Category: Covid-19

  • Review: Rapid Antigen Testing Part 4

    This is me actually doing this one slightly wrong. This one is rated as Very High Sensitivity (https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-rapid-antigen-self-tests-are-approved-australia ) which is unusual for an oral test. The downside of the nasal swab style if you are sneezing from hayfever is obvious. You don’t want to sneeze with a cotton bud up your nostril. This misnamed…

  • Covid March 2022 update

    I can’t speak for the rest of the world but Australia isn’t in a post-covid world yet. I’d describe it more as a lets-not-talk-about-covid world. There’s not much news coverage but given substantial flooding in parts of Australia and the war in Ukraine, this isn’t surprising. However, there are a lot of people sick. Schools,…

  • LTUE and the self-enforcing conspiracy

    The Utah-based Life, The Universe & Everything (LTUE) is an annual quasi-academic conference on science-fiction writing. It’s not explicitly a pro-Sad Puppies conference but the Utah location and the connections between the original SPs and the Utah writing scene means there has been a lot of overlap over the years. In 2020 Mary Robinette Kowal…

  • Australia Covid Update

    For a lot of the time (heading towards two years) that I’ve been posting these graphs, Australia has either looked like a footnote at the bottom or (like my last post) I’ve shown it just with other countries with low case numbers. Well, now Australia is competing on the international stage but not in a…

  • Some Graphs to Start the Year

    Not wanting to start your year with doom, I waited a day. I didn’t post much satellite global temperature data last year because I was busy. Here’s how things look up to November 2021. The usual caveats apply here: not the best temperature record but the one that side-steps some time-wasting arguments. If you focus…

  • Well, that didn’t last…NSW Covid numbers escalate

    Back in November, I made this post on how covid numbers stabilised after the NSW lockdown lifted. Various reasons were offered but I thought it was probably just a matter of time. Anyway, it really was just a matter of time: “New South Wales has recorded Australia’s highest ever daily Covid case tally as the…

  • Debarkle Chapter 74: Meanwhile…Election 2020

    Debarkle Chapter 74: Meanwhile…Election 2020

    [content warning: discussion of violence and murder] Robert Heinlein’s “crazy years” were a period in his extrapolation of history into the future where rapid technological change would accompany a period of cultural and social decline. The idea resembles aspects of accelerationism[1] and the sense of galloping technological change and social unrest is one the world…

  • Debarkle Chapter 73: Covid, Contrarians and Cons

    Debarkle Chapter 73: Covid, Contrarians and Cons

    The exact start of the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t known. At the time of writing this chapter (November 2021), it is believed that via some means a variant of a coronavirus found in other mammals made its way into the human population[1]. A less likely possibility (on current evidence) is that the virus outbreak was due…

  • Not all of these are in the coming chapter

    This is one of those posts where I want to assert something in a Debarkle chapter but showing the original research in the chapter would be clunky and make the footnotes unmanageable. This is 28 posts on or relevant to Covid-19 from Sarah Hoyt (or by others on her blog) mainly from February 2020 to…

  • Currently NSW Covid numbers have stayed low

    After a breakout of covid in July leading to a lockdown and a peak of cases in August, the number of covid cases has fallen and then stabilised. After hitting the vaccination goals, the state opened up from lockdown a few weeks ago. A lot of people are vaccinated but there’s still a significant chunk…

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