Covid19mathblog.com
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” Mark Twain
Questioning even the obvious allows one to understand the core issues. History books are evolving do they real paint the reality or more how the author wants the history painted. Feel good stories are great but do they represent the truth so one can learn from the past. Here is a real good feel story in USA Today about the vaccine development – all participants are painted like heroes with no selfish intentions (e.g. no desire for fame) other than perhaps the Trump group – I am sure many are great people in the story as they suggest but I am skeptical on how things just coincidentally happens – https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/6555783002
Enjoy the read….
Being a numbers guy lets pull out the numbers from the article and leave the emotions behind –
“the Department of Health and Human Services pledged to spend $483 million on the Moderna vaccine. Later, it would add another $472 million to pay for the trial.”
“Goldman Sachs estimates that Moderna will make $13.2 billion in revenue this year from the vaccine.”
The reason regulated utilities existed is the fact to build “affordable” power generation it required significant scale and significant upfront capital which COULD potentially be worthless IF some other technology or market structure change was to occur. In order to have progress monopoly were constructed and regulated with fixed rate of returns which in theory was balance with the de-risk supplied by the monopoly power. IF vaccine development doesn’t seem like a regulated worthwhile market I don’t know what is. In this case the US govt. spent almost $1 billion – and company can make 13.2Billion in revenue – how much is that profit – how much did they invest – is the rate of return proportional to the risk undertaken particularly if the government is de-risking the deal?
“African Americans die of COVID-19 at nearly three times the rate of white Americans.”
Is this a genetic race thing or an economic issue or lifestyle? IF another race was in the same situation (which many are just perhaps not on the same scale) would they also succumb to that statistic?
IF this was a direct issue then shouldn’t the counties with the highest rates of black observe the highest confirmation per capita ….but its more clearly seen when graphing poverty level. Likely renting therefore older HVAC, smaller housing, perhaps healthy food availability limited – but then again climate probably is also a factor. This is why Dewey SD so high in confirmed per capita yet essentially 0% black. Interesting Macon AL the same poverty level but 3X less confirmed per capita than Dewey with 84% Black rate – so this multifaceted issue just cannot be explained or noted by race or even poverty. The death rate is also worse in Dewey SD than Macon AL by 3X.
US death below 4K – but it’s a weekend.
CA leads states as usual
LA leads with an interesting reporting from NC – unassigned county deaths
LA is on a downward trajectory for confirmation
