Coronavirus dashboard: updating the 52 Petri Dishes of democracy [Note: There is no significant economic data today (Dan here…May 13) Thursday we’ll get initial claims, and on Friday retail sales and industrial production for April, both of which will be important] Here is the update through yesterday (May 12). I will restart giving the daily […]
April deflation follows a typical recessionary pattern This morning’s consumer price index for April gives us our first indication of what the coronavirus recession has done to inflation. Overall consumer prices declined by -0.8% (blue), while consumer prices excluding energy (gas) declined -0.2% (red). Note that in 2015 when gas prices collapsed, prices otherwise continued […]
Reopening Isn’t Reopening—It’s Cutting Off Unemployment Donald Trump, cheering on his “warriors” who demand that states lift their lockdown and distancing orders (where they have them), would have you believe this is about bringing the economy back to life so ordinary people can get their jobs and normal lives back. Elitist liberals who work from home and have country […]
I am interested in critiquing my understanding of the simplest SIR epidemiological model and also praising a critique of an effort to extend the model and guide policy developed by some very smart economic theorists. First the useful point is that this post by Noah Smith is brilliant. As is typical, Smith argues that the […]
Tired: Remdesivir Wired: Merimopodib Inspired: Both Merimopodib (of which I just read for the first time) is an inhibitor of an enzyme used to make Guanosine. Viruses need a lot of Guanosine (and other nucleosides) to reproduce, so it is an antiviral. It can be taken orally and there is a known safe dose. A […]
If you open it, they still won’t come: restaurant edition In case you haven’t already seen it, here is the OpenTable restaurant reservation data from 3 Confederate States that “reopened” their economy at the end of April: Even though restaurants were open again, reservations were still down over 80% from a year ago.
How Likely Is A Second Wave Of SARS-CoV-2? Dr. Anthony Fauci has testified before a Senate committee that he is worried that there may be a serious “Second Wave” of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the United States. The basis for this fear is the experience over a century ago with the Spanish flu, still […]
The Greater Good “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow Originally written in 2018 on the Save The Post Office blog and featured at Angry Bear in 2019, retired North Carolina Post Master Mark Jamison wrote on the issues facing […]
Testing and the 52 Petri dishes of democracy Since the federal government has abandoned the field, fighting the coronavirus pandemic has been left to the States, territories, and the District of Columbia. This means that there is no unified response and instead there are 52+ individual responses. That is the biggest challenge in tracking the […]