Wednesday, 1 December 2021, the state of Mississippi argued before the US Supreme Court that the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision [410 U.S. 113 (1973)] giving women a constitutional right to have an abortion was in error; that it should be overturned. During Wednesday’s oral arguments, Justice Sotomayor asked Mississippi’s Solicitor Stewart whether Mississippi’s challenge was premised on religious grounds. No doubt about that. In Missouri, Alabama,...
Read More »Omicron at Slow Boring
I think every word of Matthew Yglesias’s post on Omicron, Omar Bradley, and why the hell aren’t we investing in pandemic prevention is brilliant. I think it is publicly available (I didn’t pay) and advise just clicking the link. For those who ignored the above advice, I would like to focus on two main points First he argues that we should invest in the capacity to make large amounts of vaccines against currently unkown viruses. This...
Read More »Half of what you read about Omicron is wrong, but you won’t know which half for weeks
Coronavirus dashboard for November 29: half of what you read about Omicron is wrong, but you won’t know which half for weeks, New Deal democrat As with any “Breaking News!” event, about half of what you read will be wrong. The problem is, nobody knows which item falls in which half. Recognizing that you need to step back a little bit and “wait a week” to see how the more breathless commentary plays out can save a lot of aggravation. In that...
Read More »Moderna’s Intellectual Property
Robert Waldmann has some questions and thoughts! Hi Robert, AB upgraded the way we post now. (run75441). I am going to ask someone to engage your post who has far greater knowledge than I or anyone else has. He is a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and participated in the Moderna clinical trials. I am fairly sure that I am going to regret this post. Also it will be extremely long with almost exactly zero overlap with any field in...
Read More »Explaining Mutations and Variants
Blogger and Commenter Professor Joel Essenberg addresses Covid variants being called mutations. As a geneticist, I am troubled by the promiscuous use of the word “mutation” to describe amino acid or nucleotide differences from a reference sequence. In nearly all cases, there is no known functional significance attached to these differences. Accordingly, the differences are best referred to as “variants,” not mutations. I’ve had my genome...
Read More »Pessimistic and optimistic scenarios for the winter wave
Coronavirus dashboard for November 26: pessimistic and optimistic scenarios for the winter wave, New Deal democrat I hope all of you had a Happy Thanksgiving. Since I haven’t posted one in a bit, here is an update on the pandemic.As an initial matter, in the last day or two, there has been a mini-panic about a new strain out of South Africa called B.1.1.529 which may or may not get the designation Nu. While this *may* be a concern, I wouldn’t...
Read More »As the winter wave takes hold, how much will resistance from prior infections hold numbers down?
Coronavirus dashboard: As the winter wave takes hold, how much will resistance from prior infections hold numbers down? Europe and North America, the winter wave is underway. While vaccinations clearly work, in most countries of the West there is a reservoir of defiant anti-vaxxers, who are not going to get vaccinated unless they are absolutely forced to. What does that mean for the present, immediate, and longer term future of endemic COVID?...
Read More »Coronavirus: regional variations and the winter wave
Coronavirus dashboard for November 12: regional variations and the winter wave There’s a glitch in 91-Divoc collecting Johns Hopkins data, so the State by State totals have not been updated for several days, but here is Our World in Data’s update for the US as a whole: As of yesterday, cases are up only 3.5% from their recent low 2 weeks ago.Meanwhile, deaths have also stopped declining, but have not increased from their low of just...
Read More »Continuing the Conversation on Medicare and Medicare Advantage – 2
Where we are in the Conversation VBP: I had stopped the dialogue on Kip Sullivan’s paper Medicare’s “Value-Based Payment (VBP)” programs are Failing on page 3 of 12 pages so as to detail it as much as possible and breaking this portion out for readers. It can be reviewed here. This part of Kip’s paper gets to the root of why Value-based rewards to Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) will not work. It is also detailing why Value Based Payments...
Read More »Vaccinating Big Bird, Children, and Giving Adults a Choice to Vaccinate
Sesame Street’s Big Bird Gets a Covid Vaccination After Sesame Street’s Big Bird tweeted that he received the COVID-19 vaccine, Sen. Ted Cruz and other right-wing media figures criticized the character for promoting “propaganda” to children. Sesame Street launched a promotional campaign during the past week after the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for ages 5-11, according to Insider. Big Bird@BigBird I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!...
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