Good for re-election but in my opinion and my experience dreadful for the people.

So dear NY Times, do try to dig a little deeper for the truth.  Instead you blame the older folks. It is not their fault that the State has developed nothing at all. This includes their alleged Mega Sites, which I warned about months ago. They are unreachable by the elderly and at least in my county one cannot under any circumstance even see if appointments are available. That is why tomorrow I drive almost 300 miles in hopes of getting a vaccine on the Delaware border. Lots in Delaware, but in NJ, not so much! 

And another thing. $470 million for support of older Americans! Like the IRS? Are they insane. We are from the Government and here to help you! NOT!

The real issues is NOT that older folk are technologically incompetent, it is that the people who are responsible for establishing access are grossly incompetent. No matter how expert one is, no matter how complex a computer, communications, software, technological capability one has, the systems are dysfunctional. There are a multiplicity of alleged providers with disparate interfaces, lack of supply, having people sign up in anticipation of being informed but never replying. It is a scheduling system coddling the morbidly obese and smokers, the prisons and the Press, those segments of society which are problematic at best. While at the same time satisfying the "select" groups yet disenfranchising the old are infirmed. 

Finally expecting someone to use Twitter, Facebook or any of those corrupted elements of Silicon Valley propaganda, systems which are devoid of any elements of privacy, is another element of gross neglect. Any self respecting person would eschew these systems, systems which clearly are propaganda multipliers, invasive and not at all functional for the purpose intended. The Times and their reporters in my opinion demonstrate clear ignorance of the facts and are nothing but ongoing promoters of a warped social agenda.

Now, I will let you know how I really feel.........

NJ 2021 02 27

 We are in the end of February approaching one full year of the pandemic being active. So here we go.

The first is the doubling time per town. Note the negative. This is faulty data on part of the State, and in fact the State bumbling have failed to post data properly today. It is Saturday and they have the less than less than competent people. The doubling times are dropping and this means we are really not doing well.

This is the normalized infection per town. No change here we still have the ever increasing Dover cluster.

This is the incidence per day of county and town. County is lower but town remains at 3 per day. If it stays here we can hit 1,000 by August. Almost all are still teen angers infecting older family members.

The town prevalence is again flattening. There is no town government attempt to try to reduce this. I suspect it will continue to grow even higher with another peak. This is true since one cannot get vaccines in Morris County and also one is prohibited from crossing county lines. Again gross negligence in my opinion on the part of the State leaders. As for County or Town leaders there are none to be seen.

Death rates remain at 2-3%. This is amazing since we now have good treatments and hopefully have taken care of LTC.

State doubling time are still increasing.

State incidence is decreasing but ever so slowly.

County is not so good.

Per county numbers of incidence still show hot spots.

Finally. LTC deaths are still there but decreasing. It could be they have managed to see most of them have died by this time. This will go down in history as an example of how nothing worked in the Government except for the vaccine production.

New Jersey and Vaccines

 New Jersey and its rather incompetent management seem to continue down the path of gross mismanagement of vaccines distribution. As noted in NorthJersey they state:

New Jersey has been receiving about 200,000 to 300,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna each week.  Murphy did not say what day he expects New Jersey to receive its first shipment from J&J. "Needless to say there will be a lot of meetings and calls this weekend on exactly how to deploy these doses," he said. Murphy has said for months that a more abundant supply will make it easier to distribute doses to the most vulnerable like ...., of Jefferson, who has had no luck getting an appointment despite being at high risk. "My wife and I are both over 80, registered with the state and Morris County in January but cannot even learn how long it will be before our names get to the top of the so-called list," he said. "Others we know who are much younger with no health problems have already received both shots." Thus far, the rollout has had a number of problems. Murphy made more than 4 million people - those 65 years and over, those with chronic medical conditions and smokers - immediately eligible in mid-January, causing such a demand that some providers had to immediately shut down appointments. 

It is clear that the distribution is in chaos.  It appears that with prisons in priority we have murderers. rapists, thieves, arsonists, smokers, drug addicts, the Press and campaign contributors move to the front of the line while those over 75 end up dead. Unlike the Count of Cuomo in New York, the Duke of Jersey maintains an aloof and chaotic position. LTC patients are still dying, yet 20ish smokers get their vaccines and go back to their lives of drinking, smoking and parties. 

Thanks Gov and Happy Saint Pats. Forgot, St Pat chased all the snakes out of Ireland, guess they ended up in New Jersey!

Variants and Vaccines

We have just posted a paper discussing the variants and vaccines. The paper notes:

Viral variants have been developing in COVID-19 and especially in the spike protein. In order to address these changes one must also modify the vaccines currently being produced. There are several ways to do this. One is the classic post hoc manner of monitoring what is produced and then address it. The second extreme is pre hoc, anticipating what most likely will occur and vaccinate against this anticipated variant. We present a proposal for a Bayesian pre hoc approach to vaccine development with COVID-19 variants.

This is the sixth in a series of COVID-19 papers prepared over the past year. Interest in these has to my surprise stretched even to the Wuhan Viral Institute.  Also the one written last April on therapeutics has now been validated on NEJM by several authors. 

Comments are always welcome.

And the NY Times Rolls On

 According to the NY Times, there are minimal roadblocks to Morris County, NJ. Perhaps that is why I have to drive 135 mile to the Delaware border to try to get mine next week after a month of trying on dozens of disconnected sites. One cannot get anything in Morris County! A Zero, da nada, zilch! I often wonder what moron did these charts. Try and find a place here. The Hospital system given the exclusive right to distribute blocks any attempts after registering. The so called drug stores have no vaccines. That's it Charley! I might as well live in Outer Mongolia, it may be better there. This is the colossal gross incompetence of our Government in Trenton! At this point I give odds of 1 in4 that I will be successful next week! 

Fake News folks!

Lost in the woods on a Snowy Day

 

It is possible to see to the other side of this mess. Just take a walk in the woods! Even if you live in New Jersey, run by the gang who could not shoot straight!

Demographics and ACE2 Receptors

 It is now well known that the ACE2 receptor variants are a dominant cause of ethnic variations in infectivity. We present so current data for comparison.

Below we show the normalized by race. Note the high incidence amongst Hispanics. This can be a result of both ACE2 receptor variants as well as socioeconomic conditions. African Americans have the most vulnerable ACE2 receptors but their normalized distribution is substantially lower. In contrast Asians have a protective ACE2 receptor and this is exhibited below.

Now by age we see where the problem is. It is the 18-29 year olds who are the spreaders. The 80+ are dominated by LTC cases most likely via the 18-29 class. Also the 5-17 year old school group has a low relative count.

The New York Variant

 Now it begins.In a paper by West et al the authors note:

 Wide-scale SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing is critical to monitoring and understanding viral evolution during the ongoing pandemic. Variants first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil have spread to multiple countries. We have developed a software tool, Variant Database (VDB), for quickly examining the changing landscape of spike mutations. Using this tool, we detected an emerging lineage of viral isolates in the New York region that shares mutations with previously reported variants. The most common sets of spike mutations in this lineage (now designated as B.1.526) are L5F, T95I, D253G, E484K or S477N, D614G, and A701V. This lineage appeared in late November 2020, and isolates from this lineage account for ~25% of coronavirus genomes sequenced and deposited from New York during February 2021.

 This is now the New York variant. It appears very virulent and an aggressive spreader as well. Clearly New York is an ideal spot for such a generation. I was at Columbia this week and the crowds at the hospital made any social distancing impossible. But outside the ability to transmit gets even better.

 I have plotted below the mutation spreads for a variety of the current variants 

 

I have also now plotted the number of variant proteins from the Wuhan wild type below for all known variants. The original variants were generally centered on the spike protein now they are taking up the tails as well.

We have been concerned about the mutations for a while now but this New York variant seems highly aggressive. Hopefully the current Administration can at least come to par with the former and hopefully better. Mutations are now spreading at an alarming rate. One suspects that they are going to be home grown unless we can massively improve Public Health. 

Just a tip for Hospital Administrators. Patients in large waiting areas should not be talking. It becomes a massive spreading event and if the patients are of suppressed immunity then it is a pool for mutations.

Poor Job?

 

Storms or no storms, the vaccine distribution seems to be faltering and faltering significantly. Perhaps they want to stop herd immunity issues by making certain fewer people are vaccinated. One wonders if they have true incompetents in charge always!

FED Balance Sheet

 It is worth looking at this before we add another $2 trillion. Just Treasury Noted and MBS have exploded in the last year. We saw a slight dip back to rationality but it jumped.

The split is shown below.

The chart below is the total, and we are well above $7 trillion in debt. Compare that to 2007 which is about one tenth.

The complete profile is below.

Battle of Bastogne

 Where is General Patton when he is really needed. The NY Times reports

The rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in the United States, which had been accelerating after a chaotic start, has quickly fallen after a winter storm blew through much of the country, closing vaccine sites and delaying shipments of millions of doses. About 1.52 million vaccine doses are being administered per day, according to a New York Times database. Although that is still above President Biden’s target, it is the lowest rate since Feb. 8. The country has been racing to vaccinate as many people as possible before more contagious and possibly deadlier variants of the coronavirus become dominant, and the figure had been well above the president’s goal of 1.5 million doses for several days. It peaked at 1.7 million on Feb. 16 before a brutal winter storm hit states from coast to coast. The bad weather delayed shipments of vaccine supplies from two hubs: a FedEx center in Memphis and a UPS site in Louisville, Ky.

Patton was undeterred by the weather driving his tanks across a frozen snow and ice swept Europe in latter 1944. Let us deconstruct the above:

1. First, the current Administration was handed a system delivering 1.2 million per day before they stepped in.

2. The Current Administration is now down to about 800,000 per day and dropping. Hardly any demonstration of competence.

3. It snows in February. Shocker! I lived in Dallas, Memphis and Atlanta for short periods,  and yes indeed there is ice and snow. Remember FEDEX is in Memphis because that is where its founder lived not because it is a good fit for inclement weather.

4. It could have been worse. We could have used the US Postal Service. One would be still looking for the initial shipment!

5. Racing to vaccinate! Try and make an appointment. There are dozens if not hundreds of disparate scheduling systems in New Jersey alone, and it is akin to whack a mole to try to get one that works! The irony is that systems have been making reservations for over 40 years. On line real time reservation systems are everywhere, think rock concerts.But what do we get? I seems as if it is some politicians off spring in a garage in New Jersey banging out their first try but getting paid a fortune! Just a guess but that is what it looks like.

NJ 2021 02 20

 Again a new week. Overall numbers decreasing but vaccines have slowed most likely due to weather. Chaos still rules the local distribution arms controlled by grossly incompetent State officials. Nothing really new.

Firs we start with the town incidence per PoP. Again Dover leads the list as well as surrounding towns. If we had a competent Public Health entity this would never occur but the County is as grossly incompetent as the State! The surrounding towns have an equally high rate.

The following is the new cases per County and Town. The town is 2 to 4 per day. This is due primarily to teenage groups, most apparently females.

This is reflected in town prevalence. We are now back to where we where at the peak last spring. There is no notice from the town and large gathering continue the spread. In a town of 9,000 at any time we have 40 active spreaders. In fact it may be 2-5 times that number if they are younger and non-symptomatic.

Now let us look at vaccine availability. Pfizer (red) finally seemed to get their act together catching up with Moderna (blue).

This is the chart which shows new infections vs percent immune. Last week was bad due to the storm. Hopefully this improves. This chart is critical since it shows when we will be past the  pandemic. I suspect mid-April based upon this data.

This shows the vaccinated and infected. Note the small growth probably due to the storm.

This is the summary chart

This is the incremental vaccinations per day. This week we saw a dramatic drop. Frankly there really has been limited growth with the new Administration.

This is the Biden Curve. The current Administration has a 1.1 million per day run at day 1. With a doubling of supply one would have expected a greater growth. Again is is the incompetent State folks and now we see the same incompetence at the Fed level.

Death rates are climbing. Not clear why. But it should be a concern.

But again we are still having 8 deaths per day in LTC. New York is getting noticed but here in NJ this should never be happening! No one really cares.

Doubling time is now back to early June of last year.

State per day are dropping but only to the peak of the Spring.

County also is dropping.

The infections per PoP per County show Burlington as a hot spot.

State prevalence is decreasing to levels we saw early last May.

But County prevalence is still higher near the Spring peak.

A Tax to "Support" "Journalism"

 If one were to look at 21st century journalism one would be hard pressed to find facts. Almost any so-called journalistic endeavor is rant with political bent, one side or the other. There is no true journalism, namely the unbiased reporting of facts. The anonymous source is ever present and add to that the so called social media elements are all too often promoters of hate and revolt.

Now along comes some writer in Technology Review, that left wing rag pretending to present information to MIT alumni, and they note that we should be taxed to support this failing and slanted journalism. They suggest:

• A spectrum auction tax. This intervention would seek not to extract a pound of flesh from platform companies, but rather to mine the profits of mobile operators and broadcasters by taxing the licenses they purchase for the right to operate on specific frequencies, with the proceeds going to some kind of public media fund. This year, for instance, the 5G mobile spectrum (considered a public resource) fetched more than $80 billion at auction. Since the proceeds go to the US Treasury, Congress could decide that some portion of the revenue should be put toward journalism. 

• Advertising taxes. Rather than forcing tech platforms to pay news companies directly, governments could simply assess a tax on digital advertising. In its 2010 report, the FTC surmised that a 2% sales tax on advertising would generate $5 to $6 billion annually that could go toward journalism. Maryland has just put forward legislation to introduce a tax on digital advertising, which it intends to use to fund another public good—education. (The big tech companies oppose it vehemently.)

• Taxes on cell phone plans. Another way to pay for public media would be for consumers to pay a small tax on their monthly cell phone bills. In 2010 dollars, a tax of 3% on the monthly fees would have generated $6 billion annually, and there are roughly 120 million more US mobile subscriptions today. 

Now let us look at some of the current taxes. Take sports channels. Each cable subscriber pays tens of dollars a month for channels that they may never watch. I have never seen a football game, I have seen one baseball in 1951, and forced to a basketball game in 1987. I have no interest and yet I pay.

Now why must I be taxed to pay for say some left wing rag, of the opposite? Who gets to "distribute: the Tribute. This whole idea reeks of corruption and cronyism. Take the cell phone tax. I do not use my phone for anything other than calls or texts. I do not use Facebook or any of the plebeian tools of amusement. This suggestion is akin to the sports programming tax. At least the sports programming tax just supports over paid athletes none of whom I would ever recognize. But the cell phone tax would support the promulgation of ideas which I may very likely oppose.

It is a shame we have to see things like this. Yet alas perhaps the proto-Marxists have truly penetrated much of my old alma mater.

COVID-19 Vaccines: A Modest Proposal

COVID-19 has become a global pandemic. With the introduction of vaccines the initial virus may have a chance to be controlled. However, mutants or variants, are being generated naturally at a fast rate and some are getting released by and into the existing pool of infected patients and spreading as a secondary pandemic. The question posed is: What can be done to address this secondary spread of new variants?

 The classic approach is to do a wait and see approach, seeing new infections, ascertain the variant, and then modify or enhance the vaccine to address that new variant. We see this in annual flu immunizations. Often this works well but there are times when one fails to see a new variant or the new variant arises after a set number of newer variants have been selected for vaccine preparations.

 A second approach may be possible. We examine this approach herein. Namely, we know several facts:

 1. COVID spike protein comes from an MRNA single stranded segment which is about 3000 nucleotides long generating a protein of about 1000 nucleic acids in length. We are being simplistic at this point.

 2. COVID spike protein targets the ACE2 receptor, ACE2R, on cells thus enabling entry, replication and immune responses.

 3. There are multiple ACE2 receptors so that the spike may be more infectious in some humans than others.

 4. We generally know what the pool of ACE2 receptors look like as proteins.

 5. We now know several COVID variants that attach to ACE2 receptors. We know or can know the nature of the spike/ligand binding sites. We know or can know the profiles of COVID variants and ACE2R variants and their binding strengths.

 6. We now know the putative genetic variants that are of concern and arguably we can ascertain the genetic changes that led from the wild type originally identified to each variant.

 7. We have many powerful computational tools to examine proteins, asses structure from RNA elements, and consider mutational changes. The challenge here may be a bit simpler since we know the ab initio protein structures and thus we deal with a boundary value problem having COVID and its variants on one end and ACE2R and its variants on the other.

 Thus, we pose the following challenge:

 1.     Knowing boundary condition proteins for spike and ACE2R, and assuming stability in ACE2R variants, then what mutations of the spike will lead to bindings to these ACE2R?

 2.     Furthermore, understanding these mutations can we rank order them from strongest binding downward?

 If we can achieve the two issues noted above, then it would be reasonable to anticipate the next set of most likely mRNAs for spikes and in turn use these anticipated spikes pre-emptively in a new vaccine profile.

 If correct, we can then develop a significant tamping down of infections prior to any substantial spread.

Luddites?

 The NY Times seems to be getting worse by the day. Take the Luddite who says we should eliminate cars altogether, including electric. Now living in New Jersey in order to get a vaccine shot, hopefully, I must travel 135 miles each way two times or a total of 540 miles to the Delaware border. There is no chance in my county and surrounding counties prohibit us. Thus the need to travel. So the Luddite would insist I find some public transportation. Really. Try NJ Transit for anything. It would take days to get there. Assuming you can even get there.

That is the problem with New York Luddites. Try getting out to the world. Transportation is critical, it has been evolving for centuries, so what does this character want, 2000 BC? No, worse, no donkeys or camels, just walk. 

In the midst of the pandemic we get to read, unfortunately for me, the likes of these individuals. Pity.

A Most Interesting Chart

 

Now we can start to say something. The above chart is a plot of new daily infections nationally vs the total percent of the US population vaccinated and previously infected. Namely new infections vs immune percent. The curve shows that we have gone from about 175,000 to 75,000 new infections as we went from 13% t0 26%. I suspect it is actually more nonlinear as we see more vaccinations. One can conjecture that if we go to the end of March we will have well above 50% penetration of immunity and we will be seeing less than 25,000 new infections per day. Take that to June and I suspect we will be close to zero.

As we say in engineering, damn facts can really be annoying. The current Administration's opposite extreme negative view we believe is grossly unwarranted if one perchance looks at the data. This is the most promising data I have seen in a year. This will become a benchmark curve as we continue.

Yes I know we are also seeing the end of the Holiday peak but even if one includes that we see the effect of the vaccine already.

A Little Kipling, Me Thinks

 If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;

If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

NJ 2021 02 13

 Another week and some progress. We start with the town/county mix. The county is decreasing as is the town. We are back to early April for the town and late April for the county. The drop from the holiday peak is good, down 50%.

The doubling times are increasing but some have dropped such as Rockaway. Then again that is the site of the useless Mega Site for the county. Smart choice from Trenton.

We continue to look at doubling times vs infection percent. No clear trends here.

Now to the vaccines. The Biden Curve is below. The old Administration was running some 1 million plus per day and the new one seems to be increasing as anticipated.

The percent of US now set for immunity is approaching 25%. Now this should have a force to drive down new infections as we see increases here. We have doubled this number in less than a month. If we keep this trend then by mid March we are well on our way to suppression of the current strain. However, this depends on vaccinating those who present a potential pool for mutations not just 29 year old would be smokers who want to party as Trenton seems to think.

The data below is interesting since we started out having both equal and low we see vaccinations dominating.

I am always amazed as to the daily data. It has a cyclic pattern signifying something, which I have yet to ascertain. But we seem to be hitting 2 million per day. However one always suspects this data and the CDC is quiet on this. They really are a grossly incompetent group.

Death rates still are about 2%. It will take several weeks to shake out this for clarity.

The Banker's Death Curve is below. We still see 10 LTC deaths per day! This is gross immorality. It should have been remedied months ago.

Doubling times for the state are getting back to last June levels.

The new numbers for the state are declining but slowly.

Likewise for the county

The infections per county are getting somewhat flat except for Ocean which is high and Salem which is low.

The state prevalence is back to last May

As is the county.