• In This Coronavirus Wave, China Tries Something New: Restraint

    As China tries to stifle the new outbreak in its capital city, it is applying something often alien to the instincts of the country’s rulers: restraint. Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley write in the New York Times that the brunt of the government’s measures has been borne by food traders at markets that were sealed off after cases were found, and by the residents of more than four dozen apartment complexes placed under lockdown. But in many other Beijing neighborhoods, the shops, restaurants and even hair salons are still operating. Traffic is a little lighter than usual, but plenty of cars are still on the road. City sidewalks remain busy.

  • The Dangers of Tech-Driven Solutions to COVID-19

    Although few sensible people have anything good to say about the federal government response, reactions to tools for managing the pandemic designed by tech firms have been more mixed, with many concluding that such tools can minimize the privacy and human rights risks posed by tight coordination between governments and tech firms. Julie E. Cohen, Woodrow Hartzog, and Laura Moy write for Brookings that contact tracing done wrong threatens privacy and invites mission creep into adjacent fields, including policing. Government actors might (and do) distort and corrupt public-health messaging to serve their own interests. Automated policing and content control raise the prospect of a slide into authoritarianism. 

  • The Coronavirus App Was Always Doomed to Fail

    For months now, the British public has been told there’s only one way to resume normal life: a successful virus-tracing scheme. The public was prepped to download it as soon as it was made available UK-wide. Kate Andrews writes in The Spectator that months later, there is still no NHSX app to download. Today we learn there will never be.Far from being an exception to the rule, the app now joins in a long line of government IT projects to have glitched and failed, even before arrival.

  • Summer Weather Won’t Save Us from Coronavirus

    Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and with summer on the doorstep, scientists are still investigating whether weather and climate affect the novel coronavirus. Chelsea Harvey writes in Scientific American that experts seem to be converging on a mix of good and bad news. Hotter, more humid weather probably does dampen the transmission of the virus, at least a bit. But it’s probably nowhere near enough to significantly affect the progress of the pandemic. That’s dismal news for U.S. states that have retreated from social distancing protocols—some without robust testing and tracing programs, and many with infection rates still climbing.

  • People Probably Caught Coronavirus from Minks. That’s a Wake-Up Call to Study Infections in Animals, Researchers Say.

    The Netherlands has culled more than 500,000 minks from 13 infected fur companies. The goal of the grim task, set to continue until the farms are virus-free, is to snuff out the possibility of the animals becoming a reservoir for the virus that causes covid-19, which could stymie efforts to end a pandemic that has killed nearly half a million people worldwide. Karin Brulliard writes in the Washington Post that Some researchers say that although the chances of that happening appear minimal, the implications are too grave to dismiss. In a commentary published Thursday in the Lancet Microbe, researchers at University College London called for widespread surveillance of pets, livestock and wildlife. Studies on animal susceptibility have been small, limited and, in the case of pigs, conflicting, they wrote.

  • 5 Ways the World Is Better Off Dealing with a Pandemic Now Than in 1918

    Near the end of the First World War, a deadly flu raced across the globe. The influenza pandemic became the most severe pandemic in recent history, infecting about one-third of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920 and killing between 50 and 100 million people. It was caused by an H1N1 virus that originated in birds and mutated to infect humans. Now a century later the world is amidst another global pandemic caused by a zoonotic disease that “jumped” from wildlife to people, a novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. If managed competently, this fight may turn out differently, resulting in lower rates of infection and mortality and, possibly, fewer deaths.

  • COVID-19 Reveals Need for More Research about Guns

    Shortages of toilet paper at neighborhood grocery stores have become a symbol of the nation’s response to the COVID-19 virus, but recent reports suggest that people also reacted to the pandemic by purchasing firearms and ammunition in massive numbers. Andrew R. Morral and Jeremy Travis write in USA Today (republished by RAND) that eventually, the pandemic will recede, scientific rigor will lead to treatments or a vaccine, and life will start to return to a new normal—but those new firearms aren’t going anywhere. They ask: “What does this mean for public safety? And what can policymakers do to ensure that a spike in sales doesn’t result in more injuries or deaths?”

  • The Dangers of Tech-Driven Solutions to COVID-19

    Although few sensible people have anything good to say about the federal government response, reactions to tools for managing the pandemic designed by tech firms have been more mixed, with many concluding that such tools can minimize the privacy and human rights risks posed by tight coordination between governments and tech firms. Julie E. Cohen, Woodrow Hartzog, and Laura Moy write for Brookings that contact tracing done wrong threatens privacy and invites mission creep into adjacent fields, including policing. Government actors might (and do) distort and corrupt public-health messaging to serve their own interests. Automated policing and content control raise the prospect of a slide into authoritarianism. 

  • U.K. to See Three Waves of Unemployment as a Result of COVID-19, Experts Warn

    The UK will be hit with three waves of unemployment as a result of the Coronavirus crisis, experts have claimed as official data is on Tuesday expected to show a record monthly rise in joblessness. Anna Mikhailova writes in The Telegraph that new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will reflect the first wave of jobs lost since the lockdown began. Analysis by the Resolution Foundation, the economic think tank, predicts the April data will show a record monthly rise of people out of work, up from the latest figure of 1.29m in March.

  • A Second Wave of Coronavirus Infections Could Begin in September, UW Model Suggests

    After remaining fairly constant through the summer, novel coronavirus infections and deaths in the United States are likely to begin climbing again in September, marking the start of a second wave of the epidemic, according to a model from the University of Washington that has been widely cited but also criticized. Sandi Doughton writes in the Seattle Timesthat the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projects the national death toll from COVID-19 could reach nearly 170,000 by Oct. 1, with an uncertainty range of 133,201 to 290,222. That’s 57,000 more deaths in the coming months, in addition to the approximately 113,000 Americans killed by the virus so far.

  • One in Five Coronavirus Patients Caught the Virus in Hospital

    One in five hospital patients with coronavirus caught it while on wards, papers by Government scientists have revealed. Laura Donnelly writes in The Telegraph that the findings come alongside orders to all hospitals to enforce social distancing between staff in order to stop doctors and nurses from “congregating” and fueling the spread of the virus. An investigation by The Telegraph reveals that it was not until May 18 – nearly two months after Britain entered lockdown – that health chiefs finally issued guidance on how hospital workers should implement social distancing.

  • Study Finds 1 in 5 People Worldwide at Risk of Severe COVID-19

    In just six months, nearly 8 million people worldwide have been stricken with confirmed cases of Covid-19, and at least 434,000 have died. But those deaths have not been distributed evenly; among the most vulnerable are people with underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and diseases that affect the heart and lungs. According to a new modeling study, roughly 1.7 billion people around the world — 22 percent of the global population — fall into that category. Katherine J. Wu writes in the New York Times that that estimate, published in The Lancet Global Health, excluded healthy older individuals without underlying health conditions, a group also known to be at risk because of their age. It also did not take into account risk factors like poverty and obesity, which can influence a person’s susceptibility to disease and access to treatment.

  • Norway Pulls Its Coronavirus Contacts-Tracing App after Privacy Watchdog’s Warning

    One of the first national coronavirus contacts-tracing apps to be launched in Europe is being suspended in Norway after the country’s data protection authority raised concerns that the software, called “Smittestopp,” poses a disproportionate threat to user privacy — including by continuously uploading people’s location. Natasha Lomas writes in Tech Crunch that following a warning from the watchdog Friday, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said today it will stop uploading data from tomorrow — ahead of a June 23 deadline when the DPA had asked for use of the app to be suspended so that changes could be made. It added that it disagrees with the watchdog’s assessment but will nonetheless delete user data “as soon as possible.”

  • Up to 45 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections may be asymptomatic

    An extraordinary percentage of people infected by the virus behind the ongoing deadly COVID-19 pandemic—up to 45 percent—are people who never show symptoms of the disease, according to the results of a Scripps Research analysis of public datasets on asymptomatic infections. Scrippssays that the findings, recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest that asymptomatic infections may have played a significant role in the early and ongoing spread of COVID-19 and highlight the need for expansive testing and contact tracing to mitigate the pandemic.    

  • Common Drug Reduces Coronavirus Deaths, Scientists Report

    In an unexpected glimmer of hope amid an expanding pandemic, scientists at the University of Oxford said on Tuesday that an inexpensive and commonly available drug reduced deaths in patients with severe Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Benjamin Mueller and Roni Caryn Rabin write in the New York Times that if the finding is borne out, the drug, a steroid called dexamethasone, would be the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in the sickest patients and may save hundreds of thousands of lives, eventually even millions, altering the course of the pandemic.