Category Archives: Medicine

COVID-19: Back to Square 1

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th May 2020

The country is gradually starting to reopen, but not before 33 million Americans are out of work. Millions more have or soon will lose their businesses. But if you stop and think about the difference between reopening and staying open from the start you’ll realize that except for the carnage there is no difference. Of…


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COVID-19: A Medical Example of How Science-Guided Policy Goes Wrong

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th May 2020

COVID-19: A Medical Example of How Science-Guided Policy Goes Wrong is the title of an article by me published on the National Association of Scholars website. Among other topics its discusses the problem of false positives test for the virus. The issue has largely been ignored. Consider the five soccer players in Spain who have…


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The Press Still Doesn’t Understand the Principles of Testing

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th April 2020

Here’s an article about testing for COVID-19 which reveals the press, irrespective of political bias, is still in the dark about screening for this disease, or broadly any disease. The piece is written rather awkwardly, but what its trying to say is that the Abbott ID NOW test is 85% sensitive. This means that 85%…


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Corona Craziness – Why We Surrendered Without a Fight

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th April 2020

Genghis Khan was the greatest administrator who ever lived. He always knew when to temper justice with brutality. Anonymous How did we reach a social point where most of the world would accept suicide as a remedy for a serious, but not unmanageable, contagious disease? We’ve endured plagues, famines, natural disasters, wars, and a Pandora’s…


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Lubbock Has More ICU Beds Than Either Brooklyn or Queens

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th April 2020

There can be no greater evidence of the disparity of medical facilities and outcomes than the comparisons suggested by the above title. You can read the three charts below. Note that Queens has more than 38 thousand cases of COVID-19. The county has 146 ICU bed for a population of 2.273 million. Brooklyn (Kings County) has…


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Coronavirus – From Panic to Reality

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2020

It is slowly dawning on the world and the US in particular that we are suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. We’re on life support. Our economic survival is 50-50, probably worse. How did we get here and where is here? I’ll start with the newest information which should come as no…


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What We Don’t Know About COVID-19

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th April 2020

The simple answer to what we don’t know about COVID-19 is just about everything. The Johns Hopkins Tracker that everyone is following presents a lot of data, most of which is uninterpretable. Let’s start with the number of cases. The Total Confirmed is not really that, rather it’s the number of patients with a positive…


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COVID-19 Attack Rates Amid Different Strategies

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd April 2020

Much of the world has virtually shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But a few countries have taken a different course. Presented below are the “attack rates” for countries that different approaches to this disease. I’ve defined “attack rate” as the percent of the population that has been diagnosed with COVID-19 up to…


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Corona Uncertainty

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st March 2020

The country has slowed to the pace of a toddler’s crawl because of the coronavirus epidemic. We have decided to follow the advice of the federal government’s top medical experts. This decision has imposed an economic burden on the country that may cause more damage than the virus itself. Our handling of a very complex…


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Understanding the Implication of a Positive Test For COVID-19

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th March 2020

The public and the press have little understanding of what a positive test for any disease means. Iceland has decided to test its entire population for COVID-19, which as can be seen from the data below is an act of well meaning folly. I’ll make this explanation as simple as I can. Any medical test…


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