Life Under Lockdown (V)

Another week passes and the world keeps turning. There's so little to report here that I'm down to commenting on routine emails : one from BA saying that when travel resumes "it will be epic", which I thought sounded very street, and one from the Zooniverse project saying, "I’m pretty tired. I think everyone is", which had me scratching my head in bewilderment. Who's tired ? Why are they tired ? Haven't they been staying at home like they're supposed to ? I mean, unless you're stuck inside with a horde of screaming brats, the last thing anyone should be is "tired". Frankly I could do this all year.

(Although I hasten to add that if, for some unfathomable reason, a future crisis favours the extroverts, forcing everyone to go outside and talk to as many total strangers as possible, then the shoe will be well and truly on the other foot. Until then, I'll continue wallowing in my welcome preview of retirement. And ten internet points to whoever creates the best scenario in which maximum socialising would avert disaster.)


Progress on FRELLED continues steadily. I can now import axes with a more robust, modular, and accurate code than the old version, which is far superior for dealing with high-resolution cubes. It's not yet perfect but it's generally working well. I've also begun the process of generating an interactive walk-through Arecibo, which should eventually be a lot of fun.

Speaking of which, where the heck's my Oculus Quest ? I check various Amazon sites frequently, and both prices and availability estimates vary chaotically. I guess it won't be arriving this month, which is annoying since I just learned the latest version of Blender has direct support for VR. Oh well, first world problems.


That's literally all the news in the world of Rhysy for this week. So how's the virus doing ? Here I'm pleased to report that I have some good news for Easter - and it's even better than it may appear at first sight :

It seems that things may finally be starting to turn a corner - we may be at end of the beginning, at least. I drafted this post yesterday, but I had to re-write it this morning because things have taken a sudden, dramatic turn for the better. This is where this plotting method really shines, because you won't see this on the conventional plots. I had intended to say that most European countries, although having flattened out, haven't shown any indications of the plummeting curves seen in China and South Korea. This is no longer the case. Take a look at this :

All of these countries - by no means all European countries, but a good chunk of them - are now seeing steep declines. Note that it appears from this plot that France had a previous similar drop, but it didn't - that's China. Sadly most other European countries, including Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK, do not yet show the same rapid drops, but if the lockdowns continue, it's surely only a matter of time. It's also highly encouraging to see the US finally start to really pull away from the exponential, with the caveat that it's probably a mistake to plot the US as a single entity here.

Earlier in the week the Czech Republic hit the important milestone of getting the reproduction number down to 1.0, meaning that each person is now infecting an average of one other person, and yesterday it dropped to 0.9, meaning that the virus will eventually die out. There are now plans to begin very gradually easing the lockdown, starting by re-opening small shops (with more strictly enforced hygiene regulations and harsher penalties for those breaking social distancing measures) and allowing essential foreign travel (with mandatory quarantine on arrival).

What's not yet clear is what measures will be taken to prevent/reduce a second wave of infections. Whatever the Czech activists may like to think, it's still uncertain how much difference the compulsory masks have really made - and the massive drops in population density still seem like much bigger drivers of reducing the infection rate. So start increasing the density and we'll be right back to exponential growth. On the other hand, which an increased testing capacity - generally 5-10,000 people per day here, and fall in the number of cases, that ought to make track-and-trace very much easier.


I thought about adding some political comments, but, in order to bring you yet more good news, I've decided not to. So just remember to over-indulge on Easter eggs and, of course, remain indoors.