• U.S. COVID-19 Cases Keep Climbing, with No End in Sight

    U.S. COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing as the coronavirus spreads to every corner of the country. The United States reported 121,888 new COVID-19 Thursday, and 1,210 deaths. That’s nearly 20,000 more cases than were reported Wednesday, and the third day in a row of more than 1,000 deaths.

  • Poor U.S. Pandemic Response Will Reverberate in Health Care Politics for Years, Health Scholars Warn

    Much has been written about the U.S. coronavirus response. Yet little is known about the views of a group of people particularly well qualified to render judgment on the U.S. response and offer policy solutions: academic health policy and politics researchers. We have surveyed 400 researchers, and the highlight the damaged reputation to government institutions. The surveyed scholars also believe the poor government response will shift the politics of health care.

  • Confronting the Notion that Face Masks Reduce COVID “Dose”

    When two physicians at the University of California at San Francisco published a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Sep 8 proposing to resurrect the 18th century practice of variolation using face coverings to prevent severe COVID-19 and confer immunity, the Internet lit up with headlines such as “Coronavirus: Another reason for that mask: You’ll get less sick.” Concerned that the piece, its positioning in a top medical journal, and the resulting media coverage would embolden people to abandon physical distancing and other public health measures in favor of only wearing face coverings, scientists warned against the practice.

  • Escaping the “Era of Pandemics”: Reducing Risks of Worse Crises to Come

    Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns a major new report by 22 leading experts from around the world.

  • U.S. at “Critical Point” as COVID-19 Cases up Nationwide, Crossing the 9 Million Mark

    The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is setting new records as infections continue to spike in the Midwest and other parts of the country. A member of the White House coronavirus task force said Wednesday that the nationwide increase in cases isn’t just a reflection of increased testing. “We are at another critical point in the pandemic response,” Admiral Brett Giroir, MD, told NBC’s Today Show. “Yes, we’re getting more cases identified, but the cases are actually going up. And we know that, too, because hospitalizations are going up.”

  • EU Uses Chinese Technology Linked to Muslim Internment Camps in Xinjiang

    In the fight against coronavirus, the EU is using thermal cameras produced by Chinese tech giant Hikvision. The firm has been linked to the oppression of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.

  • COVID-19 Drug Shortages—and the Solutions

    A new report lays out not only how the US drug supply chain has been vulnerable for years, but how those vulnerabilities are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report points out that 29 (72.5 percent) of the 40 critical drugs for COVID-19 patients are experiencing shortages.

  • Russia Launches Disinformation Campaign to Undermine Public Confidence in Oxford University’s COVID Vaccine

    The U.K. government said it condemned as “utterly deplorable” a Russia disinformation campaign to undermine public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine currently under development by Oxford University scientists. The Times reported on Friday that Russian government officials have been using social media and Russian state media to depict the vaccine as dangerous – going as far as claiming that the vaccine would turn people into monkeys or chimpanzees.

  • Covid-19 Kills – but So Does Lockdown

    Just over six months ago Boris Johnson gave the British people a clear instruction: “You must stay at home.” Professor Karl Sikora writes that it was impossible for anybody to anticipate the unintended consequences of those five words and quite how much pain and anguish they would unleash. “No computer model nor brilliant epidemiologist can fully estimate the sheer long-term destruction lockdowns have caused,” Sikora says, adding: “This is not an argument for a fundamental shift in strategy, those debates have been had. “This is a plea for more balance.”

  • U.K. Government’s Tiered COVID-19 Alert Systems Are All Flawed, Warns Disaster Expert

    Alert systems need to be clear and easy for everyone to understand. Yet, to date, the UK’s national alert system has created confusion and been largely ignored. Now, a second local alert level system has been introduced in England. I’m not convinced it will do any better.

  • Popularity of COVID-19 Conspiracies Linked to Vaccine Hesitancy

    A new study of beliefs and attitudes toward COVID-19 in five different countries – UK, US, Ireland, Mexico and Spain – has identified how much traction some prominent conspiracy theories have within these populations. Moreover, the study finds that people who rate coronavirus conspiracy theories as more reliable are much less likely to say they will get vaccinated.

  • Trust in COVID Info Sources Varies by Demographics, Beliefs

    People seek COVID-19 information from different sources based on sex, age, education level, political bent, and beliefs about the pandemic, according to a study published last week in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance. Led by researchers at New York University (NYU), the study involved recruiting US adults on Facebook to complete an online survey in two rounds in March and April on their use of 11 different coronavirus information sources and their most trusted source of information.

  • Global Internet Freedom Declines in Shadow of Pandemic

    Governments around the world have used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to expand online surveillance and data collection, censor critical speech, and build new technological systems of social control, according to an annual assessment of internet freedom, released Wednesday by Freedom House.

  • Game “Pre-Bunks” COVID-19 Conspiracies as Part of U.K.'s Fight against Fake News

    Go Viral!is a new game developed in partnership between the University of Cambridge and the U.K. government. Based on “inoculation theory,” it simulates an environment for users to play the role of fake news producer, so they can understand how COVID-19 misinformation circulates online.

  • FDA Head: Outside Pressures Won't Rush COVID Vaccine

    The decision to authorize and approve a COVID-19 vaccine will be based on data and science—not politics, Stephen Hahn, MD, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said. “Science will guide our decision, and I will not, and the FDA will not, allow pressure from anybody to change that. We plan to fight for science, we will fight for the integrity of the agency, we will always put the interest of the American people ahead of anything, and that includes personal considerations,” Hahn said.