Henry Miller, M.S., M.D., joins the John Batchelor Show to discuss the spread of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, and how countries can determine the total coronavirus population. The CDC has currently reported 647 cases in the United States, with more than 116,000 cases reported worldwide. ...
Expanding the use of biosimilars to treat serious illnesses like cancer or auto-immune diseases could reduce a patient’s out-of-pocket costs by 17 percent, finds a new issue brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute. Click here to download the study “Biologics effectively treat very serious illnesses but can often be very expensive and lead to patients incurring significant out-of-pocket costs,” said Dr. Wayne Winegarden, director of PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation...
Title: As U.S. Sees COVID-19 Infections Spike, Some Worry About 'Grave Errors' By Adam Smith In the beginning, the few reports of a newly discovered virus seemed inconsequential and distant. The coronavirus was causing pneumonia in scores of people, but those patients were in a faraway province of China, Hubei, that most outside that nation had never heard of. “There is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been...
The Green New Dealers want us to think we have to either live more austere lives under coercive government policies or destroy the planet. Opponents of their plan, the theory goes, are willing to sacrifice the environment for short-term financial prosperity for the elite few. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meeting Americans’ needs, especially those of the neediest, requires free markets that can realize and reward the benefits of technological innovations, big and small. Big innovations are those such as the...
Fractions are taught in elementary school, but adults sometimes still manage to misunderstand how they work in everyday life. I was reminded of that after President Trump’s Saturday press conference, which focused on the federal government’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus (formally SARS-CoV-2, with the illness it causes designated COVID-19). Let me explain. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the articulate, veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described at the presser how the efforts to prevent the spread—or “contain”...
CDC warns on coronavirus in US: Should you start to worry? By Madeline Farber, Fox News Federal health officials this week warned that community spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. is seemingly inevitable, with one Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official saying it’s no longer “a question of if, but when, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.” In the same vein, officials have maintained that the immediate threat to the public remains low. So how worried should you be?...
Dr. Henry Miller, PRI’s senior fellow for the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, joins the John Batchelor Show to offer analysis on the search for a vaccine for the coronavirus. Dr. Miller says the United States has a steep learning curve ahead for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and talks about the latest developments from the World Health Organization. ...
PRI's Henry Miller, M.S., M.D., joins the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show to discuss the latest developments in the spread of the coronavirus. Larson and Dr. Miller look at the rise of coronavirus cases in South Korea and Italy, and what the United States is doing to prepare for the impact of the pandemic. Miller's segment begins at the 47:00 minute mark. ...
The World Health Organization, a part of the United Nations, has proposed an official name, COVID-19, for the illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus, after the city in China where it emerged. (The new designation stands for coronavirus disease 2019, as the illness was first detected toward the end of last year.) The director-general of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that the name was chosen “to avoid stigma”—or as the woke might say, microaggressions—thus, the new name makes no reference to...
California wants to get into the drug making business. Gov. Gavin Newsom just announced his intention to have the state contract with generic drug manufacturers to make drugs to sell to state residents, presumably at lower cost than they’re available on the market today. But the plan won’t deliver much in the way of savings. In fact, it could cost taxpayers a significant amount of money. There are far more effective ways to make prescription drugs more affordable — say, by injecting...
WHO says coronavirus ‘absolutely’ has potential for pandemic status as Italy, Iran brace for surge By: Alexandria Hein Health officials stressed on Monday that while Iran and Italy have reported a surge in coronavirus cases over the last several days and raced to cancel public events, the outbreak, which originated in China, has not yet met the criteria for a pandemic, although it “absolutely” has the potential to get there. “Using the term pandemic now, it doesn’t fit the facts, but it may...
PRI's Henry Miller, M.S., M.D., joins the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show to breakdown updated numbers on the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic released by the Chinese government including changes in criteria and the continued spread of the flu-like virus into other countries. ...
As Coronavirus Infections Top 72,000, 'We Are Learning About This as We Go' By: Adam Smith The Street As the coronavirus continues its rapid spread throughout China and the rest of the world, one thing is becoming increasingly certain: There’s a lot that’s still unknown about the newly discovered and sometimes deadly pathogen. We have no idea how far and for how long it will spread or how many it will kill. We don't know when a vaccine will be created and even treatment...
As the outbreak of a novel coronavirus accelerates in China, and sporadic cases appear elsewhere in Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe, there is intense interest in the development of a vaccine, and several U.S. drugmakers have begun working on them with the National Institutes of Health. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a Jan. 30 editorial, “It took scientists 20 months to develop a SARS vaccine to test on humans, but the NIH hopes to have a vaccine ready for human trials...
Business impact widens as China fights to get infections under control By: Anjalee Khemlani, Yahoo! Finance Feb. 7, 2020 China’s deadly coronavirus outbreak continues to threaten multi-national companies, as a range of businesses from leisure to retail suffer from the outbreak’s after-effects. The number of confirmed cases in the country surged past 31,000 Friday, well beyond three times the number of cases last week. While the number of new cases daily have dipped slightly, World Health Organization officials said on Friday the organization’s not...
As the cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (formally 2019-nCoV) continue to increase, and China and other countries aggressively perform screening, isolation, treatment and tracking of patients’ contacts, demand for various essential medical items is unprecedented, and shortages have been reported. For example, American dentists, who go through large numbers of surgical masks daily, are already finding their supply chain interrupted. Ironically, most of the world’s supply of masks and respirators, along with other materials essential for health care, comes from manufacturers in...
Swiss drugmaker Novartis recently launched a lottery-style program to allocate free doses of Zolgensma, its groundbreaking treatment for children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), to patients in countries that haven't approved the drug. But with a $2.1 million price tag, Zolgensma is inaccessible to some patients even where it has been approved. The prohibitive cost has been a source of criticism since the drug was approved. In a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Acting Commissioner last August, five U.S. senators, including presidential...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so744sbVJ_E Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow with PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, joins PRI's "Next Round" podcast to discuss the Wuhan Coronavirus. We explore a wide variety of topics related to this public health crisis, including how people get the illness and how it is being treated, how the Chinese and U.S. governments are working to combat it, the prospects for the rapid development of a vaccine, how social media disinformation is fueling the crisis, and how concerned Americans...