Dumb Questions and Horrible Customer Service

 Welcome to the world where some third party software program seems to think they know you. Try favorite ice cream? I do not like ice cream so why ask. My favorite books? Even Amazon knows that one. Scientific and Math, not cooking! I really wonder what moron developed this annoying set of security questions. This is AI at its best. This is even worse than the one where you must find all the motorcycles or traffic lights. Some aggravating moron has made millions on this one.

NJ 2021 10 30

 Well we are a day before Halloween. Are we getting any better? Almost all infections are Delta now and no new ones announced by our trusty CDC trolls. 

Let's start with  County prevalence. Slowly dropping but give the vulnerable base which is tiny one wonders who these characters are? If we knew we could avoid them.

The State prevalence is similar.

This is the real problem. Those infected are dying at a higher rate and we still have about two LTC deaths per day. Do politicians have the slightest clue!

The County per day is still kind of dropping

As is the State

This one is interesting. It is the national profile showing we have almost 82% either vaccinated or previously infected and we still have the remaining 18% transmitting. Whatever happened to that "herd" idea which I rejected over a year ago? Academics!

Vaccinations still muddle along

This is also worrisome. The new infections normalized remains constant if not increasing. Identifying these by class would be a great Public Health advantage.

Town prevalence is up again. No surprise.

One can see this in the doubling times. Morristown is the highest and they have a large dense ethnically diverse group. Dover is also great and they are 80% + Hispanic. Harding is upper class and doing poorly. What is this saying?

The town doubling time is below:

County and Town incidence is below.

Power Systems

 As we have note many previous times the power generation and distribution system in the US is frozen in the late 19th century. Edison and Tesla would feel at home there. No first rate university has any focus on power systems. Power companies employ mediocre at best employees. Con Ed for example is no more than an ersatz Government entity. The "grid" lacks any realistic elements of a reliable network. They all have single points of failure. More than twenty years ago I move one of my companies from New Jersey to Prague to get a more reliable electrical source. NJ failed monthly!

The NY Times reports:

Seven months after workers finished installing solar panels atop the Garcia family home near Stanford University, the system is little more than a roof ornament. The problem: The local utility’s equipment is so overloaded that there is no place for the electricity produced by the panels to go. “We wasted 30,000-something dollars on a system we can’t use,” Theresa Garcia said. “It’s just been really frustrating.”

This problem is universal. The system is not a distributed fault tolerant system. It is run by a  collection of generally mediocre people who have no idea what has changed in over a century. In contrast just look at the phone companies. Competition. There is no way we are going to be able to rely on electricity with this group of folks. The environmentalists are grossly clueless about what they propose. 

Well we can always hope.

W11, NOT!

 In my opinion and in my experience the very worst thing one can do is upgrade any Microsoft product. I have spent thousands o hours re-configuring and tens of thousands of dollars on redoing software corrupted by the upgrades. Now they team out there wants to force us to upgrade to W11. No way folks. In my opinion and my experience it may very well crash my system, destroy my expensive software and take hours of time wasted on the upgrade process. So beware, folks, Halloween approaches and the monster of W11 just wants you to have a bite of the poison apple!

BTW, I still have a few XP systems working just fine in the Labs.

NJ 2021 10 23

 It is amazing to see the continuation of infections and deaths at this stage. Given the extremely high level of both vaccine and prior infection immunity it really begs the question as to the competence of our poor Public Health system as well as government officials. Pin point targeting of clusters should be available and acted upon. When this pandemic is analyzed the worst players will be government officials.

Now for the data:

The State doubling time has continued slowly upward

State incidence has plateaued again.

County seems to be dropping

However deaths are massive given the knowledge. LTC are still present.

Prevalence in the state is decreasing but given the small vulnerable base it is truly massive, time times greater!

Town doubling is still much too low. One wonders who these morons are? The vulnerable in the town is less than 10%. This may be Darwin in action!

Town prevalence is increasing. There has been no notice from any Government officials!

One can see the county and town just bumbling along.

National vaccinations are flat at about 1 million per day.

Normalized incidence may be decreasing.

Lots of Words, No Answers

 The transmission of COVID is arguably still and unanswered question. The current focus is on aerosol transmission. However as we have noted many times the science behind this is limited and quite complex. Aerosol transmission has two dimensions. First the physics of the problem, aerosols are temporal-spatial random fields. Thus their analysis and prediction is at best estimates. Second, and even more importantly is the mechanism of viral transport. 30nm virions somehow get embedded in the aerosol, say 100nm in diameter and that aerosol goes from A to B and must attach itself, most likely in the nasal passage.

Some academic has opined in the NY Times regarding this process. Lots of words but no answers. The author notes:

It took a long time for air cleaning to be recognized as a powerful tool for reducing the risk of Covid-19 transmission, and it should be embraced more thoroughly during this pandemic and to reduce flu cases. Ventilation and filtration are two proven techniques for physically removing viruses from the air, so that people are exposed to fewer of them....There are some simple ways to improve ventilation, like opening windows and doors. A recent small study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, showed that the amount of coronavirus in the air was substantially lowered when ventilation was significantly increased by running an exhaust fan that removed stale air from a room, pulling in outside air through an open window. Other effective options can require more effort. Ultraviolet treatment is another approach used in hospitals to kill viruses in the air. This technique could be more broadly applied in crowded public areas, although it must be properly installed to be effective and avoid the potential for harm. 

 Suggesting solutions without understanding the problem becomes some religious artifact. UV is interesting but it at best covers things on the surface. A new person may reintroduce the pathogen as soon as they enter. Masks are also problematic. In examining the many in NYC, half have their noses uncovered. Thus the mask is useless. Also we really do not know how many aerosols get around a mask.

It will take a few years of real study to determine the best way to deal with this. Vaccines work for almost all. At this point they are our best bet.

Doughnuts

 I was in Washington during the Carter years and bought my home in New Jersey in 1980. The interest rate on the mortgage was 18.5% and it would have been cheaper to put it on my Visa account! Topped at 18%.

Now to doughnuts. I am not a fan but my wife is. Last year you could buy 2 boxes at a 7-11 for $5.00. Today the same doughnuts, but just one box was $6.99! Try calculating the inflation rate on doughnuts. Remember 1980! It went from $2.50 a box to $7.00! Think Weimar!

NJ 2021 10 16

 Another week and no real progress. With 90%+ of the town vaccinated or previously infected we still see 5-6 per day of new infections. The town is about 10,000, so the vulnerable is 1,000 and the daily infection rate is near 0.6% pd. Who are these folks?

One can see below a flattening in the county but an explosion in the town.

The prevalence is high and constant. Remember the percent vulnerable is low. They must all know each other. If so, we should avoid them.

State doubling seems to be increasing which is a good sign.

State incidence is dropping

County has a blip upwards

Nationally the normalized infections seem flat to dropping slightly

Vaccinations holding at about a million pd.

Ah, to be a Government Worker

 The CDC web site notes:

In observance of Columbus Day, the COVID Data Tracker will not update on Sunday, October 10th or Monday, October 11th, 2021. Updates will resume on Tuesday, October 12th, 2021.

 Yep, people are dying, plague is expanding, but they get the holiday off! Imagine if we had these clowns in WW II. Say my father said, let's not sail into that Japanese Fleet, we have a holiday this weekend. Fortunately he did not.

NJ 2021 10 09

 Here we go with another week. Given that we have nearly 90% either already infected or vaccinated we really should be asking; who are these people getting sick and by what means! But alas it is election year here in NJ and the officials seem more clueless than ever. 2 people die each day in LTC, death rates are 2% for others. 

First the demographics. Blacks still are slow on vaccinations. Infections may cluster there but there is not data to verify that.

 

Nationally we still see an infection incidence normalized which is perhaps decreasing.

Vaccinations are increasing nationally but not a great deal.

County and town doubling times are increasing

Incidence is still around 80 per 500,000 people but since only about 50,000 are vulnerable it is a ten times higher rate! Why?

Town prevalence is low but still existing.

Deaths prevail. The LTC issue should be a concern but it seems no one cares!

County incidence it flat. Why?

State incidence is also flat

Doubling times are also flattening.

Supply Chain Disasters

 I guess we at the end of the chain are just starting to see the disaster which will soon be upon us. For example, I recently ordered a simple computer display from Dell. I have been a Dell customer for thirty plus years, but alas, they are in a total mess in my opinion. First display was rescheduled for several months in the future so was cancelled. Second display was sent via some low cost carrier who immediately seemed to have lost it. Tracking did not work. 

When USPS becomes more reliable than these other carriers you know we have real problems. I suspect the system will be near total collapse in January of next year. This means massive disruptions in revenue not to be seen until the end of Q1. Watch the hedge fund guys.

Again, What is an aerosol?

 Here we go. In the Sunday talk shows we have to note:

Anchor Margaret Brennan said, “There are two new studies out that show COVID has gotten better at transmitting through aerosols, just through the air. What does that mean? We’re going into cold weather, the holidays. Do people need to start looking around and say it is too risky to gather with family members if there are unvaccinated children?”

 Yes one must ask, what does the TV reader think she means? If at all. Aerosols are small droplets often containing water and air as well as viral particles, virions. That is how they get from person A to person B. Other ways may be via surface transfer but that seems to not work well with COVID. It is that little aerosol, in the air, that goes from A to B! By definition aerosols go through the air, Duh! "aero" like the airplane, flying through the air.

No wonder girls in a Southern University believe they got COVID from someone vaccinated! It is our defunct education system and political class.

 

NJ 2021 10 02

 Now into October:

The doubling time for the State has flattened.

The incidence appears to be dropping

Possibly for the county

The ratio of new infected to vulnerable nationally may be dropping

whereas the vaccination rate is low

town doubling time is increasing, we are running out of vulnerables!

the county and town incidences seem good

and town prevalence is dropping

Now for a Tale. One of my granddaughters goes to University down South. She is vaccinated, the only one amongst 4 room mates. Well! She had a sore throat and went to the infirmary. Tested negative but got quarantined. Then some whiz kid in the infirmary asked how her room mates were. All had come down with COVID, all unvaccinated and all had traveled home on the prior weekend! Talk of Typhoid Mary's. To top it off, the three now infected blame my grand daughter for infecting them by having gotten a vaccination! These will be the leaders of our future. My grand daughter will be coming back north to normalcy soon. Pity!