Volusia county deputies were involved in a shooting yesterday, well let me just use the quote from deputies:
Deputies said the suspect eventually reached his home and brandished what appeared to be an AK-47 style weapon out of his window at deputies and they returned fire, mortally wounding the man.
The police posted a picture of the weapon on their Facebook page this afternoon:
So now, a pump action shotgun is considered to be an “AK-47 style weapon.”
So my house fire the other day has illustrated some issues. Titanium boy points out:
While this was wired to meet the National Electrical Code, it is still a terrible way to install electrical outlets. The way your outlet was wired is that ALL of the downstream outlets current draw is going through your crispy outlet. The nasty side effect of wiring outlets this way is that if you have a problem with one outlet, them all of the downstream outlets get FUBARed.
The proper way to wire outlets is to install pigtails so that current for downstream outlets goes through the pigtail connection and not through the outlet. The outlet is, so to speak, off to the side and out of the main roadway.
As terrible as your outlet installation is, it still could have been worse. Imagine your outlet being wired the way it is but instead of using the side screws they used the notorious “back stab” holes in the back of the outlet. These back holes are notorious for the internal spring to lose its springiness over time and the wire connection becomes wonky. Again, all of the downstream outlets get FUBARed.
More good news; all of the other outlets in your house were wired the same way.
I have been finding electrical issues in this place since I moved in. My wife was living here when I met her. She says that there were electrical problems (mostly breakers tripping) since she moved in and the builder had to come back a few times to rewire things.
Now I was an electrician for six years in the Navy. One of the things that I was always fond of telling my subordinates is that a fuse blowing or breaker tripping isn’t a problem, it is a symptom of a problem.
Here are a few of the problems that I have discovered since I moved in:
The most recent one was the fire. I rewired that receptacle with pigtails and wire nuts. The problem that caused it was that the electrician who installed power for the hot tub simply tapped it off of the same circuit as the plug that just failed. Not technically an overload, the hot tub should still be on its own circuit. The good news is that I have wanted to convert the tub to 220v, but the wife didn’t want to spend the money. She is OK with it now, and the electrician will be out this afternoon. I could do it myself, but this job looks like a PITA with the way that the wire has to be run, so I will pay someone the money to do it.
A few months ago, I did a project where I mounted the TV on the wall. While doing that, I had to install a plug in the wall 5 feet off the floor. I intended to just tap off of the plug that was below that spot. I turned off the power and then checked it with a voltage tester. It was still hot. It turns out that box was powered from more than one breaker. For obvious reasons, that is against code. One breaker supplied just that plug, the other breaker supplied 5 others. It was easy to split the circuit. Now the TV has its own breaker, and the other five has the second.
I have a good story about a set of faulty circuit breakers in the house, but I will save that to be its own post.
In 14 states, more than half of Wuhan virus deaths occurred from COVID infections acquired in nursing homes.
Again, it seems to me that if we lock down those over 65, nursing homes, and establish a wing of the hospital for those over 65 and refuse visitation in that wing, we could control this virus to levels lower than the flu.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 58 people in the U.S. between ages 0-24 have died from COVID-19 as of May 6. As tragic as that is, for comparison, 250 people in the same age group have died this year from pneumonia and 126 from the flu, but our nation doesn’t close down those non-COVID cases. As I have been saying, fear is contagious:
This panic illustrates the real hazard with nCOV 19. The real hazard is fear induced panic, and the people demanding that the government (or the medical field) do something. It doesn’t matter if the something that is being done is actually effective- just that they are doing something. We see this all of the time, which is the reason why we have to suffer through the Kabuki Theater of security everywhere.
Over 92% of the people who have died in the US are over the age of 65, and more than half live in nursing homes. When I pointed this out over at Aesop’s place, he resorted to emotional argument:
What’s your point? Are older people expendable by fiat? Where is that principle in the Constitution, state law, or common law…? Should we also crash test cars with old people? Use them to clear minefields?
We can argue and quibble over things like infection rate and death rate, but the numbers aren’t there. Ignoring projections, which are as accurate as the ones declaring Hillary would be President, or that Hurricane Dorian was going to wipe out the state of Florida, the real numbers have been less than scary.
The entire US has had about 1.3 million confirmed cases and 82,200 deaths. A six percent fatality rate would be rough, but remember that the total confirmed cases is not a valid number.
New York metro area was hit the hardest with 490,000 cases and 36,000 deaths to date, which represent more than a third of all cases and nearly half of all Wuhan related deaths for the entire country. In fact, DNA sequencing of the virus has shown that New York was the source of most of the infections in the US.
During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country. Just as the restrictions are pointless now.
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have been, and remain, a staunch advocate for taking the Wuhan virus seriously. In that same discussion, I said:
If you want to debate whether or not shutting down the economy is a wise method of preventing the spread of the virus, that’s one thing, but denying the existence or deadly nature of it is pure bullshit.
It’s time to have that discussion. The facts are showing us a few things:
No one should accept this lockdown as “the new normal.” Even New York City is not having many new cases lately. At its peak, the virus was claiming 800 lives a day in New York City alone, but the last few days show that the danger is receding. On Monday, the entire state of New York had 410 deaths. The data we have at this time simply doesn’t warrant maintaining a total lockdown. Of course, the pandemic is a fluid situation and things could change for better or worse in the coming months. Aesop, who is advocating an indefinite lockdown, has this to say:
Flattening the spread of COVID-19 using lockdowns allows health systems to cope with the disease, which then permits a resumption of economic activity. In this sense, there is no trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods.
He is wrong, because there is, of course, a trade-off. The Wuhan virus has caused a lockdown of most of the countries that drive the world economy. The projection is for the world economy to recede by 3%, down from 6.3% annual growth. In other words, the global economy shrank ten percent from its pre-lockdown levels. This means a cumulative loss of over $9 trillion over the next two years.
It is easy for those in the health professions, those who are essential, and others who don’t need to work to sit there and demand that everyone else starve so they can continue to live in their homes in fear of getting a virus with a survival rate of at least 95%.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, said
The decision to reopen schools cannot be made based solely on trying to prevent transmission. I think we have to take a holistic view of the impact of school closures on kids and our families. I do worry at some point, the accumulated harms from the measures may exceed the harm to the kids from the virus.
The same goes for the rest of the country, not just the schools. We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease. If people don’t speak up and demand that the country reopen, that’s likely what will happen — regardless if a resurgence of the virus takes place or not. The stark reality is that the Wuhan virus may be with us indefinitely, just like the seasonal flu, and we must adapt to it rather than revamping the entire U.S. economy.
Perhaps the lockdown can be lifted, beginning with the sparsely populated counties and states. We could restrict access to nursing homes and hospitals, with screening of visitors. What the country should do is offer people a choice: For those who are afraid to be exposed, those people should stay home.
The rest of us need to get back to work.
Sound reasonable? If so, contact your local school officials today.
Note:
The problem with Aesop and his blog is that he has gotten a boner for every deadly disease outbreak for the better part of a decade. When Ebola came to the US in 2014, the guy was practically salivating at the thought of the disease killing thousands. He has this macabre fascination with disease that we see here in Florida with people who get excited every time a hurricane comes within a thousand miles of the state.
In order for a statistical analysis of a set of numbers to take place, there are a few things that must be done.
The data set must be random. If it isn’t, you suffer from selection bias. For example, if all of a person’s friends tell them that they were going to vote for HRC, they would have been surprised that Trump won the election. This is because their sample wasn’t random.
The sample must also be large enough to be significant. When measuring a large data set or population, like a workforce, you don’t always need to collect information from every member of that population – a sample does the job just as well. The trick is to determine the right size for a sample to be accurate. Using proportion and standard deviation methods, you are able to accurately determine the right sample size you need to make your data collection statistically significant.
When studying a new, untested variable in a population, your proportion equations might need to rely on certain assumptions. However, these assumptions might be completely inaccurate. This error is then passed along to your sample size determination and then onto the rest of your statistical data analysis.
That is what is happening now to statistical analysis of Wuhan virus numbers. We have a data set that tells us how many people had the disease at the time of testing. There are a couple of assumptions there that are making those numbers worthless.
The state of Florida thinks that since they have tested a large percentage of the state that they can predict what will happen. The numbers we have now cannot be used for a statistical analysis because they are not random. We are also assuming that the people who tested negative didn’t get it later, and didn’t have it earlier. This makes it impossible to determine the CFR.
Last night, my wife reported hearing a buzzing noise, but I couldn’t find anything. This morning while enjoying our quarantine breakfast, we smelled burning plastic. Smelled electrical to me. I began looking around, and poked at an electrical outlet. That is when flames shot out of the wall. The fire is out, and there is some electrical work that needs to be done. Not much damage, and everyone is OK.
Good thing we were quarantined at home to catch it while it was small. Had we been at work, the fire could have been bad.
All you have to do to get people into the ambush zone is let them see something that will cause them to act in a predictable way. This one went perfectly: The guy who staged it made them look like idiots.
