Coronavirus, the Late August Edition

 Coronavirus, the Late August Edition

       By the Numbers 

The FDA has granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine. One less excuse for the refusenicks.

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The number of daily new cases and the total number of active cases continues to grow.  My earlier prediction that we would hit 2 million active cases by Aug 18 was exceeded by 5 days. 

The rate of increase is leveling off.  We currently have an estimated active case count of 2.7 million.  The average number of daily new cases last 7 days was 120,600, increasing by just 1.05% per day, compared to late July when it was between 10-15% per day, but we haven't plateaued yet.

If it wasn't for children being sent back to school I would say curve was about to level out around 3 million, followed by a sharp drop sometime the first week of September.  This fire has burned very bright, and against an ever reducing pile of fuel. There are only so many unvaccinated left, and by the end of August, the vaccination rate nation wide should hit 77%. 

But the politicos are insisting on sending children back to school.  And regardless of how well protected they are, this churn of the population cannot reduce the amount of Covid cases, so it can only increase it.  

A week after school opens, there will be cases among the children, which will have already passed onto their families.  A week later we will be back on virtual learning.  The systems are set up already, so this time around it shouldn't have even been a question.

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On Variants.  All Covid is effectively the Delta variant  now.  It was 51% of the cases in June, 83% at the end of July, and is well over 95% now.

Lambda is concentrated in LA and Houston areas and represents about 1% the total cases in those areas.  Any articles you read regarding Lambda's mortality rate, infectiousness, and ability to "breakthrough" vaccines is hyperbole right now.  I noticed the word "may" distributed liberally in those articles.  

We don't really know.  

But, if Lambda was more infectious, lethal, or vaccine avoiding compared to Delta, I think we would have a better hint of it by now.  

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The articles about breakthrough rates and Delta and vaccination loss of efficacy were across the board. But now I am seeing a consensus with the major medical services.

I have had to rewrite this section 4 times in 9 days due to the deluge of newly  uncovered information.

Rather than posting various reports I'll just cut to the (current) finals.

The effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines among front-line workers declined to 66% after the delta variant became dominant.  The formal report, dated Aug 18 from the CDC is here.

This is pretty much in alignment with Israel's health ministry regarding  putting Delta  at 64%.

Now take this with a grain of salt.  Assuming front-line workers are properly protected, but they are also exposed 8 or more hours a day.   Time of exposure is also a factor.  15 minutes in the grocery store is not really a problem.

Since May, there has been 41,000+ deaths in the USA due to Covid.  The CDC's counts of total breakthrough deaths at 1,829.  This puts the vaccination to unvaccinated ratio at around 19-1 for hospitalizations and death.  I have seen over a dozen reports from individual hospitals all saying the same thing. 

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The topic of booster shots evolved quickly in the last 2 weeks.  What you heard in beginning of the month may not apply now.

By mid September, all American adults will be eligible for a booster if their last vaccine was 8 months ago, or if they are immunocompromised.

It is recommended your booster be the same brand as your vaccine, but it is not mandatory.   There is some chatter that mixed vaccines is better.  

At this time, the booster will be exactly the same vaccine as you received earlier.  Work is being done on tuning them for "Delta", but that is still a work in progress.

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As mask requirements are being heavily suggested or required again, the mask-deniers are back in force.  Beware being presented with studies with false headlines.  I just got one with the headline broadly proclaiming masks don't work, when in the summary the study proclaims they do work.  Followed by a long line of comments of "I knew it!" from people that didn't read the article.   This particular study was not even about testing if masks work or not, but about some masks work better than others.  

And proper fit is important.  

So nothing new here.

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There is a good article on myths being put out by refusenicks, mask-deniers and other "it ain't so crowd" put out by the Boston University.  ... here...

On Battery Life

On Battery Life

By the Numbers.

We no longer can live without our devices of convenience.  All of which require frequent charging of their batteries to remain active.  Over time the batteries grow weaker and eventually fail.  And most times this leads to replacing the device.  Whether that is preplanned obsolescence or adopting the latest and greatest technology is your call.

There are steps that can be done extend the battery life of your favorite device.  Put another way, avoiding things that are damaging the battery.

My formal training is with electronics and as such, I have worked on a variety of electronic/electrical equipment, including battery chargers.  Most recently with a company called Lithium Battery in Plymouth Meeting, PA.  They make specialized batteries for things like submersibles.  Over the years I have observed numerous behaviors about batteries and evolved strategies on mitigating them.

Here are some thoughts you may want to consider.  Some of these are easy to implement, others border on being a pain in the ass.  They are not "all or nothing".  Just decide on the ones you wish to follow. 

Batteries will get weaker over time.  This is unavoidable as batteries store energy chemically, and over time the chemicals dispersed in the structure, or the structure is weakened and breaks down.  As the chemicals are stored in a cellular  pattern, individual cells break and become useless, but the remaining cells is holding charges, and so the battery gets weaker, but doesn't fail.

#1)  Don't leave your device on the charger over night.  

Chargers are, by and large, built by the lowest bidder, and as such, are probably very cheap, and cheaply built.  Leaving the device on the charger over night will cause the battery to over charge by a very small amount, for a long period of time.  Overcharging will cause the battery to weaken sooner.

The truth is, battery chargers do not "Know" when the battery is charged.  Cheap ones from the dollar store will just pump full power until bad things happen.  More advanced ones, like what comes with your cell phone has some ways of monitoring the situation, by temperature and power storage estimates, and will reduce the charge to a trickle when the battery is thought to be near fully charged.  This greatly extends the life of the battery, but is not perfect either.  

One way to tell if this is happening is when you take your phone off the charger first thing in the morning. Is it warm to the touch? If so, it was over charging the battery.

Anecdotal story:  I was issued a new company laptop way back when.  And I used it to entertain my son on a long drive.   I didn't have the ability to charge the laptop from the car.  I put in a DVD of a movie and took off.  The DVD ran the whole movie and just about died when we arrived at our destination.

Next year, same trip, same laptop.  The battery died half way to the destination.  The backup battery also ran flat before arriving.  One of the differences is that laptop was on a charger 24x7 for a year.  

Anecdotal story:  In 2017, I received a company laptop, a Microsoft Surface.  Which I basically used as desktop.  At home, it rarely left the cradle, but I also spent half my time on the road, so it wasn't on a charger 24x7.  About a year later, the batteries expanded (swelled, bulged), causing the case to round and rock.  But those batteries were now compromised and at risk of fire and explosion.  I called Microsoft, and even though the unit was out of warranty, they replaced the unit and copied over the drive for free.  While waiting for the work to complete, I found out that they had a warehouse full of these compromised units.  This is a major problem for Microsoft.  Over the next year, all four of the units we bought in 2017 failed in a like manner.  

I did Google search on this problem, I see units still being reported with battery "Swells", but many of the victims are reporting older models, and so are in the range of when our units were purchased.  I also found a reference just last year of firmware changes to prevent overcharging in Surface units.  My thought is that Surface batteries are still a problem, and I would not recommend buying one.

#2)  Don't charge your device to 100%

As you get closer to the battery capacity, the battery will also be damaged by a very-very small amount.  And over the years this adds up to a degradation of the charge.  For my phone, I only take the charge to 80% and then remove it from the charger.  It seems to work well.  My phone is now 4 years old and the the battery effectiveness is still rated at 80%.

I realize this tactic is in the range of "Pain-in-the-ass".  And I don't have a measured difference between taking it to 80%, and taking it to 100% before removal.  Once again, it's your call.

Now the companies know all this and do their best.  When your device is at 100%, it is not really at full charge.  It's at 80%(ish)  They set it that way to protect the phone from fully charged damage.  So when I remove the phone at 80%, it's closer to 64% of the real charge.  And for my needs, that is good enough.

And example of an excellent charging system is the Toyota Prius.  When introduced in 1997, there was a fear that they would be replacing their battery packs at 5 years, costing $3,500 (1997) and creating an environmental problem disposing of 110 pounds of lead acid batteries.  

And that didn't happen.  After 5 years, Prius's batteries were at about 80% effectiveness, more than sufficient to provide hybrid assist when needed.  Toyota accomplished this by really babying their batteries.  They spent significant R&D on the charging system.  In the end, they keep the charge on the batteries between 40-60%.  We know this because hypermiling enthusiasts modified Prius's to accept full charge in their efforts to get more MPG out of them.  And it worked, but we have no stats on how long the batteries lasted.

#3) Run on battery if you are using an external display.

The display is the major consumer of power of a laptop or phone, by a lot.  If you are using an outboard display/keyboard/mouse etc... then the battery will run all day long with normal usage.  Charge the laptop to about 80%, then unplug it.  

#4) Don't leave your device in the car.  

The trunk is OK, but the passenger compartment gets very hot, shortening the life of the battery.  I had a Garmin GPS unit on the dash board for about 10 years, it's last 5 years the battery was just enough to boot up and die.  In the end, the batteries were so dead, that even being on a power cord, it wouldn't boot up. 

Your car battery also suffers in the summer heat.  That is when it suffers the most damage. You only notice the problem in the winter because a cold engine needs more current than a warm engine to start.

Running battery saving modes.

There are many settings to help extend the length of the charge.  In essence, they all reduce performance and energy usage, but come up to full power when the device is in use. 

Which ones you should use is situational to you.  How mobile are you?  If mobile, and away from  convenient charging, then use them all.  Dim the screen a bit, slow the processor, set sleep for 5 minutes.  

If you are on a docking station. Turn them all off.  I find them really annoying to have my screen dim after a minute of reading.  But again, this is situational, you have to be the judge, and the settings are available to you.

;) Except for iPhone auto dimming.   Auto dimming is controlled by  4 of the settings, in different locations on the phone that are available to you, but one is not.  So don't bother.  It's going to auto-dim on you whether you want it to or not.  Consider it a feature. ;)

 

Coronavirus, the Mid August Edition 2

 Coronavirus, the Mid August Edition

       By the Numbers 

Often these missives start immediately after publishing the last, and numbers edited and new articles added over time.  This one was no exception.  However there has been so much news on the Covid front that the the overall theme and cadence of its unpublished predecessor is no longer supporting the ad Hominem like alterations.  So first, back to the basics.

On Wed., Aug 11th, we had 144,635 new cases, for an estimated total of 1,690,000 active cases.  The nationwide growth rate is averaging 38% increase for the week, the week before was 37%, and the week before was around 21%.  The last time we had that many new cases, and growing, was November 11th, 2020.  One major difference is then, the weekly growth rate was 5% per week.

There is no sugar coating this, it's horrible.    In June, the average was 12,500 new cases a day, and an active case estimate of 270,000. 

So what went wrong?  Most of  country opened up before the vaccination plans were completed.  Vaccinated people celebrated and went on their lives, while the unvaccinated decided they were safe by virtue of of the arms of the vaccinated.  I'm being kind here.  I have seen their "echo chambers", and I lack the words to describe it.

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If you are Immunocompromised, then soon, a Covid "booster" shot will be available for you.  Dr. Fauci announced on 8/5 that approval for the boosters is in the works.

Priorities will be for the Immunocompromised and health care workers.  Among the 5,000+ known "breakthrough" cases, 44% are  with Immunocompromised people.  

Take a note on those numbers.  So far, there are only 5,000(ish) known "Breakthrough" cases, out of 3 million since May.  Those would be cases where the symptoms were severe enough that the person sought treatment.  Surely there are more, but they never reached the level of needing to seek help.  If you just look at the headlines you would think every other case was a breakthrough.

And the headlines will imply booster shots will be required for everyone.  So far, for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the 6 month measurements show about only a 3% degradation in efficacy.  The articles regarding the J&J, is across the board in the 6 month efficacy tests.  Some say it increases in efficacy, others report a steep drop.  So a booster there may be in order there.  

There is a study being publish in Yale's Axios that puts the degradation in effectiveness much lower for Pfizer Moderna, especially against the Delta variant.  But that study has not yet been peer reviewed and contradicts other studies.  Stay tuned.

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Last month I reported the numbers posted by the CDC about "breakthrough" infections of fully vaccinated people in May.  They were small, totaling around 5,000 cases, constituting .15% of the hospitalizations and .8% of the deaths associated with Covid. 

The numbers were so small, the CDC decide to discontinue counting them.  That decision has been called into question and served as propaganda fodder for the refusenicks.  However, many states have continued counting and the problem of "breakthroughs" is growing and accelerating.  It is the states that do the actual counting anyway, the CDC is just accruing data sent by the states.  But without a single source, we have to go with a number of sources/articles/reports.

First, let me say, if you are vaccinated, the news is not as bad as the refusenick propaganda would have you believe.  Here are some numbers:

In Israel a 14 week study followed 1,500 healthcare workers looking for breakthrough cases. 39 became infected or 2.6%.  67% had mild symptoms, 33% were asymptomatic.  None were hospitalized.

See: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/07/israeli-study-finds-26-covid-breakthrough-infection-rate

Cape Cod had a super spreader event in July.  469 cases of Covid, 346 were fully vaccinated.  Of the 346, about 1/3 was Delta, 1/3 Alpha, 1/3 unknown.  5 were hospitalized, none died.  Also noted in the article is that the source is the CDC, so they seem back in the game on counting breakthroughs.

See:  https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

Iceland is having a surge of Covid, despite being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world (96% at least partial) The counts are small by US Standards, from the 10's in June and July to about 100 cases a day in August.  But no deaths since May.

See: https://qz.com/2044284/icelands-rising-covid-19-cases-demonstrate-vaccine-efficacy/

The example of the fleeing Texas legislature.   All vaccinated, 1 had it, 5 more got it.  2 had symptoms.

My wife's company's upper staff, all vaccinated.  5 caught it, 2 had mild symptoms.

The spread of the virus in the US has been described as a "Pandemic of the unvaccinated"  And in hospitals around the country the doctors will say it is true.  I have read 3 or 4 articles, which I did not log, from hospitals in Los Angeles, Georgia and Texas where the hospitalized are described as 95+% unvaccinated. And this seems to still be true.

This is all evidence that the vaccine is protecting its patients, and very well, but it is also clear that the vaccinated are getting and spreading Covid, we are just not paying the ultimate price for it.

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The fear of Covid seems to have hit some of the refusenicks.  Vaccinations have been up for a couple of weeks.  Almost 800,000 a day from a low of 400,000.  The peak was about 3.5 million a day.  

There is no clear vector to follow here.  The groups are clusters and not homogeneous within a cluster.  

As the unvaccinated are disproportionately feeling this 5th surge of the virus, by almost 2-1, so to will the effects of getting more vaccinated improve the situation with those groups.  

By that I mean, as an example if there are 102,000 new cases in the USA, it will feel like 204,000 if you are in the unvaccinated clusters.  Last year there were only 23 worse days than yesterday.  So in those areas, it is going to get much worse. 

Even in Pennsylvania, after hovering at 140 new cases a day throughout June, yesterday was over 2,000, last week the growth of it concentrated in 6 counties.  This week, 50 out of 67 counties had reported over 40% growth. In New Jersey, just one county has half the new cases. 

This is not a tragedy.  Tragedies are accidental and just happen.  This is an Atrocity!  A man made event.

Once again the Disinformation Dozen are in the news as they are a main source of antivax hysteria.  A later study has shown that since April, 73% of social media misinformation on vaccines derives from one of these 12 people.

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The refusenicks have been fed the lie that this surge is due to undocumented immigrants being flown around the country.  At first it was 200,000 of them.  But as that number is not sufficiently scary  sounding, so now it's 2 million.   Meanwhile they deliberately reduce the numbers of refusenicks for statistical purposes to validate their world view.  One claimed only 18% (54 million) of "US Citizens" remain unvaccinated.  My calculations put it closer to 100 million.  48 million under 12 and can't, 46 million and won't, and about 6 million that are just late to the party.

And to over sell this lie, they claim that due to this immigrant surge, measles, mumps and whooping cough are also surging. Another lie they are being fed.  And its easily disproved. I looked them all up and none of them are surging, actually they are at an all time low.  Measles is at 2 (not 2 thousand, not 2 hundred, just 2) this year, down from over a 1,000 in 2017, and then that was mostly in American Samoa thanks again to the Disinformation Dozen.  Mumps are down also in the US, from about 3,500 cases around 2016 just 52 this year.  But a quick google will not show that, because mumps is increasing in the UK, and that is bubbling to the top of the results.  You also have to dig deeper for Whooping Cough, because of Finland's current outbreak is driving those articles to the top as well.

On Aug 5, Dr Fauci also counts the number of eligible but unvaccinated Americans at 100 million.  It's nice to get validation.  

So blaming 200 thousand or even 2 million immigrants for this surge is patently ridiculous.  Its an attempt to distract the conversation from the real problem.

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We hit 70% partially or fully vaccinated on July 28.  Which means we are now tracking to 70% fully vaccinated by Aug 28, partially vaccinated  around  77% the same date.  

70% has been bandied about as the herd immunity level, but that was always just a hopeful wish.  There is no fixed number, and immunologists regard herd immunity as between 70 and 80%.  So 70% was always on the low end.  And if you are talking Flu, with an R rating of 1.8, that is a lower case 'ok', and still kills 10's of thousands a year.  

But Delta's R rating of 5?  No one knows.  I'll throw a dart and say 85% (281 million) vaccinated is going to be required.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lies Continue

    The 2020 Election Lies You May Have Heard
The Lies Continue

The election is over.  The results long in the can and ratified, and yet, new lies are being created whole cloth out of nothing.

August 5, 2021, Mike Lindell (CEO "My Pillow") made the claim that he has evidence that China hacked the presidential election in 2020 and changed votes.

Including Clark County, Wisconsin.  

To be fair, he is claiming every state was hacked by the Chinese, but lets focus on Clark County for this one.

He claims that China hacked and changed 24,000 votes of Clark County's Dominion voting machines, and 45 actually won by 5,000 votes.

 There are a few problems with this.  

1)  Clark county only has 17,000 registered voters.

2) 15,000 of them voted.

3) Clark county doesn't use any machines.  They are still using paper ballots.  If you look at the data they provided the state on who won the municipal elections, it arrived as handwritten note, later scanned as a PDF file.

4)  45 actually did win the county by 5,000 votes.

What proof Mike has provided has been looked at by 6 cyber experts who state there is no evidence of anything there, let alone switching votes.

But after his proof has been repudiated, twice now, he has doubled down and stated he will broadcast the actual proof on a later date, along with discount coupons for "My Pillows"

 The CNN article, which is more complete than what I have provided, can be found here. 

I have seen Mike Lindell's commercial for his Cyber Security expo, and I have to say he does not look good.  I expected a raving loon version of his my pillow advertisements.  But no, he looks exhausted and trapped.  My impression is he painted himself into this corner, and doesn't know how to get out.  

He has bet his honor and his company on this nonsense, and has doubled down on his bet, where he is showing a 2.  It's called the "sunk cost fallacy".  He has invested so much, the only way out is to put more into it and pray.

But that is a fallacy.  What he as spent is gone.  He needs to stop digging the hole deeper so he can climb out and do damage control.  

Additional:

I went to view his Cyber Security Expo.  And it was not held.  Mike is claiming his servers were hacked.  So as of yet, he still has not presented any evidence he claims to have. 

Other lies you may have heard:

The Final Word

Addresses to Vacant Lots

Pennsylvania's Million Vote Dump

Nationwide More Ballots Than Voters

Stuffing the Ballot Box Video

Poll Worker Changing Votes Video

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Votes Changed in Frankfort Germany

PA County with More Ballots Than Voters 

More Votes than Voters in Detroit

More Votes than Voters in Atlanta