A linkfest dedicated to the coronavirus pandemic is now a weekly feature here on Abnormal Returns. You can read last week’s edition here. Please be careful, get a flu shot and stay safe.
Quote of the Day
"Due to its potential for exponential growth, Covid-19 is more like Blitzkrieg than it is like chess. You are either winning or losing (badly), and you would prefer to be winning."
(Tyler Cowen)
Chart of the Day

How mask wearing, by state, correlates with the incidence of the coronavirus.
Vaccines
- The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine seems to produce a robust immune response among the elderly. (ft.com)
- One of the casualties of the trade war with China is vaccine cooperation. (bloomberg.com)
- The race to a coronavirus vaccine is creating some strange bedfellows. (wsj.com)
- Vaccine trials need to make sure they enroll more Black subjects. (washingtonpost.com)
- Things are going to get tricky once vaccine trials begin to unblind. (blogs.sciencemag.org)
Vaccine distribution
- Just a reminder that a vaccine is not a silver bullet. (seattletimes.com)
- The states are not ready to distribute the vaccine. (washingtonpost.com)
- There's no reason to believe a Trump administration could successfully roll out a coronavirus vaccine. (theatlantic.com)
- Ideally high risk populations wouldn't have to leave their homes to get the vaccine. (statnews.com)
Immunity
- Antibody levels in Britons previously exposed to the coronavirus are warning. (msn.com)
- Take a breath - antibodies naturally decline over time and are only one part of the immunological equation. (nytimes.com)
Treatment
- Sarah Zhang, "The longer we can prevent infections, the better prepared we will be to treat them." (theatlantic.com)
- Monoclonal antibodies are showing great promise but are expensive and difficult to administer. (nature.com)
- Antibody treatments show great promise, but we can't make them fast enogh. (statnews.com)
- The improvement in Covid-19 survival rates are real but are threatened by another surge in cases. (nytimes.com)
- Despite its approval, there are more questions than answers about the efficacy of remdesivir in treating Covid-19 patients. (sciencemag.org)
- Covid patients on low-dose aspirin had better outcomes. (sciencedaily.com)
Long haulers
- A doctor on why we need to take long haulers seriously. (statnews.com)
- A first-hand account of what it's like to recover from a severe case of Covid-19. (wsj.com)
Spread
- What went wrong in Europe? (wsj.com)
- Why the outbreaks in North and South Dakota are so bad. (vox.com)
- Why the UK could go back on lockdown. (ft.com)
- How keeping groups from intermixing can help slow a pandemic. (sciencedaily.com)
Influenza
- Researchers still don't know why influenza peaks during colder months. (scientificamerican.com)
- Hospital workers who got vaccinated were significantly less likely to develop COVID than those who did not. (scientificamerican.com)
Ventilation
- Germany is investing in better ventilation for public buildings. (bbc.com)
- A visualization of how the coronavirus is spread indoors. (english.elpais.com)
Policy
- What the West can learn from how Asian countries tackled the pandemic. (bloomberg.com)
- Some countries are shortening the quarantine window to help increase compliance. (wsj.com)
- How San Francisco was able to reopen safely, albeit slowly. (msn.com)
- Reopening schools amid high community spread doesn't help anyone. (bloomberg.com)
- Despite being a hotspot for fatalities, nursing homes have avoided CMS fines. (washingtonpost.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Coronavirus links: a lack of silver bullets. (abnormalreturns.com)
- On the challenge of holding two competing thoughts on the pandemic in your head a the same time. (abnormalreturns.com)