Tag Archives: Healthcare

Vua Econospeak, hat tip commenter Ken Melvin for this example from Crooks and Liars of a BBC anchor being straight forward: [embedded content]BBC News to American Brodcasting: How to Open a News Segment

Coronavirus dashboard for April 11: new high in daily infections as testing falls further behind Here is the update through yesterday (April 10) I’ve changed the format, moving the “just the facts, ma’am” data to the top, and comments to the end. Significant new developments are indicated in italics. The four most important metrics are starred (***) below. Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com)  Number:...

Remdesivir and Transfer Pricing III Robert Waldmann posted his Remdesivir III: I do not understand the need for “evidence-based medicine” or rather I do not understand how the phrase is used by doctors. There is no evidence that Covid 19 patients (without heart disease) do better without Chloroquine. I learn that “evidence based medicine” does not imply choosing the therapy that a fair balance of evidence suggests is best for the patient. Pharmaceuticals...

Lessons from the Pandemic First, all who produce things we need or want are “essential workers”.  Health care practitioners are essential, but so are the people who stock pharmacies and grocery and hardware stores or staff customer service phone lines.  Truck drivers are essential.  Farmworkers who pick the crops we plan on eating are too.  Nothing demonstrates whose work matters in this world better than a pandemic that threatens to pull them off the...

Here is a moment of respite: [embedded content] Don’t stand so close to me

“High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases Doing my usual morning reading, I ran across a comment concerning an early release article by the CDC which as the CDC points out is not considered to be a final versions. I believe what is important about the preliminary information is the increase of R-naught from 2.3 to 5.7. By now I believe you know what R-naught means; but, I...

The superiority of stay at home orders vs. voluntary social distancing: two graphic proofs Here are a couple of graphs I pulled last week that I’ve been meaning to post. Together they show that mandatory “stay at home” orders have been much more effective than voluntary social distancing. First, here is a graph of the “change in distance traveled” by county during March: While almost all counties showed a sharp decline in the average distance travelled...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 9: Are new cases peaking? Or is a lack of testing failing to pick up continued spread Here is the update through yesterday (April 8) (NOTE: significant new developments in italics) I’ve changed the format, moving the “just the facts, ma’am” data to the top, and comments to the end. The four most important metrics are starred (***) below. Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 8: peak new infections *may* have occurred on April 4 – by New Deal democrat Here is the update through yesterday (April 7) I’ve changed the format, moving the “just the facts, ma’am” data to the top, and comments to the end. The four most important metrics are starred (***) below. Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com) Number: up +31,480 to 368,449 (vs. 33,787 possible...

Given Donald Trump’s enthusiastic participation, the debate on hydroxychloroquine and Covid 19 has become very heated. As I wrote here I agree with Trump. This is unusual (not unique he and I both advocating cutting interests rates long ago before the Fed Open Market Committee cut them to 0-0.25 again). My view (and as far as I can make sense of anything he says his) is that it is wise to prescribe hydroxychloroquine for patients with Covid 19 even...