We Should Worry About the Omicron Mouse Origin Theory
The news that the Omicron strain of SARS-Cov2 has mouse fingerprints all over it probably didn’t rock your world, but it maybe it should. Let’s first explain the mouse part.Wei et al claim that the molecular spectrum of...
Read MoreGuidelines for the End of the Pandemic
I was heartened to finally see a pragmatic guideline come out of the White House and CDC: reducing quarantine from 10 to 5 days. There’s been some pushback from some epidemiologists and unions, but the truth is if we’re ever...
Read MoreSARS-Cov2 Omicron Strain: Is This the Light at the end of the Tunnel?
We’ve seen a lot of drama in the past few weeks with the rise of the Omicron strain. Some of it may turn out to be justified. This strain has an interesting lineage (Figure 1) that came from South Africa. South Africa has been a...
Read MoreLessons Learned from the Current Pandemic
This is the first and last time I’m getting on a soapbox. Usually, I try hard to be balanced and objective when writing blogs about medicine or science. Not this time. As we approach Thanksgiving in the USA, we’re more than 2...
Read MoreSARS-Cov2 Tests: Everything You Wanted to Know
In this post we’ll cover the different kinds of tests available, some background on the testing principles, what the tests tell us, and a few dos and don’ts. PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests The PCR method was invented in...
Read MoreThe SARS-Cov2 Endgame: The Road Ahead
In this blog we’ll mostly take a 35,000-foot view of a number of issues (with some exceptions), and take a long, hard look at how the pandemic will progress, and finally end. Basic epidemiology With the delta variant (strain...
Read MoreThe Second Phase of the Pandemic: The Race to herd Immunity
Pandemics are multi-year events that often go in phases. The 1918 flu pandemic had 3 distinct phases of which the second was the deadliest. I have some serious concern that April 2021 through March 2022 will follow that pattern...
Read MoreWhy You Don’t Want to Be Like Brazil
It’s been about a year for us in the USA since things started to go sideways. Where are we? At the beginning of the year I developed a simple empirical model to project a worst-case scenario in terms of cumulative deaths from...
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The SARS-Cov2 Outbreak in Manaus, Brazil: Bad Science, Bad Behavior, or Just Bad News?
As the pandemic spreads and many more individuals are infected with SARS-Cov2 we can expect many more “very rare” events to be come more commonplace due to sheer numbers.
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Understanding Infections Rates in Terms of R0 and Re
One of my readers thinks the public needs an education on the nature of exponential growth (and...
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We Should Be Very Concerned About the New SARS-Cov2 B.1.1.7 Strain
Most of you have heard by now of two new SARS-Cov2 strains that have come into play: The B.1.1.7...
Read MoreSARS-Cov2 Superspreaders: The Key to Controlling the Pandemic
Most people of heard of Typhoid Mary, an unfortunate healthy carrier of typhoid who was probably singlehandedly responsible for infection of 3,000 New Yorkers in 1907. She was probably the most celebrated of a phenomenon called...
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