Thursday, July 9, 2020

Busy Life

Living Systems,

COVID-in-Austin update:
Our tests take 10 days to come back. I'm giving out all the vitamin-D I bought when I test people, and advising them how to dose their families.
I'm comforting people afraid they will get worse again and have to go back to the hospital. There is a lot of fear associated with smothering. The anxiety persists.
Your own immune system is probably the only wonder drug you will ever get. Feed it 5000 units per day of vitamin-D. 
Get some zinc if you can, maybe talk to your doctor about hydroxychloroquine, or get some if you can do that where you live.
Hydroxychloroquine + zinc is safe and effective if started before illness is severe:

Here is a mathematical curve fitting technique that seems to effectively predict COVID epidemic case and fatality curves after a certain period of time into the epidemic. It is very interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on it. I'm not able to assess the math properly myself, so I've asked someone to look at it.

It's not that there isn't news, or I'm not looking some, but I am not looking enough to be able to post much, and I'm working a bit more.

I'm focusing a lot on the Yoakum Avocado Project and the remaining 25 remaining avocado seedllings in the kiddie pool.
The question is up in the stack about what to do this September/October, after the August heat has killed some weak trees. Will I be able to graft strong-tree cuttings onto the better-performing seedlings?
The seedlings are going through their selection process, too, as you see,

Cultivating Life

2 comments:

  1. Re the curve fitting, I skimmed the pdf. Sounds like what they are hoping is that given data on infection rates for a particular region, they will be able to figure the rate of new infections and predict the date when they go down to zero. They think they've figured out the math that fits the data in locations that have gone into decline and are hoping that by applying that math to places that are still getting new infections, they can precict when new infections will stop. Only question seems to be whether different places in the world are sufficiently alike so one set of equations fits them all. I guess people would like to know when it's going to be all over.

    I like the picture of the baby pool with all the avocado plants in it. Hope they do well for you. In Mexico, drug people from Michoacan are moving in on the avocado business. Potentially more profitable than drug running and less risky. Straightforward extortion of growers. And on the local scene, a lot of money is coming in from Michoacan and setting up pork raising operations. Drug money? Do they see a future in food production?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Wolfgang,

      I'm sorry to hear the avocado growers are getting the squeeze put on them by the narco-gangs. Vicious gangs.
      I gathered as much as you, but I wanted somebody with PhD or Masters level mathematics to look at it.
      Basically, they are saying, we found an equation that seems to describe the natural progression after an initial phase, which is too variable for anybody to predict.
      I hope it proves to keep being the fit going forward.
      It has not had a true exponential characteristic ever, maybe the first month in a place has looked that way, but mathematicians and statisticians have been saying what-it-isn't, not able to say what-it-is.

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