Browsed by
Category: Health

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

The FDA should be our toughest regulatory body, but the pharmaceutical lobby has torn it to shreds

The FDA should be our toughest regulatory body, but the pharmaceutical lobby has torn it to shreds

Natalie Shure writes: Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm—the first new Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years—an event that, at first blush, heralds the amazing news of a medical advance. Perhaps it might have been, had the whole process leading up to the agency giving its nod to the medication played out in a functional health care system. But that’s not what happened. Far from hailing the advent of a transformative breakthrough for the six million Americans suffering…

Read More Read More

Could a nasal spray of designer antibodies help to beat Covid?

Could a nasal spray of designer antibodies help to beat Covid?

Dr. Francis Collins writes: There are now several monoclonal antibodies, identical copies of a therapeutic antibody produced in large numbers, that are authorized for the treatment of COVID-19. But in the ongoing effort to beat this terrible pandemic, there’s plenty of room for continued improvements in treating infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. With this in mind, I’m pleased to share progress in the development of a specially engineered therapeutic antibody that could be delivered through a nasal…

Read More Read More

Delta variant of the coronvirus is on the rise across the U.S. Here’s why experts are concerned

Delta variant of the coronvirus is on the rise across the U.S. Here’s why experts are concerned

CNN reports: The Delta variant is on its way to becoming the dominant strain of coronavirus in the US, raising concerns that outbreaks could hit unvaccinated people this fall. And a new study shows the Delta variant is associated with almost double the risk of hospitalization compared to the Alpha variant. The Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant, which is “stickier” and more contagious than the original strain of novel coronavirus, became the dominant strain in the US this spring. But health experts…

Read More Read More

Outgoing UN aid chief slams G7 for failing on vaccine plan

Outgoing UN aid chief slams G7 for failing on vaccine plan

Reuters reports: Outgoing U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock slammed the Group of Seven wealthy nations on Monday for failing to come up with a plan to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, describing the G7 pledge to provide 1 billion doses over the next year as a “small step.” “These sporadic, small-scale, charitable handouts from rich countries to poor countries is not a serious plan and it will not bring the pandemic to an end,” Lowcock, who steps down on Friday,…

Read More Read More

The implications of the lab-leak hypothesis

The implications of the lab-leak hypothesis

David Wallace-Wells writes: Nothing has changed but the narrative. A majority of Americans now believe that the coronavirus emerged from a lab, not nature, and in recent weeks a new openness to the lab-leak theory has taken over “nearly all mainstream media,” as my colleague Jonathan Chait put it. But the material case for the hypothesis remains essentially unchanged from the version advanced by Nicholson Baker, in this magazine, in January — indeed more or less unchanged from the version…

Read More Read More

Virologist, Shi Zhengli, at center of a pandemic storm, speaks out

Virologist, Shi Zhengli, at center of a pandemic storm, speaks out

The New York Times reports: To a growing chorus of American politicians and scientists, she is the key to whether the world will ever learn if the virus behind the devastating Covid-19 pandemic escaped from a Chinese lab. To the Chinese government and public, she is a hero of the country’s success in curbing the epidemic and a victim of malicious conspiracy theories. Shi Zhengli, a top Chinese virologist, is once again at the center of clashing narratives about her…

Read More Read More

Reports of severe Covid or death after vaccination are rare, but not unexpected

Reports of severe Covid or death after vaccination are rare, but not unexpected

The New York Times reports: Over the last few months, a steady drumbeat of headlines has highlighted the astounding real-world effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The vaccines, study after study has shown, are more than 90 percent effective at preventing the worst outcomes, including hospitalization and death. But alongside this good news have been rare reports of severe Covid in people who had been fully vaccinated. On June 3, for instance,…

Read More Read More

Why are women more prone to long Covid?

Why are women more prone to long Covid?

The Observer reports: In June 2020, as the first reports of long Covid began to filter through the medical community, doctors attempting to grapple with this mysterious malaise began to notice an unusual trend. While acute cases of Covid-19 – particularly those hospitalised with the disease – tended to be mostly male and over 50, long Covid sufferers were, by contrast, both relatively young and overwhelmingly female. Early reports of long Covid at a Paris hospital between May and July…

Read More Read More

The newly approved drug that could break American health care

The newly approved drug that could break American health care

Nicholas Bagley and Rachel Sachs write: Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration overruled—to much criticism—its own scientific advisory committee and approved the Alzheimer’s treatment Aduhelm. The agency made this decision despite thin evidence of the drug’s clinical efficacy and despite its serious side effects, including brain swelling and bleeding. As a result, a serious risk now exists that millions of people will be prescribed a drug that does more harm than good. Less appreciated is how the drug’s…

Read More Read More

The grave implications for the world if China covered up the origins of Covid

The grave implications for the world if China covered up the origins of Covid

John Gray writes: If … it becomes clear that the pandemic originated in failures of the Chinese state, the damage to its model of government will be irreparable. At the same time, the West would be faced with the uncomfortable fact that Xi Jinping’s China is a totalitarian regime. Secrecy and cover-ups are normal in such systems. Only in 1990 did the Soviet state formally accept responsibility for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940, carried…

Read More Read More

America still undervalues public health

America still undervalues public health

Ed Yong writes: During a pandemic, no one’s health is fully in their own hands. No field should understand that more deeply than public health, a discipline distinct from medicine. Whereas doctors and nurses treat sick individuals in front of them, public-health practitioners work to prevent sickness in entire populations. They are expected to think big. They know that infectious diseases are always collective problems because they are infectious. An individual’s choices can ripple outward to affect cities, countries, and…

Read More Read More

If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write: It would only cost $50bn to ensure 40% of the world’s population is vaccinated by the end of the year, and 60% by the first half of 2022. This is a recent estimate from the IMF, the latest institution to join a chorus of voices calling for a global vaccination programme to bring Covid-19 under control. The IMF has highlighted the economic benefits of global vaccines, which would be huge. But there is another…

Read More Read More

The evidence still suggests the virus came from nature

The evidence still suggests the virus came from nature

Angela L. Rasmussen and Stephen A. Goldstein write: In March 2020, a group of renowned evolutionary virologists analyzed the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and found it was overwhelmingly likely that this virus had never been manipulated in any laboratory. Like the earlier coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, they theorized, it “spilled over” from its natural reservoir host (bats) to a new one (humans). Viruses jump species frequently, with unpredictable consequences. Often a virus hits an evolutionary dead end if it cannot…

Read More Read More