Month: October 2022

Posted on

BOOM! It Is Unravelling!

SUMMARY: The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19… …analysis suggests global IFR of 0.03% for ages 0-59 and 0.07% for 0-69 years…

Less than a tenth of one percent!

ARTICLE: The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection is important to estimate accurately, since 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years. In systematic searches in SeroTracker and PubMed (protocol: https://osf.io/xvupr), we identified 40 eligible national seroprevalence studies covering 38 countries with pre-vaccination seroprevalence data. For 29 countries (24 high-income, 5 others), publicly available age-stratified COVID-19 death data and age-stratified seroprevalence information were available and were included in the primary analysis. The IFRs had a median of 0.035% (interquartile range (IQR) 0.013 – 0.056%) for the 0-59 years old population, and 0.095% (IQR 0.036 – 0.125%,) for the 0-69 years old. The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years. Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025-0.032% for 0-59 years and 0.063-0.082% for 0-69 years. Meta-regression analyses also suggested global IFR of 0.03% and 0.07%, respectively in these age groups. The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested. Large differences did exist between countries and may reflect differences in comorbidities and other factors. These estimates provide a baseline from which to fathom further IFR declines with the widespread use of vaccination, prior infections, and evolution of new variants.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1

Posted on

Ten Bears And Josey Wales

Ten Bears And Josey Wales

(Tom: I remember liking this scene when I saw it. I am please someone took the trouble to transcribe and share it so I could pass it on to you.)
·
One of the cinema’s most powerful scenes occurs in a film many might disregard due to its genre. In “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” a man trying to rebuild his war-shattered life, rides out to face a Comanche chieftain.

Josey: You be Ten Bears?

Ten Bears: I am Ten Bears.

Josey: I’m Josey Wales.

Ten Bears: I have heard. You’re the Gray Rider. You would not make peace with the Blue Coats. You may go in peace.

Josey: I reckon not. Got nowhere to go.

Ten Bears: Then you will die.

Josey: I came here to die with you. Or, live with you. Dying ain’t so hard for men like you and me, it’s living that’s hard; when all you ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you. I came here like this so you’ll know my word of death is true. And that my word of life is then true. The bear lives here, the wolf, the antelope, the Comanche. And so will we. Now, we’ll only hunt what we need to live on, same as the Comanche does. And every spring when the grass turns green and the Comanche moves north, we can rest here in peace, butcher some of our cattle and jerk beef for the journey. The sign of the Comanche, that will be on our lodge. That’s my word of life.

Ten Bears: And your word of death?

Josey: It’s here in my pistols, there in your rifles . . . I’m here for either one.

Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.

Josey: “That’s true. I ain’t promising you nothing extra. I’m just giving you life and you’re giving me life. And I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another.”

Ten Bears: “It’s sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues. There is iron in your word of death for all Comanche to see. And so there is iron in your word of life. No signed paper can hold the iron, it must come from men. The word of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life . . . or death. It shall be life.”

Posted on

Engineering – Roman Water Mills

Roman Water Mills

The Romans were accomplished hydraulic engineers and built impressive water delivery systems to supply their cities with good water. An aqueduct from the Alpilles mountains brought water to Arelate, a distance of about 25 km. At modern-day Barbegal, 12 km to the north of Arles, the water dropped precipitously. The Romans used the flow to power water wheels. There were two parallel sets of eight large water wheels in stacked sequences. Flow from each wheel turned the wheel below, maximizing the energy generated by the falling water. The wheels in turn drove mills for grinding flour and saws for cutting lumber and stone. There were many such industrial sites throughout the Roman Empire, but Barbegal was one of the largest.

http://www.chi-rhogroup.com