Well, yes, the humour is pretty black. But there is still humour to be had. In this post we’ll link to things that genuinely made us laugh (even if we were crying/yelling two minutes later). Commenters are of course welcome to suggest others. (Our standards are high.)
3) First Dog on the Moon: Coronavirus 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 (27/3) and 5 (7/4) and 6 (16/4) and 7 and 8 (21/4) and 9 and 10 and 11 (1/5) and 12 and 13 (11/5) and 14 (14/5) and 15 (18/5) and 16 (23/5) and 17 (15/6)
We had plans a week ago (seems like a year ago) for a PoSSW coronavirus post. But, God, there is so much stupid right now. Who could possibly keep up?
Here is a dedicated post for coronavirus-related stupidity. Commenters are welcome to point to and give links to specific idiocies, or simply to vent. We’ll update the post with the hyper-stupids. (So, standard Morrison/Trump/Johnson incompetence doesn’t cut it, but unloading a whole fucking boat of sick people most definitely does.)
PoSWW 2 (26/2) Courtesy of occasional commenter Franz, cardiopraxis.de gives us a graph showing what “uncontrolled exponential spreading of the infection” would look like:
PoSWW 3 (27/2) The Guardian royally fucks up their 96pt bold headline:
“The president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced that he would suspend funding for the WHO while they investigate whether it’s handled the COVID crisis properly. Good move, bad move?”
“Look, I sympathise with his criticisms, …”
Wrong. The answer is “Bad move”, you useless, greasy dickwit.
I’ve been busy the last couple of days, and will be for the foreseeable future, since my girlfriend and I have taken our two young children out of school.
I have informed my parent friends of this decision, but I am not advocating that they, or anyone, follow our lead. My girlfriend and I are lucky in that we are financially secure (for now), and are currently freer of work than we might otherwise be.* It is easy for us to bring the kids home, and we could see no good argument against it. Other parents are much less fortunate, and may have a very difficult decision ahead, very soon. I really feel for them, and for everyone dealing with this mess.
This brings up a general and hugely important question: should schools stay open? Honestly, I have no idea. It is an aspect of Australian discussion that I have been trying, and failing, to get my head around. It seems that the main argument for keeping schools open is simply as a childminding service, so that the oldies don’t do the minding and the doctors and the nurses can get on with running themselves ragged. Is that a sufficient argument? I’m sceptical, but I don’t feel confident to say “no”.
Here are two links to articles discussing the matter (in Australia), neither of which I either vouch for or reject:
I’m open to people’s thoughts. But, I’ll just add one thing. Prime Scott Morrison has threatened private schools that might close, and he has expressed his confidence in the decision to keep kids at school:
I’m telling you that, as a father, I’m happy for my kids to go to school. There’s only one reason your kids shouldn’t be going to school and that is if they are unwell.
I wonder if all of Morrison’s Liberal colleagues agree.
A number of prominent public Health Professionals have written an open letter to Australia’s health ministers and (the stunningly appropriately titled) gambling ministers. The letter is written in a predictably calm, professional and diplomatic manner, but we’ll translate: you people who signed off to keep pokies venues open are out of your fucking minds.
This post is inspired by an article by Tomas Pueyo, which I believe is compelling reading for understanding the growth of and the control of the COVID-19 outbreak:
I have no idea who Pueyo is, I cannot vouch for his data, and commenters are free to argue against his analysis and his conclusions. I do not claim to know what Pueyo’s analysis might imply for how any particular city or country should be responding at any particular time.
I’m not sure where this post, or this blog, might go for the next while. Nothing is as important to society right now as managing COVID-19. Ironically, I’ll probably have plenty of time sitting at home in the next weeks or months, to write on the standard maths ed topics.
I plan to update this post from time to time, with links to articles and reports that, to my amateur eye, seem considered and important. In general the articles will be linked without comment; linking them means I believe they are worth reading, but I am not pretending to be an expert and I am open to counterclaim on anything. Commenters are also welcome to suggest articles; I may then update the post with a link up high. My general intention, however, is to have fewer articles, of high quality.
To be clear, this post is not particularly intended to be a forum for naive mathematical models, and I don’t intend to engage in that. I’ll also try to lay off the snarkiness, at least in the actual post. Commenters can comment as they wish. If, for example, some Liberal clown or some Greens clown says something stupid on social media, feel free to call it out. But the post itself is intended to promote clear-headed analyses. My other posts will continue to be as charmingly snarky as ever.
UPDATE (19/03/20)
Link 1 Here is the link to the original article, by Thomas Pueyo, that inspired this post:
Below are a few more links (and link 2 above has been redirected). The top two come from David Nagayam Nayagam a sciency friend of ours who sends article-links to an email list. David mostly links to technical-clinical articles. If you want to be added to David’s list, you can email David directly.
More links below, from David Nagayam Nayagam. You can still email David directly, if you wish to be added to his email list. (Also, David’s twitter account contains more day to day information, plus howling at Australia’s idiocy.)
Link 8 University College London National Research Group’s tracking for each country
