• Facebook Studies Reveal Science Mistrust Winning on Vaccine Messaging

    Lisa Schnirring writes in CIDRAP that Facebook groups which fuel mistrust of health guidance, such as those that air anti-vaccine views, have gained the upper hand over groups with reliable information from health agencies, a team led by George Washington University reported yesterday in Nature.

  • Americans May Be Willing to Pay $5 Trillion to Stop the Spread of the Coronavirus and Save Lives

    A new analysis suggests Americans are willing to pay about US$5 trillion to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save as many lives as possible – dwarfing the $3 trillion Congress has so far agreed to spend to support the U.S. economy and its workers. Diego C. Nocetti and Luciana Echazu write in The Conversation that to get to that figure, they calculated the implicit value of public intervention measures like social distancing and statewide lockdowns – meant to prevent people from catching COVID-19 and possibly dying – by estimating how much people are willing to pay to have them implemented.

  • Lives vs Lives – the Global Cost of Lockdown

    The arrival of a new coronavirus blindsided governments of most advanced nations as they reached for a tool that few had ever really considered before: lockdown. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen write in The Spectator that it all happened too fast for a proper discussion about the implications. The biggest question — the extent to which lockdown will claim lives as well as save them — is one you can ask at a global level.

  • COVID Is Ushering in a Surveillance State That May Never Be Dismantled

    Is the “new normal” to be a surveillance society, with tracing apps and facial recognition health passports? Philip Johnston writes in The Telegraph that the British government insists not; but if we are hit by a second wave of COVID-19, the temptation to extend the monitoring will be hard to resist.

  • Has COVID-19 Killed Globalization?

    Even before the pandemic, globalization was in trouble. The open system of trade that had dominated the world economy for decades had been damaged by the financial crash and the Sino-American trade war. Now it is reeling from its third body-blow in a dozen years as lockdowns have sealed borders and disrupted commerce. The Economist writes that those three body-blows have so wounded the open system of trade that the powerful arguments in its favor are being neglected. Wave goodbye to the greatest era of globalization—and worry about what is going to take its place.

  • Battling the “Pandemic of Misinformation”

    When a disease outbreak grabs the public’s attention, formal recommendations from medical experts are often muffled by a barrage of half-baked advice, sketchy remedies, and misguided theories that circulate as anxious people rush to understand a new health risk. The current crisis is no exception. Ubiquity of social media has made it easier to spread or even create COVID-19 falsehoods, making the work of public health officials harder.

  • COVID-19 and Terrorism: Assessing the Short and Long-Term Impacts

    A new report reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic is already having a significant impact on terrorism around the world. “One genuine concern is that COVID-19 may lead to a resurgence in interest among terrorists for using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons,” says one expert. “While serious obstacles certainly remain, the huge impact of COVID-19 may re-ignite some interest in biological weapons.”

  • Foreign countries’ Efforts to Influence U.S. Public's Understanding of COVID-19

    The ongoing worldwide coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been immune to the problem of rampant disinformation—intentionally misleading information or propaganda. The European External Action Service of the European Union recently stated that “despite their potentially grave impact on public health, official and state-backed sources from various governments, including Russia and—to a lesser extent—China, have continued to widely target conspiracy narratives and disinformation both at public audiences in the EU and the wider neighborhood.” Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, discuss how disinformation has impacted the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • In Germany, Vaccine Fears Spark Conspiracy Theories

    The increasing number of gatherings in German cities, some under the motto “Resistance 2020,” have attracted all sorts of supporters: people who belong to the far-right Reichsbürger movement, conspiracy theorists, liberals, and people from the neo-right — and increasingly, those who support the anti-vaccine movement. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is keeping an eye on the protests, has noted an increase in right-wing extremists in attendance, as well as growing anti-Semitic and anti-democratic symbols and slogans.

  • Virus Conspiracists Elevate a New Champion

    A discredited scientist who blames her professional downfall on Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the new hero of the anti-vaccinators, the conspiracy group QAnon, activists from the Reopen America movement, and some right-wing media. They support her claims that Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and other “establishment” figures inflated the danger of the coronavirus in order to make money by selling more vaccines.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Hits 80,000 as Top Leaders Quarantine

    The U.S. death toll due to COVID-19 surpassed 80,000 yesterday, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times. At least 1,346,800 cases have been confirmed in the country, including 80,095 deaths. The death toll has already surpassed the most optimistic epidemiologic model, the one produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and touted by the White House, which projected 64,000 deaths by Aug 1. That model has since been adjusted to take into account the easing of social distancing measures, and now projects 137,000 U.S. deaths by Aug 1.

  • A Close Relative of SARS-CoV-2 Found in Bats Offers More Evidence It Evolved Naturally

    There is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. Cell Press notes that on May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative in some regions of the genome and which contains insertions of amino acids at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the virus’s spike protein in a manner similar to SAR-CoV-2. While it’s not a direct evolutionary precursor of SARS-CoV-2, this new virus, RmYN02, suggests that these types of seemingly unusual insertion events can occur naturally in coronavirus evolution, the researchers say.

  • New AI Diagnostic Can Predict COVID-19 without Testing

    Researchers at King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. Their findings are published today in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0916-2. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Nature Medicine. King’s College London says that the AI model uses data from the COVID Symptom Study app to predict COVID-19 infection, by comparing people’s symptoms and the results of traditional COVID tests. Researchers say this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited. Two clinical trials in the UK and the US are due to start shortly.

  • Experts: We Must Cooperate to Develop, Deploy COVID-19 Vaccines

    Development of vaccines against COVID-19 hinges on “unprecedented” and transparent cooperation among industry, government, and academia, according to a commentary by Anthony Fauci and other U.S. vaccine experts published yesterday in Science. Mary Van Beusekom writes in CIDRAP that the authors, noting that all vaccine platforms have advantages and disadvantages and underscoring the need for speed and flexibility of manufacture, safety, long-term efficacy, scale, affordability, vaccine stability, and a temperature-controlled supply chain, said that “no single vaccine or vaccine platform alone is likely to meet the global need, and so a strategic approach to the multi-pronged endeavor is absolutely critical.”

  • BGU Scientists Develop Anti-Coronavirus Surface Coating Based on Nanomaterials

    In light of the possibility that the virus can spread through contaminated surfaces, it is important to be able to sterilize surfaces with high contamination potential, such as doorknobs, elevator buttons or handrails in public areas in general, and in hospitals and clinics in particular. However, current disinfectants are mainly based on chemicals such as poisonous sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or alcohol, both of which provide only a temporary measure until the next exposure to the virus. Israel’s Ben Gurion University said that Prof. Angel Porgador, from the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at BGU and the National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN), and Dr. Mark Schvartzman, Department of Materials Engineering at BGU, are developing novel surface coatings that will have a long term effect, and contain nanoparticles of safe metal ions and polymers with anti-viral and anti-microbial activity.