Risks Digest 31.84

[RISKS List Owner <risko () csl sri com>]

RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Wednesday 20 May 2020  Volume 31 : Issue 84

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
  <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31.84>
The current issue can also be found at
  <http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt>

  Contents:
Piper and Garmin Certify Autoland on Halo M600SLS (Julie Boatman)
The ultimate Turing test (Henry Baker)
The FBI Just Unlocked an iPhone Without Apple's Help (Lifewire)
Fairfax schools' switch to Google didn't stop harassment (WashPost)
Florida scientist fired for refusing to 'manipulate' COVID-19 data
  (USA Today)
Being offline is the new luxury (Matthew Kruk)
AI gets the attention, but biotechnology is poised to change the world
  (Axios)
Humans are complicated; do we need behavioral science to get through this
  (Ars Technica)
Wall Street traders fight over milliseconds in mmWave transmission battle
  (Light Reading)
China's New Outbreak Shows Signs the Virus Could Be Changing (Bloomberg Law)
Why the coronavirus hits kids and adults so differently (The Atlantic)
The Chaos of Asynchronous Grief (Allegra)
Quarantine and a monitoring bracelet for Hong Kong returnees (Fox5NY)
How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online (NYTimes)
Covidiots: R_nought's are naughty not nice (Henry Baker)
Re: Stimulus check delays when accounts were overdrawn! (John Levine)
Re: Coronavirus New York Shock: Two-Thirds Of Recent Patients
  Infected While Staying At Home (David Lesher)
Re: Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase (Chiaki Ishikawa,
  Henry Baker, William Brodie-Tyrrell, Henry Baker)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 20:29:51 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe () gabegold com>
Subject: Piper and Garmin Certify Autoland on Halo M600SLS (Julie Boatman)

Julie Boatman, 18 May 2020
The final FAA blessing came following a last round of test flights.

The Piper M600SLS is the first certification platform for Autoland, with
other airplanes to follow.

Piper Aircraft and Garmin International announced on Monday, May 18, 2020,
the final FAA certification on the Halo-equipped Piper M600SLS, which uses
Garmin's Autoland feature to land the airplane without human intervention in
the event of a pilot-incapacitating emergency. The last push to finish
flight tests on the innovative system consisted of validation and
coordination with air traffic control, among other scenario-based
events. Piper conducted the final series of tests in M600 in Vero Beach,
Florida, and Garden City, Kansas, concluded on May 5.

Garmin's Autoland system forms the basis for the Piper's version of the
automated system, which also incorporates several recent updates to the
aircraft, including an autothrottle, and rounding out the Autonomí suite of
safety protocols, including emergency descent management (EDM), and
electronic stability and protection (ESP).

Unique among those systems, however, Autoland takes the airplane all the way
to the conclusion of landing on a runway. How it does this combines an
intricate ballet of GPS-based situational awareness on the part of the
Garmin G3000 flight deck, voice and data communication with air traffic
control, and mechanical functions normally operated by the pilot but
automated within the airplane once the system is activated.

Autoland features a unique passenger-centric interface to communicate what
the system is doing at all times.

Autoland, as executed in the Halo system, can only be initiated by an
occupant of the airplane -- typically a passenger -- so its interface was
designed to be transparent and straightforward to non-pilots. Once the
passenger presses the activation button (a guarded installation on the
instrument panel), the system calculates through a wide range of
performance, operational, and weather data and criteria to conclude the
nearest safe airport at which to land the airplane. Autoland communicates
with ATC over standard frequencies so that not only are controllers alerted
but also other pilots flying in the area. The autothrottle is used to
control speed, and manage engine performance and power, allowing the M600 to
climb, descend, or stay at a given altitude as appropriate as Autoland
guides the airplane to the chosen airport.

The full report on Autoland was published in the January/February 2020 issue
of Flying. Garmin expects certification of the system on board the Cirrus
Vision Jet and the Daher TBM 940 to follow.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 08:03:57 -0700
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1 () pipeline com>
Subject: The ultimate Turing test

I'm aware of a company that made their first 'virtual hire' due to COVID-19:
this person was interviewed, hired, and started working from home without
ever being met *in person*!

With Zoom virtual backgrounds, real-time facial animations, etc., someone is
certain to use these capabilities to become a fake virtual employee at a
major company -- perhaps *more than one virtual employee simultaneously*!

While I was an undergraduate at MIT in the 1960's, I heard about a gentleman
who couldn't afford all 4 years of tuition & boarding, so he signed up for a
*double load* of courses, and managed to get through MIT in only 2 years by
skipping lectures and only taking the exams.

In this new 'gig' economy, someone could sign up for 2,3,4 'virtual' jobs,
and with suitable scheduling of Zoom conferences, survive for months or
years before anyone ever found out.

An even better hack will be to use an 'AI' to become a virtual employee and
get away with it for a non-trivial amount of time.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 14:32:10 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe () gabegold com>
Subject: The FBI Just Unlocked an iPhone Without Apple's Help (Lifewire)

What does the FBI's success mean for your iPhone?

https://www.lifewire.com/the-fbi-just-unlocked-an-iphone-without-apple-s-help-4845466

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 17:29:23 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe () gabegold com>
Subject: Fairfax schools' switch to Google didn't stop harassment (WashPost)

The incident is only the latest snarl in Fairfax’s troubled rollout of
online learning, which began in mid-April when the sprawling Northern
Virginia system tried to launch a learning platform called Blackboard.  That
effort dissolved into chaos after students and teachers suffered technical
troubles, privacy issues and harassment.

A second failed attempt a week later led to the resignation of the school
system's longtime information technology chief and to the announcement that
Fairfax was moving away from Blackboard. Instead, officials switched at warp
speed to Google’s online learning platform. [...]

“Basically kids have zero issue getting content from the open Internet into
fcpsschools.net and back out,” said Tim Schaad, a Fairfax parent and
cybersecurity specialist who raised the alarm about G Suite to Fairfax’s top
brass in late 2017. “Kids are running circles around administrators.” [...]

Over the years, Schaad reached out to local officials, to state lawmakers,
to news outlets, trying to keep attention on the issue. But no one
acted. “It was crickets,” he said.

Though the pandemic has gotten schools’ attention, he remains convinced
Fairfax is ignoring the risks and best practices of technology
implementation he follows every day in his profession. It is an “ironclad
rule of IT,” he said. “When you give people tech, they will do whatever they
can with it.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/after-online-learning-flopped-fairfax-schools-switched-to-google-more-virtual-harassment-followed/2020/05/16/728ecb1e-9449-11ea-91d7-cf4423d47683_story.html

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 11:47:27 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: Florida scientist fired for refusing to 'manipulate' COVID-19 data
  (USA Today)

Apparently she coded and maintained Florida's COVID-19 info site, but when
she refused to manipulate data dishonestly, she was fired.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/19/florida-covid-19-coronavirus-data-researcher-out-state-reopens/5218897002/

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 16:53:37 -0600
From: "Matthew Kruk" <mkrukg () gmail com>
Subject: Being offline is the new luxury

https://www.youtube.com/watch?s=&v=WBFoV6jn79c&app=desktop

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 13:38:31 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: AI gets the attention, but biotechnology is poised to change the
  world (Axios)

Why it matters: This bio revolution could lead to a world that is more
sustainable and even extend human lifespans. But its full extent is
dependent on social acceptance -- and carries serious risks as well.

What's happening: The scientific reaction to COVID-19 illustrates the rapid
change in the biological sciences, says Michael Chui, a partner at McKinsey
Global Institute (MGI). "For SARS-CoV-2, it took a matter of weeks between
identifying the new disease and sequencing it, compared to months for the
original SARS virus."

   - Improvements in reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
   (RT-PCR) machines have made it possible to diagnose COVID-19 cases in as
   few as 15 minutes.
   
<https://link.axios.com/click/20337583.60839/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY291cmFudC5jb20vY29yb25hdmlydXMvaGMtbmV3cy1jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1hYmJvdHQtcmFwaWQtdGVzdC0yMDIwMDUxNC15YjZpbW5rY2VqZTNibDN3Y3A1aTYzdWx5dS1zdG9yeS5odG1sP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2F4aW9zZnV0dXJlb2Z3b3JrJnN0cmVhbT1mdXR1cmU/5c90f2c505e94e65b176e000B4fd58d24>

   - AI-powered R&D is speeding the search for a vaccine,
   
<https://link.axios.com/click/20337583.60839/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2lyZWQuY29tL3N0b3J5L29waW5pb24tYWktY2FuLWhlbHAtZmluZC1zY2llbnRpc3RzLWZpbmQtYS1jb3ZpZC0xOS12YWNjaW5lLz91dG1fc291cmNlPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXImdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249bmV3c2xldHRlcl9heGlvc2Z1dHVyZW9md29yayZzdHJlYW09ZnV0dXJl/5c90f2c505e94e65b176e000B738f17f1>
   while geneticallyengineered animals have been used to develop potential
   treatments.
   
<https://link.axios.com/click/20337583.60839/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2NpZW5jZWFsZXJ0LmNvbS9sbGFtYS1ibG9vZC1jb3VsZC1wbGF5LWEtcm9sZS1pbi1oZWxwaW5nLXBlb3BsZS1maWdodC1vZmYtY29yb25hdmlydXMtaW5mZWN0aW9ucz91dG1fc291cmNlPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXImdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249bmV3c2xldHRlcl9heGlvc2Z1dHVyZW9md29yayZzdHJlYW09ZnV0dXJl/5c90f2c505e94e65b176e000B10036e18>


*But the response to COVID-19* only scratches the surface of what the bio
revolution may make possible. [...]
https://www.axios.com/biotech-revolution-covid19-coronavirus-world-14a98277-e9c2-4f01-8419-986377d0e96b.html

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 13:36:30 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: Humans are complicated; do we need behavioral science to get
  through this (Ars Technica)

*Some scientists think social science isn'9t ready for the COVID-19 crisis*

In mid-March, just before President Trump declared COVID-19 a national
emergency
<https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/covid-19-is-a-national-emergency-trump-declares/>,
Stanford psychology professor Robb Willer posted a call to arms
<https://twitter.com/RobbWiller/status/1237815774024052736> on Twitter,
asking for suggestions on how the social and behavioral sciences could help
to address the pandemic. ``What ideas might we have to recommend? What
research could we do?'' he asked. ``All ideas, half-baked or otherwise, are
welcome!''

Given the importance of our social interactions to the spread of the
pandemic, behavioral sciences *should* have a lot to tell us. So Willer got
a large response, and the result was a huge team effort coordinated by
Willer and New York University social psychology professor Jay van Bavel
<https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/jay-van-bavel.html>. The goal:
to sum up all the best and most relevant research from psychology,
sociology, public health, and other social sciences. Published in the
journal Nature Human Behaviour
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0884-z> last week--a
lightning-fast turnaround for academia--the resulting paper
highlights research that addresses behavioral questions that have come up in
the pandemic, from understanding cultural differences to minimizing
scientific misinformation.

Different sections, each written by researchers with expertise in that
particular field, summarize research on topics from social inequality to
science communication and fake news. Responding to the crisis requires
people to change their behavior, the paper's authors argue, so we
need to draw on behavioral research to ``help align human behavior
with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health
experts.''

But while Willer, van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together
their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely
opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral
science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some
humility. This paper--currently published online in draft format
<https://psyarxiv.com/whds4/> and seeding
<https://twitter.com/hansijzerman/status/1254649705667100678> avid
<https://twitter.com/jayvanbavel/status/1254845283151818753> debates
<https://twitter.com/StuartJRitchie/status/1254866823570427918> on social
media <https://twitter.com/NeilLewisJr/status/1256209412164911104>--argues
that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready
to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an *evidence readiness*
framework to help people determine when the field will be. [...]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/humans-are-complicated-do-we-need-behavioral-science-to-get-through-this/

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 13:40:28 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: Wall Street traders fight over milliseconds in mmWave transmission
  battle (Light Reading)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to decide
later this month whether the New York Stock Exchange's (NYSE) plans to offer
a new, high-speed wireless connection is anti-competitive.

The situation highlights the financial value of high-speed, low-latency
connections, as well as how seemingly minor technological details -- such as
the difference between a wired connection and a wireless one, or the
distance between a data center and a cell tower -- can have significant
implications.

At issue is the new 160-foot-tall E-Band millimeter wave (mmWave) cell tower
that NYSE's parent company, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), built at
its data center in Mahwah, New Jersey, where NYSE's electronic trades are
executed.

ICE, through its data services division, provides the wireless connectivity
between third-party data centers and the Mahwah, NJ, data center. Its new
tower transmits in the E-Band, a slice of mmWave spectrum that sits between
71GHz and 86GHz and is ideal for carrying ultra-high capacity traffic a very
short distance (typically just one or two miles). Such connections can be
even faster than wired, optical networks because sending signals through the
air can be faster than sending signals through glass.

*An anticompetitive connection?* [...]
https://www.lightreading.com/services/wall-street-traders-fight-over-milliseconds-in-mmwave-transmission-battle/d/d-id/759555

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 12:29:50 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: China's New Outbreak Shows Signs the Virus Could Be Changing
  (Bloomberg Law)

Patients in new cluster take longer to show symptoms, recover.
Uncertainty over virus mutation is hindering control efforts.

Chinese doctors are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among
patients in its new cluster of cases in the northeast region compared to the
original outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting that the pathogen may be changing in
unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out.

Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to
carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to test
negative, Qiu Haibo, one of China's top critical care doctors, told state
television on Tuesday.

Patients in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to
two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this
delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before
they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating
patients. [...]

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/chinas-new-outbreak-shows-signs-the-virus-could-be-changing
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/chinas-new-outbreak-shows-signs-the-virus-could-be-changing/ar-BB14mHis

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 13:35:30 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: Why the coronavirus hits kids and adults so differently
  (The Atlantic)

*COVID-19 is much less severe in children, and it could have to do with a
child's still-developing immune system*

Only after New York City passed its current coronavirus peak did
pediatricians notice a striking, new pattern: Dozens of kids who had been
exposed to COVID-19 were coming in sick, but they weren't coughing. They
didn't have severe respiratory distress. Instead, they had sky-high
inflammation and some combination of fever, rashes on their hands and feet,
diarrhea, vomiting, and very low blood pressure. When ICU doctors around the
world gathered for a weekly online COVID-19 call on May 2, doctors elsewhere
began sharing similar observations. ``The tenor of the meeting completely
changed,'' says Steven Kernie <https://www.nyp.org/physician/skernie>, the
chief of critical-care medicine at New York -- Presbyterian Morgan Stanley
Children's Hospital, who was on the call.

Until then, the news about children and COVID-19, the disease caused by the
novel coronavirus, had been largely good: Kids can get seriously sick, but
they rarely do. They can spread the disease, but they do it less than
adults. Study after study--in China
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20056010v1.full.pdf>,
Iceland <https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100>, Australia
<http://ncirs.org.au/sites/default/files/2020-04/NCIRS%20NSW%20Schools%20COVID_Summary_FINAL%20public_26%20April%202020.pdf>
, Italy <https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v1>, and
the Netherlands
<https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/children-and-covid-19>--has
found that children get less sick and are less contagious.

But a very small number of children seem to have a delayed reaction to the
novel coronavirus --one that takes many weeks to manifest. What
pediatricians first saw in Europe and New York is now named
``pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome'' (PMIS) or,
per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
<https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2020/han00432.asp>, ``multisystem
inflammatory syndrome in children.'' Since the New York City Health
Department issued an alert on May 4
<https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/han/alert/2020/covid-19-pediatric-multi-system-inflammatory-syndrome.pdf>
, 82 such cases
<https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/13/more-than-80-kids-in-new-york-city-have-coronavirus-inflammatory-syndrome-mayor-de-blasio-says.html>
have been confirmed in the city. Most patients have recovered or are
recovering, but one child has died. Across the country, doctors are finding
similar cases. PMIS does seem to be a phenomenon unique to kids
<https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2020/han00432.asp>.

But the virus is the same, whether it infects adult or child. The question
is, why does COVID-19 affect them so differently? Both striking patterns in
kids--the fact that most do not get very sick but a small number
still end up with a delayed inflammation syndrome--may be rooted in a
child's still-developing immune system. And although COVID-19 is a
new disease, these patterns are seen with other viruses too. [...]
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/covid-19-kids/611728/

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 13:37:30 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: The Chaos of Asynchronous Grief (Allegra)

*Spoiler: I hate to say it, but Americans have only begun the five stages of
grief, and we aren't all going through it in the same way and at the same
time. This can be problematic for cooperation -- something we need if we are
going to get through a global pandemic.*

For the first time in our lived memory, the entire planet has experienced
the same horror and the same fear at the same time in a broad and deep way.
Yes, many of us have been concerned about climate change, but the immediacy
of COVID-19, and its threat of sudden death, shocked us into compliance with
our local health departments and authorities. At the start of the worldwide
infection, most of the globe was on the same page for how to stay safe. All
over the world, we were scared, and we stayed home as much as we could. This
mostly worked in the United States -- until recently, when it suddenly
didn't, and some people hit the streets to protest, claiming a burning need
for, of all things, haircuts.

This action came on the tail of US politicians and the powerfully wealthy
*seemingly more concerned about `The Economy' than human lives,
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/chris-christie-coronavirus-deaths-reopening/index.html>*
publicly urging us to risk infection for the good of commerce, rather than
staying home as advised. That didn't play well for those of us who were
scared and staying home, and many of us were outraged by this
declaration. However, for some people, it sparked something, enough so that
the people who liked these new ideas began to organise.

This organising seemed manufactured, and in many ways it began that way.
The websites that posted information about how or where to protest the
``lockdowns'' were coordinated efforts
<https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-domain-surge/>,
with many of the domains registered to the same person. The protest
turnouts were eerily similar, and seemed to be occurring in key political
states in which voters of either party could be harmed by an increase of
COVID-19 cases (pretty much all states, really), or states where the
President is against a Governor (nearly all Democratic ones). But it may
not just be about the President's preferences. Some have rightly argued
that structural racism has played a huge part in who gets COVID-19
<https://ehe.amfar.org/disparities>. Proportionally, the virus is taking a
higher toll in lower income, disadvantaged communities, and racism may be
part of where the impetus for some to protest comes from: the idea from
those protesting the lockdown that the spread of the virus could result in
the eradication of certain minority members of society, who are on their
lists to remove.

The protests mimic the audience participation portion of Trump's
campaign rallies. Just as the President misses his podium, the crowds miss
being there as well. Trump's rallies offered his supporters
camaraderie, and the chance to yell and join together against common
enemies.

In psychological parlance, a Narcissist like Trump needs both an Apath (an
enabler) and an Empath (a victim). Apaths are dangerous because their
actions normalise ``the toxic individual and their harmful behaviours
towards others
<https://www.businessinsider.com/what-an-apath-is-and-why-they-are-dangerous-2018-2>.''
The rallies have provided a place for these dangerous Apath enablers to get
support and strokes for pleasing the Narcissist, whilst being able to vent,
scapegoat and blame his (their) victims, who do not conform to the
Narcissist's whims. With sporting events shut, many people lack the
constructive ways to express themselves and their feelings that games and
playoffs can provide, and with Trump's campaign rallies currently suspended,
his supporters also lack the public space they usually have to get that
emotional charge -- as well as to scapegoat, blame, and bully others.
Trump's Apaths are simultaneously suppressed and powder kegs about to blow.
They need a regular outlet, so they've created one: protesting against the
lockdown offers them a way to let off steam, please their leader, and get
those emotional strokes they rely on from him, and from banding together.

However, what people are protesting seems odd. They are protesting change,
and this is realised by them protesting having to stay home. Cloaked in the
label of *Freedom*, these gun-toting, flag-waving folk are crowding together
in public
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/trump-supporters-protest-coronavirus-orders>.
Some of these protestors are likely COVID-19 positive but asymptomatic,
creating disease vectors, which at best could further imprison them at home
or in a ICU hospital ward, and at worst, kill them and their loved ones.
That aspect doesn't seem to matter as they chant displeasure towards the
rational common sense enacted by health departments and state governments,
as well as a dislike for the rest of us who choose to stay home, potentially
denying the protestors sources for the goods and services that they desire
and imagine will be accessible to them when things open. It doesn't make
sense, as acts of passion rarely do, to those not directly involved.

Perhaps these protests aren't about freedom at all, but are
leveraging the concept to validate other, more irrational actions. The
protestors aren't for everyone else's freedom, for they
don't seem to want some subset of the population (hairdressers to
name one group
<https://www.newsweek.com/protesters-wave-signs-branded-dumb-ignorant-1498873>)
to be at home, either, which would be an expression of another's
freedom to choose. No, these protests are about something else underneath
their chants.

I argue that this new faction of protestors taking action arises from people
being at various stages in a grief cycle, combined with different imagined
realities of outcomes for the future. Throughout the 20th century, scholars
and psychologists have developed models for understanding and processing the
complex human emotions that arise as we are able to extend the human life
span. As we live longer, we live with illnesses that can last decades. As a
result, we have had to come to terms with slower processes of
dying. COVID-19 has created conditions where we are all Schr=C3=B6dinger's
Cat: sequestered in our homes, unsure if we are ill or not ill, and lacking
ways to get reliable confirmation one way or another.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat>

This produces feelings. Lots of them. One of the more well known volumes on
the subject of grieving is K=C3=BCbler-Ross' 1969 book, On Death and
Dying <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>. In it,
K=C3=BCbler-Ross outlines the stages of a grief and/or bereavement as a
process and offers a psychological tool for humans to understand and accept
terminal illness and death. [...]
https://allegralaboratory.net/the-chaos-of-asynchronous-grief/

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 12:28:50 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
Subject: Quarantine and a monitoring bracelet for Hong Kong returnees
  (Fox5NY)

It sits on your wrist, just as a wristwatch would. And in a moment when the
world fears infections more than almost anything, it knows exactly where you
are.

Since late March, residents returning to Hong Kong have been required to
undergo a two-week quarantine at home, in a hotel or at a government
facility as part of stepped-up efforts to curb the spread of the
coronavirus.

To ensure people don't flout quarantine, the semi-autonomous Chinese city
issued mandatory wristbands to all arrivals, to be worn for the entirety of
the two-week period.

Those required to go through the two-week quarantine are unable to leave
their homes and must rely on food or grocery delivery for meals. Government
officers also conduct random checks on their homes to make sure they have
not broken quarantine. [...]

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/quarantine-and-a-monitoring-bracelet-for-hong-kong-returnees

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 12:01:51 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Subject: How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online
  (NYTimes)

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic have gained more traction than
mainstream online events. Here’s how.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/technology/plandemic-movie-youtube-facebook-coronavirus.html

Virus Conspiracists Elevate a New Champion
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/technology/plandemic-judy-mikovitz-coronavirus-disinformation.html

If Someone Shares the ‘Plandemic’ Video, How Should You Respond?
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/05/plandemic-video-what-to-say-conspiracy/611464/

Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-plandemic-and-the-seven-traits-of-conspiratorial-thinking-138483

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 12:27:24 -0700
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1 () pipeline com>
Subject: Covidiots: R_nought's are naughty not nice

I'm surprised that the century-old Ross/Kermack-McKendrick "R0" differential
equation models are still being (ab)used, even though they are fatally
flawed in our 21st Century when we know a lot more about "fat-tailed" --
i.e., large or infinite variance -- distributions.

I think the paper below does a pretty good job of destroying the nonsense
about "R0" being superspread by the covidiot talking heads appearing on
cable TV.

Before wasting additional trillions of dollars on bad policy choices,
perhaps we need to retire the R_nought models in favor of models with the
tiniest bit more fidelity to real life, and the covidiot talking heads need
to quietly disappear with their fat tails between their legs.

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/transmission-t-024-cristopher-moore-on-the-heavy-tail-of-outbreaks

Transmission T-024: Cristopher Moore on the heavy tail of outbreaks
April 27, 2020

R-naught is just an average: the transmission rate varies widely, and
outbreaks can be surprisingly large even when the epidemic is subcritical.

Much of the coverage of COVID-19 talks about R0, the average number of
people each sick person infects. If R0 is bigger than 1, cases grow
exponentially, and an epidemic spreads across the population. But if we can
keep R0 below 1, we can limit the disease to isolated outbreaks and keep it
under control.

But R0 is only an average. Your ability to practice social distancing
depends on whether you are a first responder or healthcare worker, whether
you have to work in close quarters, or whether you can work comfortably from
home. (I'm one of the lucky few getting paid to work from my garden.) It
depends on how seriously you take your government's warnings and how
seriously your government takes the warnings of public health experts. And
it depends on the structure of your family and your home.

As a result, R0 varies wildly, not just from region to region, but across
social space, as well. In New Mexico, Santa Fe has very few new cases, but
there has been an explosion of cases in rural areas due to lack of running
water, multi-generational homes, and other factors. As of April 26, 47
percent of our confirmed cases are in Native American communities, even
though Native Americans make up only 11 percent of New Mexico's
population. Clearly R0 is larger in some parts of the state and of society
than others.

Even if R0 < 1, outbreaks can be surprisingly large. Suppose you meet 10
people while you are contagious, and you infect each one with a probability
of 8 percent. The average number of people you infect is 10×0.08 = 0.8, less
than 1. But those you infect may infect others in turn, and so on. If an
outbreak starts with you, how many "descendants" will you have? A classic
calculation shows that, if R0= 0.8, then the average number of people in
this chain reaction is 1/(1 - 0.8) = 1/0.2 = 5. But, like R0 itself, this is
only an average. Like earthquakes and forest fires, outbreaks have a "heavy
tail" where large events are common.

Here is a visualization of 100 random outbreaks. The average size is indeed
5, and most outbreaks are small. But about 1 percent of those outbreaks have
size 50 or more, ten times the average, and in this simulation the largest
of these 100 outbreaks has size 82. This tail gets heavier if R0 is just
below the phase transition at R0 = 1. If R0=0.9, the average outbreak size
is 10, but 1 percent have size 140 or more.

https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/ckeditor/2020/04/23/moore_outbreak-fig1-82.jpg

Figure 1. A hundred random outbreaks in a scenario where each sick person
interacts with 10 others, and infects each one with probability 8
percent. Here R0 = 0.8 and the average outbreak size is five, but 1 percent
of the outbreaks have size 50 or larger, and in this run the largest has
size 82.

This tail has real effects. Imagine 100 small towns, each with a hospital
that can handle 10 cases. If every town has the average number of cases,
they can all ride out the storm. But there's a good chance that one of them
will have 50 or 100, creating a "hot spot" beyond their ability to respond.

The tail of large events gets even heavier if we add superspreading. We
often talk of "superspreaders" as individuals with higher viral loads, or
who by choice or necessity interact with many others. But it's more accurate
to talk about superspreading events and situations -- like the Biogen
meeting, the chorus rehearsal, or the pork processing plant, as well as
prisons and nursing homes -- where the virus may have infected many of those
present.

Suppose that 20 percent of cases generate one new case, 10 percent generate
2, 4 percent generate 5, and 1 percent "superspread" and generate 20 (and
the remaining 65 percent infect no one). The average number of new cases is
again R0= 0.8. Let's generate 100 random outbreaks with this new scenario.

https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/ckeditor/2020/04/23/moore_outbreaks-fig2-663.jpg

Figure 2. A hundred random outbreaks in a scenario with superspreading,
where 1 percent of the cases infect 20 others. As in Figure 1, we have R0 =
0.8 and the average outbreak size is 5, but now the heavy tail of outbreaks
is much heavier. In this run the largest outbreak has size 663.

The average outbreak size is still 5, but now the tail is much heavier. If
just one of the 100 original cases is involved in superspreading, we get a
large outbreak. If there are several generations of superspreading, the size
multiplies. As a result, large outbreaks are quite common, and the largest
one in this simulation has 663 people in it.

What does all this mean? First, it can be misleading to look at
statewide or national averages and celebrate if R0 seems to be falling
below 1. The epidemic could still be raging in particular places or
among particular groups.

Second, even if R0 is below 1, we need to prepare for hot spots. Even if the
average outbreak is small, large outbreaks will occur due to superspreading
or simply by chance. If we do a fantastic job at testing and contact tracing
-- using both technology and human effort -- we will get this pandemic under
control, but for the foreseeable future there will be times and places where
it flares up and strains local resources. And through those flare-ups, we
have to do our best to help each other, and hope that intelligent, generous
voices prevail.

Cristopher Moore, Santa Fe Institute

REFERENCES

    Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Benjamin M. Althouse, Samuel V. Scarpino, and Antoine Allard, "Beyond R0: Heterogeneity in 
secondary infections and probabilistic epidemic forecasting." https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04004

    J. O. Lloyd-Smith, S. J. Schreiber, P. E. Kopp, and W. M. Getz, "Superspreading and the effect of individual 
variation on disease emergence." Nature 438 (2005) 355–359.

    T-024 (Moore) PDF
https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/ckeditor/2020/04/27/t-024-moore.pdf

    Read "Coronavirus Doesn't Care About Your Data Points" in Bloomberg (May 11, 2020).
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-11/lowering-coronavirus-infection-average-won-t-stop-all-spread

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 2020 15:18:05 -0400
From: "John Levine" <johnl () iecc com>
Subject: Re: Stimulus check delays when accounts were overdrawn! (RISKS-31.83)

This article misses the key point that for the most part the entire US tax
preparation industry is predatory and unnecessary.

For people with simple tax returns, which likely includes everyone described
in that article, the IRS (the tax authority) already has enough information
to prepare their returns. The IRS could send you a tentative return, you say
it's OK or make corrections, and send it back and you're done. I gather this
is common in other countries.  (There aren't a lot of new privacy issues
here, since this is the same info they already have to check that the return
you file is correct.)

The commercial tax prep industry knows this and has been fighting for
decades to keep it from happening.  Since it's hard to make a persuasive
argument for why people should pay private tax prep for a service the
government can do better for free, there has been a great deal of smoke and
mirrors and "compromises."  The current compromise is that eight of the
commercial tax preparers have a free online version you can use if your
income is below a threshold ($69K for most of them) and otherwise simple,
and if you know about it and you can find this link on the IRS web site:

https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/

In a scandal last year, one of the prep companies had a different "free"
site which charged for most returns, and coded their web pages to hide the
real free site from search engines. In fact only about 3% of the US
taxpayers eligible to use free file do so.

The people described in the article also all sound like they'd have been
eligible to use free file and get 100% of their refund and their Corona
payment directly into their own accounts, had they known about it. If the
tax prep companies were honest they'd tell people you don't need to pay us,
you can get our service for free online, but fat chance.

Beyond that are the issues of all the ways the tax prep companies prey on
their customers so they don't get the money they should, but the article
described that pretty well.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 02:27:00 -0400
From: David <wb8foz () panix com>
Subject: Re: Coronavirus New York Shock: Two-Thirds Of Recent Patients
  Infected While Staying At Home (Elinsky, RISKS-31.83)

Besides the very real fire issue, you also some have residents smoking,
cooking lutefisk, etc. And sound transmission between units.

But more important to the builder, those required large ducts will be
non-revenue space, the last thing any developer wants. Far smaller pipes
will carry equal KW's of heating/cooling.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 06:57:45 +0900
From: "ISHIKAWA,chiaki" <ishikawa () yk rim or jp>
Subject: Re: Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase (RISKS-31.83)

> Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase (Wordpress)

Although I generally agree with that assessment, there *ARE* problems with
Imperial code.

- The lack of reproducibility: Even with a simulation program,
reproducibility using the same series of pseudo-random numbers is very
important for verification/debugging. Imperial code does not seem to have
it.  I think the lack of reproducibility on the same hardware seems to be
caused by the following bug.

- Memory access errors: I notice a few git patches mentioned in
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/ and/or articles
that can be reached from it, that there are uninitialized memory accesses,
and possibly out of bound memory accesses. Very bad. Anything goes with the
code before the fixes when the outcome of the program was used to estimate
the # of infections and possibly deaths in UK.

I feel it would be interesting to see current release of Imperial code run
under valgrind/memcheck memory access checker. I suspect MS programmers
realized these issues right away when they had access to the
about-to-be-released Imperial code using some internal tool.

I think the lack of reproducibility using the same series of pseudo random
numbers on the SAME HARDWARE poses great doubt on the correctness of the
Imperial code.  There *may be* genuine logic error(s) or random errors
caused by incorrect memory access. GIGO.

If the above issues are fixed, ONLY THEN we can begin to evaluate Imperial
code in terms of evaluation metrics in the expert field, in this case
epidemiology.

My credential: Trained as a physics student who used to write lousy code
from the viewpoint enterprise software developer.  Now I have been working
as software developer for quite some time. So I can tell I WROTE CORRECT BUT
LOUSY CODE when I was grad student.:-)

Anecdotal evidence about scientist's writing CORRECT BUT LOUSY code from the
viewpoint of software developers.

Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame, was a physicist by education. He
received Ph.D. from Caltech in 1979.  He was interested in cellular automata
for a while in the 1980/1990's to study bifurcation caused by some such
automata when their behavior is plotted on computer screen (as in LIFE
game), and wrote a code that simulates such automata behavior. I can't
recall the name of the exact program, but his program source file was
included in Sun Microsystems User Group software tape (not floppy, not CD,
but magnetic tape back then.)  I was already a software developer after
quitting my grad study when I noticed Wolfram's name in the list of the
programs (he had already been known for a symbolic manipulation system, a
precursor of Mathematica of a sort), I looked at the code. I was
horrified. It was a C code, but the indentation was horrible. And there WERE
compiler warnings when I tried to compile it.  I wonder where Wolfram
learned C programming. It was written as if the code was, hmm, Fortran. No
indentation. All source code lines started on the first column. No type
safety. Pointers were stored in integers and vice versa (it was OK on a
byte-addressable 32 bit computers. But my experience with Data General
Eclipse 32-bit computer with word-addressable operation mode, the mixing of
pointers and integers was a no no.).  BUT important point here is that his
program WAS a CORRECT program on Sun hardware that simulates cellular
automata that behaves according to some parameters based on user input and
not only that, it plots the behavior of cells on then Sun workstation's
black and white screen using sunview toolkit.  The horrible indentation
could be simply improved by running the source code through |indent|
program, and after throwing some type casts to shut up compiler warnings, it
was easy to verify that the code did what it was advertised to do correctly.
My point here is that the LOUSY looking code Wolfram wrote was CORRECT.

I don't think we can say that for Imperial code before the heavy bug fixes
visible at github. I would say there had been a GIGO situation.

Another anecdotal evidence about the rigor necessary for software used in
academic work.

When supernova 1987A generated a flurry of neutrinos that reached the solar
system, some of them were observed by Japanese underground neutrino
detector, called Kamiokande. The research crew never saw such clusters of
neutrinos, but learning of 1987A was observed in the southern hemisphere
(not visible from Japan), they figured that the neutrinos may be from the
supernovae traveling through the earth from the southern sky.  The research
facility's program never meant to detect something from the invisible
southern sky. So the researchers including graduate students decided to
create a quick program to see if the direction of the incidental neutrinos
match that of 1987A. It did.  They wrote a paper about the observation
quickly and it was sent out by airmail. (It was before the Internet.)  After
the envelope was handed over to the counter at the post office near the main
gate of the U. of Tokyo, someone at the Koshiba lab which manages Kamiokande
realized there was an incorrect sign (+/-) used in a formula to calculation
of the direction. I think someone forgot that they needed now to look DOWN
toward the southern hemisphere instead of looking UP at the northern
hemisphere sky. The recalculation using the corrected formula was done, and
luckily the conclusion was the same.  However, Prof. Koshiba (later Nobel
laureate) rushed to the post office and demanded to see the office chief to
retrieve the envelope already in the possession of the post office and
replaced the paper with a corrected formula. The rest is history.  I think
in today's culture, the initial paper reaches the office of Physical Review
and quickly be replaced with a revised version, etc.  The retrieving of
envelope at the post office is a bit embarrassing story both for
Prof. Koshiba AND the post office chief of that time, but Prof. Koshiba
talked about this in public, which was later published, I think it is OK for
me to quote it.

I am afraid that the authors of Imperial code lacked the rigor to verify the
original code operation and correctness of it using whatever correctness
criteria they may have in mind.  I sense this lack of rigor based on the
failure to achieve reproducibility (as I suspect may be due to the incorrect
memory access.).  When there is no reproducibility, how can one expect to be
confident of the "correctness" of simulation?

OTOH, I commend that the code albeit with dubious history (it may not
reflect the original code at all) is made available to the public.  This
makes scientific scrutiny possible after all.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:11:11 -0800
From: RISKS-request () csl sri com
Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 10:07:40 -0700
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1 () pipeline com>
Subject: Re: Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase (RISKS-31.83)

Following Fermat, there isn't enough space in this margin to fully address
the problems in Covid models, but I will list some *major* issues:

1.  Differential equation models -- e.g., Ross/Kermack-McKendrick -- the
original "R0"/"R_nought" models.  Problem: there may be *no* reasonable
single estimate of R0, as the variance in R0 may be exceedingly large --
e.g., "super-spreaders" who infect 50-100 people.  *Fractals* and *fat
tails* and *fragility*, oh my!  Oops!

2.  Monte Carlo models.  By definition, epidemics depend upon *positive
feedback loops* which produce *exponential behavior*.  Such exponential
behavior guarantees that the system is *ill- conditioned*, hence minuscule
differences in inputs -- e.g., noise or round-off errors -- produce dramatic
and/or overwhelming differences in results: garbage-in, garbage-out.

E.g., suppose that you use your Monte Carlo method to compute N independent
samples of a random variable X in order to estimate mean(X).  Then
var(avg(X_i)) = var(X)/N.  But what if var(X) is extremely large and/or
infinite ?  Then N has to also be exceedingly large and/or infinite, else
*no convergence*, hence garbage answer!  Oops!

Once again, policies having *trillion-dollar* effects should require
substantially better and more perspicuous models than the Imperial Covid-Sim
model.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 09:16:04 +0930
From: William Brodie-Tyrrell <william.brodie.tyrrell () gmail com>
Subject: Re: NOTSP Re: Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase
  (Baker, RISKS-31.84)

Again, this criticism is all true but entirely misses the point and purpose
of these models.  Their purpose is not to say "this will be the exact
outcome" -- which is impossible because critical and sensitive inputs are not
measurable accurately - but to predict the relative impact and effectiveness
of public policy controls.

If the model predicts 1M fatalities with no action and 10k fatalities with
specific controls in place, that is the desired outcome: it provides some
evidence that the control should be enacted.  Absolutely no one cares -
except people who try to look smart by "reviewing" code and models outside
of their domain - that the true answer was either 700k or 2M fatalities
without the control in-place.

Controls and environmental factors and human behaviours are
constantly-changing during an epidemic and no epidemiologist pretends that
their model is precisely predicting outcomes, so yay for setting fire to yet
another strawman I guess?

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 21:31:53 -0700
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1 () pipeline com>
Subject: Re: Meaningless "review" of Imperial COVID codebase (RISKS-31.84)

What about *garbage out* can't you comprehend?

Please Google "ill-conditioned" and see me in the morning.

You keep presuming that these models output useful information because they
*happen to* produce graphs that are sometimes reminiscent of actual data.

I have some cheese mold that *happens to* look like a picture of Jesus.  So
what?

A "model" can't predict *anything* when it outputs *zero* significant bits.

Such an ill-conditioned model can't even get the *order of magnitude* of the
*exponent* right.

------------------------------

End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 31.84
************************