Angrybearblog December 22,2020 “Eyeballing, the first shot looks 80-90% effective.” (Moderna) and “my guess is that the first shot was about 90% effective over this period.” (Pfizer). Angrybearblog December 24,2020 New England Journal of Medicine February 17 2021 We used documents submitted to the Food and Drug Administration2 to derive the vaccine efficacy beginning from 2 […]
As is very rare, I find myself disagreeing with Josh Marshall who asked “What Were the Democratic Senators Thinking?” when they agreed to accept Representative Jaime Herrera-Beutler’s assertions (that Trump sided with the insurgents over minority leader McCarthy’s) in writing when Trump’s lawyers stipulated that they could be assumed to be accurate. First, I will […]
Larry Summers has responded to his critics. My first thought is, yes he is still really smart. Also Olivier Blanchard also thinks the Covid Relief bill is too generous, and, in particular objects to the $1400 for most Americans. Note that Blanchard is the author of the main citation in my critique of Summers (although […]
It seems that many people have concerns about Larry Summers’s concerns about overdoing the Covid 19 Relief bill. My first reaction to his op-ed is here, but I realize that I had more nearly relevant things to say in the Debt and Taxes series and, in particular in debt and taxes I and debt and […]
Early this morning the Senate passed a budget resolution telling committees to spend an additional $ 1.9 T on Covid relief. Yesterday, Larry Summers wrote an op-ed expressing concerns about the imminent resolution. Like many many many people, I disagree in part. Oddly, I think I disagree less strongly with Summers than most US adults […]
I didn’t expect this to be a series of posts, but there is news since I wrote post number III. There is a partial change of subject, because the news concerns the Oxford/AstraZeneca adenovirus based vaccine and not the mRNA based vaccines which I discussed before. In the UK they decided to delay the second […]
First, I want to discuss the evidence on effectiveness of the first dose of the BioNTech Pfizer Covid 19 vaccine. The data from few person – weeks of the phase III trial suggested that one dose was highly effective after 10 days. This is based on 4 of roughly 40 cases in vaccinated participants. Much […]
The reliably brilliant Catharine Rampell argues against giving $1400 to quite so many people. She notes The Democratic-controlled House passed legislation in December to expand stimulus payments to $2,000. This was marketed as aid to the poor and middle class, but the bill would have given some money to 94 percent of households — including those making over […]
What are we going to do about Mitch McConnell and his enabler Jim Manchin ? McConnell is blocking the establishment of committees for the 117th Senate. This means that the committees with Republican Chairs and Republican majorities will exist and operate in the Senate with a Democratic majority. He demands that Democrats promise not to […]
Fifth and last. Not relevant to the USA. Back in the day when US unions weren’t totally feeble, MacDonald and Solow wrote a brilliant paper on collective bargaining and tax based incomes policy. Imagine a world in which firms must negotiation with unions (for example imagine Europe). The unions have two aims — they want […]