The Angry Bear

(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 Trump is making a very convincing case for leaving things up to experts by pretending to be able to outguess them using his gut. I remain...

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 little bit for my efforts.

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. Since monthly changes in inflation are closely correlated with the gas prices, let’s start...

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 the pandemic. Many people (including the ex FDA director Gottlieb retweeted by a Senator Brian Schatz) argue that the extreme circumstances imply that delays that are normally...

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, 2020, through March 7, 2020, and have clinical data for at least 1 subsequent day.” I think I’m just...

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 agree with some of his analysis and have doubts about other parts.  But here I want to make a...

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 increase: day/day: 6% (vs. 8% for the past week, and 8% on April 9) Yesterday marked the...

CNN’s Slavish Service to Trump I had to do a double-take when I saw this news item.  First came the headline, “Pence won’t let public health officials appear on CNN unless Trump’s disinfo briefings run in full”.  I thought, this is horrible: the administration is holding Fauci and Birx hostage to force CNN to cover not only them but also Trump in his daily blatherings.  But no, it was exactly the other way around.  Pence was keeping them from being...

Why was the PREDICT Program Suspended Last Fall? A discussion from October 29, 2019: A crucial federal program tracking dangerous diseases is shutting down. Predict, a pandemic preparedness program, thrived under Bush and Obama. Now it’s canceled … Ever since the 2005 H5N1 bird flu scare, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has run a project to track and research these diseases, called Predict. At a cost of $207 million during its...

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 there.  Unfortunately so far the Houthi enemies of the Saudis and the recognized government have not so far accepted this proposed cease fire,...