• South Korea’s Coronavirus Plan Is Working, Can the World Copy It?

    To fight the COVID-19 epidemic, the South Korean government has taken drastic, even extreme, measures: Government health agencies send citizens phone alerts – at times, a dozen a day – about new infections in their neighborhoods; health officials conduct thousands of in-person interviews with those suspected of being infected; and the government has instant access to extensive amounts of personal information —  such as bank records, phone GPS data, and surveillance footage — not only for confirmed coronavirus patients but also suspected cases. This access is possible because South Korean lawmakers loosened privacy laws following a 2015 outbreak of MERS. It is not clear that citizens in Western countries would be comfortable with this intrusive approach.

  • Using Machine Learning to Discover Coronavirus Treatments

    Conducting antibody discovery in a laboratory typically takes years, but it takes just a week for the algorithms developed by two graduates of Columbia University’s Data Science Institute – algorithms capable of computationally generating, screening, and optimizing hundreds of millions of therapeutic antibodies — to identify antibodies that can fight against the virus. Expediting the development of a treatment that could help infected people is critical.

  • Even a Limited India-Pakistan Nuclear War Would Bring Global Famine, Says Study

    The concept of nuclear winter—a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs—has been around for decades. But such speculations have been based largely on back-of-the-envelope calculations involving a total war between Russia and the United States. Now, a new multinational study incorporating the latest models of global climate, crop production and trade examines the possible effects of a less gargantuan but perhaps more likely exchange between two longtime nuclear-armed enemies: India and Pakistan.

  • Impact of a Second Dust Bowl Would Be Felt Worldwide

    The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s - captured by the novels of John Steinbeck - was an environmental and socio-economic disaster that worsened the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl was an extreme event. But due to climate change, massive crop failures are more likely to happen again in the future. A catastrophic shock to U.S. agriculture would deplete reserves, including those of other countries.

  • Italian COVID-19 Deaths Pass China's Total; Cases Surge in Europe

    With reports of 427 more deaths reported yesterday, Italy’s fatality count has now passed China’s, as case numbers continued to surge across much of Europe and the disease makes inroads on other continents, including Africa and the Americas. In other key developments, China yesterday had no new locally acquired cases, though it did report several imported infections, and a research team from China reported disappointing early findings for a widely available HIV drug combo (lopinavir-ritonavir) for treating hospitalized patients.

  • COVID-19 Treatment Might Already Exist in Old Drugs – We’re Using Pieces of the Coronavirus Itself to Find Them

    As a systems biologist who studies how cells are affected by viruses during infections, I’m interested in the question how long will it take to develop drugs to treat COVID-19. Finding points of vulnerability and developing a drug to treat a disease typically takes years. But the new coronavirus isn’t giving the world that kind of time. With most of the world on lockdown and the looming threat of millions of deaths, researchers need to find an effective drug much faster.

  • Coronavirus Testing Kits to Be Developed Using New RNA Imaging Technology

    Simon Fraser University researchers will use their pioneering imaging technology—called Mango, for its bright colour— to develop coronavirus testing kits. They’re among a small set of Canadian researchers who responded to the rapid funding opportunity recently announced by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to help address COVID-19.

  • Where Is Helmut Schmidt When We Need Him?

    Helmut Schmidt came to the attention of Germans, and Europeans, in February 1962, when he competently and effectively managed the crisis which followed the massive flood which inundated the city of Hamburg. His determined, unbureaucratic, and effective management of the crisis earned him the reputation of a Macher — someone who gets things done regardless of obstacles. This reputation carried him all the way to the chancellorship (1974-1982). He was a competent, low-key, trustworthy straight shooter who told it like it is. Someone who offered a calm, steady, and reassuring leadership in trying times. A pair of safe hands in a time of crisis. On Wednesday, the title of an editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung told us something about the mood, and yearnings, in Germany – and around the world: “Wer ist heute der Helmut Schmidt?” (Who Is Today’s Helmut Schmidt?).

     

  • Experts: Russia Using Virus Crisis to Sow Discord in West

    Experts say that Kremlin’s disinformation specialists are behind a disinformation campaign in the Western media on coronavirus, intended to fuel panic and discord among allies, deepen the crisis, exacerbate its consequences, and hamper the ability of Western democracies to respond to it effectively. The European Union has accused Moscow of pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, using “contradictory, confusing and malicious reports” to make it harder for the bloc leaders to communicate its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Truth Decay in the Coronavirus Moment: Q&A with Jennifer Kavanagh

    The COVID-19 crisis “is the type of environment in which false and misleading information thrives and spreads quickly. People are vulnerable. People are afraid. People don’t know what to believe. Trust in basically every organization or position that we would turn to is pretty low. There’s higher trust in the medical community than in, say, media or government, but it’s still not all that high. The combination of low trust and high volume of information coming from people who are not experts—but purport to be experts—creates the perfect storm for the average person,” says Jennifer Kavanagh, author of Truth Decay.

  • Modeling Study Suggests 18 Months of COVID-19 Social Distancing, Much Disruption

    On 16 March, when White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, MD, stood beside President Donald Trump and announced the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign, she said guidance on home isolation was informed by the latest models from the United Kingdom. Birx was likely referring to a new modeling study by Imperial College of London epidemiologists on likely U.S. and U.K. outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The model, which has been lauded by epidemiologists around the world, analyzes the two approaches to managing the virus – mitigation vs suppression.

  • Wuhan Reports No New Coronavirus Cases for First Time

    The Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic has for the first time reported no new daily cases, reporting Thursday that there were no new cases Wednesday. Wuhan has spent about two months on lockdown as authorities tried to stop the spread of the virus, and in recent weeks the number of new infections there dwindled.

  • COVID-19: Imperial College Researchers’ Model Likely Influenced Public Health Measures

    The latest analysis comes from a team modelling the spread and impact COVID-19 and whose data are informing current U,K, government policy on the pandemic. The findings are published in the 9th report from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, J-IDEA, Imperial College London.

  • 10 Misconceptions about the 1918 Flu, the “Greatest Pandemic in History”

    Pandemic is a scary word, but the world has seen pandemics before, and worse ones, too. Consider the influenza pandemic of 1918, often referred to erroneously as the “Spanish flu.” Misconceptions about it may be fueling unfounded fears about COVID-19, and now is an especially good time to correct them.

  • Making Bioweapons Obsolete

    As the threats posed by bioterrorism and naturally occurring infectious disease grow and evolve in the modern era, there is a rising potential for broad negative impacts on human health, economic stability and global security. To protect the United States from these dangers, researchers are taking on the ambitious goal of making bioweapons obsolete.