I saw that Donald Trump retweeted this and -- after getting over the fact that the President of the United States was retweeting pandemic analysis from an anonymous dude calling himself "bad cat" -- I wanted to respond to some of the things in the thread:In general, he's talking about charts of confirmed U.S. Covid-19 case counts per day, like this one that I posted on … [Read more...] about The difference between data and a model
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Building the Model is the Easy Part
Apparently when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made their plans to return to live classes this fall, they based some of their planning on epidemiological models constructed especially for the purpose. This included a test, trace, and isolation plan which the models indicated would be effective at preventing community spread of Covid-19 on campus.UIUC had … [Read more...] about Building the Model is the Easy Part
Illinois needs another lockdown [Updated]
I'm no expert, but I've been poring over statistics on the Covid-19 pandemic since it began, and regularly tweeting out the numbers for the local Chicago area, and I'm starting to feel like I might have an understanding of some of the basics. And what I'm seeing right now has me worried that Illinois is headed for trouble.Let's start with the number of new confirmed cases … [Read more...] about Illinois needs another lockdown [Updated]
Much ado about the Harper’s letter
Everyone's been talking about the "Harper's Letter," created at the behest of Harper's editor Thomas Chatterton Williams and signed by a crapton of well-known people. I'm basically very supportive of free speech, in both law and culture, so it sounded like something I'd have signed if asked. (Not that anyone would ask me.) On reading it, however, I'm not so sure. To be clear, I … [Read more...] about Much ado about the Harper’s letter
Corona Dreaming
You know that dream? Where you're at work or school or some other public place, and you suddenly realize you're naked? So the other day, my wife and I were at McDonald's, and we had our food and were sitting at our table, and I went to the soda dispenser to fill my cup with Diet Coke, and as I got there, I noticed two things. First, there was a Plexiglas shield over the … [Read more...] about Corona Dreaming
