• COVID Deniers: How Shadowy Social Media Groups Are Spreading Myths and Conspiracy about Coronavirus

    Conspiracies and fake news about Covid-19 are spreading across millions of users’ timelines.
    Two weeks ago an anti-vaccine Facebook group called ‘We Brought Vaxxed to the UK’ started to disseminate a new and dangerous contagion: misinformation about Covid-19.
    Paul Nuki writes in the Telegraph that its posts promote xenophobia, conspiracy theories and erroneous medical information about the disease and how it might be treated.
    One post claimed China was using the outbreak to cull the elderly, another suggested hand sanitiser causes cancer and a “probiotic yogurt suppository” was recommended as a cure.
    The group is just one of some 50 social media accounts being tracked by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a charity dedicated to preventing false and divisive lies and myths spreading across the web.
    “I took our file on these groups to Facebook executives to express our deep concern”, said CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed. “But nearly two weeks later, they have still not taken action to enforce their own policies and remove them.”

  • The Debate over Ending Social Distancing to Save the Economy, Explained

    “America will again, and soon, be open for business,” President Donald Trump said on Monday. “Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
    Ezra Klein writes in Vox that the cure, in this case, is social distancing, and the mass economic stoppage it forces. The problem is Covid-19, and the millions of deaths it could cause. On Tuesday, Trump accelerated his timeline. He said he’d like to see normalcy return by Easter Sunday, which is 12 April. “Wouldn’t it be great to have all the churches full?” he asked. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country.”
    Public health experts reacted with horror. “But the question Trump is posing needs to be taken seriously,” Klein writes. “The costs of social distancing are tremendous. The economic forecasts now predict a GDP drop and an unemployment rate of Great Depression-level proportions. The human suffering that will be unleashed is real, and it is vicious.”

  • U.S. COVID-19 Cases Surge Past 82,000, Highest Total in World

    Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, reached 82,404 yesterday in the United States, giving it the most cases in the world. And yesterday was the most active day so far in the country, with 14,042 new cases reported, and the national death toll reaching 1,069 fatalities. The numbers came on day 10 of the White House’s “15 days to slow the spread campaign,” a nationwide effort at social distancing measures that has been implemented in a patchwork fashion across the 50 states.

  • Poor Leadership during Times of Disease: Malta and the Plague of 1813

    Disease ravaged the population. Thousands died and those who survived were forced to isolate themselves in their homes as medical officials attempted to purge the pestilence from the area.  The economy, previously growing and sound, came to a standstill. Blame for the disaster was widespread, but it was an absence of leadership that bore the brunt of responsibility. The government officials charged with protecting the population were lax in preparation for a possible disaster and were often insufficient in their response to events. Andrew Zwilling writes that the sentences above describe the outbreak of plague on the islands of Malta in 1813. “Despite these differences, modern policymakers can learn from Malta’s experience two centuries ago,” he writes.  

  • Duke University Hospital Will Help Test Potential Treatment for COVID-19

    Duke University Hospital will take part in the first national tests of a drug that could be effective in treating COVID-19. Duke patients with significant symptoms of COVID-19 will be given the option to participate in the trial, which will begin immediately and be limited to adults. Richard Stradling writes in Raleigh News Observer that the treatment, known as remdesivir, is an antiviral agent previously tested in humans with Ebola virus disease.

  • Repurposed Drugs Offer Shortest Path to Coronavirus Treatment

    With the global COVID-19 death toll surging past 20,000 people this week, accelerated efforts to develop coronavirus treatments are primarily focused on adapting existing drugs intended to fight other diseases.
    “The shortest path to a treatment, we think, is to repurpose something that already exists based on our knowledge of the mechanisms of action,” Dr. Hana Akselrod, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told VOA.

  • Lab Antibody, Anti-Viral Research Aids COVID-19 Response

    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are contributing to the global fight against COVID-19 by combining artificial intelligence/machine learning, bioinformatics and supercomputing to help discover candidates for new antibodies and pharmaceutical drugs to combat the disease. See the visualization.

  • COVID-19 Preventative Vaccine Trial for Healthcare Workers

    Professor Kathryn North AC, Director of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, has announced its infectious disease researchers are preparing to roll-out a multi-center randomised controlled clinical trial of the BCG vaccine against COVID-19. 
    The trial has been endorsed by the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom, who has called for global support and assistance in the fight against COVID-19.  

  • U.K. Patient Zero? East Sussex Family May Have Been Infected with Coronavirus as Early as Mid-January

    A family from East Sussex may have been Britain’s first coronavirus victims, catching the virus in mid-January after one of them visited an Austrian ski resort that is now under investigation for allegedly covering up the early outbreak.
    Paul Nuki writes in he Telegraph that if confirmed by official tests, it would mean the outbreak in Britain started more than a month earlier than currently thought.
    As things stand, the first recorded U.K. case was on January 31, and the earliest documented incidence of transmission within Britain occurred on 28 February.
    IT consultant Daren Bland, 50, was skiing in Ischgl, Austria from 15 to 19 January with three friends, two from Denmark and one from Minnesota in America.
    All three fell ill on their return with classic coronavirus symptoms, and Bland passed on the infection to his wife and children in Maresfield, East Sussex.

  • MyPillow, Other U.S. Companies Making Face Masks to Meet Coronavirus Shortages

    As coronavirus cases start to overwhelm U.S. hospitals, American companies say they’re starting to make face masks and other personal protective equipment critically needed by medical staff.
    Brie Stimson writes in Fox News that in Minnesota, the MyPillow company is refocusing 75 percent of its production to face masks for health care workers.
    “We have capacity to make a lot of things at big rates and we’re going to be going hopefully from 10,000 units a day to 50,000 units a day in a very short period of time,” CEO Mike Lindell told FOX 9 of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
    In New Jersey, Stuart Carlitz, president and CEO of mattress company Eclipse International, said he made the decision to switch production to masks last week after hearing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo say that state had a shortage and was paying high prices for masks.
    “I’m not trying to sell masks,” Carlitz said. “Whether it’s a dollar apiece or four dollars apiece, that’s not going to change my business. I’m going to donate the masks.”
    Other companies, too, have converted their production lines to producing masks, among them: The Tablecloth Company in Paterson, N.J., decided to start making masks after requests from customers, including nursing homes where the virus can easily spread, according to NJ.com.
    Los Angeles-based apron company Hedley &Bennett will also be putting its 30 factory employees to work on face masks, Owner Ellen Bennett told Fast Company magazine.
    Other American fashion brands like Hanes, Los Angeles Apparel and Michael Costello and Karla Colletto Swimwear are also asking their workers to start making masks.
    Michigan-based Ford is assisting General Electric Healthcare with ventilator production, according to Yahoo Finance.

  • Economic Crash Could Cost More Life Than Coronavirus, Says Expert

    If the coronavirus lockdown leads to a fall in GDP of more than 6.4 per cent more years of life will be lost due to recession than will be gained through beating the virus, a study suggests.
    Philip Thomas, professor of risk management at Bristol University, said that keeping the economy going in the next year was crucial, otherwise the measures would “do more harm than good.”
    “I’m worried that in order to solve one problem we’d create a bigger problem,” he said a day after economists predicted we were on course for the worst recession in modern history.
    Tom Whipple writes in The Times that there is a clear link between GDP and life expectancy, in part due to richer countries being able to spend more on healthcare, safety and environmental regulations. This means it is possible to calculate roughly the effect of increased, or decreased, wealth on the health of a population.

  • Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine: No Proof These Anti-Malarial Drugs Prevent Novel Coronavirus in Humans

    There’s worrying news around the world of people self-medicating at home with the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. Chloroquine is not yet proven to work against COVID-19, though news reports originating in China have speculated otherwise. But theories about chloroquine and COVID-19 have spread around the world, despite a lack of hard evidence about the value of chloroquine in preventing or treating COVID-19. No one should be self-treating with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 as there is currently no proof they can cure the infection – and accidental harm is more likely if they are used in this way.

  • ECDC Warns of Overwhelmed Hospitals, Italy-Type COVID-19 Pattern

    The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) yesterday warned in its latest COVID-19 risk assessment that cases are rapidly increasing in all of Europe, following rises that look similar to those of China’s Hubei province and Italy and that the risk of overwhelmed health systems is high. Three of the five worst-hit countries are in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Germany. Also, the global number of confirmed deaths passed 20,000 yesterday, with 20,857 reported so far.

  • Initial Results of a New Symptom Tracking App: About 10% of Britons Are Infected

    The first app monitoring symptoms of people in Britain with suspected coronavirus shows that, at present, one in 10 users have a mild form of the virus at present. The app, developed by researchers in King’s College London, was made available to the public on Wednesday. Within the first 24 hours of the app being made available, some 650,000 people had signed up – and an initial analysis revealed that 10 percent of people were showing mild symptoms of the virus.

  • App Helps Doctors Find the Right Dose of Corona Medication

    Researchers have developed an app that doctors can use to more easily determine the right dosage of medication for corona patients. At the moment, doctors are prescribing many existing kinds of medication to patients. Using the app, they can determine a safe and effective dosage.