https://twitter.com/R_DesJarlait/status/1255575004042969090

A reminder that vital stats offices are distributed among local governments and that mortality has a regular pattern...

http://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254844218184515584

While I realize we are not fortunate enough to have a leader who has gone missing, it is a strange thing to see Americans upset about this...

I put off blocking off my dryer vent. Spring has come, and so have some new inhabitants.

I do not know, for sure, what, if anything is in the nest, but I do know that there is a new nest in the pipe.

Is it possible to push the nest out into a box or something, such that if the contents of the nest are safely moved into the box, then I can block off the pipe and the birds can carry on with their business?

https://twitter.com/Berryhillj/status/1253448930790182916

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23/data-on-gileads-remdesivir-released-by-accident-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/

The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a “potential benefit.”

A summary of the study results was inadvertently posted to the website of the World Health Organization and seen by STAT on Thursday, but then removed.

“A draft document was provided by the authors to WHO and inadvertently posted on the website and taken down as soon as the mistake was noticed. The manuscript is undergoing peer review and we are waiting for a final version before WHO comments,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202044.pdf

We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States —Hannity andTucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News — on viewers’ behavior and downstream health outcomes. Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February.

...

First, we document that greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. The relationship is stable across an expansive set of robustness tests. To better identify the effect of differential viewership of the two shows, we employ a novel instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in when shows are broadcast in relation to local sunset times. These estimates also show that greater exposure t Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of county-level cases and deaths. Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert. We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects,they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population.