Imperial College: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand

A better way? “Given that mitigation is unlikely to be a viable option without overwhelming healthcare systems, suppression is likely necessary in countries able to implement the intensive controls required,” says Ferguson. Suppression involves much tougher controls and compliance than mitigation.  

How China built facial recognition for people wearing masks

How China built facial recognition for people wearing masks: Hanwang, the facial-recognition company that has placed 2 million of its cameras at entrance gates across the world, started preparing for the coronavirus in early January.

Huang Lei, the company’s chief technical officer, said that even before the new virus was widely known about, he had begun to get requests from hospitals at the centre of the outbreak in Hubei province to update its software to recognise nurses wearing masks.

“We wouldn’t wait until something explodes to act. If three or five clients ask for the same thing . . . we’ll see that as important,” said Mr Huang, adding that its cameras previously only recognised people in masks half the time, compared with 99.5 percent accuracy for a full face image.

Since then, demand has soared, from police stations, railway stations and all the office towers that use Hanwang’s cameras to screen employees, and Mr Huang reassigned teams of people to work on the challenge.

The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is more accurate in real life, where its cameras take multiple photos of a person if the first attempt to identify them fails.

Governo toma medidas extraordinárias para responder à epidemia de Covid-19

6 social media challenges for journalists in 2020

Yes, There Are Libertarians in Pandemics

Yes, There Are Libertarians in Pandemics: It's almost never a good idea to use a public health crisis to score points against your political opponents—and if you're going to do it, you really ought to try to describe the situation accurately.

Actually, that second part applies even when there's no public health crisis.

It has, however, become fashionable for certain elements of the Very Online Left to use the ongoing coronavirus outbreak as evidence that libertarians either don't actually exist or that we quickly abandon our principles in the face of a pandemic.

Coronavirus "infodemic" threatens world's health institutions

Tom Jefferson: Covid 19—many questions, no clear answers

Tom Jefferson: Covid 19—many questions, no clear answers: So I cannot answer my nagging doubts, there does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness.

There are, however, two consequences of this situation that bother me.

The first is the lack of institutional credibility as perceived by my friends. They range from firefighters, policemen, and even a GP—not the kind of people you would want to alienate in an emergency. A restaurant owner told me he would never report himself to the health authority as that would mean at least two weeks of closure and his business would go to the wall.  

Jokers and spoofers are doing overtime on the web. The authorities cried wolf in 2005 and 2009 with influenza and see what you get now.

The second is that once the limelight has moved on, will there be a serious and concentrated international effort to understand the causes and origins of influenza-like illnesses and the life cycle of its agents?

Past form tells me not, and we will go back to pushing influenza as a universal plague under the roof of the hot house of commercial interest. Note the difference: Influenza (caused by influenza A and B viruses, for which we have licensed vaccines and drugs), not influenza-like illnesses against which we should wash our hands all the year round, not just now.

Meanwhile, I still cannot answer Mario’s question: what’s different this time?