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Category: Health

Russian disinformation campaign aims to undermine confidence in Pfizer, other Covid-19 vaccines, U.S. officials say

Russian disinformation campaign aims to undermine confidence in Pfizer, other Covid-19 vaccines, U.S. officials say

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian intelligence agencies have mounted a campaign to undermine confidence in Pfizer Inc.’s and other Western vaccines, using online publications that in recent months have questioned the vaccines’ development and safety, U.S. officials said. An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said have served as fronts for Russian intelligence. The websites played up the vaccines’ risk of side effects, questioned their efficacy, and…

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Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same

Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same

Hilda Bastian writes: Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers. Much more germane, they say, is the fact that the Johnson & Johnson shot,…

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The virus is mutating — but we can still beat it, one vaccination at a time

The virus is mutating — but we can still beat it, one vaccination at a time

Dhruv Khullar writes: Last March, during the first wave of the pandemic, Adriana Heguy set out to sequence coronavirus genomes. At the time, New York City’s hospitals were filling up, and American testing capacity was abysmal; the focus was on increasing testing, to figure out who had the virus and who didn’t. But Heguy, the director of the Genome Technology Center at N.Y.U. Langone Health, recognized that diagnostic tests weren’t enough. Tracking mutations in the virus’s genetic code would be…

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The short-term, middle-term, and long-term future of the coronavirus

The short-term, middle-term, and long-term future of the coronavirus

Andrew Joseph and Helen Branswell write: When experts envision the future of the coronavirus, many predict that it will become a seasonal pathogen that won’t be much more than a nuisance for most of us who have been vaccinated or previously exposed to it. But how long that process takes — and how much damage the virus inflicts in the interim — is still anyone’s guess. “The most predictable thing about this coronavirus is its unpredictability,” said Howard Markel, a…

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Countries with highest levels of obesity have most Covid deaths, report finds

Countries with highest levels of obesity have most Covid deaths, report finds

The Guardian reports: Countries with high levels of overweight people, such as the UK and the US, have the highest death rates from Covid-19, a landmark report reveals, prompting calls for governments to urgently tackle obesity, as well as prioritising overweight people for vaccinations. About 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from Covid were in countries with high levels of overweight people, says the report from the World Obesity Federation. Countries such as the UK, US and Italy, where…

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In Palm Beach, Covid-19 vaccines intended for rural Black communities are instead going to wealthy white Floridians

In Palm Beach, Covid-19 vaccines intended for rural Black communities are instead going to wealthy white Floridians

STAT reports: The winds blew southwest the day of Pahokee’s Covid-19 vaccination drive, which meant the sugarcane fields were ablaze. Growers are banned from burning excess leaves when there’s an eastward breeze, to keep fumes away from the gated communities of Florida’s Gold Coast 40 miles away. Pahokee is in the same county but, with a median personal income of $13,674, its residents live in a different world. A single highway connects the billionaire’s club of Mar-a-Lago to the working-class…

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The pandemic is crippling world’s most fragile states, report finds

The pandemic is crippling world’s most fragile states, report finds

The Guardian reports: Thousands could starve in the world’s most fragile states as the pandemic comes on top of existing crises, warns a new report today which found aid workers are deeply pessimistic about the coming year. The survey of aid workers by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) found that they believed humanitarian conditions were at their worst in a decade. The chief executive of the DEC, Saleh Saeed, said reduced funding could force aid providers to prioritise some populations…

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The Trump administration quietly spent billions in hospital funds on Operation Warp Speed

The Trump administration quietly spent billions in hospital funds on Operation Warp Speed

STAT reports: The Trump administration quietly took around $10 billion from a fund meant to help hospitals and health care providers affected by Covid-19 and used the money to bankroll Operation Warp Speed contracts, four former Trump administration officials told STAT. The Department of Health and Human Services appears to have used a financial maneuver that allowed officials to spend the money without telling Congress, and the agency got permission from its top lawyer to do so. Now, the Biden…

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The coronavirus is threatening a comeback. Here’s how to stop It

The coronavirus is threatening a comeback. Here’s how to stop It

The New York Times reports: Across the United States, and the world, the coronavirus seems to be loosening its stranglehold. The deadly curve of cases, hospitalizations and deaths has yo-yoed before, but never has it plunged so steeply and so fast. Is this it, then? Is this the beginning of the end? After a year of being pummeled by grim statistics and scolded for wanting human contact, many Americans feel a long-promised deliverance is at hand. Americans will win against…

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Five pandemic mistakes we keep repeating

Five pandemic mistakes we keep repeating

Zeynep Tufekci writes: When the polio vaccine was declared safe and effective, the news was met with jubilant celebration. Church bells rang across the nation, and factories blew their whistles. “Polio routed!” newspaper headlines exclaimed. “An historic victory,” “monumental,” “sensational,” newscasters declared. People erupted with joy across the United States. Some danced in the streets; others wept. Kids were sent home from school to celebrate. One might have expected the initial approval of the coronavirus vaccines to spark similar jubilation—especially…

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The false dilemma of post-vaccination risk

The false dilemma of post-vaccination risk

James Hamblin writes: Every day, more than 1 million American deltoids are being loaded with a vaccine. The ensuing immune response has proved to be extremely effective—essentially perfect—at preventing severe cases of COVID-19. And now, with yet another highly effective vaccine on the verge of approval, that pace should further accelerate in the weeks to come. This is creating a legion of people who no longer need to fear getting sick, and are desperate to return to “normal” life. Yet…

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Nursing homes, once hotspots, far outpace U.S. in Covid declines

Nursing homes, once hotspots, far outpace U.S. in Covid declines

The New York Times reports: Throughout the pandemic, there has been perhaps nowhere more dangerous than a nursing home. The coronavirus has raced through some 31,000 long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 163,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since the late spring. But for the first time since the American outbreak began roughly a year ago — at a nursing care center in Kirkland, Wash. — the…

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The people giving the shots are seeing hope, and it’s contagious

The people giving the shots are seeing hope, and it’s contagious

The Washington Post reports: The happiest place in medicine right now is a basketball arena in New Mexico. Or maybe it’s the parking lot of a baseball stadium in Los Angeles, or a Six Flags in Maryland, or a shopping mall in South Dakota. The happiest place in medicine is anywhere there is vaccine, and the happiest people in medicine are the ones plunging it into the arms of strangers. “It’s a joy to all of us,” says Akosua “Nana”…

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How to understand Covid-19 variants and their effects on vaccines

How to understand Covid-19 variants and their effects on vaccines

Tara C. Smith writes: Viruses evolve. It’s what they do. That’s especially true for a pandemic virus like SARS-CoV-2, the one behind COVID-19. When a population lacks immunity and transmission is extensive, we expect viral mutations to appear frequently simply due to the number of viruses replicating in a short period of time. And the growing presence of immune individuals means that the viruses that can still transmit in these partially immune populations will be favored over the original version….

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Nine reasons to believe the worst of the pandemic is over

Nine reasons to believe the worst of the pandemic is over

Chas Danner writes: There has recently been a lot of good news about the pandemic, notwithstanding the fact that it has now killed more than a half-million Americans. The horrifying surge of coronavirus cases that began last fall has now abated. Two months after the first two COVID vaccines began going into American arms, studies continue to emphasize how remarkably effective they are. And after a haphazard start, the country’s mass-vaccination effort is continuing to ramp up. Suddenly, the latest…

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Massive Google-funded Covid database will track variants and immunity

Massive Google-funded Covid database will track variants and immunity

Nature reports: An enormous international database launched today will help epidemiologists to answer burning questions about the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, such as how rapidly new variants spread among people, whether vaccines protect against them and how long immunity to COVID-19 lasts. Unlike the global COVID-19 dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and other popular trackers that list overall COVID-19 infections and deaths, the new repository at the data-science initiative called Global.health collects an unprecedented amount of anonymized information…

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