Welcome to Plugging the Gap (my email newsletter about Covid-19 and its economics). In case you don’t know me, I’m an economist and professor at the University of Toronto. I have written lots of books including, most recently, on Covid-19. You can follow me on Twitter (@joshgans) or subscribe to this email newsletter here.
After a year of writing, this week I ran out of things to say. So there were no newsletters on Monday or Wednesday. I think we can now say that this newsletter is going to move to intermittent — something I regard as a good thing.
Nonetheless, there have been some interesting things written by other people so I thought I would link to them here:
This piece from The Atlantic on why data matters and how many authorities failed to collect it!
What was the biggest mistake the US made in the pandemic? You guessed it, failure to test and solve the pandemic information gap.
Tinder is sending people rapid screens to use at home.
The X-Prize announced its rapid test winners.
Why we still need testing even though we have vaccines.
Why is it so hard to get appointment software working?
The data visualisations behind Covid-19 scepticism.
If you want to justify being nice to others, don’t appeal to self-interest, appeal to better natures.
Finally, if you are missing the whole economics and Covid-19 shtick you might want to pre-order Economics in One Virus by Ryan Borne. I received an early copy and it is more a book about economics, in general, that is motivated by situations arising from the pandemic but it is a fun and prescient way to learn the discipline.