Partial Unlock Caseload Management for COVID-19 Can Save 1-2 Million Lives Worldwide

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3575147

This paper analyzes the stability and usefulness of a human-in-the-loop caseload management method for COVID-19.  This can control the balance between medical resource utilization and economic shutdown duration across significant scenario variation.  It reduce the total cases by controlling the rate of spreading as groups cross the herd immunity threshold, and suggests late intervention has more effect on total cases than early intervention once containment has failed.  Data as of April 11, 2020 show that “flattening” strategy for COVID-19 in both the world and the U.S. is working so well that a significantly effective removal of social distancing (aka “unlock”) at any time in the next few years, other than after widespread and effective vaccination, will produce a rebound overloading the healthcare system.  For the world, by early April flattening was working so well that a world rebound could be projected in 2021 that would exceed in critical demand even the additional million or so ventilators requested by world governments.  In the U.S., whose trajectory is somewhat ahead of the world, the projected rebound of a late year unlock is already greater than the current crisis projected peak.  Most citizens are tacitly expecting much sooner rather than much later unlocks.  Leaving economies locked down for a long time is its own catastrophe, especially for countries that cannot provide substantial economic aid to their citizens.  An SIR-type model was used with clear parameters suitable for public information, and both tracking and predictive capabilities, and an additional simulation of a decision-maker on selected-day partial unlock designed mainly to manage ventilator or other critical resource utilization, to make sure they are neither idle nor over committed.  Using certain days of the week, already practiced by some countries, is not a necessary part of the method, but was used in the simulation to give a highly quantified unlock scheme.  It also helps restore economic activity.  While the model shows total cumulative cases, and therefore deaths, declining initially with flattening, when flattening begins to produce large rebounds the death rate goes back up.  Partial unlock to manage critical resources brings the cumulative cases down about 8-12% between now and the second half of 2021, and therefore saves lives with some degree of certainty.

Technodiversity, now with a new, even more amazing cover!

The new cover of Technodiversity! You can see Rem with a Faraday Fox and a bunch of other technocreatures.

The new cover of Technodiversity! You can see Rem with a Faraday Fox and a bunch of other technocreatures.

The old cover was great, but was hard to make out when shrunk in thumbnail size.

Thankfully, my hero, CATILUS, drew me a new cover and I’m super-thrilled!

What do you think?

By the way, you can check out more of Catilus’ work at her DeviantArt page: https://www.deviantart.com/catilus
She’s really awesome!

The Gnosis Machine, my second novel, is out now!

Gnosis Machine Cover 2

The Gnosis Machine orbiting the famous luminous variable star 1806-20 in W31 sector (the star and W31 are both real! Google them!)

A story about people trying to survive on a computer built to predict and control the future: The Gnosis Machine!

In The Gnosis Machine, we get to see the lives and difficult decisions of four fateful people who find themselves stranded on the half-finished Machine. It’s a story about trust and hope, but also about entropy and determinism.

The Gnosis Machine might be my second published sci-fi novel, but it’s actually the first one I wrote. The current version has a whooping 1119 hours of editing time logged, which is more than double what I spent for Technodiversity, my first published novel.

Looking back, I had a blast writing The Gnosis Machine, and I hope you love reading it and uncovering all the secret plots and machinations on that huge artificial planetoid!

Here’s the book blurb for The Gnosis Machine:

The Gnosis Machine is a tale about the unpredictable nature of predictability and the consequences of absolute certainty. It’s also the story of a thousand and two stellar castaways on a planet-sized computer designed to predict and control the future: The Gnosis Machine.

An ambitious professor bets his life on a bid to abolish uncertainty, but when an entropic alien stresses the Machine’s computing power to its absolute limit, he faces an impossible dilemma as everything begins crumbling around him.

A grizzled war veteran comes to the Machine to fade away. His hopes for a quiet retirement are shattered when his ship implodes, stranding everyone on the Machine, and he finds love at the edge of the half-finished artificial planetoid.

A homesick science graduate becomes the unlikely hero when he saves a man from predetermined suicide — but he must then master gravity in a desperate attempt to save a thousand more people, including three cyborg madammes of excellent pedigree.

A fifty-year-old widow in an ageless body tries to escape the horror of her husband’s death only to find his charred remains 40,000 light-years from where he died. As chaos erupts and more people attempt to kill themselves on the Machine, she becomes the reluctant leader of the desperate castaways as they all clash in the battle between entropy and determinism.

The Gnosis Machine is built to predict everything, but in the end, will it be able to foresee — and prevent — its own fate?

Narrated through multiple points of view, The Gnosis Machine is a literary science fiction novel that explores the true meaning of trust, and the complications that arise when what you think you desire is actually not what you want. It is a book about humanity’s relationship with certainty and the timeless struggle to control the unknown.

Plus, there’s a big, well-hidden surprise somewhere in there. 🙂

Come on, check The Gnosis Machine out!

Technodiversity, my first novel, is now available!

The book cover of Technodiversity

Rem of the Recycle Canyon and that fated Faraday Fox!

A world where rogue software animates junk to life?

A female protagonist that doesn’t cry at the first sight of trouble?

A sci-fi book where the word ‘robot’ appears only once and the word ‘science’ zero times?

Oh yes, and so much more! Techodiversity, my first sci-fi novel, is now available on Amazon!

Spanning 118k words, Technodiversity is one of many stories that take place in the Improbable Future: a time and space that might be, but probably won’t. The Improbable Future is a hard science fiction setting I’ve been developing stories for since 1999.

In addition to stories where rogue software stirs junk to life, there are tales of intergalactic invasions, ancient enigmas, planet-sized computers that try to predict the future, interstellar treasure hunters, galactic conspiracies, peculiar alien societies, space divas, and even a medieval science fiction romance near the absolute zero.

Here’s the blurb I wrote for Technodiversity:

Born on a blasted world where mechanical creatures form spontaneously in the wake of interstellar apocalypse, Rem of the Recycle Canyon must scour laser-lit landscapes for lost knowledge and rip technocreatures apart for scraps of lost technology.

But when she decides to set her first catch free, Rem disturbs the ancient balance between her people and their spacefaring relatives who crave her world’s riches, finding herself in a post-biological world of trouble.

Rem’s defiance against the so-called “gods of hell-space”, and her surprising affection towards her world’s technocreatures, kick off an explosive misadventure that will challenge her convictions and test every skill she doesn’t believe she has.

Will she rise above age-old prejudices, outsmart a computer-god, keep her feelings for a charming but suspicious outsider under control, reach the mythical Hologram Valley and survive its secret?

If so, she might succeed where legendary heroes of old failed and discover the impossible solution to protect her world’s technodiversity… and perhaps even find love in the unlikeliest of places.

Otherwise, she might leave her last breath under a techbeast’s chassis — or worse — find herself banished in hell-space!

Check out Technodiversity, a fresh science fiction adventure that combines a sophisticated narrative in the vein of traditional sci-fi classics with breathtaking action, whirlwind romance and spunky humor.

 

Sounds fun?
I hope it does, because there’s more where that came from!

Scam Detection Kit: Scientific Tools to Demolish Hoaxes, Scams, Frauds and Everything In-Between

Ready to bust some scams?A Kit with handy scientific tools to demolish hoaxes, scams, frauds and everything in-between

My latest book “Scam Detection Kit: Scientific Tools to Demolish Hoaxes, Scams, Frauds and Everything In-Between ” is now available on Amazon. Humorous, scientific and brutally effective, the Scam Detection Kit arms the reader with a trusty set of tools to spot and demolish all kinds of cons, from harmless hoaxes and white lies, to pseudoscientific claims and deadly frauds.

Cons and scams come in all shapes and sizes, but share the same characteristics that can be their undoing. All such shady practices rely on confusion and lies. By arming ourselves with the proper scientific tools to see through lies and bogus claims, as well as our own misconceptions, we become empowered to tackle the world’s most dangerous cons and live a scam-free life!

This book took me a lot longer to write than most others. It is a more general and layman-friendly approach to scams than my more technical “Snake Oil” book.

I hope you enjoy reading the Scam Detection Kit as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I also hope this handy kit helps you dodge a scam or two in your lives!

 

It’s all Greek to them! 101 amazing facts about Greece and the Greeks

It's all Greek to them! book coverHumans have been living, thinking, creating (and occasionally killing each other) in Greece since time immemorial; their actions shaping this ancient land. Greece’s rich history has left behind countless astounding buildings, unique traditions and bizarre cultural phenomena. Yet Greece is living and breathing today and Greek history is being written as you read these lines, with modern-day Greek events sometimes surpassing the weirdest ancient fables in sheer oddness.

In my latest book, it’s all Greek to them! 101 amazing facts about Greece and the Greeks I examine a plethora of little-known, yet amazing facts about my homeland and the curious people living on it.

Through this quirky book’s pages, I aim to travel you from the myths that shroud antiquity to Greece’s tumultuous present and from the highest peaks of Mt. Olympus to the azure beaches of the Aegean. The book is equal parts wit and scientific integrity, providing objective, provable yet mindblowingly interesting facts about Greece and Greeks!

WWWordsmith: Forging a living from online writing, my latest book, coauthored with Kay McMahon.

My latest book: WWWordsmith: Forging a living from online writing is now available from Amazon!

WWWordsmith coverWorking once again with epic friend and mentor Kay McMahon, we have put together a book explaining the the ins and outs of making money online from writing.

I am covering all aspects of working online as a freelance writer with Kay focuses on the business aspects of writing online.

If you think you have writing skills, if you know you have a book in you, if you already make money from your writing but want to go online then this book may help you find your way to forge a living from online writing!

As with all our books, there are no upsells, no tricks, no get-rich-quick schemes and no promises to miraculously turn the reader into a capable writer. Instead, we just offer you accurate and objective info about what’s what in the internet when it comes to writing.

 

Snake Oil! How ‘Make Money Online’ scams work …and how to avoid them – My latest ebook, coauthored with Kay McMahon

My latest ebook: Snake Oil! How ‘Make Money Online’ scams work …and how to avoid them is available from Amazon!

 

Snake Oil!

 

Coauthored with good friend and epic scambuster Kay McMahon, this book blows the lid off the countless lies and scams that surround the so-called “Make Money Online” (MMO) industry; a shady industry that supposedly teaches people how to become rich through the internet, but in reality it mostly makes them poorer.

From the countless products that promise to make you rich online, most are bogus or scams that only make the product’s creator richer. This book empowers the reader to see through all such scams and find the rare good deal amongst an ocean of scams.

The victims of MMO scams become poor and get trapped in a vicious circle of buying more and more MMO products in hopes of finding the “real deal”.

Through this book’s pages, Kay and me explore the reality of the MMO industry and cut through all the hype, misinformation and bamboozle that surround most products that promise overnight riches.

This brutally honest book will help you to avoid online moneymaking scams and help you become more powerful in understanding how some scammers work behind the scenes.

If you’re hoping to make money online, you should really think about reading this book before you spend any money on any secret MMO recipe that promises to make you rich with no effort!

Opposing Forces: How online reputation management can work for fame or shame, a new book by Theodore Koukouvitis

My second Kindle book: Opposing Forces: How online reputation management can work for fame or shame is now available from Amazon Kindle store.

Book cover for: Opposing Forces: How online reputation management can work for fame or shame

The Opposing Forces

Online reputation management refers to everything that can bring fame or shame to any organization, product or individual on the internet.

Since the advent of the internet, reputation management has exploded into a multibillion (yes, with a “b”) industry that brings people and businesses out of obscurity and can equally plunge others into the pits of online infamy. The powers that control online reputation are often mutually exclusive as positive reputation management directly opposes negative reputation management and usually the one with the most resources wins.

Through this book’s pages I explore all levels of online reputation management; from multinational corporations to your local pub, every business’s online reputation can be altered with rep management. I also focus on personal reputation management and how malicious individuals can ruin a person’s social and personal lives by defaming them online.

Opposing Forces: How online reputation management can work for fame or shame” cuts through a lot of misinformation that surrounds online reputation management today. Many reputation management firms, specialists and so-called gurus thrive in providing false and misleading information to further their own financial and online reputation goals; this book attempts to cut through all that and provide the reader with a clear picture of what online reputation management is really all about.

The Smart Tourist’s Guide to Greece – A New Book By Yours Truly

The Smart Tourist’s Guide to Greece, my first ever kindle book is now available from Amazon Kindle store!

The Smart Tourist's Guide to Greece, by Theodore Koukouvitis

 

The Smart Tourist’s Guide to Greece was written to give all tourists the knowledge to comprehend what is really going on around them when they are visiting Greece and allow them to look beyond the spoon-fed tourist attractions and into a magnificent but troubled land; the real Greece without any make-up.

In this unique tourist guide I have decided to explore the culture, history and politics that make Greece such a popular destination for millions of tourists instead of writing about restaurants and hotels that other guides so extensively cover.

Greece is beautiful even beyond the popular tourist destinations and through this book’s pages I attempt to reveal a land that most tourists don’t know much about.
Remember that you don’t need an actual Kindle device to read a Kindle eBook! Amazon offers numerous (free) alternatives including their official Kindle for PC software.

You can find The Smart Tourist’s Guide to Greece through this link.

Enjoy!