corona

Let ‘er Rip!

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Thanks in no part to Domicron Pairoftits we are now leading the way in new cases. And I know, the company line is now about how many are in hospital or ICU, but even the people getting sick and not going to hospital are still having a dire effect on the community. How many businesses have had to shutdown for a fortnight or so due to having no staff?

Either we start treating this like the common cold, an endemic – accept that everyone will get it and just go about our lives like normal, or we treat it like a pandemic and still have people isolating.

Fortnight endingAUSNSWVIC
Jan 8 2022559,058301,901143,518
Dec 25 202165,19439,00220,626
Dec 11 202120,6194,27616,071
Source: https://covidbaseau.com/cases/

That means that in the last fortnight we have had 65% of our total case count of 850,349 nationally.

Looking at those numbers, it would mean we have at least 1 million people in their own lockdowns; 559,058 due to being positive and at least that number again in close contacts. Thankfully the number of people in hospital is less than 3000 but of those in lockdown, only the positive people that don’t have sick leave or annual leave are entitled to the government support (which is taxable) of $750. The close contacts don’t get any support now unless they can’t work because they are caring for a positive case.

Folding@Home

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As the SETI@home project has stopped handing out work units I was on the lookout for a new project to donate some spare compute cycles to and given the current state of affairs, the best option was the Folding@Home project which is researching protein folding of the corona virus.

And since you can setup teams for it, of course that is what I did.

Getting Started

head to https://foldingathome.org/ and hit the Start Folding Now button, download the app, get it running.

Joining the Lankyland team

Open up the Web Control interface once you have it installed, click Change Identity in the top left and add in these details.

  • Team number: 260468
  • Passcode: itscidersbirthday

Then sit back and smile a smug smile as your computer churns through data to help find a cure for the corona virus.

Unprecedented

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adjective

  1. without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled:an unprecedented event.

How many times have you heard the word “unprecedented” on the news recently? I am thinking of setting up a socially distant drinking game, everyone hangs out in their own lounge rooms, we have a video chat service, and then we fire up the news and do a shot every time someone says “unprecedented”.

I was just watching ABC News and in the last 15 minutes I would have sustained significant alcohol poisoning if I was playing.