Author Archives: jbakerjrblog

Note: if you read this blog on your phone please do it in landscape orientation. I had two interesting responses to my blog about the “third Peak.” From C. Goller: It would be interesting to see the rate of hospitalization over the same time period. That rate might be a good intermediary between reported tests andContinue reading “More unanswered questions about the US “Third Peak.””

The numbers across the U.S. today show an increase in COVID-19 infections that appears to be a “3rd peak” occurring since the pandemic started in early March. The dynamics of this 3rd peak, which has been called the 2nd wave by some media outlets, are interesting and deserve further discussion. When one looks at theContinue reading “The 3rd COVID-19 peak — is it really different from the first two?”

An article yesterday in Science Magazine by Jocelyn Kaiser highlights one of the most crucial questions on COVID-19 illness.  Why are there people who get horribly ill with COVID-19? In fact, COVID-19 seems to be almost a binary disease, with people becoming deathly ill or having a relatively mild or even no apparent illness. Most of us inContinue reading “Why do some people get so sick from COVID-19? Is it in their Neanderthal genes?”

Two recurring news items raised substantial noise in the media concerning COVID-19.  The first item was the publication of the reported case of reinfection from Nevada. This case report was published in the Journal “Lancet Infectious Disease” and purports to show the first individual in the United States who suffered a re-infection with coronavirus.  The evidenceContinue reading “Two follow ups on important news items.”

A friend who was not a physician once told me drug companies were “stupid” since most therapies fail in advanced clinical trials after spending lots of money. I responded that given the complexity of human biology, it is almost impossible to anticipate the bad effects that cause most drugs to fail!  Therefore, it is notContinue reading “Three major COVID human trials have now been stoppd over safety issues”

One of my great annoyances is scientific articles that use highly controlled experiments to reproduce “real world situations,” especially to generate data that seem to be used only to scare people. In this regard, the news today presented “data” from a new article showing that SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can “survive for 28Continue reading “Coronavirus can last 28 days on your Phone Screen! Well, maybe not.”

The number of people with severe illnesses from COVID-19 in the United States has appeared higher than in other countries on a per capita basis. The media has attributed this to failure of public health measures to control the viral infection. But there may be another reason why Americans have been particularly impacted by COVID-19. Continue reading “Why has COVID-19 been so devastating to Americans? Unfortunately, we may be able to answer the question simply by looking in the mirror.”

I received quite a bit of feedback from my blog post calling for an investigation of the Justice Barrett ceremony a “super-spreader” event. I have been reassured now that Dr Fauci agrees with my assessment. Therefore, we need to understand what happened there. I have been told that at least one attendee was screened forContinue reading “Dr. Fauci also calls White House ceremony “Super-Spreader” event.”

Since I started this blog last March, some of the least recognized concerns with the efforts to limit COVID-19 are the inadvertent mental and physical health problems suffered from the mitigations. The total shut down of work places and schools have yielded children not getting routine vaccines, parents losing jobs, people becoming more likely toContinue reading “The Great Barrington Declaration”

There are many things that we don’t know about transmission of the COVID 19 virus. One thing is clear though, its unique tendency to spread in clusters — where one or a few infected persons infect a large number of individuals, often at a single event. This is interesting since the transmission of COVID-19 oftenContinue reading “It is crucial to examine the Super-Spreader event at the White House.”