Although the COVID-19 infection rate in LA county is still quite low, I thought it would be best not to require that you attend classes this week. (We'll see about next week when it arrives.)

I will still be in class, but I won't be taking attendance either Tuesday or Thursday. We will have presentations on a voluntary basis from those who attend. If there are not enough volunteers we can talk about the NetLog model or the extensions to the forces_and_effects code. That file now generates graphs of the following forms: random, ring, star, and wheel. You may use that code in your work as long as you can explain it.

Regarding COVID-19, I recommend this video. (Watch from 5:03 - 12:10. Watching at 1.25 speed is fine.)

Dr. Richard Hatchett is being interviewed on a UK TV channel. Hatchett is a Public health executive with extensive governmental expertise and leadership experience in medical countermeasure development and public health emergency preparedness more generally. He served in the White Houses of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and designed and led medical countermeasure development programs at BARDA and NIH, including planning for and responding to H5N1 avian influenza ("bird flu"), the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the Ebola, MERS, and Zika epidemics.

Here are some basic facts. The mortality rate of COVID-19 is at least 30 times that of seasonal flu. Perhaps more significantly, the infection rate is orders of magnitude greater. That combination makes it a very dangerous disease. (Much more dangerous, Hatchett says, than even Ebola, which has an up to 80% mortality rate but a much smaller infection rate.) Some governments (e.g., Singapore, Hong Kong) have mobilized their populations and have done well at containing the virus. Others (e.g., Italy, Iran) have not. At this point, the public must play a major role in a country's response.

Hatchett talks about how people who are not in the primary target population for serious illness--e.g., students, since those at most risk are the elderly and infirm--may take the disease less seriously. Yet they can still spread the disease and should be aware of their responsibility to avoid being a carrier and a danger to others.

This Johns Hopkins web page tracks the state of the virus in the world.

Here's a joke from SNL two weeks ago. The "Cold Open" included presidential candidates talking about the disease. Bernie Sanders was portrayed as saying that Purell is not acceptable. Even though it kills 99% of germs it spares the top 1%.