Random ramblings

Eastern promises Are Asians relatively immune to COVID-19? Believe me, I really did not want to write another post on COVID. Why would I wish to put off my already limited readership?   But with so much going on, the temptation was simply too much to resist. And for what it’s worth, I do hope you’ll share the joy I got out of this minor insight and data dredge. From the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve heard how the South East Asian countries have efficiently curbed their infection rates. Some of the writing was clearly politically motivated, contrasting them to the supposedly poor initial response of China. We were told how South Korea and Taiwan tested a large number of people and were able to control transmission. Though the testing figures don’t hold up (at <0.01 tests/1000 population, Taiwan has perhaps the lowest testing figure among well-off countries, and South Korea fell behind most of Europe in testing by the beginning of March), some of these countries di...

Four drugs and a deadly disease A COVID parable Believe me, this is a serious post, despite the frivolous film reference in the title. In a previous piece ( http://randomramblings2018.blogspot.com/2020/06/home-remedies-hydroxychloroquine-and.html ) I had talked about how and why we are easily mislead by what we hear and see. And how all this makes us hold beliefs which may be both ridiculous and strong. If only we could disregard them, merely as the quaint eccentricities of human behaviour. Unfortunately, the problem is that there is a whole bunch of people, with a wide range of scruples (mostly towards the deficient end), who are out there to take advantage of our fallibility. Over the last several weeks, it has been quite revealing to watch the promotion and the interest generated in four potential drugs for COVID-19. The four drugs that I am considering all have different levels of proof of efficacy in treating the disease. At one end, the benefits of hydroxychloroquine...