[BitCoinTalk][COVID-19] Grim Reality

[Timelord2067]

Tonight Australia and New Zealand have both closed our borders to all non residents with our National air carriers Qantas and Virgin Australia suspending flights (Qantas) after the end of March 2020 through end of May 2020 and (Virgin Australia) effective immediately.  I have no doubt that Air New Zealand is about to make a similar decision.  Cruise liners have already this week been barred from docking in Australia.

The same decision to close borders or regions is being made across the Globe: Italy, France, Spain are in lock-down and the Canadian/US border is closed to name prominent examples.

According to bpip.org there are approximately 116,862 active profiles as at a little while ago.



If we assume perhaps 6,862 user profiles are shall we say "mobile" alts of main accounts, then the actual number of active accounts drops to 110,000.  If we shave another ten thousand UID's off that number as alts being manufactured for any reason at all be it good, bad, or, indifferent reasons, then we have a certain 100,000 active and possibly unique users on BitCoinTalk.org

Grim reality.

(See links below for references - as the pandemic is evolving, the figures may vary higher, or lower - I will gladly adjust these figures up, down or sideways with links provided)

If 60% of this 100,000 active membership contracts COVID-19 ^{0} then we have over the next four to six months 60,000 of us who will become infected with the Virus.

If there is just a 1% mortality rate ^{1} among this 60,000 people, then six hundred active users will die.

If 3.4% of the 60,000 active BCT UID's contracting the COVID-19 VIRUS are fatal, that number becomes 2,040 fatalities.

At a 5% fatality rate, there will be 3,000 fewer users.

If the number of infections were 30% of all active users not 60% in the example above, then there is still the reality that up to 1,500 active BitCoinTalk users will die. ^{2}


Interesting, but so?

If the spread of deaths is uniform (it never is) then at least one user on DT1 will die, maybe five to ten depending how old the user really is.   For DT2: Anywhere from a half dozen minimum on DT2 through a couple of dozen members.

Far beyond DT2 the numbers run into the hundreds of casualties.


Over the next few months unless a user posts, or starts a thread announcing they have contracted Covid-19 and are posting a tentative "good-bye" (and then their account falls silent) we may never really know if a user dies or their account becomes inactive only to reactivate months or years later.

I can see hackers *might* try to hack Legendary accounts for resale or SigCamps and I can also see some lesser ranked Hero/Senior member for example using this pandemic as an exit scam strategy to pull a "too good to be true" exit scam.

Don't distrust, but be extra vigilant when doing trades.


Source Material.

https://www.covidus.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019
https://stsievert.com/blog/2020/03/14/covid-19/
https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
https://medium.com/@quinterojs/covid-19-infection-growth-rates-lagged-mortality-rates-and-other-interesting-statistics-ff39f5408a21

Footnote: The W.H.O. website is actually a little thin on numbers of infections and mortality rates from a quick glance over their site.

^{0} Can't find a number on the websites when I went looking just now, so let's start with 60% of us contracting Covid-19...
^{{1 Link} Case fatality rates by age group in China. Now out-of-date, as data only through 11 February 2020} places under 50 year olds at <1% fatality and age 50 - 59 years of age at 1.4% fatality with the number climbing after that.
^{2} If a large majority of the 2.7 Million registered users (let's say 2.5 Million) are real, unique users, then using the figure 60% infections is 1.5 Million users with 1% fatalities (15,000 UID's) through 5% - 75,000 fatalities - At 30% infection those numbers are still surreal - 750,000 infections, 7,500 to 37,500 deaths amongst our ranks.


Although there are warnings concerning "social distancing" and hand hygiene, I would like to also suggest one safety tip most always overlooked:  Brush your teeth regularly.  It might sound lame, but if you are coughing and spluttering all day long, the infection in your mouth will get re-swallowed and re-spread throughout your system.


Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?

Posting "I wish this person/group/country would die" is considered to be OFF-TOPIC and will be reported as off-topic...

[1714607149]

1714607149

[Timelord2067]

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[Timelord2067]

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Corrections, clarifications and concerns.

Links:



[FAKE] Covid-19 WHO website - author dkbit98


Other issues and information gleaned.

Links:

Top 1000 merit receivers who were not active the past 30 days. - Author: iasenko

If someone pass away, will their Trust feedback still exist permanently ? - OP: hd49728

[AdolfinWolf]

I don't see the correlation between a hacked account and someone dying from corona?

[nutildah]

Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?

For the purposes of the forum, I don't see how this would differ from business-as-usual handling of the issue. You're making too many assumptions. If there's mass extinction, I guarantee you we'll have more important things to worry about than whether bitcointalk accounts are hacked or not.

[Timelord2067]

I don't see the correlation between a hacked account and someone dying from corona?

I actually expected a more coherent response from yourself - did you just shit-post to get $6 $5 from your signature campaign?

For the purposes of the forum, I don't see how this would differ from business-as-usual handling of the issue. You're making too many assumptions. If there's mass extinction, I guarantee you we'll have more important things to worry about than whether bitcointalk accounts are hacked or not.

Your response is typical trolling - a mass extinction would be a far higher proportion of fatalities in which case most people would simply stop using forums.

[AdolfinWolf]

I don't see the correlation between a hacked account and someone dying from corona?

I actually expected a more coherent response from yourself - did you just shit-post to get $6 $5 from your signature campaign?

2. Posts that aren't in proper English, aren't constructive or under 100 characters will not be paid. Local boards are excluded from the "proper English" rule.

Code:

I don't see the correlation between a hacked account and someone dying from corona?

83 characters
70 characters without whitespace

Quite the opposite actually.

keeping it under 100 chars so as to not get paid for a post that's not informative while simultaneously asking why there's a correlation between hacked accounts and corona seemed like the best option to me

So again, with a fatality rate of 0.1%-0.2% between 20-50 year olds, considering 60% of the (active members of the) forum will get it, that'll mean ~ 60 deaths. Unless some high-profile users didn't secure their accounts properly, and then also died of corona (a statistical wonder for now) i don't really see the issue at hand here. Shouldn't we generally be looking out for accounts that seem hacked, etc..?

But, whatever floats your boat.

Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?

This is not a bad idea, but i think that this is already being practiced.

If the spread of deaths is uniform (it never is) then at least one user on DT1 will die, maybe five to ten depending how old the user really is.   For DT2: Anywhere from a half dozen minimum on DT2 through a couple of dozen members.

Okay, so then the account also needs to get hacked, after it has (obviously) been inactive for some time. Again, not a bad idea, but i think we all already regularly look/monitor DT1/2 accounts for irregularities.
(Plus the statistical chance of someone getting killed by Covid, that someone being in DT1, the hacker knowing the owner has died, the hacker actually being able to hack the account, seems pretty low to me. (For now.))

I guess i'm just not a fan of all this fear-mongering and speculation over relatively nothing.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I can see hackers *might* try to hack Legendary accounts for resale or SigCamps

There is already an abundance of inactive Legendary and Hero accounts. I don't think this pandemic will result in a significant change in the number being hacked or reactivated.

Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?

If someone falls seriously ill with SARS-CoV-2 and spends time in intensive care, then they will be at high risk of developing post intensive care syndrome which can bring with it months of fatigue, cognitive impairment, memory issues, focus and attention problems. Bitcoin and bitcointalk might be the last thing on their minds for a considerable length of time. A period of inactivity surrounding this pandemic doesn't necessarily mean a hacked account.

Having said that, as with all accounts which have "woken up" after a period of inactivity, asking to sign from a previously staked address or PGP key is a sensible move, bearing in mind that accounts can be sold along with previously staked addresses or PGP keys.

[ChuckBuck]

I am not interested in your topic around assumptions about members on this forum, I see a lot of assumptions made, there is no basis to confirm  But to talk about Covid-19, this terrible disease made me feel insecure  Ignoring temporarily the place I'm living, it's quite peaceful to worry. But looking at what is happening in Italy, Iran and some countries in Europe, I wonder how much worse it will be in the future. They seemed helplessly the damn spread of it  A real crisis is taking place  Meanwhile, recently, the UK still held a music festival for thousands of people attending, they didn't seem to be worried about the spread.

[nutildah]

Your response is typical trolling - a mass extinction would be a far higher proportion of fatalities in which case most people would simply stop using forums.

You asked this question:

"Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?"

Why would you want to catalog these UIDs that "fall silent" during this period? Why wouldn't we approach the issue as we already do?

[20kevin20]

We shoudn't consider a Legendary (or a DT1/DT2) user to be dead from the COVID-19 if they fall silent. There could be many underlying reasons and their privacy shouldn't be played with one way or another. If a DT1 user wants to leave the forum forever without a good-bye, it's their choice.

If a DT1 member of the forum died and a hacker took control over their account, I'd wish best of luck to the new user with using the exact same words and post structure the member had before. It's usually obvious when a new person takes over an account: take some of the threads/replies post his gap history and take some of the threads/replies pre-gap history and if there's a noticeable difference, there you go. You don't change your posting structure and wording in months.

As far as I know, the post history gaps are usually found by other members of the forum very easily so there's no need to create some kind of "deathlist" to find whether an user has died from COVID-19 or has been hacked after their death. That is usually noticeable. Moreover, we can assume the hacker will most likely reset the password - that's another little red flag. Connect all the dots and it's easy to find whether an user has been hacked or not. On the other hand though, I guess most DT1 users have a pretty strong password on the forum. Like come on - we're cryptocurrency users, we are interested in securing our wallets so we should be interested in securing our BTCTalk accounts too, right?

[TECSHARE]

I am just posting to confirm I am dead from Coronavirus. If you want to donate to my afterlife, my tip address is in my profile. Also God says hi.

[Welsh]

There's a lot of users that keep a eye on "high" level profiles on this forum. When I returned to the forum from a period of activity I had several users contact me to provide a signed message from addresses that I had previously posted on the forum. Dating all the way back to 2015.

As for the estimation of the deaths, that would be assuming that the spread of age on the forum is the same as the statistics in other countries. The statistics are chance of death will widely vary due to the fact that Bitcoin, the internet, and cryptocurrencies in general apply to a certain individual, and I would estimate that the younger generation is far more likely to be interested than those that are in their seventies plus. That also brings up the fact that there's likely a lot of programmers, and other users which can work from home, and significantly reduce the chance of getting infected. Unfortunately, due to the varying circumstances you cannot apply the same statistics of the current virus to the forum users.

I would estimate that the majority of accounts that can be hacked, have already been hacked due to the database compromises in 2015. Most active users would have likely changed their credentials or their credentials were already good enough to withstand the attacks that a malicious user could've performed on the hashed data.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I don't think this pandemic will result in a significant change in the number being hacked or reactivated.

Nor do I.  I also tend to think bitcointalk members are younger than average and would probably have a lower mortality rate than the general population--but I have no data to support this, just my impressions based on experience. 

I don't know how many members have died since I registered, either.  There have been a couple that the community was made aware of (like Zepher), but unless a member has on-forum friends that they know personally and someone notifies the community of a death, there's really no way to tell who's died.  And the only reason I'm writing this is because 600+ deaths of forum members is weird to ponder. 

And yeah, OP.  More border closings are probably going to happen, and I'm a little surprised countries haven't made that move sooner.

[Jet Cash]

Oh dear, I must be the DT1 that is set to go. I'll buy some condoms, that should give me some protection.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I can't filter who might have disappeared from the forum because of the virus but you can get some hints by just check regularly Top 1000 merit receivers who were not active the past 30 days. Then you know who is "gone" for a while.
Then I should start updating this list more often.
We have a really bad flu here in Norway (not the corona one) and many people die from this one too, you can't focus only on covid-19, accidents happen every day.
Stay safe people

[DdmrDdmr]

Ok, so I’ve been in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 positive over the past 10 days, but have not developed any symptoms (this is true, and fortunately the person is recovering fine). Should I not post in the coming days, either the synthons have made their appearance, or I’ve got an overwhelming amount of work to do, even on lockdown (although in the latter scenario I could always pop a post or two every now and then).   

By the way, there’s still a lot of fuzz around how the death rate is being calculated in different countries, and how it’s evolution is not necessarily due to clinical reasons, but rather statistical ones. For example, Germany seems to consider amongst the deceased only those where the Coronavirus was the primal cause of death. Other countries are considering those that, having died for any reason, had the Coronavirus.

Additionally, the more tests that are extended over to mild symptomatic cases, the less the death rate ratio. Spain is currently focused on testing those with clear symptoms, but not so much on those with mild symptoms, thus the death rate is higher, and will decrease as the test is extended on to the milder cases at some point.

[actmyname]

By the way, there’s still a lot of fuzz around how the death rate is being calculated in different countries, and how it’s evolution is not necessarily due to clinical reasons, but rather statistical ones. For example, Germany seems to consider amongst the deceased only those where the Coronavirus was the primal cause of death. Other countries are considering those that, having died for any reason, had the Coronavirus.

Isn't causality fun? There should be some error margin to fix due to the fact that dying of the virus is more involved than "get virus -> organ failure" but the nature of accumulated illnesses after-the-fact can also be disputed.

This kind of meta-analysis should be sought after in order to ascertain the definitive death rate. What are the chances of X occurring in a human with these illnesses? Then, add a strain of covid-19... what are the elevated chances now? Perhaps sigma of the weighted delta probabilities would grant us some more closure on the death rate. I'm not sure how countries' reported death rates compare in relation.

[philipma1957]

Your response is typical trolling - a mass extinction would be a far higher proportion of fatalities in which case most people would simply stop using forums.

You asked this question:

"Can we please have a sensible discussion of this issue and any solutions to identifying UID's that fall silent during this period and are potentially hacked/brought back to life later?"

Why would you want to catalog these UIDs that "fall silent" during this period? Why wouldn't we approach the issue as we already do?

He is suggesting the amount of inactive accounts will go up 2 or 3 or 5 fold.

[dkbit98]

Why would people believe anything they read and hear on news, tv and internet?

With stats not limiting only to covid, much more bitcointalk members and DT memberts would die from other old and well established viruses, diseases and old age.
Just sayin.