outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

That's nuts.

xp Elementary schools actually have a lower infection rate compared to the general populace in NY

Pre-school and elementary school students having lower infection rates and posing a low risk of transmission, and secondary school students having the highest rates and posing the greatest risk of transmission (of any age group) is a repeated observation in S. Korea, Israel, and Germany...

It points to an improved policy for future pandemics where in-person schooling continues for those who benefit most from it, developmentally, while middle and high-school latch key kids are toil behind laptops, in preparation for their adult drudgery.

grim but probably true

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/nyregion/schools-reopening-partially.html

Good

https://www.twitter.com/kate_ptrv/status/1332398737604431874

I couldn’t just walk past this Tweet, so here is some fun #dataviz

Scented candles: An unexpected victim of the COVID-19 pandemic 1/n https://t.co/xEmCTQn9sA pic.twitter.com/tVecEiX5Jc

— Kate Petrova (@kate_ptrv) November 27, 2020

Percent of wages currently subsidized by governments due to COVID:

Japan: 100% for small businesses; 80% for large firms

Netherlands: Up to 90%

Norway: Up to 90%

Germany: Up to 87%

France: Up to 84%

Italy: 80%

United Kingdom: Up to 80%

Canada: Up to 75%

United States: 0%

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 30, 2020

The US is such a cruel country. I hope Biden uses his bully pulpit to at least attempt to ram through more relief, but I'm guessing I'll end up donating to a bunch of fucking gofundmes instead.

Well, I burst into tears after seeing that tweet.

I'm so scared about money, guys. I have no idea what I'm going to do if this gig I'm testing for on Thursday doesn't work out. I don't make enough to live on running the workshops that I do, and all of the universities here have decimated their adjunct ranks for the spring.

<3. i'm so sorry, table. it's really fucked :(

God that's a stark reminder of how much our elected officials openly and actively hate the populace they allegedly represent.

a stark reminder of how much our elected officials Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in Congress openly and actively hate the populace they allegedly represent

fixed

Fair. I was just to incensed by seeing that in black and white to get too specific.

Aimless, it's Dems too— they could have pushed something through, but didn't. They're a bunch of spineless fucking assholes, all of them, every single one, and deserve nothing but absolute scorn.

Also, thanks Neanderthal. <3

I'm not sure what exactly the Dems can do unilaterally. Not gonna blame them for not accepting a $6,000,000,000 slush fund in exchange for a small one-time check

I have no idea what I'm going to do if this gig I'm testing for on Thursday doesn't work out.

None of us can drive the national process that's really needed to deal with what you're facing. But as inadequate as it may seem, I think ILX would respond favorably to a gofundme to help keep one of our own out of hunger or homelessness. At least it's something to consider if it comes to losing your gig.

I mean the correct thing to do would be to commit murder-suicide with their Republican counterparts and allow the US populace to distribute their collected fortunes in equal parts to every household making under 50 grand a year.

Aimless, that is very kind and thoughtful. I appreciate it very much.

Luckily, my husband makes enough that we can probably juuuuuust scrape by. It's more that I'm already not an equal contributor, so to speak, and feel really crappy about it.

it would never work, Republicans would back out of it at the last second and the Dems would commit suicide anyway out of respect for the pact

But as inadequate as it may seem, I think ILX would respond favorably to a gofundme to help keep one of our own out of hunger or homelessness. At least it's something to consider if it comes to losing your gig.

just want to second that. i think aimless was probably referring to ANY of us, not just table, but if not, i will go further and say that. don't be afraid to ask for help.

otm. and we've done it before!

It's true!

That’s messed up, table. Hang in there. <3

xps

My mom just texted me that my (adult) cousin who commented that "masks are stupid" on my daughter's instagram page is now in the ER on a ventilator.

Jfc that's bleak.

My apologies: he's in the ICU, his whole family is infected but he's the only one in critical care.

Rural deep-red state, ~1 hour from the nearest city, nobody wears masks, etc.

sounds like a very sad story. i hope it doesn't have an even sadder ending.

Yeah, I mean, I do hope he and his family recover. I also hope that he realizes that his previous stance was idiotic.

i thought this was interesting https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/covid-middle-of-nowhere/

I mean lol i know: "The week before, she and I had celebrated my birthday at a restaurant outside in Granbury."

These stories are not new, but they need to get told over and over anyway.

Yeah my Mom is genuinely spooked now that it has hit her general area. She's evolved from a denier, to a "it's other-people's-problem", to now she's wearing a mask/curbside pickup of groceries, sundries & provisions, etc. She's in a bit more of a town than where my cousin lives but still fairly rural compared to most of us who post here.

I harbor no ill-will towards my cousin, I legitimately hope he recovers but the only interaction I've had with him in the last few years is this comment on my daughter's IG account.

The story shouldn't have been framed as rural vs. populated but "I did everything right and then slipped up in this one way the state is all but encouraging us to do."

A friend's daughter (age 14) was thought to have "mono" back in March and was never tested for COVID. A short time later she had an onset of Type 1 diabetes and now the doctors think she had COVID and it triggered a genetic marker. Not sure if I'm relaying this medical information correctly but as far as I can tell that is the story.

milo otm, the way so many states have all but encouraged the spread of the virus in the name of keeping capital moving because the federal response to relief has been so miserable and catastrophic is really an enormous issue.

yes but the state paying people is equivalent to those souls being harvested by satan, unfortunately :(

the thing is if you did pay everybody to stay home, they'd fuckin do it, which is why the government can't possibly do it, because it makes too much sense. there'd still be people violating stay at home orders, obviously, but people wouldn't need distractions so much if they weren't worried about how they could survive the next 25 years after their lives are ruined by this pandemic.

Bootstraps ideology is among the most painful and pain-inflicting myths promulgated in this rotten country.

neanderthal and table otm, individualism is the real virus. watching all of this has really made me hate this country and its culture in a way i don't think i'll ever be able to shake.

like i'm fantasizing about what it might be like to live in a country that acknowledges and values collective existence and i hope some day i'll be able to experience that, even if it's just for an extended visit. i doubt i'll ever be able to permanently break free of this place considering my financial debts (which are very much tied to its dysfunctional systems in the first place, and not having the wherewithal to navigate them correctly).

I've seen people post GoFundMes and write "i wouldn't normally do this because I think GoFundMes are tacky..." and it's like, no no no, you have it backwards. It's not pathetic or weak to ask for help - the reason nobody should be doing GoFundMes for life expenses is because *they shouldn't fucking have to*.

the other thing is, many people wind up borrowing money from well-meaning friends and family in lieu of doing a GoFundMe, and then whose well-meaning friends and family wind up overdoing it and then they need help years later.

pretty much nobody should have to work 40 hours anymore, we barely need the human output due to years of automation. let people live in peace with a livable wage. ban eat billionaires.

hear hear.

More good news?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/absolutely-remarkable-no-one-who-got-modernas-vaccine-trial-developed-severe-covid-19

i am SUPER not a statistician but:

30 out of 185 total cases in the placebo group developed severe symptoms. about 1 out of 6.

nobody out of 11 total cases in the vaccinated group developed severe symptoms. to match the placebo group it would have needed to be 2 out of 11.

feels like..... very small sample size going on here

The statisticianly way of looking at this is: Assume there is no difference between groups, and check how unlikely the observed outcome is. We have 196 cases, 30 of them severe.

So: Fill a sack with 196 balls, of which 185 are marked "placebo" and 11 are marked "vaccine". When we draw 30 balls out of the sack, what is the probability that zero have "vaccine" on them? This can be taken to mean: what is the probability of the outcome being 0 in a binomial distribution with 30 trials and probability 11/196.

The answer turns out to be just below 18%. Low enough to be mildly encouraging, not low enough to make the classical statistician give up his baseline assumption that the probability is the same in both groups. It is certainly not "absolutely remarkable", unless I'm missing something important here.

And to be entirely clear re Tracer's hunch: yes, this is about small sample sizes. If the entire study was, say, four times as big, and we had the numbers 120 out of 740 in placebo group severe, 0 out of 44 in vaccine group severe, the corresponding probability would be less than one in a thousand (rather more than one in six), and pretty much a clear-cut case.

parenthesis should be: "rather than more than one in six".

Tracer’s been away from spring training stats for a while