I teach a 15-credit course to 3rd yr #datascience ugrads @UCD. I've their full attention for ~10 wks. They work in pairs to produce a major project of their own design. Every year I'm amazed by how they grow during this time & the confidence they gain from what they achieve. 1\n At the start of the module we've a 1-wk bootcamp where I work on a sample project from start to finish. Each year I pick a new topic & this year it was an analysis of #Wordle, the popular @nytime word puzzle. Here's a summary of the key findings... 2\n
towardsdatascience.com/big-data-in-li…

Query for immunologists...we need about 70% of the pop. to be vaccinated for herd immunity; ie. at 70% we get R=1. So lets call it 3.5m vaccinations. Can we do 500k/month? So this takes 7 months to achieve? What’s the effect of increasing vaccination levels by 500k/mth on R? 1/ In Jan we will be facing the prospect of a further lockdown as cases will be rising fast. If we start vaccinations in Jan then how will this help the R number. If 70% vaccinations imply R~1, then is there a linear relationship between vaccination level and R? 2\

Some people have been asking about the ‘models’ I used in this graph to make case predictions beyond today. It’s very simple. There isn’t a model, at least not in the complicated way you might think. Wtf?!? Let me explain.
1\ Instead of using a complex predictive model & having a debate about parameters etc. I just used the case trend/numbers from waves 1 (red) & 2 (blue) after aligning the relative case numbers based on their peaks, as shown. Both waves are similar so this makes sense. 2\

Level 5 seems well & truly stuck now, & each day brings a new even higher cases/day ‘prediction’ for an early Dec exit; its now 257 today, up from 223 yesterday. The problem is not only that cases are stalled/rising, but we have less and less time left to fix it before Xmas. 1/ That puts us >500c/d by Dec 25 & >900c/d by Dec 31, but that’s if transmission in Dec is similar to tx in Sept/Oct, which is surely very unlikely. Chances are, it will be markedly worse because of Xmas, so we’ll get more cases later in Dec & need a lockdown in early Jan. 2\

How are things going in Level 5? Cases and positivity rates are coming down nicely. How does this compare to wave 1 and can this help us to predict where we might get to by December? Let’s have a look ...
(1/n) I’ve aligned waves 1 & 2 using their peaks. The y-axis is the 7d moving average of daily cases as a fraction of each wave’s peak. Wave 1 peaked at ~872 c/d and came down to about 50 c/d by June. So far, wave 2 has peaked at 1169 c/d & its falling. Where will it fall to?
(2/n)

Slovakia's drive to test its entire population over 2 weekends got off to a good start on Saturday with 2.5m tested and 1% positivity. Those 25k positives are now in quarantine. A voluntary programme with opt-outs required to quarantine for 10 days.
(1/n)
theguardian.com/world/2020/nov… Next weekend the second half will be completed and presumably another ~25k positive cases will be found. So approx. 50k people will be in quarantine for 10-14 days. The remaining >5.4m people will presumably be free to go about their business with limited restrictions. (2/n)

This seems like an interesting experiment. Slovakia is testing entire population (5m) over 2 w/ends. Testing is ‘voluntary’ but those not participating must self-isolate for 10d. The first round covered 1m people with 1% positivity.
(1/n) @dwnews
In theory, absent issues with false negatives, could an approach like this drive the virus out of a country within a couple of weeks after testing? Imperfect because of false negatives and secondary tx during isolation, but it would surely do more than 6 was in L5 (for all) (2/n)

We can now see transmission rates after L3, as we began L5. Much better than start of L3. Almost all counties either in or near the lower-left quadrant (low transmission & falling). A great good from which L5 can do its work if we all do out bit.
link.medium.com/z5HrNtUB3ab Here’s the same picture from just a few days ago ... we were moving in the right direction but still more to do.

Now that we are closing in on the end of October there is an opportunity to look back at the data from Ireland’s Level 3 restrictions to determine: was it working; why we needed to move to L5; and what this means for the future.
(1/12)
link.medium.com/Wj7KAIHpXab Here's the county transmission picture from Oct 7, at the start of L3. We want to be in the lower-left quadrant (low & falling transmission rates) but counties are mostly spread across the upper-right (high and rising transmission rates). Not good.
(2/12)