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<title>22 March, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The RBPome of influenza A virus mRNA reveals a role for TDP-43 in viral replication</strong> -
<div>
Recent technical advances have significantly improved our understanding of the RNA-binding protein (RBP) repertoire present within eukaryotic cells, with a particular focus on the RBPs that interact with cellular polyadenylated mRNAs. However, recent studies utilising the same technologies have begun to tease apart the RBP interactome of viral mRNAs, notably SARS-CoV-2, revealing both similarities and differences between the RBP profiles of viral and cellular mRNAs. Herein, we comprehensively identified the RBPs that associate with the NP mRNA of an influenza A virus. Moreover, we provide evidence that the viral polymerase is essential for the recruitment of RPBs to viral mRNAs through direct polymerase-RBP interactions during transcription. We show that loss of TDP-43, which associates with the viral mRNAs, results in lower levels of viral mRNAs within infected cells, and a decreased yield of infectious viral particles. Overall, our results uncover an important role for TDP-43 in the influenza A virus replication cycle via a direct interaction with viral mRNAs, and point to a role of the viral polymerase in orchestrating the assembly of viral mRNPs.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.21.533609v1" target="_blank">The RBPome of influenza A virus mRNA reveals a role for TDP-43 in viral replication</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 infection activates endogenous retroviruses of the LTR69 subfamily</strong> -
<div>
Accumulating evidence suggests that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) play an important role in the host response to infection and the development of disease. By combining RNA- and ChIP-sequencing analyses with RT-qPCR, we show that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces the LTR69 subfamily of ERVs, both in vitro and in vivo. Using functional assays, we identified one SARS-CoV-2-activated LTR69 locus, termed Dup69, which exhibits enhancer activity and is responsive to the transcription factors IRF3 and p65/RelA. LTR69-Dup69 is located about 500 bp upstream of a long non-coding RNA gene (ENSG00000289418) and within the PTPRN2 gene encoding a diabetes-associated autoantigen. Both ENSG00000289418 and PTPRN2 showed a significant increase in expression upon SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thus, our study sheds light on the interplay of exogenous with endogenous viruses and helps to understand how ERVs regulate gene expression during infection.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.21.533610v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 infection activates endogenous retroviruses of the LTR69 subfamily</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Nasopharyngeal Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) Expression as a Risk-Factor for SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Concurrent Hospital Associated Outbreaks</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Widespread human-to-human transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus two (SARS-CoV-2) stems from a strong affinity for the cellular receptor angiotensin converting enzyme two (ACE2). We investigate the relationship between a patient9s nasopharyngeal ACE2 transcription and secondary transmission within a series of concurrent hospital associated SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in British Columbia, Canada. Methods: Epidemiological case data from the outbreak investigations was merged with public health laboratory records and viral lineage calls, from whole genome sequencing, to reconstruct the concurrent outbreaks using infection tracing transmission network analysis. ACE2 transcription and RNA viral load were measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The transmission network was resolved to calculate the number of potential secondary cases. Bivariate and multivariable analyses using Poisson and Negative Binomial regression models was performed to estimate the association between ACE2 transcription the number of SARS-CoV-2 secondary cases. Results: The infection tracing transmission network provided n = 76 potential transmission events across n = 103 cases. Bivariate comparisons found that on average ACE2 transcription did not differ between patients and healthcare workers (P = 0.86). High ACE2 transcription was observed in 98.6% of transmission events, either the primary or secondary case had above average ACE2. Multivariable analysis found that the association between ACE2 transcription and the number of secondary transmission events differs between patients and healthcare workers. In health care workers Negative Binomial regression estimated that a one unit change in ACE2 transcription decreases the number of secondary cases (B = -0.132 (95%CI: -0.255 to -0.0181) adjusting for RNA viral load. Conversely, in patients a one unit change in ACE2 transcription increases the number of secondary cases (B = 0.187 (95% CI: 0.0101 to 0.370) adjusting for RNA viral load. Sensitivity analysis found no significant relationship between ACE2 and secondary transmission in health care workers and confirmed the positive association among patients. Conclusion: Our study suggests that ACE2 transcription has a positive association with SARS-CoV-2 secondary transmission in admitted inpatients, but not health care workers in concurrent hospital associated outbreaks, and it should be further investigated as a risk-factor for viral transmission.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.20.23287264v1" target="_blank">Nasopharyngeal Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) Expression as a Risk-Factor for SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Concurrent Hospital Associated Outbreaks</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 infection induces dopaminergic neuronal loss in midbrain organoids during short and prolonged cultures</strong> -
<div>
COVID-19 is mainly associated with respiratory symptoms, although several reports showed that SARS-CoV-2 affects the nervous system. We evaluated the effects of infection in prolonged culture of midbrain organoids, showing that the virus induces changes in gene expression, and fragmentation and loss of dopaminergic neurons. Our findings highlight the direct viral-induced damage to midbrain organoids indicating the relevance of assessing the neurological long-term evolution of COVID-19 patients.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.20.533485v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 infection induces dopaminergic neuronal loss in midbrain organoids during short and prolonged cultures</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Nanograms of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Delivered by Exosomes Induce Potent Neutralization of Both Delta and Omicron Variants.</strong> -
<div>
Exosomes are emerging as potent and safe delivery carriers for use in vaccinology and therapeutics. A better vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is needed to provide improved, broader, longer lasting neutralization of SARS-CoV-2, a more robust T cell response, enable widespread global usage, and further enhance the safety profile of vaccines given the likelihood of repeated booster vaccinations. Here, we use Capricor’s StealthXTM platform to engineer exosomes to express native SARS-CoV-2 spike Delta variant (STX-S) protein on the surface for the delivery of a protein-based vaccine for immunization against SARS-CoV-2 infection. The STX-S vaccine induced a strong immunization with the production of a potent humoral immune response as demonstrated by high levels of neutralizing antibody not only against the delta SARS-CoV-2 virus but also two Omicron variants (BA.1 and BA.5), providing broader protection than current mRNA vaccines. Additionally, both CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were increased significantly after treatment. Quantification of spike protein by ELISA showed that only nanograms of protein were needed to induce a potent immune response. This is a significantly lower dose than traditional recombinant protein vaccines with no adjuvant required, which makes the StealthXTM exosome platform ideal for the development of multivalent vaccines with a better safety profile. Importantly, our exosome platform allows novel proteins, or variants in the case of SARS-CoV-2, to be engineered onto the surface of exosomes in a matter of weeks, comparable with mRNA vaccine technology, but without the cold storage requirements. The ability to utilize exosomes for cellular delivery of proteins, as demonstrated by STX-S, has enormous potential to revolutionize vaccinology by rapidly facilitating antigen presentation at an extremely low dose resulting in a potent, broad antibody response.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.20.533560v1" target="_blank">Nanograms of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Delivered by Exosomes Induce Potent Neutralization of Both Delta and Omicron Variants.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 on mind: Daily worry about the coronavirus is linked to negative affect experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming</strong> -
<div>
Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people’s spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19 related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry are associated with the daily fluctuation of the affective quality of mind-wandering and dreaming, and to what extent these associations can be explained by poor sleep quality. We used ecological momentary assessment by asking participants to rate the affect they experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming in daily logs over a two-week period. Our preregistered analyses based on 1755 dream logs from 172 individuals and 1496 mind-wandering logs from 152 individuals showed that, on days when people reported higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect during mind-wandering, they experienced more worry. Only daily sleep quality was associated with affect experienced during dreaming at the within-person level: on nights with poorer sleep quality people reported experiencing more negative and less positive affect in dreams and were more likely to experience nightmares. However, at the between-person level, individuals who experienced more daily COVID-19 worry during the study period also reported experiencing more negative affect during mind-wandering and during dreaming. As such, the continuity between daily and nightly experiences seems to rely more on stable trait-like individual differences in affective processing.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/bk4tn/" target="_blank">COVID-19 on mind: Daily worry about the coronavirus is linked to negative affect experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Design and implementation of a system for automated monitoring of adherence to evidenced-based clinical guideline recommendations</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements intended to optimize patient care. However, a gap-less implementation of guideline recommendations requires health care personnel not only to be aware of the recommendations and to support their content, but also to recognize every situation in which they are applicable. To not miss situations in which guideline recommendations should be applied, computerized clinical decision support could be given through a system that allows an automated monitoring of adherence to clinical guideline recommendation in individual patients. Objectives (1) To derive the requirements for a system that allows to monitor the adherence to evidence-based clinical guideline recommendations in individual patients, and based on these requirements, (2) to implement a software prototype that integrates clinical guideline recommendations with individual patient data and (3) to demonstrate the prototype9s utility on a COVID-19 intensive care treatment recommendation. Methods We performed a work process analysis with experienced intensive care clinicians to develop a conceptual model of how to support guideline adherence monitoring in clinical routine and identified which steps in the model could be supported electronically. We then identified the core requirements of a software system for supporting recommendation adherence monitoring in a consensus-based requirements analysis within loosely structured focus group work of key stakeholders (clinicians, guideline developers, health data engineers, software developers). Based on these requirements, we implemented a prototype and demonstrated its functionality by integrating clinical data with a treatment recommendation. Results Based on our conceptual flow chart model of recommendation adherence monitoring in clinical routine, we identified four main requirements of a software system for automated support of recommendation adherence monitoring of in-hospital patients: (i) Ability to interpret guideline recommendations9 semantics and logics, (ii) integration of clinical routine data from various underlying data structures, (iii) automatic adoption of new or updated guideline recommendations, and (iv) user interfaces optimized for distinct groups of users. Using a prototype implementation that fulfills these requirements, we demonstrate how such a system could be applied to monitor guideline recommendation adherence over time in clinical patients. Conclusions The four main requirements identified through our model-based analysis represent the most important aspects that need to be considered when developing a clinical decision support system for monitoring the adherence to evidence-based clinical guideline recommendations in individual patients. As each of the requirements corresponds to a different expertise (guideline development, health data engineering, software development, patient treatment), a modularized software architecture separated by area of required expertise seems favorable. Our prototype successfully demonstrates how such a modular architecture can be implemented to allow real-time monitoring of guideline recommendation adherence. This prototype, which we released as open source to invigorate collaboration, could serve as a basis for further development to integrate guideline recommendations with clinical information systems.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.18.22277750v2" target="_blank">Design and implementation of a system for automated monitoring of adherence to evidenced-based clinical guideline recommendations</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Reduced exercise capacity, chronotropic incompetence, and early systemic inflammation in cardiopulmonary phenotype Long COVID</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
BACKGROUND Mechanisms underlying persistent cardiopulmonary symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection (post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 “PASC” or “Long COVID”) remain unclear. This study sought to elucidate mechanisms of cardiopulmonary symptoms and reduced exercise capacity using advanced cardiac testing. METHODS We performed cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET), cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) and ambulatory rhythm monitoring among adults &gt; 1 year after confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Long-Term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus cohort (LIINC; substudy of NCT04362150). Adults who completed a research echocardiogram (at a median 6 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection) without evidence of heart failure or pulmonary hypertension were asked to complete additional cardiopulmonary testing approximately 1 year later. Although participants were recruited as a prospective cohort, to account for selection bias, the primary analyses were as a case-control study comparing those with and without persistent cardiopulmonary symptoms. We also correlated findings with previously measured biomarkers. We used logistic regression and linear regression models to adjust for potential confounders including age, sex, body mass index, time since SARS-CoV-2 infection, and hospitalization for acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, with sensitivity analyses adjusting for medical history. RESULTS Sixty participants (unselected for symptoms, median age 53, 42% female, 87% non-hospitalized) were studied at median 17.6 months following SARS-CoV-2 infection. On maximal CPET, 18/37 (49%) with symptoms had reduced exercise capacity (peak VO2&lt;85% predicted) compared to 3/19 (16%) without symptoms (p=0.02). The adjusted peak VO2 was 5.2 ml/kg/min (95%CI 2.1-8.3; p=0.001) or 16.9% lower actual compared to predicted (95%CI 4.3-29.6; p=0.02) among those with symptoms compared to those without symptoms. Chronotropic incompetence was present among 12/21 (57%) with reduced VO2 including 11/37 (30%) with symptoms and 1/19 (5%) without (p=0.04). Inflammatory markers (hsCRP, IL-6, TNF-α) and SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels measured early in PASC were negatively correlated with peak VO2 more than 1 year later. Late-gadolinium enhancement on CMR and arrhythmias on ambulatory monitoring were not present. CONCLUSIONS We found evidence of objectively reduced exercise capacity among those with cardiopulmonary symptoms more than 1 year following COVID-19, which was associated with elevated inflammatory markers early in PASC. Chronotropic incompetence may explain exercise intolerance among some with cardiopulmonary phenotype Long COVID.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.17.22275235v3" target="_blank">Reduced exercise capacity, chronotropic incompetence, and early systemic inflammation in cardiopulmonary phenotype Long COVID</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on household energy consumption in England and Wales</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way many people lived, worked, and studied around the world, both during and after the lockdowns. Changes to daily routines affected domestic electricity and gas use. While early studies estimated the impact of the first national lockdown, the long-term effects remain under-researched. In this paper we analyse how domestic electricity and gas consumption changed in the two years since the first UK lockdown in terms of both total demand and timing of demand. We develop counterfactual (predictive) models using elastic net regression, neural networks, and extreme gradient boosting and compare observed energy use with predicted use given weather and calendar variables for each household (508 for electricity, 326 for gas). We apply cluster analysis to identify common daily energy demand profiles and observe the changes in the proportions of households in each cluster for 3540 (electricity) and 2850 (gas) households between January 2020 and March 2022. We compare the results for different subsamples, such as those with and without children or working adults, households with different levels of financial wellbeing, and households in different Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) bands. We find that the pandemic increased electricity consumption throughout the two-year period, and increased gas consumption during the winter lockdowns. Demand profiles for weekdays became more similar to those on weekends for households with children or with adults in work. On average electricity consumption was still around 5% higher than predicted at the start of 2022, largely due to increased use in households with children. On average, gas consumption was lower than predicted during winter 2021/22, which may be attributable to rising gas prices.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/m5p3b/" target="_blank">The short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on household energy consumption in England and Wales</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Troops on the Front Line of a Health Battle: Filipino Nurses’ Lived Experiences in the Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The deadly pandemic spread due to infections with the Coronavirus (COVID-19). It has a disproportionately large effect on healthcare workers and presents unique challenges for this vital sector of society. As a result, the pandemic has heightened public awareness of the dangers that nurses face around the world. This study aimed at exploring the lived experiences of five purposively selected nurses in a public hospital in the southern Philippines. The phenomenological inquiry brought out themes encompassing (1) putting up with occupational stress, (2) reconfiguring personal and social time, and (3) coping with the situation’s gravity. These themes have been fleshed out to capture deeper meanings in the experiences of nurses during the health crisis in which they are deemed to be crucial front liners. The study concludes that while the nurses’ quality of life has been impacted due to the unprecedented situation, they remain committed to their profession. The study then implies that the government should be more responsive to the needs of the nurses and that support and assistance in their practice of the nursing profession amid the pandemic be provided substantially. Implications for hospital administrators and future researchers are also offered.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/q6frb/" target="_blank">Troops on the Front Line of a Health Battle: Filipino Nurses’ Lived Experiences in the Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Surveillance of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential</strong> -
<div>
There has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. Here, we screened for coronaviruses 48 faecal samples from 16 of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK and collected through a bat rehabilitation and conservationist network. We recovered nine (two novel) complete genomes across six bat species: four alphacoronaviruses, a MERS-related betacoronavirus, and four closely-related sarbecoviruses. We demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind and use the human ACE2 receptor for infecting human cells, albeit suboptimally. Additionally, the spike proteins of these sarbecoviruses possess an R-A-K-Q motif, which lies only one nucleotide mutation away from a furin cleavage site (FCS) that enhances infectivity in other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. However, mutating this motif to an FCS does not enable spike cleavage. Overall, while UK sarbecoviruses would require further molecular adaptations to infect humans, their zoonotic risk is unknown but warrants closer surveillance.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.17.524183v4" target="_blank">Surveillance of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Introducing the COVID-19 crisis Special Education Needs Coping Survey</strong> -
<div>
Individuals with special education needs have been particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as they have been shown to be at high risk of losing medical and institutional support at a time when people are being asked to stay isolated, suffering increased anxiety and depression as a consequence. Their families have often found themselves under tremendous pressure to provide support, engendering financial hardship, and physical and emotional strains. In such times, it is vital that international collaborations assess the impact on the individuals and their families, affording the opportunity to make national and international comparisons of how people have coped and what needs to be done to optimize the measures taken by families, associations and governments. This paper introduces one such collaboration.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/rtswa/" target="_blank">Introducing the COVID-19 crisis Special Education Needs Coping Survey</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>An interpretable, finite sample valid alternative to Pearson’s X2 for scientific discovery</strong> -
<div>
Contingency tables, data represented as counts matrices, are ubiquitous across quantitative research and data-science applications. Existing statistical tests are insufficient however, as none are simultaneously computationally efficient and statistically valid for a finite number of observations. In this work, motivated by a recent application in reference-genome-free inference (Chaung et al., 2022), we develop OASIS (Optimized Adaptive Statistic for Inferring Structure), a family of statistical tests for contingency tables. OASIS constructs a test-statistic which is linear in the normalized data matrix, providing closed form p-value bounds through classical concentration inequalities. In the process, OASIS provides a decomposition of the table, lending interpretability to its rejection of the null. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the OASIS test statistic, showing that these finite-sample bounds correctly characterize the p-value bound derived up to a variance term. Experiments on genomic sequencing data highlight the power and interpretability of OASIS. The same method based on OASIS significance calls detects SARS-CoV-2 and Mycobacterium Tuberculosis strains de novo, which cannot be achieved with current approaches. We demonstrate in simulations that OASIS is robust to overdispersion, a common feature in genomic data like single cell RNA-sequencing, where under accepted noise models OASIS still provides good control of the false discovery rate, while Pearson’s X2 test consistently rejects the null. Additionally, we show on synthetic data that OASIS is more powerful than Pearson’s X2 test in certain regimes, including for some important two group alternatives, which we corroborate with approximate power calculations.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.16.533008v1" target="_blank">An interpretable, finite sample valid alternative to Pearson’s X2 for scientific discovery</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Defining drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy in refugee and migrant populations globally to support strategies to strengthen vaccine uptake for COVID-19: a rapid review</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Some refugee and migrant populations have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet evidence suggests lower uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. They are also an under-immunised group for many routine vaccines. We did a rapid review to explore drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy among refugee and migrant populations globally to define strategies to strengthen both COVID-19 and routine vaccination uptake. Methods We collected global literature (01/01/2010 - 05/05/2022) pertaining to drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy in refugees and migrants, incorporating all vaccines. We searched MEDLINE, Embase, Global Health PsycINFO and the WHO Global Research on COVID-19 database and grey literature. Qualitative data were analysed thematically to identify drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy, then categorised using the Increasing Vaccination Model. Results 63 papers were included in this review, reporting data on diverse population groups, including refugees, asylum seekers, labour and undocumented migrants from 22 countries, with six papers reporting on a regional or global scale. Drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy pertaining to a wide range of vaccines were covered, including COVID-19 (n=27), HPV (13), measles or MMR (3), influenza (3), tetanus (1), and vaccination in general. We found a range of factors driving under-immunisation and hesitancy in refugee and migrant groups, including unique awareness and access factors that need to be better considered in policy and service delivery. Acceptability of vaccination was often deeply rooted in social and historical context and influenced by personal risk perception. Conclusions These findings hold direct relevance to current efforts to ensure high levels of global immunisation coverage, key to which is to ensure marginalised refugees and migrant populations are included in national vaccination plans of low- middle- and high-income countries. We found a stark lack of research from low- and middle-income and humanitarian contexts on vaccination in mobile groups, a situation that needs to be urgently rectified to ensure high coverage for COVID-19 and routine vaccinations.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.20.23287477v1" target="_blank">Defining drivers of under-immunisation and vaccine hesitancy in refugee and migrant populations globally to support strategies to strengthen vaccine uptake for COVID-19: a rapid review</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Leveraging global genomic sequencing data to estimate local variant dynamics</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Accurate, reliable, and timely estimates of pathogen variant risk are essential for informing public health responses. Unprecedented rates of genomic sequencing have generated new insights into variant dynamics. However, estimating the fitness advantage of a novel variant shortly after emergence, or its dynamics more generally in data-sparse settings, remains difficult. This challenge is exacerbated in countries where surveillance is limited or intermittent. To stabilize inference in these data-sparse settings, we develop a hierarchical modeling approach to estimate variant fitness advantage and prevalence by pooling data across geographic regions. We demonstrate our method by reconstructing SARS-CoV-2 BA.5 variant emergence, and assess performance using retrospective, out-of-sample validation. We show that stable and robust estimates can be obtained even when sequencing data are sparse. Finally, we discuss how this method can inform risk assessment of novel variants and provide situational awareness on circulating variants for a range of pathogens and use-cases.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.23284123v4" target="_blank">Leveraging global genomic sequencing data to estimate local variant dynamics</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Performance Evaluation of the CareSuperb™ COVID-19 Antigen Home Test</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: CareSuperb COVID-19 Antigen Home Test Kit<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   AccessBio, Inc.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Use of E-health Based Exercise Intervention After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training using an e-health tool<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Norwegian University of Science and Technology;   University of Oslo<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase I Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine(Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (CHO cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Short-term Effects of Transdermal Estradiol on Female COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Hormone Replacement Therapy<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Climara 0.1Mg/24Hr Transdermal System;   Other: Hydrogel patch<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Istanbul University - Cerrahpasa (IUC);   Turkish Menopause and Osteoporosis Society;   Karakoy Rotary Club;   Rebul Pharmacy<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Kinesio Tape Versus Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercise In Post COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Pursed lip breathing;   Other: Cognitive Behavior Therapy;   Other: Diaphragmatic breathing exercise;   Other: Kinesio tape<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect Of Calcitriol On Neutrophil To Lymphocytes Ratio And High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein Covid-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Calcitriol;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universitas Sebelas Maret<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Study for the Efficacy and Safety of Ropeginterferon Alfa-2b in Moderate COVID19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: P1101 (Ropeginterferon alfa-2b);   Procedure: SOC<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Taiwan University Hospital<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Teletechnology-assisted Home-based Exercise Program for Severe COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Telerehabilitation<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Teletechnology-assisted home-based pulmonary rehabilitation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Taiwan University Hospital<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hydrogen-Oxygen Generator With Nebulizer for Adjuvant Treatment of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Covid19;   Hydrogen-oxygen Gas;   AMS-H-03<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: Hydrogen-Oxygen Generator with Nebulizer, AMS-H-03;   Device: OLO-1 Medical Molecular Sieve Oxygen Generator<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cluster-Randomized Trial of Air Filtration and Ventilation to Reduce Covid19 Spread in Homes</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: Filtration Fan;   Behavioral: Safe-home pamphlet;   Behavioral: Mid-week phone call<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Stanford University<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Use of Photobiomodulation in the Treatment of Oral Complaints of Long COVID-19.A Randomized Controlled Trial.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Xerostomia;   COVID-19;   Long COVID;   Persistent COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Institutional standard treatment for xerostomia and Long Covid;   Radiation: Photobiomodulation Therapy;   Radiation: Placebo Photobiomodulation Therapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Nove de Julho<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Zinc Supplementation Impact in Acute COVID-19 Clinical Outcomes</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Zinc Deficiency;   Sars-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: Zinc Acetate<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Parc de Salut Mar;   Universitat Pompeu Fabra<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Balneotherapy for Patients With Post-acute Coronavirus Disease (COVID) Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Balneotherapy and aquatic exercises<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Parc de Salut Mar;   Caldes de Montbui’s City Council;   Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER);   European Regional Development Fund<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Assess the Efficacy of HH-120 Nasal Spray for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Adult Close Contacts of Individuals Infected With SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: HH-120 nasal spray 1;   Drug: HH-120 nasal spray 2;   Drug: Placebo Comparator 1;   Drug: Placebo Comparator 2<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Beijing Ditan Hospital<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dietary fish intake increased the concentration of soluble ACE2 in rats. Can fish consumption reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection through interception of SARS-CoV-2 by soluble ACE2?</strong> - The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) enters the cells after binding to the membrane-bound receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), but this may be prevented through interception by soluble ACE2 (sACE2) or by inhibition of the ACE2 receptor, thus obstructing cell entry and replication. The main objective of this study was to investigate if fish intake affected the concentration of sACE2 in rats. The secondary aim was to evaluate the in vitro ACE2 inhibiting…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pseudoknot-targeting Cas13b combats SARS-CoV-2 infection by suppressing viral replication</strong> - CRISPR-Cas13-mediated viral genome targeting is a novel strategy for defending against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants. Here, we generated mRNA-encoded Cas13b targeting the open reading frame 1b (ORF1b) region to effectively degrade the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene. Of the 12 designed CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs), those targeting the pseudoknot site upstream of ORF1b were found to be the most effective in suppressing SARS-CoV-2 propagation. Pseudoknot-targeting…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Using data mining techniques deep analysis and theoretical investigation of COVID-19 pandemic</strong> - This study uses K-Means Clustering to analyze Corona-Virus Diseases (Covid-19). Data mining in medicine has generated novel approaches to examine diseases. Coronavirus is difficult to treat because of its intricate structure, shape, and texture. Due to data mining improvements, the K-Means approach has been developed for evaluating covid-19. Observe the outbreak’s evolution, including its peak, and containment measures. A basic K-Means model is used to simulate Coronavirus’s prevalence in Iraq….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ceftazidime exhibits a broad inhibition to the infection of SARS-CoV-2 prototype and Omicron variant in vitro by blocking spike protein-ACE2 interaction</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FXR inhibition: an innovative prophylactic strategy against SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New bi-phosphonate derivative: Synthesis, characterization, antioxidant activity in vitro and via cyclic voltammetry mode and evaluation of its inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 main protease</strong> - In this study, we have synthesized a new molecule labeled HBPA. Its molecular structure was determined by spectroscopic methods such as: FT-IR, NMR (¹H, ^(13)C and ^(31)P); our compound is subjected to two antioxidant activities assays: DPPH scavenging and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP); in the results, HBPA was expanded remarkable inhibition when compared especially to standard BHT with values of 14.936±0.808 and 7.1486±0.0645 μg/ml, respectively; in addition to the scavenging test of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Co-pyrolysis of medical protective clothing and oil palm wastes for biofuel: Experimental, techno-economic, and environmental analyses</strong> - The ongoing global pandemic of COVID-19 has devastatingly influenced the environment, society, and economy around the world. Numerous medical resources are used to inhibit the infectious transmission of the virus, resulting in massive medical waste. This study proposes a sustainable and environment-friendly method to convert hazardous medical waste into valuable fuel products through pyrolysis. Medical protective clothing (MPC), a typical medical waste from COVID-19, was utilized for…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An in-solution snapshot of SARS-COV-2 main protease maturation process and inhibition</strong> - The main protease from SARS-CoV-2 (M^(pro)) is responsible for cleavage of the viral polyprotein. M^(pro) self-processing is called maturation, and it is crucial for enzyme dimerization and activity. Here we use C145S M^(pro) to study the structure and dynamics of N-terminal cleavage in solution. Native mass spectroscopy analysis shows that mixed oligomeric states are composed of cleaved and uncleaved particles, indicating that N-terminal processing is not critical for dimerization. A 3.5 Å…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bioactive Compositions of Cinnamon (<em>Cinnamomum verum</em> J. Presl) Extracts and Their Capacities in Suppressing SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Binding to ACE2, Inhibiting ACE2, and Scavenging Free Radicals</strong> - Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum J. Presl) bark and its extracts are popular ingredients added to food and supplement products. It has various health effects, including potentially reducing the risk of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). In our study, the bioactives in cinnamon water and ethanol extracts were chemically identified, and their potential in suppressing SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) binding, reducing ACE2 availability, and scavenging free radicals was…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Structure-based design of a SARS-CoV-2 Omicron-specific inhibitor</strong> - The Omicron variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) introduced a relatively large number of mutations, including three mutations in the highly conserved heptad repeat 1 (HR1) region of the spike glycoprotein (S) critical for its membrane fusion activity. We show that one of these mutations, N969K induces a substantial displacement in the structure of the heptad repeat 2 (HR2) backbone in the HR1HR2 postfusion bundle. Due to this mutation, fusion-entry peptide…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Omicron-induced interferon signalling prevents influenza A H1N1 and H5N1 virus infection</strong> - Recent findings in permanent cell lines suggested that SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1 induces a stronger interferon response than Delta. Here, we show that BA.1 and BA.5 but not Delta induce an antiviral state in air-liquid interface (ALI) cultures of primary human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells and primary human monocytes. Both Omicron subvariants caused the production of biologically active type I (α/β) and III (λ) interferons and protected cells from super-infection with influenza A viruses….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction study between rosuvastatin and emvododstat, a potent anti-SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) DHODH (dihydroorotate dehydrogenase) inhibitor</strong> - A therapeutic agent that targets both viral replication and the hyper-reactive immune response would offer a highly desirable treatment for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19) management. Emvododstat (PTC299) was found to be a potent inhibitor of immunomodulatory and inflammation-related processes by the inhibition of dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication. DHODH is the rate-limiting enzyme of the de novo pyrimidine nucleotide…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Innovative, rapid, high-throughput method for drug repurposing in a pandemic-A case study of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19</strong> - Several efforts to repurpose drugs for COVID-19 treatment have largely either failed to identify a suitable agent or agents identified did not translate to clinical use. Reasons that have been suggested to explain the failures include use of inappropriate doses, that are not clinically achievable, in the screening experiments, and the use of inappropriate pre-clinical laboratory surrogates to predict efficacy. In this study, we used an innovative algorithm, that incorporates dissemination and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Therapeutic developments for SARS-CoV-2 infection-Molecular mechanisms of action of antivirals and strategies for mitigating resistance in emerging variants in clinical practice</strong> - This article systematically presents the current clinically significant therapeutic developments for the treatment of COVID-19 by providing an in-depth review of molecular mechanisms of action for SARS-CoV-2 antivirals and critically analyzing the potential targets that may allow the selection of resistant viral variants. Two main categories of agents can display antiviral activity: direct-acting antivirals, which act by inhibiting viral enzymes, and host-directed antivirals, which target host…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Multiple functions of stress granules in viral infection at a glance</strong> - Stress granules (SGs) are distinct RNA granules induced by various stresses, which are evolutionarily conserved across species. In general, SGs act as a conservative and essential self-protection mechanism during stress responses. Viruses have a long evolutionary history and viral infections can trigger a series of cellular stress responses, which may interact with SG formation. Targeting SGs is believed as one of the critical and conservative measures for viruses to tackle the inhibition of…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The G.O.P. and the Ghosts of Iraq</strong> - Ukraine shows that Republicans have moved a long way from the Party of George W. Bush. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-gop-and-the-ghosts-of-iraq">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy</strong> - A generation is still dying younger than it should—this time, of “natural causes.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hip-hop-at-fifty-an-elegy">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Allure of Exotic Animals in Strange Places</strong> - Thefts from the Dallas Zoo made headlines. But Texas is a hotbed for ownership of all kinds of rare species. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-allure-of-exotic-animals-in-strange-places">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Ukrainian Philosopher’s Reluctant Departure from Kharkiv</strong> - Irina Zherebkina, who spent the first year of the war under bombardment in Kharkiv, still believes that peace must be imagined into being. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/a-ukrainian-philosophers-reluctant-departure-from-kharkiv">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Racial Politics of the N.B.A. Have Always Been Ugly</strong> - A new book argues that the real history of the league is one of strife between Black labor and white ownership. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-racial-politics-of-the-nba-have-always-been-ugly">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Supreme Court ponders a surprisingly difficult case about poop jokes</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Macarons shaped like the poop emoji with smiley faces on them. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CT6zHKah-Qt5nrMSl1O5IXb-KdY=/288x0:4896x3456/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72101524/907114442.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Chocolate banana poo emoji macaroons. | Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A case about a silly, poop-themed dog toy is also a case about free speech and judicial humility.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cZ3UAm">
The Supreme Court will take a break on Wednesday from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/26/23343192/supreme-court-voting-rights-abortion-affirmative-action-race-medicaid-clean-water">unusually political mix of cases</a> it decided to hear during its current term, to consider a case about poop jokes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RjZZ8w">
<a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/jack-daniels-properties-inc-v-vip-products-llc-2/"><em>Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products</em></a> asks whether VIP Products, the nation’s second-largest maker of dog toys, infringed upon the whiskey maker’s trademarked bottle shape and label when it sold dog toys that resemble a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The dog toy, named “Bad Spaniels,” juxtaposes imagery drawn from the whiskey maker’s trademarks with a gag about a dog dropping “the old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r3WcNZ">
Jack Daniel’s seeks a court order prohibiting VIP from continuing to sell this toy.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A side-by-side photo of a Jack Daniels whiskey bottle and a dog toy in the shape of the bottle, featuring similar design elements." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bTWfi42-79kgpLCKSiCoQ2qCuzs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24525939/temp.png"/> <cite>Petitioner’s brief in <em>Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products</em></cite>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q4Qn4r">
<em>Jack Daniel’s </em>is, on the surface, a very silly case, which prompted some very silly attempts by the whiskey maker’s lawyers to explain why their client is so offended by this dog toy. Sample quote <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/252030/20230111151701242_Jack%20Daniels%20petitioners%20brief_1.11.23.pdf">from their brief</a>: “Jack Daniel’s loves dogs and appreciates a good joke as much as anyone. But Jack Daniel’s likes its customers even more, and doesn’t want them confused or associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MHxdac">
Lurking below the surface, however, are very serious questions about the First Amendment. And about how far courts should go in second-guessing Congress’s decisions about how to balance the needs of the marketplace with the demands of free speech. VIP has strong legal arguments that it should prevail in this case, but Jack Daniel’s also raises strong claims that the lower courts did too much to undermine federal trademark law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r9F9ka">
Trademark law — that is, the body of law giving companies an exclusive right to use the imagery associated with their brand to market their products — necessarily limits free speech. Only McDonald’s, for example, may use its trademarked golden arches to sell hamburgers, and only Nike may use its trademarked swoosh simply to sell shoes — which creates a risk that companies may sometimes go overboard in filing lawsuits seeking to protect their trademarks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0qUt5v">
And yet, we give companies like McDonald’s or Nike a monopoly over such commercial uses of their trademarks because the marketplace would function less reliably if consumers cannot readily identify which products are genuine Big Macs or Air Jordans, and which ones are knockoffs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NYvFWe">
Additionally, the Court explained in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/469/189"><em>Park ’N Fly v. Dollar Park and Fly</em></a><em> </em>(1985) that “trademarks foster competition and the maintenance of quality by securing to the producer the benefits of good reputation.” Because Pepsi, and only Pepsi, can use <a href="https://www.pepsi.com/#!products/pepsi">its distinctive labeling</a> to market its products, Pepsi has a clear incentive to ensure that any beverage that uses that labeling will be high quality — because, if the quality suffers, consumers will know not to buy anything that uses Pepsi’s trademarked red, white, and blue label.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qf21Qe">
The specific legal questions that arise out of the <em>Jack Daniel’s</em> case are difficult, in part because federal trademark law sometimes permits companies to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1125">sell products that parody a famous trademark</a>. But the federal appeals court that heard this case largely bypassed the hard questions that arise under federal statutes, and instead held that <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/233482/20220815135352778_Petn%20Appx_Jack%20Daniels%20Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Certiorari_8.5.22_as%20refiled%208.15.22.pdf">the First Amendment places strict limits</a> on a company’s ability to protect its own trademarks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oLj9Mf">
Federal trademark law, however, already strikes a careful balance between the demands of the First Amendment and the benefits all of society gains from allowing companies to clearly and consistently brand their products. And it is far from clear why the appeals court should be allowed to upset that balance.
</p>
<h3 id="2Sz4sU">
The Lanham Act, briefly explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0f7DpH">
Jack Daniel’s argues that the Bad Spaniels dog toy <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/252030/20230111151701242_Jack%20Daniels%20petitioners%20brief_1.11.23.pdf">violates the Lanham Act</a>, the primary federal law governing trademarks, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/252030/20230111151701242_Jack%20Daniels%20petitioners%20brief_1.11.23.pdf">in two ways</a>. The dog toy allegedly “infringed” Jack Daniel’s trademarks by using imagery that consumers would associate with the whiskey maker and not with pet products. And it allegedly “diluted” Jack Daniel’s trademarks by “associating them with dog poop” and other imagery that the whiskey maker does not want consumers to think about when they see a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0nNEl">
A trademark owner will prevail in an infringement claim if they can show that some other party used their trademarked imagery in a way that “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1125">is likely to cause confusion</a>” about whether a particular product is being sold by the trademark owner. Imagine, for example, a soda manufacturer that sells “Popsi” cola, and that markets it in red, white, and blue cans similar to Pepsi’s branding. Pepsi would almost certainly prevail in a trademark infringement suit against the makers of Popsi because consumers could very easily mistake this newcomer cola for the more venerable brand.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qehyEe">
Similarly, the classic Eddie Murphy comedy <em>Coming to America</em> features a straightforward case of trademark infringement.
</p>
<div id="4HyXuj">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yy4DDJ">
Dilution suits, by contrast, allow the owners of a “famous” trademark to prevent its imagery from being used in ways that might cause “tarnishment” of their brand. This is the core of Jack Daniel’s complaint that it does not want consumers “associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gLjy2J">
These twin protections against infringement and dilution exist to protect the benefits trademarks provide to all consumers. If a trademark can be too easily infringed, then consumers may have no way of knowing which products are actually made by Jack Daniel’s (or any other company), and which ones are potentially inferior knockoffs. And, if trademarks can be too easily diluted, then companies may lose their incentive to ensure that their branding is only associated with high-quality products.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nTQSGv">
After all, why go to the trouble and expense of making a tasty and consistent product if consumers are just going to associate your product with dog poop?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="88iOtn">
Yet, while the Lanham Act provides robust protections for trademark owners, it also recognizes that there will be some instances where the First Amendment should trump a company’s desire to control its branding and keep it free of negative associations. A leftist political organization, for example, may want to incorporate several famous corporate logos into a pamphlet criticizing capitalism. Or a journalist may want to use an image of McDonald’s golden arches in a hypothetical newspaper article that reveals embarrassing information about McDonald’s labor practices.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yJQGpB">
This kind of political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment, and has historically been given the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5288934990281514823&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr">highest level of constitutional protection</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q9UDPG">
Accordingly, the Lanham Act contains several provisions ensuring that companies <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1125">cannot wield their trademarks as weapons to cut down essential speech</a>. The law, for example, explicitly forbids companies from bringing dilution suits against “all forms of news reporting and news commentary” and against “any noncommercial” use of a trademark — thus protecting journalists and anti-corporate activists. In some cases, the Lanham Act also protects speech “parodying” a company or its products from dilution suits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eAmeMs">
Similarly, courts have long understood that parodies of famous trademarks enjoy some protection against infringement suits because most consumers are smart enough to tell the difference between an authentic product and a joke seeking to mock or ridicule that product. As one consumer said in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9859603025216136987&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr"><em>Louis Vuitton Malletier SA v. Haute Diggity Dog</em></a><em> </em>(2006), a lower court case that is strikingly similar to <em>Jack Daniel’s</em> and which involved dog toys made to look like handbags, “if I really thought that a $10 dog toy made out of fluff and stuff was an actual Louis Vuitton product, [then] I would be stupid.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NzyHZK">
The makers of Bad Spaniels, in other words, have strong legal arguments that they did not violate the Lanham Act. The dog toy is clearly a parody. And is anyone really going to confuse a poop-themed dog toy with an actual bottle of whiskey?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G5usXP">
That said, Jack Daniel’s does have a stronger trademark dilution claim than Louis Vuitton did in its case, which involved dog toys marked with the words “Chewy Vuiton” and which didn’t associate Louis Vuitton’s brand with feces.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UckvWV">
Unfortunately, however, the lower court that decided the <em>Jack Daniel’s</em> case bypassed these legal arguments, instead ruling that the First Amendment provides such extraordinary protections to companies like VIP Products that trademark law could cease to function effectively.
</p>
<h3 id="QJbF0L">
The lower court made it “nearly impossible” for trademark owners to enforce their trademarks
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UApgZA">
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard the <em>Jack Daniel’s</em> case before it reached the Supreme Court, applied an unusually expansive reading of the First Amendment. Under the Ninth Circuit’s decision, when a work that infringes upon a trademark engages in “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/233482/20220815135352778_Petn%20Appx_Jack%20Daniels%20Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Certiorari_8.5.22_as%20refiled%208.15.22.pdf">artistic expression</a>,” then a trademark owner’s attempt to enforce the Lanham Act will nearly always fail.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Va5yHg">
As one federal judge explained, this approach is so protective of the free speech rights of trademark infringers that “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/233482/20220815135352778_Petn%20Appx_Jack%20Daniels%20Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Certiorari_8.5.22_as%20refiled%208.15.22.pdf">it appears nearly impossible for any trademark holder to prevail</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CS5Fnv">
One reason why is, as Jack Daniel’s argues in its brief, “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-148/252030/20230111151701242_Jack%20Daniels%20petitioners%20brief_1.11.23.pdf">all trademark uses are expressive, by owners and infringers alike</a>.” The whole point of a trademark is to associate a particular product with the company’s efforts to market that product, and with whatever reputation that product has earned in the marketplace. Similarly, the whole point of infringing a trademark is to try to falsely convey to consumers that the infringing product is just like the properly trademarked product.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fuhcyy">
In any event, Congress struck a perfectly sensible balance between the advantages society as a whole gains from protecting trademarks and the demands of free speech when it wrote the Lanham Act. As explained above, the law protects the very sort of political and other noncommercial speech that enjoys special protection under the First Amendment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dPUDSh">
There’s also one other reason to prefer the balance struck in the Lanham Act to the one struck by the Ninth Circuit. The Lanham Act was enacted by the people’s representatives in Congress assembled. The Ninth Circuit’s decision, by contrast, is the product of a few lawyers in black robes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0KsCsC">
Again, under the legal rules laid out in the Lanham Act, VIP Products has strong arguments that it sells innocent, obvious parodies that do not violate federal trademark law. They can potentially win this case without having to upend decades of law establishing that free speech and trademarks can coexist. The Ninth Circuit’s rule, by contrast, could eviscerate the very real benefits that society derives from trademark law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rEWCCV">
As the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/100/82/">Supreme Court said nearly 150 years ago</a>, “the right to adopt and use a symbol or a device to distinguish the goods or property made or sold by the person whose mark it is, to the exclusion of use by all other persons, has been long recognized by the common law and the chancery courts of England and of this country.” The United States has a long history of protecting both trademark rights and free speech. It’s unlikely that a bunch of unelected judges will come up with a better way of protecting both of these important interests than the Lanham Act.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Why the news is so negative — and what we can do about it</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zAWhW65io32IRIL6Q94lP2OEkug=/900x0:6300x4050/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72068463/Vox_Doomerism_Media_Final_2.0.jpg"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
We can break the cycle of negativity bias in the media and get a more balanced view of the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6XDH9a">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oi5MpN">
In <em>Broadcast News</em>, the movie that made me want to be a journalist, the protagonist Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) has a routine every morning. At an appointed time, she sits and weeps profusely for a minute. When the minute’s done, she wipes her face and goes about her day without showing outward signs of sadness.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IOeaNs">
Journalists have always been a <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/environment/job-stress-journalists-health-research/">fairly morose bunch</a>, and the news they produce reflects that. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464884911427800">Communications scholars</a> have found that across many years and countries, coverage of political topics tends to more often be conveyed in a negative or cynical tone rather than a positive one; <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464884911427800">one study</a> in the mid-2000s found that about half of US, German, Italian, and Austrian campaign coverage conveyed bad news, while as little as 6 percent conveyed good news. By some measures, the situation is deteriorating; a<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367"> recent study</a> found that the “proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust and sadness” grew markedly in the US between 2000 and 2019.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rBCI6k">
Some news consumers have surrendered to the phenomenon and find themselves hooked on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21547961/doomscrolling-meaning-definition-what-is-meme">“doomscrolling,”</a> in journalist Karen Ho’s memorable term, proceeding between articles asking if the war in Ukraine could be <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/what-if-were-already-fighting-the-third-world-war-with-russia">World War III</a>, or whether another <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/fc36363f-3991-45e1-8c23-a52db31bf045">world-destabilizing pandemic</a> could be on the way, or if we’ve already passed key <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds">climate tipping points</a>. At least some news consumers aren’t too happy about the situation. An<a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/dnr-executive-summary"> international survey from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism</a> last year found that in almost every country surveyed, trust in media is falling, and more people are saying they’re avoiding news. Why? Because, respondents say, it “has a negative effect on their mood.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LrT4HV">
So … why are we like this? Are we journalists just a miserable lot who insist on spreading our neuroses to the rest of the world? Are readers, despite their protestations to the contrary, likelier to click on news that’s negative or dire?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vzHdcM">
It’s, of course, both, and the supply- and demand-side reasons might come from the same source. Humans, it turns out, have what social psychologists call a “negativity bias”: We tend to pay more attention to bad-seeming information than good-seeming information. That could be a root factor for why the news is so goddamned depressing. That’s what we’re looking for.
</p>
<h3 id="YccVDO">
Negativity bias, explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VQGtdB">
One of social psychologists’ greatest passions is scouring human behavior for its many failures of rationality and perception, the systematic biases that push us off track. “Negativity bias,” the tendency for negative information and experiences to overwhelm the positive, kept coming up. As early as 1967, psychologist <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1967-11833-001">Marjorie Richey and co-authors</a> concluded that university students, given paragraphs describing a stranger’s personality, were influenced more by negative descriptions than positive ones. In 1982, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103182900786">Teresa Amabile and Ann Glazebrook</a> proposed that there might be a general “bias toward negativity in evaluations of persons or their work,” noting that already by that point, a number of other studies had found the same.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iF3pQT">
A 2001 review paper put it bluntly:<a href="https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf"> “bad is stronger than good.”</a> And all this research was conducted before the dawn of the doomscrolling Instagram era. It points to something deep in human cognition, rather than the effects of social media.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bqMRrD">
Now, in the year of our Lord 2023, your first reaction to someone telling you “social psychologists say X” should be “<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23489211/replication-crisis-project-meta-science-psychology">why in the world</a> would I believe <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/3/14/11219446/psychology-replication-crisis">social psychologists</a>, given <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/27/17761466/psychology-replication-crisis-nature-social-science">that so many of</a> their <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics">fanciest results</a> keep <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22360363/replication-crisis-psychological-science-accelerator">getting overturned</a>?” It’s true: This field was ground zero for the “replication crisis,” and many social psych concepts that were once widely touted (like <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html">“ego depletion,”</a> devised by the <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Baumeister%20et%20al.%20%281998%29.pdf">main authors</a> of the “bad is stronger than good” paper) have crumbled when subjected to repeated tests.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XVvZxV">
Researchers I spoke with, however, said that the general existence of a negativity bias is so widely validated that it has thus far survived the replication crisis unscathed. A huge “diversity of labs and traditions and backgrounds have found evidence for negativity bias, in memory and attention across all kinds of stimuli,” Carey Morewedge, professor of marketing and Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University, explained. <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-19929-006">Morewedge’s work</a> has found a negativity bias in “external agency”: When something bad happens, people are likelier to blame another person for a bad event than give them credit for a good one. Subsequent work on infants <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0096112&amp;type=printable">replicated that finding</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uwDWA6">
“This is probably one of the most robust findings in the psychology literature,” Stuart Soroka, a professor in the communications and political science departments at UCLA, agreed. Soroka specifically studies what this bias means for news. With Patrick Fournier and Lilach Nir, he conducted a massive <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1908369116">17-country study</a> with over 1,100 participants measuring how consumers reacted to positive- or negative-seeming news. “Respondents watched 7 randomly ordered BBC World News stories on a laptop computer while wearing noise-cancelling headphones and sensors on their fingers to capture skin conductance and blood volume pulse,” Soroka et al wrote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LiYRdJ">
Examples of positive news included a ballet company in Brazil that employs blind dancers, a young child recovering from a liver disease, and a Swedish news story about “the ongoing popularity of ABBA.” Examples of negative news included the Peruvian town of Chimbote burning down, UN investigations into war crimes in Sri Lanka, and ultra-Orthodox activists in Israel blocking girls from going to school. By looking at physiological responses like “skin conductance,” or how easily electricity passes through the skin, a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anne-Schell/publication/232543769_The_Skin_Conductance_Response_Anticipation_and_Decision-Making/links/5629534008ae518e347cb0f5/The-Skin-Conductance-Response-Anticipation-and-Decision-Making.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=started_experiment_milestone&amp;origin=journalDetail&amp;_rtd=e30%3D">measure widely viewed as reliable</a> that has been in use in various forms since the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1926-00790-001">turn of the 20th century</a>, the authors attempted to get around the limits of self-reporting and identify readers’ immediate, sometimes subconscious reactions. Given that people sometimes <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1940161214524832">say they prefer good news even when their behavior suggests the opposite</a>, relying on something other than self-reports makes sense.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I9lFTU">
Across their sample, they found that negative news provoked stronger physiological reactions and garnered more attention than positive or neutral news on average — though individual people’s reactions varied quite a bit, with a minority of people responding more to positive news.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XZvtKe">
This speaks to the demand side of the bad news dilemma. People who watch and consume news seem to be drawn to negative, dour stories more than positive ones. But it speaks to the supply side too. Journalists have some leeway in deciding what stories to cover, and if we, too, have a negativity bias, we could be facing the same impulses pushing us toward more negative stories that our readers do.
</p>
<h3 id="g6csEI">
Good news for people who like good news
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o6AhM6">
Soroka is not a doomer. He thinks the conditions for good-vibes journalism are actually improving. For one thing, he doesn’t think the overall mood of reporting is getting worse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vp3LId">
About a decade ago, he and colleague Lori Young developed a “sentiment analysis” tool meant to assess how positive or negative different political messages are, known as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2012.671234">Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary</a>. The LSD is simple: It contains a list of positively coded words (“decency,” “priceless”), and negatively coded words (“brazen,” “psychotic”), and counts how often each occurs in the test, adjusting for the use of negations (so “not good” codes, accurately, as negative and “not bad” codes as positive). Soroka argues that the dictionary’s classifications of texts into “positive” versus “negative” tend on average to line up with how humans classify them, and by automating the process, the LSD enables researchers to analyze much vaster texts.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A chart showing the positivity or negativity of network news from 1990-2018" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/S9zECCB9LIn7OE2np06A5lqUhvk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24435882/Screenshot_2023_02_15_at_3.35.33_PM.png"/> <cite>Stuart Soroka and Yanna Krupnikov, <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/politics-general-interest/increasing-viability-good-news?format=PB&amp;isbn=9781108987080" target="_blank">The Increasing Viability of Good News</a>, 2021.</cite>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fFzAZ0">
He and another co-author, University of Michigan’s Yanna Krupnikov, used the LSD to analyze the sentiment of nightly news segments on NBC, ABC, and CBS from 1990 to 2018. They found no downward trend — but a lot of variability. Sometimes (after terrorist attacks, notably) coverage is unusually negative; sometimes (like after Barack Obama’s election) it’s glowing. But, on average, there’s not much of a trend line.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NQnSgL">
More importantly, Soroka and Krupnikov argue, people vary in their receptiveness to good versus bad news. Good news that seems “novel” or like an “outlier” tends to get more coverage, as people separately have attention biases toward novelty that can mitigate their negativity bias. (Bad may be stronger than good, but new may be stronger than everything.) They note that on nightly TV news, the final segment is almost always “good news.” “You don’t want to leave the audience on a total downer before you say good night,” Frederica Freyberg, a Wisconsin anchor for PBS, told the authors. In other words, people crave something different from the dour news that came before; they desire novelty.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="isgUVM">
Some people are also just overall more interested in good news than others. With his colleague Marc Trussler, Soroka once conducted a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1940161214524832">lab study to see if consumers who say they prefer good news stories actually click more on them</a> in practice. They didn’t; whether you say you want to read good news doesn’t predict your actual consumption habits. But they nonetheless found heterogeneity: There was a substantial minority of people, both those who said they preferred good news and those who didn’t, who really did click more on good news.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j22xGK">
In a world of media monopolies, where most people were dependent on one or two local newspapers and three national news networks, this happy-go-lucky minority was … out of luck. The majority preference prevailed, and the majority was biased toward the negative.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oo9jhQ">
<a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-you-cant-trust-the-media">We don’t live in that world anymore</a>. The nightly news has collapsed in popularity, newspapers from halfway around the world are as easy to access as local ones, and just about everyone has access to thousands of rival news outlets. For Soroka and Krupnikov, that suggests that the market for good news is getting stronger. Outlets can carve out niches offering less negatively valenced articles in a way they couldn’t 30 or 40 years ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wJuAPh">
“The end result is probably that people are better able to find their ideal balance of content now than they ever were before,” Soroka told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uGupxp">
And they find evidence that this is happening, or at least happened for a brief moment. They document that some highly successful news posters on Facebook — specifically Upworthy and Occupy Democrats on the left, and the “Barracuda Brigade” on the right — posted more positive than negative news on average. Diehard partisans are open to positive news if it’s mobilizing, affirms their beliefs, etc. That said, because access to more recent data is lacking, their data here all comes before 2017 and the Trump era. Stuff … got dark then.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5qoKUz">
As any reporter can tell you, though, the new media landscape is hardly all roses. For one thing, the algorithmic structure of platforms like Facebook can magnify our own negativity biases. From 2016 to 2019, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm/">Facebook gave “anger” emoji reactions to posts</a> five times as much weight as “likes” in deciding which posts to show other users because their machine learning algorithms found posts that angered people fueled more engagement than posts that pleased them. That partly reflected that humans do, in fact, prefer to share news that enrages them, but it also magnified that tendency, which has costs for both the site and its users.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WJVc4I">
News consumers, then, are caught between two competing forces. On the one hand, they enjoy a vastly larger and more diverse news ecosystem than has ever existed before in history, as well as social media networks that serve them up exactly the news they demonstrate they want through their posts, likes, and other interactions. This should in principle make it easier for people who want good news to access it. But it also places consumers at the mercy of their own impulses. While at a higher level they may want to want<em> </em>news that makes them less miserable, in the moment they might prefer doomy news — and the media and the platforms they depend on are only too happy to serve up the bad.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TQGic3">
“We may, right now, be more motivated to attend to a negative story,” Morewedge explains. “If there’s enough negative information, that may reduce my incentive to come back to that site. It may have a negative effect on my well-being. In the long-term, these sites may be better suited by providing more of a mix of positive info. Just thinking about what people do in the present may not capture their full preferences.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q9KNOS">
He analogizes the current situation to an algorithmically run airline, which decides to only serve the meals people most want in the moment. That airline would start by offering people either, say, potato chips or baby carrots; when almost everyone chose the potato chips, maybe they’d move on to asking “potato chips or brownies,” then “brownies or ice cream,” and before long the whole menu is sugar. That satisfies people’s immediate preferences, but in the long run it makes them miserable.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bi2Ae2">
That’s the tricky task, for news outlets as well as social networks, in thinking about negativity bias. We can give the people what they want right now. But in doing so, we might be feeding them empty calories that will only make them sick in the future.
</p></li>
<li><strong>What Israel’s political crisis tells us about the dangers of indicting Trump</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A protester in a crowd holds a sign above her head that reads, “Stop trying to make dictatorship happen. It’s not gonna happen.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xvOJXAcViKs5eunA_PqNH8E5WTI=/516x0:5380x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72101389/1248546533.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A March 18 protest in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul. | Ilia Yefimovich/Picture Alliance/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical response to his indictment — and what it might portend for a potential Trump arrest.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yksIoi">
If the Manhattan district attorney does file charges against Donald Trump this week, as has been <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/3/18/23646106/trump-indictment-arrest-january-6-manhattan-stormy-daniels">widely reported</a>, it will be an American first: No president, sitting or former, has ever been indicted on criminal charges.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JI4fXP">
But in peer democracies, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/20/trump-ny-indictment-foreign-countries/">it’s far from unheard of</a>. France, Portugal, South Korea, Croatia, and Israel have all indicted former presidents and prime ministers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XKSX7W">
Of these countries, the closest parallels — and the most disturbing — come from contemporary Israel, a country in the midst of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64929563">gravest domestic political crisis</a> since its founding. And it is a crisis that was set off in no small part by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21111500/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-corruption-trump-peace-plan">indictment</a> on a series of corruption-related charges.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TJiyhs">
After winning <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/11/2/23437462/israel-elections-benjamin-netanyahu-coalition-explained">Israel’s election</a> in November 2022, Netanyahu — who had previously been in office in 1996-1999 and 2009-2021 — swiftly set about pushing a series of new laws imposing tighter political control on the legal system.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="klwDZE">
The proposals, unveiled earlier this year, would deliver Netanyahu’s coalition partners on the far right a long-desired leash to rein in the (relatively) liberal Supreme Court. It also gives Netanyahu powers that he could use to nullify the case against him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6UB9o4">
The reaction has been a national uprising: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israelis-protest-against-planned-judicial-overhaul-11th-week-2023-03-18/">11 straight weeks of massive and disruptive street protests</a>. On March 12 alone, about <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/12/middleeast/israel-protests-benjamin-netanyahu-intl/index.html">500,000 Israelis took to the streets</a> across the country — roughly the same number of Americans who attended protests on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">the biggest day of 2020’s Black Lives Matter demonstration</a>, in a country with about 1/35th of America’s population.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s70A9Q">
Being indicted pushed Netanyahu to radical lengths: a willingness to partner with extremists and pursue anti-democratic policies that he had previously decried, all in the name of staying out of prison.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lu2ZMP">
We should expect no less from Trump and his supporters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TtZRKe">
Politically, Trump and Netanyahu are very much alike: charismatic populists who have transformed established center-right parties into cults of personality. Netanyahu was prime minister for Trump’s entire presidency and emerged as one of his closest allies on the global stage, even <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-uses-trump-in-election-campaign-posters/">putting Trump on one of his campaign posters</a>.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="General Elections In Israel" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/96bvHT0fUcLVWRSSG3ZgMQ3gPMc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24526565/1134989383.jpg"/> <cite>Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A Trump/Netanyahu campaign poster in Tel Aviv during the 2019 campaign.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rEQVIF">
Both men stand accused of serious anti-democratic abuses while in office. Both have responded with nearly identical campaigns against legal authorities, accusing investigators of engaging in a “<a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/110051893237764471">witch</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/2019/11/22/netanyahu-indicted-likud-election-corruption">hunt</a>” at the behest of liberal elites.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="da5gyL">
Trump has already called for his supporters to take to the streets to protest his indictment. So far, these calls have <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/20/pro-trump-protest-turnout-arrest-design-00088015">amounted to little</a>, but if an indictment indeed comes down, the energy level among the MAGA faithful could change in a hurry. We saw where such a dynamic could lead on <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/1/6/22217657/us-capitol-breach-trump-rally-presidential-election">January 6, 2021</a>. And there’s an entire presidential election cycle left to go.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qx02bv">
None of this is to say that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should not prosecute Trump if he truly believes the evidence warrants it. Influential people cannot be above the law in a democracy; in Israel, the case against Netanyahu is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/middleeast/netanyahu-corruption-charges-israel.html">serious</a> and speaks to the heart of his anti-democratic behavior during his last tenure in office. It was right to prosecute Netanyahu, and it could very well be right to prosecute Trump. We’ll likely <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/31/23579526/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-investigation">find out soon enough</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DJCdY6">
But the ongoing chaos in Israel should serve as a warning: Under political conditions like those in the US, going after the country’s most influential and polarizing political figure can lead to unpredictable and potentially devastating consequences. Americans should once again be preparing for things to get worse.
</p>
<h3 id="CfrrzR">
How Netanyahu’s indictment led to chaos
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EjODOl">
Before we can talk about what Israel tells us about Trump, it’s important to understand just what exactly is happening in Israel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H3qWN2">
During his long stretch in office between 2009 and 2021, Netanyahu engaged in a series of ethically and legally questionable behaviors. The Israeli police began quietly investigating him in 2016 and eventually recommended charges in three investigations known as Case 1000, Case 2000, and Case 4000.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sc4fub">
Of these, Case 4000 is the most explosive. Israeli prosecutors allege that, while in office, Netanyahu struck a corrupt deal with <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/netanyahu-israeli-press.php">the parent company of Walla</a>, a major online news outlet. The prime minister allegedly approved a lucrative merger for the company in exchange for more favorable coverage in Walla — corruptly using the powers of his office to undermine the free press and strengthen his own political position.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C9NPei">
Netanyahu responded to the charges by embracing a longstanding cause on the extreme right, one that he had previously shunned: waging all-out war on Israel’s independent judiciary.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gkGLc4">
Israel’s far right, made up of radical settlers and religious extremists, had long seen the court as one of the major impediments to their efforts to seize control of Palestinian land and increase Judaism’s role in Israeli public life. Its politicians and think tanks had developed a series of proposals — like a bill allowing the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority vote — designed to bring the court’s allegedly liberal justices to heel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fUpgeW">
In the past, Netanyahu had vocally opposed such ideas. Israel’s judiciary is “what enables the existence of all other democratic institutions,” <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/assault-israels-judiciary/">he said in 2012</a>, during a round of debates about court reform. “In the last few months, I buried every law that threatens the independence of the [judicial] system … I will continue to do so.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUjYwH">
Then the indictments happened.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iAzlIA">
The onetime defender of Israel’s court system changed his tune, declaring (in one <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-04-05/ty-article/netanyahu-deep-state-israel-no-democracy-here-lieberman/0000017f-e06e-d804-ad7f-f1fecd800000">representative 2020 outburst</a>) that the country was “no democracy” but rather “a government of bureaucrats and jurists.” He and his allies began floating legislative remedies for his prosecution, like the so-called “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-dodges-question-on-law-that-could-stop-his-prosecution/">French law</a>” immunizing incumbent prime ministers from prosecution.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="73lVJ7">
Netanyahu purged his Likud party of the remaining critics of his behavior, turning it into a far-right vehicle for his all-encompassing quest to avoid jail time. Israeli politics polarized around whether or not Netanyahu was fit for office — with some right-wing parties even briefly joining a coalition with the anti-Netanyahu center and left on grounds that he was threatening democracy and the rule of law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ae1Ycd">
In 2022, after five narrow elections in three and a half years, Netanyahu finally emerged with a solid majority. This majority depended on an alliance with the most extreme of extreme factions, Israel’s Religious Zionist party: a militantly anti-Palestinian faction committed to waging war on the judiciary.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TVvrW0">
As a result, the new government’s first major legislative push was a comprehensive “court reform” package that would <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/current-state-play-israels-constitutional-showdown">impose significant political controls on the judiciary</a>. This includes not only the previously discussed “override clause,” but also provisions politicizing the process for appointing judges, weakening the independence of the attorney general’s office, and limiting court power to review actions taken by the executive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ATtI6G">
If passed, this legislation would allow the far-right coalition to control the legal system and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-ag-netanyahu-seeking-to-use-judicial-reform-to-bring-trial-to-improper-end/">give Netanyahu tools he could use to end the case against him</a>. Some of these proposals could become law <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-19/ty-article/.premium/judicial-overhaul-architect-proposes-naming-two-justices-before-balancing-appointments/00000186-faff-df21-a9df-fbff7a060000">before the Knesset breaks for the Passover holiday in early April</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B7dSdm">
Netanyahu’s agenda is, understandably, widely unpopular. A late February poll from the nonpartisan Israel Democracy Institute found that <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/47968">large majorities</a> oppose many of the package’s key planks (roughly two-thirds of Israelis oppose the override clause, for example). The opposition has been so intense, with many seeing the bills as an attack on the foundations of Israeli democracy, that it has galvanized what appears to be the largest protest movement in Israeli history: nearly three months of nonstop street demonstrations, joined by some of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/3/16/23639947/palestine-netanyahu-israel-protests-ehud-olmert">country’s most influential and prominent figures</a>, demanding that the government change course.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Protesters in a crowd carry signs reading, “Bibihazard,” Saving democracy,” and “Risk ahead.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pxKvx-UtHHoxRbA-j1rs7L7wPGM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24526328/1248591304.jpg"/> <cite>Gili Yaari/NurPhoto/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Protesters against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul bills in Tel Aviv on March 18, 2023.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kPx2Hz">
So far, however, there’s no indication that it<strong> </strong>will. Netanyahu has <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/15/herzog-warns-israel-on-brink-of-abyss-as-he-lays-out-judicial-compromise-proposal">rejected a compromise reform package</a> authored by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and seems intent on barreling through some version of his initial idea. If the bills do pass, litigation is inevitable — and there is a reasonable chance that <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-police-crisis-presages-potential-constitutional-showdown/">Israel’s Supreme Court will strike them down</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UxTdnv">
Such a ruling would lead to a constitutional crisis, where different elements of the government disagree on what the law is and who gets to decide on it. In such situations, other institutions — like the police and military — may have to decide whom to obey.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f4GPU3">
It is about the most severe crisis that a democracy can face, and Israel is rapidly heading toward it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fw9LIA">
“Now, when we are reaching Israel’s 75th anniversary, the country is on the brink of the abyss,” President Herzog warned in a speech last week. “A civil war is a red line — and I will not let that happen.”
</p>
<h3 id="50Q19d">
The big lesson for America: Indictments raise the stakes
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B2uwoZ">
One key point of the Israeli story, from an American view, is that an indictment radically changes a politician’s incentives.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZFnfON">
For most of his career, Netanyahu had a reputation as a calculating and cautious politician. True, he was relatively right wing, but he always seemed to have a sense of what was too far and the attendant danger of political chaos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="11kTh8">
But since his indictment, he has changed: willing to embrace autocratic policies that he had previously rejected and to align himself with forces in Israeli politics that had long been consigned to the country’s margins.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WDyXIr">
Netanyahu’s shift<strong> </strong>speaks to the way the threat of a felony conviction changes one’s incentives. If you think you’re going to prison, you have nothing to lose by fighting with every tool available. When you’re the nation’s leading politician, with a Trump-like fervent following built up over decades, that means trying to turn the government into your personal get-out-of-jail-free card.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EDybgJ">
What exactly this looks like in Trump’s case is hard to predict. His <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/3/18/23646106/trump-indictment-arrest-january-6-manhattan-stormy-daniels">call for protests</a> provides a clue, but only that: The potential avenues for extra-legal incitement on Trump’s part are legion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2h0rT8">
The only thing we can be almost certain of is that he won’t drop out of the presidential race. Returning to the presidency would be his best chance at getting immunity from prosecution, thanks to the longstanding legal practice of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/us/politics/a-constitutional-puzzle-can-the-president-be-indicted.html">not prosecuting incumbent presidents</a>. And there are good reasons to believe an indictment could help him in the GOP primary rather than hurt him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w2OJ9z">
One important difference between Trump and Netanyahu is that the former has always been willing to court chaos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iePOBV">
There was never a “cautious” Trump bounded by legal norms and niceties. Historically, his pattern has always been greater escalation when pressed — as we saw during the Mueller investigation, the first impeachment, and the 2020 election. If someone as calculating as Netanyahu can be pushed into anti-system radicalism by an indictment, what could happen with someone like Trump who is already willing to go to extremes?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gpAyNQ">
The threat of political instability — even a constitutional crisis like the one looming in Israel — should not be used as a rationale to protect powerful politicians who engage in criminal wrongdoing. An Israeli refusal to indict Netanyahu would have sent a dangerous signal about what prime ministers can get away with in Israel — a green light for future leaders to attempt to engage in undemocratic behavior while in office.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hCyV7E">
If Alvin Bragg (or other <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23518814/trump-investigations-jack-smith-january-6-classified">prosecutors in Georgia and the Justice Department</a>) sincerely believes that Trump engaged in prosecutable offenses, letting him slide because of who he is would send a similarly dangerous message about the state of the rule of law in America.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AZXA3j">
Malfeasance at the highest levels, then, puts highly polarized democracies in a lose-lose situation. Either legal authorities prosecute and risk a system-shaking political crisis, or ignore the offense and risk setting a precedent that encourages more subtle and gradual democratic erosion.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘Important to understand that there’s no one way to get medals’</strong> - NEW DELHI</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ind vs Aus 3rd ODI | Australia post 269 despite fine bowling efforts from Hardik, Kuldeep</strong> - While Pandya (3/44 in 8 overs) shaved off the top half, Kuldeep’s (3/56 in 10 overs) rhythm and guile on a helpful Chennai track was the biggest takeaway</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘2023 ODI World Cup in India likely to start on October 5, final in Ahmedabad’</strong> - The list of 12 cities, however, does not include Mohali and Nagpur, which had hosted a Test match against visiting Australia recently.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Djokovic has ‘no regrets’ about missing U.S. events over COVID-19 vaccine status</strong> - Novak Djokovic unsuccessfully applied to the U.S. government for special permission to play at Indian Wells and Miami.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | 6.6 magnitude quake in Afghanistan rocks Delhi-NCR; Pakistan court grants Imran Khan bail in terrorism cases, and more</strong> - Here’s a select list of stories to read before you start your day</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Doting parents place QR code on son’s tomb at St. Joseph Church, Kuriyachira, to keep his memories alive</strong> - They wanted his life to be a motivation for everyone</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kureepuzha Sreekumar wins Kadammanitta poetry award</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>K.C. Tyagi relieved of organisational responsibilities upon his repeated requests: JD(U)</strong> - Tyagi has been active in politics for close to five decades</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A lyrical voice lost: poet Anna Sujatha Mathai passes away</strong> - Mathai’s verses often had a familial and down-to-earth touch, and she responded to situations with sensitivity and compassion</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nod for 11 water supply projects under AMRUT scheme in Kerala</strong> - KWA, respective urban local bodies will issue technical sanction</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French reforms: Macron refuses to give way as pension protests escalate</strong> - The French leader says he has no regrets about unpopular pension reforms but tries to calm tensions.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Zelensky visits ruined frontline city of Bakhmut</strong> - Zelensky’s visit to the frontline comes after Russian forces targeted Ukrainian cities overnight.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine to clinch first IMF loan to nation at war</strong> - The $15.6bn financing package is expected to be approved in the coming weeks.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Conspiracy theorists led family to death in Switzerland</strong> - Swiss investigators say adults in the family were obsessed with conspiracy theories.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Badger tunnels halt traffic on Dutch railways</strong> - Trains in the north and south of the Netherlands are affected, with some services stopping for a week.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Three legacy Battlefield games will be removed from online stores in April</strong> - It’s your last chance to purchase <em>Bad Company</em>’s single-player campaign. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925783">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Here’s the full analysis of newly uncovered genetic data on COVID’s origins</strong> - The genetic data paints a picture of spillover in one zone of the market. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925722">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Newegg’s unique NAS configurator is a handy, but limited, shopping tool</strong> - You can only shop Newegg inventory, but it gets the ball rolling. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925650">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hackers drain bitcoin ATMs of $1.5 million by exploiting 0-day bug</strong> - Don’t store digital coins in hot wallets! It’s great advice but can’t always be followed. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925695">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Judge dismisses gamers’ claims that Microsoft-Activision merger will spoil gaming</strong> - Gamers have 20 days to supply more evidence showing the merger would harm them. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925676">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why do depressed people give the best head?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Because they don’t care about breathing anymore.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
EDIt: Sheesh. Tough crowd.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Verothyn"> /u/Verothyn </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xw9e2/why_do_depressed_people_give_the_best_head/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xw9e2/why_do_depressed_people_give_the_best_head/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When I was young, there were only 25 letters in the alphabet.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Nobody knew why.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Meguinn"> /u/Meguinn </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xjroj/when_i_was_young_there_were_only_25_letters_in/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xjroj/when_i_was_young_there_were_only_25_letters_in/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A guy is driving through Nevada and sees a sign along the road with a large cross and the words “Sisters of Mercy House of Prostitution, 5 miles ahead.”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He shakes his head and thinks “I must have read that wrong.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He continues on and a few minutes later see another sign, this one with a praying nun on it and the words “Sisters of Mercy House of Prostitution, Next Exit. So Good It’s Miraculous!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He decides he has to see this so he pulls off, and following more signs soon pulls up in front of a large church. He knocks on the door and is greeted by an elderly nun. Very embarrassed, he mutters, “Um..I saw a sign by the highway … am I in the right place?” The nun smiles and says “Of course! Right this way!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
She leads him inside and down many twisting hallways, up stairs and down until he is thoroughly lost. Eventually they come to a large door and she says, “Give me $200 and go through this door and you will find exactly what you came for.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He can’t believe this kindly old nun would lie to him, so he hands over the cash and opens the door. The nun pushes him through and the door slams and locks behind him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He finds himself standing outside at the back of the church in front of another large sign that reads: “Thank you, you have just been fucked by the Sisters of Mercy.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MYMILKISMUCHBETTER"> /u/MYMILKISMUCHBETTER </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xw33h/a_guy_is_driving_through_nevada_and_sees_a_sign/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xw33h/a_guy_is_driving_through_nevada_and_sees_a_sign/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My friend just gave me a presentation on why I should invest in his sword making business.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He made some excellent points.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/porichoygupto"> /u/porichoygupto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xed92/my_friend_just_gave_me_a_presentation_on_why_i/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xed92/my_friend_just_gave_me_a_presentation_on_why_i/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why do engineers mix up Halloween and Christmas?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Because Oct 31 = Dec 25
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Star-Lord-123"> /u/Star-Lord-123 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xhdh1/why_do_engineers_mix_up_halloween_and_christmas/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11xhdh1/why_do_engineers_mix_up_halloween_and_christmas/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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