Over the course of this pandemic I have often wished that Hans Rosling was still alive. For those who are unaware, he was a medical doctor and a professor at Karolinska Institutet who had a particular interest in global health and development. In 2012, Time magazine declared him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
During the last few months of his … Read more
You would think that governments always do a cost-benefit analysis before embarking on a certain course of action, especially if it is likely to have significant effects on many different aspects of society. The global lockdowns in response to the covid pandemic probably constitute the largest, most extreme measures taken by western governments since the second world war. So, you would think a careful cost-benefit … Read more
A few weeks back I wrote an article about an observational study published in Lancet that, among other things, looked at whether there was any correlation between stringency of lockdown and the number of people who died of covid. It didn’t find any correlation, which suggests that lockdowns don’t work. That study did have some major limitations however.
First of all, it was observational, based … Read more
A very interesting article was recently published in Lancet that sought to understand which factors correlate, on a country level, with covid related outcomes. The study was observational, so it can only show correlation, not causation, but it can still give pretty strong hints as to which factors protect people from covid, and which factors increase the risk of being harmed.
The most interesting thing … Read more
