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TerrorismHow the Coronavirus Increases Terrorism Threats in the Developing World
As the coronavirus reaches developing countries in Africa and Asia, the pandemic will have effects beyond public health and economic activity. As the disease wreaks its havoc in areas poorly equipped to handle its spread, terrorism likely will increase there as well.
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CrimeAs Crime Dips Worldwide, Agile Syndicates Adapt to Pandemic
Countries around the world are reporting a dip in criminal activity. Due to stay-at-home orders and fewer opportunities for crime, there has been a noticeable decline in burglary, assault, murder, robbery and grand larceny. But law enforcement officials and analysts say a second look reveals a more complicated and disturbing picture. Cybercrime has exploded, with mounting reports of an increase in ransomware attacks. Headline crime may have dropped, and the statistics may have improved, but analysts say that as the pandemic reorders geopolitics and economics, it is doing the same in the world of crime.
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Water securityOilfield Water Can Safely Be Reused for Irrigation in California
Reusing low-saline oilfield water mixed with surface water to irrigate farms in the Cawelo Water District of California does not pose major health risks, as some opponents of the practice have feared, a new study finds.
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ArgumentHow Conspiracy Theories Hurt Vaccination Numbers
Near the end of 2018, data released by the CDC showed that a small, but growing, number of children in the United States were not getting recommended vaccinations. One in 77 infants born in 2017 did not receive any vaccination. Michael Stein and Sandro Galea write this is more than four times as many unvaccinated children as the United States had at the turn of the century. “Some of this may be due to lack of access to vaccines; populations without insurance, and those living in rural areas have greater rates of nonvaccination,” they write. “But part of it is also likely due to the rise of conspiracy theories and the willful dismissal of scientific evidence when it comes to vaccines.”
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PerspectiveAmerica’s Never-Ending Battle Against Flesh-Eating Worms
Screwworms once killed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle a year in the southern U.S. Their range extended from Florida to California, and they infected any living, warm-blooded animal: not only cattle but deer, squirrels, pets, and even the occasional human. Sarah Zhang writes that to get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. “The insect is relentless in its search for hosts. Those who fight it must be relentless too.”
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TestsCDC Test Counting Error Leaves Epidemiologists “Really Baffled”
As it tracks the coronavirus’s spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sheila Kaplan and Sarah Mervosh write in the New York Times that now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One of the agency’s data tracker websites has been lumping them together.
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TestsCoronavirus Antigen Tests: Quick and Cheap, but Too Often Wrong?
After a painfully slow rollout of diagnostic testing for active coronavirus infections across the country, some 400,000 people a day in the United States may now receive such a test, estimates suggest. Yet a few public health experts say sending people back to work and school safely and identifying new outbreaks before they spread out of control could require testing much of the U.S. population of 330 million every day. Others suggest checking roughly 900,000 people per day would be enough. Robert F. Service writes in Science that either way, nearly all the current tests to diagnose infections work by identifying the genetic material of the virus, a technology that will be difficult to scale up much further.
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Warp SpeedDoubts greet $1.2 billion bet by United States on a coronavirus vaccine by October
Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s bid to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine faster than any previous vaccine, is both turning heads and raising eyebrows with a major new investment that promises to shave weeks off its already ambitious timeline. Jon Cohen writes in Science that much of Warp Speed’s inner workings, including how it chooses vaccine candidates, takes place behind closed doors. But the compressed timeline and the scale of the investment—more than twice the size of commitments the United States made earlier to Johnson & Johnson and Moderna to develop other vaccine candidates—is leading to questions about both the candidate vaccine and the plans for its clinical trials.
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VaccinesCoronavirus Vaccine Shows Promising Early Results in China
A vaccine developed in China appears to be safe and may protect people from the new coronavirus, researchers reported on Friday. Apoorva Mandavilli writes in the New York Times that the early-stage trial, published in The Lancet, was conducted by researchers at several laboratories and included 108 participants aged 18 to 60. Those who received a single dose of the vaccine produced certain immune cells, called T cells, within two weeks. Antibodies needed for immunity peaked at 28 days after the inoculation.
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VaccinesCoronavirus Vaccine: This Week's Update from Moderna, Inovio and More
Early progress has been reported on several vaccine efforts, as scientists around the world scramble to test possible ways to protect people from the coronavirus, which has sickened more than 5.1 million people globally and killed more than 300,000. Denise Chow writes for NBC News that vaccine candidates developed by pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Inovio as well as vaccines in the works from the University of Oxford in the U.K. and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology in China are showing early promise. But experts continue to stress that it’s still early in the testing phase, and it’s unlikely that a viable vaccine will be available before the end of the year.
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HydroxychloroquineNo Evidence of Benefit for Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 Patients, Study Finds
A large observational study suggests that treatment with the antimalarial drug chloroquine or its analogue hydroxychloroquine (taken with or without the antibiotics azithromycin or clarithromycin) offers no benefit for patients with COVID-19. Prof. Dr. Mandeep R. Mehra, lead author of the study, which was published in The Lancet, said: “This is the first large scale study to find statistically robust evidence that treatment with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine does not benefit patients with COVID-19. Instead, our findings suggest it may be associated with an increased risk of serious heart problems and increased risk of death.” Writing in a linked The Lancet “Comment” article, Professor Christian Funck-Brentano, of the Sorbonne University in Paris (who was not involved in the study), said: “This well-conducted observational study adds to preliminary reports suggesting that chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, alone or with azithromycin is not useful and may be harmful in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.”
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HydroxychloroquineWHO Temporarily Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trials over Safety Concerns
The World Health Organization will temporarily suspend enrollment in hydroxychloroquine trials in a study of four treatment options for COVID-19, the WHO announced Monday in a press conference. Mary Meisenzahl writes in Business Insider that the drug is part of the “Solidarity” international clinical trial sponsored by the WHO in 17 countries, with others expressing interest. Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan explained that the trial is overseen by a board of experts and an independent data safety monitor. The steering committee met over the weekend and decided in light of uncertainty about the drug, that they should “err on the side of caution and suspend enrollment into the hydroxychloroquine arm” of the trial, Dr. Swaminathan said.
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RemdesivirFederal Scientists Finally Publish Remdesivir Data
A clinical trial led to the authorization of the only drug shown to work in Covid-19 patients. But until now, few experts had seen the numbers. Gina Kolata writes in the New York Times that nearly a month after federal scientists claimed that an experimental drug had helped patients severely ill with the coronavirus, the research has been published. The drug, remdesivir, was quickly authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of coronavirus patients, and hospitals rushed to obtain supplies. But until now, researchers and physicians had not seen the actual data. The long-awaited study confirms the essence of the government’s assertions. The trial was rigorous, randomly assigning 1,063 seriously ill patients to receive either remdesivir or a placebo, and remdesivir shortened recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalized patients. Those who received the drug not only recovered faster but also did not have serious adverse events more often than those who were given the placebo.
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Detecting antibodiesNew Technology Can Detect Antivirus Antibody in 20 Minutes
Researchers have succeeded in detecting anti-avian influenza virus antibody in blood serum within 20 minutes, using a portable analyzer they have developed to conduct rapid on-site bio tests. Hokkaido University says that if a suitable reagent is developed, this technology could be used to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus of COVID-19.
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TreatmentsBlood from SARS Survivor Yields an Antibody that Neutralizes New Coronavirus
An antibody that scientists first identified in a blood sample from a person who recovered from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) strongly inhibits the virus that causes COVID-19. The scientists who discovered the antibody are racing to bring it to clinical trials. James Kingsland writes in Medical News Today that there are currently no proven treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory illness that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causes, and nobody can say with any certainty when a safe, effective vaccine will be ready. News of the development of a monoclonal antibody that neutralizes the virus and could, in theory, be ready to treat patients in clinical trials within 5–6 months is, therefore, very welcome.
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The long view
PerspectiveCoronavirus Disease 2019: The Harms of Exaggerated Information and Non‐Evidence‐Based Measures
Those arguing in favor of lockdowns say that postponing the epidemic wave (“flattening the curve”) gains time to develop vaccines and reduces strain on the health system, which otherwise might be overwhelmed. John P. A. Ioannidis writes in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, however, that vaccines take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. “Maintaining lockdowns for many months may have even worse consequences than an epidemic wave that runs an acute course,” he writes. “Focusing on protecting susceptible individuals may be preferable to maintaining countrywide lockdowns long-term.” He also notes that different coronaviruses actually infect millions of people every year, and they are common especially in the elderly and in hospitalized patients with respiratory illness in the winter. The only unique aspect of this year’s coronavirus outbreak is the unprecedented attention it has received in the media.
PerspectiveU.S. Intelligence Warned in November that Coronavirus Spreading in China Could Be “Cataclysmic Event”: Report
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that his administration could not have prepared for the pandemic because no government agency could have known that such an out-of-the-blue outbreak would happen. Justin Coleman writes that the president’s claims are false. The U.S. intelligence community began to warn about a global epidemic in November, saying that the outbreak in China could develop into a “cataclysmic event,” and policymakers, decisionmakers, and the National Security Council at the White House were repeatedly briefed on the issue. The coronavirus first appeared in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) of intelligence matters — placed on the president’s desk every morning — in early January.
PerspectiveCoronavirus Social Distancing Presents Special Challenges to Spies
While the COVID-19 public health crisis grabs the headlines and kills tens of thousands, state-actors and transnational terrorist groups continue to purloin data, spread disinformation and plan terrorist attacks. Jason M. Blazakis writes that the U.S. national security community’s ability to detect threats may be less than optimal because Human intelligence (HUMINT) collection — a key tool to combat terrorism — is impaired during COVID-19.
PerspectiveDon’t Believe the COVID-19 Models: That’s Not What They’re for.
Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, governments, analysts, and health organizations have released different statistical models addressing the disease – and its numerical manifestations: the number of people likely to be infected; hospitalized; treated in the ICUs; or die. Different models offer different numbers and different trajectories. Which one of them is right? Zeynep Tufecki writes that “The answer is both difficult and simple. Here’s the difficult part: There is no right answer. But here’s the simple part: Right answers are not what epidemiological models are for.” The most important function of epidemiological models is as a simulation, a way to see our potential futures ahead of time, and how that interacts with the choices we make today. Thus, epidemiological models do not give us certainty – they give us something much more important: “agency to identify and calibrate our actions with the goal of shaping our future.”
PerspectivePandemics and the U.S. Military: Lessons from 1918
The novel coronavirus will hit the U.S. military and its allies hard — how hard will depend on a number of variables, some having to do with the virus itself (how and to what extent it mutates, whether it comes back in subsequent waves, etc.) and others having to do with what measures militaries take to protect themselves. Michael Shurkin writes that, fortunately, we have a historical example that could offer some clues on how the virus might affect the military, and the policy choices that at some point today’s military leaders may face. He is referring to the 1918 influenza epidemic — commonly referred to as the Spanish flu.
PerspectiveHow to Keep the New Coronavirus from Being Used as a Terrorist Weapon
The possibility that extremist groups may attempt to deliberately spread SARS-CoV-2—the virus causing the current pandemic—should not be ignored. In fact, one of the primary limiting factors to such an attack—recruiting humans willing to infect themselves—does not apply in this case; potential perpetrators would come from the ranks of those already infected with the virus. We are faced, therefore, with a genuinely challenging task: preemption.