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Helping out

While reading up more on the COVID-19 situation, I have seen the two major responses people have made. Some have chosen to take care of themselves at the expense of others. Some, but not all, of their decisions might be based on fear. The other response is reminiscent of Fred Rogers address made after the attacks on 9/11. He recalled his mother telling him to look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

If you dont see helpers in your community, then take the opportunity to become one. I see helpers in my friends and some businesses willing to provide food to school children while schools are closed, or neighbors on social media offering some of their supplies to others who didnt get any at the store. Even as we take precautions on contact with each other to slow the viral spread, ways still exist to be a neighbor and a helper. There are plenty of supplies to go around if we all work together. Choose to be a helper.

Jake Myers, Robinson

President Reagan said: Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. Conservative Grover Norquist said: My goal is to cut the government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

Trump advocated that the government was a collection of deep-state employees there to impose taxes and regulations that did not represent the people. Trump said his great brain could easily handle the economy, health care and trade. What we have now are acting secretaries, a hollowed-out State Department and Homeland Security. He has downsized the National Security Council. The acting director of National Intelligence has absolutely no experience in intelligence. He even hired a college senior (no experience) to work in the White House.

Trump was told of the impending virus last December. He elected to do nothing for months. Who needs experience and know-how? We are the ones who must deal with this colossal magnitude of incompetence and narcissism who never takes the blame for anything. He labeled COVID-19 as Democrats new hoax and said: One day, its like a miracle, it will disappear.

This president has no idea how government works. He has put the lives of all citizens at great risk because his great brain has no concept of what is happening or how to handle this looming catastrophe. Government is drowning in the Trump bathtub.

Randy Broussard, Belton

* * *

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a few days ago that the State of New York will contract with private laboratories to help administer coronavirus testing for New York residents. Cuomo stated: We are not in a position where we can rely on the CDC or the FDA to manage this testing protocol.

Its interesting that politicians, who have longed for the day when the government finally takes over and runs health care in this country, have awakened to the realization we cannot rely on government. Bernie Sanders has made a career of demonizing Big Pharma and would love to shut them down. But when we need test kits or a vaccine for a deadly virus, to whom do we turn? The government or the private sector? Andrew Cuomo was unequivocal: he turned to private labs.

We dont need clueless government bureaucrats trying to run our medical-care system anymore than we need them to grow our food.

David B. Anderson, Waco

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LETTERS: COVID-19 on the mind | Letters - Waco Tribune-Herald

AI Fights the Pandemic (And How You Can Get Involved)

A new AI challenge is poised to help fast-track research to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

The spread of the novel coronavirus is now officially a pandemic, causing widespread disruption to normal life around the world. While hospitals ramp up capacity and governments encourage or mandate quarantines, the data and technology space is mobilizing to help.

New AI Challenge Announced

One opportunity is the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge (CORD-19), presented on Kaggle by a coalition that includes the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Georgetown Universitys Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Microsoft Research, the National Library of Medicine, and the White House.

The challenge calls on AI experts to create text and data mining tools that can help the medical community develop answers to high priority scientific questions about the coronavirus. The provided data includes over 29,000 scholarly articles about COVID-19 and related viruses. Exploring the literature with AI techniques could greatly accelerate researchers ability to understand the virus and find viable therapies.

Pulling this data together and making it ready for natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning has been the work of an extraordinary collaboration between public and private entities. According to coverage on ZDNet, Microsoft used its web-scale literature curation tools to pull together global scientific efforts and results. The NLM provided access to literature content, while the Allen Institute transformed the content into machine-readable [form]. The data set will continue to be updated as new research is published.

The projects approach grew out of the Allen Institutes existing work using NLP and machine learning to analyze large amounts of scientific literature. You can hear some key figures provide more background and context on a recent GeekWire Health Tech Podcast.

What Is Already Being Done?

Of course, the CORD-19 project isnt the only way to use data and AI to fight the coronavirus. DeepMind has already released preliminary findings about related protein structures predicted by deep learning. Understanding the protein structure of a virus can give scientists a starting point for developing vaccines or drug therapies.

VentureBeat recently reported on several AI and tech-driven initiatives , including robots wielding disinfectant mobilized in China, cameras with thermal sensors for fever detection, and deep learning models that might diagnose patients faster or predict outcomes.

Meanwhile, general COVID-19 data such as numbers of cases and demographic and regional statistics has become ubiquitous online, giving rise to hundreds of dashboards and data visualizations of varying quality. The impulse to understand the data has been so strong that Tableau released a set of guidelines for data visualization makers to help prevent those without a background in epidemiology from accidentally misleading the public.

An Opportunity to Contribute

Are you an AI specialist ready to jump in and contribute? Read the initial key questions, find out about the cash prizes, and access the data on Kaggle.

About the Author

Lindsay Stares is a production editor at TDWI. You can contact her here.

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AI Fights the Pandemic (And How You Can Get Involved) - TDWI

Gardening has been described as an act of faith. In Vermont with its short growing season, uncertain weather and rocky soil the activity requires a special kind of fortitude, as well. And it helps to have the guidance of someone who's as hardy as the native plants. Someone like Jen Kennedy.

The Underhill resident, 37, has worked as a professional gardener in Chittenden County for almost 20 years. From designing new perennial beds to helping maintain established gardens, Kennedy does it all.

"There are definitely unique challenges when it comes to locations, what people like and what's going to look good in their garden," she said, "but I really enjoy that."

When she's not working on other people's gardens in season, Kennedy is busy tending her own. And although her white clapboard home and perennial-filled grounds may seem like a quintessential Vermont idyll, it wasn't always this way.

Twelve years ago, when Kennedy inherited her grandparents' homestead built in 1852 as a local school the property was in a state of disrepair. Her grandmother's flower beds were overgrown and neglected, while the backyard was littered with old cars, rusted fences, dismantled sheds and even an old forge. (Her grandfather, Roy Kennedy, was an artist and sculptor who had a thing for scrap metal.)

Kennedy has spent the last decade transforming her grandparents' eclectic artists' den into her own private paradise.

"It took a long time, but I had a vision and I just kept with it," she said.

Kennedy's work, in both her clients' gardens and her own, is equal parts restoration and creation. Consider the terraced perennial beds in front of her house, originally planted by her grandmother. Kennedy has diligently saved many of the plants, including the Dictamnusalbus (gas plant), Pulmonaria (lungwort) and Mertensia virginica (Virginia bluebells). But she's also added new varieties such as Nepeta sibirica (catmint) and Astilboides tabularis (shield leaf) to give the beds her personal touch.

Kennedy grew up just down the road and credits her grandmother with teaching her about plants. "I learned a lot from my grandmother, but mostly I learned to love gardening," she said.

Her grandparents didn't own a TV or a phone, so when Kennedy visited, they spent their time outside. "There was an emphasis on edible landscaping and foraging for wild foods," she remembered. "It was just part of life back then, but we've gotten away from it."

Tucked behind the house is a private pastoral landscape fringed with old-growth apple trees. The vegetable garden, a large circle in the center of the backyard, is looped with a thin electric fence to keep out the deer (who love Kennedy's hydrangeas and daylilies but leave the hyssop and thyme alone). A wooden pergola frames the entrance, and pea-stone paths separate the raised beds, which are hip-high to make planting and weeding easier.

This is not a garden of straight lines but rather a cheerful jumble of flowers, herbs and vegetables sweet peas, tomatoes, peppers, Brussels sprouts, rhubarb and garlic growing together in verdant harmony.

"It's not intentional," said Kennedy with a laugh. "I plant mostly by height and shading. I like to grow small amounts of several different things. There is a science to plant companions, but I haven't used it."

Kennedy is a proponent of creating outside "rooms" to extend indoor living space, and a walk around her property reveals delightful hidden nooks. A wooden arbor laden with leafy vines shades a large table and chairs on her backyard patio. Alongside a babbling brook, two Adirondack chairs and a small fire pit offer a perfect setting for making s'mores. Just beyond the vegetable garden, a hammock sways between two old maple trees.

Although a visitor might imagine whiling away summer afternoons reading a book and sipping iced tea in such outdoor spaces, Kennedy rarely slows down; she's a woman with a vision and a strong work ethic.

Kennedy first worked as a gardener during summers while she studied art at what was then called Johnson College, and it's been her main job ever since. It's clear that the principles of art, such as complementary colors, textures and contrast, inform her botanical philosophy. In particular, she thinks about the interplay of light and shade.

For example, Kennedy often plants the bright chartreuse foliage of Hakone (Japanese forest grass) to contrast with the deep purple foliage of Cimicifuga (snakeroot).

"It's art with plants. It's my sculpture," she explained.

Making art from growing things can take a long time, though. "I once heard that gardening is the slowest form of performance art, and I totally agree with that!" Kennedy said.

Every year, she becomes enamored of a different plant. Last summer, it was Eryngium yuccifolium (rattlesnake master), a tall, white wildflower with blossoms the size of golf balls. The year before, it was hostas. "They can do dry shade and look amazing. There aren't many plants that can do that," she said.

Using her deep knowledge of native plants, as well as her yearly plant passions, Kennedy approaches her clients' gardens like a sculptor approaches a slab of marble: with a keen eye for what needs to be moved, removed or added. Many of her clients work side by side with her, and she often gives them "homework" to do between her visits.

Kennedy said she especially enjoys working in "gardeners' gardens," because "they know it's hard work, so they really appreciate what I do."

Charlotte Wheater and Mary Jane Dickerson, both from Jericho, are two such gardeners who have weeded, shoveled and planted with Kennedy for almost two decades.

"I only have one other person who works as hard as I do, and that's Jen," said Wheater. "I think of her as Mother Earth. She has a love for the land and for what it provides. She's a marvel."

Dickerson credits Kennedy with helping her see her garden in a whole new way. "She sees the contours of the land and knows how to make the most of them," Dickerson said. "Gardening with Jen is nurturing for the body and the soul."

Ask this veteran artist gardener for advice, and she'll tell you to resist the temptation to buy all your plants at once. Instead, Kennedy suggests visiting multiple nurseries throughout the growing season to collect a variety of plants that will bloom at different times.

"A lot of the creativity happens at the nursery, because you get to see what's available and what looks good together," she said. She also advises growing something edible. "That's very rewarding, because anything you grow yourself just tastes better!"

Thanks to Kennedy's counsel, Dickerson now has "a riot of nasturtiums and all kinds of mint" for summer cooking, she said.

Full-time gardening doesn't leave a lot of time for other projects, such as home restoration. So, in the winter, Kennedy turns her attention to the interior of her unique home. Here, too, she continues to patiently clear out and clean up. Where there once was a warren of small, dark rooms piled high with her grandfather's art, there's now a bright and open space. Her grandfather's sculptures hang above the hearth of the massive stone fireplace, and his large paintings are stacked neatly on wooden shelves in the corner.

Next, Kennedy plans to paint the walls and whitewash the tongue-and-groove pine ceiling. For now, she's happy to sit on the floor and sort through paint samples in palettes that echo her lush gardens outside. Making a custom home, like creating a beautiful garden, takes time.

"This is the fun part," Kennedy said. "I'm not there yet not on the inside but I can't wait!"

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Gardener Jen Kennedy Plants With Palette and Purpose in Mind - Seven Days

Is the spread of the respiratory infection known as COVID-19 happening in an "exponential" fashion?

That's been the general contention of the media, which, as a public service, have explained at some length the basics of fast-growing quantities, such as disease, to hammer home how something like a virus can double in cases in a matter of days.

However, the data on COVID-19 has a lot of puts and takes, and one of the factors not entirely considered is the graph of the infection. Graph theory has a lot to say about how phenomena can grow, such as the spread of infectious diseases. There are different graphs, or networks, of relations, and they can affect things such as the rate of propagation.

One particular recent work calls into question the notion of the exponential growth of the disease.

Scholars Anna Ziff and Robert Ziff, respectively of Duke University and the University of Michigan, earlier this month posted on the medrXiv pre-print server their curve-fitting exercise for COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, both in China and in the rest of the world, titled "Fractal kinetics of COVID-19 pandemic."

As the authors write, "in standard epidemiological analysis, one assumes that the number of cases in diseases like this one grows exponentially, based upon the idea of a fixed reproduction rate."

But that standard epidemiological view is not born out by the data. They found that while the numbers "display large growth, they do not, in fact, follow exponential behavior." Rather, the authors observed a period of initial exponential growth, followed by what's called a "power law," which is not the same thing.

Also: MIT's deep learning found an antibiotic for a germ nothing else could kill

"The behavior is clearly not linear as it would be for exponential growth," they write. "In contrast, we find that the data are very well fit by assuming a power-law behavior with an exponent somewhat greater than two."

The authors explain that growth by appeal to the notion of a "small world" network, where most people have only a small number of connections to other people, most of whom are neighbors within their community.

The small-world phenomenon was explored and revised substantially in the past two decades by graph theoretician Albert-Lszl Barabsi of Northeastern University, who runs The Center for Complex Network Research.

Anna L. Ziff and Robert M. Ziff argue the curve for deaths in China from Covid-19 isn't following the common "exponential" growth that mainstream epidemiology suggests; rather, it follows the "power law" of a "small world" network.

Barabsi popularized the application of power laws to graphs with his 2014 book Linked. In that volume, Barabsi pointed out that networks of infectious disease seem to follow a power law, whereby there is a steadily decreasing curve of connectedness between entities. For the vast majority of entities in a graph, such as, for example, the people who could potentially be infected, their connectedness dwindles at a rate that is less than exponential, the now-famous "long tail" that is familiar in internet content.

That doesn't mean disease can't spread fast, Barabsi wrote. But he hypothesized that the small-world network must have "hubs," just like the major internet sites, to amplify the spread of signals.

The point is that a lot of real-world networks, such as infectious disease, are not random networks where there is an even chance of any one person coming into contact with another. They have structure, and the dominant structure of those networks is that the vast majority of people have a sparse number of connections to local neighbors. A random network would imply exponential growth, whereas the so-called scale-free networks that Barabsi discovered do not.

Also: Google DeepMind's effort on COVID-19 coronavirus rests on the shoulders of giants

And something like that is identified in the Ziffs' paper. There is a tapering off that's been seen in the China data, they write, after an initial exponential curve. That suggests to them a "kind of small-world interaction network where individuals have many local neighbors and occasional long-range connections (such as caused by people traveling on trains, boats, and planes)."

The practical implication, if their model is correct, is that the speed of the disease is taking longer and longer to double in the number of deaths. Exponential growth is not maintained because "the number of susceptible individuals around an infected individual decays with time," as a result of the prospect that "Individuals already infected might face increased immunity and there are other individuals who might have had a mild infection that imparts immunity but without developing symptoms warranting testing."

"These various effects would inhibit the exponential growth of the virus."

The authors make a prediction, which is that starting from the 27th day of the outbreak, when there 1,669 deaths from COVID-19, according to data compiled by theWorld Health Organization, the number of deaths would double to approximately 3,340 on day 37, which was Feb. 22, double again to 6,680 on day 50, March 10, and double again to 13,350 on day 67, which would be March 27.

It turns out, the doubling has been slower than they predicted, with actual deaths on day 37 just 2,359, and the death toll for March 10th at only 4,012. The total now, as of March 16, stands at 6,606, according to the WHO.

The Ziffs offer some thoughts on variance from their model. "Deviations above this power-law behavior might indicate that the pandemic is expanding from the current level of control," they write, "while deviations below might indicate that the disease is starting to fade."

Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty in the data on COVID-19 cases, which the authors acknowledge.

"This analysis is early in the outbreak of COVID-19 and cannot predict the length of the outbreak nor the final fatality," they write.

But the main point should be that the course of the disease is showing something other than the exponential growth that is routinely being tossed around. "This is a large number of fatalities," the Ziffs observe, "but not nearly as large as if the growth were exponential."

Keep in mind, then, as you think about infectious disease, that a simple rate of spread of something has to contend with the graph structure of a network, and that can have effects that are not obvious and that bear examination.

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Graph theory suggests COVID-19 might be a small world after all - ZDNet