<shakes Magic 8 Ball>Signs Point to Yes.

As we learn how to treat the infections, overall lethality and impact appears to be going down. That’s great news. Now let’s get a vaccine going and get back to normal…. does anyone remember what normal is?

Indoor dining has a lot of risk right now, and with Florida opening back up to full capacity, we have decided to eliminate dining at places that don’t provide well spaced outdoor seating.

https://elemental.medium.com/read-this-before-you-even-consider-dining-indoors-be8ef1d24d8c

We are still ordering for delivery a bunch, with ‘touchless’ delivery, but that is getting very expensive so we will be rolling that back a bit. I hope that the local businesses get enough business to keep going, but I think they are going to struggle with outbreaks if they pack people in (and I’ve seen some videos of local bars where they are doing exactly that).

We have re-subscribed to DirecTV so that my wife can get her Sunday football fill, without going to a bar. This isn’t the experience any of us want, but it’s the world we live in for another six months to a year.

Stay safe!

This article lays out a pretty strong case for it.

It sounds like it’s possible that only a small group of Covid-19 infected people are responsible for the big spreading events.

Get rid of the big events where this spreading happens, and you end up with much smaller clusters of spreading.

Read it here.

To me, this is one of the most interesting sets of visualizations out there. This shows, over time, the rate of deaths by age group in 2018, 2019 and 2020. In all cases, except for the 14 and under age group, you can see a rather large spike when Covid-19 began making its way around the world.

An interesting point that jumps out when looking at these charts is that deaths per age group go up in the winter, so if you just look at the chart and compare the highest peak before Covid, the Covid spike doesn’t look too horrible. However, I would suggest you compare week to year-priors week. For example, in the 65 to 84 year old bracket, the peak for pre-2019 deaths was in 2017, week one, with 18,608 deaths. The peak so far in 2020 is 25,178, so about a 35% spike. However, if you compare week to week (week 14), in 2017 and 2018, the number of deaths was around 14,000 compared to the 25,178 in 2020, or an increase of around 80%. So nearly twice as many people died than ‘should have’.

Sadly, a lot of people have turned this into a political issue – it’s not, the actual disease is a medical issue. Those who say it’s not real will be hard pressed to explain why the number of deaths have spiked so much, but I have heard explanations such as “Covid doesn’t kill you, something else does” and “the numbers are made up.”

How we react is a political issue as too many people trust politicians (but only of the ‘correct’ party) rather than science and medicine.

It makes sense to be skeptical, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a horrible new disease is just a horrible new disease.

Visit the site.

Since I’m mostly in the Microsoft and Azure world, the names of the Amazon services tend to be a mystery to me. Here is a simple decoder :

https://adayinthelifeof.nl/2020/05/20/aws.html

AP News Fact Check

Financial Times – Global Coronavirus Death Toll could be much higher…

These are up-to-date values for Rt, a key measure of how fast the virus is growing. It’s the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. If Rt is above 1.0, the virus will spread quickly. When Rt is below 1.0, the virus will stop spreading: https://rt.live/.  As of today (4/20/2020), Florida is just below 1.0 – let’s hope we can push it down (but our Governor has just re-opened the beaches, so let’s see where we are in two weeks).

The COVID-19 dashboard from Johns Hopkins – contains worldwide information: Coronavirus COVID-19

Another dashboard from Johns Hopkins – US focused – that has county level breakdowns.  COVID-19 United States Cases

Added on 5/3/2020:

This data from the New York Times (free login required) shows a state by state breakdown of the rate of new infections.  As of today, we can see the flattening of the curve, which is leading to several states to open back up – slowly.  This link goes to the Florida cases, but you can click on the States menu to switch:   New York Times Coronvirus Interactive Map and Case Count

As of May 3rd, 2020:

This post by Jared Nelson is a look into the modern hiring practices of large technology companies.

I have to say that his summary items at the end are especially damning – organizations are hammering people on algorithms that they know not only that they will never use, but aren’t even remotely close to relevant.

I know when I’m hiring a developer I care much less about their ability to implement any particular algorithm – chances are someone already has it wrapped up in a library for free and easy use. What matters is that they know how to understand that what they’re trying to do is probably a solved problem that they just need to go find the solution for.

Another item to consider is the type of company you’re looking at. I imagine most companies looking for someone to develop a standard line of business app will be a lot less focused on algorithms and more focused on more relevant, actionable skills.

Anyway, Jared’s post is long, but very much worth taking the time to read!