This video too was produced by 3Blue1Brown, the man who did the previous one on exponential growth as a way of understanding the pandemic.

In this clip he runs several simulations of COVID-19's spread. Like all mathematical models, this one involves simplifications and hence is not exactly correct. But again like all good models, it does a great job of identifying the principles and variables that truly matter.

Particularly, he looks at what happens if you adjust things like personal hygiene, social distancing, bans on travel, and communicability. He thus identifies and prioritizes remedial policies and makes it possible for non-healthcare people to understand what is happening around us. In so doing, he also demonstrates the great importance of monitoring potential pandemic agents as soon as they enter the human species. Disease control is something that deserves a LOT of investment.

The bad news comes towards the end of the clip, where he highlights the criticality of testing early and aggressively to prevent a pandemic from gaining a foothold. That is an area where the United States, having in the last few years dramatically cut funding for infectious disease work, was far too slow and hence magnified the current problems tremendously. Also unsettling is the point he makes at about 21:00, where he shows that if you take all the remedial steps to contain the disease and then open things back up, the pandemic begins to accelerate in a second wave. What that suggests is that we are buying time and saving lives until a vaccine or something comparable is devised. COVID-19 is not something that is going away until then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs&feature=youtu.be



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2020 08:54PM by Lot's Wife.

Does he factor in sincere prayer?

Does he factor in faith?

How about a good, inexpensive placebo, one all of us can access? Is that factored in?

And show me in the Bible where ghawd mentions relying on this so-called science!


Get thee behind me, Satan’s secret agent lady!

I just wish God were conversant with math. He would have done much better with that creation stuff.

Here's hoping you can surpass your golf score of 1,000!

The power of BELIEF old dog. I BELIEVE jesus will fight this virus eventually....any day now....aaah crap we're on our own again it looks like. Jesus may get infected if he does anything. Forgot about that. We can't all be that surprised that jesus left us hanging again are we?

Thanks for this.

What I don’t understand is why every country didn’t just close its borders straight away, stopped international travel. I mean the world had to do that anyway in the end...Surely that would have contained it? What did the governments expect would happen?!

Because in the past, the economic damage wasn't worth the estimated risk. They'd all petered out with far less spread.

Mike Leavitt said paraphrasing: anything you do before hand seems alarmist; anything you do after looks inaequate.

I’m doomed!

Yes, but what does that have to do with COVID-19?

(Sigh) Good point...back to the Bach cello sonatas....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2020 09:08PM by BYU Boner.

Suzuki!!!

Oh wait, Rostropovich!!!

Wait, who???

Fournier.

The suites, no?

So they are! They are next to my Beethoven 32. I sometimes get confused...

I love the suites, particularly Rostropovich's version. The cello may be my favorite instrument--so emotional.

Dang it! I lost another bet.

I'd put my money on the banjo being your go-to balm of gilead!!

You shouldn't worry too much about having lost the bet. I'll take good care of your home, car, and savings.

BY was right about apostasy?

Wasn’t infectious disease research funding cut because we run a profit-driven health care system? How are investors going to make money if nobody gets sick?

Capitalism is wired to pay the pound of cure rather than the penny of prevention. That’s because it’s a religion where everyone is fed the Kool Aid starting in grade school. You could say most of the unfolding slow motion disaster was caused by our education system.

Can this virus be stopped in its tracks right now? Absolutely, by many methods. But those methods are outside of the profit-driven medical establishment and more importantly, against the dysfunctional belief system instilled in Americans by their education. Ruling them out is then human nature.

I take the view that most problems eventually solve themselves. America believes in purification by fire. It’s all through our mythology. The old must burn to the ground for any redemptive transformation to occur. That psychology is widespread enough that containment measures will leak like a sieve. They want the fire and have little interest in stopping what they see as divine retribution.

Is this a bad thing? After all we did vote for it.

Hospitals are mostly non profit last time I saw data. But they don't do research much.

Pharmaceuticals is for profit. Thought there are exceptions.

It is a mistake to think of healthcare monolithically as it's a web of manufacturing, facilities, research and point of care and then the doctors. Even socialized healthcare relies on for profit manufacturing though perhaps with price controls on some things.

I don't believe I am thinking of healthcare as monolithic. All I am saying, and it is a less important element of the OP, is that the US and many other countries are now paying a heavy price for having failed to maintain adequate stocks of testing and emergency equipment and beds.

That was for Bradley but I screwed up the indenting on my tablet

D'oh!

The speaker lost me a couple of times, but I liked the way he laid it out this presentation.

Yes, I am afraid that if we let down our defenses, we'll see a second wave. Is that "central location" now Costco? Or Walmart?

Excuse me while I go wash my hands.