Category: COVID
It’s Gotten Awkward to Wear a Mask
(The Atlantic) Last week, just a couple of hours into a house-sitting stint in Massachusetts for my cousin and his wife, I received from them a flummoxed text: “Dude,” it read. “We are the only people in masks.” Upon arriving at the airport, and then boarding their flight, they’d been shocked to find themselves virtually […]
Oct 20, 2022
New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions
(Forbes) This was one of those should-have-seen-it-coming moments. On October 14, a team of researchers posted on bioRxiv a preprint that described how they had created a new hybrid version of the Covid-19 coronavirus in their lab at Boston University and used this lab-created virus to infect mice, which ended up killing 80% of the mice. These days, if […]
Oct 18, 2022
Was a study that created a hybrid COVID-19 virus too risky?
(Science) Science looks at the furor over an experiment that combined Omicron with a more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variant. This week, Twitter exploded with outrage about a study that seemed to have created a Frankenstein COVID-19 virus: a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines Omicron, the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant that’s now everywhere, and a deadlier […]
Oct 18, 2022
Risk of reinfection, vaccine protection, and severity of infection with the BA.5 omicron subvariant: a nation-wide population-based study in Denmark
(The Lancet) Estimates of immunity and severity for the SARS-CoV-2 omicron subvariant BA.5 are important to assess the public health impact associated with its rapid global spread despite vaccination. We estimated natural and vaccine immunity and severity of BA.5 relative to BA.2 in Denmark, a country with high mRNA-vaccination coverage and free-of-charge RT-PCR testing.
Oct 18, 2022
Authorized COVID Antiviral Fails to Cut Hospitalization Risk
MedPageToday – Molnupiravir failed to reduce the risk for hospitalization or death in high-risk COVID-19 outpatients who took the oral antiviral within 5 days of symptoms, a large open-label multicenter trial found. In more than 25,000 participants in the PANORAMIC study, the rate of all-cause hospitalization or death at 28 days was an identical 0.8% […]
Oct 18, 2022
The new COVID booster will protect older Americans this flu season. Here’s how to get shots into arms
Harvard Public Health – The new bivalent booster protects against the original COVID and the dominant Omicron variant. And yet, only 5% of adults eligible for the new COVID booster have received it. Local health departments can change that. Public health leaders have blamed Americans’ lack of urgency on mixed public health messaging about boosters, […]
Oct 18, 2022
Radiographic Lung Changes Common With Pulmonary Long COVID Symptoms
MedPageToday – Radiographic evidence of pulmonary pathology was common months after acute infection among people with ongoing exertional or respiratory symptoms, early results of a study exploring the physiology of long COVID showed. Fully 55% of the subset of persistently symptomatic patients with a high-resolution CT showed radiographic evidence of pulmonary pathology at least 3 […]
Oct 18, 2022
Study Shows Benefits of COVID-19 Vaccines and Boosters
NIH Director’s Blog – As colder temperatures settle in and people spend more time gathered indoors, cases of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses almost certainly will rise. That’s why, along with scheduling your annual flu shot, it’s now recommended that those age 5 and up should get an updated COVID-19 booster shot [1,2]. Not only […]
Oct 18, 2022
Dr Anthony Fauci: long Covid is an ‘insidious’ public health emergency
Guardian – Dr. Fauci urged US Congress to avoid complacency and resume funding to combat the virus as well as long Covid, a chronic and prolonged illness that continues to elude scientists and healthcare providers. “It’s a very insidious beneath-the-radar-screen public health emergency,” Fauci said via Zoom. “It isn’t that you have people who are […]
Oct 18, 2022
Dr. Fauci: These 2 new fast-spreading omicron Covid subvariants are ‘pretty troublesome’
CNBC – As winter inches closer, Dr. Fauci is sounding the alarm about a pair of “pretty troublesome” Covid variants. The two descendants of omicron’s BA.5 subvariant, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, both have dangerous “qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have,” Fauci told CBS News on Friday. The two sublineages are responsible for […]
Oct 18, 2022