A short post but an important one. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again because it can’t be repeated enough: if you are told the increase in testing is why there is a rise in confirmed cases, check the test positivity ratio. If it is the same (or even worse, increasing), then the … Read more
Every day when I watch the news they show graphs of which states have an increasing number of cases. Guess what? That information doesn’t tell you much if anything at all. They are to be blunt essentially useless graphs and innumeracy writ large. It makes me angry and to paraphrase a friend: “when I get … Read more
There was some good (if very preliminary) news from Moderna on their vaccine candidate: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-positive-interim-phase-1-data-its-mrna-vaccine And yes it does seem to be good news. But leaving aside that they so far only report results for 8 people from their 45 person Phase 1 trial, some 4th grade arithmetic shows that even if (as we all … Read more
I don’t know if what is mentioned in this article is true: https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-pushes-cdc-to-dial-down-covid-death-counts but if it is, I have completely lost respect for Dr. Deborah Brix (not that I had much before considering her appearances on Fox news defending the indefensible – like Trump’s “musings” about bleach and UV light). The question of how many … Read more
I was talking to a couple of people and it became clear that people don’t completely grok what flattening the curve means. If you like it in the form of an aphorism, it means (to quote some unnamed wit): “Look you idiot, flattening the curve doesn’t mean you won’t get sick, it means there will … Read more
Not a math related post, just common sense this time. (It is inspired by WHO (which has great scientists if lousy leaders no matter what our both scientifically illiterate and innumerate president says), pointing out there is no evidence yet that having the virus means you would have enough antibodies to prevent another infection. Sure, … Read more