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Category: Health

The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

Carl Zimmer reports: As the first coronavirus vaccines arrive in the coming year, government researchers will face a monumental challenge: monitoring the health of hundreds of millions of Americans to ensure the vaccines don’t cause harm. Purely by chance, thousands of vaccinated people will have heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses shortly after the injections. Sorting out whether the vaccines had anything to do with their ailments will be a thorny problem, requiring a vast, coordinated effort by state and…

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The rare Chilean soapbark tree that could help stop the pandemic

The rare Chilean soapbark tree that could help stop the pandemic

Brendan Borrell writes: In early April, Paul Hiley was kicking back in the executive suite at Desert King International LLC, gazing out the window at the San Diego sunshine and daydreaming about his golf game. California had issued its initial stay-at-home order for COVID-19, but apart from the hand sanitizer around the office, life was more or less normal. Retirement was on the horizon for Hiley. Maybe he’d sell the business. Maybe his son, Damian, would take over. For more…

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Scientists may have discovered new secretive organs in the center of your head

Scientists may have discovered new secretive organs in the center of your head

The New York Times reports: After millenniums of careful slicing and dicing, it might seem as though scientists have figured out human anatomy. A few dozen organs, a couple hundred bones and connective tissue to tie it all together. But despite centuries of scrutiny, the body is still capable of surprising scientists. A team of researchers in the Netherlands has discovered what may be a set of previously unidentified organs: a pair of large salivary glands, lurking in the nook…

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Herd immunity is not a plan; it’s magical thinking

Herd immunity is not a plan; it’s magical thinking

Gigi Kwik Gronvall and Rachel West write: Ten months into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there is mounting frustration that life is not back to “normal.” Many U.S. schools and businesses remain closed, people are hesitant to fly and enjoy vacations, and in many places, restaurants and indoor activities are sharply limited, with severe economic consequences. With patience wearing thin, it may be tempting to consider policies that give us a return to normalcy, whatever the consequences. This wishful thinking describes the…

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Discord inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges

Discord inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges

The Washington Post reports: As summer faded into autumn and the novel coronavirus continued to ravage the nation unabated, Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose commentary on Fox News led President Trump to recruit him to the White House, consolidated his power over the government’s pandemic response. Atlas shot down attempts to expand testing. He openly feuded with other doctors on the coronavirus task force and succeeded in largely sidelining them. He advanced fringe theories, such as that social distancing and…

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Covid-19 is a class issue

Covid-19 is a class issue

John Harris writes: Just as [Britain’s] final exit from the EU comes into view, noise from the media and politics about Covid-19 is sounding discomfortingly similar to the furies that erupted around the 2016 referendum. On one side stands the political right, opposed to lockdown, apparently spurning the advice of experts, and seemingly convinced that a mixture of true-Brit common sense and derring-do will somehow see us through. The left, meanwhile, emphasises the importance of “the science”, and the prospect…

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Fastest-ever growth in global coronavirus cases as U.S. tops 8 million

Fastest-ever growth in global coronavirus cases as U.S. tops 8 million

AFP reports: Coronavirus cases in the United States topped eight million Friday as the world saw the highest-ever number reported in a single day, while European countries tightened measures to control the pandemic’s spread. The running US case tally from Johns Hopkins University is the highest in the world, followed by India at 7.4 million cases and Brazil with 5.1 million. America has also suffered the most coronavirus deaths of any country, at over 218,000. Worldwide, more than 400,000 new…

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279,700 extra deaths in the U.S. so far in this pandemic year

279,700 extra deaths in the U.S. so far in this pandemic year

A girl views the body of her father, who died of COVID-19, while mourners who can’t visit in person are onscreen. Joe Raedle/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Ronald D. Fricker Jr., Virginia Tech The Conversation, CC BY-ND The number of deaths in the United States through September 2020 is at least 10% and likely 13% higher than it would have been if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Conservatively,…

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‘On the brink of disaster’: Europe’s Covid-19 fight takes a turn for the worse

‘On the brink of disaster’: Europe’s Covid-19 fight takes a turn for the worse

The Guardian reports: “It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.” Europe’s second coronavirus wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their…

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U.S. coronavirus cases climb toward a third peak

U.S. coronavirus cases climb toward a third peak

The New York Times reports: The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States is surging once again after growth slowed in late summer. While the geography of the pandemic is now shifting to the Midwest and to more rural areas, cases are trending upward in most states, many of which are setting weekly records for new cases. The charts and maps below offer a snapshot of two earlier peaks of the pandemic, as well as where case counts…

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The inside story of how Trump’s Covid-19 coordinator, Deborah Birx, undermined the world’s top health agency

The inside story of how Trump’s Covid-19 coordinator, Deborah Birx, undermined the world’s top health agency

Science magazine reports: On the morning of 13 July, more than 20 COVID-19 experts from across the U.S. government assembled in a conference room at the Department of Health and Human Services, steps from the Capitol. The group conferred on how best to gather key data on available beds and supplies of medicine and protective gear from thousands of hospitals. Around the table, masks concealed their expressions, but with COVID-19 cases surging out of control in some parts of the…

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White House agrees with Dr Johnny Bananas and Dr Person Fakename that coronavirus should be allowed to spread

White House agrees with Dr Johnny Bananas and Dr Person Fakename that coronavirus should be allowed to spread

The New York Times reports: The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable — an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine. Many experts say “herd immunity” — the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has contracted it — is still…

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Trump’s Covid-19 task force is now openly rebelling against him

Trump’s Covid-19 task force is now openly rebelling against him

The Daily Beast reports: Standing outside one of the main buildings on the University of Connecticut campus last week, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, let out an exasperated sigh through her peach-colored face mask. Birx had been traveling almost non-stop since June, working with local and state officials to develop area-specific strategies for slowing the spread of the highly contagious virus. Connecticut was her 32nd state and, as in the others, she was peppered there with…

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An autoimmune-like antibody response is linked with severe COVID-19

An autoimmune-like antibody response is linked with severe COVID-19

Are patients with severe COVID-19 victims of their own immune response? JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/Getty Images By Matthew Woodruff, Emory University In the earliest days of the pandemic, many immunologists, including me, assumed that patients who produced high quantities of antibodies early in infection would be free from disease. We were wrong. Several months into studying COVID-19, like other scientists, I’ve come to realize the picture is far more complicated. A recent research study published by my colleagues and me adds more…

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How do pandemics end? History suggests diseases fade but are almost never truly gone

How do pandemics end? History suggests diseases fade but are almost never truly gone

The COVID-19 new normal might be here for quite some time. SolStock/E+ via Getty Images By Nükhet Varlik, University of South Carolina When will the pandemic end? All these months in, with over 37 million COVID-19 cases and more than 1 million deaths globally, you may be wondering, with increasing exasperation, how long this will continue. Since the beginning of the pandemic, epidemiologists and public health specialists have been using mathematical models to forecast the future in an effort to…

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Fauci: Trump’s rapid recovery, while welcome, ‘amplifies’ public misunderstanding of Covid-19

Fauci: Trump’s rapid recovery, while welcome, ‘amplifies’ public misunderstanding of Covid-19

STAT reports: Health officials have struggled to convey the seriousness of Covid-19 to many Americans. President Trump’s rapid recovery from the disease, while welcome by all, makes the challenge even more difficult, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases acknowledged. Trump’s quick bounce-back from his infection will likely underscore the mistaken belief some people have that the disease does not present significant health risks, Fauci said in an interview with STAT. “We’re all glad that…

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