Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 667
March 27, 2021
Report: close to half the tech M&A deals in the US included a stock consideration in 2020, the highest percentage since 2016, versus only 27% in 2019 (Krystal Hu/Reuters)
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Vaccines are changing how we interpret COVID-19 numbers,
It’s never been possible to know for sure how many people in the United States are sick with COVID-19 at a particular time. Instead, we combine all of the metrics — the percentage of tests run that come back positive, the number of new cases reported each day, people coming to the emergency room sick with COVID-19 symptoms — to get an estimate. It’s like the story of the blind men and the elephant: experts can feel out the different pieces of information to get a sense of what an outbreak looks like, even when they can’t see it directly.
We’ve seen the same elephant emerge over and over again over the past year. First, the percentage of tests that come back positive increases. After a slight lag, hospitalizations start to rise, and then deaths. But this time, there’s a new wrinkle: vaccinations. That’s going to change the pattern and make the COVID-19 trends over the next few weeks and months harder to interpret.
One of the most important data points to track the virus’s spread has been the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19-like illness at a particular time. It’s a concrete metric. If someone is so sick that they need to be hospitalized, they’re usually in the hospital. Other measures, like the case rate and test positivity rate, are finicky; they fluctuate based on how many people decide to get tested.
“Hospitalizations are our hard outcome. Everything else is so dependent on testing,” says Melissa McPheeters, co-director of the Center for Improving the Public’s Health through Informatics at Vanderbilt University. That’s why we’ve looked to hospitalization trends to get a sense of the direction of the pandemic, even when case rates wobble.
Now, COVID-19 cases are starting to go up again in the United States. But this time, over 70 percent of people over the age of 65 in the United States have received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s the group that, if they catch the virus, is most likely to be hospitalized or to die. Now they’re vaccinated — and their risk of hospitalization and death is incredibly small.
That could throw our normal data patterns out of whack. Cases could go up because many states are relaxing restrictions while most people still aren’t vaccinated. But the unvaccinated people getting sick may be younger and less likely to be hospitalized.
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Our normal method of visualizing the elephant wouldn’t work anymore. It’s a good problem to have — fewer people in the hospital is a wonderful victory. But when case numbers wobble and testing goes up and down, hospitalizations will no longer be a reliable backstop to clarify what’s happening with the pandemic. “I don’t know that we can get as good of a sample of what’s going on in the community,” McPheeters says.
It might mean that we need to recalibrate the way we monitor the pandemic. Maybe there will be fewer people in the hospital, but we could take a closer look at that group, for example. If lots of people from one area of a city are in the hospital, or people who work in a similar industry, that might be a signal that there is more virus in that particular community — which could help people to determine their risk and show officials where to direct resources. “It’s not just how many people, it’s who is ending up in the hospital,” McPheeters says.
For the past year, people have scrutinized COVID-19 metrics to guide decisions on how they should behave — whether to send kids to school, meet up with a few friends, or get groceries delivered. Eventually, as more people get vaccinated, new patterns could start to emerge that might guide that analysis. And when the pandemic starts to fade, we won’t have to scrutinize the COVID-19 numbers quite as closely. But for now, everything is in flux, and we can’t assume that a number means the same thing today as it did in January.
Here’s what else happened this week.
ResearchUnlocking the Covid Code
Take a deep dive into the world of genetic sequencing — and explore how this tool could change public health in a post-pandemic world.(Jon Gertner / The New York Times)
No one can find the animal that gave people COVID-19
Groups are searching for the animal that first passed the virus that causes COVID-19 to humans, kicking off the pandemic. It’s not an easy task, and international politics is making it that much harder. (Anthony Regalado / MIT Tech Review)
AstraZeneca’s wild ride
On Monday, AstraZeneca announced that its vaccine was 79 percent effective. The next day, the government issued an incredibly unusual public rebuke of the company, saying those numbers were outdated. AstraZeneca released new numbers later this week finding that it was really 76 percent effective. Whew. In the end, it’s a pretty good vaccine with a bad communications problem. The FDA committee hearings for this one are going to be interesting. (Nicole Wetsman / The Verge)
Pfizer Begins Testing Its Vaccine in Young Children
Children under 12 are starting to participate in clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna are both starting their own trials to test how well the vaccines work in younger patients — and whether they are safe. (Apoorva Mandavilli / The New York Times)
There were the two weeks in the summer when all she could smell was phantom smoke. The odor was so strong that she woke up one morning startled, convinced that something in her house was on fire. Sometime later, she was able to smell her boyfriend’s cologne again–but instead of the familiar scent she had always loved, it was a sickening chemical odor. There’s also the hand soap at work, which used to smell generically fruity to her but now smells exactly, and eerily, like Burger King Whoppers.
— Sarah Zhang writes about Ruby Martinez’s experience recovering her sense of smell after COVID-19 in The Atlantic.
As of December 10, my health-care plan had billed me for $536,000. My plan paid for most of it, but I still owe around $150,000. That doesn’t include my bill for the implant. The medical bills lag; it takes months for things to come through. At first, it was stressful for me to look at them, but now it’s a joke. I look at them and think, I don’t know how to pay that. My premium is $750 a month, and my co-workers have been chipping in to cover that.
— Liza Fisher tells journalist Wudan Yan about the costs of COVID-19 in a story for Intelligencer.
More than NumbersTo the more than 505 million people who have been vaccinated — thank you.
To the more than 125,864,307 people worldwide who have tested positive, may your road to recovery be smooth.
To the families and friends of the 2,761,409 people who have died worldwide — 547,756 of those in the US — your loved ones are not forgotten.
Stay safe, everyone.
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Netflix planning to launch 40 anime shows in 2021,
Netflix announced at Tokyo’s AnimeJapan 2021 Expo Saturday that it will launch 40 new anime titles in 2021, Bloomberg reported, following the success of its Blood of Zeus series last year.
The new series to be released this year include an adaptation of the Japanese manga Record of Ragnarok, set to premiere in June; Yasuke, about an African samurai in feudal-era Japan which will premiere April 29th; and Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, based on the video game franchise. Netflix previously announced its anime series The Way of the Househusband, also based on a Japanese manga series, will debut April 8th. Variety notes that the number of anime titles coming to Netflix this year is nearly double the number of anime series and movies it released in 2020.
“We want to be able to pride ourselves as being the top entertainment destination with good quality content,” Taiki Sakurai, Netflix’s chief anime producer, told Bloomberg. “The growth of our business is directly connected to the growth of our anime.”
The worldwide anime market reached $23 billion last year, and is expected to grow to more than $36 billion by 2025, according to Bloomberg. Sony announced in December it planned to buy anime video site Crunchyroll for nearly $1.2 billion (although that sale has been delayed due to an antitrust probe by the US Department of Justice). According to the New York Times, Netflix said the number of households that streamed its anime offerings last year increased by half from 2019.
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Facebook temporarily freezes Venezuela president’s page for spreading coronavirus misinformation,
Facebook froze the page of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro for violating its policy against spreading COVID-19 misinformation, the company confirmed Saturday. As first reported by Reuters, Maduro had promoted a “miracle” remedy that he claimed would cure the coronavirus, but those claims have not been supported by the medical community.
Facebook also removed a video where Maduro touted Carvativir, a homeopathic remedy extracted from thyme. Maduro has praised the solution in the past as “miracle drops” and a “medical breakthrough.” Doctors in Venezuela have called Maduro’s claims that Carvatavir can treat the coronavirus “dangerous.”
This is not the first time Maduro has made false claims about coronavirus treatments on his social media platforms. Last March, Twitter removed one of Maduro’s tweets that endorsed a “brew” that he falsely claimed could “eliminate the infectious genes” of COVID-19. The removal came despite Twitter’s stance against removing tweets by world leaders unless the tweets explicitly violated its other rules.
Facebook has tried with mixed success to combat the spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the pandemic, enacting policies that required posts that could lead to “imminent physical harm” to be removed. It expanded the policy to require the removal of false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including conspiracy theories and false statements about the vaccines’ safety and side effects. It also applied labels to posts with incorrect coronavirus information, and guided users to accurate information from reliable medical sources.
A Facebook spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Saturday that the company follows guidance from the World Health Organization which says there is no cure for the coronavirus. “Due to repeated violations of our rules, we are also freezing the page for 30 days, during which it will be read-only.”
Update March 27th 10:15AM ET : Adds comment from Facebook spokesperson
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Report: Southeast Asian tech startups raised $8.2B in 2020, down 3.5% YoY, compared to a 31% drop in India and 38% in Africa; Indonesia drew 70% of the capital (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)
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Chinese food delivery giant Meituan reports revenue of $5.8B in Q4, up 35% YoY, and a loss of ~$300M as it continues to invest heavily in community group buying (South China Morning Post)
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March 26, 2021
Artists are tapping into NFT marketplaces, which could pay them thousands for their work, but are running into scams, environmental concerns, and crypto hype (Abby Ohlheiser/MIT Technology Review)
Microsoft says 92% of vulnerable Exchange servers had been patched/mitigated, and reiterates that patches do not necessarily remove the access of the attacker (Liam Tung/ZDNet)
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I do not Feel Good Inc about the Gorillaz NFTs,
Virtual band Gorillaz’s debut album is turning 20 years old today (a fact I’m going to try to immediately forget), and in celebration the group will be carrying out the usual anniversary celebrations: re-releasing albums, selling new merch and, according to NME, selling NFTs.
This news has Broken me.
What’s an NFT?NFTs allow you to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and keep track of who owns them using the blockchain. NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” and it can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, animated GIFs, songs, or items in video games. An NFT can either be one-of-a-kind, like a real-life painting, or one copy of many, like trading cards, but the blockchain keeps track of who has ownership of the file.
NFTs have been making headlines lately, some selling for millions of dollars, with high-profile memes like Nyan Cat and the “deal with it” sunglasses being put up for auction. There’s also a lot of discussion about the massive electricity use and environmental impacts of NFTs. If you (understandably) still have questions, you can read through our NFT FAQ.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that NFTs are a thorny environmental issue — while it can be hard to calculate exactly how bad they are in terms of carbon emissions, the picture is not looking good. In general, upon seeing the torrent of NFT news, it’s been easy to needle people about participating in a marketplace that is doing actual damage to the world: “Okay, Brand, hope this marketing stunt was worth setting the Earth on fire?” Turns out it’s not as fun when someone you actually like is doing it, especially if that artist has previously made an entire album about ecological destruction.
I don’t want to come off like I’m trying to cancel Gorillaz, or say it’s bad for artists to make money. Artists should absolutely be paid more for their work, and I’m all for them trying to come up with new things to sell to fans willing to pay. But NFTs come with a cost that’s hard to justify, and seeing a band I like seemingly ignore that has left me sitting on a Melancholy Hill. And I’m not All Alone — there have been plenty of other fans voicing their disappointment on Twitter. It probably doesn’t help that their ecological album was called Plastic Beach, and they’re reportedly working with a company called Superplastic to sell the NFTs. Life comes at you fast.
If you’re an artist, here’s a Song 2 repeat:
The NFT market has grown,
— Limericking (@Limericking)
As eight-figure auctions have shown.
The overall price is
A worse climate crisis
For art you pretend that you own.
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I do not Feel Good Inc about the Gorillaz NFTs, Mitchell Clark
Me, after the ice caps melt. | Image: GorrilazVirtual band Gorillaz’s debut album is turning 20 years old today (a fact I’m going to try to immediately forget), and in celebration the group will be carrying out the usual anniversary celebrations: re-releasing albums, selling new merch and, according to NME, selling NFTs.
This news has Broken me.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that NFTs are a thorny environmental issue — while it can be hard to calculate exactly how bad they are in terms of carbon emissions, the picture is not looking good. In general, upon seeing the torrent of NFT news, it’s been easy to needle people about participating in a marketplace that is doing actual damage to the world: “Okay, Brand, hope this marketing stunt was worth setting the Earth on fire?” Turns…
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