I was shocked when I first saw the use of master/slave as tech terms back in the 70s. Then i got used to it.
Because I was so accustom to their use, I was surprised and amused by the proposed change. But upon reflection I think the change would be good, not so much to pander to people who are offended by them now, to but stop propagating theses terms and stop normalizing their use for future generations.
A shutdown by itself is not a solution.
I agree 100%! Most countries that have been successful at containing the virus, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and China, either didn't use a shutdown at all or used it in combination with other methods, such as test, trace, treat, and isolate. A shutdown is the method of last resort. You are absolutely correct that it would have been better for me to say they SF Bay Area acted quicker than NYC and that is why the had much less of a problem. Unfortunately the US doesn't have testing and tracing in place yet so we are in a bind. The shutdowns bought us time, as you said, but that time has been squandered just like the months of January, February, and March were squandered.
One of the most informative graphics about what is going on is covid trends. Most countries started out with exponentially growth with cases doubling roughly every 3 days. Then when countries put countermeasures in place, the growth stops and the number of daily new cases plummets. You can see that the US does not yet have the virus under control. We should not be lifting the lockdowns if we don't have other measures in place. To successfully fight this virus you need to be pro-active not reactive. Opening up too soon without other measures in place will be retro-active, and destroy what was gained through great sacrifice. The US is in a bind.
However this also means very few people [in the SF Bay Area] as a percentage have got infected and have immunity. As offices open up next week how will the Bay Area deal with it?
It sounds like you are referring to herd immunity. Unfortunately you need to have at least 70% of the population immune for herd immunity to have an effect. The UK toyed with this in early March going so far as to say that they wanted people to get infected. That plan was utter idiocy and they soon backed off from throwing their country over the cliff. The problem is that when 10% or 20% of the population gets infected like in NYC, Spain, and Italy the health care systems get overwhelmed and this causes the death rate to go up. In Spain they were euthanizing people on ventilators who were over 65 to free them up for younger people.
If two places open up the same way, the one with the most active cases will have the most risk of the virus spreading rapidly again. There is little difference between having 0% of the population immune and having 20% immune.
The US is really between a rock and a hard place. They used the crudest tool possible, the general lockdown. Then they screwed over the working class by not guaranteeing them a substantial portion of their salary which was done in France and other places. Plenty of "stimulus" money was spent in the US but the vast majority of it went to fill corporate coffers. This means the lockdowns are not sustainable. But the US really screwed the pooch by squandering the first 5 months of 2020 without implementing test, trace, treat, and isolate. Unless the US starts acting sensibly the situation may get much much worse both economically and health-wise. The only rational reason for the actions of the US government is if they want to create massive social unrest.
Whether planned or not, that seems what we are headed for. There are some glimmers of hope though. The biggest one I see is taking Vitamin D daily. It's been known for years that Vitamin D is essential for the immune system to function properly in fighting respiratory infections. The mechanisms are known and there have been many studies showing how effective it is.
We don't yet have double blind clinical studies of using Vitamin D to combat covid-19 but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. A study from Malaysia found that having sufficient Vitamin D reduced the covid-19 death rate by a factor of 8! Vitamin D deficiency would go a long way to explaining the racial disparities in severity and fatality. Our skin creates Vitamin D naturally from sunlight but darker skin create it much slower and people with darker skin tend to have a higher prevalence of low Vitamin D. But many light skinned people also have low Vitamin D.
Vitamin D is much safer than HCQ. It's also dirt cheap. You can get a year's supply in the US for $15. But the best thing is that many studies have shown it is very effective against covid-19. This is not at all surprising since it is known to be a vital for our respiratory immune system to function properly. It's possible that Vitamin D is the magic bullet we need to make it safe to lift the lockdowns (if used along with common sense tools such as wearing masks and social distancing).
I don't know why the US and Europe bungled this so badly. One thing seems clear. If there is some sort of deep state that is really in control they they are just as stupid and scientifically and mathematically illiterate as our leaders. I was hoping that at least one European country would take this seriously in time to prevent a significant outbreak. That country could have been a model to the rest of Europe and for the US. But alas, they all bungled it.
People might want to study what is unique about NYC that made it this bad. Tokyo is a bigger and denser city. Delhi has a bigger metro system and also more crowded. Moscow is just as cold and has an almost as big metro system. San Francisco and Atlanta are also International gateways for flights.
The answer is already known and fairly obvious. Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives. Gov. Cuomo says New York City will not be quarantined: "It cannot happen". Cuomo is not the only one to blame. Fighting the spread of this virus proactively was extremely rare in the US. Contrast the NYC response with this response in the San Francisco Bay Area: Meet the doctor who ordered the Bay Area's coronavirus lockdown, the first in the U.S..
Countries and locations that were proactive and acted swiftly have been spared the disasters seen elsewhere. Taiwan started their covid-19 preparations in December of 2019. They were predicted to be one of the hardest hit nations due to their close proximity to China. They've had only 442 cases and 7 deaths. That's only 19 cases per million population. The reported cases in the US come to 5,400 per million population, 280 times higher!
Yes, China dropped the ball at first (then they showed the world how to contain the spread). Yes, the WHO dropped the ball by not recommending cancelling all passenger flights in and out of China. But governments in Europe and the USA massively dropped the ball because ultimately they were responsible for protecting the health and well being of the citizens (not to mention their economies). This catastrophe was easily preventable in Europe and especially in the US. The danger was well know. The simple steps to stop it were also well known. There were decisions made to ignore the warnings; ignore what happened in China (and the great lengths they went to to contain the virus); ignore the science and math; and to not take the virus seriously.
It's baffling. I'm also baffled by the why Vitamin D is not making headlines as one of the best tools we have for fending off the infection and preventing deaths. We don't have results from double blind clinical trials yet but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
Saying that the lock down works is like saying that a sludge hammer can be used to pound in a nail. Yes, it can do the job, but odds are, there are better tools for the job.
Hell yes there are better tools for the job! Look at countries that have stopped the virus, for example: Taiwan, South Korea, (eventually) China. They used other tools such as test, track, and isolate. There was no general lockdown in South Korea, only specific targeted quarantines. Lockdowns are the tool of last resort for countries that lacked the scientific and mathematical literacy to take the virus seriously and use proactive methods to stop it.
The idea of the general lockdown was to give us a respite from the exponential spread so we had time to play catch up and get test, track, and isolate working. Unfortunately, the US still does not take this coronavirus pandemic seriously so we still don't have adequate test, track, and isolate ready to go.
Taiwan started their preparations to fight covid-19 in late December of 2019. Due to their proximity to China they were forecast to be one of the hardest hit countries but they were able to limit their numbers to 441 cases and 7 deaths. The US and Europe could have easily done the same. Instead, we squandered January, February, and most of March by ignoring the dire warnings coming from the scientific community and ignoring what was happening in South Korea, Taiwan, and China.
Then the US squandered the sacrifices made during the lockdown in a number of ways. Test, trace, and isolate was not put into place. Effective lockdowns were mostly reactive in specific locales so the number of new cases per day kept rising outside of these specific areas. Social distancing rules and mask wearing were ignored and scorned by many people.
The US is probably the one industrialized country that is least prepared to end their lockdown because the number of daily new cases is rising in many areas, no reasonable alternatives to the lockdown (test, trace, isolate; masks; social distancing) have been put in place and obeying even simple common sense rules such as wearing a mask when in public have been scorned and rebelled against.
Ending a lockdown early with no viable substitute in place and with people flaunting social distancing and mask wearing will virtually assure much more spread of the virus and greatly extend and deepen the health and economic hardship caused by the scientific and mathematical illiteracy of our leaders.
Their junk code and methodology were only reviewed after they massively impacted the world. At best that was scientific malpractice.
If Western countries (and the WHO) had been paying attention to the reports coming out of Imperial College early this year then they would have prevented covid-19 from spreading to their countries. Getting the exact numbers right when modelling exponential growth is difficult to impossible. The message from Imperial College was clear and accurate: without taking measures to control it, this virus spreads and kills rapidly. TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY! ACT NOW!
The problem is not that it's hard to impossible to make exact numerical predictions of exponential growth, the problem is that the predictions of exponential growth were ignored by most countries in the West and by the WHO. Those countries that did take the virus, and its exponential growth, seriously were able to contain it: South Korea, Taiwan, Chine (eventually), Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia. This one graph is the best way I've found to track how countries (and now US states) are doing in their fight against covid-19: Covid Trends.
This pandemic in Western countries is due to our leaders either ignoring or not understanding the science and math including that coming out of Imperial College. If you want to keep abreast of the covid-19 situation I highly recommend these two YouTube channels: Dr. John Campbell (he is a professor of Nursing, not an MD) and MedCram. If our leaders or their advisors had been paying attention to these channels then they would have averted this disaster. Much of their early prediction were based on the studies coming out of Imperial College. These channels are still mostly ignored. If our leaders or news media were paying attention to them then everyone would be taking Vitamin D and the death rate due to covid-19 would almost certainly go down drastically.
There are no peer reviewed double blind studies of the efficacy of Vitamin D in treating covid-19 but the amount of circumstantial evidence is massive. In one study of covid-19 patients in Malaysia, the death rate among people who had enough Vitamin D was 8 to 10 times lower than the death rate of people who were low on Vitamin D.
Since Vitamin D was already known to be extremely effective in preventing and minimizing most respiratory infections, Dr. John Campbell was recommending it before any of the papers about Vitamin D and covid-19 came out. Here is a recent clip of Dr. John Campbell explaining the importance of Vitamin D: Vitamin D on the news.
Waiting for a peer reviewed double blind study before telling people to take Vitamin D is nuts! Likewise, waiting for these reports coming from Imperial College to be peer reviewed is nuts. The covid-19 pandemic is very serious. All 50 states of the US are starting to open up. For states that have an R naught greater than one, opening up could be disastrous. We should be able to see the paper before it is peer reviewed. Trying to silence or delay the information coming out of Imperial College is going full speed ahead in the wrong direction. We should have been listening to their warnings back in January, February, March, and April. We should also listen to their warnings in May.
According to this how it works video from Abbott labs this is indeed an antigen test, not an antibody test. The video explains that a chemical solution cracks open the virus exposing the RNA then the machine replicates a portion of the RNA thus making it detectable.
As you said, this is not the new 15 minute test from Belgium. That test is also an antigen test but has low sensitivity. The test from Belgium comes in the form of blotting paper like a pregnancy test. This is very different from the Abbot machine and the Abbot machine does not seem to have the same sensitivity problem as the test from Belgium.
TL;DR: the problem is not that China is lying about their containment of the virus. The problem is Western nations like the US and the UK have chosen to ignore the lessons from China and have thus chosen to not contain the virus which will end up being a death sentence for millions of people. So sad
China could also be lying about current infection rates in China. They have motivation to downplay infection rates if only to keep panic to a minimum.
That is extremely unlikely and probably impossible. For example, read this interview with the WHO epidemiologist Bruce Aylward who visited China. To carefully craft the numbers day after day to make it seem like the infection rate is falling when it's not would require a vast conspiracy and would be exposed.
The truth is much simpler. After initially dropping the ball, China moved rapidly. They built a new hospital in 10 days. They enforced a lock down and quarantines. Not surprisingly, these drastic measures worked. Unfortunately, despite being forewarned by what happened in China, most Western nations are still not taking this seriously. The UK government said spreading the virus is good because it will create herd immunity. They said they don't want to stop it.
The two best sources of information on the corona virus that I've found so far are:
The big problem with COVID-19 is that 5% of those infected get seriously ill and need hospital care and a ventilator in order to survive. We only have 1 million hospital beds in the US and we have fewer ventilators. If this spreads rapidly in the US, like many epidemiologists are predicting, then we won't have enough hospital beds and ventilators to go around. If half of the US gets infected at roughly the same time then we will need about 8 million hospital beds and ventilators for the 5% who are seriously sick.
Only 0.006% of the people in China got infected. They were able to contain the virus. We could contain it in the US too but we've just been pissing away precious time as the number of cases more than double every 4 days. We've had weeks, even months, to prepare but our response has been reactive instead of proactive so the spread continues. We keep closing barn doors after the horses have gotten out. In South Korea they have drive through testing and much more sensitive testing kits than those in the US while we are struggling to get working testing kits distributed.
The US used to lead the world in healthcare technology and science. Now science is a bad word in some sectors and healthcare is more about making money than saving lives. This is a time when we need strong leadership and instead we get platitudes and campaigning. So sad
Two of the best sources of information I've found are:
It is important to pay attention to the percentage of severe cases which was roughly 20% according to WHO with 5% critical. If the infection becomes widespread in any area, even in a rich country with good healthcare, then the number of critical and severe cases will far exceed the number of hospital and ICU beds available. This will send the death rate up to 5% or higher. Even if you can convert buildings to hospitals overnight, there's not going to be enough oxygen to go around.
I recommend Dr. John Campbell's YouTube channel for accurate, non-alarmist, non-BS information about this Coronavirus outbreak. He is still predicting it will become a pandemic and healthcare services will get overwhelmed by the severe cases.
Lessig actually said:
[...] I believe it was a mistake to take this money [from Epstein], even if anonymous.
The fine summary and the NYT got it backwards implying he supported taking anonymous donations from the likes of Epstein. This is why Lessig is suing the NYT.
Lessig was spot on. The NYT and (unsurprisingly the
Repeating your lies over and again does not make them true.
Google absolutely did not copy everything. This was made perfectly clear in the early trials. The implementations (which are the bulk of everything) are different. Google used a "white room" implementation. Yes, Oracle tried to claim some of the implementations were the same but they got laughed out of court.
Oracle (and you with your lies) are trying to outlaw white room implementation which would also outlaw reverse engineering interfaces which was done by Samba and many many other open source projects. It would outlaw making compatible implementations.
The entire personal computer industry was based on a white room implementation of IBM's BIOS. IBM published their BIOS source code in a Technical Reference Manual (which, AFAIK, started the "This page intentionally left blank" meme). The coders doing the white room implementation did not see the IBM code. They were given the API specifications and coded to them, just like the Google implementation of the Java API.
If Google had copied everything like you claim then no one would support them. Certainly not the EFF. If you look at their Amicus Curiae brief then it is perfectly clear that either the EFF is lying to the Supreme Court or some asshat on Slashdot is lying.
For example, the EFF says:
[...] while the Java implementing code may be copyrightable, the Java declarations are not.
I don't know why you keep posting the same lies over and over. Did Google shoot your wife and run off with your dog?
A monolithic binary is a large attack vector and subject to many MANY bugs as we've discovered.
IOW, if systemd did not exist then it would be necessary for the NSA to create it.
Drone delivery has already been proven to work in Saudi Arabia.
I believe that any enlightened civilization has a duty to ensure that platforms exist for any speaker to reach any who want to hear. No one is forcing anyone to listen, after all, but it's important that the platform exist.
So if I have very little money, do you think I should be subsidized to spread whatever BS I want? Should I be subsidized to be in touch with my girlfriend and other people?
Yesterday the Cloudflare CEO said that 8chan would be able to get similar services from a Cloudflare competitor. If no Cloudflare competitor and no hardware provider wants to deal with 8chan then that would reflect that very few people want to hear what they have to say. It is important to protect vile speech but I don't think we should subsidize it like you seem to be suggesting. If there are people who want to hear the vile speech then let them pay for it. Don't force others to pay for it or support it.
All cultural progress must necessarily begin with ideas that are very unpopular.
This is probably true but that does not mean we should subvert the marketplace of ideas by subsidizing the most unpopular ones.
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