COVID-19 News and Discussions

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

La Jolla Institute Scientists Publish First Head-to-Head Comparison of Four COVID-19 Vaccines
May 31, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have published the first analysis of how four types of COVID-19 vaccines prepare the body to fight SARS-CoV-2. Their in-depth look at how T cells, B cells, antibody levels shift in the six months following vaccination is critical for understanding of how to protect people in the ongoing pandemic.

The new investigation, published in Cell (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S009 ... 22)00653-5), is the first study in history to compare how three different vaccine platforms trigger an immune response against the same pathogen.

“This study is important because it lets us answer how different vaccine platforms perform in terms of inducing immune responses,” says LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol. Sci..

The researchers studied human immune responses to an mRNA platform (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines), a recombinant protein-based adjuvanted vaccine platform (Novavax), and a viral vector-based platform (Janssen/J&J). All four vaccines in this study were designed to prepare the immune system to fight the same target, called the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein.

“We aren’t giving a vaccine scorecard,” says LJI Research Assistant Professor Daniela Weiskopf, Ph.D., who co-led the study with Sette and LJI Professor Shane Crotty, Ph.D. “This kind of side-by-side analysis has never been done before with people who received different vaccines at the same time—in a real life setting. Just understanding the immune responses to these vaccines will help us integrate what is successful into vaccine designs going forward.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/954429
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Anti-Asian Hate Tweets During COVID-19
May 31, 2022

(EurekAlert) In January of 2020, SARS-CoV-19 reached the United States. With it came an even faster-spreading virus—xenophobic rhetoric referring to the pandemic’s epicenter in Wuhan, China. Politicians flooded news outlets and social media with distrust of the Chinese government and labeled COVID-19 as the “Chinese flu,” “Wuhan flu,” “Kung flu” and more.

The messaging that blamed COVID-19 on its Asian country of origin appeared to spill over into the streets. Americans who are Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) began to experience racist harassment, discrimination and physical assault at higher rates than before the pandemic. According to the Stop AAPI Hate Initiative, an online tool for self-reported hate incidents against AAPI individuals, there were 9,000 hate incidents during the first year of COVID-19. In our online age, it’s crucial to understand whether racist trends on social media cause harm in the real world. If so, how can we best predict where racists attacks are most likely to occur?

A new University of Utah-led study has taken a first step in a paper that published in the American Journal in Publish Health in April. The researchers mapped anti-Asian hate by using Twitter’s data set of geolocated tweets that contained keywords reflecting COVID-19 and anti-Asian hate during November 2019 and May 2020.

They found that anti-Asian hate language surged between January and March of 2020 with clusters of hateful tweets spread across the contiguous U.S. that varied in size, strength distribution and location. The authors identified two spikes in hateful tweets: The first at the end of January 2020 when COVID-19 first came to the U.S.; the second in mid-March after President Donald Trump tweeted about the “Wuhan flu” and “Chinese virus.” Eventually the volume of anti-Asian tweets went down but remained higher than before the pandemic.

“We can interpret that as, once the hate is up, then the hate persists. At least as long as our study period,” said Alexander Hohl, assistant professor at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. “During the onset of COVID, there were reports of hate crimes committed on Asians and Asian Americans in the U.S. We think that warrants a research perspective.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/954418
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

Two million people in UK estimated to be suffering from long COVID, Office for National Statistics says

Wednesday 1 June 2022 11:44, UK

A record two million people in the UK are estimated to be suffering from long COVID, the Office for National Statistics has said.

Of the two million, 1.4 million said they first had coronavirus, or suspected they had the illness, at least 12 weeks previously, while 826,000 first had it at least a year earlier.

Another 376,000 said they first had COVID-19 at least two years previously.

The condition is estimated to be adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 1.4 million people - around seven in 10 of those who reported having it.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-two ... s-12625155
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

weatheriscool
Posts: 12971
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

St. Louis health director considers mask requirement as coronavirus spreads again
Source: STL Public Radio
St. Louis is seeing rising numbers of coronavirus cases, and the city’s health director is again considering recommending public health measures, including mask requirements, to protect people from the virus.

The number of new reported coronavirus cases is as high as it was during last summer’s delta variant surge, Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis said during a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday. An average of 212 cases per 100,000 people has been reported in the past week. However, the number of cases is difficult to tally as fewer people are getting tested.

“We’ve been in the high transmission level for some time when we talk about cases and positivity rate,” Hlatshwayo Davis said. “We’re definitely in a surge right now.”

The Board of Aldermen would have to enact requirements based on the health department’s recommendations.
Read more: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/coronav ... eads-again
User avatar
Time_Traveller
Posts: 2105
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:49 pm
Location: Clermont, Indiana, USA, October 7th 2019 B.C.E

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by Time_Traveller »

Omicron sub-variant fuels Portugal's COVID-19 surge
2 minute read

LISBON, June 2 (Reuters) - An Omicron sub-variant has fuelled a surge in COVID-19 cases in Portugal that now has the world's second-highest infection rate, potentially threatening the tourism sector's recovery.

Portugal registered an average of 2,447 new cases per million people over the last seven days. That compares to neighbouring Spain's 449 and Britain's 70, according to tracker Our World In Data.

The rolling average has subsided slightly in the past few days and is just over a third of the Jan. 31 Omicron peak.

Portugal has the world's fifth-highest death rate from COVID-19 and hospitalisations are on the rise, but both are still far below previous peaks.

Several tourism businesses contacted by Reuters have expressed fears about the surge, but said they had had no cancellations so far. The number of foreign tourists in April was close to levels seen before the pandemic.

More than 90% of Portugal's population is fully vaccinated.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/om ... 022-06-02/
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

How American Influencers Built a World Wide Web of Vaccine Disinformation
by Kiera Butler & Neha Wadekar
June 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Last year, Saphinah Kenyando was struggling to decide whether to get vaccinated against Covid. Kenyando, who is 38 and teaches chemistry and biology at a high school in Kenya, had read about horrifying side effects—blood clots, long-term disabilities—that sounded worse than the virus itself. She watched a (possibly doctored) clip from former US President Donald Trump saying that the effects included gruesome facial deformities that develop as a person ages. And she wondered whether the rumors circulating on Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube were true—that a person could take the jab and drop dead shortly thereafter.

In addition to her academic role, Kenyando also serves as the school chess coach, a duty she takes very seriously. She believes the game imparts valuable lessons to students: Make the right move, and you’ll reap the benefits. Make the wrong one, and you’ll be forced to deal with the fallout. “Chess is life,” she says. “Every decision we make in life is about the game of chess.” That’s how Kenyando framed her own decision on whether to get herself and her children vaccinated against Covid. She decided to hold off until she had more information.

The misleading posts Kenyando had seen were just a small portion of the avalanche of disinformation that flowed through social media in Kenya as the pandemic intensified and the virus infiltrated the households of everyday Kenyans. Wanja Kimani, a house cleaner in Nairobi, read that the vaccine could cause mental illness. Lucy Wambui, a human rights activist in Nairobi, heard that Covid doesn’t exist in the slum where she lives and concluded that the vaccine is a way to control populations in neighborhoods like hers. She warned her own elderly father that he shouldn’t get vaccinated.
Conclusion:
But she (Kenyando) worries that the same myths she saw are still circulating. “The falsehoods about the Covid vaccine, much of it was online,” she says. “There is power in information. Irrespective of how it comes, the first moment that somebody gets the information, they take it as the true Gospel.”
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ormation/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
Post Reply