A bit of a post-mortem on my last post. Andrew Gelman discusses the Santa Clara county study here. He focuses on sample imbalances, selection bias, and especially the way the authors deal with the specificity of the test. See his post for the gory details, but he is quite critical of the study, to the […]
I want to think about how two pieces of news should change my thinking about COVID-19. (Warning: I have no expertise in medicine or public health, and you have no reason to take my thoughts seriously – but you knew that already.) A new serological study in Santa Clara county (discussed by Kevin Drum here) […]
Jason Brennan has a new post up doubling down on his earlier criticism of epidemiologists and government policy in response to the COVID crisis. I responded to his earlier blog posts here. I am still not convinced, but there are useful lessons to be learned from going through his argument. Brennan continues to claim that […]
What lessons should we draw about the role of government from the COVID-19 epidemic? I want to address this question in a few posts. I’m going to start by examining a blog post by the libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan. Brennan makes the following claims: Many medical journals published misleading papers based on bad statistical analysis […]
Senator Patty Murray has released a Democratic proposal to increase our capacity to test for the coronavirus. The report quite rightly emphasizes that expanded testing is critical for containing the epidemic and re-opening the economy. It criticizes the Trump administration for it’s failure to recognize the need for extensive testing: Democrats demand a clear, detailed […]
Thinking about the coronavirus is bleak, so let’s do some political philosophy to cheer ourselves up. Libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan has a new post up claiming that our obligations to help strangers are much weaker than we might think they are, and may not exist at all, because most people are “morally very bad”. Brennan […]
Michael Grunwald argues in Politico that House Democrats have a lot of bargaining power in negotiations over the next coronavirus relief bill, but that they are not aggressively using their leverage. He suggests that Democrats are holding back because they are worried about being labeled obstructionist and getting blamed if legislation does not pass. I […]
Kevin Drum reminds us that our fearless leader restricted air travel from China after the airlines had already done so. And today’s New York Times: New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly […]
Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is predictably chaotic, vengeful, irresponsible, and impulsive. His actions have worsened the epidemic, they have led to unnecessary deaths and to a very painful economic lockdown. Coming in the year before he is up for re-election, this seems self-defeating: if Trump could re-run history I have little doubt he […]
The Covid-19 epidemic is creating a painful dilemma for policymakers. On the one hand, we need to practice social distancing to keep people healthy and to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, this strategy is causing a severe economic contraction as people avoid contact with others. An ideal response to this dilemma would have […]