The dark side of randomized double-blind studies

While randomized double-blind tests have become the gold standard for testing of various hypotheses, they also raise some ethical questions for which there are no easy answers. In the case of the covid-19 vaccine trials, there were discussions as to when the study should be unblinded so that those in the placebo group could also be vaccinated. Commenter Bethany said that a co-worker was in the Pfizer study and told her that it has been unblinded.
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The greatest scientist ever?

The world has marveled at the speed with which the vaccines for covid-19 were developed. The time of less than one year is the quickest on record. What was the previous record holder? It was the vaccine for mumps, which took four years. But that vaccine was developed in 1967 by a scientist named Maurice Hilleman working with just two assistants, without all the technology that is now available to quickly sequence the virus genome and the problem attacked by large international teams with huge amounts of funding.
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Ignorance of statistics can kill you

An evangelical pastor in Fort Worth, Texas mocked and dismissed the covid-19 safety guidelines and said that he was going to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family with no restrictions.

Pastor Todd Dunn had been urging “Faith over fear!” since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March. Just before Thanksgiving, he posted a message on Facebook dismissing precautionary measures advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep wearing masks and avoid gatherings with family members who don’t live in the same house.

“I’m not wearing a mask when around my family like the CDC requests and we are traveling so we’ll take our chances,” Dunn’s Facebook post read. “And to top it off we are huggers so there you go! There will be no social distancing CDC. Faith over fear!!”

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Driverless delivery service

I have been following the developments in driverless vehicles with interest. It is not just out of curiosity about the science and technology behind it, though those things do have considerable interest. It is also out of potential personal benefit. As I get older, I am aware that at some point it may not be safe for me to operate a vehicle. That would definitely restrict my movements though the ride share services have solved part of the problem.
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Ocean foam invades some Australian beaches

Australia is famously home to forms of nature not found in other parts of the world. And now, sea foam has been appearing on the beaches of parts of Australia, bringing with it all manner of things, including snakes.

People are being warned to stay out of sea foam that has appeared on the beaches of northern New South Wales and Queensland in the wake of severe storms this week, with sea snakes and hazardous material hidden in it.

Storms have lashed the two states, bringing heavy rain, flooding and coastal erosion. The foam is formed by the churning of seawater with algae, salts, fats and other pollutants.
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Nathan Fife, Gold Coast Lifesaving services supervisor at Surf Lifesaving Australia, told Guardian Australia the foam was not good for people’s health.

“Health-wise it’s probably not great to let your kids play in it,” he said. “Also the marine creatures that might get in it, like sea snakes.”

According to the Marine Education Society of Australasia, there are 32 species of sea snakes found around Australia. While they are venomous, the risk of death is low.

The sale of the foam is pretty impressive.

Is this ocean foam phenomenon peculiar to Australia? If so, why?

So why is this a bad thing, exactly?

In a speech, Mike Pence said that “”[Democrats] want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable.” As if that’s a bad thing. The idea that poor people should get a break even once in a while strikes terror in the hearts of these sociopaths.

It’s official: We are a nation of idiots

A group of massless people invaded a Target store and marched through it shouting “Freedom!” and “This is America!” and also, inexplicably,”Library Card!” (At least, that is what that last one sounded like.)

I can understand a person feeling, however wrongly, that wearing a mask is an infringement of their rights. But to care so much about it that they go out and recruit other people to engage in such an absurd stunt is to display idiocy of a high order

Can we all agree that the very lowest priority for getting the vaccines should be people like those in the Target store who are deliberately flouting the guidelines and needlessly putting other people at risk just to make a silly political point?

Seth Meyers makes the case for others who should be on the bottom of the list.

Trump’s incompetence helped speed up vaccine approval

After the expected spike in covid-19 cases and deaths about two weeks after Thanksgiving, the rates have started dropping again, although they are still high. We will now have to brace ourselves for another spike about two weeks after Christmas when some people will violate the guidelines once again to visit with family and friends.

The incompetence of the Trump administration in its handling of the pandemic has been responsible for the massive numbers of infected people and deaths in the US. In terms of total numbers (though not per capita), the US easily leads the rest of the world with over 18 million confirmed cases and about 325,000 deaths. Currently those numbers are rising at an average daily rate of about 200,000 and 2,500 respectively. Those numbers could been much lower if from the beginning Trump had been urging everyone to adopt the common sense safety guidelines that scientists and public health experts were advocating, instead of mocking them and hosting events that openly violated them and dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic.
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The covid-19 vaccines and prisoners

As I expected, there has been some controversy about how to prioritize the order of who gets the vaccines. For example, health guidelines suggest that those who are for whatever reason forced to be in very confined spaces or have to deal with large numbers of people should get it even before older people like me who are low risk because we have little contact with people and have no complicating risk factors. That sounds reasonable enough but that list of people who should have higher priority includes prisoners because, for obvious reasons, prisons have been the source of some of the biggest outbreaks of covid-19 and those outbreaks have not stayed within their walls but have also spread to the nearby communities because prison employees and visitors go in and out of the place all the time, thus aiding the spread.
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