Author: Devon Herrick

Don’t Trust Your Gut, Use Your Brain (and Data) for Decision-Making

Posted on by Devon Herrick

We’ve all met that person whose knee-jerk reactions are based on emotions even if they’re illogical to anyone but them. I’ve also heard people who say, “always go with your first thought, it’s usually the correct decision.” Or I’ve heard others say, “Always trust your intuition, it’s usually right.” Aren’t so-called gut-feelings the same as intuition and emotions?

Should intuition and gut-feelings play a role in logical decision making? Not according to the new book Don’t Trust Your Gut, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Stephens-Davidowitz was a philosophy major at Stanford, who later earned a PhD in economics from Harvard. He is a former data scientist for Google. This is what he told Vox in an interview…

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Covid Vaccine Makers Won’t Share Vaccines for Next-Gen Research

Posted on by Devon Herrick

In his Wednesday Links, John Goodman points to the question, Why aren’t we developing more nasal vaccines? This from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

Nasal vaccines are more likely to stop infection than vaccines injected into muscle because they stimulate mucosal immunity in the nose and respiratory system, the first line of attack, and they are likely to increase uptake especially among people with trypanophobia. Hence my longstanding call for an Operation Warp Speed for nasal vaccines. We haven’t got OWS 2.0 in the United States but nasal vaccines have recently been approved in China and India.

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White House: Covid is Here to Stay, as are Annual Boosters

Posted on by Devon Herrick

Covid boosters are here to stay according to White House officials. They will likely be similar to annual flu shots, with a new booster to defend against a new variant every year. There were discussions a year ago that suggested drug makers were looking for a common denominator that would be present in all Covid variants, but I doubt that will happen. First of all it’s not easy or it would have been done already for flu shots and Covid boosters. Second, why would drug makers make a universal vaccine when they can sell boosters for new variants every year?

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The Atlantic: Lowering the Cost of Insulin May Costs Lives

Posted on by Devon Herrick

An article in The Atlantic explains that lowering the cost of insulin could turn deadly. According to The Atlantic:

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed last month, aims to help people… by lowering the cost of insulin across America. …Democrats succeeded in capping expenses for the drug among Americans on Medicare at $35 a month, offering meaningful savings for our seniors, some of whom will save hundreds of dollars a month thanks to the measure.

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