Category Archives: Technology and Society

Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Hydroxychloroquine

2 Comments

The FDA has issued an authorization for emergency use.

That’s nice, considering how much we’ve been fighting red tape since this started. But early results have been encouraging. Italy and France have been not just allowing, but prescribing it.

[Update a while later]

No, Dan Diamond at Politico, there is not “scant evidence.” But you just keep being garbage.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not enough that we have to fight the virus; we have to continue to fight the FDA.

I agree with Glenn: “The thing is, Trump can intervene in these things, but there’s still delay, and there’s only so much a President can do to chivvy along the bureaucracy. I think he should announce that he’ll have a team of managers from outside government evaluate the performance of the FDA, CDC, NIH when this is over, with those found to have under-performed to be sacked.”

Bureaucracy can be just as deadly as a virus. The good news is that all of this is feeding the public’s desire to drain the DC swamp.

They’ll get to have a say in November.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Trump is slashing red tape again like he was 39.

[Update late morning]

Speaking of garbage journalism, read the latest from Treacher: “I can’t even imagine what poor Yamiche Alcindor from the PBS NewsHour is going through right now. It really puts my own petty concerns into perspective.”

I have to say that one of the people in whom I’ve been most disappointed in terms of TDS is S. E. Cupp. I used to have a lot of respect for her.

[Update a few minutes later]

[Noon update]

To get back to the original post topic, a doctor in New York has successfully treated almost 700 patients with no failures.

This might really be the magic bullet. If it’s prophylactic, the key is to ramp up production immediately, to get the economy going again.

[Update mid afternoon]

A Brita filter for blood.

This could have saved a lot of people a century ago; let’s hope it helps now.

Business, Economics, Education, Health, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Virus

1 Comment

…has exposed Americans’ disconnect from reality.

[Update a while later]

Nancy Pelosi and the politics pandemic.

[Update a while later]

Goodbye, Green New Deal.

Set aside, for the moment, any reservations you might have about the coronavirus-emergency regime, and set aside your views on climate change, too, whatever they may be. Instead, ask yourself this: If Americans are this resistant to paying a large economic price to enable measures meant to prevent a public-health catastrophe in the here and now — one that threatens the lives of people they know and love — then how much less likely are they to bear not weeks or months but decades of disruption and economic dislocation and a permanently diminished standard of living in order to prevent possibly severe consequences to people in Bangladesh or Indonesia 80 or 100 years from now?

Not a prayer.

[Update later morning]

Yes, the president is not wrong: Pelosi is a sick puppy.

Business, Economics, Health, Mathematics, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Remaining U.S. Hospital Capacity

1 Comment

A hard look.

I’m unlikely to be killed by this thing, but I don’t want to even get it, let alone be hospitalized.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Why that doomsday scenario is likely way off.

[Bumped]

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

Bob Zimmerman doesn’t think that this will overwhelm our national hospital capacity. Though it does seem to be doing so in New York city.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Five Needed Paradigm Shifts

3 Comments

…revealed by the pandemic. The latter two are particularly important.

[Update a while later]

Related: A litany of useless laws have been exposed as well.

[Update a while more later]

The coming age of dispersion.

We’ve been wanting to get out of the city for a long time. Most people don’t realize how large and empty the American west is, including California itself. New technology is going to make it increasingly possible and affordable to live comfortably off the grid.