People sometimes ask how work as an expert witness (mostly in software patent cases, but also in some aviation matters) is going during the coronashutdown. I tell them that things are slow and dead… | Continue reading
My Facebook feed is packed with the Masked Faithful expressing their outrage at fellow U.S. residents’ incompetence. Examples: Ran into Meijer today – only about 1/2 the people were wea… | Continue reading
The audience for live classical music and opera is perilously close to the 82-year-old average age of a Covid-19 victim in Massachusetts (source). Concert venues are shut down by orders of the gove… | Continue reading
One of the savviest MIT professors whom I know turned some of his software expert witness consulting revenue into a lakeside Maine summer retreat. He was able to invite 10 friends at the same time,… | Continue reading
From the Chicago Sun Times, the transcript of a southern Illinois judge’s ruling against some of the governor’s dictates: Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a fa… | Continue reading
My Dutch friend, quoted in an earlier post: What was his take on the continued lockdown in the U.S.? “All of the rights that Americans fought and died in multiple wars to defend, they gave up in on… | Continue reading
On May 3, in “Doom for the wicked Swedes is always three weeks away”, the IHME prophecy for Sweden was a peak in ICU usage on May 22 and a peak in deaths (494/day) on May 23. What actua… | Continue reading
Our decision to shut down is looking ever smarter because a vaccine will be available imminently: “Fauci Voices Cautious Optimism About Moderna Vaccine, Calling Trial ‘Quite Promising'&… | Continue reading
At least with the only people who matter, the most popular TV show in our household is Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. A big topic of discussion among friends is how the stock market can be so … | Continue reading
“Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts” (CNBC): The company will begin allowing certain employees to work remotely full time, he said. Those employees… | Continue reading
MIT has already hinted that the plan for Fall 2020 is to pocket full tuition $$ while providing students with an educational experience that fits within the screen of an iPhone 11 Pro Max. A May 15… | Continue reading
Hydroxychloroquine is back in the news. I remember getting offered this drug every time I told a doctor that I was going to a tropical country. The travel warning sites regarding malaria never seem… | Continue reading
Although Florida and Texas did not have significant coronaplague, they did go into full coronapanic, including shutdown of schools even for children under 10 whom the Swiss say cannot be relevant s… | Continue reading
The school in our town shut down on the afternoon of March 12. Initially, the school decided that teachers wouldn’t be tasked with any online teaching. This was consistent with my theory that… | Continue reading
From NPR: In all, 44 states and the District of Columbia now have plans to expand their contact tracing workforce, reaching a total of 66,197 workers — an increase by 30,000 of the number that were… | Continue reading
I was an early believer that Americans could mask up and #LeaveHomeSaveLives. This belief was substantially based on the positive experience that Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and China have had with k… | Continue reading
The author of Medical School 2020 gave me an update on his training hospital. They have roughly 1,100 beds. They have admitted 24 Covid-19 patients since the plague began. There are currently 7 Cov… | Continue reading
Asked for his theory on why death rates from Covid-19 varied so much from country to country, a Dutch friend said that he thought that countries that had “better” health care systems, i… | Continue reading
As in the early decades of Indian independence, all business activity in Massachusetts is forbidden except what is specifically permitted. Our state’s License Raj has released an update: R… | Continue reading
From Atlantic, “Dear Therapist: My Boyfriend Had an Affair and Now We’re Stuck at Home Together”: I found out during the stay-at-home orders that my boyfriend of eight years has been ch… | Continue reading
Friend of friend on Facebook: What I don’t get: If masks work, why aren’t we back at work? If masks don’t work, why are we being asked to wear them? She’s a stay-at-home mom here in the Bosto… | Continue reading
The only way that I am able to demonstrate my usefulness to children is taking them to ice cream shops. Recently, however, this has been a failure. On the first warm Sunday of what we here in Massa… | Continue reading
A friend from graduate school needs a security clearance for some work that he is doing (I guess I can’t ask what!). An investigator telephoned me to check out his story and mine. She said th… | Continue reading
One of my bored-in-quarantine activities is mocking Facebook friends for their faith in various Utopian government-run schemes for winning the war against the evil coronavirus. Most of these scheme… | Continue reading
“Estimation of SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rate by real-time antibody screening of blood donors” (medRxiv; thanks, Colin!) describes testing donated blood in Denmark (nearly 10,000 sa… | Continue reading
I had called my primary care doc at the end of March to see if something should be done about the 5-week dry cough (Covid-19? Some other Massachusetts plague?). The bill arrived today for “Ph… | Continue reading
Back in 2016, I wrote “Reintroduce Prohibition for the U.S.?”, pointing out various advantages for American society if we could reduce alcohol consumption. This proposal was not well-re… | Continue reading
Our schools and cubicle farm offices shut down more than two months ago. Our “non-essential” stores a little less. So I think it is fair to say that today is roughly the day that we in … | Continue reading
I had a physical checkup scheduled for March (the U.S. health care system had so much spare capacity prior to coronaplague that it took only 3 months to get on the schedule). As part of this, the d… | Continue reading
One of the arguments advanced by citizens of our Boston suburb (Lincoln, Massachusetts) in favor of a $600/square foot renovation/reconstruction of the K-8 school (about $250,000/student, making it… | Continue reading
Here’s an ad for our new business… Readers: Where else could we promise to take the shut-in females of America? Houston’s Galleria Mall? There aren’t any yoga spas that are … | Continue reading
From Denmark: Professor in microbiology, Hans Jørn Jepsen Kolmos, thinks that facial masks will be a solution to protect ourselves from the coronavirus on multiple segments of the journey. Just not… | Continue reading
A righteous Church of Shutdowner on Facebook regarding the infidels of the frozen north: The Swedish approach makes sense if and only if you are certain that everyone is going to get the virus in t… | Continue reading
I had searched in vain to find the Swedish equivalent of the IHME model that Americans love. Surely there had to be an academic in Sweden who wanted to be interviewed by hysterical journalists abou… | Continue reading
Are you a lower-middle class taxpayer in Iowa or Arkansas? Elizabeth Warren wants you to buy $3 billion in ferry tickets for the nation’s richest people, i.e., folks who can afford summer hou… | Continue reading
Schools are reopening in Holland today (Reuters), but not in a Swedish business-as-usual manner. Children will be separated by walls of plastic. Shops and businesses in the Netherlands never closed… | Continue reading
At the end of March, I wrote “First friend with COVID-19: mild symptoms for 5 weeks”. He recently got an antibody test: So… he’s positive for antibodies to coronavirus, but … | Continue reading
The average age of a Covid-19-tagged death here in Massachusetts is 82. Thus, presumably to the extent that any lives are saved from Covid-19 by our educational, social, and economic shutdown, they… | Continue reading
Science-deniers defy and deny the settled science and, what’s worse, suggest that Covid-19 may not be a more serious problem than influenza: Yealy was asked whether people should worry about … | Continue reading
Happy Mother’s Day to those readers who identify as “mothers”! Conversation with a 10-year-old: Why do they tell us to wear masks and avoid crowds if we can’t catch coronavi… | Continue reading
From our local public radio station: “I Love My Kids But I Loathe Mother’s Day — Especially This Year”. … our culture has a pretty long rap sheet of under-appreciating women. And … | Continue reading
BBC story, April 29: Swiss authorities say it is now safe for children under the age of 10 to hug their grandparents, in a revision to official advice on coronavirus.The health ministry’s inf… | Continue reading
A friend harvested this from a (helicopter?) mom’s discussion group: I want to vent but don’t want blow back. Our 18 year old who works 6-7 hours a week filed for unemployment benefits and th… | Continue reading
A journalist friend posted on Facebook asking how people greet each other in the mask age. Her friend: I greet someone who is wearing a mask this way “GOOD MORNING, thanks for wearing your ma… | Continue reading
Do you belong to a dark-skinned inner-city victim group? Even if you’re under 20 years old and nobody your age has ever died from Covid-19 in Massachusetts, stay in your public housing 2BR wi… | Continue reading
Immigrants may have played a substantial role in the American coronaplague. Via immigration and children of immigrants we grew our population from 200 million to 330 million (Pew) with no correspon… | Continue reading
“DESPITE ONE OF WORST CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAKS IN EUROPE, BELARUS REFUSES TO CANCEL MILITARY PARADE” (Newsweek, May 6): Belarus will continue to hold its annual military parade this week, … | Continue reading
“Greta Thunberg to UN: ‘You’ve stolen my childhood with your empty words'” (DW, September 23, 2019): “You come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” a visi… | Continue reading