TL;DR: Everything is in place for the COVID-19 pandemic to end in America. The vaccines are working beautifully, even against new variants. But vaccine hesitancy remains a stubborn barrier to full normalcy, putting American on course to reach equilibrium, not eradication. Ahead of last summer I was telling everyone they were fools for declaring the […]
COVID-19 slashed red tape and poured in government funding to spark giant leaps forward in scientific innovation, most prominently in vaccinology but also behind-the-scenes in genetic sequencing to track a fast-evolving virus generating new variants. These developments set the stage for promising new strategies for a range of infectious disease threats, from malaria to influenza. […]
The World Health Organization’s recent probe into the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan has renewed interest in piecing together when, where, and how the virus jumped from animals to humans during the fall of 2019. The Wuhan Seafood Market outbreak appears to be a red herring, serving as an early amplifier of a simmering outbreak […]
TL;DR: New variants cropping up globally are headed to America and threaten to overwhelm hospitals. Our highly potent vaccines still protect pretty well against new strains, but we are not rolling out vaccine fast enough to prevent new epidemic spikes. November’s announcement of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines brought a refreshing break in the otherwise bleak […]
From childhood, I was determined not to become an economist. My father was an economics professor. So was his father, sister, and brother-in-law. I don’t know what other families talk about at the dinner table. My family talked about airline deregulation. My father was conservative, his relatives were liberal, and the same circular arguments about […]