• COVID Is Ushering in a Surveillance State That May Never Be Dismantled

    Is the “new normal” to be a surveillance society, with tracing apps and facial recognition health passports? Philip Johnston writes in The Telegraph that the British government insists not; but if we are hit by a second wave of COVID-19, the temptation to extend the monitoring will be hard to resist.

  • Battling the “Pandemic of Misinformation”

    When a disease outbreak grabs the public’s attention, formal recommendations from medical experts are often muffled by a barrage of half-baked advice, sketchy remedies, and misguided theories that circulate as anxious people rush to understand a new health risk. The current crisis is no exception. Ubiquity of social media has made it easier to spread or even create COVID-19 falsehoods, making the work of public health officials harder.

  • COVID-19 and Terrorism: Assessing the Short and Long-Term Impacts

    A new report reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic is already having a significant impact on terrorism around the world. “One genuine concern is that COVID-19 may lead to a resurgence in interest among terrorists for using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons,” says one expert. “While serious obstacles certainly remain, the huge impact of COVID-19 may re-ignite some interest in biological weapons.”

  • How the Lyme Disease Epidemic Is Spreading and Why Ticks Are So Hard to Stop

    I have been following Lyme disease’s spread for nearly four decades. Over that time, Lyme disease cases increased from a few hundred reported in 1982 to more than 33,000 in 2018. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the actual number of Lyme disease cases is about 10 times greater than those reported. Warm weather is arriving and people are beginning to seek outside respite from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. This is the same time that ticks are beginning to search for their next meal, and the risk of getting Lyme disease rises. Its spread to new areas involves a complex interplay among animals that may aid in helping scientists slow its continuing advance.

  • Foreign countries’ Efforts to Influence U.S. Public's Understanding of COVID-19

    The ongoing worldwide coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been immune to the problem of rampant disinformation—intentionally misleading information or propaganda. The European External Action Service of the European Union recently stated that “despite their potentially grave impact on public health, official and state-backed sources from various governments, including Russia and—to a lesser extent—China, have continued to widely target conspiracy narratives and disinformation both at public audiences in the EU and the wider neighborhood.” Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, discuss how disinformation has impacted the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • In Germany, Vaccine Fears Spark Conspiracy Theories

    The increasing number of gatherings in German cities, some under the motto “Resistance 2020,” have attracted all sorts of supporters: people who belong to the far-right Reichsbürger movement, conspiracy theorists, liberals, and people from the neo-right — and increasingly, those who support the anti-vaccine movement. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is keeping an eye on the protests, has noted an increase in right-wing extremists in attendance, as well as growing anti-Semitic and anti-democratic symbols and slogans.

  • Virus Conspiracists Elevate a New Champion

    A discredited scientist who blames her professional downfall on Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the new hero of the anti-vaccinators, the conspiracy group QAnon, activists from the Reopen America movement, and some right-wing media. They support her claims that Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and other “establishment” figures inflated the danger of the coronavirus in order to make money by selling more vaccines.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Hits 80,000 as Top Leaders Quarantine

    The U.S. death toll due to COVID-19 surpassed 80,000 yesterday, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times. At least 1,346,800 cases have been confirmed in the country, including 80,095 deaths. The death toll has already surpassed the most optimistic epidemiologic model, the one produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and touted by the White House, which projected 64,000 deaths by Aug 1. That model has since been adjusted to take into account the easing of social distancing measures, and now projects 137,000 U.S. deaths by Aug 1.

  • A Close Relative of SARS-CoV-2 Found in Bats Offers More Evidence It Evolved Naturally

    There is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. Cell Press notes that on May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative in some regions of the genome and which contains insertions of amino acids at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the virus’s spike protein in a manner similar to SAR-CoV-2. While it’s not a direct evolutionary precursor of SARS-CoV-2, this new virus, RmYN02, suggests that these types of seemingly unusual insertion events can occur naturally in coronavirus evolution, the researchers say.

  • New AI Diagnostic Can Predict COVID-19 without Testing

    Researchers at King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. Their findings are published today in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0916-2. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Nature Medicine. King’s College London says that the AI model uses data from the COVID Symptom Study app to predict COVID-19 infection, by comparing people’s symptoms and the results of traditional COVID tests. Researchers say this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited. Two clinical trials in the UK and the US are due to start shortly.

  • Experts: We Must Cooperate to Develop, Deploy COVID-19 Vaccines

    Development of vaccines against COVID-19 hinges on “unprecedented” and transparent cooperation among industry, government, and academia, according to a commentary by Anthony Fauci and other U.S. vaccine experts published yesterday in Science. Mary Van Beusekom writes in CIDRAP that the authors, noting that all vaccine platforms have advantages and disadvantages and underscoring the need for speed and flexibility of manufacture, safety, long-term efficacy, scale, affordability, vaccine stability, and a temperature-controlled supply chain, said that “no single vaccine or vaccine platform alone is likely to meet the global need, and so a strategic approach to the multi-pronged endeavor is absolutely critical.”

  • BGU Scientists Develop Anti-Coronavirus Surface Coating Based on Nanomaterials

    In light of the possibility that the virus can spread through contaminated surfaces, it is important to be able to sterilize surfaces with high contamination potential, such as doorknobs, elevator buttons or handrails in public areas in general, and in hospitals and clinics in particular. However, current disinfectants are mainly based on chemicals such as poisonous sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or alcohol, both of which provide only a temporary measure until the next exposure to the virus. Israel’s Ben Gurion University said that Prof. Angel Porgador, from the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at BGU and the National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN), and Dr. Mark Schvartzman, Department of Materials Engineering at BGU, are developing novel surface coatings that will have a long term effect, and contain nanoparticles of safe metal ions and polymers with anti-viral and anti-microbial activity.

  • State Actions Played Lesser Role in COVID-19 Economic Damage

    Actions by state governments to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 played only a secondary role in the historic spike in U.S. unemployment in March, according to new research. Ohio State University says that while state actions to close schools were linked to an increase in unemployment, these effects were dwarfed by the larger national and international impact of the pandemic, according to researchers at the Ohio State University and Indiana University. Hispanics, young adults (aged 20-24), those without a college education and those with four or more children saw the steepest job losses. In two separate studies – here and here — the researchers took a broad look at the very early impact of the pandemic on jobs in the United States.

  • Coronavirus Not an Epidemic in U.K., Say Oxford University Experts

    Coronavirus is not at epidemic levels in Britain, experts at Oxford University have said, with new figures showing that only a tiny proportion of the population is currently infected. Sarah Knapton writes in The Telegraph that the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – have the virus. Separate surveillance by the Royal College of GPs indicates it may be even less. Figures released last week showed just 0.037 per cent of people have the virus, although this is likely to be lower than the actual number because few people are visiting doctors with symptoms. An epidemic is declared if the surveillance rate exceeds 40 per 10,000, but the new figures suggest it is between 24 and three in 10,000.

  • Government’s Handling of COVID-19 Is a Very British Disaster

    British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph. “We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.” He is unsparing in his judgement. He notes that Greece, with far fewer resources than Britain and having to cope with both a deep austerity and waves of migrants, has had 14 deaths per million, while the U.K. has just hit 472 (as of 24 April: the number is much higher by now). Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus, while Britain’s coronavirus-related death toll is approaching 50,000. “Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany,” he writes. If Britain had a similar COVID-related mortality rate as Greece, “These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.”