Harvard research points out that physical distancing will be around for a lot longer even based on an antidote. It is urgent to understand the future of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. We used estimates of seasonality, immunity, and cross-immunity for betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 from time series data from the USA to inform a model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. We projected that recurrent wintertime outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 will probably occur after the initial, most severe pandemic wave. Absent other interventions, a key metric for the success of social distancing is whether critical care capacities are exceeded. To avoid … Continue reading Harvard research points out that physical distancing could be around until 2022 – 2024

What is different about covid-19 ? There are technical differences in covid-19 which suggest it is smarter than earlier viruses in some respects. For those technical details, see the article. One result is the infection rate of covid-19 is higher than bird and swine flu. Basically R-nought is a value that indicates the numbers of people that will be infected by someone with the virus. One target is to keep this value below 1.0, however covid-19 is roughly estimated at 2.0 to 2.5. The H1N1 flu was also less contagious than the novel coronavirus. The basic reproduction number, also called … Continue reading What is different about covid-19 and earlier pandemics

Apple and Google team up to contact trace Covid-19 Apple and Google are co-operating in a key component of covid-19 mitigation. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52246319 Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk. If one of those people later tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, a warning would be sent to the original handset owner. No doubt the privacy brigade will have issues but this approach makes great sense to me. It does leave the question of what you are … Continue reading Google and Apple are co-operating in a key component of covid-19

Government of Canada covid-19 Projections presentation 2020-04-09 (pdf) Continue reading GoC Dynamic Model presentation 2020-04-10

Quotes and takeaways from very broad based pieces in The Times and Economist https://apple.news/ArPlIk4-8QhucrP_pgYuRAA Charles Parton, a former British diplomat, now at Rusi, a British think tank, called China’s efforts “a deep propaganda campaign” intended “to obscure the fact it caused the virus in the first place”. Emergencies “fast-forward historical processes”, says the historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. “Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours.” The author Robert Kaplan adds: “Crises like wars put history on fast forward. And history is now on fast forward.” So just weeks into … Continue reading Five years of innovation coming in eighteen months

The discussion on masks is crazy. I really do not understand why a group of intelligent people running WHO, CDC, US Government, Canadian Government, etc etc cannot come to a common conclusion for something so simple. Now they are shifting position to a yes; please wear a mask. My position is unchanged since January when I ordered masks. If I wear a mask: 1. I have some protection from other peoples nasal ’droplets’. 2. Other people have some protection from my nasal ‘droplets’. It is not perfect but it is always better than no mask. I have heard arguments such … Continue reading To wear a mask or not

Introduction As mentioned by Zanny Minton-Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist, today on Fareed Zakaria, (CNN) most people understand the logic and need for the Lockdown. But she went on to say, there is no clear way out of it, and a return to normal. The defining model that shook the UK and US governments was produced by Imperial College by the team led by Dr Neil Ferguson. That document indicated with no mitigating effort, the US would see 2,200,000 deaths, and UK would see 550,000 deaths. I will not attempt to compete with the analysis of the models performed by academics … Continue reading Banks’ considerations for the end of covid-19 lockdown

  This from the FT highlights the direction of P2P lending is closing in on the direction set in Canada in 2008. His frustration stems from the consultation paper published just over a week ago by the Financial Conduct Authority, which proposed placing the same restrictions on peer-to-peer lenders that already apply to high-risk platforms, such as equity crowdfunding sites.  This would mean that to invest in peer-to-peer loans, investors would in future have to be certified as sophisticated, be very wealthy, be advised by an authorised person, or certify they will not invest more than 10 per cent of their … Continue reading P2P Lending catches up with Canada

I have done a fair bit of research on Blockchain technologies as an alternative to SWIFT and that is really what we are talking about when it comes to international payments. This story caught my attention. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-ripple/banks-unlikely-to-process-payments-with-distributed-ledgers-for-now-says-ripple-idUSKBN1J92JG NEW YORK (Reuters) – Banks are unlikely to use distributed ledgers to process cross-border payments for now because of scalability and privacy issues, according to Ripple, one of the most prominent startups developing the technology If we look at SWIFT it is no more than a messaging system that is accepted by banks to trust each other a payment has been made and … Continue reading Finally someone in the community acknowledges Blockchain challenge for Banks

Back in 2007, then in 2016 I looked at the FaceBook business model and compared it to AOL. Here is the thing. AOL which was the US #1 internet source at one point, lost out because its mission was to retain users within the walled garden. It is not the first time this argument has been used but consider …. AOL strategy was all about building tools within their own garden, and as early as the 1990’s they even had their own browser and their own markup language (think proprietary version of HTML). They had their own CD which let … Continue reading FaceBook challenges run deep and are fundamental