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Category: Health

Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

F8 Studio/Shutterstock By Zania Stamataki, University of Birmingham There was – rightfully – a lot of excitement when Pfizer and BioNTech announced interim results from their COVID vaccine trial. The vaccine, called BNT162b2, was reported to have an “efficacy rate above 90%”. This was soon translated in the press to be 90% “effective” at preventing COVID-19. Efficacy, effectiveness – what’s the difference? We academics are very precise in our language and it can be a cause of considerable frustration when…

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It’s time to hunker down

It’s time to hunker down

Zeynep Tufekci writes: The end may be near for the pestilence that has haunted the world this year. Good news is arriving on almost every front: treatments, vaccines, and our understanding of this coronavirus. Pfizer and BioNTech have announced a stunning success rate in their early Phase 3 vaccine trials—if it holds up, it will be a game changer. Treatments have gotten better too. A monoclonal antibody drug—similar to what President Donald Trump and the former Governor Chris Christie received—just…

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The third covid surge is breaking health workers

The third covid surge is breaking health workers

Ed Yong writes: On Saturday morning, Megan Ranney was about to put on her scrubs when she heard that Joe Biden had won the presidential election. That day, she treated people with COVID-19 while street parties erupted around the country. She was still in the ER in the late evening when Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris made their victory speeches. These days, her shifts at Rhode Island Hospital are long, and they “are not going to change in the…

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Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science

Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science

The Washington Post reports: The Sydney Opera House has reopened. Almost 40,000 spectators attended the city’s rugby league grand final. Workers are being urged to return to their offices. Australia has become a pandemic success story. The nation of 26 million is close to eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, having defeated a second wave just as infections surge again in Europe and the United States. No new cases were reported on the island continent Thursday, and only seven since…

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The wisdom of pandemics

The wisdom of pandemics

David Waltner-Toews writes: Wisdom is the ability to discern inner qualities and subtle relationships, then translate them into what others recognise as good judgment. If it comes to us at all, wisdom is the product of reflection, time and experience. A person might achieve wisdom after decades; a community after centuries; a culture after millennia. Modern human beings as a species? We’re getting there, and pandemics can help. If we persist in our curiosity and reflect on what we find,…

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Make America healthy again by paying more attention to nutrition

Make America healthy again by paying more attention to nutrition

Vanita Rahman and Matthew Rees write: Health care and health care policy were centerpieces of the 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns. It’s a shame that neither party focused on the underlying issue: the poor health of the American people, largely attributed to poor nutrition. By many measures, the population of the United States is the unhealthiest of any high-income country despite spending much more money, as a share of the economy, on health care. The incidence of chronic disease is…

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Chronic Covid can be worse than the initial disease

Chronic Covid can be worse than the initial disease

The Wall Street Journal reports: Nearly a year into the global coronavirus pandemic, scientists, doctors and patients are beginning to unlock a puzzling phenomenon: For many patients, including young ones who never required hospitalization, Covid-19 has a devastating second act. Many are dealing with symptoms weeks or months after they were expected to recover, often with puzzling new complications that can affect the entire body—severe fatigue, cognitive issues and memory lapses, digestive problems, erratic heart rates, headaches, dizziness, fluctuating blood…

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Fauci warns of Covid-19 surge, offers blunt assessment of Trump’s response

Fauci warns of Covid-19 surge, offers blunt assessment of Trump’s response

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s repeated assertions the United States is “rounding the turn” on the novel coronavirus have increasingly alarmed the government’s top health experts, who say the country is heading into a long and potentially deadly winter with an unprepared government unwilling to make tough choices. “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease expert, said in a wide-ranging interview late Friday. “All the stars…

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MAGA: Trump’s America sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours

MAGA: Trump’s America sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours

The Guardian reports: The US has set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to one count with just over 100,000 new infections recorded. The daily caseload of 100,233 – as counted by Reuters – surpassed 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September. The news came three days before the presidential election, and as Donald Trump continued to stage large-scale events at which Covid mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing are…

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Trump has gone from downplaying the pandemic to outright Covid denial

Trump has gone from downplaying the pandemic to outright Covid denial

James Hamblin writes: The human brain makes decisions in two basic modes. One is analytic, which involves carefully weighing costs and benefits and choosing the best option. The other mode is intuitive: doing what feels right. Both have their merits. Intuitive thinking allows us to make split-second decisions. It helps guide our romantic lives and our lunchtime sandwich choices. But it is not the mode that should inform a strategic response to a pandemic. Even casual observers of President Donald…

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White House sidestepped FDA to distribute hydroxychloroquine to pharmacies, documents show

White House sidestepped FDA to distribute hydroxychloroquine to pharmacies, documents show

The Washington Post reports: The phone call in March from President Trump’s adviser carried an urgent message. For days Trump had touted the off-label use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure for covid-19, despite a lack of scientific evidence it worked and amid mounting concerns about the dangers to patients with underlying medical conditions. Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro wanted to make sure the administration’s top vaccine expert would be on board with a White House plan…

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Trump’s coronavirus response looks heroic to many white men

Trump’s coronavirus response looks heroic to many white men

Olga Khazan writes: Kurtis, a young accountant in McKinney, Texas, likes the thing that many people hate about Donald Trump: that the president has left the pandemic response almost entirely up to local officials. “He left it up to each state to make their own decision on how they wanted to proceed,” Kurtis told me recently. Most experts think the absence of a national strategy for tackling the coronavirus has been a disaster. But Kurtis argues that North Dakota, for…

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The pandemic is in uncharted territory

The pandemic is in uncharted territory

The Atlantic reports: The United States set a new record for reported cases this week, breaking 500,000 for the first time in the pandemic as the third surge continued to build across nearly every state in the country. Today, the country recorded 88,452 new cases of COVID-19, its highest single-day total since the pandemic began. Over the past two weeks, 25 states have set a new record for cases in the past two weeks, including 17 states with record highs…

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As over 1,000 Americans die from Covid-19 daily, Donald Trump Jr. claims ‘the number is almost nothing’

As over 1,000 Americans die from Covid-19 daily, Donald Trump Jr. claims ‘the number is almost nothing’

The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump Jr. declared on Thursday night that coronavirus deaths had dropped to “almost nothing,” questioning the seriousness of the pandemic on a record-breaking day for new cases in which more than 1,000 Americans died of the virus. Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump Jr. pointed to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he suggested show a declining coronavirus death rate. “I went through the CDC data, because I kept…

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Trump trivializes the pandemic and ignores the dead

Trump trivializes the pandemic and ignores the dead

The New York Times reports: As an immense new surge in coronavirus cases sweeps the country, President Trump is closing his re-election campaign by pleading with voters to ignore the evidence of a calamity unfolding before their eyes and trust his word that the disease is already disappearing as a threat to their personal health and economic well being. The president has continued to declare before large and largely maskless crowds that the virus is vanishing, even as case counts…

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Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

CNN reports: Shortly after joining the White House as President Donald Trump’s pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas launched a quiet effort that seemed counterintuitive to some of his colleagues — encouraging officials to limit Covid-19 testing mainly to people experiencing symptoms. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, strongly supported a decision in August to revise federal guidelines to de-emphasize the need to test people without symptoms, according to two sources familiar with the process. He shared his view with…

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