Monthly Archives: March 2020

The Deadly Chimeric Virus Has Many Strains The origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus are wreathed in mystery. There are some who may wish the mystery is never solved. Someone manufacturing a virus targeting people would have started with one that … Continue reading →

Private industry is capable of responding to a crises — if it is taken off its government leash. Abbott is in the midst of ramping up production and expects to deliver 50,000 of the tests per day in the US … Continue reading →

Update: Preliminary report on clinical treatment of coronavirus with convalescent plasma: Five critically ill patients with confirmed COVID-19 and with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), who also had the following — severe pneumonia with rapid progression and continuously high viral … Continue reading →

The current tests being used for Wuhan Coronavirus are far slower than desired. If we truly want to be hot on the trail for current cases so that we can trace & test contacts quickly, we need a fast test. … Continue reading →

Some Experts Believe the Virus May Have Escaped a Lab Viruses in the same family as Wuhan Coronavirus are routinely collected and studied at minimal protection levels, making lab accidents and viral leaks more likely. Ebright thinks that it is … Continue reading →

… The governors’ [of New York, California, and Illinois] numbers are hysterical and sloppy. None of them have released any detailed study that purported to support their extreme [economic shutdown] decrees. There was no opportunity for the many critics of … Continue reading →

Old, Sick Italians are Dying with Coronavirus Wuhan Coronavirus is loose inside the Italian medical system. While there, it preys upon health care workers. 4,824 of them so far. Most of these Italian healthcare workers will survive the virus. But … Continue reading →

I have kept public health and economics separate, but they no longer are. Shutting down the economy is a public health measure. The costs of this measure are astronomical — at least a trillion dollars per month. __ John H. … Continue reading →

The Wuhan Coronavirus is stealthy, quick to spread, and often deadly. The Chinese government gave the virus a head-start by covering up the infection for seven precious weeks — and missed the opportunity to reduce the spread by 95%. But … Continue reading →

Fear is contagious: Fear is more contagious than any virus could ever be, and the media has really fed the fear factor when it comes to the coronavirus. __ William Murray Democratic Governors of California and New York Push Panic … Continue reading →

Why would anyone expect the US to run out of toilet paper? There should be a special word for that kind of insanity. “All the grocery stores are going to have pallets of toilet paper sitting in the aisles, and … Continue reading →

Good and Bad Data are Intermixed We have to use all the data we can get, even while we know that a lot of the data is misleading. The data collected so far on how many people are infected and … Continue reading →

About 35 companies and academic institutions are racing to create such a vaccine [for Wuhan coronavirus], at least four of which already have candidates they have been testing in animals. The first of these – produced by Boston-based biotech firm … Continue reading →

When making sense of an epidemic, we want to know how fast it is likely to spread, and how many cases of the infection are likely to die from the disease. In the case of the recent China virus, these … Continue reading →

The Washington Post website features 4 fascinating epidemic simulation scenarios. At that site you can observe simulated epidemic spread of a contagious respiratory disease like Wuhan Coronavirus — under 4 distinctly different conditions. The first simulation illustrates how an epidemic … Continue reading →

Europe Has Been Reluctant to Restrict Travel From Infected Regions China is reporting significant slowing of its rate of new infections with the Wuhan Coronavirus. The epicenter of both new infections and of deaths from the virus seems to have … Continue reading →

After the deadly SARS epidemic hit China, Hong Kong, and Singapore in 2002/2003, their governments took steps to see that they would never be taken by surprise by a virus again. China failed miserably. Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, it … Continue reading →

What Virus is Killing Hundreds of Thousands? For now, influenza remains the far bigger global public health threat. Each year, about 1 billion people become infected with seasonal flu, killing some 300,000 to 500,000. This season alone (2019-20), about 20,000 … Continue reading →