this is truly insane.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/clinical-trials-begin-week-york-coronavirus-treatments-health/story?id=69817703

some clear thinking.

good.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/us-now-top-site-of-corona-infections-as-a-control-plan-emerges/

it's a time buying mechanism - it's not a vaccine and it's not a cure, and this blood is a finite resource that you can't manufacture in a lab.

but, in some way it's another argument to maximize exposure - the more immunity you develop, the more blood you can collect.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/hospitals-in-nyc-will-start-testing-therapy-using-plasma-of-those-infected/

so, you want some solidarity? 

i've got plenty of it.

and, i have a lot of it for those that are dealing with institutions that are trying to restrict their speech.

if you're old or have aids or something that's one thing.

but if you're a healthy young person then cowering in fear inside right now is literally equivalent to not going outside because you're afraid you're going to get hit by a car.

it's not clear thinking.

and, our governments are not following the science.

we need to have broader public debate on this topic, clearly, because, right now, people are just being scared into doing what they're told, and that's not a healthy situation for a democracy. people need better access to better information to make better choices, and they're just not getting it, right now.

it is times like this when it is especially important to push back against authority, and challenge censorship - and especially important to stand together in solidarity with those that are being shut down or otherwise oppressed by totalitarian governments or corporate institutions.

mr. torvalds seems to be more concerned about presenting tips about how to work from home (something he understands) than presenting his views on how to stop the coronavirus (something he probably doesn't really understand, even if his expertise in writing kernels is somewhat transferable).

that's actually probably the right answer, even if it's a difference of scale less salacious.

i mean, talk about a surreal twist of irony.

here we are in 2020 and are asking bill gates, of all people, his advice in how to stop the spread of a virus, and it's trending, and people are listening and taking it seriously.

baffling.

i still think he could have beat trump, though. and i'm really not confident that biden can...

also: bill gates is an expert on virology now, apparently?

judging from the efficacy of his flagship product in stopping the spread of viruses, i'd suggest you consider the source.

i mean, c'mon. what's the logic, here? that he's famous? that he's rich? it's the one thing everybody knows about windows: you get infected as soon as you connect.

my windows xp machines have been practicing social distancing for years, now. and, i'm about to give up on seven and move to linux...

i bet linus torvalds has a more interesting take on this. i wonder if he even supports the herd immunity line; no, hear me out, this makes some sense, because it's kind of like an open source approach. in the world of linux, we get security through transparency. and, it actually works. let me look this up....

the point i was trying to make is that i think that these covid-19 parties are a good idea and that i do support them under a few conditions.

(1) people need to be aware of the risks. there should be a bouncer at the door with a checklist that is sending away people that are old or have conditions.

(2) if you're certain you have it, you have an obligation to avoid vulnerable people, and you'd better take it seriously.

i don't want to sit in my room for the next two years; it is in my self-interest to support tactics that will help speed up this process.

so, i am in solidarity with the people organizing these parties, so long as they're following certain guidelines.

nowadays, we have a chicken pox vaccine, and if you live in every developed country except for one of them, you should have relatively easy access to a vaccine for your child.

chicken pox is also a disease with a low but substantial mortality rate amongst children, even if it's curve is more similar to covid-19 than it is to the flu, which is particularly hard on children.

i would argue that it's a better idea to vaccinate your children for chicken pox, in 2020.

however, we don't currently have a vaccine for covid-19, and we know the death rate amongst young & healthy people is on par with every day occurrences like crossing the street - it would be a risk, but it would be on par with the kind of risk that we effortlessly embrace on a day-to-day basis.

blocking an article like this is the kind of mob mentality stupidity that twitter is known for, and just another reason to stop using it. this is in fact a well reasoned article that brings up a number of questions that a large number of health experts have been articulating for quite a while, questions that we need to answer. shutting down the debate doesn't make it go away.

and, if people are not given forums to have these kinds of discussions, they will eventually take matters into their own hands.

again: the labels on the spectrum are what they are. but, as a libertarian leftist that values freedom and data, it is clear to me which side of the spectrum is ignoring science and giving into fear and authoritarian thuggery, and which is trying to follow the evidence in order to maximize freedom in the best way that it can.

here is the article:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/how-medical-chickenpox-parties-could-turn-the-tide-of-the-wuhan-virus/

& get off twitter already...

but, again - the longer it takes to ramp up the number of cases and get immunity into the general population, the longer this lockdown goes on for.

if you want this done with asap, you should be doing what you can to immunize yourself by exposing yourself, if you are confident you can beat it.

and, if you care about the old and the weak (and the fat and the stupid.), stay away from them while you're building your immunity.

# of deaths in the united states: ~1693

# of actual cases at estimated mortality of 0.1%:  1693000

and as a percentage of the population: 0.52%

# of deaths in south korea: ~150

# of actual cases at estimated mortality rate of 0.1%: 150000

and as a percentage of the population: 0.29%

this is perhaps expected, as south korea does have a universal system.

the growth rate in the united states is much higher right now.

but, if you follow what the science says about how south korea reacted to this, you should expect the small increases we've been seeing to drastically pick up fairly soon.

that said, because south korea is much smaller, both geographically and in terms of population, the challenges it faces are much less, and you probably shouldn't expect it to be quite comparable. the south koreans would have to be doing particularly badly to see these numbers stay roughly equal, and that's perhaps a pessimistic suggestion - no matter how poor their tactic, you would expect them to do a little better due to the geography, if nothing else.

but, you need to be careful about what the media tells you. 

this space exists to keep them honest, and i'll keep doing it.

population of south korea: 52 million (2017)

population of united states: 326 million  (2017)

factor: 6.3

# of known cases in south korea: ~10000.
% of population: 10000/52000000 = 0.00019 = .02%. 

# of known cases in the united states: ~100,000

% of population: 100000/326000000 = 0.00030674846 = .03%

"i'll get you next time, gadget"

no, you won't.

this is a good test case. really.

what's an empirical analysis of dr. claw's actual success rate in getting gadget? 0%. 

now, you could argue that if dr. claw tries infinitely many times to get gadget, he'll succeed eventually, so long as the actual probability is higher than 0. ok.

but, there's only a finite number of episodes.

so, what is the probability of dr. claw getting gadget this time, given that he failed n times before?

lesson: you need to be careful of statements made by authoritarian bodies.

again: you want as many people as possible to get this as quickly as possible in order to burn it out as fast as possible. you don't want this to drag on until we get a vaccine - that will lead to a higher death toll, in the end.

but, you do want to test aggressively so you can track it properly, and ensure it isn't mutating or recombining too quickly.

and, you do want to take special steps to ensure that particularly vulnerable groups are kept in strict isolation.

i know: i'm yelling at a lorentz equation. this already happened. i'm not a trafalmadorian, i can't see at all points in time. it doesn't matter anymore - we already made the mistake of not acting aggressively enough to protect the weak (and instead trying to stop the spread, so grandma can go grocery shopping on her own...the stupidity...), and we're going to see the consequences very soon.

but, the poor response in the united states may actually work out to it's benefit, in the end.

president gadget dodges another bullet, perhaps. gogo gadget corporate bailout....

current mortality rate in the united states: 1.53%

current mortality rate in south korea: 1.49%

current mortality rate in germany: 0.69%

they were slow to react, but the americans do appear to be testing, now - and they should see their mortality rate fall below south korea's within a few days.

it is of course the mortality rate that matters when talking about a pathogen like this, not the total number of cases.

now, what's the average cost per patient?

i agree that the two most important things to do right now are:

(1) keep young people away from old people

(2) cancel all religion, permanently

but, what's the use of banning visitors if you let the staff in and out?

again: what's defining the public response to this issue across the board, everywhere i look, is this tendency to pay lip service to science, while more or less discarding it in practice. and, the proper analysis of this at the end of the day is going to be that we overreacted in all of the wrong ways, and we underreacted in all of the wrong ways because we lacked the intellectual tools, collectively, to process what it means to follow what the science says.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-at-least-16-ontario-nursing-homes-have-covid-19-cases-yet-families/

if this mess with the virus goes on for a while, i'm going to find myself with some extra spending money, and i guess i'll have an opportunity to go down to a pawn shop (or maybe on ebay) and see if i can find a new system board as an access point.

i've basically decided that i shouldn't boot back into the laptop's hard drive until i'm able to do a fresh install. maybe i can parallel into the bios at some point, but if i can't reinstall then i can't use it.

i just want to stop wasting my time on this and get back to work. let's hope the new install on the 90s laptop is a stable enough workaround to let me do that for a bit.

so, i ended up spending yesterday morning trying to figure out how to get a new ip address, which turned out to be rather difficult. in the end, i decided to just turn the modem off again around 14:00 - and i got one when i finally reconnected after 13:00.

my calculation of my total bandwidth for the calendar date of the 26th would be around 650 mb. my isp is trying to tell me it was closer to 8 gb. 

i have a new ip address now, so we'll see if it tapers off today. again - i was physically disconnected for the first 13 hours of the day, so i should have exactly 0 bytes of usage over night, which i can measure from 2:00-8:00. that will at least help me understand when the ip dropped.

but, what did i do?

after i turned the modem off, i slept for the afternoon and was up a little bit before midnight. i've had to think some things through carefully, regarding what's actually going on here. what exactly are the police doing, here?

as mentioned: this started after i got a spike in electrical usage when i was gone. if changing my ip address doesn't help, it must be a cloned mac address or otherwise some kind of split in the line.

this is just relentless. they're insistent. and, i don't remotely understand the purpose. all they've managed to do over the last week is watch me try and figure out what they're doing to spy on me; when surveillance loses it's stealth, it becomes pointless. like, i know...

but, how do i adjust? what do i do?

they've tried hacking in over wireless, and i managed to mostly get around it. so, now they've apparently spliced my cable wire, and i haven't the slightest clue what they're actually doing - only that a large amount of data is moving from some unknown source to some unknown destination, and it's being assigned to my account, incorrectly.

i think i have to face the facts with this broken laptop that i keep trying to bandaid over - it's too infected, or too compromised, or too vulnerable. i keep booting back into it, and thinking i can just fix it enough to use it, but it just keeps getting worse; the more time i spend trying to bandaid over it, the more i realize just how bad it really is. the last time i booted it up, i found all kinds of scripts in the system directory of what i designated as my clean install that i'm certain were not there before, indicating that somebody has logged into my desktop and dropped all kinds of scripts into it. they must have the password. so, i decided that i'm not comfortable connecting it to the internet until i understand what's going on with the bandwidth.

i can powerwash the chromebook between uses, but i want to stop troubleshooting my computers and get back to finishing what i'm doing. this chromebook is intended strictly for traveling & emergency use and doesn't have the software i need to do any actual work on it. so, what windows machine do i not mind exposing to the storm? the 90s laptop...

i mentioned previously that i realized the 90s laptop appears to have been hijacked, but i decided i didn't care because i don't do anything on it of any interest. i just connect to youtube and watch educational films. does the government want to know about that? whatever. but, the more i looked at it, the more i realized it was more or less the same kinds of things. 

there's a difference, though - i can reinstall the 90s laptop with a winlited xp, and that's what i decided to do. but, i had to tweak it a little, so that's what i spent the morning doing.

the source for this is a physical disk, and it comes with a script that i initially wrote in 2008. this machine will not be difficult to hack, but i'm less concerned about stopping them from hacking in and more concerned about ensuring that i have a clean image i can push down to undo it.

i have no interest in getting into a hacking war. that's fucking boring. i want to work on my art, i don't want to be a hacker. and, i don't imagine i'd have the aptitude for it, either. for all my focus on math, i'm well aware that i'm starkly right-brained - i'm quite confident that i would lose a hacking war pretty badly. and, i could get taken down over the next few days more than once.

i don't care. i want to focus on my art, which means i need to have an easy way to reinstall from a stable source, and i think i've got that.

i'm going to get something to eat, and may sleep for a while. hopefully, i can get to writing that man or astroman review before midnight.