OCTOBER 2014
HONG KONG
Hong Kong administrator Leung Chun-ying has proposed modifications to election procedures in Hong Kong. The calculated response of the "occupy central" students group could well see his dismissal, although perhaps that dismissal will be attributed to scandal about his acceptance of seven million dollars from an Australian company. With Leung dismissed, a new administrator could produce a settlement without loss of face by Beijing.
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are three alternative governance models for the Chinese people. And of these, Hong Kong appears to have been the most successful, although that supremacy is apparently being lost to Singapore. It is my understanding that it has the most liberal governance of the three, although that too is subject to subversion by installation of an undemocratic selection process.
Even before the UK relinquished governance of HK on 1st July 1997, China had learned from and adopted some of the commercial ideas practiced in HK, (and greatly profited therefrom.) China has just become the nation with the greatest GDP (on a PPP basis) in the world.
Perhaps Beijing is worried that another Tienanmen Square revolution might eventuate? Admittedly, with the example of a success of the action by the students of HK that possibility would increase.
On the other hand, is Beijing more interested in benefit to the Chinese people, or benefit to those in power? Because "behind the scenes" control of a western representative democracy is certainly a more difficult problem than control of a state where the "mandate of heaven" is all that is needed. And although democracy has been known since the Greek city states era to be a very corruptible form of government, it is, subject to free information flows, capable of evolution without the mandate of heaven being lost.
The world is watching you Mr. Xi.
EBOLA
EBOLA facts as of 10 October 2014.
- Ebola has approximately 70% fatality rate.
- WHO
and CDC advise that ebola cannot
aerosolize. However it appears that
the definition of aerosolize does not
exclude the breathing in of e.g. infected
droplets from an infected person's cough
or sneeze. Or becoming infected by
touching an infected surface.
- Every four weeks for the past 4 months the count of infected persons has doubled.
- As
of 1st October 2014 there were
approximately 8,000 infected persons.
COMMENTS:
Notice that the red and the black lines are straight from June. That "straightness" on this (log-normal) graph indicates exponential growth. The earlier "bumps" for low counts of cases are normal variance for small samples.
The "halfway point" in time for 100% worldwide infection if infection rate is exponential is the geometric mean of the world population, (i.e. square root of about 7 billion) which is about 85,000 people. If growth rate remains unchanged, that point will be reached by early January 2015.
If those circumstances eventuate, if 85,000 people are infected by January 2015, I am heading for the hills.
I plan to update this page fortnightly.
EBOLA facts as of 4 November 2014
- CDC reports 13,570 cases as of 1 November.
- According to Wikipedia, CDC estimates that actual cases are 2-3 times higher than officially reported.
- CDC
states that cases reported
for October 29th might
have been over reported.
- the
ratio 13570/8000 ~
1.7 which would
indicate a reduction in
the trend transmission
rate, which previously was
~ 2.15
EBOLA facts as of 20th November 2014
- CDC reports 15,145 cases as of 20th November.
- The
ratio 15,145/13,570 spread
over 16 days = 0.53 months
indicates a growth rate of
(15145/13570)^(0.53) ~ 1.2
which is down from 1.7 in
October. If it
continued growing at this
rate, it would take four
months to double the
cases.