Quote from uncertainH

Never let a good crisis go to waste, it's a great opportunity to further the erosion of our civil liberties.

Your civil liberties?!? I get that you are vaccinated, but what if you were not? Are you saying people have a civil liberty to infect others when they could easily get vaccinated? Do people also have the right to fire pistols at random into crowds? Do they have the right to go into grocery stores and piss on the lettuce? Or run through red lights at 60 mph?

You talk about your civil liberties. What about mine? As the expression goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. You have no right to make me sick or kill me. That is negligent homicide. If you don't want to be vaccinated, stay home.

Quote from Mark U

Of the 42 cases diagnosed in this outbreak, 38 were fully vaccinated with two doses of the Comirnaty vaccine, one was recovered with one vaccination and three were unvaccinated.

If you think this is a problem, you have made a base rate fallacy. See also:

Israeli data: How can efficacy vs. severe disease be strong when 60% of hospitalized are vaccinated?

A surge involving the rapidly-transmitting Delta variant in heavily vaccinated countries has led to much hand-wringing that the vaccines are not effective…

www.covid-datascience.com

Quote from Mark U

Speaking of Israel and hospitals, and recalling Jed saying that the unvaccinated are bioterrorists, here is a detective story of a July Covid outbreak in an Israeli hopsital, originating from a double vaccinated person admitted for cardiac issues, and spread to fully vaccinated patients with comorbidities and to masked, vaccinated staff.

What is your point? Everyone knows that breakthrough cases happen, and that a person with a breakthrough case can infect others. However, breakthrough cases are between 50% and 90% less likely to happen, and they are usually less contagious. A breakthrough case is not bio-terrorism. It is an unfortunate illness.

Quote from Mark U

Here in Ontario, as of Sept 22 2021 proof of double vaccination and ID are required to get into many venues.

Good. I wouldn't go to an indoor restaurant that allows in unvaccinated people, and I sure wouldn't fly on an airplane. It is about time the government steps in and protects us from these bio-terrorists who would infect us and kill themselves. Suicide terrorists.

Animated clip explains how the coronavirus vaccine works

Sort of. This is from China. Anyway, it is cute.

Quote from JedRothwell

Look at the data from three places with high vaccination rates:

Chile, 88% vaccination (+10% acquired immunity?)

Japan, 70% (very little acquired immunity)

On the other hand, the UK has ~71% vaccinated plus some large percent of acquired immunity, yet infections continue at a high rate. I have no idea why. Thank goodness deaths are well below where they were before.

United Kingdom: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps

Tracking the COVID-19 outbreak, updated daily

graphics.reuters.com

Quote from JedRothwell

Perhaps it would form the stress cracks on the surface that Ed Storms thinks are needed . . . but I doubt it. Ed says such cavities are too large for his model, and I think the cracks that form around them are also too big.

Yup. Ed confirmed this.

In my own words:

A gap large enough to hold recombined D2 gas inside the lattice is too big for his model. It has to be smaller than that. He wants individual deuterons lining up in a row, not D2 molecules. (Deuterons or "H mono" as Cydonia calls them above.) The cracks forming around a large gap would also be too big.

Earlier this year, experts were saying that herd immunity with the Delta variant might require 80% or 90% immunity (acquired plus vaccinated). It seems to me the latest data shows that the numbers might be lower. ~70% might be enough. I recall ~70% is what they were saying for Alpha last year. Look at the data from three places with high vaccination rates:

Chile, 88% vaccination (+10% acquired immunity?)

Japan, 70% (very little acquired immunity)

Argentina, 60% (+10% acquired immunity?)

All three are rapidly approaching zero infections and deaths. They might not reach that, falling asymptotically, because there will be infections from outside these countries. But I think that if 80% the entire world population could be vaccinated, with no large pockets below 70% (the Argentine rate), the disease would be wiped out in the human population. I do not think that will happen, but only because right wing politicians are stupid and they will save $1 even if it later costs them $100,000. There is no technical reason why the disease cannot be eliminated.

Chile: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps

Tracking the COVID-19 outbreak, updated daily

graphics.reuters.com

Japan: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps

Tracking the COVID-19 outbreak, updated daily

graphics.reuters.com

Argentina: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps

Tracking the COVID-19 outbreak, updated daily

graphics.reuters.com

In the U.S. 56% of the total population is vaccinated, but the unvaccinated people are heavily concentrated in rural Republican districts where the population is older than average, so they will be infected at a high rate. In some rural districts only 30% are vaccinated. I expect ~25% of the population will ultimately refuse. That's 83 million people. Unless they change their minds, this will continue until ~40 million of them are infected and ~800,000 die. That should take 2 or 3 years at present rates. Another 800,000 will be damaged for life with things like cerebral hemorrhages or lung damage leaving them in wheelchairs with oxygen for life. Four groups of people are guilty of this holocaust: the Republican Party, FOX News, the Death Cult antivaxxers such as W. and Mark U., and the people who will themselves die because they refuse to be vaccinated. Fortunately for the nation, Republicans are dying at a ratio of 5:1 compared to Democrats.

Here is an example of a pathetic, foolish, uneducated person who died because the Republicans, FOX News and antivaxxers lied to her. The blood is on their hands:

Lorine Carol Kaylor, 48, Huntington, WV. Cashier at McDonalds. Unvaxxed, dead from COVID.

UPDATE (10/12/21 5am): Added to the bottom of the story. According to this obituary Lori died on October 6 from COVID. She leaves behind Harold A. Kaylor, her…

www.sorryantivaxxer.com

Quote from can

As far as I am aware of, H usually penetrates into the metallic lattice in atomic form, unless it recombines to molecular H2 inside large enough cavities in the material.

That's my understanding.

Quote from can

If some larger cavities remain, H may recombine there and increase stresses and pressure (it seems desirable for LENR purposes?)

Perhaps it would form the stress cracks on the surface that Ed Storms thinks are needed . . . but I doubt it. Ed says such cavities are too large for his model, and I think the cracks that form around them are also too big. I think he wants stress, but not that much stress. Maybe he can tell us. I will send him a link to this comment.

Quote from Mark U

Let's see him wear six masks thoughout the day, rather than measuring very briefly through a oximeter. In real life his breathing will be laboured while his body desperately tries to rid itself of CO2 and gain O2.

No, in real life nothing would happen. More to the point, in real life in many jobs people wear masks for hours, or all day long. Surgeons, stone cutters, fine art restorers, many people who commute on Japanese railroads, people skiing and hiking in cold places, and others. None of them have problems. People have been wearing masks for various jobs for 150 years. If masks caused problems, we would know by now.

Quote from Mark U

Perhaps dying within 28 days of a vaccine could be counted as a vaccine death...

Medically related deaths within 28 days are reported and investigated. (People getting shot or run over are not.) The attending physician's reports are evaluated, along with other data. So far, experts have concluded that vaccines have not caused any deaths in the U.S.

Quote from Mark U

Perhaps her next step will be to wonder how "well-ventilated" it is under a mask, and report her findings. I suspect it will be rather stuffy.

Nope. See:

COVID-19: Doctor wears six face masks to debunk oxygen deprivation myth

There is a general rule about sources of information: do not let the stupid rub off on you. When you find that TSN makes mistakes about one aspect of COVID, such as the base rate fallacy, do not read their other COVID articles. You might read another mistake, not realize it is a mistake, and add that to your store of knowledge. There is a history book about the White House during WWII. I think it was "No Ordinary Time." In the middle of it, I realized the author apparently did not know how many Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk during the Battle of Midway. Maybe she knew, but she and the editors left confusing text. That made me wonder "what else did they get wrong?" Then I caught another error, about Churchill. I don't want to read it again.

This rule only applies to one branch of knowledge. If you catch me making a stupid mistake about something I have no expertise in, you might still trust me when I pontificate about Japanese grammar.

Quote from JedRothwell

I have 3 large ones on one computer. It makes a big difference.

This may seem like too many screens, or an odd thing to have. You have to see it to grasp why it works well. Essentially, I have upturned my desk to vertical instead of horizontal. When I am editing a paper, I can display File explorer and an internet dictionary or Google on the left screen, the paper I am working on in the middle screen, and an earlier version of the paper on the right-hand screen. Or some related paper, a spreadsheet, or Zoom on the right-hand screen. The effect is like spreading printed papers out on a desk. When you have only one screen, even if it is large, you have to keep clicking, revealing, and hiding windows with different documents. With three high-res screens, you can see everything at a glance.

For the kind of work I do, having lots of hi-res screen surface is a better upgrade than anything else you can buy. Better than extra-high speed internet or a super fast computer. I guess if you were making movies on a computer a high-speed processor might have more impact.

There are giant hi-res curved screens that allow many documents or windows. I have never used one.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The experts are sometimes wrong. But you and I are wrong too - and it is arrogance to think TSN op-eds which are obviously scientifically illiterate, or personal opinions, better than considered opinions of experts.

That is a key point. I am an amateur when it comes to COVID, public health, and statistics. But there are degrees of expertise in any subject. You can be a rank amateur, or you have have a high school level understanding, or an undergraduate level, or what I call "college department secretary" level understanding. The department secretary is the person who proofreads papers, files them, and knows what the researchers have been doing all these years. That is a level of knowledge similar to what I have regarding cold fusion. Ed Storms, Jean-Paul Biberian and I have probably read more cold fusion papers than anyone else. Many of these papers were far over my head. The theory ones are all but meaningless to me. Ed and Jean-Paul understand far more details than I do. But I did read the papers. I know what the abstracts say. I know the general conclusions. I know a lot about the calorimetry, tritium and helium detection. So I know more than any skeptic, including all of the skeptics with PhDs. All of them tied together. I know much more than the people here who cannot tell the difference between input power and noise. That's a mind-boggling mistake. I know more than Morrison, who did not understand the difference between power and energy.

Regarding COVID, I know enough about statistics and public health to judge that TSN articles are garbage. Anyone with a college level education can see this. Or, if you can't see it when you read a TSN article, you will see it if you read and understand the papers at https://www.covid-datascience.com/. I can understand the covid-datascience papers. They are addressed to the educated general public. They are much easier to understand than, say, research papers at the New England Journal of Medicine.

Quote from THHuxleynew

If, BTW, you simply mean that experts have proven wrong many times over COVID that is true. And expected. No-one knows what will come next. But the antivax fringe has a much worse track record (0%) of being right than the mainstream views.

You would have to be omniscient to "know" what comes next. What comes next is a function of evolution, which is a random process, similar to radioactive decay. It is physically impossible for anyone to predict what will happen. The antivaxx fringe people are not only wrong, they cannot be right in any sense, because what they claim violates laws of physics, public health and medical science going back 200 years. They can no more be "right" than people who believe in flat-earth theory, or people who think that germs do not cause infectious disease. Furthermore, antivaxx Death Cult fanatics such as Wyttenbach cannot do middle school arithmetic and do not understand concepts such as the base rate fallacy. Either that, or they are trolls who understand these things and they are trying to fool the readers here.

I could not tell whether Morrison really was so stupid he did not know the difference between power and energy, or whether he was a troll who was hoping to fool stupid people. I talked to him in person, and my impression is that he really was as stupid as he seemed. He once said that if cold fusion happens in metal lattices, why doesn't it happen in heavy water ice? He thought that was a "gotcha" question. To quote Groucho Marx in the movie "Duck Soup:"

"Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot."

Quote from THHuxleynew

Cities tend to have different values from countryside - they might have larger previous infection rate, denser housing, etc. So it is really complex to put it all together.

I think denser housing is a factor.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I have no idea how Japan scores on these factors - a vague idea that it scores well on the mitigation axis.

I don't much about the details. But I think one thing is clear from the data: denser housing and population do increase infections. All else being equal, rural districts with low population have had fewer cases per capita. This was also observed in places like New York City versus upstate New York. Example from Japan:

Yamaguchi Prefecture, 1.4 million population, 5,648 cases, 4,034 cases/million

Tokyo, 14.0 million population, 376,844 cases, 26,917 cases/million (7 times more)

Development of Coronavirus cases: Yamaguchi, Japan (5,648 cases)

Development of Coronavirus cases: Tokyo, Japan (376,844 cases)

This does not apply where all else is not equal. For example, in the U.S. the states with the highest number of infections per capita are Tennessee, North Dakota and Florida. That is because Tennessee and North Dakota have very low vaccination rates, and the governor of Florida is doing all he can to prevent vaccinations, masks and other public health measures. Whereas public health measures and vaccination rates are uniform in Japan, so you can compare Yamaguchi to Tokyo.

See:

United States COVID: 45,204,373 Cases and 733,575 Deaths - Worldometer

www.worldometers.info

(Click on the "Tot Cases/1M pop" column.)

Quote from THHuxleynew

The one figure - which is what you might old against US medics in particular - that has "changed" is the efficacy against getting covid. I agree - when the US people were all saying breakthrough infections were very rare they were using non-delta data.

I have read that a third booster restores resistance against infection to the levels two doses produced for the alpha variant. It resets resistance back to around 90%. I think they do not know yet how long this lasts.

The mRNA vaccines can be reformulated to be more effective against delta. I suppose they will be, but I guess they don't want to slow production right now.

Quote from stefan

It is common to commute 2 hours a day that's 10horts a week

Two hours a day is higher than average. The average commute time in the U.S. is 55 minutes, both ways.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-travel-time-to-work-rises.html

I agree with Zephir_AWT that the best solution is not to commute. People should use web presence programs such as Zoom. Those programs can be greatly improved, and I am sure they will be. People should use bigger screens. I have 3 large ones on one computer. It makes a big difference. I think many people have trouble working from home. My solution is what Arthur Clarke suggested in the 1960s: small satellite offices close to home. People can commute a few blocks to an office building equipped with desks, high speed internet, screens and so on, and then work with others in their organization. The desks should be in small rooms with lockable doors. Open desk layouts are less secure. Here is an example at my old office:

The Globe Hub - Chamblee, GA

www.yelp.com

Quote from Fm1

These vaccines are not what was promised or promoted by vaccine warriors.

Yes, they are far better than predicted last year. When 70 to 90% of people take them, the pandemic stops abruptly, as you see in Japan.

Quote from Fm1

People still get infected still pass it on still are hospitalized and still die.

Obviously. That is true of all vaccines. No one ever said otherwise. However, when the vaccine stops transmission, even people with weak immune systems will not be infected.

Here is a news article featuring my niece and her son. It is typical of our family to show up with digital meter and data rather than argue based on speculation. When in doubt, measure it!

CO2 is measured not because CO2 itself is dangerous at these levels. High CO2 levels indicate that ventilation is inadequate.

The Hot New Back-to-School Accessory? An Air Quality Monitor

Parents are sneaking carbon dioxide monitors into their children’s schools to determine whether the buildings are safe.

The Hot New Back-to-School Accessory? An Air Quality Monitor

Parents are sneaking carbon dioxide monitors into their children’s schools to determine whether the buildings are safe.

www.nytimes.com

When Lizzie Rothwell, an architect in Philadelphia, sent her son to third grade this fall, she stocked his blue L.L. Bean backpack with pencils, wide-ruled paper — and a portable carbon dioxide monitor.

The device gave her a quick way to assess how much fresh air was flowing through the school. Low levels of CO2 would indicate that it was well-ventilated, reducing her son’s odds of catching the coronavirus.

But she quickly discovered that during lunch, CO2 levels in the cafeteria rose to nearly double those recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She shared what she’d learned with the principal and asked if students could eat outside instead.

“He expressed surprise that I had any data at all,” she said. . . .