pilowsky

Actually, I learned to play from GIB, which explains a lot about my bidding and play. I only discovered a few weeks ago that you are supposed to think for more than 2 milliseconds before doing anything. Is that one reason I get such bad results?

Welcome to the Forum. You are absolutely right. The North robot is an absolute shocker. Mind you, I once tried sitting East. The West robot is even worse.

Well, that is extraordinary! Perhaps they did insert a ghost into the machine. 'The Nunes ghost play'

Only on the teaching table can you claim 13 tricks from any position, but those hands shouldn't get played in the 'main arena' - that's what looks so peculiar. Looks like a computer glitch in this case.

Those robots! - they know everything, I just lost 8 IMPs in practice when they let this claim go through to the keeper. I'm declaring shenanigans. Normal mortals had to settle for -1 and 2.9.

Some people wonder why it's hard to win in the matchpoint daylongs. Here's what happened to me and 27 other suckers and losers for 57.58%. And here's what someone who believes in the power of prayer, luck, hope, faith, sunlight and bleach did for 100%. Kummer und schand. Kummer und schand.

Setting aside the real problem, which is how you would manage to combine all of your esoteric interests into one delightful evening of calculated fun and mayhem: I count 8 tricks off the top. The only risk is that West has Hearts and Clubs. I would let the ♥2 run to the Jack - no harm in trying. and then play - as recommended by smerriman - Diamonds Spades and Clubs ballooning the ♣2 to the queen if the Jack is still on the board. Of course, it depends a bit on whether it's matchpoints or IMP's, and if I've just eaten and if I'm holding a balloon or...

smerriman crushes it in a one-sided affair pilowsky 23: smerriman 55 https://webutil.brid...=web&v3v=5.6.14

I know what you mean just like Dirty Harry - Hates everyone - still, everyone needs a partner...

From Bear-Stearns who caused the last GFC TYVM see post above for full explanation.

Just the Labour Party? As opposed to the rest of the famously pro-Semitic aristocrats in the UK!

So there are safety trials and efficacy trials, I get that. In this trial 30,000 people were enrolled, 15000 got the active compound and none of them had any real problems. Tick, it's safe. There were 95 DOCUMENTED cases of infection in the trial, We are not talking about black and white balls in a jar here. Medicine doesn't work like that. You are probably right - for all our sakes I really want you to be right. But the numbers are still numbers, and people act and behave differently. It's the same in Bridge. I have made dozens of antibodies in my lifetime. I've even sold some of them. Images of them have graced the covers of scientific Journals. Many of them work just fine for one application and then fail dismally for the application that wanted them for. mRNA constructs are just as bad. I've also worked with RNA and DNA to interfere with biological processes in order to understand physiology. Some work exactly as they should, some don't. Everything is great in theory. Later when it comes time to saving lives problems can, and do, arise. When this crisis started I suggested to the local Bridge clubs that it might be a good idea to close. My thoughts were met with derision. You can't fight a virus with statistics.

I'm very sorry to hear that; if it were not for the strength of the regulatory regime and the lack of political interference in it the problem would have been much worse and the suffering much greater. The current catastrophe in the USA shows what happens when institutions such as the FDA, the CDC and so on are weakened by special interest groups and money is more important than life.

Interesting that you mention thalidomide. Thalidomide was one of the great success stories of the American food and drug administration FDA. It was the rigour of the FDA in making sure that it was properly tested that prevented it from entering the US market, which is why the US has no thalidomide victims to speak of. Imagine if the President at the time was touting it as a wonder drug? Access to internet pharmacies and illegal drug streams that can bypass such controls are now a major problem. They are even lauded by Hollywood movies. My first research thesis was examined by the woman whose work was the scientific basis for understanding how thalidomide causes birth defects. Her name is Dr Janet McCredie a Sydney radiologist. Not the discredited Dr McBride - but that's another story. She was very kind, but warned me to watch out for 'eros in the poofs' - smerriman would have been proud.

Unfortunately, the 2nd law of thermodynamics cannot be applied to countries, unless anarchy is a preferred form of government. A couple can be advised to go their separate ways - this happens quite commonly after marriage guidance fails. After the American civil war, there was an uneasy union. The two parties are yet to resolve their differences. Perhaps, in the end, that's why Rhett left and didn't give a damn. Of course, It was a little before my time but it makes you wonder.

I used to live in Adelaide - South Australia. Near where Howard Florey was born. They are in another lockdown because of a 17 case cluster. They are experiencing major problems. The local music scene is in trouble, and there's this. http://i.imgur.com/4YUUKmf.png

I suppose looking back it should have been obvious, when I loaded it onto the teaching table the North robot showed me how to do it before I had a chance to switch seats and try it myself. East leads the ♦K[hv=pc=n&s=sakqj8haqj72dj9c4&w=s9753h9843d4caj62&n=st62h6dt875ckt875&e=s4hkt5dakq632cq93&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=pp1d2dp2s3d4sppp]399|300[/hv] Here's how North played it. For some reason, I was asleep at the wheel.

That point is completely true. It really does look like an effective vaccine in the group that it was tested on. Let's hope that it also works when it gets distributed, that the supply chain works, that people that get very big doses of the virus are also protected and so on. It is extremely promising. The data was analysed appropriately. It is a good start. None of that means we stop asking questions, thinking or taking precautions. Look how difficult it was to eradicate polio, TB is still a massive problem. To say nothing of malaria etc etc. I get it, it's a Bridge Forum so there is a natural tendency to focus on probability and restricted choice (Bayes theorem) which is where my research career started. I'm just saying that there is much more to it. Developing a vaccine is important, but it is not the most important. Just compare the experiences of different countries around the world.

where's smerriman when we need him?

Well, there's the rub, Since coronavirus is the agent and COVID is the disease, and the participants in the trial are a quite different population to the people that are out there in the 'real world' where Doctors treat patients, that's where the rubber hits the road. Thank you all for clarifying the maths. Following the (media) commentary, there is now a major structural problem getting the vaccine to people who need it for many reasons, and then getting them to take it. Why is compliance a problem? Just to give an example, cigarette smoking causes 480,000 deaths every day in the USA. Alcohol causes 95,000 and so on. One of the main reasons that COVID-related deaths have hit the USA and the UK so hard is a failure to 'believe' in it. Along with pre-existing morbidities many of which are self-inflicted (diet/cigarettes). Confidence intervals can't overcome this. It may seem that I am changing the topic, but it does as I say relate to the original highly motivated study participant population. Speaking of which, does anyone know how many of the participants completed the study? 15000/15000 is an amazing result for a clinical trial. One normally loses at least one or two people to follow-up.

I would also value Helene's opinion. I would also like to know the relevance of a clinical trial where 95 people were infected out 30,000 participants. This seems to be an astonishingly low infectivity rate. Or am I missing something? I really hope that I have missed something. I just missed 4S= a moment ago so it wouldn't surprise me. The relationship of these data to the real world is yet to be determined as we say in the res. biz.

An excellent point, of course, the slow player may choose to litigate the matter first, using all legal options available to them. After all, it's only fair.

Implied (?)

Yes, it does worry me when you say there a 16% chance etc, and I think that you know why. What you are doing, metaphorically speaking is projecting beyond the available data. We are not talking about a single 'die' and people are actually dying. So, it's not just a matter of rolling the dice if I can be light-hearted and mix my metaphors. If 2 people are sick and both are given an effective drug and only one gets better, can we claim that the drug has only a 50% success rate? should we now take it off the market because it doesn't work? Of course not. This is really simple stuff. You CAN turn any ratio into a percentage, that doesn't mean that it's a good idea, because if the numbers are small it's misleading. Here, the numbers are in excess of 10:1 so I'm happy. I would prefer it if you said 1 in 6. As to the second point, even though the trial was double-blind, the trial was still a trial. I assume that you have no experience with clinical trials. If you did, you would know that trial participants are a very special breed of highly motivated altruistic people. I suspect that is one reason for the apparently very low rate of infections. In the placebo group the positivity rate was .006% (90/15000). That seems like a pretty effective treatment don't you think? Trial participants are very altruistic, highly motivated and very health conscious. They are not the same as members of the general population. They get much better health care than other people. Trial participants are also ordinary people, they get 'side-effects' just from being in the world. Sometimes the side-effects occur in the trial arm, sometimes not, sometimes they are serious, sometimes not. Fortunately, trial participants no longer include prisoners etc, although in some countries where there is a history of human rights abuses they may well be using unwilling participants. China for example is known for this. Ireland is threatening to forcibly repatriate healthcare workers without citizenship now that the pandemic is waning. Stalin forced slaves onto the battlefield. I have no idea what is happening ATM. Americans and British and everyone else in the world enjoy the use of slave and child labour from other countries. It's nothing personal, I am just a stickler for accuracy and precision. I see things as they are. When I get things wrong I admit it. I don't care.

You must be joking. You're a bridge player. How can you seriously ask a question like that on a forum like this? I'm still waiting to see anyone agree about anything at all in response to any sort of argument, rational, reasonable or otherwise.