The Solipsist Sans Soiree

https://scitechdaily.com/new-artificial-intelligence-diagnostic-can-predict-covid-19-without-testing/
This is an article from Scitech Daily, about a group from King's College London, Mass General, and a company called Zoe (why would I trust a company with a dog's name) that are working to develop AI to diagnose Covid-19 based on symptoms. This may be of use in communities where access to testing is limited (NJ?) and will be tested in UK and US.  The researchers analyzed data gathered from about 2.5 million people in the UK and US who had been regularly inputting their health status in a COVID symptoms study app, around 0.3 of whom had logged symptoms associated with COVID-19. Of these, 18,374 reported having had a test for coronavirus, with 7,178 people testing positive. They then investigated which symptoms associated with COVID-19 were most likely to be also associated with a positive test. Loss of taste and smell (anosmia) was particularly striking, with two thirds of users testing positive for coronavirus infection reporting this symptom compared with just over 0.5 of the participants who tested negative.  They created a mathematical model that predicted with nearly 80% accuracy whether an individual is likely to have COVID-19 based on their age, sex and a combination of four key symptoms: loss of smell or taste, severe or persistent cough, fatigue and skipping meals. Applying this model to the entire group of over 800,000 app users experiencing symptoms predicted that just under a fifth of those who were unwell (17.42%) were likely to have COVID-19 at that time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-leadership.html

This is an article from NYT about the female leaders of several countries who have demonstrated effective and compassionate leadership, decency, and respect for science, including  Ardern, Merkel, Frederiksen, Marin and Solberg, according to the NYT editors, “dulling the impact of disease upon their people.” Angela Merkel, herself a scientist, acted quickly and calmly to get testing underway for the German people. In Iceland, Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir led the government in offering free testing for all and organizing a thorough tracking system. The editors further suggest that there are “qualities beyond politics, economics and science, qualities of character that can’t be faked, chiefly compassion” that make a good leader in a crisis.  


https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/15/lancet-editorial-trump-administration-coronavirus-response/
Article from the Washpost reporting the Lancet's editorial advoating Trump's replacement by someone who supports the role of the CDC and doesn't allow partisan politics to guide public health policy at the expense of human lives. The editors of the Lancet, in the history-making editorial decry the fact that the CDC “has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser” and lament the removal of a major CDC offical in China last year which left an intelligence vacuum.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/13/opinion/inequality-cities-life-expectancy.html

This is a Sunday Review NYT article with useful graphics of features of cities compared across various cities (wages differentials, life expectancies, educational attainment, portion of work commutes an hour or longer, broadband access, venture capital investments.  Physical mobility is to a great extent controlled by income levels. Average income has soared over the past 50 years in nearly every metro area but have risen largely because incomes for affluent have increased greatly but the graphics tell all.

 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01449-8

This is an article from Nature magazine about the small likelihood that scientists will ever discover how the coronavirus got into people. Since Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of the virus, scientists have been searching genomic databases of animals. They identified RATG13, the horseshoe bat, which is 96% similar to humans. The phylogenetic tree suggests that 50 years have elapsed since the horseshoe bat virus and the human virus shared a common ancestor. This suggests that there was an intermediate host and the pangolin has not been ruled out. Computational biologists and other computer modelers are working on this problem.