Dr. Ben Carson is not a virologist. He is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for the Trump adminstration. He was the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1984 until his retirement in 2013. He is one of the reasons the cliché “It’s not brain surgery” exists to describe things that are easy…because brain surgery is f’ing hard and he operated on tiny brains!
In an interview with Fox news, Dr. Carson made his case for reopening the U.S. economy en masse to Martha McCullem:
“Well you know it’s sort of sad that everything is cast in the political arena these days, when in fact we’re trying to get the American people back on target. We have to recognize that for every day that our economy remains shut down, there are businesses that go under job losses that occur and you know right now we have a disaster but we can still recover from it, you know if we use our common sense and we use the things that we’ve learned about the virus and about its transmission to get people back to work.”
Dr. Carson went on, “But as I’ve said before you know, we can stay shuttered and allow this thing to control us and when we finally come out everything will be destroyed, or we can and quit; you know our tradition is Americans tend to be innovative they tend to be entrepreneurial and they tend to be brave this is the home of the brave. Remember that…” Home of the Brave may not describe the U.S. any longer.
Wash your hands, stay 6-feet apart when you can, and quarantine those at risk. Oh, and wear a mask. It’s not brain surgery.
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Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) Gets Fast Track
Moderna said on Tuesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted “fast track” designation to its experimental coronavirus vaccine. This move by the FDA speeds up the regulatory review process. Moderna has been in a race with other pharma and biotech companies to develope a COVID-19 vaccine. Soeme of the competitors include Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) in partnership with BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX). More than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including several in clinical trials, but the World Health Organization has warned repeatedly that a vaccine would take at least 12 months. The virus has infected over 4.2 million people world-wide and klled close to 300,000 of those people.
A vaccine or treatment that gets the “fast track” designation is eligible for the agency’s “priority review” status, which means the FDA can make decisions on approval of a drug within six months. Moderna expects to start a late-stage study of the vaccine in early summer and says there is potential for a marketing application approval in 2021. That kind of timeline fits the warnings from the WHO and others, as MRNA started working full-force on it’s vaccine in February.
The vaccine works on Moderna’s messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which basically uses the bodies own immune system to battle the virus. It tells cells in the body to make specific coronavirus proteins that then produce an immune response. The approach can be used in many types of treatments but still hasn’t been approved for any medicines. So, effectively if MRNA wins this race to a vaccine and it’s effective, it somewhat validates the messenger technology over a wide range of treatments and vaccines. Each would still have to go through their own approval process, but the technology will have passed a key efficacy test.
Last month, Moderna received $483 million funding from a U.S. government agency to accelerate development of the vaccine. This is never a bad sign and while the stock is down as I write, it may not stay dowm.
The Bitcoin Halving (Post Mortem)
Now that the Bitcoin third-block “halving” is over (until the next one), how did it play out?
The definition of Bitcoin’s halving states that every four years producing BTC becomes more difficult, as block rewards for mining get cut in half by a pre-coded blockchain protocol. As a result, miners begin receiving 50% less BTC for verifying transactions. The halving regulates the supply by delaying the moment that all 21 million coins (the total Bitcoin being released, ever) get into the market. Currently, about 18.3 million BTC have been mined, which is roughly 85% of the total cap.
“During times of inflation, the key to preserve wealth is to hold real assets,” Kristin Boggiano, a co-founder of the Digital Asset Regulatory and Legal Alliance, told Cointelegraph. She elaborated: “Bitcoin is inherently a store of value because by its design it cannot exceed 21 million, and therefore it’s a natural hedge to an inflationary dollar.”
The halving day itself went uneventfully for Bitcoin’s price, which stayed around the $8,500–$8,700 mark throughout Monday. That confirmed the assumption that the halving event was already “priced in,” which was shared by a substantial part of cryptocurrency commentators. Nonetheless, crypto Twitter celebrated the event in full force.
As for where the price is headed next, traders remain divided, as the latest analysis by Cointelegraph shows. Some experts believe that Bitcoin could soon see an upswing to the $14,000–$15,000 resistance area, while others suggest that a pullback to the $6,000 region is also a likely scenario in the short term.
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Abbot Labs Launching Another Test
Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) is launching another blood test that aims to show whether patients were exposed to the novel coronavirus based on the infection-fighting proteins in their blood.
This is the second antibody test from the North Chicago based medical device maker to get emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Abbott this month plans to ship nearly 30 million total antibody tests globally and will have capacity for 60 million tests in June, the company said in a statement today. The United States has so far, testd nearly 10 million people.
Antibody testing is expected to help determine how long antibodies stay in the body and how much of the population has been infected, the statement says.
However, the tests don’t yet address the big question; are those who have already been infected immune from COVID-19, even if temporary. Critics of widespread antibody testing fear that people will use the results to make unfounded decisions about social distancing, potentially putting themselves and others at risk.
Abbott also has two molecular tests used to detect infection in real time. These two tests are the future.
You Can Get Anything on The Internet
A Boston police officer used a mating call on his cell phone to lure a peacock escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo into custody.
Officers on patrol Monday in the area of Franklin Park Zoo received a tip from a concerned citizen that an animal had escaped the zoo, a Boston Police Department statement shows.
“Additional officers arrived at the scene and were met by an extremely large, slightly intimidating and quite beautiful, male peacock,” the statement said.
“An officer on scene relied on his quick wit to track down a peacock mating call on his cell phone, successfully luring the bird into a fenced yard where he waited patiently for the arrival of Boston Animal Control.”
I wonder what else popped up in his Google search when he typed in “Peacock mating call”.