Links For Today

Puts some numbers on flu vs the coronavirus. The new virus is probably not as deadly as the flu.

Lots of things are becoming harder to treat. Strep throat could become untreatable, researchers warn

Someday it will end. Student Enrollment Dropped 11% Since 2011, Student-Loan Balances Surged 74%. Why?

Read to the end for the kicker. Irish team question new US blood pressure threshold

Links For Today

Those who want to keep track should book mark this site. Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Global Cases (by JHU CSSE)

Did the US just concede defeat in China tech war?

Harvard says Asians have bad personalities; judge agrees

According to a study that was just published, it looks like the virus is a combination of a bat coronavirus and another one that cannot be identified. The study looked at the way the proteins are coded, and the authors claim that the most likely animal that spread the virus is a snake. That would be odd, since coronaviruses are only known to infect mammals. However, Wuhan does have open markets where live snakes are sold, and since that’s where the virus originated, it could have come from a snake.

Links for Today

Real ID starts to bite. The Washington Post reported in August that 8,000 Maryland licenses have been suspended. Three months earlier, MVA announced that 66,300 people were at risk of having their driver’s license or identification cards revoked for failure to comply with MVA demands. As Maryland ramps up enforcement, the number of suspended licenses is probably far higher now but MVA spokespersons failed to respond to repeated press inquiries seeking the latest number. Maryland police are seizing the license of any driver who they stop whose only offense was failure to hustle to show Maryland bureaucrats their birth certificate, passport, utility bills, Social Security card, or other proof of their identity.

The real scandal is that a tech executive is using WhatsApp. You would think he would know better. Jeff Bezos, blackmail and the Saudi crown prince

Not my area of expertise, but it sounds all to familiar to all NY State Employees. You Blew It, Andrew Cuomo

Coronavirus Links

This can hardly be said not to be in the news. But here are some things you many not have seen….

A Quora thread on what it is like to be in Wuhan city. When I looked at the thread, only two people were actually reporting from the city. The person further down the thread posted quite extensively and with pictures.

Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV: early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions A “scientific” paper on transmission rates that compares the Coronavirus to other virus transmission rates. Scientific is in quotes because data is so scarce that this is little more then informed speculation.

Don’t buy the media hype over the new China virus. This more or less represents my gut recreation. Unless the Chinese are seriously under reporting the death count it is hard to see how this is more dangerous then the flu. At this point it seems that the hysteria will do more damage then the virus.

Is Beijing suppressing the true scale of infections? Nurse treating coronavirus sufferers in China claims 90,000 people have already been infected This makes the case for the hysteria. I am sure that the number of people who are infected are under counted. This is almost a certainty but what matters is the death rate. If that is being reported accurately (and so far nobody is claiming that it is not) then more uncounted cases just means that it is not all that lethal. Most of the rest of the problems recounted in the article are a result of the hysteria and not the virus.