Tag Archives: Hot Topics

As noted in my last post, I have been looking at data. This usually causes trouble, and today is no exception. As anyone who was paying attention predicted, the “Easter Effect”–a large gathering of people (“EC” or Otherwise) in an enclosed area that likely has multiple asymptomatic carriers (and likely a few with symptoms) is a recipe for infection. With a two- to three-week gestation period, that there was going to be an increase in cases at the end of...

I was a vehement advocate of prescribing hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) off label while waiting for the results of clinical trials. I wasn’t all that much embarrassed to agree with Donald Trump for once. Now I feel obliged to note that my guess was totally wrong. I thought that the (uncertain) expected benefits were greater than the (relatively well known) costs. The cost is that HCQ affects the heart beat prolonging the QT period (from when the atrium...

I am reading this on Bloomberg entitled “Saudi oil rush threatens to disrupt stabilizing U.S. oil market.” These shipments are planned, Saudis are not sending this over out of the goodness of their hearts. Furthermore, the shipments themselves take roughly 21 days to get to the US. The orders were placed over 3 weeks ago. When you have a lot of US capacity which produces at a higher price and we are seeking to become oil independent and we are seeking to...

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...

The Greater Good “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow Originally written in 2018 on the Save The Post Office blog and featured at Angry Bear in 2019, retired North Carolina Post Master Mark Jamison wrote on the issues facing USPS while in competition with Amazon, UPS, and FedX. The same issue has been brought to the forefront again with President Trump refusing to...

What happens when you downsize a large number of people? Well, it depends on the cohort downsized. In this case, [embedded content] That’s correct; Average Hourly Earnings skyrocketed from $28.67 to $30.01: up $1.34. For context, that one-month change matches the average hourly earnings growth from September/October of 2018 until March of this year–18 months of increases in a month. And all it took was eliminating the jobs of about 6% of the U.S....

by Ken Melvin What to do About The Schools There needs to be a plan in place that deals with: grade levels, Covid Virus testing, schedules, classroom size, in-school traffic flow patterns, staffing, transportation, …  The how and when are tied together. And yes, all these are interconnected. How to safely get 3,000 high school students to and from school; from class to class; to, into and out of classrooms; to, into and out of the cafeteria; … ...

National Geographic published this.  This seems to be an unusual topic for that publication and I wonder why Fauci selected  it. Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab The rest is copied exactly from National Geographic Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shot down the discussion that has been raging among politicians and pundits, calling it “a circular argument” in a...

About a month ago I wrote on the COVID 19 plight of the Navajo Indians in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham requested military field hospitals to be set up to handle the fast moving virus. Trumps comment was, “Wow, that’s something.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency together constructed three reservation field hospitals to be used as alternative care sites according to the tribe earlier...