Tag: coronavirus

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life

Day328 some math

I spent a few days exploring various models hoping to get a sense of where this coronavirus is heading. Since I was planning a trip back to Atlanta, and I hear all this news about a surge of infection and I can see that myself, so I was trying to see if there is a maximum and how long will it last.

The short answer is no one knows. I think when I arrive in Atlanta it might be the peak of the crisis.

Things are not looking good in Atlanta. They are having 4000 infections a day in Georgia, and it is possible they might get to 10,000 like in Florida and Texas in next couple weeks. (Made me wonder on Georgia, Florida, Texas, or Arizona’s reopening stategy)

10,000 is high. I don’t think will ever get to 20,000. I finally understand the magnitude of the number. I was before thinking hey we have a million people in a city and 10x that in a state, 10,000 is just a fraction (1%, or 0.1%). Many people were saying the news are over hyping the severity of the pandemic.

I almost attempted to do my own forecast but I found many models were already available on the web. One was the SIR. (there is a website from someone making this very easy).

It divides the whole population into three groups, the Susceptible, the Infected and the Recovered.

An observation I had, was most models focus on the initial weeks of the spread where the infection point is small (like 1-1000). The time frame was usually the first 4-8 weeks.

I need a model where we are in the midst of the pandemic, where the infection is every where! And it is no long weeks, we are into months.

Another observation is most models (99%) expect to reach a steady state after a time, that is the infection would die out! This might be true with most outbreaks. Did they say there could be a second wave?

The total of infections/deaths curve when graphed would be an s curve (logistic curve). And the rate of infection would be a bell shape.

Seeing some S shape curves in a few states make me to believe too the pandemic was over.

Something I didn’t understand when I took the probability class in college when the professor kept talking about density function and I kept thinking what the heck it has to do with density.

Suddenly after couple decades, it connected. I was dividing the rate of infection by the population and graphing it. It came to me this is a density curve. I had an ureka moment. This stuff is related to probability. You can calculate the sum of the area under the curve to find the probability of an event (I used to hate words like that: Event, Random Variable, Function)

Summary/out take. I stopped my work. I am too lazy to pull data and do the math to carry it to the end. It takes too much time and effort. Playing around with different models I had some learning experience and it was useful. The practical aspect is I might be arriving in Atlanta at the peak of things this time around. Does this change my mind about taking my trip? Probably not.

Morality side: there was a sense of ‘righteous’ anger from people when they saw certain segment of the society blatantly ignoring social distancing by going to bars and beaches in the middle of a pandemic just for their pleasure, making the pandemic worse for everyone. I do too, so I have to balance out whether to travel or stay at home. (I heard this on NPR on Friday morning jul 24, also social shaming might not work so well).

Categories
life

day259 more the same

Blog. When I started blogging and following other people blogs, I often came across a few of the posts, that started off apologizing to users that they have been away for a time. I have seen blogs by the way side. I have one of mine too on livejournal that I haven’t updated in years. I have been telling myself, I try not be like that to leave for a long time without a heads up. I told myself, I will keep up with my blogging. I know it is mostly for my own benefits.

So I took a week off from here last week. It was not intended but might be becoming a habit for me, because I have nothing to write about in this coronavirus time. I usually blog when I have running to do and thoughts come to me that I can’t wait to write them down. I still can run, but I haven’t. No sure why is that. I know I could go outside each day and at least walk around the neighborhood for my own good. Instead, I’m just doing so vicarously by reading other people’s posts on here.

It is just that I like do things by a set routine. I wake up at a certain time, go to work at a certain time, train or run at a certain time and repeat them the next day. And of course I go wild on the weekend.

The truth is I am not so much worry about the coronavirus of how it affects me. Some people I know is deathly afraid of it. I know I can die if I catch it. At a time, yes that can be scary. Now though things seem to be getting better. I am not down playing it, but it is more a society problem than a personal problem. More a concern is like how and when are we getting back to work. We have a big problem on that front as a nation. Not just us, by around the world as well. I have been following the news in Hong Kong and they are just as bad on the economy side though they did pretty well on the virus containtment side.

But this short three weeks, now a month (if counting since March 7, when Virginia–DC area had their first coronavirus case) my schedule has been completely off. I could still try to keep the same routine, but really it is not the same. I only do two things now. Wake up, lay in bed for long long time then get to work, which is just me walking to my living room where my computer is, and then at the end of the day go back to my room. In between is cooking, getting food, throwing away trash, etc. That’s pretty much it. No trip. nothing after work hour. No TV or netflix because we don’t have those. Yes, reading blogs is my thing. I love those of you who post three or four entries a day!

My social run group and my church too, meet online. We do Zoom calling. For me it is kind of silly to do happy hour over Zoom conferencing. I haven’t joined my social running group for that. I should say toast to you with my milk glass. Cheer!

One benefit is I am saving a lot of money! Zippy. I was down on my luck — if I can say that, for overspending at the beginning of the year, and it got me to see what it means to live from paycheck to paycheck for a short time. With the coronavirus, I have nowhere to go. So my expenses basically has drop to zero, except for food and phones and some fixed payments like rents and loan payment. Thank you for all the hotel bookings, they were willing to refund me! At first I thought those thousands of dollars going down the drain. Zup, I am hording in cash! I saved thousand of dollars too for not eating out and or on transportation. Can you believe my commute cost me a thousand per month before? Food was too! Ya got to think what kind of food I ate that cost so much. Now only couple hundred for cooking my own meal. No more having to pay for parking for work! No haircuts either. I’m becoming a caveman.

Do I find myself having more time? I don’t know. Time is a fixed quantity. I should have 3-6 hours more, however, they get filled up with random looking out the window time. Navelgazing? Gosh, I hope it hasn’t been just browsing the web.

I finished reading a web novel this week and reread couple of the old ones and currently do not plan on starting on another 2000 chapters book. I don’t plan to do any review on them. The current one I finished is “Sovereign of The three Realms” (SOTR). Eh. Not recommended.

I have more complaints about the website than the novel. It limits how many chapters I can read unless I pay. I don’t mind paying, but the site organization sucks. Unless there is a compeling novel I want to read, just randomly browsing for one I like is a very difficult thing to do on that site. I won’t say the name. It was like reading on my WP site. Even if I know a particular book or chapter I want to read, it was very hard to get to it. I thank them for offering bookmarking. I could use my own bookmark as well (I usually don’t close my browser now, just keep the page opens until next time).

True though, I haven’t been paying for their novels in the past and had enjoying reading for free for last couple years. Thst is like 10k plus chapters. Oh gosh, what a time drain. Now they made it impossible to binge read, unless I pay. So I have been searching for a new site. I am a hypocrite, haha :). I really do appreciate the army of volunteered translators that make reading novels in other languages possible for English readers.

That’s my week. Ciao.

Categories
health running

day258 – week summary

Is it week 10 or 11 of my training? I lost track. Usually by the 10th week, everything fall apart. This time is no different.

I wrote this entry last week but lost it as I was about to publish and now finally found it again. How do you lose an entry? Ask WP. At that time, I didn’t know how, but now I found it was in the webpage folder instead of the blog post folder. So weird, you can’t move a post from one folder to the next. Does that make sense?

Bear with me if it seems to be the same stuff I wrote last week. I have short term memory.

total mile: 26

Monday/Tuesday rest: 0

Wednesday: 0

Thursday: forgotten. probably 0

Friday: 0

Saturday: 26

Sunday:0

It has been another crazy week. This week was worse than the last. I had ton of time, yet very little running done because of the coronavirus.

Now I don’t have a 3 hour commute (roundtrip) every day. It is almost a vacation I always dream about. Every day is a Saturday. Almost. Yet, the reality of being stuck at home is no fun. I didn’t get to do what I need/want to do. No one to blame but me, for being too obssessed with the news.

For running, I am doing the same route. There are tons of neighborhoods I can run to, but I have been sticking to running the boring same route of back and forth in front of my house.

By the way, our county finally closed all the public parks. We haven’t done so at the national level yet. It is getting there. They closed the parks for cars. There are parks I can still run to without driving there. Our quarantine enforcement in our area has no bite. There is no street closure. We do it in some places, but the idea is not to limit movement, but prevent people from congregate at a location. No one is being pull over by the police for violating the ‘essential’ travel only. That bother me when I look out at the street and see so many cars. Basically people still can go where ever and do whatever they want. That should be good for me, right?

Along with everyone, I just can’t wait to have it over with. On one hand, it seems impossible to get everyone following the quarantine order. The other hand, we have shutdown the city like never before. However, there are too many people deem themselves essential. It is a disease we don’t see affecting us immediately due to the long incubation period and the infected can be without any symptoms but still can spread to others, which many didn’t realize. It might bite them two or three weeks from now. We are not fighting today battle. What we do now affect in 2-3 weeks time.

So it’s supposed to last 2-3 more weeks according to the New York governor before it gets better. New York is taking the lead and all eyes are on them. Our area is now maybe a month behind them (4000 cases, to theirs 130000). NY seems to slowing their curve today. Our area is slowing a bit too, it is no longer doubling at every 4-5 days as before or even freaking every 3 days sometimes, so that is some good news, but it is too early to tell.

The cost of the policy to shutdown the state/country is huge. There is also a cost if we do nothing. Some states still do not have a stay-at-home policy due to the low count of infections in their states. There are some who question if it worth it. Mayor of New York, said yes. For each life saved is worth the economic cost.

There are some good news that a cure or vaccine might be possible. Hopefully, everything will be over when the summer comes around. Hopefully not too long, so we can all get back to work.

Categories
life

coronavirus is changing my life around

Day 248

I guess I am not the only one affected but many people around the world too.

In this corner of the world since we had our first case on March 7, things are changing day by day. Our government at various level declared a state of emergency. They always added that not to panic, the declaration was done so they could access special funding from a higher level of government.

There was a kind of disbelief at first that this is in our city. Then there was the panic. I believe on March 7, I still ran a marathon. I glad the race was held. I know it was a hard decision. If anyone got sick from the race, the media would have been all over it.

As of last week (Wednesday), our workplace started allowing anyone who wanted to work from home can work remotely. I think 80% of the staff took the offer. I was one of the few who was still going into the officw until they banned the general public from using the subway.

Then last Friday, the word got out, and there was a mad dash to the mall/grocery stores. By then almost there was no toilet paper available in the whole city. People were stockpiling weird stuffs. I was at Costco thinking to buy their inexpensive rotisserie chicken for lunch. We couldn’t get through the crowd. The check out line was all the way to the back of the store. I left empty ended. I had Costco pizza instead.

I have been working from home the last two days. I tried to keep the same schedule as if I wad going into work. I got up, showered, dressed. Instead of commuting, I had time for breakfast, a real breakfast and not just a piece of bread I normally stuff in my month as I rush on the road, eating while driving. Nope, now I had a sit down breakfast.

The day was pretty normal. I worked actually longer hours remotely than when I go in.

I tried to go for a run after work. I worked until 6 each night. Tonight I had to work a little bit longer. Time seemed go by quicker. I missed the normal office interaction with my coworkers. Yes, it is a bit more quiet at home.

I was not as tired now, saving time from not having to go in to work is a plus. I could run longer. I had more time! Yesterday I ran about 13 miles in 3 hours. Not a fast pace but it was very enjoyable. Today I did 12 miles in 2:22.

I have a roomate who works in the food industry. His life is definitely affect by this since no one goes to eatout any more.

The coronavirus has caused all of us to stay put. In the coming days, it might get worse. I keep on imagining it would be like one of the scary movie like World War Z or Residence Evil. I don’t know. Or maybe I am Legend.

The last two nights, as I ran around the neighborhood, it seemed like the city empties itself out. It was such an eerie feeling.

I don’t know how to close this post. Let life goes on.

Categories
health

Friday almost random thoughts

Day 243

I learned a bit more about the coronavirus , COVID-19, yesterday as the situation changed in our community. Last weekend was the first known case in our area. As expected, with each day, more and more cases are being identified.

My response has been like the rest both with fear and also blowing it off. First I saw lack of response and planning on the official part. They gave news conference and asked people to wash their hands.

I checked on the statistics myself since I think I am confidence in my math ability though I am not an expert. I saw the curve and all. I saw we are not as bad yet. We (people around me) are lucky compare to some other country.

Yet I felt we have not done enough. Also I felt it almost as inevitable it going to come and spread here as well. It was only a matter of time. The question on my mind was how dangerous is it and what drastic actions are we taking.

I saw people started ‘raiding’ their stores and emptying shelves of some day to day items. Toilet paper buying is just hilarious.

People behavior are funny. Then it hits me. My race at the end of the month is canceled/postponed. Many other races are canceling as well. My workplace sent their employees home. My running group is no longer meeting. Same for church fellowships. Rush hour trains are half-empty. I have a seat to myself and last night I have a whole train car to myself.

I learned as young healthy man the risk of me dying if contracted with the virus is low. The risk of me contracting os probably moderate since I ride the mass transit and it is hard avoiding crowd.

But that is not why I shouldn’t take precaution. I can be a germ carrier. I have to wash my hands and practice social distancing. Because this desease is serious for people whose immune system are weaker, such as the older population. It can be devastating.

gotta go. I didn’t get to my other thoughts.