Tag Archives: Healthcare

Updating the Petri dishes of democracy: population density remains a primary determinant of intensity Over the weekend I saw a map indicating that new coronavirus infections have been increasing on a relative basis in different and generally more rural parts of the country, especially in the Baltimore-Washington portion of the eastern megalopolis and the “black belt” in the South, the interior Midwest and Mountain West: Below are two charts...

This is an interesting study.  This link is to the summary.   There is a link there to the full study.   600 people with active disease of over 2 weeks completed a survey to find out just what people are experiencing with the illness.  I find the following most interesting: ● Early testing is crucial, and questions remain around test accuracy: Despite all respondents showing COVID-19 symptoms, 47.8% were either denied testing or not tested for another...

Three virus-related thoughts for Sunday There are a few posts I have been working on, but haven’t had the energy to complete.  But since I wanted to make the point, let me use this opportunity to quickly set forth a few thoughts. 1. I suspect that the virus has been “burning through the dry tinder” in March and April. At least 1/3, and possibly 1/2, of all deaths from the disease have been at nursing homes. When you consider this disease thrives on...

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 estates to retreat to don’t care, but “real” people do. The reality is different. ...

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 useful implications economic models depend on strong assumptions so economic theory isn’t very useful. He praises simple empirical...

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 preprint asserts that a combination of Remdesivir and Merimopodib completely blocks SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro. Here is the abstract The IMPDH...

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. This highlights an important behavioral aspect of the pandemic: people did not wait for their State governments to order lockdowns in...

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 deadlier than the current pandemic.  It came in three full waves, and of those the second was easily substantially larger than the other two.  The...

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 pandemic. Which means I’ve been looking for the best resources to show how the States are doing in comparison...

Arthur Dahlberg Pop-Up [embedded content]