Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/26/21 in all areas

  1. Polio is still endemic in Afghanistand and Pakistan and I believe there have been irregular detections elsewhere. To OP, at this point it is not clear. If vaccination was available early in the pandemic and/or if the infection levels where kept at a low level until now, and if everyone was getting vaccinated, then the answer would have been a yes. However, one should take a step back in understanding how eradication works. It is not necessarily just a matter of vaccination, but it is about creating a situation where an infected person is unable to infect enough folks to sustain pathogen spread. Herd immunity could be achieved by a combination of vaccination, immunity, as well as social measures (e.g. distancing) for example. But right now we have still over 14.8 million detected infections (and likely many more undetected) which is a huge reservoir for the virus and has a high risk of the creation of new variants. I have lost track of how many variants there are now in circulation, though only relatively few are classified to be of concern. Nonetheless, there is a big risk that for at least some of the variants, the vaccine will be less effective. We have already observed across the world that the UK variant (B.1.1.7) has displaced the wildtype. And this also affects how we should interpret vaccine efficacy data. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna efficacy data were generated earlier in the pandemic where mostly the wildtype was around. However, AstraZeneca already included data from patients with the B.1.351 (South African) strain, against which the vaccines might not work as well. Some smaller data sets indicate for example that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is about 89.5% effective against any infection with the B.1.1.7 variant and only 75% against B.1.351 in some groups (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2104974). However, they still protected with over 90% against severe diseases. The issue there is that while it prevents hospitalizations, it is still possible that folks get infected and may potentially transmit it to vulnerable persons. Aside from variants we got the issue that in many (most) populations we will not achieve anything close 100% compliance. Surveys in various countries, including the US, UK and Canada, indicate that up to 35% of those surveyed indicated that they won't get the vaccine. Another big issue is worldwide-timing. If vaccines are only provided in richer countries, then those who cannot afford it are basically a reservoir for the virus. If we take another year to vaccinate them, it will be a full year where new variants can rise. But even if just focus on local issues (and I want to emphasize that this would be really stupid to address a pandemic), we can do a little bit of a back-of-the-envelope calculation here. Let's focus on vaccination as the sole measure and let's assume we need ~80% immunity in the population to reach herd immunity. Let us further assume that the vaccines have an effectiveness of 90%. In order to achieve 80% immunity, it would be necessary to vaccinate 89% of the population to reach the herd immunity target. Only few countries (according to polls) are at that level of theoretical compliance. If we use US polls as an estimate of vaccine willingness (~75%), we can estimate that with a 90% effective vaccine we will have ~68% immunity, lower than almost all current estimated requirement for herd immunity. If the vaccine effectiveness goes down to 80% (due to variants for example) we would need to vaccinate every single person. So even if there are no barriers to providing vaccines to folks, it is tricky to rely on it alone to push down viral numbers to a degree that there is no net transmission. So no, based on the current situation I actually do not think that the current rollout in practice is likely going to eradicate the virus completely. The more likely scenario (I believe) for now is that it will become endemic. However, the optimistic scenario is that it will be better controlled via regular vaccines (and treatments) and won't have the same horrible death toll in the future. It might indeed become something like a flu, which, I want to emphasize has regularly costed many lives and is not really harmless either (though compared to COVID-19 it is comparatively tame). And as a minor sidenote, I would like to emphasize how behavioral changes have affected flu-related deaths. In the years prior 20-50k folks are estimated to have died each year from influenza in the US. Last year it was a few hundred reported so far.
    1 point
  2. Thank you so much! I'll definitely make the change over to scientific notation. I am just so hell-bent on visualizing everything that it'll take a bit of practice. Have a great day!
    1 point
  3. Well, actually, checking homework is not my absolute favourite pastime....... This all looks fine to me. You are not doing a reaction with an excess of one of the reactants here, so don't worry about that. I assume from your comments at the end that 2.68 metric tonnes of coal is burnt per person per year in your country. I assume this is the US, as you have had to convert to the old Imperial units at the end - something we gave up in Britain when I was at school in the 1970s. And yes you have one mole of carbon reacting with one mole of diatomic oxygen molecules to make one mole of CO2. My only comment on your working is that you may find it better, soon, to start getting used to standard form (exponential or scientific notation) to express the numbers, to get rid of all these zeros which can become easy to miscount. So 2680kg = 2.68 x 10³ kg = 2.68 x 10⁶ g. But maybe you have not come to that yet. You seem to know what you are doing so have confidence in your other calculations. I expect you have got them right.
    1 point
  4. Well I wouldn't call any of these conversion factors. Here is an example of what I would call a conversion factor. Convert 8 kilometers to miles. the conversion factor is 5/8 and it is multiplicative (you multiply what you have by it to get what you want.) So 8 kilometers is 8 x 5/8 = 5 miles. So what were the exact words of the question ?
    1 point
  5. It is the rule to send it to several publishers at the same time. You don't have to have a guilty conscience if you send it to several publishers at the same time. It only makes sense to send your work to publishers who also publish the relevant genre. You have to differentiate here. You often have more opportunities with small publishers in your region. Sometimes they want to promote the people from the region and it is easier to “sell” the people from the region (local media, ...). With a certain amount of experience and enough time, you can do it alone. The question is also whether you want it and have the time to do it. So I can understand why there are providers like Novum Publishing and others who do a lot of work for you. Many will lack the time. You usually still have a main job. Agents go in the same direction, I guess. They save you time and work again. Here you have to see whether you can / will do this work yourself or transfer it.
    1 point
  6. I recommend watching a great movie about the pyramids " revelations of the pyramids" What is interesting to pay attention to. Pyramids are not tetrahedra. At their base is an octagon, so that on the days of the equinox at sunrise, half of the faces of the pyramids are illuminated and the other half remains in shadow. And now about choosing a place to build pyramids. The film says that if you build a straight line from Giza at an angle of 30 degrees to the parallel, then the idols from Easter Island and Machu Picchu will be on this straight line. And the Mayan pyramids are on the same parallel as Giza. I wanted to see what was on the same meridian as Giza. And it turned out that if you go from Giza to the North, you will pass through the capital of the Byzantine and later Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (Istanbul), then through the capital of Kievan Rus, Kiev, the capital of Novgorod Rus, Novgorod, and finally come to the capital of the Russian Romanov Empire, St. Petersburg.
    -1 points
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.