SARS-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...
Read MorePfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Approval: An Extraordinary Event: Everything You Want to Know Answered Simply
This week we saw the approval in public of Pfizer’s brand-new mRNA SARS-Cov2 vaccine under the FDA’s EUA (emergency use authorization) authority. Prior to the pandemic to see approval of something like a drug or vaccine in which...
Read MoreProgenitors of the SARS-Cov-2 Virus May Have Been Circulating for Some Time in 2019 Prior to the Outbreak in Wuhan
For those of you watched the movie Contagion, which came out in 2011, you might be forgiven for believing that it’s not that hard to find “patient zero,” the index patient of a pandemic. Another impression you might have got is...
Read MoreThe COVID Spring
Vaccines There has been a lot of good news on the vaccine front. First, Pfizer announced that its BNT162b2 vaccine was 95% effective against COVID-19 beginning 28 days after the first dose;170 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were...
Read MoreThe Winter of our Covid Discontent
Things are not looking good in regard to the COVID-19 virus. Infection rates are totally out of control (see Figure 1a). Testing rate is up since summer but positivity rates are way up and funding issues mean that some states...
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