The Angry Bear

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 of London’s model, that forecast over 1 million US deaths if no quarantine measures were put in place. But that model has come in for a lot...

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 is optional. –you can obtain groceries and shop on line, but having a job is optional. –other people work at farms, factories, and...

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 good times, to eke out a living. (The history of how is it that they come to live on these lands is the stuff of anthropology.) These...

 Which Nations Have Most Rapid Rate Of Increase In Deaths Per Million from SARS-Cov-2? As of earlier today, 4/29/20,. according to “Our World in Data” ourworldindata.org/coronavirus, there are currently nine nations that based on looking at the three-day rolling average, have rates of increase of more than 5 per million per day.  They are in order with their rates: Belgium 15.97 Ireland 10.73 UK 9.2 Spain 9.01 Sweden 8.38 Italy 7.82 France 7.32 USA 6.2...

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 foundation is on it committing to mass produce 6 candidate vaccines. A remaining problem is that proof of effectiveness takes a...

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 large double blind randomized controlled trial. The null of no effectiveness was rejected using the principal outcome measure. This is the sort of outcome which...

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 testing, but actual lower number of infections found by that testing – a very good sign. The 7 day average of deaths also...

An Update on Shadow Government Not only is the current level of testing for the coronavirus insufficient, the tests themselves are flawed.  Read this summary by infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm and a coauthor for particulars.  Their key policy conclusion is A blue-ribbon panel of public health, laboratory and medical experts, ethicists, legal scholars and elected officials should be convened immediately to set out a road map with...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 28: good news on testing at least Here is the update through yesterday (April 27). s usual, significant developments are in italics. There were some late-reporting States for testing yesterday, so the initially discouraging number was actually pretty good. We are now seeing much more testing, and for the last two days an actual decrease in new infections being found. One problem is that this is mainly due to one State:...