Infections in US States by population density Since COVID-19 is a communicable disease, it should hardly be a surprise that the most densely populated States have the most cases per capita, and conversely the least densely States have the least cases. But since that basic point is lost in a lot of the analysis, let’s […]
A Very Grey Swan Keynes and Knight famously simultaneously in 1921 identified the concept of fundamental uncertainty as a situation not understandable by using a probability distribution, an idea popularized by Nassim Taleb just as the 2008 crash happened as a “black swan.” Taleb defined white swans as situations describable by Gaussian normal distributions. For […]
by Ken Melvin Are capitalism and democracy compatible? Both Capitalism and Democracy are complicated, complex concepts with varying interpretations. Beginning with a working definition of democracy: Democracy — A government formed of representatives popularly elected by the enfranchised citizenry of the governed entity. Webster’s : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people […]
There is a severe Remdesivir shortage On March 2 2020, I warned you that this was going to happen. I did not warn about the opaque and arbitrary Trump administration policy, because the Trump administration is always “worse than you imagine possible even taking into account the fact that it is worse than you imagine […]
Comparing the US’s coronavirus response with its Western European peer group Western Europe is a reasonable peer group of countries against which to compare the US response to coronavirus. The 5 largest countries in Western Europe in particular – in order, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain – together have a population of about […]
Potential Pricing for Remdesivir The FDA has approved Remdesivir for emergency use and Gilead Science will denote its current 1.5 million vials, which could potentially treat 300 thousand patients as it takes 5 to 10 treatments per patient. The WHO wants more Remdesivir: The World Health Organization said Monday that it will speak with the U.S. government […]
It looks like many states are preparing to end stay at home quarantine. If you look at the numerous charts around on the number of new coronavirus-19 cases reported each day it looks encouraging. They show a peaking and a very slow decline or at best a plateau. However, this plateau is the product of […]
by Ken Melvin The Road to Calvary From: What to Think To: What to Believe From 15 to 30mins of TV Evening News in 1970 to 24hr TV News in 1980; then on to Fox News in 1996. From the 1950s print journalists and radio news broadcasts, to TV Evening News, to 24hr TV telegenic news […]
A note about the weekly and monthly economic data For the past month or so, with the exception of the weekly catastrophe of new jobless claims it hasn’t been very important to keep track of the economic data. Now that it is May, that will start to change with the weekly data as of next […]