Tag Archives: Hot Topics

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...

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,...

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...

Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Org. has a petition promoting the cancellation of Student Loan Debt. When Angry Bear ran (April 1) his commentary on Student Loan Debt asking for signatures, there were 161,000 signatures on the petition. A couple of days later, the number of signatures was approaching 200,000 Today, I was advised, they now have 211,000 signatures. If the Fed will be supporting the asset-backed markets, the primary corporate bond...

A broad topic (at least it is close to the field in which I am most nearly expert). I am going to write about policy to deal with the economic effects of the Covid 19 epidemic. There has already been an amazingly quick and huge policy response, which generally seems fairly well designed (with different reasonable approaches in different countries). Also there is, of course, an active discussion of what remains to be done and what could have been done...

(Dan here…Best to go there for the content.  And Trump is only one of many.  One could add pipelines as an issue.  Who is coordinating this onslaught while we are pre-occupied?) Via Tom Dispatch : …the latest piece by TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, author most recently of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State, on the many ways in which what may be a pandemic for the rest of us is proving to be the perfect moment for The Donald when it...

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...

I told you so on March 2 2020 The first Covid 19 case diagnosed in New Jersey Around 3 a.m. on March 10, Balani arrived at the hospital. The medicine had come in, and she did not want to wait until the morning to administer it. With Balani in the room, a nurse woke Cai up so that he could sign the legal papers. Soon after, he was hooked up, intravenously, to the drug. The next day Cai’s fever, which he’d had for at least nine days, finally broke. Even...

One of the serious issues with healthcare today is the lack of universal availability of it across the nation. In citified areas, the availability of it mostly meets the demand of the people requiring it and is in close proximity. If you travel one to two hours outside of the city, the availability of it begins to drop off until a person in need must travel hours to get to help. The resource in more rural areas begins to drop off in a precipitous manner....