From Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, via the Daily Mail: Coronavirus could already have infected HALF the British population and been spreading in the UK since JANUA… | Continue reading
We’d like to buy or lease a new car, but right now we have two cars and almost nowhere to go. I expected to fight through traffic to Harvard Medical School every day this month. Instead, I… | Continue reading
Email received from the president of Harvard, Larry Bacow, today at 1:15 pm: Earlier today, Adele and I learned that we tested positive for COVID-19. We started experiencing symptoms on Sunday—firs… | Continue reading
As soon as the coronaplague hit Massachusetts, Boston’s government-run public transit system (MBTA) cut its schedule. Despite the reduced number of people trying to move around, the result wa… | Continue reading
A ray of sunshine in these dark COVID-19 times, from the Harvard Bookstore, Yes She Can: 10 Stories of Hope & Change from Young Female Staffers of the Obama White House: It’s part of a se… | Continue reading
What do the Russians get up to when they’re not interfering in our elections? Thus far, stopping coronavirus pretty much dead in its tracks (see “Why does Russia, population 146 million… | Continue reading
“Coronavirus disease 2019: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures,” a peer-reviewed article by John Ioannidis, best-known for “Why Most Published Res… | Continue reading
A friend’s son developed a low fever last week, a stiff neck, and some other cold/flu-type symptoms. He is a strapping college-age lad. She arranged a doctor’s appointment for him last … | Continue reading
David St. Hubbins: “It’s such a fine line between stupid.” My idea for an airline that wouldn’t sell its middle seats was greeted with derision back in December 2019. Appare… | Continue reading
A good movie plot involves a Cassandra-like figure warning humanity and doom ensuing when the warnings aren’t heeded. Coronaplague seems to fit this narrative perfectly. From New Yorker magaz… | Continue reading
The biggest inequality of coronavirus is that those who are fortunate enough to be young and healthy have the additional good fortune of being less likely to suffer serious consequences from an inf… | Continue reading
We have Holocaust deniers. We have climate change deniers. I’m wondering what we call the author of “Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19”. He marshals a lot of scientific-sounding e… | Continue reading
On the lighter side of a dark topic… will Americans start naming dogs “Community Spread”? Separately, Mindy the Crippler has never been happier. She has her whole family home almo… | Continue reading
Stupid question… Why isn’t hand sanitizer back on store shelves? I can understand how all of the product in stock as of a week ago got sold. But the production lines are still running. … | Continue reading
Happy first day of spring. Will this be mating season, to the extent that cisgender heterosexual couples are imprisoned within their homes, to be followed by a January 2021 baby boom? Or, as a frie… | Continue reading
I made it out to the local supermarket recently. The folks in our town who previously said that helping the vulnerable was their only priority continue to keep it stripped of the hand sanitizer and… | Continue reading
FAA Air Traffic Controllers have been there for us on Christmas, in the wee hours of boring weekdays, etc. Towers are shutting down, now, one by one, as coronaplague sweeps over the nation. Las Veg… | Continue reading
Under the principle of cui bono we should suspect our canine companions of spreading coronavirus. The whole family is home all the time and formerly house-imprisoned dogs are getting walked six tim… | Continue reading
Bad news if you’re unhealthy: “99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says” (Bloomberg): More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffere… | Continue reading
The Samsung repair guy came into our pantry/laundry closet last week to fix the dryer. I cleared mountains of clutter away from the appliance, including 11 rolls of paper towels, 29 rolls of Charmi… | Continue reading
Our town is building what is, on a per-student basis, the most expensive school ever constructed in the United States. Thus, when it comes time to do sex ed they need to rely on materials from Proc… | Continue reading
Email from the president of Harvard University: I write to follow up on the message you received Wednesday from HUHS Executive Director Giang Nguyen regarding two members of our community who have … | Continue reading
What do you call someone who washes his hands 30 times a day? “OCD,” right? As the coronaplague spreads, what do you call someone who washes his hands 30 times a day? “Alive”… | Continue reading
From three days ago: “If the British are right, everything the U.S. is doing about coronavirus is wrong”. If you’re not like my friends on Facebook who get all of their scientific… | Continue reading
From a friend, a few days ago: We were supposed to be in Vienna today for a short vacation, but the city is at high risk and we would have had to be quarantined on the way back. The hotel refused t… | Continue reading
My Facebook friends who previously posted mournful and/or urgent messages regarding climate change are now posting messages about the calamity of coronavirus (also how it would hardly bother us at … | Continue reading
From “Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT scientist and researcher” (also the inventor of email)… “MIT biologist says fear mongering on coronavirus will go down as biggest fraud to … | Continue reading
President Trump can stop new cases of coronavirus from being diagnosed in the United States. All that it would take is a one-line Executive Order: “The U07.1, 2019-nCoV ICD-10 code is non-rei… | Continue reading
From my secret source in Ireland… “Coronavirus: What are the British up to?” (RTE): The UK scientific and medical advisers do not expect the infection rate to peak for another thr… | Continue reading
Friends on Facebook are demanding that the Federal government (i.e., taxpayers) underwrite unlimited paid sick leave in order to stop the coronavirus plague. This sounds reasonable. We don’t … | Continue reading
“The Purell presidency: Trump aides learn the president’s real red line” (Politico, January 7, 2019): A self-described germaphobe, the 45th president is strictly enforcing proper hygien… | Continue reading
Yesterday I asked “What is the point of closing universities and companies if K-12 schools remain open?” Today it seems that a bunch more nearby K-12 schools are closed. The decisions a… | Continue reading
My friends in the charter business are saying that demand is up at least 15 percent due to coronavirus paranoia (how many Americans need to be hospitalized before we say that it isn’t “… | Continue reading
“Trudeau self-isolates at home as wife awaits coronavirus test results” (Politico): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau entered self-isolation Thursday as his wife, Sophie, awaited test resul… | Continue reading
A lot of U.S. universities seem to be sending the students home to catch glimpses of the truth via Internet (it will be like Plato’s cave, but with LED backlighting instead of a climate-destr… | Continue reading
A Facebook friend who is passionate about both Elizabeth Warren and the Rainbow Flag (LBGTQIA+) religion posted “Elizabeth Warren endured sexism at every step of her campaign” (Guardian… | Continue reading
“Stanford cancels in-person classes due to coronavirus”: In-person classes at Stanford University will be canceled beginning March 9th, as a faculty member has tested positive for coron… | Continue reading
… according to JetBlue.com. When looking for LAX to BOS: “Proof of return travel is often a requirement for one-way international flights like this. Please check with your destination c… | Continue reading
A friend is a physician at a Boston-area hospital with nearly $1 billion in annual revenue and more than 250 beds. This evening I asked what he would do if a patient came in with the full slate of … | Continue reading
Thought experiment: What stocks will go up in response to the coronavirus plague? One idea: Comcast and similar cable TV stocks. If people are stuck at home they won’t mind paying for premium… | Continue reading
Another day, another batch of primary elections. (How are the candidates doing?) I recently finished Edison by Edmund Morris. It turned out that, like the Iowa Democrats, Thomas Edison thought that… | Continue reading
Right now we’ve tried to close our border with China. The US State Department says don’t go there. Airline flights have been cut back. Yet what if the widely mocked Chinese government turns o… | Continue reading
“The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, includes a great lecture on economics. One of the effects of a reduction in popu… | Continue reading
… but there will be a epidemic of coronavirus in the U.S. if the millions of immigrants who can’t afford health care at U.S. rates are denied health insurance welfare (Medicaid). “… | Continue reading
Karl Marx remains one of the most referenced and taught authors in Academia today. The best that one has been able to say about him was that he was a great historian and sociologist, but a failure … | Continue reading
Apologies for the macabre subject, but with everyone freaking out about the coronavirus, I’m wondering if it makes sense to step back and ask why the Diamond Princess wasn’t a worst-cas… | Continue reading
… offered for sale on land once owned by Native Americans who were dispossessed by settler colonialism. From the window of the Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Where has the auth… | Continue reading