- Most new drugs do not cover the cost of their development. So, the pharmaceutical industry needs a few blockbusters (with annual revenues of $1 billion or more) in order to survive. HT: Tyler
- Railroad deregulation occurred under Carter, not under Trump and accidents and derailments plunged thereafter.
- Humans share 98.8 percent of their DNA with bonobos and chimpanzees.
- Is Biden about to surrender authority over US pandemic policy to the WHO?
- Prof. Marty Makary: Ten myths about Covid that were propagated by the “experts.”
- How different federal agencies view the origin of Covid.
- Yglesias on the lab leak theory.
Would You See an AI Doctor?
The term artificial intelligence (AI) has been in use for many years. Indeed, it includes many names, such as AI, neural networks, machine learning and a few other buzzwords. The preceding linked article from IBM tries to explain the meaning of all these terms. A few years ago, IBM made headlines as the developer of Watson, which famously competed on the game show Jeopardy, beating Ken Jennings. There is a new AI interface on the Internet that anyone can try out called ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a language-based AI chatbot that can do many things humans can do, including correcting computer code, writing college entrance essays and a host of other things.
Tuesday Links
- Lancet study: Covid natural immunity is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines.
- Nearly all contemporary countries were colonized at some point in their history by a foreign power; yet most citizens have a favorable attitudes toward their country’s former colonizer. HT: Tyler
- Losing fitness: Scientists have found that it is around the three-week mark [of no exercise] that people experience the biggest changes in their ability to get through a workout. (NYT)
- North Carolina’s medical system would have had an additional 55 hospitals, including 24 in vulnerable rural areas, were it not for the state’s certificate-of-need regulations. (WSJ)
- Cocaine Bear scene: what are the effects of swallowing a tablespoon of cocaine?
More on the British National Health Service
In December, 54,000 people in England had to wait more than 12 hours for an emergency admission…. The average wait time for an ambulance to attend a “category 2” condition – like a stroke or heart attack – exceeded 90 minutes. There were 1,474 (20%) more excess deaths in the week ending December 30 than the 5-year average….