Posts by linger
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Hard News: Together Alone, in reply to Simon Armstrong,
lady out walking her husband
That certainly conjures up an image.
(But not of the emoji, which I have no referent for.) -
There’s a kind of controlled experiment in progress right now, if you want to try to assess the effect of New Zealand’s “fast and hard” lockdown measures.
Coincidentally, the number of cases in Tokyo is roughly the same, and has been increasing at roughly the same rate, as the number of cases in New Zealand over March. (Yesterday those totals stood at 959 for NZ vs 891 for Tokyo.)Tokyo has not (yet) gone into enforced lockdown. (If it does, it will be a local government decision, with the central government having little constitutional authority.) Nevertheless, there are voluntary measures in place that are at least equivalent to NZ’s “Level 3” response: schools are closed (now until at least the first week of May), many chain restaurants have shut, anyone who can work from home is encouraged to do so.
As of midnight April 3rd, Japan’s borders have been closed to all foreigners (e.g. I could not have re-entered the country this week), and returnees are being quarantined for 2 weeks. (That will include our students returning from Wellington. Stable door, horse, etc.)Remembering that the total population of Tokyo is about 6 times that of New Zealand, Tokyo has actually fared quite well so far. But in the past week (after one week of NZ lockdown) the rate of increase in Tokyo has gone consistently above that of New Zealand.
So yes, NZ’s lockdown does seem to be having a measurable effect already, compared with the closest alternative.
Stay safe, everyone.Some notes and caveats:
1. NZ case counts were redefined March 25th to include probable cases, some of which later proved negative. The count for March 25th includes an adjustment to add previous probable cases.
2. Numbers can fluctuate from day to day with little clear trend because many cases originate in infection clusters.
3. Tokyo numbers also fluctuate because of uneven access to testing (e.g. the figure for Mar 30th, a snowy Sunday, is artificially low for this reason). -
Professor David Spiegelhalter on the risks of Covid-19 from More or Less 28/03/20 (9 minutes; stream or MP3 download)
Headline result is that the mortality risk profile from Covid-19 among adults is much the same as the mortality risk profile in general. Essentially, contracting the virus has the effect of compressing your existing annual risk of death into a few weeks: hence the risk increases with age, and for those with other pre-existing conditions that lower life expectancy.It follows that, if the virus were allowed to spread unchecked, the effect would be roughly the same as the nation's annual death rate. Spiegelhalter notes that in the UK, that would correspond to 500,000-600,000 deaths.
Spiegelhalter doesn't explicitly say this, but it also follows from general patterns of life expectancy that the risk is higher for men than for women at any given age -- and the evidence so far does seem to bear this out, as mentioned in a subsequent episode (04/04/20).
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Hard News: Together Alone, in reply to linger,
Highlights from Japan’s coronavirus response, Mar 24-31
Excerpted from the Japan Times Covid roundup pageMar 25th
Tokyo logs 41 new cases.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike asks people to avoid going outside over the weekend for nonessential reasons.Mar 26th
In response, Tokyo shoppers rush out and panic buy.Mar 27th
Tokyo heads into critical weekend facing risk of coronavirus lockdownMar 28th
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike urges residents to refrain from hoarding food at supermarkets, assuring them supply and distribution lines have been and are functioning as usual.
Tokyo logs 63 new cases.Mar 29th
In a dire warning, Prime Minister Abe urges vigilance to avoid a COVID-19 spike that could overwhelm hospitals, and vows extraordinary steps to support the Japanese economy.
Tokyo logs 68 new cases.Mar 30th
The government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, denies rumors of an imminent lockdown of Tokyo. Suga also refutes the idea that crowding in government meetings (see photo) was inconsistent with the government's requests for social distancing. -
Meanwhile, my university seems to be lumbering towards a decision to Bring The Students Back! whether they want to come back or not, and even if this might increase the risk to each student.
NZ: rate of increase in cases starting to slow March 29th (Wikipedia page);
Japan: daily figures last updated on Wikipedia March 27th, showing a slight increase in rate at that time.
I may be biassed here, but I know whose approach I trust more.
SMH.
Interestingly, NZ recovery totals seem to be tracking case totals 7 days prior, suggesting a weeklong course of disease from diagnosis to recovery, on average. This does not match the figures observed in Japan, which suggests that some Japanese cases are going untreated and unreported, and as a result the statistics are being skewed toward the most severe (longest-recovery) cases. But there may well be other confounding factors, such as differences in age distribution of travellers exposed to Covid19 overseas, and differences in smoking rate and so severity of symptoms. -
On March 8th my department sent students to Vic for the 3-month English Proficiency Program. NZ looked a safer bet than staying in Japan, and so I followed them out the next week, with a return booked March 31st to get back for the start of the next academic year.
What a difference a few weeks make.
I had to scramble to get an earlier flight back when AirNZ first announced suspension of Auckland-Tokyo services "from March 30th". Earliest available was March 27th, which then in turn became seemingly impossible to get to once lockdown was announced, a last-minute reprieve coming only when Air NZ extended domestic flights to that date.
We surveyed the students once Alert 3 was announced, they preferred to stay, so are in lockdown in their homestays, with courses moved online for the duration.
On the whole, I think they made the right choice. By contrast with NZ, Japan's official response has been muted and delayed by a month of face-saving theatre around keeping the Olympics. My flight back was full, mostly of high school tour groups buzzing with excitement after their holiday (because Japan's schools have been closed for the last month), bouncing into each other and other passengers. At Narita, flights from Australia and NZ were still being waved through with no quarantine checks, and I was genuinely surprised to be able to take public transport home. Multiply this by other flights of returning students, with schools set to restart soon, and Japan's relative success so far in limiting the spread through voluntary reduction of public events seems about to run out. -
Hard News: "OK Boomer" wins Public…, in reply to Simon Armstrong,
We shouldn’t feel superior as a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect. One reason it applies so universally is that everyone is “less competent” than others in some domain. Kruger & Dunning themselves (1998: 1132) even express some unease about possible meta-implications:
Although we feel we have done a competent job […], our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry […] that this article may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication
as, according to their own findings, they wouldn’t be aware if that were the case.
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A glossary of technical terms for types of abbreviation.
Initialisms = words formed from a sequence of initial letters (e.g. RSVP, TLA, WTO, YMMV ). Acronyms are, strictly, more specifically sequences of initial letters creating a pronounceable wordform (e.g. HART, JAFA, WHO ), though acronym is also used more loosely for any initialism.
Clippings are formed by removing entire syllables, usually leaving just the first syllable (e.g. semifinal > semi, submarine > sub). Clippings may result in ambiguity (there's a few alternative expansions for both semi and sub.)
Blends are created by combining sound sequences from several words into one wordform (e.g. brunch, frenemy, smog, spam ). Blends usually also have a meaning that combines the meanings of the original words.
That being said, some abbreviations don't strictly fit any of these patterns (e.g. the written forms govt, intl, qtr .)
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to ,
The next New Zealand election will be first class.
"Such a big election. The biggest."
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What, because of the coming election?
Dunno if I’m exactly looking forward to that.
Predictably, over at No Right Turn, I/S is arguing that our current political leaders are part of the environmental problem andif we want to survive – not just as a species, but as individuals – we need to vote them out on their arses and get better ones.
But as usual, the big unanswered question is: so where are these better leaders going to come from?
Labour have definitely proved themselves unimpressive and unambitious so far, but even the Greens have negotiated themselves into an unappealing position of appeasement. Yet (and I really wish I/S would remember this) the sad fact is that if the voters who care most about the environment abstain in disgust, that will only guarantee the election of the planet-raping Nats.
So the current options all suck, and meanwhile the waka-jumping law has removed the best chance of getting any new political party into power.
It's all too bloody frustrating.
