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Category: Science/mathematics

How Bolinas mounted one of the most advanced coronavirus-testing efforts in America

How Bolinas mounted one of the most advanced coronavirus-testing efforts in America

Nathan Heller writes: This winter … the coronavirus brought a wave of social change from which Bolinas [a tiny hippie enclave north of San Francisco] could not flee. On January 11th, China reported its first death caused by covid-19; on January 21st, a resident of Washington State, who had travelled to Wuhan, became the first confirmed case in the United States; and, by mid-February, fatalities spanned the world. On March 16th, a group of counties across the Bay Area declared…

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The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different, harder to predict, ways

The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different, harder to predict, ways

Ed Yong writes: There was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. finally crested and began descending sharply, never happened. Instead, America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths. The graphs were more mesa than Matterhorn—flat-topped, not sharp-peaked. Only this month has the slope started gently heading downward. This pattern exists because different…

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CDC staff being ‘muzzled’ as White House puts politics ahead of science

CDC staff being ‘muzzled’ as White House puts politics ahead of science

CNN reports: In the early weeks of the US coronavirus outbreak, staff members in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tracked a growing number of transmissions in Europe and elsewhere, and proposed a global advisory that would alert flyers to the dangers of air travel. But about a week passed before the alert was issued publicly — crucial time lost when about 66,000 European travelers were streaming into American airports every day. The delay, detailed in documents…

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Study shows that wearing masks can reduce coronavirus transmission rate by as much as 75%

Study shows that wearing masks can reduce coronavirus transmission rate by as much as 75%

CNBC reports: As the debate over the effectiveness of wearing masks during a pandemic continues, a new study gives weight to arguments by medical professionals and government leaders that wearing a mask does indeed reduce virus transmission — and dramatically so. Experiments by a team in Hong Kong found that the coronavirus’ transmission rate via respiratory droplets or airborne particles dropped by as much as 75% when surgical masks were used. “The findings implied to the world and the public…

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Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking

Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking

No matter the details of the plot, conspiracy theories follow common patterns of thought. Ranta Images/iStock/Getty Images Plus By John Cook, George Mason University; Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge; Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol, and Ullrich Ecker, University of Western Australia The conspiracy theory video “Plandemic” recently went viral. Despite being taken down by YouTube and Facebook, it continues to get uploaded and viewed millions of times. The video is an interview with conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits, a…

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A pandemic plan was in place, but Trump abandoned it — and science

A pandemic plan was in place, but Trump abandoned it — and science

Jason Karlawish writes: President Obama was bothered. It was the summer of 2009 and he was in a meeting at the White House to talk about preparations for an expected autumn outbreak of swine flu. Elbows on the table, he thumbed through the pages of a report on preparations for it. “So,” he asked no one in particular, “if you guys are so smart, how come you’re still making this in eggs?” he asked, referring to the nearly century-old process…

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How sunlight, the immune system, and Covid-19 interact

How sunlight, the immune system, and Covid-19 interact

Markham Heid writes: Last month, during a now-infamous press conference, Donald Trump speculated about the ways in which sunlight and chemical disinfectants could help protect people from the threat of Covid-19. Trump seemed to suggest that injecting disinfectants could have some utility — a comment that drew immediate scrutiny and scorn. Much less attention was paid to the president’s statement that sunlight might safeguard people from the virus. “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet…

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The coronavirus is mutating, but that’s not necessarily good or bad

The coronavirus is mutating, but that’s not necessarily good or bad

Jeremy Draghi and C. Brandon Ogbunu write: In early March, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Science Review published a peer-reviewed study titled “On the Origin and Continuing Evolution of SARS-CoV-2.” The authors argued that the various strains of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, could be grouped into two clusters: An “L” type, which was predominant during the early weeks of the outbreak in Wuhan, and an “S” type, which could be distinguished from the L type by only…

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Vitamin D determines severity in Covid-19

Vitamin D determines severity in Covid-19

Trinity College Dublin: Researchers from Trinity College Dublin are calling on the government in Ireland to change recommendations for vitamin D supplements. A new publication from Dr. Eamon Laird and Professor Rose Anne Kenny, School of Medicine, and the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), in collaboration with Professor Jon Rhodes at University of Liverpool, highlights the association between vitamin D levels and mortality from COVID-19. The authors of the article, just published in the Irish Medical Journal, analyzed all…

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Scientist who fought Ebola and HIV reflects on facing death from Covid-19

Scientist who fought Ebola and HIV reflects on facing death from Covid-19

Science reports: Virologist Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, fell ill with COVID-19 in mid-March. He spent a week in a hospital and has been recovering at his home in London since. Climbing a flight of stairs still leaves him breathless. Piot, who grew up in Belgium, was one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus in 1976 and spent his career fighting infectious diseases. He headed the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS…

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Trump’s America-first push for a coronavirus vaccine

Trump’s America-first push for a coronavirus vaccine

Science reports: Conventional wisdom is that a vaccine for COVID-19 is at least 1 year away, but the organizers of a U.S. government push called Operation Warp Speed have little use for conventional wisdom. The project, vaguely described to date but likely to be formally announced by the White House in the coming days, will pick a diverse set of vaccine candidates and pour essentially limitless resources into unprecedented comparative studies in animals, fast-tracked human trials, and manufacturing. Eschewing international…

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The many ways SARS-CoV-2 attacks the human body

The many ways SARS-CoV-2 attacks the human body

The Washington Post reports: Deborah Coughlin was neither short of breath nor coughing. In those first days after she became infected by the novel coronavirus, her fever never spiked above 100 degrees. It was vomiting and diarrhea that brought her to a Hartford, Conn., emergency room on May 1. “You would have thought it was a stomach virus,” said her daughter, Catherina Coleman. “She was talking and walking and completely coherent.” But even as Coughlin, 67, chatted with her daughters…

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What needs to go right to get a coronavirus vaccine in 12-18 months

What needs to go right to get a coronavirus vaccine in 12-18 months

A coronavirus vaccine is coming, but when? Francesco Carta fotografo/Moment via Getty Images By Marcos E. García-Ojeda, University of California, Merced I, like many Americans, miss the pre-pandemic world of hugging family and friends, going to work and having dinner at a restaurant. A protective vaccine for SARS-Cov2 is likely to be the most effective public health tool to get back to that world. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautiously estimates that a…

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Could BCG, a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis, protect against coronavirus?

Could BCG, a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis, protect against coronavirus?

Shutterstock By Kylie Quinn, RMIT University; Joanna Kirman, University of Otago; Katie Louise Flanagan, University of Tasmania, and Magdalena Plebanski, RMIT University This week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will donate A$10 million to help fund an Australian trial testing whether a very old vaccine, BCG, can be used against a new threat, COVID-19. So what is the BCG vaccine and what might its place be in the fight against coronavirus? The ABCs of BCG The BCG…

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Sugars on coronavirus spike protein offer vaccine clues

Sugars on coronavirus spike protein offer vaccine clues

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: Cells are furry. That might come as a surprise, since textbook illustrations so often represent a cell as smooth — “something like a balloon full of water,” said Elisa Fadda, a computational chemist at Maynooth University in Ireland. “But that is absolutely not true.” In reality, the surface of a cell is adorned with a forest canopy of sugars, intricate and diverse clusters of carbohydrates that extend like branches and leaves from protein tree trunks. And because…

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Beware overblown claims about new strains of the coronavirus

Beware overblown claims about new strains of the coronavirus

Ed Yong writes: As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory released a paper that purportedly described “the emergence of a more transmissible form” of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This new form, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single…

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