Reposted from Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality: What is the Real Prevalence of Coronavirus Across States? Click on the image to enlarge Tests per million times cases per test gives you confirmed cases per million. But we want true cases per million. Tests per million are different across states because (a) the states are undertaking testing with different […]
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) […]
Only two because the FDA did play an important role in the US Covid 19 testing fiasco. the first cheer is for extreme speed in approving phase 1 trials of candidate vaccines (vaccine in a person within 2 months of publication of the Sars Cov2 sequence) and phase III trials of Remdesivir (results leaking already) […]
The action sure isn’t over. The armies are still on the field, but I fear the outcome is no longer in doubt and hydroxychloroquine will lose this battle. There are two good studies which show almost exactly no benefit of hydroxychloroquine. They are reveiewed here. Basically the only benefit detected is as a nonspecific anti-inflamatory. […]
I have repeatedly argued that, based on in vitro evidence, hydroxychloroquine should be prescribed while we wait for the results of clinical trials. Such results were just published. They are very disappointing. The link is to an LA Times Article: latimes.com 2020-04-17 malaria-drugs-fails-to-help-coronavirus-patients-in-controlled-studies On the other hand Early peek at data on Gilead coronavirus drug […]
March housing, latest weekly jobless claims slightly less apocalyptic than expected If I were President, the one industry in the economy that I would be actively trying to prop up is housing. As I have repeated constantly over the past 10+ years, housing is a long leading indicator. The permit that is issued today means […]
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 […]
James Smith protesting the protestors who are practicing unsafe methods of protest. They congregate in close proximity to others, failed to wear facemasks, threatened those people who were involved in the protest, and by their actions purposely prevented people and healthcare workers from having access to Sparrrow hospital in Lansing, Michigan. Their right to protest […]
Coronavirus dashboard for April 16: if new infections have passed peak, what pace of decline can we expect? Here is the update through yesterday (April 15). Significant new items are in italics In the US, the only significant development yesterday was that deaths rose to yet another new daily high, while infections continued to be below […]
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 […]