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Category: Health

One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

The New York Times reports: In early March, Glady’s, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, was bringing in about $35,000 a week in revenue. The Bank Street Bookstore, a 50-year-old children’s shop in Manhattan, was preparing for busy spring and summer shopping seasons. And Busy Bodies, a play space for children in Brooklyn, had just wrapped up months of packed classes with long waiting lists. Five months later, those once prosperous businesses have evaporated. Glady’s and Busy Bodies are closed for…

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A Covid-19 vaccine, amazingly, is close. Why am I so worried?

A Covid-19 vaccine, amazingly, is close. Why am I so worried?

Michael S. Kinch writes: A mere six months after identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus as the cause of Covid-19, scientists are on the precipice of a having a vaccine to fight it. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health recently announced the start of a Phase 3 clinical trial, joining several others in a constructive rivalry that could save millions of lives. It’s a truly impressive a feat and a testament to the power of basic and applied medical sciences. Under…

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Six months into a respiratory pandemic, why are we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

Six months into a respiratory pandemic, why are we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

Zeynep Tufekci writes: I recently took a drive-through COVID-19 test at the University of North Carolina. Everything was well organized and efficient: I was swabbed for 15 uncomfortable seconds and sent home with two pages of instructions on what to do if I were to test positive, and what precautions people living with or tending to COVID-19 patients should take. The instructions included many detailed sections devoted to preventing transmission via surfaces, and also went into great detail about laundry,…

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Concerns about waning COVID-19 immunity are likely overblown

Concerns about waning COVID-19 immunity are likely overblown

Scientific American reports: COVID-19 triggers a strong immune response in most people. Yet several recent studies observed that the amounts of antibodies in those recovering from the virus appear to decline within a few months of infection. The findings set off a frenzy of speculation that immunity to the virus may not last long, throwing cold water on hopes for a vaccine. Many scientists say such worries are overblown, however. A June 18 Nature Medicine study conducted with a small…

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Riding the subway during the pandemic may be safer than you think

Riding the subway during the pandemic may be safer than you think

The New York Times reports: Five months after the coronavirus outbreak engulfed New York City, riders are still staying away from public transportation in enormous numbers, often because they are concerned that sharing enclosed places with strangers is simply too dangerous. But the picture emerging in major cities across the world suggests that public transportation may not be as risky as nervous New Yorkers believe. In countries where the pandemic has ebbed, ridership has rebounded in far greater numbers than…

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How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast

How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast

STAT reports: Never before have prospective vaccines for a pathogen entered final-stage clinical trials as rapidly as candidates for Covid-19. Just six months ago, when the death toll from the coronavirus stood at one and neither it nor the disease it caused had a name, a team of Chinese scientists uploaded its genetic sequence to a public site. That kicked off the record-breaking rush to develop vaccines — the salve that experts say could ultimately quell the pandemic. The colossal…

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Medieval onion and garlic remedy kills antibiotic-resistant biofilms in the lab

Medieval onion and garlic remedy kills antibiotic-resistant biofilms in the lab

Science Alerts reports: As deadly bacteria grow ever more resistant to modern antibiotics, some researchers have turned to ancient medical manuscripts for clues. And it looks like a medieval salve dating back 1,000 years might succeed where many modern antibiotics are starting to fail. The “ancientbiotic”, as the researchers are calling it, was found in one of the earliest known medical textbooks from medieval England, known as Bald’s Leechbook. While many of the remedies included in this tome have not…

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America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

The New York Times reports: Once again, the coronavirus is ascendant. As infections mount across the country, it is dawning on Americans that the epidemic is now unstoppable, and that no corner of the nation will be left untouched. As of Wednesday, the pathogen had infected at least 4.3 million Americans, killing more than 150,000. Many experts fear the virus could kill 200,000 or even 300,000 by year’s end. Even President Trump has donned a mask, after resisting for months,…

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School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

STAT reports: When state officials were deciding whether to shutter their schools back in March, the evidence they had to work with was thin. They knew kids easily catch and spread influenza — and that school holidays and closures have helped slow its spread. But they weren’t sure if the same was true for Covid-19. Now, a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that closing all of a state’s schools was associated with a…

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Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

The Fish Site reports: A range of polysaccharides extracted from edible seaweed have been shown to at least match the efficacy of remdesivir, the current standard antiviral used to combat Covid-19, in new lab-based trials. The study, the results of which have recently been published in Cell Discovery, tests antiviral activity in three variants of heparin (heparin, trisulfated heparin, and a non-anticoagulant low molecular weight heparin) and two fucoidans (RPI-27 and RPI-28) extracted from the seaweed Saccharina japonica. All five…

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The tragedy of vaccine nationalism

The tragedy of vaccine nationalism

Thomas J. Bollyky and Chad P. Bown write: Trump administration officials have compared the global allocation of vaccines against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to oxygen masks dropping inside a depressurizing airplane. “You put on your own first, and then we want to help others as quickly as possible,” Peter Marks, a senior official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who oversaw the initial phases of vaccine development for the U.S. government, said during a panel discussion in June….

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Hong Kong was a pandemic poster child. Now it’s a cautionary tale

Hong Kong was a pandemic poster child. Now it’s a cautionary tale

The Washington Post reports: At the start of this month, restaurants here had wait-lists, bars were overflowing, and beaches were dotted with umbrellas and sand seekers. Three weeks had elapsed since the last locally transmitted novel coronavirus case, and the pandemic appeared to be down, if not entirely beaten. All of that progress has come to a halt, as government missteps and a mutated strain of the coronavirus have led to the most severe wave of infections in Hong Kong…

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Covid-19 hygiene theater

Covid-19 hygiene theater

Derek Thompson writes: As a covid-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage. National restaurants such as Applebee’s are deputizing sanitation czars to oversee the constant scrubbing of window ledges, menus, and high chairs. The gym chain Planet Fitness is boasting in ads that “there’s no surface we won’t sanitize, no machine we won’t scrub.” New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast…

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Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage

Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage

STAT reports: Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization. One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of…

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In social insects, researchers find hints for controlling disease

In social insects, researchers find hints for controlling disease

By Michael Schulson, July 22, 2020 Given that she infects ant colonies with deadly pathogens and then studies how they respond, one might say that Nathalie Stroeymeyt, a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., specializes in miniature pandemics. The tables turned on her, however, in March: Covid-19 swept through Britain, and Stroeymeyt was shut out of her ant epidemiology lab. The high-performance computers she uses to track ant behavior sat…

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How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

George Rutherford writes: In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how…

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