I am back complaining about the FDA as I have in The Ethics of Clinical Trials and 10 years earlier Clinical Trial Ethics (an aside — I had forgotten the old post and Google reminded me that I have been banging this drum for a decade). Now I have a lot of company, because of […]

This post is not up to the standards of the New England Journal of Medicine Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19 is an important article written and published with amazing speed. The (many) authors (including professional writers) assess the experience of 53 “patients who received remdesivir during the period from January 25, […]

A broad topic (at least it is close to the field in which I am most nearly expert). I am going to write about policy to deal with the economic effects of the Covid 19 epidemic. There has already been an amazingly quick and huge policy response, which generally seems fairly well designed (with different […]

Given Donald Trump’s enthusiastic participation, the debate on hydroxychloroquine and Covid 19 has become very heated. As I wrote here I agree with Trump. This is unusual (not unique he and I both advocating cutting interests rates long ago before the Fed Open Market Committee cut them to 0-0.25 again). My view (and as far […]

I told you so on March 2 2020 The first Covid 19 case diagnosed in New Jersey Around 3 a.m. on March 10, Balani arrived at the hospital. The medicine had come in, and she did not want to wait until the morning to administer it. With Balani in the room, a nurse woke Cai […]

I’m not even going to try to organize this post. I am in self quarantine 6 days after having either the mildest cold I can remember or a mild case of Covid 19 (this means alone in an Air BnB away from my family too). The pattern is the same I have read about countless […]

The USA is about to experience the largest fiscal policy shift since World War II. The House is debating whether to add $ 2,200,000,000,000 to the Federal Budget Deficit (counting loans as if they were expenses because that’s what they do). There appears to be a near consensus as all are speaking in favor. It […]

For 3 days from an abundance of caution, 4 hours a day of online teaching responsibilities and extreme laziness, I have stayed in an apartment usuaally in a bed. Rome is a bit different than was I went into hibernation. There are people walking around without dogs on a leash. Some cars. There was a […]

A clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine with 30 patients (15 treated 15 controls) has been completed in Shanghai. It is the first genuine randomized trial. It reports no evidence that hydroxychloroquine works at all. It is true, that given the principal outcome measure defined in advance, the trial has no power. Not low power, 0 power. […]

Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine are being tested as components of multi-drug cancer chemotherapy. I have noticed that when I tweet this, people conclude that I am insane. However this is not a tiny literature. \ Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO)—chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as anti-cancer agents is a long review article and meta analysis. It cites seven […]