Worrying times

[NickFaulks]

many of the Chinese expats have basically said Wuhan is a really backwater city...and all sorts of crazy stuff goes on there...

I have no doubt that is true, but nonetheless the Chinese government seemed to believe they were under biological attack and that they have evidence to prove it. I shall be interested to see whatever emerges.

[Paul McKeown]

It's amazing, isn't it. No matter how one might wish for a positive thread in which all are wished well, some unfailingly plumb the abject depths.

[NickFaulks]

It's amazing, isn't it. No matter how one might wish for a positive thread in which all are wished well, some unfailingly plumb the abject depths.

If you wanted everyone to overlook the reasons why we might be worried, perhaps you should have chosen a different title for the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVM1nUmDHHc

[JustinHorton]

Hi John
how about this offering then

Fruit bat pie

Little Jack Wong sat in a corner
eating his fruit bat pie
He stuck in his thumb
and pulled out an eye
and said....
oh my! oh my!

Martin

Well it's certainly an improvement

Not really, no

[Matthew Turner]

lots of interesting information here
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Att ... 505601089b

You can draw lot of conclusions but I will leave people to find their own.

[NickFaulks]

Yes, in Figs 1 and 2 the flattening in the grey ( time lag ) areas at the ends could be taken as encouraging, but I expect they just mean "too low, but we don't know how much too low" - ie not really meaningful.

Of local interest to me, it is also clear that London is leading the way, but that hasn't been in much doubt.

The single datum on which we would really like a fix is how many people have already been infected. There will be no way of knowing that for a while.

[JustinHorton]

apparently so....I have been following the story since early Jan and on another chat room forum

What forum

many of the Chinese expats

Which expats

and all sorts of crazy stuff goes on there

What stuff

[NickFaulks]

bit.ly/39t6PSg

This is a video put out by the Czech Ministry of Health saying we should all wear face masks. I have to say that I believed the stories that only the proper ones do any good, but the Czechs don't think so and they seem to be doing quite well.

Anyway, I'm going to make one and wear it. What harm can it do? At worst it's a fashion statement.

[Reg Clucas]

and all sorts of crazy stuff goes on there

What stuff

This perhaps. Though not confined to Wuhan.

[Tim Spanton]

Going through this thread, and similar ones, it is interesting how different statistics mean different things to different people.
It is not just interpretation - sometimes the statistics themselves are challenged.
I was reminded of this today when seeing a recently-launched poster campaign for the British charity Missing People (formerly the National Missing Persons Helpline).
The charity is asking people to donate via text, citing the shocking - well, it shocked me - statistic that a child goes missing every second.
But when I did a quick calculation, the most shocking thing about this statistic is that anyone would dare put it forward.
Consider: one a second = 60 a minute = 3,600 an hour = 86,400 a day = 31.5million a year.
As far as I can discover, there are just over 12million under-18-year-olds in the UK, some of which are too young to go missing even if they tried. So unless quite a few of these 12million or so are going missing many times a year, the figure of 31.5million really is a shocking statistic, although not for the reason originally intended.

[Adam Raoof]

Maybe there is a group of children who repeatedly go missing, and then are retrieved?

[Michael Farthing]

I suppose it might raise money in Britain but operate internationally? 31.5 million out of perhaps 2 billion is believable

[Tim Spanton]

No, as its original name implies, it works in the UK, with helplines being its speciality. It was mainly concerned with giving support over the phone to families who had missing loved ones - it was formed in the wake of the Suzy Lamplugh case - but later moved on to widen its activities, for example working with the police.

[Brendan O'Gorman]

-- text omitted --
The charity is asking people to donate via text, citing the shocking - well, it shocked me - statistic that a child goes missing every second.
But when I did a quick calculation, the most shocking thing about this statistic is that anyone would dare put it forward.
Consider: one a second = 60 a minute = 3,600 an hour = 86,400 a day = 31.5million a year.
-- text omitted --

Are you sure they made this claim? Searching online, I found their Christmas appeal poster which claimed "Every five minutes, a child goes missing in the UK." https://gibson.co/portfolio/missing-peo ... marketing/

[Brendan O'Gorman]

Incidentally, please remember there's a Not Chess! section on this forum where most of the posts in this thread belong.