• Lab Leak Theory Gains Momentum

    On Wednesday, 26 May, President Joe Biden urged the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to determine the origin of SARS-CoV-2. This is an about-face from the administration’s earlier reliance on the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the origins of the pandemic. This is a shift from the assessment that the novel coronavirus emerged naturally, jumping from an animal species to humans.

  • Intelligence Report on COVID-19 Origin

    Amid growing speculation that COVID-19 might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday instructed federal agencies “to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.” Biden, in a statement, told the U.S. intelligence community “to report back to me in 90 days” after he had received a report this month that had no definitive conclusion.

  • Cummings’s Evidence Reinforces the Impression that Ineptitude over COVID-19 Reflected Errors Made by Individual Ministers. That’s Only Part of the Story

    Cummings’s evidence reinforces the impression that ineptitude over COVID-19 reflected errors made by individual ministers. That’s only part of the story. Insufficient attention has been paid to the inadequate public administration capability of British government as a factor in the COVID-19 response. the center of government lacks capacity, that its policymaking capacity is compromised, and that territorial conflict is growing as key systemic weaknesses that have compromised the UK’s ability to respond to such a crisis.

  • Total Deaths Due to COVID-19 Underestimated by 20% in U.S. Counties

    More than 15 months into the pandemic, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is nearing 600,000. But COVID-19 deaths may be underestimated by 20 percent, according to a new study. The study uses data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to estimate the number of deaths in 2,096 counties from January to December 2020 above what would be expected in a normal year, or “excess deaths.”

  • What Do We Need to Do to Get Ready for the Next Global Pandemic?

    “Pandemics are going to happen, but we can absolutely prevent the devastation that occurs from a pandemic. We can act now to put us in a position so that when the next pandemic does happen, we don’t have to allow it to get out of control. We can build tools to find it quickly and to act fast. We can build up new public health infrastructure to tackle it once it starts spreading,” says Harvard’s expert Michael Mina.

  • From Visits to Vaccines: The Evolving Nature of China’s Military Diplomacy

    A new report details the growing role of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military-to-military cooperation in response to the global coronavirus pandemic – a move which signals the greater involvement of the PLA in China’s diplomatic activities.

  • At the Critical Intersection of Public Health and Homeland Security

    Promoting wellbeing of “communities and families” makes the nation safer, says the new chief medical officer for DHS. “I think what this pandemic has shown us is that if we think about the need to build systems that promote the health and wellbeing of communities and families, we’re going to be better off as a nation,” he says. “We’re going to be safer.”

  • How to Use Statistics to Prepare for the Next Pandemic

    Publicly available statistics about population demographics and culture can help governments prepare for the next pandemic. We have found that by using existing socio-demographic data from early COVID-19 hot spots, where there was a lot of information, officials could have predicted how COVID-19 would spread through society. The next time there is a global health crisis governments can use our techniques to figure out how a disease will likely move beyond hot spots to regions that are not yet affected.

  • “Paradigm Shift” to Fight Airborne Spread of COVID-19 Indoors

    Humans in the 21st century spend most of their time indoors, but the air we breathe inside buildings is not regulated to the same degree as the food we eat and the water we drink. Scientists from 14 countries say that needs to change to reduce disease transmission and prevent the next pandemic.

  • New Biodefense Lab to Focus on Food Security

    The University of Nebraska has launched a 5-year project to help safeguard the U.S. food supply. The project will address agricultural and natural resources security, defense, and countermeasures; biological defense in support of the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and other government stakeholders; development and deployment of biosurveillance, biodetection and diagnostic tools; and pandemic preparedness related to human, livestock and crop plant diseases that could result in disruptions to the U.S. and global food systems.

  • Expert Panel: Current Global Alert System “Clearly Unfit” to Prevent Another Pandemic

    An independent report by experts offers a scathing assessment of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The current system—at both national and international levels— was not adequate to protect people from COVID-19,” the report says. The current pandemic alert system is too slow, and it lost precious time “when many more countries could have taken steps to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and forestall the global health, social, and economic catastrophe that continues its grip. The Panel finds that the system as it stands now is clearly unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic.”

  • Who Was Better at Predicting the Course of the Pandemic – Experts or the Public?

    Despite the potential influence of both expert and non-expert predictions on people’s responses to the pandemic, there’s been limited research on the accuracy of either – or indeed on the difference in accuracy between them. Perhaps it’s not surprising that most people’s best guesses about the number of deaths and infections were off: predictions about emerging diseases are hard, and none of us has a crystal ball. We found that even experts weren’t particularly good at predicting the pandemic’s ultimate course and impact. But our level of confidence about our predictions is within our control – and the evidence suggests that most of us could stand to be a bit more humble.

  • Cybercrime a Booming Business — Thanks to COVID

    The coronavirus pandemic has given a huge boost to internet crime. The number of offenses is on the rise while the number of successfully solved cases is stagnating in Germany. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) registered 108,474 cybercrimes in its latest annual report. That is an increase of nearly 8% on the previous year.

  • How Can Scientists Predict a COVID-19 Outbreak? There Is an App for That

    A mobile app that uses crowd-sourced data on COVID-19 symptoms can accurately identify where local coronavirus outbreaks will appear, according to scientists who developed the app. “COVID Control” using self-reported virus symptom information could predict next outbreak.

  • The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown

    Among the relieved Americans going back out to restaurants and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group, Emma Green writes: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. “For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit.” For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump - but the spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, as scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. “Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information,” Green says.