With reports from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that the preliminary analysis of their data suggests a 95% effective vaccine (one each for each company) [1], I found myself wondering about the mathematics of vaccine effectiveness. There were some small details about how numbers were calculated from the data that were lost […]
There are a lot of idiots on social media. This will come as no surprise to most of you (to the rest … well, chalk up one more). For example, in response to the COVID Tracking Project’s update of weekly COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death data, this was posted: Of […]
The Biden transition team has been hard at work preparing for the first real presidency in 4 years. While there will be a lot of work to do to claw out of the abyss created by the previous 4 years of chaos, mismanagement, and willful ignorance of reality, it’s nevertheless […]
Nothing says “we don’t care much about the health of our county residents” better than this COVID-19 “dashboard” from Collin County, TX: No case counts. No testing information. No death counts. No sense of the past, or trends. Collin County has yet again abandoned its residents to the coronavirus. Data […]
In my thoughts on the close of the experiment with American Fascism, I worried at the end about the damage that would be wrought in the months before Trump is constitutionally required to leave office. Here is a good example on the scientific side of things: www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/11/09/trump-removes-climate-program-director/ UPDATE: 10:46am This […]
One of the great victims of the four-year experiment of American Fascism has been science, along with scientific thinking. Readers of my past essays in this blog are well aware that, already in the past, this nation had a real struggle with critical thinking. I’ve worried in the past about […]
UPDATES: Last week, I started seeing the emails from my server: the disk hardware early failure detection system, known as SMART, was beginning to spot errors on a disk in the server that powers this domain (and a few others). I sort of plan for disk failures, but I hate […]
We crossed a horrific milestone this weekend: at least 200,000 Americans are now dead due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We crossed the 100,000 mark around May 27, approximately 4-5 months after the virus first landed on U.S. soil. [1] Now, 4 months after that grim […]
One of the things that often gets mentioned by coronavirus public information projects [1][2] is that certain days of the week are “under-reporting” days. Weekends tend to take the crown in this – public health reporting systems lag on weekends. I can see this in the data from our county, […]
When I step outside, it’s 81F and humid. 10am on a Sunday morning in July in Texas is brutal. It doesn’t matter to me. I need some variety in my workout routine, and I need to go outside and run. I set out west. I avoid people on the narrow […]