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Category: Health

Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Rebecca Solnit writes: Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and…

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Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

The New York Times reports: Officials in Louisiana have been willing to try just about anything to jolt the state’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination rates, from a $1 million cash giveaway to a public service announcement featuring the recent 14-year-old national spelling bee champion. But when Madeline LeBlanc relented and got her first vaccine dose this week, she was motivated by something entirely different: fear. After seeing news reports about the Delta variant raging across the state, Ms. LeBlanc, 24, had…

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I went to a party with 14 other vaccinated people; 11 of us got Covid

I went to a party with 14 other vaccinated people; 11 of us got Covid

Allan Massie writes: I was sitting on an examination table at an urgent care clinic in Timonium, giving my history to a physician’s assistant. An hour later, she would call me to confirm that I was positive for COVID-19. Given the way that I felt, it was what I expected. But it wasn’t supposed to happen: I’ve been fully vaccinated for months. Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there,…

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‘Dark times’: Houston’s fourth Covid wave to be the largest yet, medical leaders predict

‘Dark times’: Houston’s fourth Covid wave to be the largest yet, medical leaders predict

Houston Chronicle reports: Fueled by the delta variant, a surge in Houston COVID-19 hospitalizations is growing as fast as at any time during the pandemic so far, and is projected to pass previous records by mid-August — even though roughly half of all eligible Houstonians are fully vaccinated. “We’re heading into dark times,” said Texas Medical Center CEO Bill McKeon. Already, he said, “our ICUs are filled with unvaccinated people.” On Tuesday, Texas Medical Center hospitals listed 1,372 people in…

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Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch Covid. None of them helped

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch Covid. None of them helped

Will Douglas Heaven writes: When covid-19 struck Europe in March 2020, hospitals were plunged into a health crisis that was still badly understood. “Doctors really didn’t have a clue how to manage these patients,” says Laure Wynants, an epidemiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who studies predictive tools. But there was data coming out of China, which had a four-month head start in the race to beat the pandemic. If machine-learning algorithms could be trained on that data to…

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What Delta has changed in the Covid pandemic — and what it hasn’t

What Delta has changed in the Covid pandemic — and what it hasn’t

STAT reports: In some respects, the Delta variant has changed everything in the Covid-19 pandemic. In others, the same rules still apply. Before the variant of SARS-CoV-2 began spreading rapidly in the United States, Covid-19 vaccines were drastically cutting the number of cases. They were preventing people from being infected. And vaccinated people who got infected were unlikely to infect others. That’s all still true, even with Delta — if just to a lesser extent. Despite the threat of Delta,…

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Surprise dip in UK Covid cases baffles researchers

Surprise dip in UK Covid cases baffles researchers

Nature reports: Scientists are scratching their heads over the precipitous decline in daily COVID-19 infections in the United Kingdom following their rapid rise earlier in the year. Officially recorded new cases more than halved in just two weeks: from a high of 54,674 on 17 July to 22,287 on 2 August. “Nobody really knows what’s going on,” says epidemiologist John Edmunds at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In particular, it’s not clear whether this sudden trend…

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An uncertain new phase of the pandemic in which cases surge but deaths do not

An uncertain new phase of the pandemic in which cases surge but deaths do not

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: So many things have gone wrong in the American response to the pandemic, but two important things have gone right: scientists have developed a vaccine, and older Americans have got it. Seventy-six per cent of Americans between the ages of fifty and sixty-four have received at least one dose, according to the Mayo Clinic’s vaccination tracker. Between the ages of sixty-five and seventy-four, it’s ninety-one per cent, and among those over the age of seventy-five it’s eighty-seven….

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Who are the unvaccinated in America? There’s no single answer

Who are the unvaccinated in America? There’s no single answer

The New York Times reports: As coronavirus cases rise across the United States, the fight against the pandemic is focused on an estimated 93 million people who are eligible for shots but have chosen not to get them. These are the Americans who are most vulnerable to serious illness from the highly contagious Delta variant and most likely to carry the virus, spreading it further. It turns out, though, that this is not a single set of Americans, but in…

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As Delta spreads, Pfizer and Moderna get set for a booster shot to profits

As Delta spreads, Pfizer and Moderna get set for a booster shot to profits

The Guardian reports: Praised for preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths and allowing a return to more normal life, Covid vaccines will also substantially benefit some pharmaceutical companies. In June, analysts estimated the global market for the vaccines could be worth $70bn (£50bn) this year, but the figure could be even higher as the Delta variant of coronavirus spreads and scientists debate whether people will need booster shots. On Thursday Moderna, which received US government funding to develop its vaccine,…

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The overlooked superpower of mRNA vaccines

The overlooked superpower of mRNA vaccines

Science reports: Individuals facing the threat of COVID-19 may care most about a vaccine’s ability to forestall grave disease that could lead to a hospital bed or worse. And a number of vaccines perform that vital task well, including those from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, which are based on genetically engineered cold viruses, as well as the not-yet-authorized protein vaccine from Novavax. But for public health experts trying to halt a global pandemic, shutting down even the mildest infections…

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They spurned the vaccine. Now they want you to know they regret it

They spurned the vaccine. Now they want you to know they regret it

The New York Times reports: As Mindy Greene spent another day in the Covid intensive care unit, listening to the whirring machines that now breathed for her 42-year-old husband, Russ, she opened her phone and tapped out a message. “We did not get the vaccine,” she wrote on Facebook. “I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok.”…

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Vaccinated people may spread the virus, though rarely, CDC reports

Vaccinated people may spread the virus, though rarely, CDC reports

The New York Times reports: In yet another unexpected and unwelcome twist in the pandemic, fully immunized people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant may spread the virus to others just as easily as unvaccinated people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report published on Friday. The vaccines remain powerfully effective against severe illness and death, and infections in vaccinated people are thought to be comparatively rare. But the revelation follows a series of…

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Breakthrough Covid cases are on the rise among the vaccinated

Breakthrough Covid cases are on the rise among the vaccinated

NBC News reports: At least 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans have tested positive for Covid and 1,400 of those have died, according to data collected by NBC News. The 125,682 “breakthrough” cases in 38 states found by NBC News represent less than .08 percent of the 164.2 million-plus people who have been fully vaccinated since January, or about one in every 1,300. The number of cases and deaths among the vaccinated is very small compared to the number among the unvaccinated….

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Behind the masks, a mystery: How often do the vaccinated spread the virus?

Behind the masks, a mystery: How often do the vaccinated spread the virus?

The New York Times reports: The recommendation that vaccinated people in some parts of the country dust off their masks was based largely on one troublesome finding, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New research showed that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carry tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat, she said in an email responding to questions from The New York Times. The finding contradicts what…

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Something strange is happening in Britain. Covid cases are plummeting instead of soaring

Something strange is happening in Britain. Covid cases are plummeting instead of soaring

The Washington Post reports: This is a puzzler. Coronavirus cases are plummeting in Britain. They were supposed to soar. Scientists aren’t sure why they haven’t. The daily number of new infections recorded in the country fell for seven days in a row before a slight uptick Wednesday, when the country reported 27,734 cases. That’s still almost half of where the caseload was a week ago. The trajectory of the virus in Britain is something the world is watching closely and…

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