On the three-year anniversary of America’s COVID-19 oh-shit moment—when Tom Hanks announced he had contracted the potentially deadly virus and the NBA suspended the rest of its season—I looked down at the little testing rectangle and said “Oh, shoot.” It was more observationally interesting than existentially nerve-rattling to experience my second official case of COVID […]
When cornered, some politicians grudgingly admit COVID-19 restrictions went too far and made little sense. But that still leaves us wondering as to their thinking when they locked playgrounds, mandated masks, restricted travel, shuttered businesses, closed schools, confined people to their homes, sent cops after paddle-boarders floating on the lonely sea, ignored their own rules, […]
Today’s guest is Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. The author of two books on how bad medical policy persists long after it has been recognized as ineffective or even deadly (Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People With Cancer and […]
Legalization linked to fewer suicides, traffic fatalities, and opioid deaths. A new paper on the public health effects of legalizing marijuana finds “little credible evidence to suggest that [medical marijuana] legalization promotes marijuana use among teenagers” and “convincing evidence that young adults consume less alcohol when medical marijuana is legalized.” And that’s just the start […]
Does the artificial sweetener erythritol cause heart attacks and strokes? That’s the tenor of a spate of reporting on a new study published this week in the journal Nature Medicine. But there are numerous reasons to be cautious about drawing conclusions from the study’s purported findings. The researchers report that “in patients undergoing cardiac risk […]
“Trust is justified based on how an organization or system performs,” writes Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. “And the truth is, the entire public health apparatus, failed.” Join Prasad and Reason‘s Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller for the YouTube premiere of a […]
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI)—a British nonprofit that smeared Reason as an unsafe news website using dubious criteria—might want to take a closer look at newly uncovered disinformation being spread by… the website of the Global Disinformation Index. GDI is partly funded by the U.S. State Department, and seeks to discourage advertisers from working with news […]
New data highlights just how deadly U.S. prisons became during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the U.S., prison deaths spiked by almost 50 percent in 2020, jumping to 6,182 deaths from 4,240 the year before. “The U.S. has seen a significant, continual increase in deaths in prisons over the past two decades, […]
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Emma Camp look at the Cochrane Library’s new study which concluded masks had “little or no difference” on COVID-19 and ponder a new Florida bill that proposes to remove legal protections against defamation lawsuits. 0:26: The Cochrane Library’s review […]
The U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that the most likely origin of COVID-19 is a lab leak. The federal agency reviewed new intelligence, which prompted officials to revise their position that it’s unclear how the virus emerged. The White House and certain members of Congress also reviewed the intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Energy […]