Posts by Deleo

Quote from JedRothwell

No, that makes no sense. That would be the most lethal outcome. If 50% of the population is going to get it, you want them to get it over the longest period of time possible. You want to stretch it out. Otherwise, the hospitals are overwhelmed. Here is an interactive graph for the U.S. showing how that works:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…virus-trump-response.html

(Note that N.Y. Times articles about the coronavirus are no longer behind the paywall.)

Here are the two key graphs showing the effect of stretching out the epidemic:

Display More

just reading this article below about the UK makes me think this has to be one of the biggest medical experiments in history. Boris Johnson is either going to look really smart or incompetent in a few months time:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13…hnson-intl-gbr/index.html

Quote from Max Nozin

Stock market never made any sense. They tend to over/under react to the events.

There is a rumor that Trump is going to declare a state of emergency. That can only mean more shut downs causing domino effects in transportation, hospitality and then retail, wholesale and so forth. What is more probable is that market players are trying to predict and buy on the bottom after reports of 'worst crash since 1987'

Streamlining the testing, while being positive news for pandemic fighting, will cause a spike in the numbers and more shutdowns.

Yeah, put me in the camp that people are being overly optimistic - especialy here in the U.S. The WHO is now saying the epicenter of the virus is in Europe and not China. How long can Spain, Germany and France go without a full shutdown like Italy? Spain is +1200 cases today. That puts it in-line with Iran and Italy.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/…re-coronavirus-who-warns/

Quote from Max Nozin

that will cause a spike in numbers once deployed

Probably, but it feels like a good part of the reason of the stock market is going up a bit today so far is because of this test from Roche. If they can get a lot of people tested it will make this outbreak so much more manageable. It would be great if everyone could get tested in hotspots, and they can try to stamp this thing out with quarantines.

Quote from JedRothwell

It is not speculation if tests have been administered to a statistically significant fraction of the healthy population. I do not know if such tests have been done in the UK, but they have in China. As reported by the W.H.O. they looked for both current cases (symptomatic and asymptomatic) and cases in people who recovered completely (antibody tests). They found very few in samples of hundreds of thousands. If there are not many hidden cases in China, there are probably not many in the UK, human biology being the same in both places.

These notions that you cannot measure hidden cases or asymptomatic cases is weird. Have you people never heard of statistics, or population sampling? Of course you can measure such things!

I should add that no such measurements have been made in the U.S., because essentially zero test kits have been distributed. (Zero in comparison to the needs.) We have not even tried to measure people who have the symptoms and who the doctors have diagnosed with coronavirus, never mind a sample of the healthy population. Based on the studies in China, I do not think it is likely the UK has as many as 5,000 hidden or asymptomatic cases. But no one can have even the slightest idea how many there may be in the U.S. We have no data. We are flailing around in the dark. The only data we have is the actual number of sick people. That is, the new cases per day shown above. Projected from those numbers alone, without knowing how many hidden or asymptomatic cases there may be, anyone can see there will be ~50,000 cases in another 12 days if the trend continues. And anyone can see from the events in China and Italy that nothing is being done in the U.S., and the trend will continue. What will stop it? Nothing stopped it in China and Italy until drastic measures were taken. Closing down flights to Europe is useless. It is purely for show, done by people who have no understanding of disease or epidemiology. You might as well delay the next launch of a rocket explorer to Mars and expect that to have an effect.

It sounds dramatic to say it, but for Germany, Spain, France and the U.S. it's too late to really do anything but shut the country down similar to Italy and China. Today's cases in Germany are +779, Spain +782, and France +592. The U.S. is much lower than that, but our numbers are bogus since our government is basically not testing anyone - which is horrific.

All four countries are essentially a week behind Italy. So something miraculous would have to happen to not be where they are in 7-10 days from now. Yes, major events are being shut down, which helps I guess. Banning flights from Europe does nothing. But where I live I still see people in groups all over the place. People aren't in isolation in the U.S. anymore than they were in Italy a week ago. As long as people are in physical contact with strangers the numbers should grow at an increasing daily compounding rate.

Quote from RobertBryant

More reason to wash hands that have gone through populated indoor areas...

From medrxiv.. 9th March..

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…03.09.20033217v1.full.pdf

HCoV-19 and SARS-CoV-1 exhibited similar half-lives in aerosols, with median estimates around 2.7 hours.

Both viruses show relatively long viability on stainless steel and polypropylene compared to copper or cardboard: the median half-life estimate for
HCoV-19 is around 13 hours on steel and around 16 hours on polypropylene.

A notable feature of SARS-CoV-1 was super-spreading events, in which a single infected individual was responsible for a large number of secondary cases,

well above the average number denoted by the reproduction number.

A tendency toward such super-spreading events has two important consequences for the epidemiology of emerging infections:

it makes any given introduction of infection more likely to die out by chance,

but when outbreaks do occur they are explosive and can overwhelm hospital and public health capacity.

A number of hypothesized super-spreading events have been reported for HCoV-19.

Given that SARS-CoV-1 superspreading events were linked to aerosol and fomite transmission our finding that HCoV-19

has viability in the environment comparable to that of SARS lends credence to the hypothesis that it too may be associated with superspreading.

.......................................

Sunshine uv may be beneficial in reducing Covid-19 halflife.. (according to Dr Nichols but there is little inside a hospital..in winter..or at night

Display More

The problem with this virus is it’s airborne. Someone can give it to you just by breathing the same airspace as they do. And they may not have any symptoms of being sick when you are sharing that airspace. That’s why this one is so much more difficult to contain than SARS. The best thing people can do in this situation is not share airspace with other people. And this may have to be the case for months to come. That’s quite difficult in modern day society. But anything short of that will lead to this virus spreading further.

It's pretty eye-opening to see the new daily cases today in France +497 and Spain +527. These are similar to the increases that Italy saw 5 days ago. So this could all get much more impactful in the next week.

Quote from Dr Richard

Why are these people being allowed to die when we now have cheap effective treatments? ACE receptor inhibitors, chloroquine and monolaurin? Oh, I forgot there's no profit to be made out of these treatments. Medics seem to be unwilling to try anything new even with known, relatively safe drugs used for other conditions. So how many deaths before WHO approval?Possibly

There was a good interview this morning with the head of the Seattle hospital. He spoke about what it was like to treat patient zero here in the U.S. He said that it was a 35 year old and he was in really bad shape but that they gave him Remdesivir (which I think is made by Gilead), and he got better. It sounds like the NIH is testing it now and will have some early results within the next week. But I wonder if people who are not going to make it can ask for this drug as a last resort. It was developed for Ebola.

They are not recommending everyone wear a mask and gloves because if that happened there would be a shortage of them. They are trying to reserve them for healthcare workers on the front lines and people who are already known to be infected.

Here in the U.S. we have basically run out of hand sanitizer to purchase. So there can be shortages of just about anything.

What happened in Italy was really eye-opening. Sixteen days ago, it had about 100 total cases. Ten days ago it had 1,000. Yesterday it had over 8,500 active cases; and another 1,000 people had recovered, and 631 died.

If the Italian government hadn't essentially shut the country down it feels like the contamination rate could have grown exponentially. Let's just hope what they are doing works. I think NYC is a real concern here in the U.S. Have to closely watch what happens in that city over the next several days. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a center of outbreak.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Warning: Big increase in death rate in Italy (+36% absolute one day!!) . Real death rate is now way higher than 10% close to the initial Wuhan level of 17%! Whether this is due to a similar smog situation will be known in some weeks...

In the mean time we must assume its the more deadly strain and people should minimize contacts with ties to Italy for the next 4 weeks at least.

We here in central Europe are close to the next escalation step as most public events will be forbidden. In Japan a large number of infections just happened in small music clubs - restaurants, luckily most guests where younger than 40.

Within one weeks all schools, universities, sports events gyms will be closed and locked down here in Europe. Please forget all holiday plans.

And please do not believe such bullshit as below.

The surface protein of corona frequently changes, what is a challenge since 30 years as all developments so far failed. Some dramatically, in way they promoted a negative reactions (increase the virus effect...). Thus any live test will need at least 2-5 years!

Display More

The thing about this virus is it's new. So no one has a handle yet on exactly how contagious it is or what the mortality rate is. The data varies from country to country. This article below thinks the reason Italy's death rate is higher is because its population is older. It's a decent guess, but hard to know if it is the answer.

Still, it really feels like the next couple of weeks are a "hold your breath" moment. This includes those of us in the U.S. where this thing could really breakout, or in Europe where Spain and France could go the way of Italy. If all of those things go bad, then all bets are off imo. What crucial time this is right now on where this all goes.

https://www.livescience.com/wh…virus-deaths-so-high.html

Quote from JedRothwell

That is wrong. The Chinese have found the answers. They are close to eliminating the epidemic within China, or reducing it to a few deaths per day. Very few additional people will die there before a vaccine can be deployed.

In Japan they are using Chinese methods. So far, they have kept the epidemic at bay. They are now getting around 50 new cases a day, which they can handle. It is starting to recede in Sapporo, which is their worst hot spot.

The number of new cases per day are finally stabilizing and falling in South Korea. It is 272 today. It was 400 to 500 last week, and 800 per day before that.

The Italians are also now using aggressive methods. If the Italian methods work, there is good hope of controlling this in the first world. Unfortunately, I fear it will go out of control in the third world.

I have heard it might be sooner than that. Perhaps in a year. There are already tests underway. The previous record for this stage of development was 5 months, and this has only been 3 months. Deployment usually has to wait until rigorous safety testing is finished, but if thousands of people are dying every day, I am sure they will cut corners.

http://www.pmlive.com/pharma_n…accine_candidates_1326923

I have heard middle aged researchers say it will take a year and a half, and young, hotshot researchers with the latest gadgets say it might be done in 6 months. The young ones are usually right. They know how to do things more quickly. It is like that in programming and other high tech fields. Look at how fast the hotshots fixed the botched Obamacare website rollout.

I think a panic would be appropriate. I wish the administration had started panicking weeks ago.

I feel sorry for small shop owners in China, and travel agents in the U.S., but other than that who cares about the economic toll? The economy will snap back as soon as a vaccine is deployed.

If the U.S. healthcare system collapses, it will be a blessing. The hospitals are charging people $3,000 to test for the coronavirus. A two-week hospital stay to cure, without IC, would cost $55,000. That is not sustainable. A year from now we may have Medicare for all universal healthcare, the way every civilized nation already has.

Display More

The measures China is taking do appear to work. I guess my point is that we are going to get into a social science experiment soon. How long can people live that way if a vaccine is at best a year away? They are getting through it now, but what about 2-3 months from now? Things could start to get very uncomfortable living that way. I think we will see a scenario in China where the number of infections continue to go down because of these measures. Then people will feel safe to go about their normal lives again (and the government will acquiesce), and then the infection rate will go right back up. That’s the problem with this virus. It’s very contagious.

I also just don’t know if people in the U.S. and other western countries are going to be comfortable living in any way like that for an extended period of time. Some people may say screw it, and just live out in the world with the risk of getting it thinking they are young and strong enough to fight it off. Then the government would have to decide on becoming more authoritarian in a way we’ve never seen before. Imagine large populations in the U.S. being told they have to stay home and can’t leave their city.

And I get that the economic toll takes a back seat to the health one. But watch for failing corporate debt that could tank the economy. And $20 oil for a year’s time in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Russia could not only lead to serious economic collapses there, but there would be political unrest that would come from that.

I think there is a lot of good commentary in the panel discussion link below. These epidemiologists are open to the possibility that the mortality rate could be as low as .1 to .5%. One said he thinks 10x the number of people in China have likely been infected or exposed to the virus than what has been reported. My concern is people are going to hear a .1% mortality rate and go back to that overused talking point that this virus is in-line with the flu.

But it needs to be shouted from the rooftops that COVID-19 burns through populations much, much faster and easier than the flu viruses we are used to. So the types of restrictions that work to contain the flu do not work here.

Put me in the camp that there are simply no good answers until a vaccine arrives, or we build up a natural tolerance to it. Best case for a safe, working vaccine is 1.5-2 years away. No one wants to panic, but we are in a bad situation between now and then.

The health toll will be bad, but I don’t think people are talking enough about the economic toll as well. The health system will be under serious strain, I could see oil prices going to $20, which for an extended period of time would cause several countries to be on the verge of economic collapse. You could even think of geo-political implications for all of this that lead down some dark paths. No one wants to be a doomsayer, but this virus could send the world into uncharted waters within the next 6-12 months.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/…unting-virus-in-50-years/

Quote from Mark U

I haven't carefully looked at the gallium calorimetry, but the water calorimetry is likely to be off, and a significant overestimation.

First, it involved a water temperature change of only one third of a degree C, in a container that is about 1 cubic metre. Temperature measurements are almost certain not to be uniform, and thus error prone.

Second, the calculations are assuming all the water mass loss is from a water change of state, from liquid to vapour. But surely this in untenable because the temperature of the water was only about 33C, and bubbles from the very hot SunCell surface in the bottom of the water tank would carry liquid water up and away from the tank. So clearly not all water loss is from change of state, perhaps not even close. This is made even more critical seeing that most of the excess energy calculation comes from change of state.

I say this as a long term Mill's fan: It's a letdown to see both a low COP and questionable water calorimetry.

I have to agree. It would be good to see more clarity and stronger results over time that can be verified top to bottom. This press release is cloudy and not a confidence builder. It's more of the same, at best.

LeBob wrote: This calorimetry test gives a COP of 4.8 with 100kw overflow.

This is far from being exciting.

I disagree, even as just a science experiment, if this could be replicated, it would be very exciting.

BrLP just put out a paper with water bath testing done in February/March 2019. It seems like the setup is a good one, and they are talking about long, continuous runs. Here is a quote from it:

“The raw voltage and current data from the energy input pulse and the calorimeter bath temperature data were processed and magnitudes of the energy input and thermal release were computed along with the excess energy release for each test. The excess energy is defined as the thermal energy released into the water bath in excess of the electrical energy input. For all three of the non-control tests the excess energy was positive and for two of these the excess energy was significantly greater than the cell input energy. For these two tests the energy release was about two and a half times greater than the input.”

Quote from Steve Albers

Good question - perhaps the lack of a customer who can verify the device within a year or so. This is hard to say exactly since Leonardo is still purportedly kind of a slow start-up company that isn't quite yet claimed to be ready for high volume production. Also a good question as to what the rationale would be for customers to keep this a secret, except for not wanting attention. We should ask Rossi how long this process of "discovery" will take, he did say it will "resolve itself".

We already know how this is going to play out. AR will ask himself a question on his website a couple of months from now. The question will be “how many customers did you pick up since the demo?”

AR will answer “several”, and that they are all happy, and everything is magnificent and working as advertised. But he will say he can’t reveal who the customers are because they all signed confidentiality agreements. Some people on ECW will believe AR, even they aren’t 100% certain. But they are hopeful. Same thing different year.

In terms of Mats Lewan’s article, he seems like a nice genuine guy. I read his book and liked it. But he is providing way too much cover for Rossi. He acts a little skeptical but then says things like:

From Mats:

“But again—even though the presentation could be considered to be sloppy, the message is clear: Orders for heat produced commercially by the E-Cat SK can now be made, with delivery within weeks.“

By saying this Mats is implying that everything AR is saying and promoting has some merit. AR has been in multiple lawsuits, sued for fraud, and has been caught lying multiple times on different fronts. Nothing is clear with AR, and nothing is clear from that video. I think there is no reason to believe that AR will deliver a working e-cat within weeks to anyone.

From Mats

“In other words—Rossi might be the first of a series of technology companies launching a commercial energy service based on LENR, which is still considered to be impossible by many scientists, yet having the potential to disrupt the energy sector and to bring huge change to the world.“

Why say that AR might be the first versus anyone else? What has he demonstrated to warrant such hope? Why might AR be the first based on anything from the video? Why always go to the most hopeful, positive scenario?

I realize I sound like old Mary Yugo here, but think of all of the years AR has been at this and the video he produced. This can’t be taken seriously in my opinion.

1. Italo R. December 21, 2018 at 6:40 AM

   Dear Dr. Rossi,

   The first month of operation of the heating system in the customer’s factory has passed.

   1 – Is the COP greater than 10,000

   2 – Does the e-cat also make espresso for the customer?

   3 – Is the customer one of the ten largest multinational corporations in the world?

   4 – Do you think the e-cat will cause world upheaval or world peace by the end of 2019?

   Sincerely,

   Italo R.

2. Andrea Rossi December 21, 2018 at 11:54 AM

   Italo R.:

   1- yes

   2- yes

   3- yes

   4- we will talk about this issue during the presentation of January 31st

   Warm Regards,

   A.R.

Right now I would settle for amps and volts going in and heat coming out. That would tell us a lot.

Until then I will choose to keep on my skeptical but rose colored glasses and hope that BrLP has indeed made some key engineering breathroughs and the train is rolling now. Maybe we will see longer videos with some measurement data at some point.

Are we seeing an energy breakthrough in these videos? Maybe.

Quote from Shane D.

They are excited over there, that is for sure. Looks like the R/D is going very well. Hiring those extra engineers must have something to do with it.

BrLP is like the company that cried wolf. If they ever finally have something will anyone believe them? I thought the videos in Sept showed great progress, and that there was a 50/50 chance that they might be able to demonstrate a clear over-unity device within a few months time based on what I saw. I am still holding to that so basically b/w now and March. But 50/50 is too risky to make a serious wager on it.

It’s a strange thing that not many people are following this. If they can submerge the thermal cell into a water bath and show a significant heat gain that beats any known chemical reaction, for even just one minute, it would be imo the greatest scientific demo in decades (if not longer). It would be Mills for the win. I hope it happens.