In the last two weeks of March and the first week of April, 2020 16.5 million new claims for unemployment were filed in the U.S. After the novel coronavirus is successfully contained some but not all of those jobs will return. The post-pandemic economy will not be the same as the economy before and to […]

Trump All Over The Place On Oil Prices Indeed, are we surprised? But POTUS has reached a new level of hypocrisy on all this. So a while ago when oil prices began falling sharply, Trump bragged about how much this was going to help consumers, and he should get credit for it, of course. More […]

I have had this re-posted today because I believe it is as relevant today as when I wrote it in May, 2009.  My hope is that this event we are living moves enough new people to realize the society we built is not sustainable.  My hope is that one of the basic questions I was […]

Thinking about the coronavirus is bleak, so let’s do some political philosophy to cheer ourselves up. Libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan has a new post up claiming that our obligations to help strangers are much weaker than we might think they are, and may not exist at all, because most people are “morally very bad”. Brennan […]

A thought for Sunday: a brief history of Republics anticipates Trump I just finished reading William R. Everdell’s “The End of KIngs: A History of Republics and Republicans,” which was originally published in 1983. It was interesting to read a book that treated Watergate as recent history! I want to write at more length about […]

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 […]

Michael Grunwald argues in Politico that House Democrats have a lot of bargaining power in negotiations over the next coronavirus relief bill, but that they are not aggressively using their leverage.  He suggests that Democrats are holding back because they are worried about being labeled obstructionist and getting blamed if legislation does not pass. I […]

Something Good From The Panemic? Maybe A Cease Fire In Yemen Yes, in the midst of deaths and deep recession there may be someting good that may come from this pandemic.  Saudi Arabia’s leaders have announced a cease fire in Yemen after five years of war, one also accepted by its ally, the recognized government […]

“High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases Doing my usual morning reading, I ran across a comment concerning an early release article by the CDC which as the CDC points out is not considered to be a final versions. I believe what is important about the […]

Coronavirus dashboard for April 9: Are new cases peaking? Or is a lack of testing failing to pick up continued spread Here is the update through yesterday (April 8) (NOTE: significant new developments in italics) I’ve changed the format, moving the “just the facts, ma’am” data to the top, and comments to the end. The four […]