Category: COVID-19 and Public Health

Thursday Links

Posted on by John C. Goodman
  • Moffit: In the face of Covid, Medicare Advantage enrollees did better than those in traditional Medicare.
  • Badger: Twelve years after the founding of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, only 6 of more than 50 models it has tested have met de minimis measures of success (no increase in federal spending or diminution of quality).
  • Haislmaier: As the price to the patient for Medicare prescription drugs has been going up, what the drugmaker actually gets is going down.
  • Moffit: British NHS is failing: waiting lists are growing, ER wait times are rising, and access to primary care is falling.
  • Nina Schaefer: Biden EO on abortion is misleading and full of misinformation.
  • Moffit & Butcher: Teachers unions colluded with the White House and CDC officials to write federal guidance that kept schools closed.
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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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