• Debate Over COVID Origins Continues

    Late last week, ProPublica published an article claiming to have unveiled new information from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) supporting the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origin. Now, the piece some have described as a train wreck is being heavily criticized for having faulty translations, mis-matched dates, misrepresenting the sources of the documents discussed in it, not understanding how common VPN usage is in China-related research, and more.

  • Senate Panel Minority Staff Report Argues for Lab-Leak Theory of COVID Origins

    The Republican minority staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee earlier this week issued a 35-page report contending that “SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 global pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident associated with coronavirus research in Wuhan, China.” The report has failed to win over prominent supporters of the lab leak theory, including Rutgers University’s Dr. Richard Ebright, who said that “there was no information in the report that has not been publicly presented in the media and discussed in the media previously.”

  • Coronavirus Origins: The Debate Flares Up, but the Evidence Remains Weak

    A recent, not-yet-peer-reviewed, study claims to have identified possibly unusual sequence patterns in the SARS-CoV-2 genome which may indicate that the virus was genetically modified in a lab. The study has been poorly received by most experts in the field. The evidence reported in the study is neither conclusive nor final, and the findings may turn out to be a fluke, or generated by a flaw in the method, as the study’s authors concede. This study and its reception remind us that it would be unwise to suppress a discussion of the lab leak theory by arguing that such a discussion has fueled conspiracy theories. A confirmation of an accidental lab leak – if such a leak has indeed occurred – would be less damaging than a confirmation of a lab leak whose evidence has been aggressively suppressed.

  • A One Health Approach to Preparedness and Prevention

    COVID-19 is the latest zoonotic RNA virus epidemic of concern. Learning how it began and spread will help to determine how to reduce the risk of future events.

  • Traces of the Polio Virus found in Several New York State Counties

    Polio was declared eradicated in the United States in 1979. In the summer, the first case of polio was discovered in New York, and an examination of the wastewater in several NY counties found traces of the virus which were genetically related to the virus which infected the polio patient in the summer.

  • China's Anti-COVID Policies in Tibet Trigger Resentment, Online Outcry

    The harsh COVID-19 containment restrictions China is imposing across Tibet are leading to public resentment in the capital of Lhasa, where residents who have tested positive are being quarantined in empty stadiums, schools, warehouses and unfinished buildings.

  • Lancet Commission on COVID-19 Response: “Massive Global Failure”

    A stinging new Lancet Commission report on the international COVID-19 pandemic response calls it “a massive global failure on multiple levels” and spares no one the responsibility—including the public—for millions of preventable deaths and a backslide in progress made toward sustainable development goals in many countries.

  • The WHO Has Advised Against the Use of Two Antibody Therapies Against COVID – Here’s What That Means

    New guidance from WHO strongly advises against using the antibody therapies sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab to treat patients with COVID-19. This means that, at least for the time being, there are no recommended antibody therapies to treat COVID. There are, however, still other treatment options.

  • Can South Korea Help the World Beat the Next Pandemic?

    As nations around the world emerge from the long and devastating COVID-19 pandemic and reflect on the losses and the way forward, nations around the world, including the United States, could look to South Korea’s near-perfect response as a model for dealing with future public health crises.

  • Public Health Tool Predicts Effects of a Pandemic and Mitigation Efforts

    Epidemiologists and public health officials have a new predictive tool to analyze the course of pandemics.

  • Did Sweden’s Controversial COVID Strategy Pay Off? In Many Ways It Did – but It Let the Elderly Down

    Sweden’s approach to COVID was controversial, with some calling it “the Swedish experiment.” But almost two-and-a-half years after the pandemic began, what can we say today about the outcomes of this “experiment”?

  • COVID-19 Origins Linked to Wildlife Sales at Chinese Market; Other Scenarios Extremely Unlikely: Studies

    Analyses based on locations and viral sequencing of early cases indicate the COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, with two separate jumps from animals to humans.

  • During Pandemic: More News, More Worry

    Anxiety and fear went hand in hand with trying to learn more about COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in the United States — and the most distressed people were turning on the television and scrolling through social media.

  • Google/Apple's Contact-Tracing Apps Susceptible to Digital Attacks

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and health authorities have relied on contact-tracing technologies to help manage the spread of the virus. Yet there’s a major flaw in a framework that many of these mobile apps utilize – one that attackers could exploit to ramp up false positive notifications.

  • Local Focus Can Prevent Failures in Large Networks

    We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networks — global air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of these systems also is increasing, but control is difficult.