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

Coronavirus dashboard for April 30: the US has the worst record in the world, by far

Coronavirus dashboard for April 30: the US has the worst record in the world, by far Here is the update through yesterday (April 29): Number of new and total reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com and 91-divoc.com): Number: South Korea: ZERO (4 detected from incoming flights at airport) Number: Taiwan: ZERO Number: Vietnam: ZERO Number: Germany: […]

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic   The IHME model by the University of Washington has gotten a lot of attention in the past month, most likely because it has always forecast a much lower number of total deaths caused by coronavirus than, for example the Imperial College […]

Conservative rhetoric, COVID-19, and Lockdown Socialism

Arnold Kling has a recent post up on “Lockdown Socialism”: I’ve seen headlines about polls showing that people are afraid of restrictions being lifted too soon. To me, it sounds as if they prefer what I call Lockdown Socialism. Under Lockdown Socialism: –you can stay in your residence, but paying rent or paying your mortgage […]

Tip of the Iceberg

by Ken Melvin (reader Ken Melvin offers more on climate change) Tip of the Iceberg Around the world, the poorest live on marginal land. Land where, whether due the shortness of the growing season, frequent flooding, lack of moisture, poor quality of the soil, temperatures, altitude …, it is difficult for them, even in the […]

Accelerating Vaccine Development

How can deployment of a Sars Cov2 vaccine be speeded up ? One important step is to make a lot of candidate vaccines while testing for effectiveness. Usually, there is testing, approval than producing. Since producing a lot then testing makes no business sense, it is a project for states or charities. Unsurprisingly the Gates […]

Remdesivir 7

The NIAID Trial of Remdesivir has closed early, because they concluded it was not ethical to treat people with placebo given what they consider proof that Remdesivir is effective. This is huge news (I am surprised that the Dow Jones only went up 2% not that I care about the Dow Jones). This is a […]

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 29: actual good news on testing, deaths 

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 29: actual good news on testing,deaths  Here is the update through yesterday (April 28). This is somewhat abbreviated since I want to post about a couple of other items. As usual, new items of significance are in italics. Yesterday was the 3rd day in a row of not just significantly increased […]