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Category: Science/mathematics

Inside the race to create a coronavirus vaccine

Inside the race to create a coronavirus vaccine

The New York Times reports: Each workday morning in March, Noe Mercado drove through the desolate streets of Boston to a tall glass building on Blackfan Circle, in the heart of the city’s biotech hub. Most residents had gone into hiding from the coronavirus, but Mr. Mercado had an essential job: searching for a vaccine against this new, devastating pathogen. Parking in the underground lot, he put on a mask and rode the empty elevator to the tenth floor, joining…

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Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

The more politicized an issue, the harder it is for people to absorb contradictory evidence. Drew Angerer/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Adrian Bardon, Wake Forest University Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ineffective pandemic response on an American “anti-science bias.” He called this bias “inconceivable,” because “science is truth.” Fauci compared those discounting the importance of masks and social distancing to “anti-vaxxers” in their…

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Aerosols are a bigger coronavirus threat than WHO guidelines suggest – here’s what you need to know

Aerosols are a bigger coronavirus threat than WHO guidelines suggest – here’s what you need to know

Aerosols are made up of tiny respiratory droplets suspended in the air. Jeffrey Coolidge via Getty Images Byron Erath, Clarkson University; Andrea Ferro, Clarkson University, and Goodarz Ahmadi, Clarkson University When someone coughs, talks or even breathes, they send tiny respiratory droplets into the surrounding air. The smallest of these droplets can float for hours, and there is strong evidence that they can carry live coronavirus if the person is infected. Until this week, however, the risk from these aerosols…

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We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher and Richard Besser write: As America begins the formidable task of getting our kids back to school and all of us back to work safely amid a pandemic that is only getting worse, public health experts face two opponents: covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public…

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Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests

Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests

The Guardian reports: People who have recovered from Covid-19 may lose their immunity to the disease within months, according to research suggesting the virus could reinfect people year after year, like common colds. In the first longitudinal study of its kind, scientists analysed the immune response of more than 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust and found levels of antibodies that can destroy the virus peaked about three weeks after the onset of…

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Larry Brilliant on how well we are fighting Covid-19

Larry Brilliant on how well we are fighting Covid-19

WIRED interviews epidemiologist, Larry Brilliant: WIRED: We talked 100 days ago. What is different about the pandemic now? Larry Brilliant: A hundred days ago we didn’t really understand the pathophysiology—the way the virus and the human body interact, the illness as opposed to the epidemic. The unexpected things that it’s doing are not epidemiological—they are virological. In March, we were just beginning to see these horrific CT scans or x-rays of people with ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where they…

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In awe we hold fast to nature’s strangeness and open up to the unknown

In awe we hold fast to nature’s strangeness and open up to the unknown

Helen De Cruz writes: When a scientific paradigm breaks down, scientists need to make a leap into the unknown. These are moments of revolution, as identified by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s, when the scientists’ worldview becomes untenable and the agreed-upon and accepted truths of a particular discipline are radically called into question. Beloved theories are revealed to have been built upon sand. Explanations that held up for hundreds of years are now dismissed. A particular and productive way of…

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Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

STAT reports: Long after calls for more data on the disproportionate number of Covid-19 infections and deaths among Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released limited additional information, which revealed non-white and Hispanic Americans under age 65 are dying in greater numbers than white people in that age group. The agency reported that more than a third of deaths among Hispanic Americans (34.9%) and almost a third of deaths among non-white Americans…

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Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should

A high-profile paper on the risks of hyrdoxychloroquine was recently and rightfully retracted. AP Photo/John Locher, By Mark R. O’Brian, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Several high-profile papers on COVID-19 research have come under fire from people in the scientific community in recent weeks. Two articles addressing the safety of certain drugs when taken by COVID-19 patients were retracted, and researchers are calling for the retraction of a third paper that evaluated behaviors that mitigate coronavirus…

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Spain’s coronavirus antibodies study adds evidence against herd immunity

Spain’s coronavirus antibodies study adds evidence against herd immunity

CNN reports: Spain’s large-scale study on the coronavirus indicates just 5% of its population has developed antibodies, strengthening evidence that a so-called herd immunity to Covid-19 is “unachievable,” the medical journal the Lancet reported on Monday. The findings show that 95% of Spain’s population remains susceptible to the virus. Herd immunity is achieved when enough of a population has become infected with a virus or bacteria — or vaccinated against it — to stop its circulation. The European Center for…

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Mounting evidence the coronavirus is airborne, 239 experts say

Mounting evidence the coronavirus is airborne, 239 experts say

The New York Times reports: The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby. If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant. Masks may be needed indoors, even in socially-distant…

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Going to the beach during the pandemic may not be as reckless as it’s portrayed

Going to the beach during the pandemic may not be as reckless as it’s portrayed

Zeynep Tufekci writes: We’ve entered another risky, uncertain phase of America’s pandemic summer. COVID-19 cases are surging across most states, and once again, intensive-care units are filling up. Eighteen states have either paused or rolled back their plans to reopen, and even Republican governors who previously resisted public-health guidelines about masks are now asking people to mask up. So why on Earth do so many articles about this crisis feature pictures of people frolicking on wide-open beaches? Why is an…

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DNA linked to severe Covid-19 was inherited from Neanderthals, study finds

DNA linked to severe Covid-19 was inherited from Neanderthals, study finds

The New York Times reports: A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study. Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history. “This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years…

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The link between restaurant spending and new cases of coronavirus

The link between restaurant spending and new cases of coronavirus

CNBC reports: Higher restaurant spending appears to be linked to a faster spread of the coronavirus, according to a JPMorgan study. Analyst Jesse Edgerton analyzed data from 30 million Chase credit and debit cardholders and from Johns Hopkins University’s case tracker. He found that increased restaurant spending in a state predicted a rise in new infections there three weeks later. He also said restaurant spending was the strongest predictor across all categories of card spending. The United States set a…

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How the coronavirus escapes an evolutionary trade-off that helps keep other pathogens in check

How the coronavirus escapes an evolutionary trade-off that helps keep other pathogens in check

An artistic rendering of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 illness. Getty Images / s-cphoto By Athena Aktipis, Arizona State University and Joe Alcock, University of New Mexico Viruses walk a fine line between severity and transmissibility. If they are too virulent, they kill or incapacitate their hosts; this limits their ability to infect new hosts. Conversely, viruses that cause little harm may not be generating enough copies of themselves to be infectious. But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes…

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The right way to breathe during the coronavirus pandemic

The right way to breathe during the coronavirus pandemic

Breathing in through the nose is an integral part of meditation and delivers virus-fighting gases to the lungs. triloks / Getty Images By Louis J. Ignarro, University of California, Los Angeles Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. It’s not just something you do in yoga class – breathing this way actually provides a powerful medical benefit that can help the body fight viral infections. The reason is that your nasal cavities produce the molecule nitric oxide, which…

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