I have a piece up at Science Based Medicine digging into some misleading claims by two authors of the Great Barrington Declaration about Anthony Fauci. Frankly I was surprised at how brazen some of the misrepresentations were. For example, they criticize Fauci for being in favor of school closures, but: . . . if you […]
This doesn’t justify the NYDH guidance. In a recent post, I criticized the New York Department of Health for using race/ethnicity as risk factors when determining eligibility for Paxlovid without providing evidence that Black/Hispanic people are more likely to die if they get Covid-19 than similar White people. My criticism is not based on a […]
Donald Trump had a rally this weekend in Arizona: Former President Donald Trump on Saturday claimed that white people are being discriminated against and sent to the “back of the line” when it comes to receiving COVID-19 vaccines and treatment. Speaking during a rally in Florence, Arizona, Trump alleged that coronavirus vaccines and treatments are being unfairly […]
What are leading Democrats trying to accomplish with their current push on voting rights? It’s far from clear. One approach to voting rights reform would have been to reach out quietly to Republicans and to try to negotiate a limited bill that could win bipartisan support. Biden could express optimism that reasonable Republicans would come […]
Some libertarians oppose vaccine mandates by claiming that unvaccinated people only impose costs on themselves. However, as I noted in an earlier post, we’re all paying for the vaccine hesitancy stirred up on the right. From JAMA (footnotes omitted): Findings suggest that insurers heavily subsidized the costs of ivermectin prescriptions for COVID-19, even though economic […]
The United States is currently recording over 700,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day and the number is rising rapidly. Fortunately, vaccines are quite effective at preventing severe disease, and Pfizer’s anti-viral drug, Paxlovid is remarkably effective at preventing death and severe illness from Covid-19. However, only 265,000 courses of Paxlovid are expected by the […]
I have pointed out many times that libertarian critics of lockdowns and vaccine mandates often promote vaccine hesitancy by downplaying the effectiveness of vaccines and exaggerating their risks and the benefits of natural immunity. I had assumed that this anti-vax angle was a later addition to the libertarian playbook, a response to vaccine mandates and […]
I just read the transcript of Biden’s address on the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, which has gotten generally favorable reviews. I thought the speech highlighted an inconsistency in Biden’s approach to politics that has served him poorly. Biden has emphasized bringing the country together, working with Republicans, and returning the country to […]
Via Brad DeLong: Berlinski understates her case. The notion that liberals claim to “follow the science” and conservatives claim to do something else (what exactly?) is wrong. Everyone appeals to science in a pandemic. Conservatives claim that the science favors their preferred policies, and that people who disagree with them are corrupt, incompetent, or even […]
Almost everything wrong with the libertarian approach to covid policy has been on display at the Brownstone Institute recently: misrepresentation of facts, misdirection, revisionist history. The bad faith is almost beyond belief, except, well, it’s exactly what we have come to expect from the fine libertarians at Brownstone. The 6 essays I discuss here were […]