New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown

Is New York Containing Covid?

New York vs Italy

I think what is happening here is that Italy is just barely maybe starting to contain the virus.  New York is in serious and, I would guess, irrecoverable containment failure.  Italy has been locked down since March 9th.  New York is still far from fully locked down.

The data are for New York State, but it's basically driven by the NYC metro area.

NYC Update - 46.5% increase Sunday over Saturday.

We Are About to Lose New York City to Covid

Containing Covid-19 (Or Not)

Covid-19 update

Covid-19 Infection Rates

The graph shows the number of cases of Covid-19 as a fraction of national population, for some countries of interest.  The data are from the World Health Organization, except for the US data which is from the NYT.  The data may not all be reliable (eg both the BBC and the Washington Post have reported that Iranian hospitals have far more cases than is officially reported, and US testing and reporting still appears to be shambolic).

The infection began and grew rapidly in China.  You can see that the other countries have a pattern of a small number of cases that are well contained (folks coming from somewhere else who are in professionally managed medical isolation), followed by a "breakout" when the disease manages to slip the containment and start spreading through the general population. This leads (presumably after a delay) to a rise in cases. You can see that breakout in Korea around Feb 19th, in Italy about Feb 23rd, and late last week for the United States.

The data suggest that China has its outbreak well under control.  However, this took extreme measures with huge economic impact: for example, there has been a 90% collapse in the rate of property sales.  Korea also seems to be gaining control, and the growth rate of the Italian outbreak is declining.  Both these countries and Iran have more cases, proportionally, than China.

The US curve is accelerating as testing becomes more widespread.  The current growth rate of known cases is about 10x per week.  The dashed line is an eyeball extrapolation, which suggests the US is one to two weeks from the level at which other countries have started taking measures like closing all their schools, quarantining cities, etc.

Global Carbon Sink Holding Up So Far

The Wake-Up Call from David Buckel

US Carbon Emissions

Are Winters Getting Warmer in Ithaca, NY?

Is Europe Recovering Yet?

Oil Supply Update

Monthly Oil Supply Update

Your tax dollars at work...

Unbelievable:

Personally, I thought the Internet was already quite insecure without the US government spending large amounts of money to deliberately make  it worse.

NSA Malware

There's a fascinating report in the Washington Post about the dimensions of US offensive cyber-operations. Here are a few excerpts.

Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed “covert implants,” sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions.

The documents provided by Snowden and interviews with former U.S. officials describe a campaign of computer intrusions that is far broader and more aggressive than previously understood. The Obama administration treats all such cyber-operations as clandestine and declines to acknowledge them.

and

The administration’s cyber-operations sometimes involve what one budget document calls “field operations” abroad, commonly with the help of CIA operatives or clandestine military forces, “to physically place hardware implants or software modifications.”

Much more often, an implant is coded entirely in software by an NSA group called Tailored Access Operations (TAO). As its name suggests, TAO builds attack tools that are custom-fitted to their targets.

The NSA unit’s software engineers would rather tap into networks than individual computers because there are usually many devices on each network. Tailored Access Operations has software templates to break into common brands and models of “routers, switches and firewalls from multiple product vendor lines,” according to one document describing its work.

The implants that TAO creates are intended to persist through software and equipment upgrades, to copy stored data, “harvest” communications and tunnel into other connected networks. This year TAO is working on implants that “can identify select voice conversations of interest within a target network and exfiltrate select cuts,” or excerpts, according to one budget document. In some cases, a single compromised device opens the door to hundreds or thousands of others.

The focus on routers, switches, and firewalls is very interesting and news.  To the best of my knowledge, nothing like this is known to the computer security industry.  No doubt the NSA is careful to test its efforts first, to ensure they aren't detected.

However, the hunt will be on now.

This suggests also a new market niche doing intrusion detection on these kinds of infrastructure components.  However, it's not clear that a US based firm could be a very credible provider...

Friday Links

• Edward Snowden impersonated top level NSA officials to steal documents.  Fits my hypothesis about him.
• Indian government to ban use of US email services for official communication.  There's going to be a lot more of this kind of thing, I think.
• Kevin Drum bashes the Obama administration over Syria.  My general sense is that there are no good options here.  If we, collectively, do nothing, we are no doubt in for an ongoing and regular diet of headlines and youtube videos of Syrian kids being massacred with nerve gas.  Being able to clear neighborhoods cheaply is pretty handy for a dictator with his back to the wall and Assad will do it again if he thinks he can.  On the other hand, a limited bombing campaign is likely to be illegal, unpopular, and fairly ineffectual, particularly given the warning the Syrian government has had.  On the third hand, a major involvement in the war would be very costly in lots of ways, and it's completely unclear that the end result would be a better regime.  Anyone who suggests there are any simple good options here isn't thinking it through.  It's fairly likely to suck regardless of what we do, just in different ways.

What The Oil Drum Meant

Tuesday Links

• Libyan oil exports have apparently plunged by 70% due to unrest in that country.
• The utility industry plans to hold large exercises to simulate a big attack on the US electricity grid.  Should be interesting.