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And so it starts: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/sports/ncaafootball/college-football-coronavirus-cases.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage And if a school as football crazy as KSU decides to stop practice, then I expect others to be the rule, not the exception.

No, they weren't. Some talking heads on tv thought the protests might lead to spikes in infections, but I never heard a single one say that they would. (Well, except for some folks around here.) The people who are experts on the virus expressed fears stemming from the way some demonstrations -...

On the effect of protests nationwide on COVID-19, see: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf Usual caveats: this hasn't been peer reviewed and it's an early cut. Still, the cell phone data is indicative of an increase in social distancing (i.e. most people stayed home and away from protest...

1. Most of the "studies" discussed here are news stories about studies, not the studies themselves. That's the real problem. I know this isn't a science seminar and that people here will have as hard a time as I do making sense out of some of the studies covered. (I give up regularly.) But at...

India is perhaps not the best example. The country is not very highly urbanized (11.4%; the US = 82%) and the population is widely dispersed in small villages. I wouldn't be at all surprised if their stats are fairly accurate, largely because their testing is probably confined largely to the...

I think that Ron is right on this. One reason I keep calling for links to the actual studies that so many on this board are citing news stories about is that, provided the studies involved are published in reputable sources, you can be pretty sure that the peer review process will root our...

Or it's like the Belgians say: they (and the others) counted all the actual deaths. Both ways work. Like I said, we'll see after we get a defense and can look at the stats in more detail.

As you say here, what it comes down to is simple enough. If people don't feel safe, you can "open the economy" to your heart's content and still not return to normal economic activity. If people continue to avoid - and, down here with the strong air conditioning systems, they had better -...

Somebody finally said it. You're right. If there is any season that Tech fans should not be particularly upset to see cancelled or curtailed, it's the Season of Doom. Another year of development would not do the program any harm at all.

Good post. I would only add that COVID-19 damages the lungs at all ages, sometimes severely. If I were a college football player, I wouldn't be that worried about being killed by the disease; it could happen, but it isn't likely. However, having my lungs damaged - for life - would get my...

1. Yes. Good point, if the alternative would actually address the problem. I haven't seen anything here that does. But, admittedly, that depends on the time horizons for an actual catastrophe and how bad you think it will be. Me, I'm conservative on this and very aware of tail risks. One bad...

What's interesting about this post - and this thread, btw - is the dearth of citations to actual scientific research on climate change. Instead what we have here is the usual: a bunch of "stories" by people who don't think the problem is that great or is a hoax of some (usually unclear) sort...

It's an excellent movie, despite playing fast and loose around some details. Beria wasn't as bad as he is portrayed, Molotov was not that spineless, Melenkov was generally considered the sharpest knife in the drawer by outsiders (but he was very scared by Stalin). Oth, Stalin was every bit as...

This is an aside. You can ignore it completely with no damage one way or the other. While I'm at it, I thought I'd say one more thing about evolution and selection pressure. Many people tend to discuss evolution as if it was a random process and are puzzled as to why anyone would think that...

Yes. It's instructive to look at a comparison of the US and the EU on this. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-3-day-average?time=2020-02-24..&country=European Union~USA The Europeans have taken on the virus and made some real progress. We have taken it on (sorta) and...

Well … let's hope you are right. Present trends aren't particularly encouraging. Like they say, what you see today is where the virus was 2 weeks ago.

If I were you, I'd wait a month or two before I put a halo on DeSantis. Say what you will about NY, but they actually have decreasing trends for the disease. Florida plateaued, but since? Well, things are worse in Arizona, Texas, and Alabama. We'll have to see how this works out.

I'm sorry, but I think this misunderstands natural selection, particularly the role of selection pressure. It is true that any virus, just like this one, wants to spread as much as possible. But that doesn't entail any selection pressure if the organisms the disease spreads to have no natural...

Not until we have a vaccine or another defense. Natural selection, remember? Until a virus has something that prevents it from multiplying, it won't change, except randomly. When we start to vaccinate, I expect we'll find SARS-Cov-2 mutating a lot like the flu does; i.e. a new vaccine every...

I expect our frosh QBs to shirt this season. Why waste them by throwing them to the wolves? Now if one of them turns out to be a world beater, he'll end up starting. But looking at their HS films doesn't make me think they were any better in high school then Yates or Graham and both of them have...