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Sermo Reports on Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy, Rise in Prophylaxis Use; Over 80% Expect 2nd Outbreak April 02, 2020 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Widespread confusion, conflicting reports, inconsistent testing, and off-indication use of existing and experimental drugs has resulted in no single source of information from the frontlines. To create a centralized and dynamic knowledge base, Sermo, the largest global healthcare polling company and social platform for physicians, leveraged its capabilities to publish results of a COVID-19 study with more than 6,200 physicians in 30 countries. The study was completed in three days. Data covers current treatment and...

There is room for different interpretations of the dataIn announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of Britain nation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the UK government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation...

Coronavirus Cases: 49,594 Deaths: 622 The rate of case Growth may be slowing dramatically.

The world is hungry for some good news as the coronavirus outbreak continues to upend lives and cause serious damage to the world economy. As if by design, on March 19, Communist China reported “no new local infection of the novel coronavirus cases in the mainland for the first time since the start of the outbreak.”Chinese state media lauded the Communist Party’s leadership for achieving this important milestone while the rest of the world is struggling to contain the outbreak. But why on earth should anyone believe in Beijing’s numbers when it was Beijing’s cover-ups and delays that resulted...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently shared some pretty stark statistics regarding how coronavirus will affect his state. “We project that roughly 56 percent of our population – 25.5 million people -- will be infected with the virus over an eight week period,” he predicted, issuing a stay-at-home order. Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx if we can expect those kinds of numbers nationwide on "Special Report" Thursday night. Birx was one of the leaders in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, and was appointed as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator in 2014...

I have spent the last several days like most Americans somewhat baffled, perplexed and even a little nervous at the rapidly unfolding events as to CoVID-19. The community seems to have been divided into two groups, those who are advocating that there is nothing more than the common flu here and that there is vast overreaction, and those that advocate that this is a serious illness that for the safety of all requires drastic measures in order to prevent mass death and tragedy. If one looks closely, it is possible to find everything from death rates calculated at 0.1% -...

I have always been fascinated by numbers, so looking at data on the virus spread and its lethality is revealing, and also raises lots of questions I cannot answer, since I am not a virologist, nor am I on top of what each country is doing to contain the spread of the virus. There are several very good sources of information on the numbers if this interests you. A 17-year-old prodigy from Seattle has created an excellent database, which updates every minute.  Here is an article on the young software designer.  Johns Hopkins University, recipient of the largest gift...

P-values are used in statistics and scientific publications, much less so in machine learning applications where re-sampling techniques are favored and easy to implement today thanks to modern computing power. In some sense, p-values are a relic from old times, when computing power was limited and mathematical / theoretical formulas were favored and easier to deal with than lengthy computations. Recently, p-values have been criticized and even banned by some journals, because they are used by researchers, who cherry-pick observations and repeat experiments until they obtain a p-value worth publishing to obtain grant money, get tenure, or for political reasons....

In 1983 a sponge diver found funny metal biscuits with ears at the ocean floor. That is how the excavation got started, Hirschfeld said. The ship carried ten tons of copper ingots, which after being analyzed, were determined to be from Cyprus. Each ingot weighs approximately 60 pounds, she said. She and her team also excavated glass ingots, tons of tin, and three Italian swords that were not part of the cargo of the ship. Among the 130 Canaanite jars they found, there were traces of wine in the jars and one was full of glass beads. The team also...

Remains of a long dead house mouse have been found in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship. That makes it the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of how house mice spread around the world. Archaeologist Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from a ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey. The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold - including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti - indicates it was a royal vessel. Because the cargo...

The approach that was adopted for Anatolia, however, was to rely largely on what is called a "D-score". The D-score does not exist in statistics. It has been used solely with tree rings. D-scores do not have a mathematical derivation -- unlike t-scores, g-scores, and times series. In fact, D-scores were more or less just made up (in an unpublished 1987 thesis), and using them to evaluate a tree-ring match turns out to be little better than rolling dice... The most important of those dates was perhaps for wood from a shipwreck, which was claimed to resolve some of the...

Communism at "Peace": An Outline of Non-Wartime Communist Atrocities / --No victims in any category below have been double-counted. / --Outside Peru, no war-related deaths or imprisonments have been included.

American spy chiefs are offering $250,000 in prize money for a competition that will test how successfully someone can predict future unknowns such as political election results or missile tests. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity [IARPA], which sits within the office of America’s top intelligence official, is behind the challenge, which is designed to improve forecasting techniques. Participants will be asked more than 300 questions about the outcomes of various issues across a nine-month period. The winner will collect $153,000, with smaller prizes to runner-ups. Sample questions listed include “Which political party will win the most seats during the...

UPDATE (Nov. 10, 2018, 2:23p.m.): Since first publishing this article, the Florida secretary of state has ordered a machine recount in the U.S. Senate, governor and commissioner of agriculture races as unofficial returns have found the results of these races within half a percentage point. This automatically triggers a machine count in each race. If the race falls within a quarter of a percentage point after the machine recount, each ballot will be recounted by hand in a much more complex, manual recount. The Florida U.S. Senate race is still too close to call. According to unofficial results on the...

Most U.S. adults identify with a particular religious denomination or group. They describe themselves as Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Jewish, Mormon or Muslim– to name just a few... The new typology sorts Americans into seven groups based on the religious and spiritual beliefs they share, how actively they practice their faith, the value they place on their religion, and the other sources of meaning and fulfillment in their lives... Sunday Stalwarts are the most religious group. Not only do they actively practice their faith, but they also are deeply involved in their religious congregations. God-and-Country Believers are less active in church...

An Israeli company that designs military-grade vests, uniforms and helmets has developed a bulletproof backpack for school students – and orders are pouring in from the US. Masada Armour created the bag, which costs upwards of £385, in response to the sheer number of shootings at American secondary schools in recent years. Now, the firm says it is having to scale up production to keep up with orders from worried parents ahead of the new term.

The claim that the US has by far the most mass public shootings in the world drives much of the gun-control debate. Many argue that America’s high rate of gun possession explains the high rate of mass shootings. aim received coverage in hundreds of news stories all over the world. It still gets regular coverage. Purporting to cover all mass public shootings around the world from 1966 to 2012, Lankford claimed that the United States had 31 percent of public mass shooters despite having less than 5 percent of the population. But this isn’t nearly correct. The whole episode should...

Shortened title. Full title: Feds Suspiciously Revise Obama’s GDP Up and President Trump’s GDP Down – Still Debt to GDP Decreasing! The US GDP Numbers were released on Friday and after accounting for new revisions [?] and seasonal adjustments[?], the debt to GDP ratio still continues to decrease. The US GDP for the second quarter accelerated to a whopping 4.1% under the leadership of President Donald Trump. This was another BIG Trump win doubling the first quarter growth of 2.2%. Some changes were uncovered when reviewing the GDP numbers from Friday. The major change being that the US Bureau of...

Doctors (A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000. (B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000. (C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Now think about this: Guns (A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000+. (Yes, that's 80 million) (B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500. (C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188 Statistics courtesy of FBI >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun...

Austin, TX, May 03, 2018 --(PR.com)-- DogsBite.org, a national dog bite victims' group dedicated to reducing serious dog attacks, releases a multi-year U.S. dog bite fatality report. From January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2017, canines killed at least 433 people. The majority of these victims were ages 10 and older. The 9-page report examines over 20 factors involved in fatal dog maulings and key changing metrics since a government body last examined this issue in 2000. The 13-year report shows that pit bulls contributed to 66% of all dog bite fatalities. Within this period, deaths attributed to pit bulls...