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7
May
2020

Randomized Controlled Trials For Healthcare Delivery Work; Now Let’s Do More At Scale

The value of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in healthcare delivery was highlighted earlier this year with the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) of a paper that rigorously evaluated a deeply appealing hypothesis: that you can improve care and reduce costs by focusing on “superutilizers” – the patients who consume the most healthcare resources.  I discussed this...
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5
May
2020

Giving Models and Modelers a Bad Name

As someone who has spent a career building and studying disease models, primarily for cancer, the latest update from Chris Murray and the IHME model makes me cringe. The IHME model, readers will recall, has been frequently cited by the White House coronavirus task force. On May 4, the IHME called a press conference to release the results of their...
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1
May
2020

A Time for Empathy

This is a fragile moment. It’s May 1. Some of us have been in social isolation for two solid months. Everyone’s at some point on the continuum of stir crazy. More than 30 million people are out of work. Tempers are flaring. Protestors are carrying guns. It’s obvious we can’t sustain a maximalist social-distancing policy much longer. Today, we have...
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28
Apr
2020

Keeping an Academic Lab Afloat in a Pandemic

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25
Apr
2020

A San Francisco Doctor Answers the Call to New York

The week things got really interesting was the week of March 16. That’s when Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health officer, and her legion of public health heroes made the gutsy call – the first of its kind in the nation — to shut things down in the entire 6-county San Francisco Bay Area, home to more than...
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24
Apr
2020

A Sad Week of Reckless Leadership

The first US death from COVID-19 was reported on Feb. 29. Today, Apr. 24, the US death toll exceeds 50,000. That’s more than Italy and Spain combined. Even though we had early warning. It’s tragic. There’s also a reason why the death toll hasn’t been higher. It’s because of large-scale physical distancing in this expansive country of 330 million people....
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22
Apr
2020

Build Back Better

As the nation has struggled to cope with the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has become the voice so many have looked to for support and leadership. What Cuomo seems both to offer and effectively communicate is not just a mastery of the facts, but also a grounded yet hopeful narrative. The story he projects...
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17
Apr
2020

The Real Question is How to Restart

When?? When can we finally go back to something resembling a “normal” life, go back to work and restart our economies, embrace again long-lost family, friends, co-workers? And, in too many cases, when can we get together to properly mourn those we have lost? I cannot tell you “when.” Everyone wants the answer to that question. I do, too. But...
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