Bad luck played a role in the COVID-19 pandemic, but China's criminally negligent and malevolent behavior has placed the world in a position in which bad things are likelier to occur. Therefore, China must bear the brunt of the blame, and our relationship with that country should not go back to normal.
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Scammers like to scare the elderly using coronavirus and Social Security fraud. Now, the AARP likes to scare old people over the food they eat.
Publishing propaganda as news is dishonest and lets readers down. Dr. Henry Miller (pictured), the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology, explains.
As a result, we're now paying the price for perverse, wasteful research spending.
Every morning we're greeted by another set of indicators telling us how bad or good the COVID-19 pandemic is trending. There are lots of numbers to consider, but which are actually useful?
How would we respond differently if another outbreak happened?
Niche; it can be described as a comfortable, suitable position in life, the equipoise of resources and competition. Having one’s niche, it sounds so comforting; having a special place in the world. COVID-19 may have temporarily disrupted our niche, but climate change could drastically re-alter it.
Once again, from the frontline of COVID-19's war on the elderly, a follow-up diary covering recent thoughts of two of our seniors. They are heroes in their own way.
Is sticking your finger down your throat a pleasant experience? How about sticking it down there and leaving it for three weeks? You probably wouldn't want to be awake for that, but a shortage of IV hospital drugs is causing some real problems for intubated patients on ventilators. And guess what drug they're out of? Fentanyl(!). And if you read on you'll get that, plus a bubble bath with Kim Jong-un, all in one idiotic article.
As we move towards social mingling, the official mantra is the three T’s, testing, track, and tracing. There are two bottlenecks, first having enough reliable tests; second, having the labor force, human or technological, to do the tracking. While the process of track and trace remains under development, testing is increasing and is frequently now a daily metric by government officials.
Given that PBS, in its recent documentary, “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World,” found it necessary to disparage Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug, we believe it is important for our readers, and the world, to know what a thoughtful and truly benevolent man he actually was. Here is an article about Dr. Borlaug, a co-founder of the American Council on Science and Health, that we published on July 18, 2007 after first appearing in the Washington Times earlier that day.
Media headlines are almost exclusively about the coronavirus death toll and the debate over whether it's too early to begin lifting lockdown restrictions. However, there are several other observations about COVID-19 that are important, but are getting very little attention.
Preliminary data, obtained from a randomized clinical trial of remdesivir in China, look bad. Maybe even very bad. But this doesn't mean that the drug won't be shown to be useful in other trials. Nonetheless, not good news.
Much remains unknown about the coronavirus. A new paper published in The Lancet estimates that roughly 60% of the population needs to be immune to COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity.
EIDD-2801, one of the most promising coronavirus antiviral drugs, just lept ahead of the pack. Merck has partnered with Ridgeback Biologics to develop the drug. It has a lot going for it. Here's why.
Infectious disease models can also describe riots. The spread of coronavirus and violent protests share many features in common, shedding at least some light on the coming summer of discontent.
Peer review, especially peer review of chemical safety/risk assessments, is under assault. Is something inherently wrong with the process of this area of peer review?
Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health. At issue is the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.
We tend to overlook how natural disasters like the coronavirus pandemic shape human behavior. Maybe that should change.
Somewhere along the way, our achievable goal of "flattening the curve" for COVID-19 has mutated into "finding a cure," which is perhaps an impossible one. Public health and economic policy must be based on reality, not starry-eyed wish-making. Otherwise, people's lives and livelihoods are in grave danger.
As we turn to social mingling once again, those of us blessed with 20-20 hindsight are increasingly angry at the models used by policymakers in locking us down. It is time to speak of the misuse of tools and regret.
"Recency bias" states that more recent memories come to mind more quickly. But specific ideas and objects that have “stood the test of time” can overcome recency bias. How do we take longevity into account when making judgments? Are old conserved ideas better than the novel? In the attention economy novel wins, but what about in our day-to-day lives?
The COVID-19 lockdown is responsible for both the loss of economic activity and human lives. Two independent groups of researchers concluded that the lockdown may be costing more lives than it saves.
Another “novel” feature of COVID-19 is coming to our attention: some individuals are more capable than others of sharing their viral load and infecting others. What’s up with that? Let's take a look.
American culture, specifically our disdainful attitude toward expertise and leadership, is not conducive to making improvements to public health policy. Don't expect many changes in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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