Tag Archives: Coronavirus
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th May 2021The title above is that of a detailed report by the eminent science writer Nicholas Wade. In it he discusses the the possible scenarios for how the COVID-19 epidemic originated. No one else has examined all the evidence concerning the appearance of this virus with as much rigor and thoroughness as has Wade. His list…
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Asymptomatic Subjects Do Not Transmit the Coronavirus
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th December 2020Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China is the title of a paper published in Nature Communications. First, a few caveats. The article is from China and its content was obviously scrutinized by a repressive regime before it was allowed publication in a western journal. Second, Nature Communications is…
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COVID-19 Immunity
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th September 2020I’ve tried to resist the urge to write more about the COVID-19 epidemic. Afterall, there are only so many ways to say that we’ve done just about everything wrong that’s possible. Turning politicians and journalists loose on the disease was certain to make a hash out of a serious, but not world ending, problem. Even…
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False Positive PCR Tests For COVID-19
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th September 2020I got tired of writing about the problem of false positive tests for the coronavirus, so I gave up. Now the New York Times has suddenly become aware of the problem. When a PCR test is run the virus is amplified in proportion to the number of cycles run. Typically 40 cycles are performed. Thus,…
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COVID-19 Six Months In
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd September 2020It’s just about half a year since we recognized that the coronavirus had taken residence in the US and just about everywhere else. We took a while to realize that the bug was going to stay longer than The Man Who Came to Dinner. Though epidemics have been a feature of human existence ever since…
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Einstein, Insanity, and Models
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th July 2020“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This quotation attributed to Einstein, was said by him (if he really said it) in the context of quantum mechanics, where doing the same experiment repeatedly does give different results. But in the macro world the same experiment properly performed does give…
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The False-Positive Panic over COVID-19
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th July 2020The title above is that of an article by me published today in the Mises Wire. It deals with the problem of false positive tests for COVID-19 that will be found if a large population is tested which has a low prevalence of the virus. It also deals with the issue of frequent tests of…
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Athletes and the Coronavirus
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd June 2020Baseball, football, soccer basketball, golf, and for all I know tiddledywinks are planning to reopen, but not before testing their athletes daily for the Coronavirus. As I mentioned here earlier this month, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the sensitivity of the tests for the virus is no better than 70%. Our “experts”…
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The NEJM Discovers COVID-19 Sensitivity and Specificity
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th June 2020If you’ve been reading the articles here about the specificity and sensitivity of testing for COVID-19 you are aware that we lack critical information about the various tests used to diagnose the disease. The New England Journal of Medicine has just published an article about the sensitivity and specificity of testing for the Coronavirus. They…
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Lubbock Has More ICU Beds Than Either Brooklyn or Queens
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th April 2020There 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 beds for a population of 2.273 million. Brooklyn (Kings County) has…
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