Tag Archive for: disease

To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate

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At a time where vaccinations are a hot topic right now and on everyone’s lips. Coronavirus vaccine is a way off, but it brings us to think about vaccination’s in general and how important they are to everyone’s livelihood.

To most of us getting a vaccination is just a natural way of life and a way of protecting ourselves against the many different diseases out there. However, in America, vaccination’s are a controversial topic, with many parent’s opting to not have their children vaccinated.

So when an outbreak of measles infected a small town in America, one parent who decided against getting their child a vaccination. Was worried about their child getting sick and asked her community how best to protect her child from measles. Well….you can guess the response.

Take a look at the gallery below for the full response on how people reacted to her not getting a vaccine for her child:

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How many people will you kill?

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We’re all on lockdown at the moment here in the UK. Following in the footsteps of Italy, Spain and France. Though it may seem like it’s nothing to go out and live life as you normally would. You could be putting a silly amount of people at risk. So website How many people will you kill, helps to shock you into behaving correctly.

The site does some mathematical magic to work out how many people you will kill by going out. Potentially infecting people. Remember you may be infected and not even know it!

You put in your location, how many people will be there and an average age. It will give you a run down of how many people you’ll infect. Furthermore it will tell you of those infected how many people you will kill.

How Many People Will You Kill?

(The below information has been copied/pasted, we need it to be 100% accurate)

The calculator pulls in the latest figures for confirmed cases for each country and region. Due to limited testing, asymptomatic cases and a lag between contracting the virus and test results, the true numbers of infected people are much higher. This is evident when looking at the number of diagnosed cases vs true cases in the early stages of the spread in Hubei:

The proportion of undetected cases is estimated by comparing the measured fatality rate with the fatality rate in countries with the best testing, for instance South Korea. Higher fatality rates in a country are assumed to imply limited testing and hence more hidden cases.

The data from South Korea also depicts considerable variation in the number of confirmed cases across different age groups. Party-goers in their 20s are more likely to contract the virus than typically less sociable older people. This distribution is hidden in countries such as Italy, where only those with the most severe symptoms are tested:

Combining the recent infections data with the hidden case and age factors gives a probability that each of your attendees is infected.

Number of immediate infections

COVID-19 has proven to be very infectious, so it’s assumed that for small gatherings if anyone in your group has the virus, they’ll infect everyone else.

Crucially this means the expected number of direct infections scales as the square of the number of attendees. If you’re really set on holding an event, best not allow +1s as that’ll make the impact 4 times worse.

Long-term impact of these infections

Exponential growth means a small number of infections can quickly explode to a vast number, as has been seen around the world. For the countries still battling with the epidemic, we assume the worst (but very possible) scenario, that they fail to control the spread, and eventually 60% of the population become infected. For the countries who have demonstrated they can contain the disease. The number of possible final infections has been capped to a much smaller proportion of their population.

Your event is responsible for the infections it causes instantly as a fraction of all the infections at that time. Multiplied by the final number of infections. The expected deaths are estimated to be 1% of this figure.

There’s an argument that, in this worst-case scenario, the deaths would have happened anyway, with or without your event, you just make them happen sooner. In which case you’d need to calculate the extra pressure on the health care system, due to the larger and more sudden peak in infections. This approach would also work for considering the non-worst-case scenarios, where the disease is eradicated before it infects most of the population. This refinement can be added when the effectiveness of the European lockdowns becomes apparent.

(How Many People Will You Kill)

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Amazon Tracking Employees

Amazon shipping only essential products in Italy and France

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Amazon has temporarily stopped taking orders on non essential products on it’s Italian and French sites. This in an effort to stop the spread and contain the novel coronavirus.

“As customers use e-commerce to support their social distancing efforts, we too have implemented social distancing guidance within our fulfillment centers to keep our employees safe and healthy,” An email from an Amazon spokesperson to The Verge 

While customers can still order many of the products from 3rd party sellers who are able to shop directly to customers. Essential products include food and hygiene items. Amazon have said that the measure will allow “fulfillment center associates to focus on receiving and shipping the products customers need most at this time.”

Furthermore a notice on Amazon read:

“We are prioritizing the most requested products and some items may be temporarily unavailable. We appreciate your understanding at this time when we prioritize the products that customers need most. All orders already confirmed will be delivered regularly.”

While 5 workers have tested positive at Amazon Warehouses in Europe for coronavirus Bloomberg reported. Workers at an Amazon Warehouse in Italy went on strike on March 17th to protest inadequate action by the company to protect them.

Italy has become one of the hardest areas hit by COVID-19. As more than 53K people infected and 48K dead according to the New York Times. With Saturday alone, reporting 793 new deaths in one day, reported by the Times.

(The Verge)

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Toilet Paper Calculator

How long will your toilet paper last?

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There’s a toilet paper calculator to help you know how long you’ve got left based on the amount of rolls you have and the number of toilet visits you take per day. It’s called How Much Toilet Paper?! So helping during the time where people panic buy outrageous amounts of toilet paper.

We love talking about toilet trips here at How To Kill An Hour. We delved deep into how various different celebs wiped their back side. So now it’s time to find out how long that paper will last!

Staying calm and rational means that there’ll be plenty for everyone. The website starts with an average of 10 rolls left in the house with 3 visits per day. This will last you 53 days. Which is more than enough to last for a while.

For those wanting to delve down deeper into the more advanced settings. Which includes number of sheets per roll and the average number of wipes per visit.

(Metro)

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Twitter Fake Tweets Removed!

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Twitter are cracking down on fake tweets during the coronavirus outbreak. Tweets with promote fake treatments or deny expert guidance will be marked as harmful. Then removed. Content like this could place people at a high risk and contravene it’s safety rules

Furthermore this could include claims that specific groups are more susceptible of contracting COVID-19. While posting unverified claims that incite people to action and cause widespread panic. Plus posting about harmful or non harmful treatments which are ineffective.

‘We will enforce this in close coordination with trusted partners, including public health authorities and governments, and continue to use and consult with information from those sources when reviewing content.’ Twitter post on it’s website

This follows announcements from various video social media sites, such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIN and Reddit, who are committed to work together. Alongside governments in response to the pandemic.

Social Media

In a joint statement, they said they’d work to help people stay connected during the isolation. Furthermore fighting any misinformation and fraud linked to the outbreak.

‘We are working closely together on Covid-19 response efforts,’ the statement said. ‘We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in co-ordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.’

Social media sites and search engines have placed official guidance on their sites. From the NHS and World Health Organisation at the top of search results. Other platforms are also removing any misinformation linked to coronavirus which is either flagged or spotted by them.

Other platforms have also pledged to work quickly to remove any misinformation. Which is linked to the virus which is flagged to or spotted by them .

(Metro)

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Facebook

Facebook / Instagram lower video quality in EU!

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Following YouTube and Netflix’s decisoin to lower video quality to help European networks deal with demand, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook and Instagram will also temporarily reduce video bitrates in Europe. Therefore helping to handle “bandwidth constraints” and keep people in touch.

The sheer audience sizes of Facebook and Instagram could cause additional strain of users are more active than usual. Facebook had 288M daily users in Europe as of Summer 2019. With many users turning to video chat to keep in touch with people they’d otherwise meet in person.

With the news of reducing video bitrates it might help people work from home and otherwise get the internet services they expect.

“To help alleviate any potential network congestion, we will temporarily reduce bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in Europe. We are committed to working with our partners to manage any bandwidth constraints during this period of heavy demand, while also ensuring people are able to remain connected using Facebook apps and services during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

(Engadget)

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YouTube cuts videos to lower quality during Coronavirus

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YouTube are following in the footsteps of Netflix and will begin capping its data flow during the coronavirus pandemic. YouTube will being limiting all European streams to standard definition to manage the load on it’s network.

This is following advice from the EU Internal Market Commisson. Which was that everyone should limit their streams to standard definition. As it will minimie the network congestion as millions of people will be going online to kill time in isolation.

Thierry Breton from the commission spoke to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to ensure the measures are put in place.

‘We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default.’

‘People are coming to YouTube to find authoritative news, learning content and make connections during these uncertain times,’ a spokeswoman for the video platform said.

‘While we have seen only a few usage peaks, we have measures in place to automatically adjust our system to use less network capacity.

‘We are in ongoing conversations with the regulators (including Ofcom), governments and network operators all over Europe, and are making a commitment to temporarily default all traffic in the UK and the EU to standard definition.

‘We will continue our work to minimise stress on the system, while also delivering a good user experience.’  YouTube Spokesperson

The video streaming service said that there has little change in the peaks for usage. Furthermore seeing changes mostly in usage patterns, with usage expanding across longer hours.

The switch to standard definition should free up traffic on European networks considerably. While Netflix said that they would see a 25% reduction of it’s traffic on Europe’s networks.

Mobile Networks

While mobile networks including O2, EE, Vodafone and Three all began to struggle. As people are starting to work from home. With many customers complaining online that they were unable to make calls. With some claiming business had already began to slow down dramatically.

‘Today the industry experienced an issue that meant some calls between different networks were unable to connect. Specifically, O2, Vodafone and Three were unable to connect to EE and EE customers were unable to connect to O2, Vodafone and Three.

‘At a time when the country needs connectivity most, it is important we work together rather than pointing fingers before facts have been determined.

‘As this was a problem for a multiple networks, there is a National Emergency Alert for Telecommunications and Ofcom call at 2:30pm this afternoon to determine the route of the issue to ensure this doesn’t happen again.’ O2 spokesperson told Metro

Furthermore YouTube also confirmed it was introducing a new area on its homepage. Which is dedicated to news about Covid-19 from trustworthy sources.

(Metro)

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mind control

Will there be Mind Control for real?!

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Well turns out we’re all screwed. We may not even know what free will is even more, mind control could be happening!

Ok enough movie quotes, let’s get on to the real reason as to why we may be seeing Jedi mind tricks in the real world at some point in the future. Hope you’re sitting down for this, scientists have suggested that we humans could tuen into mindless ‘cyborg’ type super consumers. The same technology has been used on rats – successfully. Well, it’s time to turn off all technology. It was nice knowing you!

Mind Control: Shopping

It relates to shopping. A team of researchers working at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology discovered that by stimulating a certain part of a mouses brain. The process triggered a craving, a craving for possessing unnecessary objects. Looking at you impulse buyers! The intended use of the discovery of this process is intended to treat people. The idea is to treat people with brain disorders such as kleptomania or hoarding. However, they also stated that it could be used to ‘control human behaviour’

You may think that craving objects is quite scary in and of itself. Prepare to be bamboozled. The team said that it can control the behaviour with a technique known as MPA-Induced aDrive Assisted Steering. This, when used, made the mice chase whatever is in front of them whenever the same region is stimulated.

Psychological

The joy that we as children got when we recieved a toy from our parents has followed us into adulthood. We experience the same sort of lust for objects – one example of this would be if you have a shopping addiction. Which of course, could be used to exploit us, coroporations couold make us shoppers just grab anything, mindlessly. Though, would mean shops would have access to our brains. Which isn’t going to happen.

Professor Kim noted that:

‘This study provides evidence to treat brain disorders such as compulsive hoarding and kleptomania. ‘It also contributes to the development of technology to control the behaviour of animals and humans using strong innate motivation, and thus could impact neuro-economics, defence and disaster relief.’

So there is some good to the mind control news. Of course, the treatment of brain diseases. But disaster relief could be good if it got more people to safety. But again it needs access to the brain!

 

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Smartwatch will tell you when you’re getting ill!

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That smartwatch on your wrist may have just got a little bit smarter – they’ll be able to tell you when you’re getting ill before you actually do, according to US scientists.

Researchers made an app called “Change of Heart” which tracked health data, such as your heart rate, then used 60 people to conduct a study for up to two years and found that the stats changed from the baseline, when they were falling ill.

These stats are very important as the researchers say that with this data they could potentially help to develop an app which will detect things such as type 2 diabetes and in the study the app detected very early signs of Lyme disease in one of the scientists behind the study.

As the devices are constantly measuring our vitals they can often give a quick up to date information and your doctor (we presume) would have access to these stats they could detect not only things like the common cold but the onset of diseases due to small undetectable changes in your physiology. 

If this comes to fruition a combination of a smartwatch to detect the changes and a smartphone to act as a health dashboard could save plenty of lives in years to come!

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