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Author: dan
COVID-19 Trends in QLD, Australia, UPDATED Sat 4th April , 1st post March 21 2020
UPDATED 4/2 2 weeks ago we were at a few hundred cases and the trends suggested we would be at 1000 cases today. in Qld . Well were are actually at 900 cases, which is a bit better than expected. It seems the social distancing has worked. We have hit a new challenge now though, there are cases in the community now with no identifiable source, meaning there are others out there as well. So we move to containment phase…lets hope complacency doesn’t sink in
1/4 Creeping up on two weeks since first post…/5 and nudging the prediction of 1000 cases by then too š
One the bright side the rate of new cases is steady
29/5
The growth in news cases has held steady for the past week …maybe its even dropping? Well done Qld!
27/5 Is growth slowing with the contain policies of the STAte Government…only the weeks ahead will tell. Can we keep our cases to 1000, rather than 5000?
25/5 There are likely ~5000 cases in the Qld community (assuming a 2 week delay until its measured). With a population of 5M in Qld, that’s 1 in 1000 cases. So any time you are coming into contact with surfaces that have close to this volume of people you are likely exposed. If the numbers are smaller eg your corner shop only has 200 customers a day, then thats a 20% chance.
24/4 See https://sabelconsult.com/c19/ for local information resources(its a bit draft at the moment) .
23/3 Qld Cases Updated 23/3. current trend suggests ~1000cases by 1st April. See comments section for a post from a friend in Germany (22/3) and what life is like there (sorry can’t make a link directly to her facebook post)
A post I shared to facebook Saturday 21 March early afternoon (as it will date pretty quickly). If our thinking (and behaviour) can move faster than the virus, we have a chance!. I’m putting it here so it has traceable references to the author, to avoid fake news accusations etc….
DISCLAIMER:
- Before you read my rant don’t trust me, instead see my bio and publications to decide if it’s reasonable or not, as this is well outside my primary areas of expertise
2. This is a useful article on the guardian on digesting information https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/22/coronavirus-overload-five-ways-to-fight-misinformation-and-fear
3. This is the primary source of Australian information on stats and epidemiology (updated weekly) https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/novel_coronavirus_2019_ncov_weekly_epidemiology_reports_australia_2020.htm
4. ABC News articles and infographics on cases and sources. Some state by state analysis too (It looks like its going to be updated beyond original publication date too). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704
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Hi Everyone,
Iāve been tracking the Corona cases in Queensland (not Australia, not Italy, not China) but right here where we live and plotted them up. I have plotted them on something called a log scale (because this lets you see exponential data a bit more easily). On the data I have plotted lines for trends since the start, the last 2 weeks and the last week.
It is pretty clear we will hit 1000 detected cases in two weeks or less.
When something is detected in 2 weeks time, it means it is likely already in the community RIGHT NOW, but symptoms are not showing yet, but spreading is likely. So taking steps right now to isolate and prevent spread is pretty important. As a community we are only going to be as strong as the most unhygienic amongst us, that we come into contact with, so limiting contact and upping our standard of hygiene is pretty important.
So look I am just a guy in your street and not a medical person or epidemiologist (though they are saying similar things), but I have also been a research scientist for 30 years and my PhD is in Physics. Argument by authority is all things considered a weak form of argument, so am sticking to the data (except for trend lines)
I encourage you to look at the data (actual confirmed data) and the trend lines i drew (decide which one you like) and make up your own mind for the sake of your own family as well as for those in the community you might become a spreader for. I am all for listening to authority but I think that guy, Scotty from marketing is moving too slowly and more concerned about the economy and toilet paper sales (this is actually a slightly unfair emotive statement to makeā¦apologies for that)
Some back of the envelope calculation that helped me decide to keep my oldest home from school this week. Population of Qld is 5, 000, 000, so assuming there are 1, 000 cases that is about 1 in 5000 in the population overall (this isnāt completely tru as the detected ones are isolated). His school is 3, 000 kids so thats almost unity odds that he will be exposed (through desk, chair, hand rail etcā¦ when combined with his not great personal hygiene).
I am hoping the data is wrong, I would love it to be wrongā¦ā¦.
best to all ,
Dan
MBA: Books, Brand and Buddies
Following on from my accidental MBA I noticed there seem to be three things people are looking for in an MBA books, brand and buddies. By books I mean learning new skills,Ā whereas brand is getting three magical letters after your name and the prestige of the institution offering it and buddies, the building of professional networks.
Books
When shopping for textbooks (often secondhand on sites like StudentVIP) I noticed many schools across the various ranking tables were using the same textbooks. This is not to say the quality of the learning would be identical, but its a strong indicator that there is a lot of equivalency across the various programmes in terms of content delivery.
Brand
Doing my MBA across a number of institutions and then teaching into some as well its pretty clear each MBA is striving to be as high as possible on the various ranking tables (business is competitive right?). While in some there were clear marketing differences about the programmes focus, for example for some it was all about the institution, for others it was more about the student and maybe had particular areas of focus or excellence that wasnāt always immediately apparent. Brand is a key factor in the selection of an MBA and its reflected in the price. David Jones or KMartā¦its up to you
Buddies
There is a lot of talk about the importance of networks with your peers in the various programmes. The various cohorts I noticed through might include those recently graduated, overseas students and professionals doing a bit of personal PD (or sponsored). I suspect if your mid management in mid to large sized business this might be important. Overwhelmingly the strongest cohort I have noticed though was in a lower ranked programmeā¦very surprising
Outrage Puppet
Hardly a day goes by when mainstream (or alt) press, facebook or twitter doesnāt report some event, quote or photo that promotes feeling of outrage, sufficient to stir the emotions, galvanising us to share or retweet some sound bite, MEME image or story.
Whether innocuous or deliberate, wether reported about someone important or someone that wants to be important it matter little. Itās easy to let it trigger our emotions through our basal tribal behaviour (our biology is wired for it) to protest the offence across our modern bastions of information and truth ā¦.social media,. And in that moment there is little intrest in the full story,Ā in a familiar emotion clouds intellect moment. Inevitably the largely good works of public figures over many years are suddenly erased and falling on swords often ensues, ultimately to the detriment of the community.Ā
And as if that isnāt enough cue then the outrage against the outrage and it lives for a least a second media cycle, mean while the big issues of our time hide in the corners ā¦.
Playing with Kanji, playing with Aiki
I’m told language changes over time, the way we use it and the meaning too.
Recently I was invited to share some thoughts on biomechanics and Aikido at a friendship seminar at Aikido Redlands. A friendship seminar is where people from different styles of Aikido (and related arts) might come together to share experiences and learnings.Ā I think there is much to be gained from these great ocean experiences, rather than dwelling on lofty mountain tops. (Check out Redlands AikidoĀ facebook pageĀ for some images and reflections on the seminar by my betters.)
Clem Sensei, the host is also experienced in Japanese calligraphy so I asked if he might brush something I could refer to in my session. Happily he indulged. with the Kanji for āAiā inside a circle (many thanks Sensei). Its very close to my former dojos logo and for his dojo at one time too.
The topic for the seminar was beginners mind, for which the circle symbolising a continual process of renewal and returning to the beginning is quite a nice reflection.
āAiā in Aikido has usually the meaning of āto joinā and so the Kanji for āAiā was a nice symbol for the practice of the art (the joining with your attackers energy) as well as for the seminar , we we join together with others to learn.
Iāve been working for a while on bringing the biomechanics idea of toppling in Aikido as a vehicle for understanding it for a while.Ā
Essentially you need to take a persons tanden (centre of mass) diagonally up and then diagonally down to outside their feet (base of support) accomplish the topple and subsequent throw, Doing this below the threshold of perception and with minimum force is a pretty good first approximation for Aiki I recon, though there is plenty more to it. Its easy to say but hard to do.Ā
‘Ai’ reimagined
I kind of like to think of the Kanji for āAiā now as mnemonic for a person (the box ) Ā and the diagonal brush strokes above it as the directions for up (aiki age) and down (aiki sage). Its easy to remember, something we can see everytime we are in a dojo, and perhaps not so irreverant that its a worthwhile tool to prompt memory.
My thanks to everyone involved and congratulations to Clem Sensei, a great day out and some good dialogue on and off the mat too!
Out of balance…and not knowing it!
I dusted off the Dogi the other night (itās been a while) and paid a visit to Redlands Aikido to share some thoughts on stability (thanks for the invite Clem). Whilst I didnāt go the full toppling biomechanics. We worked on the idea that as long as the Tanden (Centre of Mass) is inside our feet (Base of Support) we are stable. Once it ventures out side this point we stand to fall, if we are lucky we catch our selves with a stepā¦this is calling walking (a repeated practice of controlled falling).
The really interesting thing is as we explore this by moving our centre of mass around until we feel unbalanced is that we discover we start to lose our balance before we get outside the limits of our stance, and if we gently move our partner through the same thing we can feel their balance is lost slightly before they feel it. This is true for high level athletes as wellā¦but sensitivity to it can be trained (if we are not to stiff or focused on power). The next step is putting it into technique, by moving their CoM to very precise points outside their perimeter we can help Uke find which foot they need to move to take the tumble.
Thus we find that its possible to take someones balance and not have them even be aware of itā¦maybe this in part explains how little old Japanese men seem to be able to chuck our westerners around with such aplomb?
New Strings
I just put some TziganeĀ strings on my violin (rather than my usual Dominant). They are a lower tension string, which I was told would be a bit kinder to my old french violin. In so doing its supposed to bring out its tone a bit betterā¦and how true it was!
Just goes to show that in so many things its often about getting the right match, to get the best performance.
Compromising to produce Excellence
Iām working at the moment with another cohort of MBA students on their capstone projects. Its a quite a challenge as the term is short and by necessity there is a strict word limit (thank God). Their ideas are often BIG as they want to hone their newly developed MBA skills and solve something they are passionate about!
So I remind them of the secrets from project management (with a little Pareto on the side), that it is all about finding the right balance between resources (word limit), time (the term) and cost (them).Ā
While some, in their initial proposal, come out of the blocks with at least 3 PhDās worth of work. As they progressively focus their ideas down to something achievable (often data driven) ā¦the end result of this compromise is often excellence!
Its a sage reminder for me that less can be moreā¦.but it takes hard work and quite disciplined thinking to get there, I guess that is part of the crucible of graduate study!
Triple bottom line Politics.
There is a real nice idea in accounting called the triple bottom line. The idea here is that you measure in three areas financial, social and environmental and try to achieve a good outcome for all three. Its a really nice idea and gets back to what āaccountingā is all about, that is to account for all things, whereas mostly its used as a bit of a dirty work because its most often associated with financial matters only.Ā
I guess finances are the easiest thing to measure ā¦how much have you got? and you get a nice round number. Measuring social and environmental indicators is a bit tougher. There are some indicators such as Bhutanās happiness index (rather than GDP) but thats another story.Ā
So onto the political area and in Australia anyway we might easily pigeon hole the LNP, Labour and Greens into each of the triple bottom line areas ofĀ financial, social and environmental respectively. Whats interesting is that each party might over time seek to reach the triple bottom line of balancing all areas ( and ultimately snag more voters ) by steadily iterating towards the centre. We certainly see this with the LNP and Labour parties, with at times, their policies at times being almost indistinguishable. The Greens however, maintaining a somewhat more evangelical stance on the environment, seem less interested in persuing a triple bottom line approach.
For example when we look a compromise agreements around carbon emissions we can certainly LNP and Labour have put forth remarkably similar policies with the Greens Ā steadfast in not supporting anything that has the remotest sniff of compromise. Sadly as a result carbon emissions are a work in progress…
Interestingly as majors (LNP/Labour)Ā drift slowly to a more balanced perspective, it seems to allow space for more room for the purists focusing on the core areas of financial and social. This room has left opportunities and the rise of the the alt right/ alt left movements, advocacy groups and parties seem to be a direct response to this.
Anyways thats about all the political analysis this swinging voter has in him for the moment.Ā
An Accidental MBA
A few years back I finished an MBA. I didnāt set out to do one but thats where I ended up. There are wild MBA evangelists out there (āit will change your lifeā) and the detractors (āover hyped, you can learn this stuff from a bookā) so this is my story.
Establishing an intrapreneurial enterprise within a university almost a decade ago, on the back of a decade of working with industry, I had realised clients generally trusted me on the science, but something else was driving decisions and processes. More often than not the go-no-go decisions were out of my hands and made on something else e.g. market size, profitability, budget cycles or sometimes political issues.Ā I read ( and still do) a lot of business books to try an get my head in the game, they were extremely useful but they only got me so far. Belonging (and being a board member) of some industry associations put me in a lot more regular contact with business speak, bootcamps ( just quietly…Iāve done a few to many of those), decision making and accelerated time frames (compared to glacial academic ones anyway),Ā pretty soon I realised I need to take a plunge into something a bit more rigorous.Ā
A Graduate Certificate in Business Administration was a great start, covering many of the basics including marketing, where I surprised myself by topping the class, HR because after all at least 50% of what I do was Ā working with people… it just made sense. Probably the greatest single influence there was the first introductory subject where I did my first ever scenario analysis and projection on what I had being doing in my research lab for the last 10 years. It was like a lightbulb went off, suddenly I had a crystal ball into the future. It was a nice tool to compliment my intellectual curiosity lay and to balance the pull of the next pay check, both of whichhad been unconsciously positioning my work.Ā
The successes were almost immediate for the bottom line. By riding trends (instead of fighting or trying to create them), consciously pursuing operational efficiency with technology tools and adopting internal lab standards everything became just that bit easier. It also gave me something more interesting to say at industry conferences than my latest algorithms š
Dial forward a few years and the tension of trying to be nimble in a large sluggish organisation, where sometimes I completed a āgigā faster than an invoice could be issued ( and by faster it was only a few months of work) I decided to study up on entrepreneurship and innovation, (which turned out to be more than Malcom Turnbullās latest buzz words).Ā
Sadly my time at the helm of the entrepreneurial unit came to a close not long after, it had become mainstream enough that it was swallowed back into the loving arms of the tenured. So I took the opportunity to finish up a few more interesting subjects, in particular Strategy (which nicely complimented the first subject I started with) and a smattering of finance and accounting. Just for fun, in a project I looked into the growth of online tertiary education, eerily the case organisation I chose ended up just a year later confirming most the findings (yet unable to steer itself enough to take advantage of them)ā¦how cool!!
Anyways thats my MBA story, thanks to Griffith, Stanford and Sunshine Coast universities I entered the wilderness of the gig economy better prepared than what one might expect from a yesteryear Physics PhD. For me an MBA hasnāt been a silver bullet, but rather a partner on the journey. Its been a gateway to new skills, surviving uncertainty and learning to enjoy the ride. Iām continuing to do research, consultancy with industry, with a side order of online teaching and workingĀ within some growing SMEāsĀ whilst raising a family too!
You can pay big bucks (or not so much) for an MBA, but thats something for another post …