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 […]
Coronavirus dashboard for April 13: Plateauing and stasis Here is the update through yesterday (April 13). The bottom line is that infections and deaths appear to have plateaued, while there has been no progress towards any “test, trace, and quarantine” regimen that is the necessary next step; and to the contrary Trump appears to be […]
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 […]
(Dan here..Robert leads with a disclaimer, but I respectfully disagree it does not belong here. So this is lifed from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts). Experts and Me This is much too self indulgent for Angry Bear. I am trying to understand what I think of the recent discussion of leaving things up to the experts. Donald […]
Weekly indicators for April 6 – 10 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democratMy Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.. As you can imagine, most of the numbers are horrible. Clicking over and reading will bring you as up to date as you can be on the economy, and as usual rewards me a […]
Consumer prices sharply decline in March: keep your eye on wages This morning we got some monthly economic data that will be actually valuable to watch throughout this Coronavirus Recession: consumer prices. That’s because during recessions, consumer price growth decelerates, as does wage growth, which continues to decelerate well after the recession bottoms out. […]
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 […]
This post is not up to the standards of the New England Journal of Medicine Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19 is an important article written and published with amazing speed. The (many) authors (including professional writers) assess the experience of 53 “patients who received remdesivir during the period from January 25, […]
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 […]
Abbreviated Coronavirus dashboard for April 12: fundamentally, still flying blind Here is the update through yesterday (April 11) This is an abbreviated version, covering just the essentials. Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com) Number: up +28,391 to 530,006 (vs. 35,219 prior peak on April 10) Figure 1 ***Rate of […]