Coronavirus changes how doctors deal with death
A moving BBC video on how doctors deal with death and how this has changed due to COVID-19.
Tag: covid-19
All stocks are vaccine stocks
In a world with COVID-19, what factors are most influential to a company’s stock price? Are company specific or macroeconomic factors most important? It turns out, the speed of health care innovation in fighting COVID-19 may be the biggest single factor influencing all stock market prices. Barrons: General Electric stock was racing higher Tuesday, but…
Are COVID-19 tests free?
The answer should be ‘yes’. From an economist’s perspective, prices for goods and services should generally be set at marginal cost unless there are externalities. In the case of COVID-19, there are clear externalities. By finding out that someone is COVID-19 positive, one could not only treat the patient (not an externality) but also the…
More evidence that social distancing works
Kapoor et al. (2020) uses rainfall on last weekend before the stay-at-home order as an instrument for social distancing. variables. They find that social distancing works and has persistent effects, especially early on: We test whether earlier social distancing affects the progression of a local COVID-19 outbreak. We exploit county-level rainfall on the last weekend…
Human Challenge Trials
Should we infect people with COVID-19? Although most people would say ‘no’, this prospect could help speed the development of a vaccine. In these trials, half the people would be treated with a test vaccine for COVID-19 and half the people would receive a placebo. Then, people in both arms would be infected with COVID-19…
Fighting fraud sensibly in a global pandemic
COVID-19 has wreaked havoc for patients, family, the economy and the health care system. In an attempt to provide support to families and businesses, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act injects funding into the economy. Further, regulations have been relaxed. As Michael Adelberg and Melissa Garrido write today in the Health Affairs…
Just-in-time vs. building resilience: Finding the balance
Siddhartha Mukherjee has a great article in The New Yorker titled “What the Coronavirus Crisis Reveals About American Medicine“. Much of the article details some of the fundamental problems that causes major failures in the U.S. health care system’s response to COVID-19. Resilience in our medical system will involve more than considerations of physical supplies.…
Does social distancing matter?
According to a working paper by Greenstone and Nigam (2020), the answer is a resounding yes! …we project that moderate social distancing would save 1.7 million lives between March 1 and October 1, with 630,000 due to avoided overwhelming of hospital intensive care units. Using the projected age-specific reductions in death and age-varying estimates of…
Some good news in the fight against COVID-19
Looks like remdesivir had some positive results against COVID-19. As reported in STAT news: The preliminary data showed that the time to recovery was 11 days on remdesivir compared to 15 days for placebo, a 31% decrease. The mortality rate for the remdesivir group was 8%, compared to 11.6% for the placebo group; that mortality…