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Category: Health

Had Covid (or been vaccinated)? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

Had Covid (or been vaccinated)? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

Nature reports: Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-19. The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect,” says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash…

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The Wuhan lab leak question: A disused Chinese mine takes center stage

The Wuhan lab leak question: A disused Chinese mine takes center stage

The Wall Street Journal reports: On the outskirts of a village deep in the mountains of southwest China, a lone surveillance camera peers down toward a disused copper mine smothered in dense bamboo. As night approaches, bats swoop overhead. This is the subterranean home of the closest known virus on Earth to the one that causes Covid-19. It is also now a touchpoint for escalating calls for a more thorough probe into whether the pandemic could have stemmed from a…

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Biden: Intelligence community split on Covid-19 origin

Biden: Intelligence community split on Covid-19 origin

Politico reports: President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the U.S intelligence community is split between two origin theories for the Covid-19 pandemic. In a statement Wednesday, Biden notably did not detail the two theories between which the intelligence community is split. The president’s statement did note that he had ordered a review of the pandemic’s origins, “including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” but did not say whether either of those…

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How do we know that Covid isn’t a bioweapon?

How do we know that Covid isn’t a bioweapon?

Since the revival of the lab-leak theory will once again enliven conspiracy theorists, it’s worth being reminded why it’s wildly implausible that SARS-CoV-2 was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a biological weapon. (Also keep in mind that the possibility that the virus accidentally leaked from the lab does not contradict the still widely held view that it originated in the wild.) Last July, Ruby Prosser Scully wrote: [C]reating this virus in a lab and knowing that it…

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Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

NPR reports: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic. It’s social media. And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason. At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO…

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Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin

Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory. The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers…

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World’s worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19

World’s worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visits a hospital for COVID-19 patients, unmasked, in Minsk on Nov. 27, 2020. Andrei Stasevich\TASS via Getty Images By Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University; Dorothy Chin, University of California, Los Angeles; Elizabeth J King, University of Michigan; Elize Massard da Fonseca, Fundação Getulio Vargas; Salvador Vázquez del Mercado, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan COVID-19 is notoriously hard to control, and political leaders are only part of the calculus when…

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The pandemic’s mental wounds are still wide open

The pandemic’s mental wounds are still wide open

Ed Yong writes: This time last year, the United States seemed stuck on a COVID-19 plateau. Although 1,300 Americans were dying from the disease every day, states had begun to reopen in a patchwork fashion, and an anxious nation was looking ahead to an uncertain summer. Twelve months later, the situation is very different. Cases are falling quickly. About half as many people are dying every day. Several vaccines were developed faster than experts had dared to predict, and proved…

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CDC chief Walensky keeps changing her story — and confusing everyone

CDC chief Walensky keeps changing her story — and confusing everyone

The Daily Beast reports: The most remarkable moment of national frustration over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s coronavirus guidelines began two days before the agency’s controversial new mask guidance was even announced. “Dr. Walensky, I used to have the utmost respect for the guidance from the CDC,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, last week, in detailing her belief that the CDC has been slow to keep up with the science. “I always…

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Covid is bringing a global divergence between the wealthiest and poorest nations

Covid is bringing a global divergence between the wealthiest and poorest nations

The Wall Street Journal reports: Covid-19 is reopening a rift between economies in the world’s richest and poorest nations, driven by growth rates that are moving firmly in opposite directions. In the U.S., economists are forecasting a return to boomtime growth levels of the “roaring 20s”; China’s economy expanded at a record 18.3% in the first quarter; and the U.K. is growing faster than at any time since the end of World War II. Yet across the developing world, where…

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The once dismissed lab-leak theory is becoming increasingly plausible

The once dismissed lab-leak theory is becoming increasingly plausible

Donald G. McNeil Jr. writes: In early spring 2020, I reported an article for The New York Times on which I put the tentative headline: “New Coronavirus Is ‘Clearly Not a Lab Leak,’ Scientists Say.” It never ran. For two reasons. The chief one was that inside the Times, we were sharply divided. My colleagues who cover national security were being assured by their Trump administration sources — albeit anonymously and with no hard evidence — that it was a…

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The CDC’s mask guidance is a mess. Biden needs to clean it up

The CDC’s mask guidance is a mess. Biden needs to clean it up

Leana S. Wen writes: Last Thursday’s abruptly announced guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has devolved into a giant mess. Governors and mayors were caught by surprise, leading to a flurry of rapid changes and a patchwork of disparate regulations across the country. Businesses found themselves scrambling without the tools they need to relax restrictions for the vaccinated while protecting the ­unvaccinated. While many people happily shed their masks and celebrated the apparent end of the pandemic,…

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The 60-year-old scientific screwup that helped Covid kill

The 60-year-old scientific screwup that helped Covid kill

Megan Molteni writes: Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives…

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723 epidemiologists on when and how the U.S. can fully return to normal

723 epidemiologists on when and how the U.S. can fully return to normal

The New York Times reports: Covid-19 cases are decreasing in the United States, and masks are no longer required everywhere, but the pandemic is not over — and won’t be until younger children can also be vaccinated, epidemiologists said in a new survey by The New York Times. The true end of the pandemic — when it becomes safer to return to most activities without precautions — will arrive once at least 70 percent of Americans of all ages are…

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Federal mask retreat sets off confusing scramble for states and cities

Federal mask retreat sets off confusing scramble for states and cities

The New York Times reports: Minnesota’s statewide mask mandate is over. But in Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, face coverings are still required. In Michigan, Kentucky and Oregon, governors cheerily told vaccinated people that they could go out maskless. But mask mandates remained in force for New Yorkers, New Jerseyans and Californians. So unexpected was new federal guidance on masks that in Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Quinton Lucas went from saying he would not change his mask order, to saying…

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Hundreds of epidemiologists expected mask-wearing in public for at least a year

Hundreds of epidemiologists expected mask-wearing in public for at least a year

The New York Times reports: When federal health officials said on Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear masks in most places, it came as a surprise to many people in public health. It also was a stark contrast with the views of a large majority of epidemiologists surveyed in the last two weeks by The New York Times. In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor…

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