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

Liveblogging the FDA hearing on the Moderna Covid 19 vaccine

So Far the efficacy data has been presented. As reported in the press earlier, the vaccine is roughly 95% effective, that is roughly 95% of people who got Covid 19 during the trial were participants who received the placebo. Importantly, the null hypothesis that just one dose is just as good as two was not […]

Covid update

I seem to be through the worst of it. My fever is down and my cough is subsiding. If I hadn’t gotten a covid test I would have thought I had a moderately bad cold. With a bit of luck, it’s all over except the quarantine. Thanks to everyone for their good wishes.

Paying people to get vaccinated?

Apparently there are proposals circulating to pay people to get vaccinated. (Summary here.) The pro/con story is familiar enough. Monetary incentives might increase the uptake rate; but they might also increase suspicion and backfire, or at least not be very effective. Given the large cost involved – the number cited in the linked article is […]

I have covid . . .

I’m fairly certain I picked it up this past Tuesday.   Wednesday night I had a slight throat-clearing cough.  Not sure if this was covid related or not.  Saturday I had a fever of 100.5, along with some achiness.  I got tested on Saturday and received the positive test result on Sunday.  Last night was a […]

The Failure of the Public Health Establishment

Prof. Peter Dorman of Evergreen College writes at EconoSpeak and portrays Matt Yglesias’s retrospective on how the healthcare establishment failed the public when passing information on facemasks, hand-washing, distancing, etc., and how Covid is transmitted. The direct result of not following these practices or casting doubt upon them is an elevation of Covid cases which […]

Should we worry about hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID-19 Patients? Libertarian: Nah.

Our friend Donald Boudreaux is at it again, dispensing misleading statistics that just so happen to favor libertarian outcomes. Two days ago Boudreaux posted some data on hospital capacity that seem to suggest that we do not need to worry about hospitals getting overwhelmed with COVID patients because capacity utilization over time is flat.  As […]

Social Security Trustees Update 2020 Report To Include Effects of Covid Recession

Reader and poster Dale Coberly updating Angry Bear readers on recent Social Security findings in the 2020 report. Reader Bruce Krasting had alerted Angry Bear to the publication by the Social Security Trustees of a “revised baseline” that includes effects of the Covid recession on their projections otherwise from the 2020 Trustees Report. “Updated Baseline […]

“with our breathtaking landscapes and wide-open spaces, we’re a place to safely explore.”

South Dakota: the Land of the Free. Celebrate what makes America great, and experience the Great Faces and Great Places of South Dakota. This is a bit of old news from September. Both South and North Dakota have emerged as the nations hot spots for Covid infections even though sparsely populated per square mile and […]

State Medicaid Reported Enrollment Compared to CMS’s Reports and Covid’s Impact on Medicaid

I get commentary (in my emails) from xpostfactoid who writes on healthcare issues and also does a yeoman’s function not found elsewhere  in reconciling ACA signups, the differences between the penalty-mandate vs no penalty-mandate, Medicaid signups by state in both expansion and non-expansion states, and lately the impact on Medicaid due to the Covid-19 pandemic. […]