Thursday Throughput: When You Get Caught Between the Moon and Suez Canal

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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13 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    [ThTh2] I’ve been thinking recently that there’s something I’ve been calling the effective unprotected contact rate, and that no one has any idea how high it has actually been in the different parts of the country. Also that it is, to a considerable extent, independent of whether or not there was a mask mandate — eg, in some places there were “secret” large mask-free gatherings despite any mandate, and in some places people followed good protocols even though there was no mandate. I expect this will become a hot study topic for PhD candidates in epidemiology in coming years. They’ll start by trying to work backwards from the infection/death data to estimate what the actual contact rate had to be.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Michael Cain says:

      The SF Bay Area was generally excellent with mask compliance both indoors and outdoors. However, it was clear early on that a lot of people had very big pods (even if inadvertently) and were seeing friends and family. I know people who have not seen family for a year despite living close by and I know people who have seen family like the pandemic is non-existent even if otherwise trying to be good. I expect that even liberal cities like SF have had a fair number of indoor gatherings. Maybe not as big as before but existent none the less.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    ThTh6: It’s amazing how much we’ve come to understand fluid mechanics without the underlying math. Just the intuitive understanding that comes from living in a fluid. It even plays into my work doing CFD. Being able to look at certain plots and images of the flow field can let me know if a completed simulation is garbage or not.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Dumb math question about ThTh14.

    Like, let’s say that the AZ vaccine causes blood clots and it’s not a weird data thing like the Cancer Cluster Power Line thing that we had going on in the 90’s.

    How many blood clots does it cause?

    Let’s say that the vaccine protects against Covid about as well as Moderna or Pfizer or J&J.

    And let’s say that the Covid kills some percentage of people who get it.

    And let’s say that the AZ shot is available right now but Moderna or Pfizer or J&J won’t be available for at least X months.

    Will waiting X months cause more deaths than the AZ shot?Report

    • Michael Siegel in reply to Jaybird says:

      Interesting question. Too many variables for an accurate answer but we can ballpark it.

      Let’s say the odds of death from the AZ vaccine are one in a million (one in a hundred thousand of getting clot). That means vaccinating, say, the entire population of Germany would cause about 100 deaths. Let’s be really pessimistic and say a thousand if the odds are ten times that.

      Right now, Germany is losing 200 people a day to the virus. So in a week, you’d be better off with the vaccine.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Michael Siegel says:

        My intuition was to say that the AZ vaccine has less risk than the blood clots.

        But I also know that I got the Moderna and, as such, it’s real easy for me to say “other people should just take the AZ shot!”

        Thanks for doing the math.

        It seems that withholding the shot from people (even as an option!) is costing lives.

        That seems to be bad.Report

        • Michael Siegel in reply to Jaybird says:

          Some countries are doing it based on age since COVID is much more dangerous to those over 50. That’s … not entirely unreasonable. But there’s zero reason to delay giving it to at-risk populations.Report

  4. Kazzy says:

    ThTh3: Maybe this is my own conspiracy-theorist coming out, but I can’t help but call BS on just about everything Covid-related coming from official Chinese sources. I mean, China — where this whole thing started — went from thousands of reported daily cases in March to basically zero overnight.

    But I never see this discussed. Is it just accepted wisdom that their numbers are bunk? Or did they achieve that through authoritarian means no other country would repeat? Or are they some miraculous Covid success story?

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

    I mean, those charts just seem impossible.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

      There was a lot of really, really sketch stuff happening with regards to China/COVID.

      Did you ever see this interview?

      Anyway, there is a lot of money in doing what China wants and there is a lot of money to be lost if China gets ticked off. It’s hard to not keep that in mind when you hear stuff on NPR like this:

      DOUCLEFF: Well, you know, I mean, there’s been some criticism of the WHO with this report. You know, there’s concern that WHO is underplaying and not fully pursuing this lab leak theory because they are catering to the Chinese government. But one of the members of the WHO team, Peter Daszak – he’s a disease ecologist. He pointed out that the members of this investigation are not actually working for WHO. They are independent.

      PETER DASZAK: Our voices are independent. If there was political interference with what we’re trying to say or someone removed a section that we disagreed with, no, we would push back. And if it didn’t go back in, we would have stepped to one side and said, we cannot sign off on this, and we’re going to have to release our own report.

      DOUCLEFF: Daszak notes that the team unanimously agrees on the main conclusion of the report, and that’s that it came from a bat to an animal and then somehow made its way to Wuhan.

      I mean, do you believe the guy?Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

        That’s a much harder topic for me to really speak to. Where did the virus come from? Heck if I know! Does the “official” explanation make sense? Yea. Does the conspiracy? Yea.

        But the basic numbers reporting? The official numbers make ZERO sense. So either A) I’m dumb and can’t understand why they’re right or B) they aren’t right.Report

  5. Kazzy says:

    Comment in perma-mod, it seems.Report

  6. This title is laugh out loud funny! Love itReport