Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, offers President-elect Biden advice for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. As COVID-19 has demonstrated, new deadly viruses can spread quickly and easily around the globe, causing significant loss of life and economic ruin. With nearly 200 epidemics occurring each year, the…
Philosopher Ben Bayer rejects the common notion that refusing to wear a mask is inherently selfish. In fact, he argues, wearing a mask is often the selfish thing to do. The problem, he says, arises from a widely held misconception about the meaning of selfishness. But if selfishness also means the dedicated pursuit of one’s…
The economic devastation from the lockdown continues to create more victims. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimates that by the end of the year, 1.34 million renter households will owe a combined $7.2 billion in back rent, or an average of $5,400 per household. Because of the moratorium on evictions imposed by the Centers…
On Tuesday, Ken Potrock, president of Disneyland Resorts, issued a statement criticizing the California government’s lockdown orders. And he didn’t “play nice” or grovel. We have proven that we can responsibly reopen, with science-based health and safety protocols strictly enforced at our theme park properties around the world. Nevertheless, the State of California continues to…
In late September, William Foege, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent a letter to Robert Redfield, the current director of the CDC. In the letter, Foege calls on Redfield to “face the truth.” In a period of six months, the CDC has gone from the gold standard in…
An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine provides a sobering and accurate assessment of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard…
Philosopher Ben Bayer addresses the FDA’s refusal to approve an inexpensive text for COVID-19. The test can be done at home and yields results in about fifteen minutes. The FDA “justifies” its position by noting that if the tests produce false negatives, then contagious individuals may unknowingly spread the virus. Apparently, the agency believes that…
The west African nation of Senegal is one of the success stories of the pandemic. With only 7 doctors per 100,000 (the United States has almost 300 doctors per 100,000), the nation of 16 million has had just over 14,000 confirmed COVID cases. In contrast, the United States has reported more than 20,000 new cases…
With an election fast approaching, it is not surprising that the pandemic has been a political issue. It is also not surprising that politics is shaping the message being delivered to the American public. Catherine Lynne Troisi, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, writes: [R]ecent actions by the CDC…
On September 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an order halting residential evictions until the end of the year for the purpose of slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2. In practical terms, this order will be economically devastating to countless landlords and property owners. In moral terms, it represents an attack on…
According to the Wall Street Journal, a growing number of economists and epidemiologists are questioning the wisdom of lockdowns to combact COVID-19. [T]he evidence suggests lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool. They are politically difficult to keep in place for long enough to stamp out the virus. The evidence also points to…
Imagine for a moment what would happen if the government declared, “Since every individual has the potential to commit a felony crime, we are going to incarcerate everyone.” There would be outrage, protests, and defiance. “That is unjust,” the protestors might proclaim. “You are treating innocent citizens the same as actual criminals.” Yet, in principle,…