🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@pendragon Sad but true.. I have seen their "fact checks" often ping things about trump and then you click the fact check and it effectively says that the article is correct but then says a bunch of unrelated negative things about trump (which are sometimes valid).. Thats not fact checking though, thats basically campaigning for the democrats at that point.. its basically "yea those good things about trump were true but have you considered all these shitty things, also biden is awesome!".. the fact check articles are also usually with some pretty heavy bias, the author tends to clearly show a bias in wording that suggests they arrived at an opinion.

Meanwhile I've seen things posted by biden that have been debunked by more reputable and even left-leaning publications like CNN and yet those posts dont get the fact check link.

The bias is extraordinary, obvious, and a bit too much. I say this as someone who is no Trump lover too (though I dont like Biden either).

@pendragon

Well that's not entirely true. We don't catch diseases cross species easily at all. when it happens it is rare, usually, and only occurs in special environments where such things are likely to occur.

The pigeon/swine flu for example only actually crossed over to humans because it got into something we eat and that occured in a country where there was little or no meat regulations to catch it.. Birds had the flu for a long long time and we never caught it.

@adrysdale @Space6host

@pendragon

Agreed, species jumping is always a concern.

@adrysdale @Space6host

@pendragon

Yes I'm aware, been saying that from early on int he infection and no one believed me. Though dogs and lions have an attenuated immune response so they are at very low risk of being symptomatic and also much lower risk than humans for transfering the disease... though, then again, humans dont have the tendency to lick your face, so in practice that might even the playing ground a bit :)

@adrysdale @Space6host

Just a little recap on coronavirus numbers for those who like to make it sound like Trump and the USA did a bad job on handling it, when in fact long-term seems we did a better job than almost any other country.

Just a side note, it is important we look at coronavirus cases and not deaths because we dont have similar comorbidities across countries. Obesity is the #1 comorbidity for coronavirus and the USA has more of that, by far, than any other country. Obviously we cant lay that blame on Trump or the government. So if we want to fairly evaluate the USA's government in handling this we have to look at the part of the equation they have control over that is case count. So lets give a good summary of that.

I will break the numbers down into two points, one to demonstrate long term outlook will be the change in case numbers since lockdown was letup in each respective country. For the most part that would be mid june to mid july for most countries. The other number we will look at is the current situation, which we will look at percentage of the population currently infected to measure that.

Literally I picked 7 random countries in europe and even included canada. The USA has beat all but two countries in terms of infection rate, canada, which is only slightly better, and germany, which has half the infection rate. The other 5 countries the USA is doing significantly better than on infection rate. More importantly though in terms of trending since lockdown the USA has significantly outperformed every single country without a single exception by a huge margin. In fact the USA is the only country showing a downward trend since lockdown was over at 1/3 increase where all other countries have seen upward trends between 5x and 86.16x. So overall I'd say the USA is probably one of the best performing countries worldwide in terms of the coronavirus when we consider both long-term outlook and current infection rate.

Moreover, while we cant really compare absolute numbers in the case of death rate, due to the comorbidity issue I mentioned we can still evaluate that by looking at relative numbers. Essentially if we look at how quickly our medical system adapted to reduce the mortality rate since initial outbreak till now (which would normalize for comorbidities to some extent). As can be seen in the attached chart the USA has done quite well in that regard as well.

USA:
* 0.00679% infected
* 1/3 decrease (0.33x) in case rate since out of lockdown

Canada:
* 0.00565% infected (0.832x of USa)
* 9x increase since out of lockdown

UK:
* 0.0107% infected (1.57x more than USA)
* 5x increase since out of lockdown

Spain:
* 0.0306% (4.51x more than USA)
* 86.16x increase since out of lockdown

Belgium:
* 0.0227% (3.34x more than USA)
* 36.7x increase since out of lockdown

Netherlands:
* 0.0190% infected (2.8x more than USA)
* 53x increase since out of lockdown

Sweden:
* 0.00671% infected (0.988x the USA)
* 16x increase since out of lockdown

Germany
* 0.00321% infected (0.472x USA)
* 12.4x increase since lockdown

#Coronavirus #COVID #COVID-19 #USPol #Biden #Biden2020 #Trump #Trump2020 #USElection #Election #Election2020 @adrysdale @Space6host

@adrysdale By the way, as I covered, long term cases are what we care about, not short term case count, not initial case count, and not death rate (since this varies greatly on comorbidity which is not similar)... But even if you really insist at looking at overall numbers instead of trends.. America still looks pretty good. While we still cant really look at deaths because Americans tend to be significantly more obese, we can look at cases to get an outlook on case number, an the USA doesnt look bad at all.

Compare overall case count in the USA vs Canada, for example:

USA: 0.00679% is, as of today, the current percentage of the population infected

Canada: 0.00565%

So very comparable in terms of overall percentage of the population infected, coupled with the fact that the USA has had a decrease of 1/3 in case count with a downward trend since June while canada has had a 9x increase in case count in that same period and is trending upward faster every week. I think that says everything when we really look at America's long-term outlook which looks a hell of a lot better than canadas.

Hell lets look at a few other countries just to make sure that isn't a fluke.

In that time the UK has seen a 5x increase in case count, In terms of infection rate currently 0.0107% of the population is effected with corona virus, thats nearly **twice** the total case count over the USA.. So presuming you are from wales it looks like you should be criticising the UK before the USA, your much **much** worse off than us.

The Netherlands in that time, my second home, has had a wopping 53x increase in case count in that time. Thats 0.0190% of the population has it, that is 2.8x higher than the usa.

Sweden is a bit different only because they actually followed the pattern of the a bit USA and didnt have strict across the board lockdowns, which as I stated was our saving grace. But even then they pushed things a bit too far and didnt do as well a job as the USA in terms of long term outlook, but for now they are doing one of the best out of europe, as a fluke more than anything else. Even so since early to mid july sweden's case rate has increased a whopping 16.3x while the USA, as I stated has decreased by 1/3 in that time. The total percentage of population currently infected is 0.00671%. So they have virtual the exact same infection rate as the USA, but with an infection rate trend of 16x increase and still going up while the USA is at 1/3rd down.. I'd say even europe's best country, sweden, the USA would have ya beat.

Literally the USA is overall doing significantly better than almost any country we could compare to in Europe or even canada or the UK... Long term we made the right call.

Lets not forget the economic fallout we avoided by not laying on the lockdown too hard!

@adrysdale Yes but its a good thing, particularly when looking long term.

The fact people keep dancing around is 1) this virus is here for the long term, years, even with a vaccine, and it is unlikely we will have an effective vaccine given the facts (past failures over decades to produce corona vaccines coupled with the observed nature of coronavirus-class immunity).

This means that eventually, if you let up a lock down, eventually the overall case numbers willcatch up, at least until some sense of limited herd immunity kicks in.

So there are only two options really.. 1) you stay in perpetual lockdown forever, everytime you release lock down the spread starts from scratch and when it starts to increase you go back into lockdown.. this obviously isnt feasible to be in lockdown forever.. 2) you accept the situation, let up lock down, you get a huge spike and case number which eventually levels off and stabilizes at reasonable numbers once some limited herd immunity catches up.

Here is the thing, we are all in situation #2 in all likelihood, no one will keep a lockdown going forever. This means, long term, we are all going to get the same % infected as we would if we never did a lockdown at all. Lockdowns delay the inevitable, but in the end they do nothing to reduce case numbers, this should be obvious why really, all it does is hit pause (or slow motion) on the virus and has no lasting effect once its over.

So you are really looking at things all backwards, the question you need to ask is what is the point of the lockdown, and it wasnt so fewer people get sick from coronavirus (overall).. the point was exactly what doctors said early on it was suppose to be, to level the curve. That is, to slow down the initial spread of the virus so ICU departments of hospitals didnt reach 100% capacity, nothing more. Any lockdown beyond that is more harmful than good since the only benefit from lockdown is to keep ICU under capacity, the goal is **not** to reduce case numbers, nor could it.

So any reference to overall case numbers is pointless, though we do care about trends. The trends prove this very point, the USA released lockdown once we know our ICUs were not going to go past capacity. We had an initial spike, as expected, and then a significant and sustained downward trend since June, also as expected. Our ICU capacity never went over the 100% mark, ergo success.

Europe you dont see that wisdom embodied in their plan though. They pushed lockdown way beyond what it was intended for (to keep ICU under capacity. The end result is they did nothing to reduce their case count long term, as we see by the fact that most countries in europe and canada have experienced 4x to 8x increases in case count since then.

You have to understand in data science we care about trends, cause and effect, not absolute numbers, and the nuance matters too. Absolute numbers dont really help you much when you talk about nations with very different distributions of comorbities in its population, and when the long term outlook is more important than any effects in the short term. But most importantly it should just be common sense why lockdowns beyond reducing ICU capacity have no long term positive outcome.

@adrysdale Comparing deaths rather than cases isnt particularly useful when the biggest comorbity for COVID death is obesity which the USA has a bigger issue with than Canada, and would not be the fault of our government, trump didnt make people fat in 4 years

@adrysdale Lets put it this way, canaday and europe since mid une onward have mostly all had increases cases of covid (4x to 8x in most countries). Likewise, however the USA has decreased its cases by 1/3 with clear downward trend.

So if I look at long-term trends we seem to be doing better, and have been doing better, than most countries.

@mur2501 Makes sense, about what I expected honestly.

@mur2501 Well depends on what part. Dutch people are very "sensible" .. There can be a good deal of variety of opinion, but people don't get immature about it and use it to judge people nearly as much as in america.

So I'd say similar variety and distributing of views as the USA , but less extreme, and no one likes guns there except a very small crowd, so that and maybe healthcare will be the only thing that look very different in terms of political distribution of the people among the two.

But yea the big difference is 98% of dutch people if they are on the opposite end of the political spectrum as you they will still get along with you just fine. They dont often make politics personal

@mur2501 Perfectly said and couldnt disagree with any part of that.

@mur2501 I kind of agree.. I wouldnt say the people surrounding him arent dumb.. they are less dumb.

I've worked with government employees. Aside for a very small handful in high level technical positions, usually R&D or code breaking or something, most of the people that work government are below the curve.. But trump is a little dumber than most, and more worrisome he doesnt realize that. But, when you really judge the US administration right now overall.. well they arent phenomenal but they are way better than the media makes it sound right now.

I notice democrats often point to Dr. Fauci as a way to attack Trumps COVID response.. While I myself think the USA has, for the most part, handled COVID pretty decent I dont think its due to Trumps vision or anything else. I think it was more luck on his part, than intellect. BUT I do still find it compelling to share this quote from an interview with Dr. Fauci where he clearly stated he was impressed with the Trump administrations response to COVID. Not because I am impressed by Trump but more because I think the negative narrative against him is way overblown and not really a reflection of the reasonable job the USA did overall.

Here is the exact wording from the interview (there was a bit of irrelevant rambling I removed at ..., I suggest you look up the full interview for full context):

MARK LEVIN: Welcome back. Dr. Fauci, let me ask you a question. You've been doing this a long time. Have you ever seen this big of a coordinated response by an administration to such a threat? A health threat?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, we've never had a threat like this and the coordinated response has been, there are a number of adjectives to describe it. Impressive, I think is one of them.

...

So I can't imagine that that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more. I mean, obviously, we're fighting a formidable enemy -- this virus. This virus is a serious issue here.

#Trump #Trump2020 #Biden #Biden2020 #Election #Election2020 #USPOL

@2ck

"Creates a matcher of String that matches when the examined string exactly matches the given regular expression, treated as a Pattern."

http://hamcrest.org/JavaHamcrest/javadoc/2.0.0.0/org/hamcrest/text/MatchesPattern.html

FYI to all my Electronics people out there.

Did you know you can represent capacitance and inductance with a complex number and by doing so you would incorporate ESR (equivalent series resistance) into your equations. Essentially you dont have to model with idealized components and add in the parasitics manually, you can add the parasitics directly into the capacitance or inductance of your components!

See the following equation in my blog and the subsequent explanation if you want some further details and examples: http://jeffreyfreeman.me/an-indepth-look-at-duals-and-their-circuits/#mjx-eqn-realcap

#electronics #electricalengineering #EE #HamRadio #AmaetureRadio #Physics #Science #QotoJournal

@pendragon What is olg?