es

Pletcher Sending Horses Back North After Waiting Out COVID-19 In Florida

The Daily Racing Form reported Thursday that trainer Todd Pletcher is sending strings of horses north to Churchill Downs and Belmont Park next week. Pletcher had pulled many of his horses from Belmont and sent them to Florida in late March as shutdowns and fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic ramped up. Pletcher told the Form […]

The post Pletcher Sending Horses Back North After Waiting Out COVID-19 In Florida appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.




es

WATCH: Gov. Hogan Says COVID-19 Increases Are ‘Frightening’

A COVID-19 outbreak at a Maryland nursing home contributed to an increase in virus cases Sunday across the state that the governor described as “frightening.”




es

President Trump Extends Coronavirus Guidelines, Braces US For Big Death Toll

Bracing the nation for a death toll that could exceed 100,000 people, President Trump on Sunday extended restrictive social distancing guidelines through April.




es

Pope Urges Solidarity On An Easter Of Both Joy, Virus Sorrow

Pope Francis called for solidarity the world over to confront the “epochal challenge” posed by the coronavirus pandemic, as Christians celebrated a solitary Easter Sunday, blending the joyful feast day with sorrow over the toll the virus has already taken.




es

Congress Mulls Expanded SBA Loan Authority, Democratic Demands

Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Andy Harris are weighing in.




es

Protesters Demand Reopening Of Maryland; Lawmakers Suggest Regional Approach

There were no arrests during Saturday's protest in Annapolis, where organizers were calling on Gov. Larry Hogan to lift his executive order shutting down many businesses by the end of the month.




es

TRACKING: Coronavirus Cases In Maryland, See The Latest Numbers

The number of cases of coronavirus in Maryland continues to rise.




es

Harrison Urges Witnesses To Reach Out After Violent Week In Baltimore

Baltimore City's non-fatal shootings have gone down from 232 this time last year to 195 now, but homicides have gone up from 102 in 2019 to 103 so far this year.




es

Baltimore Ceasefire Weekend Goes Virtual

Baltimore City's annual ceasefire weekend goes virtual for the first time ever amid coronavirus concerns.




es

See a Beautiful Gardens winner in western Twin Cities

Gardeners create backyard oasis with pond and waterfall.




es

Min No Aya Win clinic on the Fond Du Lac reservation during COVID-19.

The Min No Aya Win clinic on the Fond Du Lac reservation has seen a small amount of patients on a daily basis as they prepare for a wave of COVID-19 cases to hit their area. Dr. Vainio MD, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe tribe has worked at the clinic for decades and has never seen anything like this pandemic. The week of May 4th, he worked the respiratory cases at the clinic. Only one doctor a week takes all the respiratory cases to minimize the amount of people potentially exposed to the virus.




es

'Camp Quarantine' homeless encampment grows during the pandemic

What began in March as a small camp consisting of about a couple dozen homeless adults has now swelled to more than 100 residents in tents. Known as "Camp Quarantine," the fast-growing encampment has raised alarms over the health of the camp residents amid the coronavirus pandemic. Construction crews will begin installing a large metal fence around a homeless camp. Police are also expected to be on site too. The fence is being erected to contain the growth of the sprawling camp, which now has about 100 residents in rows of tents. The camp is located on Met Council property along the light-rail line near E. 28th Street and Hiawatha Avenue.




es

“The Evidence and Tradeoffs for a ‘Stay-at-Home’ Pandemic Response: A multidisciplinary review examining the medical, psychological, economic and political impact of ‘Stay-at-Home’ implementation in America”

Will Marble writes: I’m a Ph.D. student in political science at Stanford. Along with colleagues from the Stanford medical school, law school, and elsewhere, we recently completed a white paper evaluating the evidence for and tradeoffs involved with shelter-in-place policies. To our knowledge, our paper contains the widest review of the relevant covid-19 research. It […]




es

The best coronavirus summary so far

I’d still go with this article by Ed Yong, which covers biology, epidemiology, medicine, and politics. Here’s one bit: In 2018, when writing about whether the U.S. was ready for the next pandemic, I [Yong] noted that the country was trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. It rises to meet each new disease, […]




es

More coronavirus testing results, this time from Los Angeles

In comments, Joshua Ellinger points to this news article headlined, “Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus, study finds,” reporting: The initial results from the first large-scale study tracking the spread of the coronavirus in [Los Angeles] county found that 2.8% to 5.6% of adults have antibodies to the virus […]




es

Himmicanes!

Just a reminder that life goes on (thanks to commenter Lemmus), from the British Journal of Social Psychology: Are women more likely to wear red and pink at peak fertility? What about on cold days? Conceptual, close, and extended replications with novel clothing colour measures. Evolutionarily minded researchers have hypothesized that women advertise their ovulatory […]




es

New analysis of excess coronavirus mortality; also a question about poststratification

Uros Seljak writes: You may be interested in our Gaussian Process counterfactual analysis of Italy mortality data that we just posted. Our results are in a strong disagreement with the Stanford seropositive paper that appeared on Friday. Their work was all over the news, but is completely misleading and needs to be countered: they claim […]




es

“In any case, we have a headline optimizer that A/B tests different headlines . . .”

The above line is not a joke. It’s from Buzzfeed. Really. Stephanie Lee interviewed a bunch of people, including me, for this Buzzfeed article, “Two Big Studies Say There Are Way More Coronavirus Infections Than We Think. Scientists Think They’re Wrong.” I liked the article. My favorite part is a quote (not from me) that […]




es

“I don’t want ‘crowd peer review’ or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It’s just too burdensome and I’d rather have a more formal peer review process.”

I understand the above quote completely. Life would be so much simpler if my work was just reviewed by my personal friends and by people whose careers are tied to mine. Sure, they’d point out problems, but they’d do it in a nice way, quietly. They’d understand that any mistakes I made would never have […]




es

New York coronavirus antibody study: Why I had nothing to say to the press on this one.

The following came in the email: I’m a reporter for **, and am looking for comment on the stats Gov Cuomo just released. Would you be available for a 10-minute phone conversation? Please let me know. Thanks so much, and here’s the info: Here is the relevant part: In New York City, about 21 percent, […]




es

More than one, always more than one to address the real uncertainty.

The OHDSI study-a-thon group has a pre-print An international characterisation of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 and a comparison with those previously hospitalised with influenza. What is encouraging with this one over yesterday’s study, is multiple data sources and almost too many co-authors to count (take that Nature’s editors). So an opportunity to see the variation […]




es

Controversy regarding the effectiveness of Remdesivir

Steven Wood writes: There now some controversy regarding the effectiveness of Remdesivir for treatment of Covid. With the inadvertent posting of results on the WHO website. https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23/data-on-gileads-remdesivir-released-by-accident-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/ One of the pillars of hope for this treatment is the monkey treatment trial (the paper is here). As an experience clinical trialist I was immediately skeptical of […]




es

Tracking R of COVID-19 & assessing public interventions; also some general thoughts on science

Simas Kucinskas writes: I would like to share some recent research (pdf here). In this paper, I develop a new method for estimating R in real time, and apply it to track the dynamics of COVID-19. The method is based on standard epidemiological theory, but the approach itself is heavily inspired by time-series statistics. I […]




es

Best econ story evah

Someone who wishes to remain anonymous writes: Here’s a joke we used to tell about someone in econ grad school, a few decades ago. Two economists were walking down the street. The first one says: “Isn’t that a $20 bill?” The second one says: “Can’t be. If it were, somebody would have picked it up […]




es

Coronavirus Quickies

This post is by Phil Price, not Andrew. There a couple of things that some people who comment here already know, but some do not, leading to lots of discussion in the comments that keeps rehashing these issues. I’m hoping that by just putting these here I can save some effort. 1. The ‘infection fatality […]




es

My talk Wednesday at the Columbia coronavirus seminar

The talk will be sometime the morning of Wed 6 May in this seminar. Title: Some statistical issues in the fight against coronavirus. Abstract: To be a good citizen, you sometimes have to be a bit of a scientist. To be a good scientist, you sometimes have to be a bit of a statistician. And […]




es

Resolving the cathedral/bazaar problem in coronavirus research (and science more generally): Could we follow the model of genetics research (as suggested by some psychology researchers)?

The other day I wrote about the challenge in addressing the pandemic—a worldwide science/engineering problem—using our existing science and engineering infrastructure, which is some mix of government labs and regulatory agencies, private mega-companies, smaller companies, university researchers, and media entities and rich people who can direct attention and resources. The current system might be the […]




es

Updated Imperial College coronavirus model, including estimated effects on transmissibility of lockdown, social distancing, etc.

Seth Flaxman et al. have an updated version of their model of coronavirus progression. Flaxman writes: Countries with successful control strategies (for example, Greece) never got above small numbers thanks to early, drastic action. Or put another way: if we did China and showed % of population infected (or death rate), we’d erroneously conclude that […]




es

Simple Bayesian analysis inference of coronavirus infection rate from the Stanford study in Santa Clara county

tl;dr: Their 95% interval for the infection rate, given the data available, is [0.7%, 1.8%]. My Bayesian interval is [0.3%, 2.4%]. Most of what makes my interval wider is the possibility that the specificity and sensitivity of the tests can vary across labs. To get a narrower interval, you’d need additional assumptions regarding the specificity […]




es

Statistics controversies from the perspective of industrial statistics

We’ve had lots of discussions here and elsewhere online about fundamental flaws in statistics culture: the whole p-value thing, statistics used for confirmation rather than falsification, corruption of the pizzagate variety, soft corruption in which statistics is used in the service of country-club-style backslapping, junk science routinely getting the imprimatur of the National Academy of […]




es

Bayesian analysis of Santa Clara study: Run it yourself in Google Collab, play around with the model, etc!

The other day we posted some Stan models of coronavirus infection rate from the Stanford study in Santa Clara county. The Bayesian setup worked well because it allowed us to directly incorporate uncertainty in the specificity, sensitivity, and underlying infection rate. Mitzi Morris put all this in a Google Collab notebook so you can run […]




es

We need better default plots for regression.

Robin Lee writes: To check for linearity and homoscedasticity, we are taught to plot residuals against y fitted value in many statistics classes. However, plotting residuals against y fitted value has always been a confusing practice that I know that I should use but can’t quite explain why. It is not until this week I […]




es

Laplace’s Demon: A Seminar Series about Bayesian Machine Learning at Scale

David Rohde points us to this new seminar series that has the following description: Machine learning is changing the world we live in at a break neck pace. From image recognition and generation, to the deployment of recommender systems, it seems to be breaking new ground constantly and influencing almost every aspect of our lives. […]




es

DFL congressional endorsements get underway




es

Small Minnesota brewers, distillers look to help from Capitol

Proposal to temporarily loosen restrictions on on-site sales faces uncertain prospect in session's final days.




es

Sheriff's deputy faces charges charges after targeting teen

A sheriff's deputy in North Carolina is facing criminal charges after authorities say he led a group of armed people to wrong home in a search for a missing girl.




es

Hot-button issues go cold amid pandemic focus




es

Veteran DFL lawmakers question virtual conventions after coming up short

Two legislative stalwarts lose endorsements as a wave of younger, more liberal challengers emerges in Minneapolis.




es

US approves new coronavirus antigen test with fast results




es

Why a red hot small-business relief program has gone stone cold

After snapping up more than $500 billion in emergency loans in just three weeks, small-business owners have lost interest in the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Minnesota business owners are among those who may give back a chunk of their forgivable loans.




es

Twin Cities employers rethink office design: 'We are too close together'

Companies are rushing to readjust their office designs as they prepare to reopen workplaces amid the pandemic. Strategists and designers are putting aside past concerns about branding and flashy office amenities to focus on employee safety.




es

A job lost in government has the same economic effect as one lost in a business

Declining state and local government spending really can make an economic downturn worse. And this recession is bad enough already.




es

Orioles, Mets To Play Exhibition Game At Naval Academy

It's the first Orioles game to be played there under a long-term partnership with the Naval Academy.




es

Orioles: Trey Mancini Has Malignant Tumor Removed

The fan-favorite outfielder abruptly left the team last week.




es

Orioles Opening Day Delayed, Spring Training Games Canceled

The Baltimore Orioles' Opening Day will be delayed by at least two weeks after Major League Baseball announced its response to the coronavirus outbreak Thursday.




es

MLB Delays Opening Day Until Mid-May At Earliest Due To Virus

The commissioner's office said clubs remain committed to playing "as many games as possible" when the season begins.




es

MLB Teams Pledge $30M To Support Ballpark Employees

Major League Baseball's teams have pledged $30 million for ballpark workers who will lose income because of the delay to the season caused by the novel...




es

Union Calls For 40-Game Pay For Camden Yards Employees Out Of Work

The union representing 700 hospitality workers at Camden Yards is asking for financial help on what would have been opening day.




es

Former Oriole Pearce Retires, Injured Most Of 2019

The journeyman's career saw a resurgence after he joined the Orioles. He went on to be the MVP of the 2018 World Series with the Boston Red Sox.




es

Orioles' Trey Mancini Undergoing Chemotherapy For Stage 3 Colon Cancer

Baltimore Orioles' Trey Mancini announced Tuesday he is undergoing chemotherapy for Stage 3 colon cancer.