Tag: Covid-19
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What’s next with Covid-19?
My prognostication that Covid-19 infections would abate by early November was wrong. The prediction assumed that herd immunity required 40 to 60 percent of the population to be immune for the virus to find fewer hosts and trail off. The estimate assumed that some groups would be affected less than others due to self-quarantine and…
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Light at the End of the Covid-19 Tunnel
The US Covid-19 pandemic may soon abate. A typical pattern of deaths from Covid-19 within a confined geographic/demographic boundary is characterized by rapid increase of deaths during a 4 to 6-week period followed by gradual decline during a 12 to 14-week period to near baseline. Deaths follow infections from 2.5 to 4-weeks, so rising infections…
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The Covid-19 Debate
Americans are divided over the distribution and severity of the Covid-19 virus. A wide swath of Americans view the virus as a variant of flu with its dire effects greatly overstated. On the other hand, mainstream public health officials and establishment media emphasize the dangers and risks of the virus and its threat to health…
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Covid-19 Present and Future Prospects
Public health recommendations to limit the spread of Covid-19 are social distancing, avoiding crowds, reducing exposure to closed spaces with recirculation, hand washing, and wearing masks. These are all good. However, often absent in recommendations is an important variable that bears upon the importance of these measures. The variable is the frequency of current infections…
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Some Survival Guidelines for Covid-19
Recent Covid-19 research and news has been mixed. The US Covid-19 death rate has fallen to roughly one percent from the previous 2 to 3 percent due to better treatments, increased testing, and a younger population. That’s good news. However, follow-up of recovered persons reveals about half with long-term damage to lungs, heart, kidneys, blood…
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Revisioning Government for a New Democracy
The bizarre experience of the current presidency has made abundantly clear that the US government requires an overhaul. Least the current administration take the entire hit for incompetence and kowtowing to the military-industrial complex, evidence of delusion, misappropriation, and doublespeak may be readily traced to successive Republican and Democratic administrations. The result is a parody…
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A way forward from the Covid-19 morass
The likelihood is Covid-19 is not over and done with at the end of May or June. The curve may be flattened, but unless new cases are identified through testing followed by contact-tracing, the US will be buffeted by the continuing emergence of hotspots. The most likely places for new hotspots are the same heavily…
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Is the Securities and Exchange Commission asleep at the wheel?
During the past three weeks, shorting of stocks and indices has increased tenfold to twentyfold. Shorting is selling a stock or index not owned, but presumably “borrowed” from an account of a person or entity. In this way, presumably, the number of shares sold “short” cannot exceed the number of shares available for public trading.…
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It Can’t Happen Here
During the 1960s a band called the “Mothers of Invention” produced a song called, “It can’t happen here”. Among the places it couldn’t happen was Kansas. I suspect the Mothers had in mind the 1960s revolution of pot, psychedelics, and sex. But I think of the song in a different light and this is in…