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Covid strategies for Australia: herd immunity or quarantine land?

Let’s talk about some of the covid policy options facing Australia in the coming months and years. It seems to me we can either grasp the nettle and accept we will get a wave of highly visible covid-19 deaths before life returns to normal, or we can try and defend ourselves against any further wave and infections by quarantine rules, State border controls, immunity passports, tracer apps, and the like. The main cost of the latter is in the total collapse of several industries, as well as longer-term but less visible loss of life. The main political cost of the former is admitting we f*cked up first time round and needlessly damaged the economy and society for no benefit.

Let’s talk about the quarantine path first.

Stuck In Quarantine – Zombie Guide Magazine

If one only wanted to prevent a up flare of covid cases in Australia one should continue the current restrictions.

One would have strong quarantine rules regarding visitors from any country with a high number of active cases. Even with countries with few identified active cases, one would want a strict quarantine policy: there is a 2-week delay between the unseen spread of the virus via asymptomatic cases and visible deaths, so you don’t know whether a country is experiencing an unseen flare up of the virus. Hence even visitors from “clean” countries pose a risk. This means one should not expect too much of the idea of some large group of countries that declare themselves a covid-free zone and have free travel between them. One little wave of infections in one of them and such a system would already break down.

The economic costs of quarantine rules is that it kills off some of the tourism, a lot of the international student business, quite a bit of temporary migration, and most business travel. This is exactly why in the UK over 70 big travel operators and hotel businesses have called on the UK government to ditch its plans for quarantine rules. Those businesses are very afraid that the summer holiday season (mid June to August), in which they make a lot of their yearly revenue, is lost, so they are making a huge noise right now. It would mean the end of their business and hence the jobs they provide if the quarantine rules are kept in place. They claim to be close to 10% of the UK economy.

If you count all the ancillary business associated with tourism and business travel, like catering, this industry is somewhat similar in size in Australia. So quarantine rules come with a big economic impact, which is why right now the Gold Coast operators are strongly lobbying the Queensland government against border controls and quarantine rules. They claim 40,000 jobs are in danger. And the Gold Coast is just one small part of the Australian tourism and business travel industry.

And don’t forget, jobs and the economy are about lives. That’s why a job is called someone’s “livelihood”. Jobs support individuals and their families. As I have calculated before, a million jobs lost for just one year equates to over 100,000 life-years lost in terms of direct misery to the unemployed, and another couple of hundred thousand life-years via reduced public services and (health) consumption for the whole community.

Now, of course, things are not quite as bleak as saying quarantining arrivals from outside of Australia kills all tourism and hospitality: quarantine rules not only discourage foreign tourists from coming in, but they also discourage domestics from going out, meaning less foreign tourism but more domestic tourism. Australians do like to travel, with a million or so abroad at any moment in time and they’d do less of that if forced into quarantine every time they return from abroad. With the glut of Asian tourism in the last 10 years, Australia is probably a net winner in terms of the international tourism trade, but it clearly wont be true that its tourism industry will have no clients if the Asians and others are discouraged from coming via quarantine rules. Destinations popular with Australians might even see a net increase. It’s the internationally oriented tourism, travel, and hotel chains that will lose out most. So yes, jobs are on the line, but not quite as many as the whole of the industry.

That is unless one has lots of border controls within Australia that basically kill off most internal tourism as well! Lots of internal controls on movement are essentially equivalent to preventing lots of people from doing their jobs (ie, looking after interstate tourists and travelers), which is a straightforward reduction of total production in Australia. Its like a mandatory closure.

So there is an economic price tag on quarantines rules for foreign visitors and a separate but also big price tag on internal border controls.

Nevertheless, let us press on with describing what the continued suppression path could look like. Importantly, you wont keep this out completely with a quarantine regime, if only because of all those government and military people still flying around on official business. Also, you’ll get cases that fall through the cracks of any quarantine system, whether that is an infected visitor escaping from the quarantine hotel or some infected piece of clothing getting passed on from a docking freight ship. It’s just too contagious and hard to notice to keep out completely when you have a lot of activity in airports and freights (which you have even right this moment). So you cant only have a quarantine regime if you want to keep the virus repressed.

Another element in the suppression strategy is the notion of forced local lock downs connected to a track-and-trace system. They now announced such a system in the UK: anyone tested positive for covid will be asked to say whom they have been in contact with recently, and those others can be forced into an involuntary two week lock down to prevent further spread. The UK government is essentially copying the Chinese system of neighbourhood snitches for this, ie 25,000 busy-bodies whose job it will be to go and pester everyone about their health and their movements. Those 25,000 ‘contact tracers’ will be on the phone to all the friends of an identified case, as well as looking at the movements of a victim’s mobile phone, charged with looking at where an infected person might have gotten the virus from and whom he or she might have given it to.

To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China - The ...One might call this a “low-tech” track-and-trace system, something that other countries try to do with apps but that China and Japan have done with an army of local busy-bodies checking on all others. Key in this system is that one can be forced to undergo a covid test if one the new busy-bodies think that is appropriate. One might thus call it the covid-police.

The Australian government first tried something like this with a mobile phone track-and-trace app, but that one now seems to be abandoned. Yet, it can try again with an updated app or copy China, Japan, and the UK, in setting up a covid-police to track and trace more manually.

Now, of course, the dangers for abuse in this system are horrendous. These contact tracers can threaten businesses with oblivion by calling for a local lock down of all the high-contact businesses in an area, and they can make life hell for any particular individual by calling all their friends and families, or forcing them into continuous tests. As a result, people will be very reluctant to have tests done!

Perhaps even more important is that “track-and-trace” creates its own demand when it is “successful”: by preventing local flare ups, such a system means the community never gets high infection levels and so perennially remains vulnerable to them. So one has to track and trace until there is a vaccine. And with a new virus or a new version of the covid-19 virus, one would have to have the track-and-trace system running again. The local Chinese busy-bodies also find some new threat to guarantee them an ongoing job, and the Australian covid-police would do so too. So its an ongoing cost and form of interference. Just like the Chinese system of social busy-bodies. It would turn the UK or Australia into a mini-China.

Successful continued repression in Australia comes with the irrelevance of immunity passports: those only make sense if you have had enough cases of people recovering from infections. That’s relevant for the UK, but not Australia.

Crowds - The opera house was deserted. The doors were closed. The ...Note also how difficult a track-and-trace system is to operate with lots of visitors and foreign tourists in a neighbourhood. A place like Buckingham Palace or the Sydney Opera House, with a continuous flow of buses full of foreign tourists feeding into cramped spaces, does not allow one to track and trace all the interactions between them and the locals.

So track-and-trace almost inevitably comes with further restrictions: no crowds in massed spaces and no mass tourism. The Opera House deserted.

What does a ban on mass gatherings kill off apart from certain forms of tourism? Well, it kills of all major sports, cultural, or even political events. No stadiums full of football fans or music lovers. No festivals. No Opera House performances with meaningful numbers of attendants. No sizeable political demonstrations. No election rallies. No park runs. No London or Sydney marathon. Probably no large full open office spaces.

So track-and-trace combined with bans on mass gatherings kills off a lot of joy and work. Again, this holds until there is a vaccine, and then applies again with the next version of the virus or some new threat.

Another policy meant to suppress the virus is social distancing and staying indoors. In Europe, we have basically woken up to its futility in preventing cases. Both the 1.5 metre ban and the pressure to stay indoors have now proven to be either largely useless (social distancing) or strongly counter-productive (staying inside). The Germans are thus leading the way in lifting the 1.5 metre ban, and governments are starting to realise they should encourage people to go outdoors.

The Australian government will be getting the same advice right about now.

However, one should note that whilst being in close proximity to others outdoors is now known to carry very little risk of infection, it is of course not the case that there are no infections from close proximity outdoors. Also, close proximity outdoors makes track-and-trace virtually impossible to do. If each individual is in close proximity to a thousand others every day, such as via public transport or lots of close passes on the streets, then the covid-police is going to have to call millions of people every day to inform them they have been ‘in contact’ with someone who has the virus. That is quickly going to become laughable. So there is a tension between letting go of the “stay inside and keep distance” policy and track-and-trace, which is basically why much of continental Europe has abandoned the idea of track-and-trace.

Note also that, once again, preventing mass gatherings might create its own demand if it is successful: one prevents lots of people from catching the virus so one maintains total vulnerability in the population.

Then, the business of face-masks. These have now been found to have a particular use in crowded indoor places with low humidity and poor ventilation. They are thus made compulsory in many European countries for use in public transport (which is crowded, poorly ventilated and sometimes with low humidity). They seem quite important in reducing infection rates.

For those not yet in the loop on the medical reason for this: the issue is tiny “respiratory” droplets of water and saliva (snot!) in the air which contain the virus and which people breathe in. Infected people breathe out rather a lot of such droplets and those droplets can hang in the air for hours depending on circumstances. Those circumstances are humidity and ventilation: if a place is well ventilated, the droplets move away or fall to the ground, and if there is high humidity the droplets also fall down much quicker. On the ground, those droplets are not much of an infection hazard. And where is ventilation good? Outdoors. Where is it bad? Indoors.

So this has become the new wisdom on covid-19 infections: the main place lots of people get strongly infected is in crowded indoor places with poor ventilation, like the Sydney Opera House on a dry day. Sit in there with a few infected people for a few hours and the infection will have reached all areas of the lungs, a much worse form of infection than having only the nose infected by a chance meeting outside. The face masks stop most of the droplets.

So compulsory face-masks in public transport come with another strongly suggested policy, which is continued bans of large gatherings in poorly ventilated indoor places, or at least compulsory face masks in those. That includes lots of school sports. It includes parliament, though they’ll be fixing the ventilation there as soon as they can. It includes bus rides full of tourists. It includes ocean cruises and large boats generally. It includes lots of factory floors. It includes academic conferences, business retreats, and all those other mass-indoor events. For some, you can imagine everyone wearing face-masks for an hour so, but for many, like factory floors or indoor sports, wearing continuous face-masks seems pretty infeasible.

So it kills off an awful lot of industries and activities, at least in the face-masks-off form we used to know, until there is a vaccine, which might well be never. Considering how every year there are new versions of the flu, that it normally takes many years to develop and test a vaccine, and that there is still no vaccine for the previous covid-virus (SARS), one shouldn’t believe in a quick vaccine miracle too easily.

Realistically speaking, the package of quarantine, State border controls, track-and-trace, face-masks, and banned mass gatherings should be expected to have to stay in place for several years in a suppression strategy. Precisely if they work, they have to be kept up till a vaccine because the population never develops immunity. So one kills off large economic sectors indefinitely.

Now, particular aspects of the potential package are more socially and economically costly than others. It is hard to know with the data at present, but I think that compulsory face-masks are probably the least costly of the package, unless they are mandated for all offices and factory floors. They main cost is more indirect in keeping up the fear. Social distancing is probably the most economically and socially expensive item in the potential package as it kills off most of office life and regular work. If mass gatherings include office floors, then keeping them outlawed costs close to that of social distancing. Quarantine is quite expensive, particularly economically, whilst track-and-trace on its own is probably more socially expensive than economically expensive.

Let’s then talk about two different options for grasping the nettle, ie accepting some form of herd immunity is the way to go, which comes with accepting a second wave of infections and deaths with a full opening up of the economy.

Measles, journalism and herd immunity / Data news / News / Home ...The technically easiest thing to do is to simply lift all government-mandated restrictions (state and federal), have some measures in place for the most vulnerable (unhealthy old people in nursing and retirement homes), and otherwise just watch and see what happens as international tourists, business people, migrants, and students come flooding back in. Like in Sweden, one would let individuals and businesses make their own calculations and decisions on how afraid they would be of what, but the official line would have to be that the risks in hindsight were much smaller than initially feared and people should hence just get on with their life and not be so scared.

There would clearly be a wave of infections and deaths lasting a few months. That wave would be quite a bit larger than the first wave Australia had. How large is not known, but I would personally expect it to be inbetween Sweden, which looks like ending up with a death rate equivalent to 15,000 Australians, and Japan, which would mean a few thousand Australians. Hand on heart, I’d expect about 10,000 covid deaths in Australia if we fully open up and stop worrying about the virus.

The advantage is that the economy starts to recover and social life resumes. There would still be one hell of a recession and a leftover government debt, but at least one would be on the path upwards again rather than killing off more industries permanently.

What happens after that first wave? The experience in Sweden is still the most instructive: the virus keeps “burning its way through the population” to the degree that that is natural with the economic and social reality in that country. Large parts of the healthy population eventually get the virus. After 2 months, the Swedish virologists now think, on the basis of anti-body immunity tests, that only about 20 to 25% of the population in the capital have had the virus (up from 7% in early April). The key unknown is whether lots of people (50%?) have prior immunity anyway due to some previous exposure of a related virus. If so, Sweden is close to herd immunity right now. Otherwise, they would still have a few more months of relatively high infections to go before so many are immune that the number of new cases become negligible. The former increasingly seems likely, ie that one only needs 20-30% of the population with anti-body immunity to have herd immunity. Part of the reason immunity is happening slower than expected in some countries is because of the high degree of voluntary isolation by a population afraid to gather in large numbers. In hindsight that was hence a big mistake and lots of damage could have been avoided letting them get exposed quicker.

Australia would be on a similar trajectory, with probably lower eventual levels of the population having been infected because Australia is more spread out, more humid, and might be lucky in importing less virulent versions of the disease than Sweden.

So it would take maybe 4-6 months for the number of cases to drop to almost nothing, after which you’d get the occasional local flare-up but no major further waves as a large part of the population has become immune. If it turns out that people lose immunity, you’d get smaller waves in subsequent years, much like the flu comes around every season. Eventually the population shrugs it off as just another health risk among many other, more worrying ones, like smoking or obesity.

Now, for me this represents the politically easiest option as one does not have to do anything radical but simply talk down the risks of the virus and give in to the demands of business to lift restrictions.

The narrative writes itself: “we have to make a living”, “we cant hide away from the world”, “Australia must be open for business”, “The virus is not even 1/10th of the risk of smoking”, “Our children must have a future”, “our elderly must be allowed to mingle with their family and friends”, “we cannot police the whole population”, etc.

This is the politically easier option and thus the more likely one. Yet, if one is of a more pro-forward and maverick nature, like myself, one is interested in the question of the smartest option around. What would that look like?

I think the smartest option around is to have a designated period in which one tells the old and frail to stay away from the active part of the population, whilst one deliberately created herd immunity by letting the healthy who come most into contact with others get a mild infection in the nose. You’d literally give them nose-sprays with the virus, a technology we already have and could mass-produce quickly.

One would thus have an infection program to catch up with Sweden, but then with fewer deaths and less economic disruption. You’d want something like 30-40% of the population to get infected, and that of course should be the most active group that runs almost no risk of dying from the infection. That’s 18-60 year olds who travel around a lot, which includes public transport commutes.

So you have a second wave, but one that is created and managed rather than one that occurs naturally. One can repeat the exercise in future years if it turns out that people lose immunity. There would of course still be a sizeable number of deaths from this approach. Not so much among those deliberately infected, but among those infected by the deliberately infected. One would try to minimise this damage, but one cant prevent such a large group of people entirely from working or mingling during their infectious period and one should thus expect to fail to some degree in completely protecting the vulnerable population during this deliberately created second wave.

Is this the lowest risk option? I think on balance yes, but it is not without risk. One such risk is that one didn’t need to do it because of some as yet unknown advantage that Australia might have that would make the natural “herd immunity level” particularly low. In that case the “second wave one needs to have to get back to normal” could be much smaller than it seems at present. Just as the fatality of the virus was totally over-estimated, so might the level of the population needed to be immune to get herd immunity also be over-estimated.

One indication that this might be possible is that much of Asia and Africa simply has incredibly low infection and death rates of this virus, suggesting that “doing pretty much nothing” would not lead to much death or infection in those places anyway. Just like malaria does not exist in Europe because it is too cold, maybe covid-19 has a tougher time in Australia than you’d think from merely looking at the usual indicators (urban density, climate, health characteristics of the population, age structure, work habits, social habits, etc.). So the deliberate infection options comes with the risk of creating a larger second wave than you’d actually need.

Politically, the fast-track policy to herd immunity also seems a tough sell. It is super easy to criticise and you’d have a conga line of supposed experts warning of the dangers of doing this. Whilst there are the odd medics whispering in the corridors about such an option, there is not an open consensus on it, so one cant hide behind some recognised solidly large group of scientists. You’d get doctors grand-standing how deliberate infections violate their oaths, and lots of other forms of protest. That alone would seem to make it a political impossibility, even though it seems to me the smartest option on the table with the least net economic and social disruption. Its probably too toxic for politicians to even mention it.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place. Stock Photo, Picture And Royalty ...These are then the more politically realistic options: continue with suppression indefinitely at high social and economic cost until the miracle vaccine appears, or open up fully and take your chances. Whilst Australia is currently right on track with the suppression option, it seems inevitable to me it will end up with laisser-faire after a few months of pussy-footing and continued economic harm. It would be nice to visit Australia again without needing to spend 2 weeks in a hotel room alone.

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16 Responses to Covid strategies for Australia: herd immunity or quarantine land?

  1. David Harris says:

    Bravo! I am upset by the way that people (especially politicians) believe that man-made laws can get around the laws of nature. The virus will do what viruses do.
    Nature implements its law of survival of the fittest through a system of predators and prey. The role of predators is to strengthen and improve the prey population by removing the less useful (slow, old, weak, careless) leaving the fittest in the population. Covid19 is just such a predator, favouring a strong immune system. Those who recover from infection do so because their own immune system eliminates it. A vaccine doesn’t stop or kill the virus – it just makes the immune system recognise it more quickly. I like your logical approach, but in the end, what will happen is what nature will allow.

    • paul frijters says:

      I do want to push back on this “what Nature will allow” business. We are also part of Nature and using our natural wits to minimize the damage the rest of Nature can do us whilst maximising our own interests always seemed very sensible to me. Natural even. It is, after all, the Anthropocene.

      So I am not someone who in principle says we should let Nature take its course. Its only when that’s the best option available according to our own criteria that we should say that. Long live the Anthropocene.

  2. Aaron says:

    What about a covid test instead of a 14 day quarantine? Countries like Iceland and Antigua are proposing that. I think it would have to be taken before you board the plane to Iceland or wherever.

    • paul frijters says:

      that would be a lot less disruptive, that’s for sure. There would probably be many tourists, students, and business people willing to put up with that.

      One big problem though is that it takes something like 24 to 48 hours to get the result from the test. So forget about last-minute flights then or anyone not organised enough to get to a test centre 48 hours before flying.

      Relatedly, one can easily cheat the test, particularly with such a long delay. And one can get the virus after testing and before boarding.

      Also, tests have false positives and false negatives. Not many (1%) but that’s way too much if you want to keep a virus out.

      Finally, this thing is very dormant and hardly noticeable in many people when they have it, and it can be present in different parts of the body. So a nose-swab doesnt pick up those who have it in their lungs (someone correct me if this isnt true!). The amounts might be too low to pick up, especially at the start, a major issue for the healthy asymptomatic cases who are the super-spreaders because they dont know they have it.

      So I do understand why Australia is not keen on this. The anti-body tests are even worse. Anti-body levels only start to increase quite a while after one has picked this thing up. So then the delay is a month.

      • Aaron says:

        IMO, quarantines will never be enacted because they’re so expensive and impractical – like you said, it kills off most international travel. But, people will put up with the testing and have to plan in advance for their trip. It’s going to become a totally unnecessary tax that will get applied to every traveler, but Australia has to do this to show they are being responsible. Even if one or two countries start opening with such testing, they’ll be forced to copy them. It seems the world is headed in this direction.

        The point of test cheating and false negatives remains and for this reason, I think we’ll have social distancing and testing/tracing in addition to the testing. It also looks like certain things are gone for years, maybe even permanently (any big social gathering basically), until we have a vaccine. Trying to stay “covid free” allows for no error. Sadly it appears people have accepted it. Travel bubbles are forming already. The world we are heading towards sounds pretty horrible to me, yet I feel powerless to change it.

        I don’t know what happens to countries like Sweden and the US, and many others including poor countries. They will almost certainly try to mimic to show they are making an effort, but it’s hard to say where it will end up.

        • paul frijters says:

          hard to foretell the dynamics, indeed, but I am less pessimistic than you. It is not that I trust in reason, but I do trust in the great pull of greed. And making ongoing economic losses whist other countries are lapping up the tourism, students, tax evading businessmen, and other goodies that you get with a more relaxed approach are powerful drivers.

          It’s an empirical question though. We will learn the outcome of this one!

          • Aaron says:

            I hope you are right. I derive my optimism from the reality of countries that simply cannot pull off any of this nonsense, either because they are too crowded (developing countries) or too disorganized (like the US).

          • David Harris says:

            Perhaps we should define more clearly the problem we are trying to solve. This seems to me to be something like “Reduce the adverse effects of Covid 19 on the community. These adverse effects appear to be serious illness and death in a small number of those affected. The number per capita is small, but combined with the seriousness of the possible illness, is enough to cause a large number of deaths and to overwhelm our medical system.”

            For a very large number of those affected, catching Covid19 is no big deal. So, the solution for the problem must address the suffering of the small number of seriously affected. Their suffering must be reduced enough to greatly reduce the death rate and greatly reduce the need for their hospitalisation. So, Covid19 is in the community, but with less deaths and less strain on the health system.

            This can be compared with AIDS. No vaccine, but enough new medical treatments to keep those with the virus alive, out of hospital and able to live a normal life. Yes, I know this is a stretched comparison but the principle is there, and many medical treatments are currently under development to do the same for Covid19.

            And, all the while, the virus is doing its thing, 24/7 – infecting, spreading, mutating.

            We can keep Covid19 under control at huge cost. This cost will eventually be unbearable, as is beginning to happen in Australia. Life will not go back to ‘normal’ because the new ‘normal’ will have Covid19 as a component which cannot be ignored.

            As you say, Paul, it is hard to foretell the dynamics. I’d love to come back in 20 years, or 50 years, to see what happened. But I am an octogenarian…

  3. Bruce Bradbury says:

    Would the economy recover if we adopted the Swedish model? Compared to the current situation, we would have many _more_ people seeking shelter, and international travel would remain low.

  4. Margaret Hogge, Non-Smokers' Movement of Australia Inc. says:

    Exit strategy: We can do it for COVID-19, why not tobacco? (online Insight article, 18 May 2020).

    Two Australian experts in Tobacco Control, Emeritus Professor Mike Daube and Professor Rob Moodie discuss the smoking pandemic which takes 20,000 Australian lives each year.
    We have known for 70 years, since May 1950, that smoking causes lung cancer.
    Quote “ We know the cause, the harms, the vector and the comprehensive public health approach recommended to bring it to an end”.

    This Sunday, World No Tobacco Day 31 May, we call on every Australian politician to pull out all the stops and work together to end this carnage.

    A comprehensive public health approach towards a Tobacco End-Game would include a Tobacco-Free Generation, where nobody could legally purchase if born after a certain date; heavy penalties for “social-supply” to friends and family; smoke-free, clean-air policies protecting everybody, in vehicles and (horror of horrors) in the home, from the toxins in second-hand tobacco smoke; indoors everywhere, including in shonky 75% enclosed/ legally unenclosed gaming rooms; as well as outdoors near others; vastly increased funding to promote quitting programs to assist the 90% of Australia’s 2,500,000 smokers who want to escape their addiction; free quitting advice and pharmacotherapies; purchasing from specialist licensed tobacco-sellers only (not at every corner shop, supermarket, newsagent, petrol station); individualised smoker’s licence, similar to a prescription – see Prof. Simon Chapman’s incentive concept on YouTube; pursuing Big Tobacco in court to recover damages, currently costing Australia $137 billion annually. There’s a start.
    Collateral benefit: no smoking in vehicles will lead to less cigarette-butt tossing, thus potentially less bushfires. Climate change causes enough disasters.

  5. Tony says:

    After 2 months, the Swedish virologists think only about 20 to 25% of the population in the capital have had the virus, and they thus still have a few more months of relatively high infections to go before so many (50%?) are immune that the number of new cases become negligible.

    There is recent data (week 18 of the year, so up to the 5th of May I think) that 7.3% of people in Stockholm have antibodies and maybe 5% of Sweden in total see here. I.e. 5% in the three months since their first infection.

    It is difficult to calculate when herd immunity can be reached. However, there is a really nice ABC new article about the reproduction number, see here. If you look at the graphs on the link everywhere has a basic reproduction rate of about 1.0. I.e. the number of new cases today is similar to yesterday’s. In the case of places like Sweden, perhaps only a few tens of thousands of people are infected at any one time. Potentially you could take a few years to infect enough people.

    As we discussed on another thread, it seems many people (30-60%) have some limited, pre-existing immunity due to common cold coronaviruses, on the other hand immunity to those same viruses wanes after about a year. So, really if you want to infect lots of people, you have to push for lots of infections, sick people still going to work, import lots of cases indefinitely. However, the behavioural evidence suggests that as infections rise, people will take action to avoid infection. In effect that is an uphill battle to achieve that behaviour.

    • paul frijters says:

      Hi Tony,

      I think the issue of pre-existing immunity is really important but of course one I will have to leave to the virologists to figure out. It makes it hard to estimate just how many are immune in a community.
      Yet, I think its very unlikely the pre-existing immunity is anywhere near as large as 30% or higher. That’s because of the recent data on anti-bodies in New York. They have found whole neighbourhoods (basically in some of the more deprived black-American neighbourhoods) that have about a 50% rate of the population with anti-bodies. That suggests i) that they cannot have had much pre-existing immunity at all, including the common cold which in a place like New York must be a very normal illness (the place is cold and windy), ii) you need something like 50% for herd immunity at least in a crowded place like New York, and iii) it can be done to actually have so many of the community infected in a short period of time.

      Now, on the Swedish data, which I talked about in a previous post, the crucial point is that that data comes from mid-April and their virologist claim there is about a two week lag between getting the disease and seeing anti-bodies. So they reckon the 7% was early April and that if you consider the evolution of the known cases, they must be up to 20 to 25% now. This is also why I said that this is what the swedish medics said, not what a study had shown! Still, its a lot less than the numbers claimed earlier by that Swedish ambassador, presumably informed by the earlier modeling of the same Swedish medics.

      The issue of behaviour indeed makes it tougher to catch up with Sweden, but that is largely a matter of fear and I see no problem in offering money to those willing to get infected. And one can make it a condition for certain forms of travel and that sort of stuff. But I just cant see politicians going anywhere near such a thing. Maybe if other countries try it first.

  6. George Wilson says:

    You might benefit from spending some time listening/watching Nassim Taleb and Yaneer Bar Yam

    • paul frijters says:

      I gave this the benefit of the doubt and watched 4 videos. What can I say? Very unimpressive. They can’t see the forest from the trees. Only useful when/if I want to make the argument of how much mainstream scientist nowadays lack training in the relative magnitude and importance of things.

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text:
193 Hematology/Hematopathology Case Conference: "Treating CML Blast Crisis / Mast Cell Sarcoma" (051618)

Dallas, TX US
May 16, 2018

To educate faculty and trainees from Hematology-Oncology and Hematopathology (Clinical Pathology) in Pathophysiology, diagnosis and management of hematologic disorders.

Target Audience

Medical Radiation, and Surgical Oncologists; Radiologists; Pathologists; Urologists; Neurologists;
UTSW Faculty, Fellows and Residents in training; and private practice oncologists.

Learning Objectives

As a result of this conference, participants should be able to: (1) Understand basic mechanisms of
hematologic processes and disorders, (2) Diagnose hematologic disorders from clinical and laboratory
data, and (3) Manage hematologic disorders according to accepted criteria

Course summary
Available credit:
  • 1.00 AMA
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Takeo Police Hunt Another Green Fingered Farmer

Takeo: Kirivong District Special Police Force, in cooperation with 12 administrative police stations, cracked down on 6 illegal marijuana plantations at the foot of Dob Komsat Mountain in Preah Bat Choan Chum Commune, Kirivong District (the ‘green triangle‘) on Tuesday, February 9. 2021 at 7:30 in the morning.

Police cut and burned marijuana pants on a total area of 982 square meters and destroyed five reservoirs, police said. Specialist police forces are currently searching for the cannabis grower(s) to bring them to justice.

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Show Dailies: Give Attendees Something to Talk About

Print show daily sampleWhy print? When social media channels and mobile apps providing conference updates in real time, why does print still offer value?

We asked a communications manager at a medical association with a conference newspaper why print matters:

“There is a strong, intangible connection that print dailies create between conference attendees. In addition to the value of program updates, deep insights into session content and coverage from the previous day, dailies enable their own brand of community by giving everyone something to rally around and talk about. Not everyone tweets or uses Instagram, but any and everyone is encouraged to pick up a daily paper—it’s a different kind of community building that is just as impactful as any app or website.”

What type of show daily content can start conversation?

  • Recaps of education sessions – attendees can’t hear every speaker.
  • Questions of the day – they’ll stop to think what they’re answer would be.
  • Information on upcoming events – it could be something they want to attend.
  • Exhibitor news and advertisements – they’ll head into the exhibit hall to speak with industry representatives.
  • Membership benefits – can joining your association advance their career?
  • Award winners – who they are and what have they accomplished?

Every conference has conversation-starters – we want to showcase them in your show daily! Contact us today to get started!

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According to Governor Cuomo's Office, starting today (Jan. 11), in New York State we begin phase 1b for COVID-19 vaccine distribution.  This is for:

  • Teachers and education workers
  • First responders
  • Public safety workers
  • Public transit workers
  • People 75 and older

If you fall into any of the above categories, you may be wondering, what next? Before you can get the vaccine, you have to fill out the New York State COVID-19 Vaccine Form. This form can be completed online at and you will receive a submission ID, or you can fill out the form at your vaccination site.

Individuals being vaccinated must bring proof of eligibility to the vaccination site. This may include an employee ID card, a letter from an employer or affiliated organization, or a pay stub, depending on the specific priority status.

Just in case you're not certain if you are eligible for the vaccine, you can check at

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

KEEP READING: See 25 natural ways to boost your immune system


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text:
The Question

Given a set of 9 numbers, m[], which contains only numbers 1 through 9 in a random order, with no two numbers being the same, create a program in any language which rearranges the number to be in numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc. etc.) by only switching two numbers which are next to each other (ie. 1, 3, 2 → 1, 2, 3).

  • You may only modify the set by switching two numbers which are next to each other
  • The ending numbers (1 through 9 in order) should be contained in m[]
  • You can use any language you would like
  • The answer with the smallest amount of bytes wins

Your code does not have to print the output, but the rearranged array must be in m[].

  • 6
    \$\begingroup\$ So basically a Bubble Sort algorithm ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Optimizer
    May 10 '15 at 18:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Optimizer Correct \$\endgroup\$
    – Meow Mix
    May 10 '15 at 18:38
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Do you have to print the intermediate steps? \$\endgroup\$
    – xnor
    May 10 '15 at 18:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ Can you show more examples? \$\endgroup\$ May 10 '15 at 22:46
  • 7
    \$\begingroup\$ can we just return 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9? \$\endgroup\$
    – Ewan
    May 11 '15 at 9:27

12 Answers 12

CJam, 15 bytes

How it works:

q~                     e# Read the CJam styled input array (For ex. [1 3 4 2 5 6 8 7 9])
  A{        }*         e# Run the loop 10 times. This is enough times for a 10 length
                       e# input array in a bubble sort
    {    }*            e# reduce
     a+$~              e# Rearrange the pair so that they are sorted
           ]           e# After each loop, wrap the numbers back into the array
              p        e# Print the array after the loops are done

Try it online here

Mathematica, 38 bytes

This is an unnamed function taking an array, which applies a replacement rule until the pattern cannot be found any more. The pattern is a list which has two consecutive elements b and c where b > c, and the rule says to swap the b and c but otherwise leave the array untouched.

There's a lot of syntactic sugar here, but the code is actually very readable if you know a bit of Mathematica:

# //. {a___,b_,c_,d___} /; b>c :> {a,c,b,d} &
^  ^     ^   ^          ^      ^            ^
|  |     |   |          |      |            |
|  |     |   | Declares an unnamed function |
|  |     |   |          |      |
| The function's argument      |
   |     |   |          |      |
   | Replace while possible... |
         |   |          |      |
         | Zero or more list elements.
             |          |      |
             | A single list element
                        |      |
                        | A condition for the pattern
                               | What to replace the pattern with

Python 3, 72 bytes

from random import*
while m!=sorted(m):p=randrange(8);m[p:p]=m.pop(p+1),

The bogosort (aka stupid sort) approach: swap neighbor elements randomly until the array will be sorted. Usually runs under a second.

2 bytes thanks to @xnor.

Python 2, 45

for i in range(8)*8:m[i:i+2]=sorted(m[i:i+2])

Cycles around the list, sorting consecutive pairs of elements. The index i cycles through 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7 eight times, which guarantees all elements bubble through and the list is sorted.

Pyth, 13 - 15 bytes

Solution which performs the requested swapping, and produces no output:

Solution which performs the requested swapping, and prints out the intermediate state of the list at every step:

Solution which performs the requested swapping, and prints out the final state of the list:

Demonstration of the middle solution above.

The method of swapping adjacent values is taken from @Jakube's answer.

The program uses #, the loop until error statement, to swap an adjacent pair of misordered elements until no such pair exists, at which point h, the head function, throws an error, ending the program.

  • \$\begingroup\$ Outputting additional things which were not requested by the question is considered to be a standard loophole. \$\endgroup\$
    – Optimizer
    May 11 '15 at 9:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Optimizer Actually, the OP doesn't mention output at all. It merely talks about modifying a set of numbers. Therefore, the same objection could be made about most of the answers here. I'll put a note about this in my answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – isaacg
    May 11 '15 at 10:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ You should instead ask the OP. I just asked. But I think its given and you are simply abusing the silence to make your program shorter :P \$\endgroup\$
    – Optimizer
    May 11 '15 at 10:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Optimizer Updated my answer accordingly. \$\endgroup\$
    – isaacg
    May 11 '15 at 10:09
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ I vote for the first version, the set is sorted and no output is required. It's useful add an output just to verify that the program works, but that it's part of a test and not to be counted. \$\endgroup\$
    – edc65
    May 11 '15 at 10:12

Retina, 95 93 bytes

Not particularly competitive (and probably still golfable), but here we go...

Where <empty> should be an empty line.

Since all numbers are single digits, this just expects a string with all 9 digits as the input and will print 123456789 after successfully sorting it. Each stage performs a single swap and the )1` indicates that all but the last stage should be repeated until the result stops changing.

The empty stage at the end is necessary, because otherwise we would get intermediate results every time the 98 stage is processed.

Here are all the intermediate results (whenever it changes) for an example run:

(I obtained this by adding the : option to each stage, and got rid of consecutive duplicates manually.)

Pyth, 17 bytes

Switching items in a list is really expensive in Pyth. So here's a fun solution, that stretches the rules a little bit. It's probably not valid.

Try it online: Pyth Compiler/Executor

First of all, the time complexity of my code is O(n^3). But this is not the interesting part. The question doesn't say anything about the complexity.

The critical part is, how I switch two elements in the list. Let's say I want to switch the elements m[3] and m[4]. I don't care about the indices 3 and 4 at all. I simply create a second list, that replaces every element equal to m[3] with the number m[4] and every number equal to m[4] with the value m[3]. Since the list doesn't contain duplicates, this simulates switching these two values. If there were duplicates, like in the input [1, 3, 2, 2], the output would be [1, 2, 3, 3]. And if you give the input [1, 2, 1], it would end in an infinite loop. I don't explicitly create the second list, it's just part of Pyth's implementation of the translate-method. If you print out the current lists (see here), it give the correct values, which you would expect.

                   implicit: Q = input list
u               Q  set G = Q, update G as long with the following statements,
                   until it stops changing:
         .:G2         all pairs (G[i],G[i+1])
     f>FT             filter for pairs T, where T[0] > T[1]
    a        ]Z       add to this list of pairs [0]
                      (ensures that the filtered list is always non-empty)
   h                  take the first element
 XG            )      translate G by this pair (switches the values T[0] with T[1])
                   print implicitly at the end

JavaScript (ES6) 56

A recursive function that rearranges the given list in place.

  • In JS, for any numeric value v : v > undefined == false, v < undefined == false. So going outside the array bounds is not a problem if we use the right comparison

  • When the array at last is sorted, the function inside 'some' return false and recursion ends

  • The value returned in case of a swap is a 2 element array, and its value is always 'truthy'. That works even when one or more array elements are 0

  • In fact the function works with any numeric input, not only single and not repeated digits. Did not found a way to take advantage from this OP constraint.

Test using snippet (in Firefox) - the snippet version output the current list values at each step.

F=l=>(log('L='+l), l.some((v,i)=>v>l[++i]&&[l[i-1]=l[i],l[i]=v])&&F(l))

function log(x) {
   L.innerHTML = L.innerHTML +x+'\n'

function go() {
  l = I.value.split(/\D+/g).map(x=>x|0)
  O.innerHTML = '' + l

Unsorted: <input id=I value="2 8 4 7 5 3 9 1 6"><button onclick="go()">-></button>

Sorted:

Operations log:

Javascript (ES6), 66 61 53 bytes

Thanks to the new rule, I can reduce even further :)

// Snippet demo: (Firefox only)
alert(z.join(', '));

f=x=> // recursive function f
    x.map( // map function to array
        (a, i)=> // a = current value, i = current index
            a < (b = x[--i]) && // poll value of previous index, compare less than
                                // comparison always false at first index as undefined will always be less
                f(x, x[i] = a, x[i + 1] = b) // if true, swap values and call f

C, 183

main(c,d,s){int a[10];for(c=0;c<10;c++)scanf("%d", &a[c]);for (c=0;c<10;c++){for(d=0;d<10-c-1;d++){if(a[d]>a[d+1]){s=a[d];a[d]=a[d+1];a[d+1]=s;}}}for(c=0;c<10;c++)printf("%d", a[c]);}

It's not golfed yet, other than variable names.

Haskell, 59 bytes

s e(h:t)=min e h:max e h:t
f l=iterate(init.foldr s[9])l!!9

The function s puts an element e in front or at the second place of a list depending on if it's less or greater than the first element of the list. Folding s into the input list lets the smallest element bubble to the front. I'm folding into a list containing a single 9 which I immediately remove afterwards with init, so that I don't have to check for empty lists in s. iterate repeats the folding process forever creating a list of intermediate results. The final result is the 9th element of this list.

Perl, 68 bytes

Ungolfed code

 {                                             # Block runs once unless redo is called

     for (0..7) {                                 # Loop index is in $_

         if ($m[$_] > $m[$_+1]) {                 # Check if swap needed

             splice @m, $_, 2, $m[$_+1], $m[$_];  # Replace a two element slice of
                                                  # the array with those
                                                  # two elements reversed

             redo                                 # Restart the block over

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Tag - tier i

Committed to Making a Difference

The Augusta University College of Education is committed to being a relevant, responsive, and respected institution with a keen focus toward high impact work in the community. Our faculty, students, and alumni are committed to improving lives and expanding opportunities through the comprehensive study and effective practice of education.


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Coke Bottle from Malaysia (MY003)

Kuala Lumpur
Content : 250ml
Year : 2015
Material : Glass
Product : Classic
Type : Commemorative

Shape : Hobbleskirt
Marking : Print
Front : 100 years of the Coca-Cola bottle logo with 2 bottles
Back : 5th annual Coca-Cola Collectors Fair 9th May 2015

Crown cap
The story behind the bottle…
Ltd. Ed. Malaysia collector club
Special thanks to Stéphane Buttigieg for his contribution !


text:
Introduction to solitons in photonic lattices

Nikolaos K. Efremidis, Jason W. Fleischer, Guy Bartal, Oren Cohen, Hrvoje Buljan, Demetrios N. Christodoulides, Mordechai Segev

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

In this chapter, we present a review of optical systems that have a periodic variation in their index transverse to the direction of propagation. Such photonic systems include photonic crystal fibers, which have a large index variation that controls frequency dispersion, and coupled waveguide arrays, which have a relative small index variation that controls spatial diffraction. Here, we will focus on the latter case and consider 1+1D and 2+1D dynamics. A photonic lattice has the advantage that the refractive index contrast requirements are low, and thus, for example, a 2D bandgap can be established for index modulations of the order 10-3. Light excitation is quite simple because the optical wave is launched in a direction that is almost perpendicular to the direction of the index modulations. Also, nonlinearity can quite easily manifest in such systems simply because of low refractive index modulations. As a result, nonlinear self-localized structures or solitons are possible for nonlinear index modulations of the order of 10-4. An optical periodic system with periodicity along the transverse direction was first theoretically studied in 1965 [1] in the linear regime. In that work the diffraction pattern of an array of identical fibers has been found using coupled mode theory in terms of Bessel functions. Experimentally this behavior was reported in 1973 in an array of optical waveguides [2].

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)73-99
Number of pages27
JournalSpringer Series in Optical Sciences
StatePublished - 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Dive into the research topics of 'Introduction to solitons in photonic lattices'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

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text:
Zika Virus

The mosquito-borne Zika virus (ZIKV) is prompting worldwide concern due to its connection to a neurological birth disorder and its rapid spread across the globe. ZIKV appeared in Brazil in May 2015 and has since spread to 25 countries and territories. In February 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Recombinant Proteins • Produced in insect cells

Monoclonals • Suitable for use in ELISA and Lateral Flow • Produced in-vivo

• Suitable for use in ELISA and rapid assays • Detects both IgG and IgM antibodies to ZIKV ZERO-X-REACT™ ZIKA ENVELOPE REC-ANTIGEN 9050 • Mutated to eliminate cross-reactivity to the major conserved domain of other flaviviruses • Contains a His tag ZIKV NS1 PROTEIN R01636 • NS1 is a large conserved protein believed to contain species of specific epitopes • Contains a His tag ZIKV ENVELOPE PROTEIN R01635 • Sequence derived from the African strain (a.a. sequence is proprietary) • The E protein comprises the majority of the virion surface and is involved in replication

C01864M C01865M C01866M

C01870M C01887M (Pair) C01888M (Pair) C01889M (Pair) C01890M (Pair)

C01860M C01861M C01862M C01863M C01938M

C01867M (Pair) C01868M (Pair) C01869M

Polyclonals • Produced in goat • Suitable for use in ELISA and rapid assays GOAT ANTI - ZIKA NS1 C01885G (Total IgG) • Caprylic acid and ammonium sulfate fractionation C01886G (Affinity Purified) • Immunoaffinity purified by Zika NS1 conjugated Sepharose 4B Matrix

Protein Confirmation & Molecular Weight The Zika antigens are expressed in insect cells and accordingly are expected to have the necessary post-translational modifications (e.g. glycosylation) required for proper folding. The native conformation of Zika NS1 is proposed to be hexameric, similar to other NS1 proteins, so molecular weight testing may produce varying results depending on the technique used (e.g. higher molecular weights may be seen using analytical SEC techniques due to oligomer formation). The specification for molecular weight provided on the COAs for the antigens were determined by reducing SDS-PAGE. There is an urgent medical need for rapid ZIKV diagnostic assays for use in the field to screen large numbers of samples. Existing tests include PCR assays and antibody (IgM/ IgG) detection assays, however differentiation between flaviviruses remains challenging. Assays that directly test for the presence of ZIKV (e.g. PCR) are only able to detect infections up to 5 days after onset of symptoms – after this, the virus is no longer detectable. To overcome flavivirus cross-reactivity in diagnostics, recombinant antigens to envelope and NS1 proteins are commonly used. IgG and IgM antibodies typically show a high sensitivity and specificity to these epitopes, especially NS1 which is thought to contain more species specific epitopes than the envelope proteins. The biological safety level assigned to live Zika virus is BSL-2.

Reducing cross-reactivity with Dengue To improve assay specificity, it is necessary to remove any cross-reacting antibodies that could bind to the antigen and cause a false result. Defined epitope blocking ELISAs have also been used to increase the specificity and have been useful for differentiating flaviviral infections through targeting epitopes on NS1 or E protein. By including low concentrations of unconjugated Dengue NS1 and Chikungunya NS1 antigens, it is possible to block antibodies that are highly cross reactive between the three flaviviruses.

RECOMMENDED DENGUE RECOMBINANTS: R01656 (NS1, Type 1) R01659 (Envelope, Type 1) R01657 (NS1, Type 2) R01660 (Envelope, Type 2) R01658 (NS1, Type 3) R01661 (Envelope, Type 3) R01663 (NS1, Type 4) R01662 (Envelope, Type 4)

Methods to increase IgM sensitivity To improve assay sensitivity to IgM, we recommended the following:

1. IgM-Capture Assays: Use anti-human IgM Fab fragment antibody as the capture as opposed to a full-length anti-human IgM antibody. This allows more Fab fragment antibodies to bind to the surface area on the solid substrate increasing the

number of sites available for total IgM antibody to be captured. 2. Lateral Flow Assays: Employ the bridging method in which colloidal gold-labelled disease specific antibody (e.g. MAb or PAb to Zika NS1) is pre-mixed with recombinant antigen (e.g. Zika NS1). Conjugating colloidal gold directly to the Zika antigen can inhibit its ability to bind to captured IgM. Furthermore using a gold-conjugated PAb, which has a broad reactivity, can further increase assay sensitivity. A PAb can bind to different antigen epitopes therefore enabling more than one PAb to bind to the same antigen simultaneously to generate a stronger signal.

RECOMMENDED ZIKA POLYCLONALS: C01885G (Total IgG) C01886G (Affinity Purified) * C01886G Purified using Zika Virus NS1 to minimize cross-reactivity to other flaviviruses such as Dengue NS1

Protocol suggestions for using the bridging method to improve assay sensitivity and specificity: • Conjugate the gold particle to the anti-Zika NS1 Ab (optimization of conjugation chemistry required). • Mix the recombinant Zika NS1 antigen and gold-conjugated anti-Zika NS1 Ab to form a complex. - The ratio of Zika NS1 and gold-conjugated anti-Zika NS1 Ab must be optimized for a particular assay. - Remove any unbound gold-conjugated anti-Zika NS1 (e.g. via centrifugation) prior to deposition on the conjugate pad.

Gold-conjugated MAb or PAb (e.g. PAb to Zika NS1)

- In order to reduce cross-reactivity with Dengue, include a recombinant Dengue NS1 antigen to conjugate mixture (inclusion of one serotype should be sufficient). Optimal dilution must be determined by the end user.

Antigen (e.g. Zika NS1)

Patient’s IgM to Zika

Anti-human IgM (capture antibody)

Model of the ZIKV NS1 hexamer

Zika NS1 shares a high structural similarity with other flavivirus NS1 proteins and NS1 is suspected to be a major genetic factor underlying the diverse clinical consequences of infections caused by flaviviruses. Zika NS1 displays characteristics that are unique among flaviviruses including a loop surface containing both a positively and negatively charged central region and a negative charge toward the two distal ends in its loop surface. This loop-surface interface is thought to play a crucial role in interactions of secreted NS1 hexamers with host factors and antibodies.

The ZIKV NS1 hexamer, modeled by using the full-length Dengue Type 2 NS1 structure. The actual NS1 172–352 structure is colored in orange, and the predicted NS1 1–171 structure is colored in light gray. NS1 172–352 is located in the outer layer of the hexamer barrel.

Song, H., Qi, J, Haywood, J., Shi, Y. and Gao, G.F. (2016). Zika virus NS1 structure reveals diversity of electrostatic surfaces among flaviviruses. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology . 23:456–458.

Fig. 1: Microcephaly: a neonatal malformation defined as a head size much smaller compared with other babies of the same age and sex.

ZIKV is closely related to other mosquito-borne flaviviruses such as Dengue, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, and West Nile. Structurally, like other flaviviruses, ZIKV is icosahedral shaped and enveloped with a non-segmented, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome which encodes seven nonstructural proteins and three structural proteins. The structural proteins encapsulate the virus and the replicated RNA strand is held within a nucleocapsid which is contained within a host-derived membrane modified with two viral glycoproteins. There are two lineages of Zika (African and Asian lineage) and phylogenetic studies indicate that the virus spreading in the Americas is 89% identical to African genotypes, but is most closely related to the Asian strain that circulated in French Polynesia during the 2013–2014 outbreak. ZIKV is primarily transmitted by infected Aedes species mosquitos ( A. aegypti and A. albopictus ) although it appears that it can also be spread through blood transfusion and sexual contact. Control measures aim to minimize any exposure to potentially ZIKV infected mosquitos. However, given that the global distribution of A. aegypti is expanding due to global trade and travel (including continents such as North America and the European periphery) ZIKV will likely continue to spread to new areas. Before the current pandemic began, ZIKV was not known to spread widely among humans or cause any neurological complications however ZIKV does possess the ability to mutate rapidly. Sequence analysis has shown that that virus has undergone significant genetic changes in the past 70 years, including substantial DNA changes between the Asian and African lineages, as well as the human and mosquito strains. It has been suggested that these mutations could enable the viruses to replicate more efficiently, evade the body’s immune response or invade new tissues that provide a safe harbor for it to spread. Zika (ZIKV) virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus that was first identified in a monkey in Uganda in 1947. Outbreaks of ZIKV disease have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, however, ZIKV appeared in Brazil for the first time in May 2015 and since then has been estimated to have infected up to 1.3 million people and spread to 25 countries and territories. There is scientific consensus that Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Links to other neurological complications are also being investigated.

In general, infection with Zika fever is a mild disease only causing a rash, fever, joint pain, and malaise, similar to Dengue fever. However, ZIKV infection during pregnancy can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, as well as other severe fetal brain defects. It has also been linked to other cases of several neurological complications including Guillain-Barré syndrome and hearing difficulties.

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View Full Version : Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City

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text:
Preview 2018: TCU Horned Frogs

Preview 2018: TCU Horned Frogs

2018 Preview

Preview 2018: TCU Horned Frogs

Preview 2018: Previewing and looking ahead to the TCU season, and what you need to know.

Preview 2018: TCU Horned Frogs

Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

Offense Breakdown
Defense Breakdown
Top Players, Key Game, Fun Stats
What Will Happen & Win Total Prediction
– TCU Previews 2017 | 2016 | 2015

Yeah, really. Over the last four seasons, TCU has been the second-best team in the Big 12, and it’s not even that close.

In the College Football Playoff era – which is all that matters now – yup, the smallish school from the old Southwest Conference, and then the WAC, and then Conference USA, and then the Mountain West, that went 4-8 in 2013 has grown into one of the powerhouses of a Power Five conference.

The Horned Frogs got to the reboot of the new Big 12 Championship game last year, have won three of their last four bowl games, should’ve been given a bit more love and respect in the final 2014 College Football Playoff rankings – going 11-1, dropping from third in the next-to-last rankings to sixth, despite a 42-3 win over Iowa State – and won a total of 40 games with three 11-win seasons in the last four.

Over that span, Oklahoma State has won 37 games, Kansas State and West Virginia 32, and Texas just 23.

And even Oklahoma – who has recently owned the conference – only has two more wins than the Horned Frogs over the last four years.

Want to go even deeper? Those 40 wins over the last four seasons equals Florida State, are four more than Penn State, two more than USC, and just one less than Georgia.

And yet, for all that head coach Gary Patterson has done, and for all of his success, and for proving time and again that he, as well as any head coach in college football, will figure it all out, TCU doesn’t get the automatic respect it’s earned and deserves.

What, seven 11-or-more win seasons in the last ten isn’t enough for you, America?

The program joins Wisconsin, Penn State, and USC in the discussion of ones who have done the most without making the College Football Playoff, but this year’s team will need to do a little work just to get back to the Big 12 Championship.

It’s a down year for the conference overall, but the Horned Frogs still have to break in a new starting quarterback, come up with some key new starters at receiver and running back, and have to replace three of their top four defensive tacklers along with some other terrific stars.

But plenty of ballers return – led by LB Ty Summers on the defensive side – and again, Patterson almost always knows how to quickly fix the glitches with a system that finds great athletes and football players, and then gets them into the right spots.

Will it be enough to finally break down that Oklahoma door, win the Big 12 title, and get to the CFP?

TCU will keep on knocking.

NEXT: Offense Breakdown, Defense Breakdown, Top Players, Final Prediction & What Will Happen

More College Football News


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2018 Acorns to Oaks Gala

Saturday November 10, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm

Our Sixth Annual Autumn Gala Was Our Best Ever!

Saturday, November 10, 2018 • 7:00 to 11:00 PM • Spring Mill Manor, Ivyland

See Photos of the Gala!

Our 6th Annual Gala called on all you Super Heroes to come out in support of our campers…and you did! It was an amazing evening spent with our award honorees, sponsors and supporters, and friends—raising a record amount for our summer campers. Thank you to the 220 folks who attended—and to everyone who sponsored, donated and supported!

Master of Ceremonies: Brittney Shipp, Emmy-nominated journalist and meteorologist for NBC10’s First Alert Weather Team. Brittney is passionate about educational school visits, diversity in children’s literature, and bridging the gender gap in STEM careers. Through school visits, mentoring and volunteering, Brittney is dedicated to energizing young girls and students to understand weather and science-related careers. See Brittney’s facebook page, featuring her just-published children’s book, The Meteorologist in Me.

This Year’s Honorees:

Anna Freeman Davies Founders Award

Dr. Ann Repplier
Former Board member for many decades, former Vice President, and former overnight camp summer staff.
Nominated by Mike Spangler

Leonard C. Ferguson Youth Advocate Award

Dr. Monica J. Taylor, Ed.D. Assistant Superintendent of the Hatboro-Horsham School District
A very highly-valued participant in our Outdoor School Program, Dr. Taylor is also well recognized by others, receiving many awards for her impact on youth.
Nominated by Mary Dare

College Settlement Corporate Good Citizen Award

Comcast Cable Communication, Inc.
Represented by Janet Steiner, Manager of Government Affairs, for their 6 years of volunteering at Clean Up Day and providing grants as well as supplies to College Settlement through their Comcast Cares initiative.
Nominated by Susan Daily

College Settlement Dave DeRosa Outdoor School Award

Craig Newberger, Germantown Academy
A science teacher who has brought 5th grade classes to the Outdoor School since 1986, Craig is much loved both at his school and by our staff, and was himself a camp staffer in Maine for many years.
Nominated by Karyn Bonner

Summer Camps at College Settlement Award

Jeff Bedford, a former camper, parent of campers and an advocate of our camps in the community
Jeff first came to camp in 1972, at eight years old. He is a volunteer baseball and basketball coach, works at the Emlen School, and is a consistent presence at our Open Houses, where he brings new camper families.
Nominated by Josh Davis

Thank You to Our Generous Sponsors!

GOLD Sponsors:

SILVER Sponsors:
Smith Oil
Utility Line Services

BRONZE Sponsors:
Philly Transportation
Comcast Cable
Joe McCreavy
Stephen Smart

ACORN Sponsors:
BP Environmental Services
Susan Daily
Elizabeth Finocchio
Kimberly Gost
Robert Kutzik
Ted Naccarella
Teri Ohliger
Pitney Bowes
Hilary Seabrook

Saturday November 10, 2018
7:00 pm - 11:00 pm


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Update—Sunday, September 13, 2020

The rains have left giving us lovely late Summer days

The corn is drying down

Ever so nicely in the peaceful warmth of September sunshine

But the thing that is more than delightful

Boomer actually asked to go with me on the four-wheeler, something he hasn’t done in two or more weeks.

The earth is full of Late Summer/Early Autumn flowers

And my little Boomer has a smile on his face again

Giving me great joy!

Thank you ever so much for caring about my little beagle.

You are all true friends,

From my heart to your world,

30 thoughts on “Update—Sunday, September 13, 2020

  1. I am so glad Boomer is feeling better! You too!! Brought tears to my eyes ~
    He needs a mask like the fire fighters wear, as the smoke is forecasted to drift back to Colo this week… uck!

  2. Boomer looks so good….yes he does look like he’s smiling. Sweet dog. Hope he stays healthy for a good long time. Are your fires getting better?

  3. I don’t think we will see any rain here so I can’t send you any. Glad to see Boomer out in the sunshine. I’m behind as you well know. I’ll try and see what I’ve been missing. I’m so ready for winter this year more than ever. Be careful with that smoke blowing in. It’s not kind.

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Replacement IKEA Sofa Legs

Replacement Legs for your IKEA Sofa

Spruce up that IKEA sofa with replacement sofa legs. Create your very own mid-century inspired sofa with our wooden legs here! Custom legs add characters to all types of IKEA sofas. Some couches might require the legs adapter if they aren't using M8 bolt on their legs by default.

Don't See Your Sofa?

We're quite the couch detectives, so if you couldn’t find yours in the line-up above, get in touch with us and send us a photo of it. We'll get back to you within a working day with what to do next.

Give your IKEA sofa legs

Our mid-century replacement IKEA sofa legs come in 3 designs, 2 sizes (regular and tall) and 2 types of wood which are Beech & Cherry.

These legs are sold individually, all pre-installed with an M8 bolt which works with these IKEA models generally: Karlstad, Karlsfors, Klippan, Klobo, Soderhamn, Landskrona, Ljungvik, Harnosand, Sater, Solsta-Olarp, Stockholm, Strandmon, Landskrona, Mellby, Norsborg.

Our legs uses a special 2 ways M8 Bolts, so simply screw in the bolts into your furniture's 8mm pre-drilled holes. We provide complimentary mounting plates If your furniture doesn't use M8 Bolts, simply check the option in the product page.

Personalise your home with small attention to details. Our legs are compatible to all IKEA sofa models that comes pre-installed with the M8 sized fitting.

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(New) Visuality: Ethics and Aesthetics Symposium

27 March 2018

(New) Visuality: Ethics and Aesthetics Symposium

27 March 2018

The University of Queensland, Forgan-Smith Tower (Building #1), Room 402

RSVP to Dr Ted Nannicelli: t.nannicelli@uq.edu.au

Co-organised by the School of Communication and Arts and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences’ visual politics research program

9:15 – Welcome

9:30 – Prof. Kris Fallon:

“(In)visible Adversaries: Paranoia and the End of Mass Media”

10:30 – Prof. Tom O’Regan:

“Re-drawing the line between Journalism and the Interpersonal: Facebook and the Future of the Platform Press”

11:30 – 1:00 Lunch

1:00 – Dr. Amy Hubbell:

“Circulating Bodies: Retelling the Trauma of the Algerian War through Photography and Art”

2:00 – A/Prof. Damian Cox:

“Looking for minds (and not really finding any): Mindhunter and the quest for understanding”

3-3:30 – Afternoon tea

3:30 – A/Prof. Robert Sinnerbrink:

“‘A Documentary of the Imagination’: Cinematic Ethics in The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence

4:30 – Prof. Mette Hjort:

“Creating Cinematic Art in Occupied Territory: Why is Artistic Value Enhanced by Solidarity?”

Abstracts and Bios

“(In)visible Adversaries: Paranoia and the End of Mass Media”

Kris Fallon, University of California-Davis

For much of the 20th century, visual media were mass media.  From film and television broadcasts to magazines and newspapers, such mechanically reproducible media were reproduced at scale, drawing together widespread populations into vast audiences and publics.  Critics and champions of these forms celebrated their ability to knit together ‘imagined communities’ of spectators and questioned their ability shape public opinion or manufacture consent among the electorate of open democracies.  With the rise of digital media and its steady subsumption of these other forms, mass media are slowly giving way to the algorithmic precision of individualized content.  If the 20th century gave birth to mass visual media, the 21st may have already witnessed its death.

This talk will explore the ethical and political implications of this shift from mass media to digital media by considering the perceived influence of outside forces in recent elections in Europe and the United States on social media platforms. Indeed, Facebook’s recent move away from delivering ‘public content’ produced by news organizations toward delivering more ‘meaningful’ content produced by a user’s friends and family reveals the stakes involved in the broader shift.  While prior moments produced a concern over mass propaganda and the undue influence of ever expanding media conglomerates, the open plasticity of the feed and the anonymity of the network engender fears around ‘fake news’ spread by bots and trolls. Where the mass ornament and the media spectacle have come to define prior political configurations, the networked model produces no shared visual emblem, offering instead the fractal suspicion and insular tribalism of content shared by ‘friends’.

Kris Fallon is an Assistant professor in the department of Cinema & Digital Media at UC Davis.  His research focuses on non-fiction visual culture across a range of platforms, from still photography and documentary film to data visualization and social media.  His essays on digital technology and documentary have appeared in journals such as Film Quarterly, Screen, and several edited anthologies including Contemporary Documentary and Documentary Across Disciplines. He is currently completing a book entitled Where Truth Lies: Digital Culture and Documentary Media After 9/11.

“Re-drawing the line between Journalism and the Interpersonal: Facebook and the Future of the Platform Press”

Tom O’Regan, University of Queensland

It is too soon to call with any certainty the consequences of Facebook’s recasting of its relation to news which now clearly separates user news (which it supports) and public news (which it does not). What can be considered, however, are the political and ethical implications of this recasting as Facebook seeks to reinstitute and redraw the familiar distinctions between “The News” and “news”, between “Public News” and the more private “community of user news”, between Public Communication and interpersonal communication that it and other social media outlets had purposefully muddied. This play on Facebook’s part does not involve our going back to where we were before social media; rather Facebook is seeking to normatively reconstitute these public and private boundary distinctions in the light of social media and on its own terms at a time when its operations have come under increasing public scrutiny. What also can be considered are the ways this reframing repositions the longer term process of media platformisation. “The Platform Press” preceded and will succeed Facebook’s recasting of its News involvements but the trajectory of news platformisation may be changing in direction and emphasis. Both these considerations will be teased out in relation to media development trajectories anchored in the political, ethical and economic possibilities of the constitutive trifecta of media provision, market and user information and media user/audiences, to our available ways of paying for News media, and to the longer term trends in journalist employment over the past 30 years.

Tom O'Regan took up the position of Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland in 2004. He has been a key figure in the development of cultural and media studies in Australia and has an international reputation for his screen policy studies related work. In 2002 Tom was elected a Fellow of Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Arts (2010-2011); Head of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History (2005-2008), Director of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy (1999-2002, Griffith University) and the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication (1996-1998, Murdoch University). Tom co-founded the media and cultural studies journal Continuum (1987-1995) and was Australia's UNESCO Professor of Communication from 2001-2003.

“Circulating Bodies: Retelling the Trauma of the Algerian War through Photography and Art”

Dr Amy L. Hubbell, University of Queensland

The diaspora of former French citizens of Algeria, known collectively as the Pieds-Noirs, have increasingly turned to the internet to reattach themselves to each other and to their lost homeland by circulating images and texts from home. While the postcard-perfect images of Algeria that initially dominated community remembrance still circulate freely, over the past decade, traumatic images from the Algerian War for Independence have multiplied on Pied-Noir websites and listservs. The shocking images of mutilated corpses are at first confronting, but as they pile up, the viewer becomes more and more immune to their power. When the viewer engages with the images, she eventually recognises that the same select bodies are continuously circulating but alongside a variety of political messages.

Though no new images are likely to join these collections, the often repeated photos are now appearing in different formats such as paintings and installation art. One artist who routinely incorporates the traumatic images of the war in her work is Nicole Guiraud who survived the famous Milk Bar bombing in the Battle of Algiers in 1956 when she was ten years old. Guiraud has a personal stake in this representation: she is an amputee and champion for victims of terrorism in Europe. Her art addresses personal psychological wounds as well as the historic trauma from the Algerian War (1954-1962). Depicting both living and dead victims and including her own body, Guiraud does not solely repeat the well-known images that recount her community’s trauma and exile; she reworks and interprets them while inscribing herself among the dead. This article seeks to understand what is at stake when traumatic images are proliferated and whether the dulling effect produced through the repetition of the initial photos functions in a similar way to mitigate trauma when the images are interpreted in art.

Amy Hubbell is lecturer in French at the University or Queensland where she researches Francophone autobiographies of exile and trauma. She is author of Remembering French Algeria: Pieds-Noirs, Identity and Exile (U of Nebraska P, 2015), and A la recherche d'un emploi: Business French in a Communicative Context (Hackett, 2017) and co-editor of several journal volumes as well as The Unspeakable: Representations of Trauma in Francophone Literature and Art (2013), and Textual and Visual Selves: Photography, Film and Comic Art in French Autobiography (2011). She is currently working on her new project, "Hoarding Memory: Covering the Wounds of the Algerian War."

“Looking for minds (and not really finding any): Mindhunter and the quest for understanding”

Damian Cox, Bond University

The 2017 Netflix series Mindhunter, directed by David Fincher (episodes 1, 2, 9 &10), confronts the aesthetic problem of making the minds of serial killers both accessible to audiences and tolerable to them. It tries to solve the problem by displacing the burden of recognition onto its protagonist, Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff). Ford takes on the burden of internalising the serial killers’ perspectives – saving an audience from the need to do so. Long form storytelling (as long as it is not binge watched) facilitates a kind of distanciation.  Because of its long form (10 episodes), Mindhunter is able to show the slippery slope of Ford’s trajectory – from wide-eyed enthusiasm to panic-stricken breakdown – incrementally. Audiences get to view the trajectory over time, with breaks between episodes. Ford’s character also becomes less appealing as the series progresses, as his insight into the serial killer mind deepens.

The series explores contrasting forms of understanding: causal explanation, as represented by the psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) versus Ford’s search for verstehen. Carr is looking for identifying and explanatory factors.  Ford is too; but his technique is to establish as much cognitive empathy with the serial killers he interviews as he can bear (and it is considerable). I argue that the finale of the series demonstrates an epistemic impossibility: the task of understanding evades both Carr and Ford, for different reasons.  They hunt for the minds of serial killers, but never really find them.

Damian Cox is Associate Professor of philosophy at Bond University. He teaches philosophy and film, ethics, political philosophy. He has co-authored three books: Integrity and the Fragile Self ; A Politics Most Unusual: violence, sovereignty and democracy in the war on terror and Thinking Through Film. Current projects include work on “affect mirrors” in the cinema.

“‘A Documentary of the Imagination’: Cinematic Ethics in The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence”

Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University

Joshua Oppenheimer described his remarkable documentary re-enactment film, The Act of Killing (2012), as a ‘documentary of the imagination’. This was followed by an equally remarkable but quite different ‘sequel’, The Look of Silence (2014), which addressed many of the issues raised by, and criticisms made of, its controversial counterpart. Indeed, the two films compose a documentary diptych, The Look of Silence providing the absent victim perspective and reckoning with historical responsibility that was lacking in The Act of Killing’s focus on the perpetrators of the 1965-66 state-sponsored massacres in Indonesia after General Suharto’s military coup. In this paper, I explore this documentary dialogue, guided by the question, ‘what is a documentary of the imagination’? To do so I approach these films as contrasting cases of ‘cinematic ethics’—films that show how cinema can be a medium of ethical experience enacted through emotional engagement and cognitive reflection (see Sinnerbrink 2016)—focusing in particular on the mediating role of imaginative engagement with cinematic works. Both films invite the viewer to imaginable the unthinkable, and to explore the role of the cinematic and ideological imagination in the complex dialectic between perpetrator and victim of political violence. I also challenge recent critiques of Oppenheimer’s films, notably by documentary theorist Brian Winston, who claims that they fail to abide by the ethical rules of engagement for both filmmaker and spectator, sensationalising violence, ignoring historical context, and privileging aesthetics over ethics. Such criticisms misconstrue both the aesthetic and ethical-political import of these films, the manner in which they expose the ideological imagination of the perpetrators and articulate the ethical imagination of the survivors in ways that exercise complex and confronting forms of cinematic and moral imagination. These two remarkable works thus offer ample scope to explore contrasting approaches to cinematic ethics: reflexive performative re-enactment in The Act of Killing versus contemplative ethical witnessing in The Look of Silence. Despite their stylistic and ethical differences, both films taken together comprise a ‘minor politics’ by enabling marginalised, suppressed, or ‘impossible’ ethico-political experiences to be narrated and enacted via cinematic means.

Robert Sinnerbrink is Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (Routledge, 2016), New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (Continuum, 2011), Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen, 2007/Routledge 2014), and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Film-Philosophy. He has published numerous articles on the relationship between film and philosophy in journals such as the Australasian Philosophical Review, Angelaki, Film-Philosophy, Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies, Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind, Screen, Screening the Past, and SubStance. He is currently writing a new book, Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher (Bloomsbury, 2019).

“Creating Cinematic Art in Occupied Territory: Why is Artistic Value Enhanced by Solidarity?

Mette Hjort, University of Copenhagen / Norwegian University of Science and Technology

In 2014, the Danish Film Institute, in partnership with the Danish House in Ramallah, established FilmLab:Palestine in the West Bank. Based in Ramallah and with Palestinian filmmaker Hanna Atallah as its creative director, FilmLab:Palestine finds its origins in Atallah’s “personal experience” of “empowering Palestinian youths in refugee camps in Jordan.” Atallah identifies the revitalization of the “culture of film in Palestine” as the Lab’s “sole purpose.” The aspiration is for a cinema that fosters authentic and genuinely creative expression, in part by escaping “the grasp of conventional European filmmaking industries and Hollywood” (FilmLab:Palestine 2017). Focusing on children and young people, FilmLab:Palestine pursues a variety of strategies, each of them designed to enable the next generation of Palestinians—whether in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza—to tell their own stories. FilmLab:Palestine has initiated a number of outreach and talent development programmes, each of them working in synergy with the Lab’s annual film festival, ‘Days of Cinema.’ In my talk I focus on the “twinning” of young filmmakers from Denmark (the Aarhus Film Workshop) and Palestine (FilmLab:Palestine) and on the Danish Film Institute’s contribution to talent development in Palestine, through the involvement of the Head of the DFI’s ‘New Danish Screen’ initiative. My aim is to shed light on the ethics of facilitating partnerships of equals on a North/South basis, for the purposes of developing artistic talent and producing cinematic art. A key question is this: Do the ethical and political commitments facilitating sustained collaboration under difficult circumstances have positive implications for the artistic value of the “twinned” filmmakers’ films? If so, how might such implications be captured in conceptual terms? My paper draws on my own involvement with FilmLab:Palestine from 2017 onwards, on participant and non-participant observation in Ramallah, and on practitioner interviews with talent developers and “twinned” filmmakers.

Mette Hjort is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Professor II of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Affiliate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Honorary Professor of Visual Studies at Lingnan University, where she previously served as Associate Vice President (Internationalization & Academic Quality Assurance). Appointed by the Ministry of Culture, Mette serves on the Board of the Danish Film Institute, a body responsible for creating policies for the film sector and for disbursing public funds for filmmaking. Selected publications include the influential monograph, Small Nation, Global Cinema (U of Minnesota P, 2005), and, most recently, the edited volume African Cinema and Human Rights (with Eva Jørholt, forthcoming with Indiana UP).


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