Monday assorted links
1. “We also looked Iceland-scale mass population testing (i.e. 0.7% of population per day). Such testing would be very helpful for monitoring the epidemic, but unsurprisingly it had a negligible impact on reducing transmission, because cases would be detected too late (if at all)”, link here.
2. Which workers bear most of the burden from social distancing policies?
3. This 1,000-Year-Old Mill Has Resumed Production Due to Demand for Flour.
5. BMI is very hard to predict, even with an impressive data set of socioeconomic and genetic factors.
6. Graph of excess deaths in various locales, recommended, and Sweden far from the worst. Bergamo ouch.
7. Was Portugal early to take care of the nursing home problem? And Connecticut looking for a nursing home solution (WSJ).
8. Vaccine update.
9. Solving for the equilibrium: “Some of the millions of British workers furloughed during the coronavirus lockdown will be encouraged to take a second job picking fruit and vegetables, the government has said. Giving the daily COVID-19 briefing, Environment Secretary George Eustice said only a third of the migrant workers who normally picked fruit and vegetables were currently in the country.”
10. ComedyCellar podcast with me, Coleman Hughes, Yascha Mounk, others, audio / pod: http://riotcast.com/thecomedycellar and the link to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNG1FsUdXDw.
11. Which retailers generate the most physical interactions? (Big, internationally known chains) Might the same be true for restaurants?
12. “The scenario of one million Covid-19 deaths is similar in scale to the decades-long HIV/AIDS and opioid-overdose epidemics but considerably smaller than the Spanish Flu of 1918. Unlike HIV/AIDS and opioid epidemics, the Covid-19 deaths will be concentrated in months rather than spread out over decades.” Link here.
13. Spanish flu closings were short in duration and didn’t help much.
14. What community colleges do and do not know. And a list of colleges’ plans.