I don't think he would like this, but I will!

I will look into these. I haven't read them. Thanks!

This is VERY good to know. I just couldn't get through part 1. Seems like he needs to think about whether he would like to study the French, Russian, or Chinese Revolutions through literature. I'll ask him.

Yes, he is definitely more interested in the spontaneous piece. Like why was there a run on TP. He also doesn't like dystopias and has pretty much avoided reading them.

Ah, too intense for this gentle soul.

My ds loved Scarlet Pimpernel when he was younger and actually dressed up as the SP for halloween when he was about 10. 🙂

LOL, you are the second to recommend it. It was on our list, and then the English teacher started recommending books like 1984 and Brave New World. So we got side tracked in the wrong direction. I've got it on my shelf. Might be perfect as it is short!

Well, I'll go look at it! I remember years ago trying to listen to it, and the beginning was quite dense!

We did, but I forgot about it. 🙂 I'll go see if it has his themes.

Interesting! I had not even considered the French Revolution. Do you know of a book that is easier/shorter than A Tale of Two Cities?

ETA #2 Ok, in the ongoing saga, it has finally become clear that we do really need to keep to one time period. If we go with Lord of the Flies, then she is recommending 1984, Brave New World, and Handmaiden's tale. This is really not OK with my ds who hates dark depressing books. Really hates them. So we are going to do conformity on books like Pride and Prejudice. She said we could pick any from Austen and the Brontes. So which of those 10 books focuses the most on conformity but also hits this theme in different ways so ds has something to talk about. I'm thinking Wuthering Heights would be pretty hard to do even though I love that book. Thoughts? ETA #1: We have gotten more clarity as to what is expected. DS needs to expand out of mob psychology because it is too mucky. He has decided to focus on conformity. He also needs to attack the topic from 3 different lenses - so psychology (point of view of individual), political or sociological (point of view of society), and one other lens. We have been kicking around the issue of conformity with Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Flies, but now need more books or movies on this topic. The teacher said it would be easier (but not required) to focus on 4 works in the same time period, which clearly LotF and P&P are not. Can you guys help us find books of a high level that deal with issues of conformity. He is not that interested in state control, although he is considering Brave New World from the point of view of conformit. The Wave and The Lottery were deemed too low level, so we need something with depth but not University level (so not War and Peace or something). Previous post: My ds is writing a connections paper for English where he needs to compare how 4 different works attack a theme. He has chosen a theme of mob psychology, and we are looking for one more novel/play/ advanced short story. We have Lord of the Flies, The Crucible, and The Wave (thanks Regentrude, this is perfect). The short story, The Lottery, was deemed too simple by his English teacher, so I need something longer or more complex I guess. DS is not interested in governmental control; rather he wants to look at how mobs form. So not 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. So far he has ideas about: legitimacy of the leader, a common enemy, shunning those that don't conform, and a foundation based on logic. The recommendations need to be high-ish level, but don't have to be classics. Suggestions? And thanks to those who gave us all the movies. We are working our way through them now and they are awesome! Ruth in NZ

I think they have said 40% of cases are from overseas travellers, but it might have been 40% *linked* to overseas travel. I can't remember.

Same here. For the past 2 weeks and for the foreseeable future, anyone with *any* respiratory symptoms can get a test. The sentinel testing is different. This is the grocery store testing and it is supposed to detect asymptomatic cases.

True, but we are at 91% of deaths were people who lived in nursing homes, which is way higher than in the USA. I think it is a small sample size problem, but it just means that NZ's numbers aren't going to inform anyone.

Our sentinel testing is purposely non-random. We are testing in the hot spot regions where there are the most cases, and we are testing grocery store workers and customers in those regions because that is where most of the exposure is happening. The government is searching out the worst case scenario rather than just going for random testing.

So for us the CFR = IFR, or at least pretty close. I'm wondering about the nonrandom distribution of the disease caused by chance. It is probably a low sample size problem for us, but 6 out of 11 of our deaths are because 1 subset of a single nursing home got it by chance, and by chance they were the most frail and oldest. So our death rate is inflated by 2x due to nonrandom distribution.

Question for you guys (well, many questions). I simply can't make sense of studies saying 80% of people are asymptomatic and the data we have here. NZ has only been testing *symptomatic* people, but has used a low bar of *any* respiratory symptoms, so like a sniff. There must have been asymptomatic carriers here in NZ and they would have infected others. We have a 2% community spread number so 30 cases in 1400 that are not linked to our known 16 clusters. So if we weren't identifying asymptomatic people and they could be as high as 80% of all cases, then why did we not have more spread? Is it because we did a strict lockdown when we had only 70 cases or so? At that time we actually had 350 cases (if 80% of people were asymptomatic but unknown), but the lockdown kept them from spreading? I can't see how if that were true, that we wouldn't have more clusters. Where did these 80% of asymptomatic people go? How did they not infect more people? Could it be that when other countries say that only symptomatic people are tested that they have a much higher bar, like a fever. So perhaps 'asymptomatic' people in other countries have a sniff, but here we call that symptomatic? I just can't make sense of this. ETA: I guess our 70 known cases ballooned into 1400 over the period of 3 weeks, and that was under the strictest lockdown in the world based on Oxford Stringency Index.

So 11 deaths, 60 hospitalizations, 1400 cases, 70,000 tests, 4.8 million population. Yesterday's positive testing rate was 8 in 4200 symptomatic people (but all in known clusters) Yesterday, 0 in 300 asymptomatic people from 'hot spots' (areas where the most cases have been identified). Do these numbers line up with other countries?

Also, we have only had 1 death that was someone who died *of* rather than *with* covid. He was 70 years old and the father of the groom for our biggest cluster which was a wedding. 😞 All the others, were either in hospice already, or over 90, or with major underlying conditions.

Ah, we were writing at the same time and thinking the same thing. We have had somewhere between 13-15 people in hospital for 3 weeks. And a lot of those are the same people. My guess is maybe 50-75 in total out of 1400 cases.

So the question then is how do we use a CFR? Is it useful at all? How does it inform policy? For example, with 11 deaths, that would mean that we would have may 50 in the hospital based on overseas numbers? But we don't, we only have ever had 15 at the max because of this group in a single nursing home. They are close to 100% death rate, so deaths=hospital beds. So we can't use the CFR to inform the number of bed we need.

We are currently at 11 deaths for 1400 positives. But those 11 deaths are not randomly distributed. 6 of the deaths were in the special care part of a bigger nursing home, and these residents were 85+ years old and very frail.

The goal of elimination is on target in NZ. 8 new cases today with 4200 symptomatic people tested. All 8 were were in known clusters (family of confirmed cases). Random community testing has started in areas with clusters. First set of 300 asymptomatic people was done at a grocery store in a 'hot spot', and found 0 cases. 800 of all 1400 cases have officially recovered. All kiwis returning from overseas are in 14-day supervised quarantine. Current strict lockdown in effect until Thursday at the earliest. The date when we enter a looser lockdown (but still a lockdown) will be announced on Monday. Crossing fingers.

This is fascinating. I do think it is too much for ds, but I'd like to watch it! Thanks!

Nice variety here! Thanks! He could probably handle a couple of sci fi /dystopia movies as a part of a balanced list, as long as it is not in the creepy category.