Thursday, May 21, 2020

Blood and plasma: a brief history, from 1628

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With all my discussion of convalescent plasma for Covid-19 this week*, here's a historical perspective on the technology and changes in...
Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Convalescent plasma collection and distribution

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Efforts to collect and distribute convalescent plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients are ramping up: there are lots of options. I do...
Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Surrogacy amidst the corona virus pandemic lockdowns

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The coronavirus pandemic isn't only a story about disease, it's also a story about lockdowns, and restrictions on travel (among oth...
Monday, May 18, 2020

Qingyun Wu defends his dissertation--remotely

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Qingyun Wu successfully defended his dissertation at Stanford today, remotely, as we are all sheltering in place from the coronavirus pande...

Plasma and plasma products (such as antibodies) are a big business (and the U.S. dominates the international market)

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These days I'm thinking about corona virus covid-19 convalescent blood plasma, which I blogged about yesterday, and about which I hope ...
Sunday, May 17, 2020

Cascades of convalescent plasma for Covid-19, and chains of exchanges, by Kominers, Pathak, Sönmez, and Ünver

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Covid-19 convalescent plasma is a new thing in the world, that came into existence only when the first human was infected and recovered fro...
Saturday, May 16, 2020

Transplants dropped as Covid-19 rose, in France and the U.S.

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In France, even more than in the U.S., kidney transplants were considered elective surgery. In the Lancet: Organ procurement and transp...
Friday, May 15, 2020

Search and matching models of marriage (with emphasis on search or on matching)

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Often when economic theorists (particularly matching theorists) speak of "marriage" we don't mean the real thing, we mean a m...
Thursday, May 14, 2020

Does the porn industry provide a model for disease testing and contact tracing to end corona virus lockdowns?

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The adult film industry--which produces films in which performers engage in sex with one another--has a testing service called PASS (Perfo...
Wednesday, May 13, 2020

College admissions, late in the season

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Each year, around this time of year, as the main round of college admissions comes to a conclusion, NACAC (the National Association for Col...
Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Confusion in NYC high school wait lists

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In August, the New York City Department of Education announced a change in the school choice assignment process--without announcing any det...
Monday, May 11, 2020

Double bubble: Locking up with exactly one other household during lock down

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You thought your hard interpersonal decisions ended in high school, or when you married?  Not if you live in parts of Canada, where househo...
Sunday, May 10, 2020

Buying and selling blood plasma, with focus on Canada, continued

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Peter Jaworski writes: "I had a video with Big Think come out recently where I defend paying for plasma against a number of object...
Saturday, May 9, 2020

Repugnant but legal: can strip shows and payday lenders get Paycheck Protection Program support in the pandemic?

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The Washington Post has the story: Strip clubs, payday lenders, lobbyists fight to get emergency federal loans In wave of lawsuits, comp...
Friday, May 8, 2020

Human Challenge Trials (aka Controlled Human Infection studies) for corona virus vaccines

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What do we want?   A vaccine for covid-19. When do we want it?   After clinical trials and peer review. How can we get it faster?   By ...
Thursday, May 7, 2020

Price versus waiting time in a ride sharing market

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Here's an interesting paper on ride sharing, with estimates of the tradeoffs that individuals make between price and waiting time. The ...
Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Testing (for virus and/or antibodies) as a component of ending corona pandemic lockdowns

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Yesterday I wrote about how  contact tracing  could play a big role in relaxing corona pandemic lockdowns.  How about very large scale test...
Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Contact tracing as a component of ending corona pandemic lock-downs

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One important idea behind 'flattening the curve' of covid-19 cases is that, if lockdowns reduce the case rate sufficiently, the eco...
Monday, May 4, 2020

Transplants under lockdown (but beginning to pick up)

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Since the beginning of pandemic lockdowns, living donor kidney surgeries in the U.S. have almost ceased (partly because living donor surger...
Sunday, May 3, 2020

Repugnance watch: Hungary moves to roll back legal recognition of transsexuality

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The covid-19 pandemic has allowed a consolidation of authoritarian power in Hungary, as also elsewhere, which can take some odd forms. Th...
Saturday, May 2, 2020

Test design and gender gaps in performance--evidence from a national exam in Chile, by Coffman and Klinowski

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Here's a recent paper from PNAS: The impact of penalties for wrong answers on the gender gap in test scores Katherine B. Coffman and...
Friday, May 1, 2020

Yelping about restaurant health violations, by Dai and Luca

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Online reviews, like Yelp, can play an effective role in disseminating information about restaurant hygiene scores... Digitizing Disclosu...