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Category: Health

A lack of coronavirus genomes could prolong the pandemic

A lack of coronavirus genomes could prolong the pandemic

Puja Changoiwala writes: Back at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, before the disease had even drawn the attention of much of the world, researchers in China and Australia mapped the genome of the coronavirus isolated from one of the first patients in the Wuhan outbreak. This first genetic blueprint of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was publicly released soon after, on January 10, 2020. The disclosure of that genome, and others that soon followed, guided the vigorous international scientific response to…

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How the drug industry has exploited reforms started in the fight against AIDS

How the drug industry has exploited reforms started in the fight against AIDS

Robert Bazell writes: Three decades ago, a small group from within the AIDS activist organization ACT UP changed the course of medicine in the United States. They employed what they called “the outside/inside strategy.” The activists staged large, noisy demonstrations outside the Food and Drug Administration and other federal government agencies, demanding an acceleration of the drug-approval process. Others learned the minutiae of the science and worked quietly with receptive bureaucrats, bringing the patient’s perspective to the table toward the…

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Pfizer and Moderna vaccines likely to produce lasting immunity, study finds

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines likely to produce lasting immunity, study finds

The New York Times reports: The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday. The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from Covid-19 before being vaccinated…

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Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute

Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute

Bloomberg reports: From her first visit before it formally opened in 2018, Anderson was impressed with the institute’s maximum biocontainment lab. The concrete, bunker-style building has the highest biosafety designation, and requires air, water and waste to be filtered and sterilized before it leaves the facility. There were strict protocols and requirements aimed at containing the pathogens being studied, Anderson said, and researchers underwent 45 hours of training to be certified to work independently in the lab. The induction process…

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WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

CNBC reports: The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe. “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “Vaccine alone won’t…

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Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Zeynep Tufekci writes: There were curious characteristics about the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1977-78, which emerged from northeastern Asia and killed an estimated 700,000 people around the world. For one, it almost exclusively affected people in their mid-20s or younger. Scientists discovered another oddity that could explain the first: It was virtually identical to a strain that circulated in the 1950s. People born before that had immunity that protected them, and younger people didn’t. But how on earth had it…

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When a good scientist is the wrong source

When a good scientist is the wrong source

Thomas Levenson writes: Six weeks ago, a reporter, Nicholas Wade, published what seemed to be a blockbuster story, one that, if true, would expose the greatest scandal in recent history. SARS-CoV-2, he wrote, or SARS2 for short, the virus that has driven the global COVID-19 pandemic, had likely been modified in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which it then escaped into the wild. “Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled…

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Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

The Associated Press reports: Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine. An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19…

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Why is there such a gender gap in Covid vaccination rates?

Why is there such a gender gap in Covid vaccination rates?

Angelica Puzio writes: For months, local, state and federal officials have been consumed with how to persuade Americans who are wary of the COVID-19 vaccine to get the shot anyway. The conversation has focused in large part on specific demographic groups and how to overcome certain cultural factors to get the vaccines into people’s arms. Experts worried about low turnout among women, who reported significantly more vaccination hesitancy than men prior to the vaccine rollout. And public health officials warned…

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Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

David A. Relman writes: If we scientists are not forced to confront the issues of laboratory safety and risky research in a serious and sustained manner, history suggests that we will not do so. In 2012, controversy erupted when it transpired that two sets of researchers — at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands — were altering highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to enhance their transmissibility among mammals (to understand their potential…

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Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

A COVID-19 field hospital in Santo Andre, Brazil. The pandemic has killed over 503,000 people in Brazil; just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated. Mario Tama/Getty Images By Maria De Jesus, American University School of International Service In the race between infection and injection, injection has lost. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population…

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Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

The Wall Street Journal reports: Chinese researchers directed the U.S. National Institutes of Health to delete gene sequences of early Covid-19 cases from a key scientific database, raising concerns that scientists studying the origin of the pandemic may lack access to key pieces of information. The NIH confirmed that it deleted the sequences after receiving a request from a Chinese researcher who had submitted them three months earlier. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal…

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Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

NBC News reports: Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report. The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those…

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Delta variant could create ‘two Americas’ of Covid, experts warn

Delta variant could create ‘two Americas’ of Covid, experts warn

BuzzFeed News reports: The Delta coronavirus variant, which devastated India and forced the UK to delay lifting its remaining coronavirus restrictions, is now on the rise in the US. What that means for you will depend on whether you are fully vaccinated and where you live. Experts say we may be about to see the emergence of “two Americas” of COVID: One with high rates of vaccination where the Delta coronavirus variant poses little threat, and the other with low…

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New $3.2 billion program will support the development of drug to treat Covid-19

New $3.2 billion program will support the development of drug to treat Covid-19

The New York Times reports: The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it’s pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come. The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of…

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What Covid-19’s long tail is revealing about chronic disease

What Covid-19’s long tail is revealing about chronic disease

David Cox writes: One of the major challenges for doctors attempting to treat long Covid is that there are likely to be a variety of underlying triggers or causes, depending on the patient. Recent epidemics have provided one way of gaining crucial clues about what these underlying causes might be. Far from being unique to Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – some scientists believe almost all infectious outbreaks leave behind a proportion of patients who remain chronically unwell…

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