• In Europe, Local Leaders Increasingly Frustrated with Pandemic Restrictions

    By Jamie Dettmer

    Across Europe, mayors are also questioning the orthodoxy of lockdowns, arguing that infection rates are trending up even in locked-down towns. They are not going as far as to ignore government instructions, but they are becoming increasingly frustrated with the pandemic restrictions central governments are imposing from on high. Local leaders say they are better placed to know when and how to tighten restrictions, or whether they are needed at all. They fear central governments are not getting the balance right between protecting lives and saving livelihoods and businesses.

  • Coronavirus: Thresholds for Effective Herd Immunity Could be Lower Than Predicted – Here’s Why

    By Pieter Trapman

    Basic models for COVID-19 suggest herd immunity is achieved when 60 percent of people are immune. This is based on a very simple model, though. It assumes that everyone in the population mixes to the same degree and at random. It’s unrealistic. In our research, we tried to reflect some of the diversity of behavior found in human populations to show what effect it might have on reaching herd immunity. We found that accounting for age-specific mixing trends, together with different sociability levels, lowered the herd immunity threshold a little further, to 43 percent.

  • Building Pandemic Preparedness and Resilience to Confront Future Pandemics

    By Sally Huang

    With the current COVID-19 pandemic revealing major gaps in national readiness, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense brought together members of the legislative and scientific community for a virtual discussion on the need to increase and optimize resource investments to promote changes in US policy and strengthen national pandemic preparedness and response.

  • Tracking a Pandemic—Through Words

    In late December 2019, U.S. analysts monitoring global biothreats began tracking an unidentified viral pneumonia spreading in China through technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). About a month later, the rest of the world would know that disease as COVID-19. The text analysis software developed at PNNL helps the nation track global biothreats, such as COVID-19.

  • How Coronavirus Took Hold in North America and Europe

    By Daniel Stolte

    Early interventions were effective at stamping out coronavirus infections, but subsequent, poorly monitored travel allowed the virus to ignite major outbreaks in Europe and North America, according to a new study.

  • Calling Out Bad Science

    Two weeks ago, a group of scientists posted an article in which they claimed that certain features of the COVID-19 virus lend support to the theory that the virus was synthetic, that is, that it was made or modified in a lab rather than having evolved naturally. Since such claims serve as the basis for conspiracy theories, and since the article has not yet been peer-reviewed, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security took it upon themselves to do an informal peer review of the article. Their detailed, page-by-page review of the article is unequivocal in its conclusions: the authors failed to provide accurate or supportive evidence to back up their claim. Moreover, the article contains many errors of both facts and interpretation.

  • EU Takes Action against Fake News

    By Christoph Hasselbach

    A special committee of the European Parliament is set to detect and combat foreign cyberattacks. The EU has confirmed that targeted disinformation campaigns are on the rise — partly relating to the coronavirus pandemic.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Top the 200,000 Mark

    By Lisa Schnirring

    The United States passed the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 yesterday (22 September) on the first day of fall, cases are rising nationally, and more controversies and developments continue to roil the U.S. response. Currently, the U.S. fatality count from COVID-19 is at 200,477 among 6,882,969 cases that have been reported.

  • 50,000 Benghazis, 109 Katrinas: U.S. COVID-19 Death in Perspective

    The United States now counts over 200,000 dead in direct connection with the novel coronavirus. Elizabeth Hunt Brockway writes that to grasp the enormity of this figure, we need to see how this massive number stacks up to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other iconic events of mass death, suffering, and pain seared into the American collective conscience.

  • The Weakest Link of Global Supply Chains

    From toilet paper to industrial chemicals, there’s no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive to global supply chains. But how important are large, multinational companies in maintaining both local and international logistic networks and should governments be so focused on maintaining larger organizations through subsidies and bail-outs over their smaller counterparts? A new study finds that smaller operators can deliver the hardest logistic shocks.

  • Americans Increasingly Skeptical of COVID Vaccine: Poll

    By Chris Dall

    A new survey reveals that Americans are becoming increasingly wary about getting the COVID-19 vaccine once it becomes available. Last April, a Pew Research survey of 10,000 Americans found that 72 percent said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available. Hen the same 10,000 respondents were polled between 8 and 13 September, only 51 percent said they would definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available today.

  • Belief in Conspiracy Theories A Barrier to Controlling Spread of COVID-19

    Belief in conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic is not only persistent but also is associated with reluctance to accept a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available and to engage in behaviors such as mask-wearing that can prevent its spread, according to research.

  • Epidemics and Pandemics Can Exacerbate Xenophobia, Bigotry

    When viruses, parasites and other pathogens spread, humans and other animals tend to hunker down with immediate family and peer groups to avoid outsiders as much as possible. But could these instincts, developed to protect us from illnesses, generalize into avoidance of healthy individuals who simply look, speak or live differently?

  • Africa: Milder COVID-19 Pandemic than Expected Puzzles Experts

    Hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths and serious infections causing the collapse of already shaky health care systems —this is how experts imagined the effect of the coronavirus pandemic in most African countries. But, more than four months later, one can say that this horror scenario has not materialized. A lack of reliable data makes it difficult to say why, but several theories have been put forth.

  • Amid Spotty Response, COVID Silently Stalked U.S. for Weeks

    By Mary Van Beusekom

    Two new studies involving evolutionary genomics, computer simulations, and travel records from the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that inadequate travel monitoring, contact tracing, and community surveillance allowed the novel coronavirus to spread unchecked to and throughout North America and Europe in late January or early February.