Bracing the nation for a death toll that could exceed 100,000 people, President Trump on Sunday extended restrictive social distancing guidelines through April.

The Maryland Department of Health on Sunday announced five new deaths as a result of COVID-19.

Pope Francis called for solidarity the world over to confront the “epochal challenge” posed by the coronavirus pandemic, as Christians celebrated a solitary Easter Sunday, blending the joyful feast day with sorrow over the toll the virus has already taken.

Steo is taking steps to ensure the safety of buyers and sellers in an uncertain time.

The number of cases of coronavirus in Maryland continues to rise.

Facebook has added an interesting security feature called Trusted Contacts that will help you get back into your account if you ever find yourself locked out. For example, you may have forgotten your password and be unable to access your […]

The post What is a Facebook Trusted Contact? appeared first on Tech Tips » Surfnetkids.

Home is in same row as F. Scott Fitzgerald's former home

COVID cases are surging in Stearns County, in large part due to three meat packing plants in the area. We photograph St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis as he broadcasts his daily COVID-19 update to constituents on Thursday, May 7, 2020 at St. Cloud City Hall in St. Cloud, Minn.

Stephen Cole, Jennifer Hill, Luke Keele, Ilya Shpitser, and Dylan Small write: We wanted to provide an update on our efforts to build the Society for Causal Inference (SCI). As you may recall, we are creating the SCI as a home for causal inference research that will increase support and knowledge sharing both within the […]

Flavio Bartmann writes: Over the last few days, as COVID-19 posed some serious issues for policy makers who, both in the US and elsewhere, have employed statistical models to develop mitigation strategies, a number of non-statisticians have criticized the use of such models as useless or worse. A typical example is this article by Victor […]

I’d still go with this article by Ed Yong, which covers biology, epidemiology, medicine, and politics. Here’s one bit: In 2018, when writing about whether the U.S. was ready for the next pandemic, I [Yong] noted that the country was trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. It rises to meet each new disease, […]

Josh Rushton writes: I’ve been following your blog for a while and checked in today to see if there was a thread on last week’s big-splash Stanford antibody study (the one with the shocking headline that they got 50 positive results in a “random” sample of 3330 antibody tests, suggesting that nearly 2% of the […]

  This post is by Phil Price, not Andrew. I’m going to say right up front that I’m not going to give sources for everything I say here, or indeed for most of it. If you want to know where I get something, please do a web search. If you can’t find a source quickly, […]

In comments, Joshua Ellinger points to this news article headlined, “Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus, study finds,” reporting: The initial results from the first large-scale study tracking the spread of the coronavirus in [Los Angeles] county found that 2.8% to 5.6% of adults have antibodies to the virus […]

Kostya Medvedovsky writes: I wanted to direct your attention to the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium’s new projections. They’re very similar to the IMHE model you’ve covered before, and had some calibration issues. However, per the writeup by Spencer Woody et al., they do three things you may be interested in: They fix an […]

Uros Seljak writes: You may be interested in our Gaussian Process counterfactual analysis of Italy mortality data that we just posted. Our results are in a strong disagreement with the Stanford seropositive paper that appeared on Friday. Their work was all over the news, but is completely misleading and needs to be countered: they claim […]

I understand the above quote completely. Life would be so much simpler if my work was just reviewed by my personal friends and by people whose careers are tied to mine. Sure, they’d point out problems, but they’d do it in a nice way, quietly. They’d understand that any mistakes I made would never have […]

The following came in the email: I’m a reporter for **, and am looking for comment on the stats Gov Cuomo just released. Would you be available for a 10-minute phone conversation? Please let me know. Thanks so much, and here’s the info: Here is the relevant part: In New York City, about 21 percent, […]

Raghu Parthasarathy writes: I’ve been frustrated by Covid-19 pandemic models, for the opposite reason that I’m usually frustrated by models in science—they seem too simple, when the usual problem with models is over-complexity. Instead of doing more useful things, I wrote this up here. In his post, Parthasarathy writes: Perhaps the models we’re seeing are […]

Last week we discussed the Santa Clara county study, in which 1.5% of the people tested positive for coronavirus. The authors of the study performed some statistical adjustments and summarized with a range of 2.5% to 4.2% for infection rates in the county as a whole, leading to an estimated infection fatality rate of 0.12% […]

This post is by Phil Price, not Andrew. There a couple of things that some people who comment here already know, but some do not, leading to lots of discussion in the comments that keeps rehashing these issues. I’m hoping that by just putting these here I can save some effort. 1. The ‘infection fatality […]

Suppose I play EJ in chess—I think his rating is something like 2300 and mine is maybe, I dunno, 1400? Anyway, we play, and my only goal is for the games to last as many moves as possible, and EJ’s goal is to checkmate me in the minimal number of moves. Say I have to […]

The talk will be sometime the morning of Wed 6 May in this seminar. Title: Some statistical issues in the fight against coronavirus. Abstract: To be a good citizen, you sometimes have to be a bit of a scientist. To be a good scientist, you sometimes have to be a bit of a statistician. And […]

The other day I wrote about the challenge in addressing the pandemic—a worldwide science/engineering problem—using our existing science and engineering infrastructure, which is some mix of government labs and regulatory agencies, private mega-companies, smaller companies, university researchers, and media entities and rich people who can direct attention and resources. The current system might be the […]

Seth Flaxman et al. have an updated version of their model of coronavirus progression. Flaxman writes: Countries with successful control strategies (for example, Greece) never got above small numbers thanks to early, drastic action. Or put another way: if we did China and showed % of population infected (or death rate), we’d erroneously conclude that […]

Joseph Candelora in comments pointed to this updated report on the Santa Clara study we discussed last week. The new report is an improvement on the first version. Here’s what I noticed in a quick look: 1. The summary conclusion, “The estimated population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection […]

I originally gave this post the title, “Stigler: The Changing History of Robustness,” but then I was afraid nobody would read it. In the current environment of Move Fast and Break Things, not so many people care about robustness. Also, the widespread use of robustness checks to paper over brittle conclusions has given robustness a […]

tl;dr: Their 95% interval for the infection rate, given the data available, is [0.7%, 1.8%]. My Bayesian interval is [0.3%, 2.4%]. Most of what makes my interval wider is the possibility that the specificity and sensitivity of the tests can vary across labs. To get a narrower interval, you’d need additional assumptions regarding the specificity […]

We’ve had lots of discussions here and elsewhere online about fundamental flaws in statistics culture: the whole p-value thing, statistics used for confirmation rather than falsification, corruption of the pizzagate variety, soft corruption in which statistics is used in the service of country-club-style backslapping, junk science routinely getting the imprimatur of the National Academy of […]

1. The news! Zad’s cat, pictured above, is not impressed by this bit of cargo-cult science that two people sent to me: No vaccine or effective treatment has yet been found for people suffering from COVID-19. Under the circumstances, a physician in Kansas City wonders whether prayer might make a difference, and he has launched […]

Anthony Fowler wrote a wonderful op-ed. You have to read the whole thing, but let me start with his most important point, about “the temptation to overclaim” in social science: One study estimated the economic value of the people spared through social-distancing efforts. Essentially, the authors took estimates from epidemiologists about the number of lives […]

The University of Washington in Seattle is a big place. It includes the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has produced a widely-circulated and widely-criticized coronavirus model. As we’ve discussed, the IHME model is essentially a curve-fitting exercise that makes projections using the second derivative of the time trend on the log scale. […]

The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation's top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government e-mails.

After snapping up more than $500 billion in emergency loans in just three weeks, small-business owners have lost interest in the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Minnesota business owners are among those who may give back a chunk of their forgivable loans.

Declining state and local government spending really can make an economic downturn worse. And this recession is bad enough already.

The commissioner's office said clubs remain committed to playing "as many games as possible" when the season begins.

Segro, Johnny August Sep 14, 1943 - May 3, 2020 Johnny August Segro, 76, of Englewood, FL, died on May 3, 2020. Funeral arrangements .....

Russo, Jr., Joseph James Oct 30, 1939 - May 6, 2020 Joseph James Russo, Jr., 80, of Punta Gorda, Florida, died on May 6, .....

O'Hara, Susan Mary Oct 4, 1938 - May 6, 2020 Susan Mary O'Hara, 81 passed away peacefully on Wednesday May 6, 2020 at Aravilla .....

Ricardo Santana Jr., whose six-year streak as Oaklawn's leading rider was ended in 2019 by David Cohen, has been suspended the final 10 racing days of the 2020 race meeting at the Hot Springs, Ark., track for an incident involving Cohen in the stretch run of the seventh race on Sunday, April 5. Santana was […]

The post Elbow Room: Santana Suspended 10 Days By Oaklawn Stewards For Careless Riding appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Grand Canyon National Park is closed.

Information about rescheduling backcountry permit reservations can be obtained by emailing grca_bic@nps.gov

Due to the closure of Grand Canyon National Park, backcountry permits are not being issued, and staff are instructed to deny any permit requests they receive. Please wait to submit new backcountry permit requests until the park re-opens (we do not know when that might be). Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Looking for the right plugins to install on your new WordPress site? The flexibility to use plugins to improve and enhance your site is undoubtedly one of WordPress’s best features. But, it can be quite overwhelming to just get started. At the last count, there were over 54,000 WordPress plugins available on WordPress.org and thousands...

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/nps-to-offer-pilot-shuttle-bus-service-from-grca-to-tusayan-again-this-year.htm

Grand Canyon National Park was once again invited to display its contracted MD 900 Explorer helicopter at the recent "Thunder in the Desert" Open House and Air Show at Luke Air Force Base on March 21 and 22 in Glendale, Arizona.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-2009-04-02-luke.htm

The National Park Service is now accepting comments on mule operations and stock use in Grand Canyon National Park as the agency begins to develop an environmental assessment.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-2009-05-22-stock.htm

On the weekends of June 20 – 21, July 18 – 19, and August 15 – 16, 2009, Grand Canyon National Park and the 146 other National Park Service (NPS) sites around the country that charge entrance fees will offer fee-free entry into the parks. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-2009-06-04-fee-free.htm

Propane line break causes short-term closure of Grand Canyon Visitor Center https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/propane-line-break-causes-short-term-closure-of-grand-canyon-visitor-center.htm