Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Coronavirus dashboard for April 30: the US has the worst record in the world, by far

Coronavirus dashboard for April 30: the US has the worst record in the world, by far Here is the update through yesterday (April 29): Number of new and total reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com and 91-divoc.com): Number: South Korea: ZERO (4 detected from incoming flights at airport) Number: Taiwan: ZERO Number: Vietnam: ZERO Number: Germany: […]

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic   The IHME model by the University of Washington has gotten a lot of attention in the past month, most likely because it has always forecast a much lower number of total deaths caused by coronavirus than, for example the Imperial College […]

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 29: actual good news on testing, deaths 

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 29: actual good news on testing,deaths  Here is the update through yesterday (April 28). This is somewhat abbreviated since I want to post about a couple of other items. As usual, new items of significance are in italics. Yesterday was the 3rd day in a row of not just significantly increased […]

Coronavirus dashboard for April 28: good news on testing at least

Coronavirus dashboard for April 28: good news on testing at least Here is the update through yesterday (April 27). s usual, significant developments are in italics. There were some late-reporting States for testing yesterday, so the initially discouraging number was actually pretty good. We are now seeing much more testing, and for the last two […]

The biochemistry of how COVID-19 attacks the body: a synopsis of the medical studies

The biochemistry of how COVID-19 attacks the body: a synopsis of the medical studies I’ve been doing some reading over the past several weeks, trying to understand how the COVID-19 virus attacks the human body. Below are quotes I found most noteworthy or interesting from these articles. In essence, they indicate that biochemically the novel […]

Heads up for tomorrow!

Heads up for tomorrow! Tomorrow morning I have a very long post quoting about 20 medical articles at length, explaining (what we think we know so far about) the whole biochemistry of how the novel coronavirus attacks the body. By the time you finish reading it, you will understand a lot about why the disease […]

Jobless claims still point to over 20,000,000 lost jobs in April, 15%+ unemployment rate

Jobless claims still point to over 20,000,000 lost jobs in April, 15%+ unemployment rate As I’ve written in the past few weeks, the number of initial jobless claims correlates roughly with the number of net new jobs added or subtracted in any given month. Normally there is too much noise for it to be of […]

The actual US coronavirus trajectory: “flattening the curve” at least until 2021

The actual US coronavirus trajectory: “flattening the curve” at least until 2021 “Flattening the curve” was not such an appetizing option either, because it meant that *everybody* got infected with the disease during the period of flattening, and so the death toll would still be horrifying, perhaps 1% to 3%. It also meant that the […]

Rates of testing, positive tests, and new infections by State

Rates of testing, positive tests, and new infections by State So that I don’t lose them, I wanted to publish both the rates of testing (and positive tests) by State, as well as the (Rt) or rate of new infections for each. Both of these are as of last week. Here is the rate of […]