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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>Impact of National and Regional Lockdowns on Growth of COVID-19 Cases in COVID-Hotspot City of Pune in Western India: A Real-World Data Analysis</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Real-world data assessing the impact of lockdowns on COVID-19 cases remain limited from resource-limited settings. We examined growth of incident confirmed COVID-19 cases before, during and after lockdowns in Pune, a city in western India with 3.1 million population that reported the largest COVID-19 burden at the peak of the pandemic. Methods Using anonymized individual-level data captured by Pune`s public health surveillance program between February 1st and September 15th 2020, we assessed weekly incident COVID-19 cases, infection rates, and epidemic curves by lockdown status (overall and by sex, age, and population density) and modelled the natural epidemic using the 9-compartmental model INDSCI-SIM. Effect of lockdown on incident cases was assessed using multilevel Poisson regression. We used geospatial mapping to characterize regional spread. Findings Of 241,629 persons tested for SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 disease rate was 267.0 (95% CI 265.3,268.8) per 1000 persons. Epidemic curves and geospatial mapping showed delayed peak of the cases by approximately 8 weeks during the lockdowns as compared to modelled natural epidemic. Compared to a subsequent unlocking period, incident COVID-19 cases 43% lower (IRR 0.57, 95% CI 0.53, 0.62) during India`s nationwide lockdown and 22% (IRR 0.78, 95% CI 0.73, 0.84) during Pune`s regional lockdown and was uniform across age groups and population densities. Conclusion Lockdowns slowed the growth of COVID-19 cases in population dense, urban region in India. Additional analysis from rural and semi-rural regions of India and other resource-limited settings are needed.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21254694v1" target="_blank">Impact of National and Regional Lockdowns on Growth of COVID-19 Cases in COVID-Hotspot City of Pune in Western India: A Real-World Data Analysis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>RT-qPCR-based tests for SARS-CoV-2 detection in pooled saliva samples for massive population screening to monitor epidemics.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Swab, quantitative, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) tests remain the gold standard of diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2 infections. However, these tests are costly and time-consuming, and swabbing limits their throughput. We developed a 3-gene, seminested RT qPCR test with SYBR green-based detection, optimized for testing pooled saliva samples for high-throughput diagnostics of epidemic-affected populations. The proposed two-tier approach depends on decentralized self-collection of saliva samples, pooling, 1st-tier testing with the mentioned highly sensitive screening test and subsequent 2nd-tier testing of individual samples from positive pools with the in vitro diagnostic (IVD) test. The screening test was able to detect 5 copies of the viral genome in 10 μl of isolated RNA with 50% probability and 18.8 copies with 95% probability and reached Ct values that were highly linearly RNA concentration-dependent. In the side-by-side comparison (testing artificial pooled samples), the screening test attained slightly better results than the commercially available IVD-certified RT-qPCR diagnostic test (100% specificity and 89.8% sensitivity vs. 100% and 73.5%, respectively). Testing of 1475 individual clinical samples pooled in 374 pools of 4 revealed 0.8% false positive pools and no false negative pools. In weekly prophylactic testing of 113 people within 6 months, a two-tier testing approach enabled the detection of 18 infected individuals, including several asymptomatic individuals, with a fraction of the costs of individual RT-PCR testing.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.21256733v1" target="_blank">RT-qPCR-based tests for SARS-CoV-2 detection in pooled saliva samples for massive population screening to monitor epidemics.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Effects of Anxiety and Coping on Past 90-Day Opioid Misuse among Indian Adults during COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
Substance use, especially opioid use, is an ongoing public health crisis in India that is compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 22 million Indian citizens use opiates, yet there are no empirical studies that analyze the prevalence of use during a global pandemic in India. Further exploration is needed about the prevalence of opioid use among south Asian Indian adults to (1) Identify if sociodemographic variables such as gender, education, and employment are significantly associated with 90-day opioid use and (2) identify whether anxiety or coping influence the rate of 90-day opioid use regardless of sociodemographic variables. Results indicated both anxiety and coping were significantly and independently associated with past 90-day opioid use, women were significantly more likely to endorse past 90-day opioid misuse than men, and Both lower education and less than full-time employment were also significantly associated with greater frequency of past 90-day opioid misuse. Overall, the study’s results highlight the need for more concentrated investigations into substance use among South Indians, as well as tailored use substance prevention programs that consider social determinants of health when treating patients.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/3pvbj/" target="_blank">Effects of Anxiety and Coping on Past 90-Day Opioid Misuse among Indian Adults during COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A deep learning solution for NAFLD screening diagnosis</strong> -
<div>
NAFLD is reported to be the only hepatic ailment increasing in its prevalence concurrently with both; obesity &amp; T2DM. In the wake of a massive strain on global health resources due to COVID 19 pandemic, NAFLD is bound to be neglected &amp; shelved. Abdominal ultrasonography is done for NAFLD screening diagnosis which has a high monetary cost associated with it. We present a deep learning model that requires only easy-to-measure anthropometric measures for coming up with a screening diagnosis for NAFLD with very high accuracy. Further studies are suggested to validate the generalization of the presented model.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/j6tcy/" target="_blank">A deep learning solution for NAFLD screening diagnosis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Working Differently or Not at All: COVID-19’s Effects on Employment among People with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed employment situations for workers everywhere. This is especially true among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions who face greater risks in contracting COVID-19 and experience larger disadvantages within the labor market. Drawing from original data gathered through a national online survey (N = 1,027) and integrated set of virtual interviews (N = 50) with Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions, our findings show that although the pandemic has not directly led to job losses for most people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, respondents who have lost employment due to COVID-19 are struggling. Even though employed workers have been faring better, half were concerned about losing their jobs within the next year, and these concerns were more prevalent among part-time and non-union workers. Our findings emphasize the potential for growing economic insecurity as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on employment situations among marginalized groups.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/yjfse/" target="_blank">Working Differently or Not at All: COVID-19’s Effects on Employment among People with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 cases from the first local outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant in China presented more serious clinical features: a prospective, comparative cohort study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant which was first identified in the United Kingdom (U.K.) has increased sharply in numbers worldwide and was reported to be more contagious. On January 17, 2021, a COVID-19 clustered outbreak caused by B.1.1.7 variant occurred in a community in Daxing District, Beijing, China. Three weeks prior, another non-variant (lineage B.1.470) COVID-19 outbreak occurred in Shunyi District, Beijing. This study aimed to investigate the clinical features of B.1.1.7 variant infection. Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted on COVID-19 cases admitted to Ditan hospital since January 2020. Data of 74 COVID-19 cases from two independent COVID-19 outbreaks in Beijing were extracted as study subjects from a Cloud Database established in Ditan hospital, which included 41 Shunyi cases (Shunyi B.1.470 group) and 33 Daxing cases (Daxing B.1.1.7 group) that have been hospitalized since December 25, 2020 and January 17, 2021, respectively. We conducted a comparison of the clinical characteristics, RT-qPCR results and genomic features between the two groups. Findings: Cases from Daxing B.1.1.7 group (15 [45.5%] male; median age, 39 years [range, 30.5, 62.5]) and cases from Shunyi B.1.470 group (25 [61.0%] male; median age, 31 years [range, 27.5, 41.0]) had a statistically significant difference in median age (P =0.014). Seven clinical indicators of Daxing B.1.1.7 group were significantly higher than Shunyi B.1.470 group including patients having fever over 38℃ (14/33 [46.43%] in Daxing B.1.1.7 group vs. 9/41 (21.95%) in Shunyi B.1.470 group [P = 0 .015]), C-reactive protein ([CRP, mg/L], 4.30 [2.45, 12.1] vs. 1.80, [0.85, 4.95], [P = 0.005]), Serum amyloid A ([SAA, mg/L], 21.50 [12.50, 50.70] vs. 12.00 [5.20, 26.95], [P = 0.003]), Creatine Kinase ([CK, U/L]), 110.50 [53.15,152.40] vs. 70.40 [54.35,103.05], [P = 0.040]), D-dimer ([DD, mg/L], 0.31 [0.20, 0.48] vs. 0.24 [0.17,0.31], [P = 0.038]), CD4+ T lymphocyte ([CD4+ T, mg/L], [P = 0.003]) , and Ground-glass opacity (GGO) in lung (15/33 [45.45%] vs. 5/41 [12.20%], [P =0.001]). After adjusting for the age factor, B.1.1.7 variant infection was the risk factor for CRP (P = 0.045, Odds ratio [OR] 2.791, CI [1.025, 0.8610]), SAA (0.011, 5.031, [1.459, 17.354]), CK (0.034, 4.34, [0.05, 0.91]), CD4+ T ( 0.029, 3.31, [1.13, 9.71]), and GGO (0.005, 5.418, [1.656, 17.729]) of patients. The median Ct value of RT-qPCR tests of the N-gene target in the Daxing B.1.1.7 group was significantly lower than the Shunyi B.1.470 group (P=0.036). The phylogenetic analysis showed that only 2 amino acid mutations in spike protein were detected in B.1.470 strains while B.1.1.7 strains had 3 deletions and 7 mutations. Interpretation: Clinical features including a more serious inflammatory response, pneumonia and a possible higher viral load were detected in the cases infected with B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2 variant. It could therefore be inferred that the B.1.1.7 variant may have increased pathogenicity.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256655v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 cases from the first local outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant in China presented more serious clinical features: a prospective, comparative cohort study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Teletherapy for children with developmental disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines: a mixed-methods evaluation from the perspectives of parents and therapists</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objectives: As a response to the lockdown associated with COVID-19 in the Philippines, therapy services for children with developmental disorders shifted to telehealth (i.e., teletherapy). This study evaluated the delivery of teletherapy from the perspectives of parents and therapists. Methods: Participants consisted of parents (n = 47) and therapists (n = 102) of children with developmental disorders who were receiving teletherapy during the lockdown. A mixed-methods triangulation design-convergence model was adopted; participants were invited to respond to an online survey with closed- and open-ended questions. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and non-parametric inferential tests, while qualitative data were examined using thematic analysis. Results: Overall satisfaction with teletherapy was positive, with parents reporting significantly higher satisfaction compared to therapists. Satisfaction was positively associated with the frequency of teletherapy sessions for parents, and with their years of experience for therapists. The top enabling factors were family participation and effective communication. The main challenges were time constraints and difficulty with instruction and monitoring associated with the two-dimensional nature of teletherapy. The benefits included empowerment of parents and enhanced understanding of the needs of their children. Discussion: The shift to teletherapy facilitated a heightened focus on family-centered care. The evaluation findings suggest that the general satisfaction with teletherapy and the benefits associated with family-centered care will likely promote teletherapy as a service delivery mode to continue beyond the pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256662v1" target="_blank">Teletherapy for children with developmental disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines: a mixed-methods evaluation from the perspectives of parents and therapists</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Travel-driven emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.620 with multiple VOC-like mutations and deletions in Europe</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Many high-income countries have met the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with overwhelming sequencing resources and have identified numerous distinct lineages, including some with notably altered biology. Over a year into the pandemic following unprecedented reductions in worldwide human mobility, distinct introduced lineages of SARS-CoV-2 without sequenced antecedents are increasingly discovered in high-income countries as a result of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance initiatives. We here describe one such SARS-CoV-2 lineage, carrying many mutations and deletions in the spike protein shared with widespread variants of concern (VOCs), including E484K, S477N and deletions HV69del, Y144del, and LLA241/243del. This lineage - designated B.1.620 - is known to circulate in Lithuania and has now been found in several European states, but also in increasing numbers in central Africa owing to important recent increases in genome sequencing efforts on the continent. We provide evidence of likely ongoing local transmission of B.1.620 in Lithuania, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and the Central African Republic. We describe the suite of mutations this lineage carries, its potential to be resistant to neutralising antibodies, travel histories for a subset of the European cases, and evidence of local B.1.620 transmission in Europe. We make a case for the likely Central African origin of this lineage by providing travel records as well as the outcomes of carefully crafted phylogenetic and phylogeographic inference methodologies, the latter of which is able to exploit individual travel histories recorded for infected travellers having entered different European countries.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256637v1" target="_blank">Travel-driven emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.620 with multiple VOC-like mutations and deletions in Europe</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>LACK OF ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CONVALESCENT PLASMA ADMINISTRATION AND LENGTH OF HOSPITAL STAY: A HOSPITAL-DAY STRATIFIED MULTI-CENTER RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Effects of timing of Convalescent plasma (CP) administration on hospitalized COVID-19 patients are not established. Methods: We used the National COVID Cohort Collaborative data to perform a retrospective cohort study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States between 07-01-2020 and 12-19-2020. We stratified patients based on day of CP administration (Day 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4) from COVID-19 diagnosis. We used 35 predictors to frame matched cohorts accounting for clinical and sociodemographic characteristics. We used competing risk survival models to examine the association between CP administration and length of hospital stay with in-hospital death as a competing risk performing Gray9s test on the cumulative incidence function and Cox9s regression on cause specific hazard ratios. Results: In a cohort of 4,003 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, 197 (4.9%) received CP within the first 5 days following COVID-19 diagnosis. After adjusting for potential confounding variables, there were no statistically significant associations between day of CP administration and length of hospital stay. Day 0 CP administration signallled lower mortality but was not statistically significant (HR 0.45 [0.19-1.03]). Conclusions: We found no association between the timing of CP administration and length of stay among hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256627v1" target="_blank">LACK OF ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CONVALESCENT PLASMA ADMINISTRATION AND LENGTH OF HOSPITAL STAY: A HOSPITAL-DAY STRATIFIED MULTI-CENTER RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Higher case fatality rate among obstetric patients with COVID-19 in the second year of pandemic in Brazil: do new genetic variants play a role?</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: In Brazil, a 20% increase in maternal mortality rate due to COVID-19 is projected for 2020. On January 4, 2021, the P.1 SARS-CoV-2 genetic variant was firstly identified in the country and recent data has indicated an association with higher hospitalization rates and mortality. The impact of P.1 variant in the obstetric population remains unclear. Methods: We carried out a preliminary analysis of sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 confirmed maternal deaths (between 10-50 years old) comparing cases reported to the Brazilian official severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) surveillance system (SS) in 2020 with those from 2021 (until April 12, 2021). This preliminary analysis employed methods described in previous reports from our group. Results: 803 maternal deaths out of 8,248 COVID-19 maternal SARS cases with a recorded outcome were reported to the SARS-SS since March 2020. Case fatality rate was significantly higher in 2021 (15.6% vs 7.4%). The first three months of 2021 already account for 46.2% of all deaths occurred in the 13-months analysed period. COVID-19 fatal cases from 2021 had a lower proportion of at least one risk factor or comorbidity as compared to 2020 but had a higher frequency of obesity. There were no significant differences in terms of age, type of residence area (urban, rural, or peri-urban), type of funding of the notification unit (public vs. private), COVID-19 diagnostic criteria, pregnancy status (pregnancy or postpartum), cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The proportion of hospitalization, ICU admission, and respiratory support before death was also not significantly different. Conclusion: Case fatality rate was increased in the three first months of 2021 when compared to 2020. Once variables related to health care access and demographics are not significantly different and women seem to be healthier in the 2021 sample, such difference may be related to the circulation of more aggressive genetic variants in the country.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.21256651v1" target="_blank">Higher case fatality rate among obstetric patients with COVID-19 in the second year of pandemic in Brazil: do new genetic variants play a role?</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Meta-Analysis of Risk of Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia Following ChAdOx1-S Recombinant Vaccine</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Context: Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) has been reported after administering ChAdOx1-S recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (marketed as Vaxzevira by Astra Zeneca, Covishield). Estimates of incidence vary between countries, due to different age distributions chosen, case definitions and choice of denominator (persons vaccinated vs immunizations given). This study clarifies these estimates by pooling data from ten countries and examining differences by age group. Methods: We examined case reports, press releases and immunization data and calculated pooled estimates of VITT incidence using random effects models. Sensitivity analyses considered different combinations of countries and varying assumptions on time between vaccination and reporting of cases. Results: Pooling all countries, VITT incidence was 0.73 per 100,000 persons receiving first dose of Covishield/Vaxzevira [95% CI .43,1.23]. Incidence for age 65 and over was 0.11 per 100,000 persons [95% CI .05-.26], and significantly higher among those under age 55: 1.67 per 100,000 persons [95% CI 1.30-2.14] in the UK, 5.06 per 100,000 persons in Norway [95% CI 2.16, 11.86]. The latter had the best data on counts of persons vaccinated. Incidence for age 55 to 64 years was 0.34 [95% CI 0.13, 0.85] in the UK, lower than for under age 55. Conclusion: VITT is a rare vaccine-associated adverse event. Incidence estimates vary between jurisdictions. However, even the highest reported incidence from Norway is low - and in settings with high community transmission, lower than risk of serious outcomes associated with Covid-19. Policymakers and individuals can use these data to calculate risk-benefit ratios and better target vaccine distribution.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256613v1" target="_blank">Meta-Analysis of Risk of Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia Following ChAdOx1-S Recombinant Vaccine</a>
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<li><strong>Assessing COVID-19 Pandemic Risk Perception and Response Preparedness in Veterinary and Animal Care Workers</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Veterinary and animal care workers (VACW) perform critical functions in biosecurity and public health, yet little has been done to understand the unique needs and barriers these workers face when responding during a pandemic crisis. This study evaluated VACWs9 perceived risks and roles during COVID-19, and explored barriers and facilitators in their readiness, ability, and willingness to respond during a pandemic. We deployed a survey targeting U.S. veterinary medical personnel, animal shelter and control workers, zoo and wildlife workers, plus other animal care workers. Data were collected on participants9 self-reported job and demographic factors, perceptions of risk and job efficacy, and readiness, ability, and willingness to respond during the pandemic. We found that leadership roles and older age had the strongest association with decreased perceived risk and improved job efficacy and confidence, and that increased reported contact level with others (both co-workers and the public) was associated with increased perceived risk. We determined that older age and serving in leadership positions were associated with improved readiness, willingness, and ability to respond. VACWs9 dedication to public health response, reflected in our findings, will be imperative if more zoonotic vectors of SARS-CoV-2 arise. Response preparedness in VACW can be improved by targeting younger workers not in leadership roles in support programs that center on improving job efficacy and confidence in safety protocols. These findings can be used to target intervention and training efforts to support the most vulnerable within this critical, yet often overlooked, workforce.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256626v1" target="_blank">Assessing COVID-19 Pandemic Risk Perception and Response Preparedness in Veterinary and Animal Care Workers</a>
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<li><strong>Effect of storage conditions on SARS-CoV-2 RNA quantification in wastewater solids</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater settled solids is associated with COVID-19 incidence in sewersheds and therefore, there is a strong interest in using these measurements to augment traditional disease surveillance methods. A wastewater surveillance program should provide rapid turn around for sample measurements (ideally within 24 hours), but storage of samples is necessary for a variety of reasons including biobanking. Here we investigate how storage of wastewater solids at 4C, -20C, and -80C affects measured concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. We find that short term (7-8 d) storage of raw solids at 4C has little effect on measured concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, whereas longer term storage at 4C (35-122 d) or freezing reduces measurements by 60%, on average. We show that normalizing SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations by concentrations of pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) RNA, an endogenous wastewater virus, can correct for changes during storage as storage can have a similar effect on PMMoV RNA as on SARS-CoV-2 RNA. The reductions in SARS-CoV-2 RNA in solids during freeze thaws is less than those reported for the same target in liquid influent by several authors.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.21256611v1" target="_blank">Effect of storage conditions on SARS-CoV-2 RNA quantification in wastewater solids</a>
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<li><strong>Quantifying the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectiousness.</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The relationship between SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectiousness is not known. Using data from a prospective cohort of index cases and high-risk contact, we reconstructed by modelling the viral load at the time of contact and the probability of infection. The effect of viral load was particularly large in household contacts, with a transmission probability that increased to as much as 37% when the viral load was greater than 10 log 10 copies per mL. The transmission probability peaked at symptom onset in most individuals, with a median probability of transmission of 15%, that hindered large individual variations (IQR: [8, 37]). The model also projects the effects of variants on disease transmission. Based on the current knowledge that viral load is increased by 2 to 4-fold on average, we estimate that infection with B1.1.7 virus could lead to an increase in the probability of transmission by 8 to 17%.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.07.21256341v1" target="_blank">Quantifying the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectiousness.</a>
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<li><strong>The COVID-19 pandemic storm in India</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sharp increase in the number of new COVID-19 patients in India in the second half of April 2021 has caused alarm around the world. A detailed analysis of this pandemic storm is still ahead. We present the results of anterior analysis using a generalized SIR-model (susceptible-infected-removed). The final size of this pandemic wave and its duration are predicted. Obtained results show that the COVID-19 pandemic will be a problem for mankind for a very long time.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.21256523v1" target="_blank">The COVID-19 pandemic storm in India</a>
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</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>A Phase 3 Randomized, Double-Blind Placebo Controlled, Multi-regional Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of GT0918 for the Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19 Male Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: GT0918 tablets or placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Suzhou Kintor Pharmaceutical Inc,<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>Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for Prevention of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Covid19;   COVID-19 Prevention<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ);   Other: Standard care;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research<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>A Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO Cell) for COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: low-dose Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO cell);   Biological: high-dose Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO cell);   Biological: placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Vaccine and Serum Institute, China;   Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd;   Beijing Zhong Sheng Heng Yi Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd.;   Zhengzhou University<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>Safety and Efficacy of Niclosamide in Patients With COVID-19 With Gastrointestinal Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Niclosamide;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   AzurRx BioPharma, 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>tDCS for Post COVID-19 Fatigue</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post Covid-19 Patients<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Thorsten Rudroff<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>A Immunobridging and Immunization Schedules Study of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: 3-doses schedule 1 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: 3-doses schedule 2 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: 3-doses schedule 3 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: 2 doses of vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   China National Biotec Group Company Limited;   Beijing Institute of Biological Products 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>Convalescent Plasma as Adjunct Therapy for COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Convalescent plasma treatment<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Health Research and Development, Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia;   Indonesian Red Cross;   Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology<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>Selenium as a Potential Treatment for Moderately-ill, Severely-ill, and Critically-ill COVID-19 Patients.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Selenium (as Selenious Acid);   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   CHRISTUS Health;   Pharco Pharmaceuticals<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>Protecting Our Community: COVID-19 Testing</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2;   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Home-based SARS-CoV-2 test kit<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Montana State University;   National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS);   University of Washington;   Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center;   Salish Kootenai College<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>Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Nasopharyngeal Swabs by Using Multi-Spectral Screening System</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: AP-23<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Fable Biyoteknoloji San ve Tic A.S<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>Estradiol and Progesterone in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Placebo injection and placebo pill;   Drug: Estradiol Cypionate 5 MG/ML;   Drug: Progesterone 200 MG Oral Capsule<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Tulane 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>Safety, Tolerability and PK of Ensovibep (MP0420 - a New Candidate With Potential for Treatment of COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Ensovibep;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Molecular Partners AG<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>#SafeHandsSafeHearts: An eHealth Intervention for COVID-19 Prevention and Support</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: eHealth for Covid-19 prevention and support<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Toronto<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>COVID-19 Vaccination Take-Up</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Covid19;   Vaccination<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Financial incentives;   Behavioral: Convenient scheduling link;   Behavioral: Race concordant;   Behavioral: Gender concordant<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Southern California;   Contra Costa Health Services;   J-PAL North America, State and Local Innovation Initiative;   National Bureau of Economic Research Roybal Center;   National Institute on Aging (NIA)<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>PROphylaxis for paTiEnts at Risk of COVID-19 infecTion -V</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Niclosamide;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust;   LifeArc;   Kidney Research UK (KRUK);   UNION therapeutics;   Addenbrookes Charitable Trust<br/><b>Recruiting</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>Salvianolic acid B and its magnesium salt inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection of Vero-E6 cells by blocking spike protein-mediated membrane fusion</strong> - OBJECTIVE: The investigate the inhibitory effects of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) monomer salvianolic acid B (Sal-B) and its magnesium salt Salvia Miltiorrhiza Polyphenolate Injection (ZDDY) against SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro and explore the molecular mechanism.</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>Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 is a novel target of the gamma-secretase complex</strong> - Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is a key regulator of the renin-angiotensin system, but also the functional receptor of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Based on structural similarity with other γ-secretase (γS) targets, we hypothesized that ACE2 may be affected by γS proteolytic activity. We found that after ectodomain shedding, ACE2 is targeted for intramembrane proteolysis by γS, releasing a soluble ACE2 C-terminal fragment. Consistently, chemical or…</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>SARS-CoV-2 spike protein stabilized in the closed state induces potent neutralizing responses</strong> - The majority of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in use or advanced development are based on the viral spike protein (S) as their immunogen. S is present on virions as pre-fusion trimers in which the receptor binding domain (RBD) is stochastically open or closed. Neutralizing antibodies have been described against both open and closed conformations. The long-term success of vaccination strategies depends upon inducing antibodies that provide long-lasting broad immunity against evolving SARS-CoV-2 strains….</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>ILRUN downregulates ACE2 expression and blocks infection of human cells by SARS-CoV-2</strong> - The human protein-coding gene ILRUN (inflammation and lipid regulator with UBA-like and NBR1-like domains, previously C6orf106) was identified as a proviral factor for Hendra virus infection and recently characterised to function an inhibitor of type-I interferon expression. Here, we have utilised RNA-seq to define cellular pathways regulated by ILRUN in the context of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection of Caco-2 cells. We find that inhibition of ILRUN…</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>Targeting the conserved stem loop 2 motif in the SARS-CoV-2 genome</strong> - RNA structural elements occur in numerous single stranded (+)-sense RNA viruses. The stem-loop 2 motif (s2m) is one such element with an unusually high degree of sequence conservation, being found in the 3’ UTR in the genomes of many astroviruses, some picornaviruses and noroviruses, and a variety of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. The evolutionary conservation and its occurrence in all viral subgenomic transcripts implicates a key role of s2m in the viral infection cycle. Our…</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>beta-D-N 4-hydroxycytidine (NHC) Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Through Lethal Mutagenesis But Is Also Mutagenic To Mammalian Cells</strong> - Mutagenic ribonucleosides can act as broad-based antiviral agents. They are metabolized to the active ribonucleoside triphosphate form and concentrate in the genomes of RNA viruses during viral replication. β-D-N 4-hydroxycytidine (NHC, the initial metabolite of molnupiravir) is more than 100-fold more active than ribavirin or favipiravir against SARS-CoV-2, with antiviral activity correlated to the level of mutagenesis in virion RNA. However, NHC also displays host mutational activity in an…</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>Identification of phytocompounds from Houttuynia cordata Thunb. as potential inhibitors for SARS-CoV-2 replication proteins through GC-MS/LC-MS characterization, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a massive viral disease outbreak of international concerns. The present study is mainly intended to identify the bioactive phytocompounds from traditional antiviral herb Houttuynia cordata Thunb. as potential inhibitors for three main replication proteins of SARS-CoV-2, namely Main protease (Mpro), Papain-Like protease (PLpro) and ADP ribose phosphatase (ADRP) which control the replication process. A…</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>Current understanding on molecular drug targets and emerging treatment strategy for novel coronavirus-19</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped positive-sense RNA virus, contain crown-like spikes on its surface, exceptional of large RNA genome, and a special replication machinery. Common symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 include cough, common cold, fever, sore throat, and a variety of severe acute respiratory disease (SARD) such as pneumonia. SARS-CoV-2 infects epithelial cells, T-cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells and also influences the production and implantation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines….</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>Covid-19 Clinical Course and Blood Groups: Turkish Population-Based Study</strong> - CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that ABO and Rh blood groups do not have any impact on the rate of hospital admission, hospital and ICU stay, MV support, and CFR.</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 Contribution of Biophysics and Structural Biology to Current Advances in COVID-19</strong> - Critical to viral infection are the multiple interactions between viral proteins and host-cell counterparts. The first such interaction is the recognition of viral envelope proteins by surface receptors that normally fulfil other physiological roles, a hijacking mechanism perfected over the course of evolution. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the etiological agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has successfully adopted this strategy using its spike…</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>Role of epithelial-endothelial cell interaction in the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluates the role of endothelial cells in the development of clinical disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, and the importance of endothelial cell-epithelial cell interaction in the pathogenesis of human COVID-19 diseases.</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>Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for the Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19: A Fiction, Hope or Hype? An Updated Review</strong> - In December 2019, the novel coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) that began in China had infected so far more than 109,217,366 million individuals worldwide and accounted for more than 2,413,912 fatalities. With the dawn of this novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), there was a requirement to select potential therapies that might effectively kill the virus, accelerate the recovery, or decrease the case fatality rate. Besides the currently available antiviral medications for human immunodeficiency…</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>Network pharmacology approach to decipher signaling pathways associated with target proteins of NSAIDs against COVID-19</strong> - Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) showed promising clinical efficacy toward COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) patients as potent painkillers and anti-inflammatory agents. However, the prospective anti-COVID-19 mechanisms of NSAIDs are not evidently exposed. Therefore, we intended to decipher the most influential NSAIDs candidate(s) and its novel mechanism(s) against COVID-19 by network pharmacology. FDA (U.S. Food &amp; Drug Administration) approved NSAIDs (19 active drugs and one…</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>Self-Assembling Nanoparticle Vaccines Displaying the Receptor Binding Domain of SARS-CoV-2 Elicit Robust Protective Immune Responses in Rhesus Monkeys</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 caused the COVID-19 pandemic that lasted for more than a year. Globally, there is an urgent need to use safe and effective vaccines for immunization to achieve comprehensive protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Focusing on developing a rapid vaccine platform with significant immunogenicity as well as broad and high protection efficiency, we designed a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) displayed on self-assembled ferritin nanoparticles. In a 293i cells…</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>Uncoupling of macrophage inflammation from self-renewal modulates host recovery from respiratory viral infection</strong> - Tissue macrophages self-renew during homeostasis and produce inflammatory mediators upon microbial infection. We examined the relationship between proliferative and inflammatory properties of tissue macrophages by defining the impact of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, a central regulator of self-renewal, in alveolar macrophages (AMs) . Activation of β-catenin by Wnt ligand inhibited AM proliferation and stemness, but promoted inflammatory activity. In a murine influenza viral pneumonia model,…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IMPROVEMENTS RELATED TO PARTICLE, INCLUDING SARS-CoV-2, DETECTION AND METHODS THEREFOR</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU323295937">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A COMPREHENSIVE DISINFECTION SYSTEM DURING PANDEMIC FOR PERSONAL ITEMS AND PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPE) TO SAFEGUARD PEOPLE</strong> - The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to an enormous demand for gadgets / objects for personal protection. To prevent the spread of virus, it is important to disinfect commonly touched objects. One of the ways suggested is to use a personal UV-C disinfecting box that is “efficient and effective in deactivating the COVID-19 virus. The present model has implemented the use of a UV transparent material (fused silica quartz glass tubes) as the medium of support for the objects to be disinfected to increase the effectiveness of disinfection without compromising the load bearing capacity. Aluminum foil, a UV reflecting material, was used as the inner lining of the box for effective utilization of the UVC light emitted by the UVC lamps. Care has been taken to prevent leakage of UVC radiation out of the system. COVID-19 virus can be inactivated in 5 minutes by UVC irradiation in this disinfection box - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN322882412">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING SYSTEM FOR MENTAL HEALTH MONITORING OF PERSON DURING THE PANDEMIC OF COVID-19</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU323295498">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>USE OF IMINOSUGAR COMPOUND IN PREPARATION OF ANTI-SARS-COV-2 VIRUS DRUG</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU322897928">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Compositions and methods for the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) infection</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU321590214">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>用于检测新型冠状病毒的试纸和试剂盒</strong> - 本发明涉及生物技术和免疫检测技术领域，具体涉及一种用于检测新型冠状病毒的试纸和试剂盒。所述试纸或试剂盒含有抗体1和/或抗体2，所述抗体1的重、轻链可变区的氨基酸序列分别如SEQ ID NO:1‑2所示，所述抗体2的重、轻链可变区的氨基酸序列分别如SEQ ID NO:3‑4所示。本发明对于大批量的新型冠状病毒样本，包括新型冠状病毒突变（英国、南非）与非突变株的人血清、鼻咽拭子等样本的检测有普遍检测意义，避免突变株的漏检。 - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=CN322953478">link</a></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Fahrgastleitsystem und Verfahren zum Leiten von Fahrgästen</strong> -
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
</p><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Die Erfindung betrifft ein Fahrgastleitsystem zum Leiten von mit einem Fahrzeug (1) mit wenigstens zwei Türen (2.L, 2.R) transportieren Fahrgästen (3), mit wenigstens einem Sensor (4) zur Überwachung der Fahrgäste (3), wenigstens einem Anzeigemittel (5) zur Ausgabe von Leitinformationen, wenigstens einem Aktor zum Öffnen oder Verriegeln einer Tür (2.L, 2.R) und wenigstens einer Recheneinheit (7). Das erfindungsgemäße Fahrgastleitsystem ist dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass die Recheneinheit (7) dazu eingerichtet ist durch Auswertung vom wenigstens einen Sensor (4) erzeugter Sensordaten zu erkennen an welcher Tür (2.L, 2.R) des Fahrzeugs (1) Fahrgäste (3) ein- und/oder aussteigen möchten und wenigstens eine Tür (2.L, 2.R) für einen Ausstieg festzulegen und/oder wenigstens eine Tür (2.L, 2.R) für einen Einstieg festzulegen, sodass eine Anzahl an Begegnungen von sich durch das Fahrzeug (1) bewegender Fahrgäste (3) und/oder aus dem Fahrzeug (1) aussteigenden und/oder in das Fahrzeug (1) einsteigenden Fahrgästen (3) minimiert wird.</p></li>
</ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=DE323289145">link</a></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Vorrichtung zum Desinfizieren, der Körperpflege oder dergleichen</strong> -
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
</p><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Vorrichtung zum Desinfizieren, der Körperpflege oder dergleichen mittels einer flüssigen oder cremigen Substanz (20), dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass die Vorrichtung mit einem elektrisch betriebenen Erinnerungs-Modul und einem Vorratsbehälter (10) für die Substanz (20) versehen ist, die Substanz (20) in dosierter Menge zur Ausgabeöffnung (9) gefördert wird und die Vorrichtung dazu geeignet ist, am Körper oder der Kleidung einer Person getragen zu werden.</p></li>
</ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=DE323289850">link</a></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gebrauchter Schnellteststreifen als Probenmaterial für eine Nachtestung</strong> -
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
</p><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Die Erfindung betrifft ein Verfahren zur laborbasierten Überprüfung und/oder weiteren Ausdifferenzierung einer im Schnelltestverfahren erhaltenen Diagnose einer Infektionskrankheit, wobei im Rahmen des Schnelltestverfahrens eine flüssige Patientenprobe auf ein Objekt aus einem porösen Material aufgetragen wird und wobei dieses Objekt nach Trocknung der flüssigen Patientenprobe an das diagnostische Labor übermittelt wird. Im Labor werden dann die eingetrockneten Probenreste aus dem porösen Material ausgelöst und analysiert.</p></li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=DE323289151">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>针对新型冠状病毒核衣壳蛋白的抗体或其抗原结合片段及其应用</strong> - 本发明提供了一种针对新型冠状病毒核衣壳蛋白的抗体或其抗原结合片段及其应用，所述抗体选自mAb6抗体、mAb7抗体、mAb8抗体和mAb9抗体中的任意一种；且所述抗体由保藏号为CCTCC NO：C2020236、CCTCC NO：C2020237、CCTCC NO：C2020238或CCTCC NO：C2020239的杂交瘤细胞分泌。利用所述抗体能够检测环境样品和/或生物样品中新型冠状病毒或者其抗原的存在情况。此外，本发明还提供了利用所述抗体制备得到的新型冠状病毒检测试剂盒，能够在感染病毒早期就检测出核衣壳蛋白，为临床检测新型冠状病毒提供了快速、准确的手段。 - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=CN323191621">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
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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>Inside India’s COVID-19 Surge</strong> - At a hospital in New Delhi, supplies and space are running out, but the patients keep coming. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/inside-indias-covid-19-surge">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Biden’s Great Economic Rebalancing</strong> - The President is looking to correct a capitalist economy that has gone askew, and reclaim a lost vision of shared prosperity. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/joe-bidens-great-economic-rebalancing">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Facebook and the Normalization of Deviance</strong> - The trouble with waiting to address problems long after you know that they exist. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/facebook-and-the-normalization-of-deviance">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Pennsylvania Lawmaker and the Resurgence of Christian Nationalism</strong> - How Doug Mastriano’s rise embodies the spread of a movement centered on the belief that God intended America to be a Christian nation. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/a-pennsylvania-lawmaker-and-the-resurgence-of-christian-nationalism">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Don’t Panic Over One Weaker-Than-Expected Jobs Report</strong> - Many indicators point to the economy continuing to rebound strongly from the pandemic. So why did the pace of hiring fall in April? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/dont-panic-over-one-weaker-than-expected-jobs-report">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Supreme Court made the GOP’s new voting restrictions possible</strong> -
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NpHknwODV5MztGRm4_jdnRL6I9Y=/136x0:2856x2040/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69256456/696327604.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Justice Neil Gorsuch, left, talks with Chief Justice John Roberts on the steps of the Supreme Court following Gorsuch’s official investiture at the Supreme Court in 2017. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Voting rights mean little if the Court refuses to enforce them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CAfKbR">
On Thursday morning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation that <a href="https://legiscan.com/FL/text/S0090/2021">restricts absentee voting</a>, discourages voters from registering through voter registration campaigns, and potentially prohibits volunteers from giving food and water to voters waiting in line to cast their ballot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VqyPpF">
Many provisions of this new Florida law mirror similar provisions in a <a href="https://www.vox.com/22352112/georgia-voting-sb-202-explained">Georgia voter suppression bill</a> that became law last March. The Georgia law also takes aim at absentee voting, among other things, but its most troubling provision allows the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to effectively take over county election boards — boards that have the power to <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-bill-would-shift-power-over-elections-to-gop-appointees/VPNVO2W4TBBTFKGA7Z2GZIEQEE/">disqualify voters and to close polling places</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1v8x6U">
Meanwhile, Republicans in Texas are pushing legislation that would <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/19/22374521/texas-voting-laws-sb7-hb6">redistribute polling precincts in urban areas</a> in ways that would make it harder for many voters to cast a ballot, and that would require local election officials to potentially purge thousands of voters from their rolls. In Arizona, Republicans have proposed an array of new hurdles that voters would have to clear to cast a ballot — all while<strong> </strong>conducting a <a href="https://www.vox.com/22417310/arizona-audit-ballots-cyber-ninjas-uv-lights-qanon-conspiracy-theory-vote-suppression-fraud">haphazard “audit” of the 2020 election</a> that appears designed to justify such laws.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hMopPy">
All of this is possible because the Supreme Court has spent the past decade and a half dismantling safeguards against these kinds of laws. Not that long ago, these attacks on democracy would have run headlong into a skeptical judiciary. Now they are likely to be upheld.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WDc037">
Almost immediately after DeSantis signed Florida’s new voter suppression law, a coalition of voting rights organizations and voters represented by superstar Democratic lawyer Marc Elias filed a <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2021/05/Florida-Filed-Complaint.pdf">lawsuit challenging the new law</a>. Several <a href="https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/30/here-are-all-the-lawsuits-challenging-georgias-new-voting-law">similar lawsuits challenge the Georgia law</a>. But these suits face an uphill struggle, largely due to Supreme Court decisions <a href="https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/51/lets-think-about-court-packing-2/">dismantling various statutes and legal doctrines protecting the right to vote</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CoR1zE">
A little over a decade ago, federal statutes and well-established constitutional doctrines provided a robust shield against state laws that serve little purpose other than to restrict the right to vote. But the Supreme Court started poking holes in this shield not long after President George W. Bush appointed Chief Justice John Roberts, a <a href="https://www.vox.com/21211880/supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts-voting-rights-act-election-2020">longtime crusader against strong voting rights laws</a>, and Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/21/21328863/supreme-court-trump-vacancy-voting-rights-rnc2020-epa-police">most reliable Republican partisan</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kk40O7">
And the Court only <a href="https://www.vox.com/22286213/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-arizona-brnovich-democratic-national-committee-republican-party">grew more hostile to voting rights</a> after President Donald Trump added three conservative Republicans to its bench.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="08kR0d">
States like Florida and Georgia are making in harder to vote, in other words, because they think the courts will let them get away with it. Due to some crucial decisions by the Roberts Court, they’re probably right.
</p>
<h3 id="xmCnNV">
Not that long ago, the Supreme Court would have struck down laws that target trumped-up allegations of voter fraud
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j3KPbJ">
Though the right to vote is the essential building block of any democracy, not all laws that make it more difficult to vote are unconstitutional. As the Supreme Court recognized in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/415/724"><em>Storer v. Brown</em></a> (1974), “as a practical matter, there must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic processes.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uiyb7d">
States may legitimately require voters to cast their ballots at a particular location, and it may require these voters to do so by a particular time and date. They may impose reasonable restrictions on who may qualify as a candidate whose name appears on the ballot. And states may require voters to use a standardized ballot rather than, say, simply writing a bunch of names on a blank sheet of paper and dropping it off at a polling place.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ejWhOf">
Yet while many election rules are permissible even if they prevent some small cohort of voters from casting a ballot, the Supreme Court as recently as 13 years ago forbade states from enacting laws that serve no purpose other than to restrict the franchise. As the Court held in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/460/780"><em>Anderson v. Celebrezze</em></a> (1983), when confronted with a law that makes it harder to vote, federal courts must weigh “the character and magnitude of the asserted injury” to the right to vote against “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZGUXq7">
Laws that imposed minimal burdens on the right to vote, while serving legitimate state interests, were typically upheld. But laws that burdened the right to vote without achieving any other real purpose would be struck down under the <em>Anderson</em> framework.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SrSKFR">
<em>Anderson</em> is technically still good law. But the Supreme Court watered down <em>Anderson</em>’s balancing test so severely in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZO.html"><em>Crawford v. Marion County Election Board</em></a> (2008) that it’s unclear whether <em>Anderson</em> still provides any meaningful safeguard against laws enacted primarily to disenfranchise voters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KIUchs">
<em>Crawford</em> was an early challenge to what was, at the time, a cutting-edge method of restricting the franchise: strict voter ID laws. Proponents of such laws, which require voters to show a photo ID before they can cast a ballot, typically claim that they are necessary to prevent anyone from impersonating a voter at the polls. But this kind of voter fraud is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21222084/kentucky-voter-id-coronavirus-pandemic">so rare that it barely exists</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zwt9CD">
A study by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, who led much of the Justice Department’s voting rights work in the Obama administration, uncovered only <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/6/9107927/voter-id-election-fraud">35 credible allegations of in-person voter fraud</a> among the 834 million ballots cast in the 2000-2014 elections. A Wisconsin study found seven cases of any kind of fraud among the 3 million votes cast in the 2004 election — and <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/breaking-texas-voter-id-law-struck-down-by-an-extraordinarily-conservative-appeals-court-48bc0293f55b/">none</a> were the kind that could be prevented by voter ID. In 2014, Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, a Republican, announced the results of a two-year investigation into election misconduct within his state. He found <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/iowas-republican-secretary-of-state-just-proved-that-voter-id-laws-are-unnecessary-cdb0729ff3b4/">zero cases</a> of voter impersonation at the polls.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HjkHF6">
The primary opinion in <em>Crawford</em> was only able to identify one case of in-person voter fraud at the polls <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZO.html">in the preceding 140 years</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P5lnE8">
So, under <em>Anderson</em>’s framework, the Indiana voter ID law at issue in <em>Crawford</em> should have been struck down. A state’s power to regulate elections is at its nadir when it targets an imaginary or virtually nonexistent problem.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="79sDiO">
Yet the Court allowed Indiana’s voter ID law to go into effect in <em>Crawford</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="60Qr2c">
The Court’s conservatives were unanimous in favor of this result, but it’s worth noting that the vote in <em>Crawford </em>was 6-3, with the five conservative justices splitting between two separate opinions. The primary opinion in <em>Crawford</em> was authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, a moderate Gerald Ford appointee who frequently voted with the Court’s liberal bloc.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NVBE4r">
Stevens later described <em>Crawford</em> as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/stevens-says-supreme-court-decision-on-voter-id-was-correct-but-maybe-not-right/2016/05/15/9683c51c-193f-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html?utm_term=.4c92ef515545">a fairly unfortunate decision</a>.” And, shortly after Stevens’s death in 2019, election law scholar Rick Hasen <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/john-paul-stevens-supreme-court-conservative-votes.html">speculated</a> that Stevens’s opinion in <em>Crawford</em> may have been a “tactical move that saved the country from a much worse decision” — Stevens’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who might have joined a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZC.html">more radical opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia</a> if Stevens hadn’t voted for a conservative outcome.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WCdUop">
Regardless of why the justices voted the way they did in <em>Crawford</em>, however, the decision was still a disaster for voting rights. It established that states may enact laws restricting the franchise, even if the only justification for the law is an imaginary or greatly exaggerated problem.
</p>
<h3 id="U1Rwgv">
The Court dismantled key protections against racist election laws
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SphLsz">
Beyond the balancing test recognized by cases like <em>Anderson</em>, federal law is also supposed to provide very robust safeguards against racial discrimination in elections.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IUNKGi">
The most potent provision of the federal Voting Rights Act was Section 5 of the law, which required that states and local governments with a history of racist voting practices <a href="https://www.vox.com/22286213/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-arizona-brnovich-democratic-national-committee-republican-party">“preclear” any new voting rules</a> — either with the Justice Department or with a federal court in Washington, DC — before those new rules could take effect. The idea was to stop racist election rules from ever having a chance to disenfranchise anyone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6FYgDx">
Section 5 also provided very broad protection against racial voter discrimination in the jurisdictions where it applied. Under Section 5, covered states and local governments were required to seek preclearance for any new “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” And preclearance would be denied if the new election rule had either the “purpose” or the “effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S7ajBQ">
Before the Supreme Court effectively eliminated this preclearance regime in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4053797526279899410&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr"><em>Shelby County v. Holder</em></a> (2013), <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/jurisdictions-previously-covered-section-5">nine states were subject to preclearance</a> on a statewide basis. That included Arizona, Georgia, and Texas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3Njz0c">
Before <em>Shelby County</em>, in other words, Texas would not have been allowed to implement a law that shuts down voting precincts in primarily Black and brown neighborhoods. Similarly, Georgia’s entire voter suppression law would be subject to preclearance, as would any new action taken under that law — such as a decision by state-level Republicans to take over local election boards in Atlanta, or to use their control of local election administration to shut down polling locations in Black communities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jUBEQ7">
The premise of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4053797526279899410&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr"><em>Shelby</em> <em>County</em></a> was that it was unfair to single out the particular jurisdictions that were previously subject to preclearance because those jurisdictions no longer engaged in the kind of “‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination” that characterized the Jim Crow era. As Roberts wrote for the Court in <em>Shelby County</em>, “there is no denying … that the conditions that originally justified [preclearance] no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mNum8P">
Perhaps. But, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously wrote in dissent, the fully operational Voting Rights Act was one of the primary reasons Jim Crow voter suppression waned in the latter part of the 20th century. “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes,” Ginsburg clapped back at Roberts, “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K5fKvy">
Ginsburg’s warning now seems prescient, as many of the same states that were once subject to preclearance are now racing to enact laws disenfranchising voters.
</p>
<h3 id="IVFIS3">
It’s going to get worse
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6BdPsR">
Decisions like <em>Crawford</em> and <em>Shelby County</em> were handed down when the relatively moderate conservative Justice Kennedy held the balance of power on the Supreme Court, when Justice Ginsburg was still alive, and when Amy Coney Barrett was still an obscure law professor at Notre Dame. Now that Kennedy and Ginsburg are no longer around, the Court’s new majority is likely to make significant new incursions on the right to vote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gX0IZE">
The Supreme Court heard a case in March, for example, that could potentially <a href="https://www.vox.com/22286213/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-arizona-brnovich-democratic-national-committee-republican-party">dismantle what remains of the Voting Rights Act</a>. Although several of the justices seemed <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/3/2/22309326/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-brnovich-democratic-national-committee-carvin-brett-kavanuagh">disinclined at oral argument</a> to eliminate all of the nation’s safeguards against racist election laws in one fell swoop, this case is still likely to weaken the Voting Rights Act even further, opening the door to more voter suppression laws.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ty3g7e">
The conservative justices, meanwhile, are pushing a radical doctrine that would give state legislatures an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/26/21535503/supreme-court-wisconsin-democratic-national-committee-neil-gorsuch-brett-kavanaugh-bush-v-gore">unprecedented new power to enact new election laws</a> — even if those laws are vetoed by the governor or struck down by the state’s courts. As Justice Neil Gorsuch described this doctrine, “the Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w3h6ka">
It’s unclear whether the Court will implement this doctrine or how far it will go in doing so. Of the six conservative justices, only four currently endorse Gorsuch’s approach. Roberts has <a href="https://utexas.app.box.com/s/pd70m6vmah3xf3h7je69pgmnunwuscbm">backed it in the past</a>, but he <a href="https://utexas.app.box.com/s/pd70m6vmah3xf3h7je69pgmnunwuscbm">stepped away from that view</a> in an opinion last October. This means that the decision likely comes down to the recently confirmed Justice Barrett, who has not been on the Court long enough to reveal whether she agrees with Gorsuch.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zalf5P">
If taken to its logical extreme, Gorsuch’s proposed rule could <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/11/3/21546419/supreme-court-2020-election-question-pennslyvania-minnesota-texas-north-carolina">skew elections even further toward the Republican Party</a>. It could potentially allow gerrymandered state legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to draw congressional maps that will lock Democrats out of power — and then to enact these maps into law even if the states’ Democratic governors attempt to veto the maps. Gorsuch’s approach might also prohibit state supreme courts from enforcing state constitutional provisions that protect voting rights or prohibit gerrymandering.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GcYZJ0">
The Supreme Court, in other words, is signaling that it is not inclined to protect voting rights — and that it may even be inclined to further dismantle existing rules that protect our democracy. Republican state lawmakers are as capable of reading these signals as anyone else. And so it should come as no surprise that we are seeing the kinds of voter suppression bills that we are now seeing in places like Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Virginia Republicans’ messy, Trumpy race to pick a nominee for governor</strong> -
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iQUHXtDxySxZ9SNZylefLSYB-TM=/347x0:5894x4160/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69256253/1224709804.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
State Sen. Amanda Chase, seen here at a 2020 open-carry protest in Virginia, is one of the most explicitly pro-Trump candidates now running to be Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee in Virginia. | Eze Amos/Getty Images
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Republicans running for governor in Virginia signal a lot about the future of the GOP.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HBZ9E5">
GALAX, Virginia — Republican gubernatorial candidate <a href="https://kirkcox.com/">Kirk Cox</a> was several minutes into a wonky election security answer at a diner when <a href="https://www.vox.com/22217039/capitol-attack-trump-rally-election-biden-explained">January 6</a> came up again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CYs8I3">
Did President Joe Biden win the election? Cox avoided directly answering the question at this recent event, though he had previously acknowledged that reality, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-general-elections-virginia-elections-voting-495f43e4a5d5bbf049cc7c4fc008969b">the one GOP frontrunner willing to do so</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qBkhZO">
Instead, he refocused on proposals like voter ID requirements, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-oppose-many-voting-restrictions-but-not-voter-id-laws/">which are popular with lots of voters</a>. But now, Lin, a Trump supporter who had posed the Biden question, had another one. She wanted to know whether he agreed with the Virginia Senate <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/amanda-chase-virginia-censure/2021/01/27/b126bf46-60cf-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html">censuring</a> one of its members, Amanda Chase, after she called the people who <a href="https://www.vox.com/22217039/capitol-attack-trump-rally-election-biden-explained">stormed the US Capitol</a> that day in January “<a href="https://blurredbylines.com/blog/amanda-chase-virginia-capitol-riot-dc-january-6/">patriots</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7vDWuh">
Did Cox support the “freedom of speech” of Chase, now one of Cox’s competitors for the Republican nomination?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8cMWh6">
“I’m very much for freedom of speech,” Cox answered.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="475CaI">
“So you were against [the censure vote]?” asked Lin, who supports Chase in the race. “I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I need a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1EOqUX">
This narrow line on the 2020 election and cancel culture is one Republicans have had to dance along for months in courting voters before Saturday’s Virginia GOP gubernatorial convention.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<div id="c7Eq3F">
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUIc18">
The GOP has had a tough go of it statewide in the past few years in Virginia, with demographic changes helping push the state to become reliably Democratic. The party’s response — running further and further to the right — has only exacerbated the problem. But Virginia might not be lost to the right kind of Republican. At least not yet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YYvq7b">
Republicans will choose their nominee in an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/here-s-why-virginia-gop-s-nominating-process-governor-could-n1266655">“unassembled convention</a>”; nearly 54,000 Republicans who successfully applied to be a delegate will be able to cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 drive-up locations around Virginia. It’s a process that has had more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-gop-convention/2021/04/04/4bfe8fc4-9228-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html">a few</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/lot-confusion-virginia-republicans-stumble-over-their-own-voter-id-n1265887">bumps</a> along the way, including Chase <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/audio-republican-gubernatorial-candidate?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTY4OTQzLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNjEyMTU1NCwiXyI6Inl0ZUZHIiwiaWF0IjoxNjIwMzM1MjM4LCJleHAiOjE2MjAzMzg4MzgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTkxMzYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.HwqJkp0jVhIlP-YqLxj-aKtToiOeF8l2E7Fse2JYN5c&amp;utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email#play">alleging the party chose a convention over a primary</a> to prevent her from becoming the nominee. It could also take several days to know the results — candidates have already sown doubt about the race.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MT3S4S">
“It’s going to make the Iowa caucuses look like a well-oiled machine,” a Democratic operative said, with a touch of hopeful glee.
</p>
<h3 id="N6sze2">
The candidates represent a few ways the GOP could go in Virginia
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZZTZSJ">
Virginia last chose a Republican in a statewide election in 2009. Since then, the GOP has run candidates that its own insiders say don’t appeal to the state’s growing suburban population. They’re going to have to make inroads back into those communities to have a hope of winning, says Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9mUH28">
“I always look at, in the 2016 primaries, places where candidates like John Kasich and Marco Rubio did well against Trump: Those are the areas that have moved more toward the Democrats since — places like Loudoun County, Hanover County, Chesterfield County,” Coleman said. “Maybe those voters are still open to the right type of Republican after voting for Hillary [Clinton] and Biden.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Wl3jl">
But can they do that while turning out the 44 percent of the state that went for Trump?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MxFGIP">
The mix of contenders has been revealing.
</p>
<ul>
<li id="l6LOiP">
Chase, the self-described “Trump in heels,” has dominated headlines in national media, saying things like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/20/22387556/derek-chauvin-verdict-guilty-murder-manslaughter">Derek Chauvin verdict</a> made her “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-chase-gop-governor-candidate-sick-chauvin-guilty-verdict-2021-4">sick</a>” because she worried about how cops would feel about it. And she’s popular with the base, at least according to a February poll and a <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/the-latest-polling-in-the-republican">more recent one conducted by Democrats</a>.
</li>
<li id="KlUuEX">
Businessman and former lieutenant governor hopeful Pete Snyder is nearly as Trumpy, railing against the “woke” liberal establishment and highlighting endorsements from figures like <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/13/20963016/trump-promote-ken-cuccinelli-chad-wolf-dhs-acting-secretary-uscis-federal-vacancies-reform-act">Ken Cuccinelli</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/31/16236382/david-clarke-resigns">Sheriff David Clarke</a>.
</li>
<li id="xSsU35">
Meanwhile, newcomer and former private equity group executive <a href="https://www.youngkinforgovernor.com/">Glenn Youngkin</a> has surged to the top of some <a href="https://www.facebook.com/VAFaithFreedom/posts/2925876564400319">recent</a> <a href="https://www.youngkinforgovernor.com/post/youngkin-dominates-liberty-university-college-republican-straw-poll">straw polls</a> by running a well-funded campaign that ticks <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA7g_U43JxA">all the conservative culture war boxes</a> but also<strong> </strong>talks about appealing to “Trump Republicans, libertarians, and Democrats” to win in November.
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GRHaje">
Cox, a delegate in the Virginia House and formerly the body’s speaker, remains the establishment favorite. He touts his know-how on implementing conservative policies, telling Vox, “it’s very important to have the experience to know how to run the state and to make good decisions.”
</li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u9rSHa">
But regardless of how candidates are positioning themselves, there are certain issues that keep coming up on the trail: support for law enforcement, the eradication of “critical race theory” from schools, and election integrity, to name a few.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E5eQ1N">
And for some voters, like Heather, who attended Cox’s event in Galax, the last on that list is most important — or, more specifically, it’s the question of whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election that matters most.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bIqHna">
“That’s a huge one,” she said. “That’s first and foremost for this election or any election.”
</p>
<h3 id="fK7ah9">
Virginia Republicans want to stay competitive — and keep conservatives on board
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TSeaq1">
The future of the GOP after Trump is an open question. And barring disputes like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/5/5/22419504/liz-cheney-trump-big-lie">the one playing out between US Rep. Liz Cheney and the bulk of the House GOP</a> right now, Virginia might be the best glimpse we get before the 2022 midterms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EAgoBr">
Here’s what it looks like: There are seven candidates running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, with four in real contention (Youngkin, Chase, Cox, and Snyder). All of them tout their traditional conservative bona fides — being pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortion, pro-business, and the like. Many of them rail against Covid-related closures, praising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for keeping schools and businesses open throughout the pandemic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n3eMKb">
“All across Virginia on day one, we are going to get every single school open — five days a week, every single week, with a real, live, breathing teacher in every classroom,” Snyder told a crowd at a brewery in Wytheville last weekend. “And folks, getting the schools open is only the beginning. We need to break the backs of this special interest monopoly of the teachers’ unions and bring real change to our schools.”
</p>
<div id="dyHA56">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
Closing message for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VAGOV?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VAGOV</a> candidate Pete Snyder (R), all on education. If he’s nominated at this Saturday’s convention, expect the message to continue into the general…<a href="https://t.co/WN1YxoIRA6">https://t.co/WN1YxoIRA6</a>
</p>
— Josh Kraushaar (<span class="citation" data-cites="HotlineJosh">@HotlineJosh</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1389675881153634312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2021</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oH0TpH">
Given the country’s rate of vaccination, decreased community spread, and reopening, those pandemic issues might not be as relevant come November — or in 2022 and beyond. Trump, though, still will be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uWzalF">
At Snyder’s event, an emcee opened the afternoon by asking, “How many of you wish Donald Trump was president right now?” and a one-time Trump operator told the crowd they had to get to work to “defeat the socialists,” who “might even be worse than socialists, they’re bordering on communists.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="61uPsJ">
Youngkin, for his part, makes sure to note in his stump speech that he’s won praise from Trump, but he was also willing to criticize the former president’s tone as “a bit harsh” at <a href="https://loudounnow.com/2021/04/27/snyder-stumps-in-ashburn-as-convention-nears/">a campaign event in northern Virginia</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0D27JF">
Loyalty to Trump isn’t the key thing, argues <a href="https://www.peterdoran.org/">Peter Doran</a>, a former think tank CEO and one of the other three candidates recognized by the state party. (The others are former Roanoke Sheriff <a href="https://octaviajohnson.com/">Octavia Johnson</a> and retired Army Col. <a href="https://www.sergiodelapena.com/">Sergio de la Peña</a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P2OQLk">
“Most Virginia Republicans are painted as these big hard-right, hard-conservative voters who only care about Donald Trump. That’s not true,” Doran said. “They care about their job. They care about what’s happening to their kids in this past year, and their education. And they care very deeply about the Republican Party’s failure to win over the past decade.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w5xLor">
Wilma, a mother of four and delegate in the convention, agreed, saying the GOP’s future relies on getting young people to understand conservative values like small government, constitutional rights, and concern about the deficit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uN13O1">
“My kids all look at the stimulus — it might be nice to get that money, that cash,” she said. “But eventually they know in the long run, they’re the generation that’s going to have to pay it back.”
</p>
<h3 id="t3rkeU">
The culture wars have consumed the GOP
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="txNJVz">
Still, it’s no longer enough to tick the “fiscal conservative,” “Christian,” “gun owner,” and “anti-abortion” boxes. There are new ones on the list — keywords of the culture war issues the former president helped animate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4CeSr5">
Take “critical race theory,” which Chase <a href="https://www.whsv.com/2021/04/20/republican-candidates-in-virginias-gubernatorial-race-meet-at-forum/">says</a> is part of the reason she decided to homeschool her children.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a9gYaR">
As <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/24/21451220/critical-race-theory-diversity-training-trump">Vox’s Fabiola Cineas explained</a>, “critical race theory is a framework for grappling with racial power and white supremacy in America.” But it’s also become a catch-all term for what the Trump administration thought was an effort to “indoctrinate” American students and workers with “divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies”:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N0sNNO">
“They’ve lumped everything together: critical race theory, the 1619 project, whiteness studies, talking about white privilege,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and UCLA and Columbia University law professor, told Vox. “What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history, that everything is behind us. None of these projects accept that it’s all behind us.”
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eQxhMR">
It’s not just Chase using the term frequently: Almost all the candidates make sure to highlight their opposition to it; six have <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-governor-election-critical-race-theory-pledge">signed a pledge opposing critical race theory</a>. As journalist Dave Weigel pointed out on Twitter, Youngkin went so far as to upload multiple video clips of him criticizing it.
</p>
<div id="8mjsLW">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
One of the front-runners in the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VAGov?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VAGov</a> GOP primary uploaded four videos in 24 hours about his opposition to critical race theory. <a href="https://t.co/RjSuGf3Enx">pic.twitter.com/RjSuGf3Enx</a>
</p>
— Dave Weigel (<span class="citation" data-cites="daveweigel">@daveweigel</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1389298970602606592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 3, 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7iXIuh">
Trump’s impact, though, is perhaps most evident in the obsession with election security.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0pS6sd">
On one hand, Amanda Chase’s stance on the 2020 election sets her apart from the rest of the party — so much so that she, her supporters, and some outsiders claim the state party chose a convention rather than a primary to mitigate the risk of her ending up at the top of their ticket.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="krJ03W">
Last month, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-general-elections-virginia-elections-voting-495f43e4a5d5bbf049cc7c4fc008969b">in an interview with the AP</a>, Chase even questioned whether Biden won Virginia. (He carried it by 10 percentage points, as <a href="https://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2020%20November%20General/Site/Presidential.html">official election results</a> show.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wgRFeq">
But none of the candidates can distance themselves too far from Trump’s lies and doubt-sowing about the 2020 election. They need only look to the US House to see the consequences of doing so.
</p>
<div id="i347pK">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
This is the key here. Cheney is responding to massive movement across the party to validate 1/6, led by, but by no means limited, to Trump. She’s not the one forcing this conversation, what annoys her colleagues is she won’t ignore it. <a href="https://t.co/t6QzdKQTkn">https://t.co/t6QzdKQTkn</a>
</p>
— Benjy Sarlin (<span class="citation" data-cites="BenjySarlin">@BenjySarlin</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1390303717849632778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n7zmWS">
Neither Youngkin nor Snyder will say Biden’s presidency is legitimate. Cox appears willing to do so (at least when he’s not at a diner in southwest Virginia).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HyF55p">
And everyone has plans to improve election integrity. Youngkin promotes his “election security task force,” one plank of which is updating voter rolls monthly. He and Cox talk about making the state election commission nonpartisan. Snyder wants to “make Virginia No. 1 in ballot integrity.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cofaKa">
They’re all fairly anodyne-sounding proposals, but talking about things like that is a requirement for securing the nomination, says Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V2eXie">
“While they may not support what happened on January 6, they do want to offer a position that shows some sympathy to the position of Trump supporters,” Farnsworth said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DmwF8o">
That doesn’t necessarily mean the rhetoric will dog them during the general election — Youngkin’s spokesperson said they believe election security isn’t a partisan issue, “it’s a democracy issue.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XEyOu9">
And “Kirk Cox is an example of a candidate who accepts Biden as a legitimate president but nevertheless speaks in ways that gives some solace to Trump supporters,” Farnsworth pointed out, adding it’s likely that “voters in November will not be dramatically impacted by what’s said in May.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uuNpj1">
Still, the insistence on making America’s elections more secure helps perpetuate a world in which seven out of 10 Republican voters still say — per a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics/cnn-poll-voting-rights/index.html">recent CNN poll</a> — that Biden didn’t win enough votes to be president.
</p>
<h3 id="bPeDaH">
Questioning election integrity is coming home to roost
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mlrUn0">
And the continued questioning of elections has applied even to their own party’s choices. Some of those <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/lot-confusion-virginia-republicans-stumble-over-their-own-voter-id-n1265887">choices</a>, admittedly, merit scrutiny from candidates extolling the importance of signatures on absentee ballots. But it also led Youngkin, Cox, and Chase to write to the party, demanding it not use “untested and unproven software that creates uncertainty, lacks openness and transparency, and is inconsistent with our calls as a party for safe and secure elections.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7YwT4Z">
Now, every ranked-choice ballot will be counted by hand, at a ballroom at the Richmond Marriott, race by race. Chair Rich Anderson <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/rpv-chairman-rich-anderson-explains?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTY4OTQzLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNTgyMjAwOSwiXyI6IlY4NFZXIiwiaWF0IjoxNjE5ODEwMzYyLCJleHAiOjE2MTk4MTM5NjIsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTkxMzYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.1lZsdq0s6UNwjm1iVaG04zkR_Qt6hnHKPCgA4OwrEww&amp;utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email#play">detailed to the Virginia Scope’s Brandon Jarvis</a> the lengths the Republican Party of Virginia is going to try to instill confidence in the process:
</p>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="piFYK4">
Each ballot “will be seen by several eyes at the same time” to guard against transposition of numbers.
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AqIYIP">
An out-of-state independent oversight team will be present.
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="52JsAp">
Each candidate can have two representatives in the counting room, a party spokesperson told Vox. And Anderson said they can “be pretty much right up on the ballots, and eyes on them,” because he wants “them to feel comfortable with the process, to understand it, and have confidence in the final outcomes.”
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k9nCeO">
The news media can be on site to report, and Anderson says he’ll provide regular updates on social media as well.
</li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CX77wF">
They’ve also set aside money to livestream the counting process, because, Anderson said, “I just don’t want to repeat what was done in different places around the country where people were concerned about it being an opaque process.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0IHKgO">
That’s left “no room” for any conspiracy theories about the counting to crop up, says John March, the state party communications director. Even so, there are bound to be some dissidents, and if it takes days, Coleman says he can<em> “</em>see the conspiracy theories now.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9TCwrk">
“When you have a multi-candidate field in a multi-round election,” Farnsworth said, “the only sound bet is expecting that the party won’t get together and sing ‘kumbaya’ when this is all over.”
</p>
<h3 id="NkbuGm">
Do these Republicans even have a shot in a general election?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a4gRnW">
Virginia, once home to the capital of the Confederacy, has moved left enough in presidential races that on election night in 2020, the forecast group Decision Desk called it for Joe Biden right as polls closed. Trump ended up with just 44 percent of the vote here, Biden with 54.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gvZ6u0">
But the GOP argues the state is not lost to them just yet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dRLYno">
In recent decades, Virginia had a peevish streak, electing a governor from the opposite party that just won the White House. The candidate to break that trend was former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — who’s running again this year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="af7NLF">
And March points to the “unprecedented” level of interest in the convention as a sign of what’s to come: “54,000 people are getting involved on the grassroots level. … You don’t really see that, and that just shows how excited Virginia Republicans are.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yi0lUO">
Without Trump on the ballot this year, there might be an opening — a slim one for the governorship, but a bigger one to flip competitive state House districts.<strong> </strong>The person Republicans choose on Saturday will matter a lot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qn6hGR">
“One thing I do think that could bode well for them is even though he lost, in 2017 Ed Gillespie got more votes than any previous Republican nominee for governor,” Coleman pointed out. “So maybe if Youngkin or whoever else can get that type of Gillespie turnout, which is definitely a question mark, and Democrats can’t get that anti-Trump turnout, maybe it’s going to be closer.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j30RvI">
Even so, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the GOP to narrow margins in some areas, let alone retake them. Take Chesterfield County, which Republicans easily won for decades. In 2020, it went for Biden by more than 6 percentage points.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2VSaeS">
“Going forward,” Coleman says, “this may be the last potential cycle where the Republicans could win a county like Chesterfield, and that may not even be enough — it may be necessary but not sufficient.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PSfwBQ">
Democrats seem to think it won’t be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2hKELj">
“We’re ready for a fight; we expect a fight. We expect a tough race,” said David Turner, the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “But what I would say is you can’t report accurately on the state of Virginia without acknowledging there’s pre-Trump and there’s post-Trump, and we’re still post-Trump.”
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why Democrats’ ambitions for health care are shrinking rapidly</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pL_MPtEwHIP9meW31Kx_vSSmgmE=/222x0:3679x2593/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69253361/GettyImages_1232584301.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
President Joe Biden seems to be scaling down his health care ambitions as he runs into the problem of how to pay for them. | Melina Mara/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Biden agenda has run into the hardest roadblock in health care: How do you pay for it?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M4qV5m">
As <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/7/16/20694598/joe-biden-health-care-plan-public-option">Joe Biden</a> closed in on the Democratic Party’s nomination, with only <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/18304448/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all">Bernie Sanders</a> still running against him, part of his pitch was that he knew how he’d pay for his proposals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ChMnfH">
Bernie’s $32 trillion <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/18304448/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all">single-payer Medicare-for-all plan</a>? Unrealistic and unaffordable. Biden’s $800 billion plan to create a <a href="https://www.vox.com/21540041/election-2020-joe-biden-health-care">new public insurance option</a> and build on Obamacare? Joe has it covered.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1hVIC8">
“The fact of the matter is, everything I call for I pay for,” Biden <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/march-democratic-debate-transcript-joe-biden-bernie-sanders">said</a> in his final debate with Sanders on March 15, 2020.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hzaz07">
But in practice, an $800 billion plan may be almost as politically daunting as a $32 trillion one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YY3DCM">
“It’s still a monumental lift,” Kim Monk, who follows Congress for investment clients at Capital Alpha Partners, told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nTQ4ME">
And that is forcing Biden to aim lower still.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UZRua3">
Right now, in his proposed <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/28/22404411/biden-american-families-plan-inequality">American Families Plan</a>, Biden is asking Congress for $200 billion to expand the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies for health insurance premiums. The expansion already passed in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22360870/american-rescue-plan-act-premium-tax-credit-health-insurance">American Rescue Plan</a> but expires after two years; the new proposal would make them permanent. The public option is nowhere to be found.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i6GFTe">
Meanwhile, the payment plan Biden proposed during his campaign and in his debate with Sanders — an increased tax on capital gains — <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/biden-to-propose-capital-gains-tax-as-high-as-43-4-for-wealthy">will probably be used</a> to pay for other parts of the Biden agenda, while a $450 billion savings proposal, favored by most Democrats in Congress, that would allow Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies was also left out of the Families Plan. Congressional Democrats were <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-urge-biden-to-keep-drug-pricing-proposal-in-antipoverty-plan-11619126518">urging</a> Biden to include the drug price idea and use the savings to pay for coverage expansions, such as lowering Medicare’s eligibility age.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5QpcVP">
It’s hard not to see one as related to the other. Biden’s plans for expanding health coverage — earlier Medicare eligibility, a public option — were modest compared to Sanders’s. But their fate, even as Biden proposes trillions in other new spending, shows that health care programs still have to pass a difficult test: They need to at least partially pay for themselves.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xELevU">
For decades, the norm has been that when Congress wants to pass a new expansion of health coverage, it will find the money to pay for at least some of that expansion from the health care industry, whether in the form of new taxes or spending cuts. Health care funds health care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LyY6mq">
But that creates a huge political problem: The health care industry can block new reforms not by opposing the reforms themselves but by campaigning against the cuts or taxes used to pay for them. Doctors, hospitals, and health care companies retain a lot of influence in Congress; every congressional district has a hospital, as lobbyists happily point out.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xMwAnT">
So even as their ambitions for health care grow, as demonstrated by Biden’s embrace of the public option, Democrats find themselves caught in this trap.
</p>
<h3 id="UtzugB">
Biden’s health care proposals still cost a lot of money — and that money has to come from somewhere
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K1EMaR">
Nobody knows for sure why Biden dropped the Medicare negotiations proposal from the American Families Plan, even as he called for lawmakers to pass it this year on a bipartisan basis — an unlikely prospect — in his <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/28/22408111/winners-and-losers-biden-joint-session-speech">first address to Congress</a>. The reporting has been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/24/biden-families-plan-tax/">circumspect</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FZmEwT">
But we do know the pharma industry has a <a href="https://www.axios.com/phrma-lobbying-trump-drug-prices-2018-3651a0c7-0f33-4d02-94b5-3778427cc559.html">massive war chest</a>, refilled every year by member fees, and has promised to deploy it if any major drug pricing reform started moving through Congress. Drug manufacturers also enjoy <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/2/22362078/covid-19-vaccines-pfizer-pharma-companies-popularity">their best public approval</a> in years after delivering Covid-19 vaccines in record time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cYvoMg">
“Why go after the very industry that basically is our lifeline out of the pandemic?” Monk said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g7Fs7w">
This is how the trap closes: When health care must pay for health care, the health care industry must take a hit in order to cover more people. That is something the industry’s immense lobbying apparatus usually wants to stop, and given its influence in the halls of Congress and in the White House, that can make anybody’s health care plan — whether it costs $800 billion or $32 trillion — a nonstarter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BGpqPz">
Biden avoided this problem with the initial two-year expansion of the ACA subsidies in the American Rescue Plan by mostly not paying for it. But even in this age of deficit doves, the $200 billion to make that expansion, or any other major health care expansion, permanent would need to be paid for. That presents a massive political problem, even for Biden’s more modest (compared with Sanders’s) proposals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WhV5CB">
“It was quite easy to get the health care industry on board for temporarily increasing ACA premium help without any budgetary offset to pay for it, as was the case in the American Rescue Plan,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for the Kaiser Family Foundation. Levitt framed that bill’s health care provisions as “all winners, no losers.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kS5nuP">
“As soon as there starts being pressure to pay for health care enhancements,” he continued, “it becomes a zero-sum game with losers as well as winners.”
</p>
<h3 id="o0XIhh">
If Democrats are serious about expanding public programs, they can’t count on the health care industry as allies
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EMVtF1">
The health care industry can be persuaded that the trade-off is worth it. It’s happened before.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xkA08l">
The platonic ideal of this framework is the ACA itself, the 2010 law Biden says he wants to build on with this subsidy expansion and (eventually) a public option. About 80 percent of the ACA <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/30/how-congress-paid-for-obamacare-in-two-charts/">was covered</a> by spending cuts (for Medicare payments to providers, for example) or new taxes (various new levies on pharma and health insurers and medical devices) targeted to the industry.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dehwLe">
The industry bought into the law and didn’t oppose its passage. It took the deal that is at the heart of this long-held tradition: The coverage expansion would mean more paying customers. It might take a trim in payment rates or on new taxes, but it’d make up for it with more volume. And, as it turned out, more than 20 million people were covered by the law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FvP0Mg">
But the industry may not be willing to make the same kind of bargain with Biden because his proposals don’t have the same appeal. The Medicare expansion is opposed by many hospitals and doctors — Medicare pays lower rates than private health insurers; more people on Medicare means <a href="https://twitter.com/larry_levitt/status/1387034475222093828">less reimbursement for them</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x1sCye">
The industry opposes the public option, which would presumably set rates lower than private insurance so it could charge cheaper premiums, for the same reason. Considering more than half of America’s uninsured <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/how-the-american-rescue-plan-act-affects-subsidies-for-marketplace-shoppers-and-people-who-are-uninsured/">already qualify</a> for Medicaid or the ACA, the public option is less a device for expanding coverage than a way to drive down health care costs. And that is exactly why the health care industry would fight fiercely to stop it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BfGtp1">
The Biden administration still can, and has, taken steps to expand health coverage. An additional 4 million people <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/cost-and-coverage-implications-five-options-increasing-marketplace-subsidy-generosity">qualify</a> for ACA subsidies since Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. Nearly 1 million people have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/politics/affordable-care-act-enrollment-premiums/index.html">signed up</a> for insurance during a special open enrollment period Biden started shortly after taking office.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tEpwpb">
The administration is also bound by the rules and politics of the Senate. A public option may not be permissible under the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22242476/senate-filibuster-budget-reconciliation-process">“budget reconciliation” rules</a> that allowed Democrats to move some legislation without any Republican votes. Some moderate Senate Democrats may be <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511909-battle-looms-over-biden-health-care-plan-if-democrats-win-big">less enthused</a> about the public option or even a Medicare expansion than some of their peers who are more progressive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1GrNg1">
But America still has the highest uninsured rate in the developed world and the highest health care costs. So long as the health care industry wields a veto pen over any plan that would cut into its profits to address those problems, little is going to change.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h1abwO">
Democrats will have to find a way to escape this trap.
</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>IPL suspension shows game’s vulnerability, World T20 could be postponed or shifted: Ian Chappell</strong> - Chappell recalled a few incidents that led to the disruption of the game in the past.</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>MI’s foreign recruits reached their destinations safely, says franchise</strong> - A total of 14 foreign players and support of MI have left India after the cash-rich tournament had come to a halt on May 4.</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>Bumrah can take 400 Test scalps, he’s “so different” than any bowler I’ve seen, says Curtly Ambrose</strong> - Bumrah, who made his Test debut in 2018, has snapped 83 wickets in just 19 Tests at an impressive average of 22.10</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>Two ATK Mohun Bagan players test COVID-19 positive ahead of AFC Cup match</strong> - Under the AFC protocols, competing players will have to have COVID-19 negative reports two days before departure from their home base.</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>Maldives’ sports minister alleges breach of COVID-19 protocols by Bengaluru FC</strong> - Maldives is hosting the play-off match and all the Group D matches as the AFC wanted single venues in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.</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>10% quota in Devaswom boards to stay</strong> - Confusion prevails over legal validity after apex court verdict in Maratha case</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>Role of private doctors crucial in fight against COVID-19: Maharashtra CM</strong> - Uddhav Thackeray said family doctors should focus on patients in home isolation so that if required, they can be shifted to hospitals timely.</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>Defence Ministry orders Armed Forces Medical Services to recruit 400 retired medical officers of AMC, SSC</strong> - India has been badly hit by the second wave of coronavirus infections and hospitals in several States are reeling under shortage of health workers, vaccines, oxygen, drugs and beds</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>VSSC gets ready to help with COVID care</strong> - The centre develops three mechanical ventilator models and a portable medical oxygen concentrator</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>Local bodies collaborates to build oxygen cylinder plant for Kasaragod</strong> - Kasaragod is one of the two districts in Kerala which do not have an oxygen plant</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>Covid: Macron calls on US to drop vaccine export bans</strong> - The French president spoke out after the US backed a proposal to waive patents on Covid-19 vaccines.</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>Sophie Scholl: Student who resisted Hitler and inspires Germany</strong> - Germany marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sophie Scholl, who was killed defying the Nazis.</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>Neanderthal remains unearthed in Italian cave</strong> - Researchers believe the nine unlucky individuals may have been hunted and killed by hyenas.</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>German call to ban ‘Jewish star’ at Covid demos</strong> - The anti-Semitism commissioner urges officials to stop protesters “relativising” the Holocaust.</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>European Super League: Real Madrid, Barcelona &amp; Juventus defend plans in face of Uefa ‘threat’</strong> - Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus defend their plans for a European Super League in the face of “threats” from Uefa.</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>Why Amy Klobuchar just wrote 600 pages on antitrust</strong> - “Monopolies tend to have a lot of control, not just over consumers, but also over politics.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1763506">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Review: The role-playing game’s afoot in charming black comedy Murder Bury Win</strong> - It’s not an instant classic like <em>Clue,</em> but it’s fun, very solid indie fare. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1759895">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rivian’s electric truck features include air compressor and AC outlets</strong> - It’s got storage compartments galore, plus an extending truck bed. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1763611">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Apple brass discussed disclosing 128-million iPhone hack, then decided not to</strong> - Emails entered into Epic Games lawsuit show execs contradicting Apple talking points. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1763592">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>It began as an AI-fueled dungeon game. Then it got much darker</strong> - AI algorithm created disturbing stories, including sex scenes involving children. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1763513">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>I always take 40 or 50 lighters with me in a bag…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Not because I’ll need them, but you can always use a lighter bag when hiking.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And I make sure it’s not an odd number so that way it’s even lighter.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YrNotYrKhakis"> /u/YrNotYrKhakis </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n83g17/i_always_take_40_or_50_lighters_with_me_in_a_bag/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n83g17/i_always_take_40_or_50_lighters_with_me_in_a_bag/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Is it okay to compare a man getting “the snip” with a woman getting her tubes tied?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After all, there isn’t a vas deferens between the two ovum
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/coderedmedia"> /u/coderedmedia </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n84323/is_it_okay_to_compare_a_man_getting_the_snip_with/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n84323/is_it_okay_to_compare_a_man_getting_the_snip_with/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Dr. Mike had sex with one of his patients and felt guilty all day long. No matter how much he tried to forget about it, he just couldn’t.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guilt and sense of betrayal were overwhelming. But every once in a while he’d hear an internal, reassuring voice in his head that said: “Mike, don’t worry about it. You aren’t the first medical practitioner to sleep with one of your patients, and you won’t be the last. And you’re single. Just let it go, Mike.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
But invariably another voice in his head would bring him back to reality, whispering:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What’s wrong with you Mike, you’re a veterinarian.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n7nyn1/dr_mike_had_sex_with_one_of_his_patients_and_felt/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n7nyn1/dr_mike_had_sex_with_one_of_his_patients_and_felt/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>My dad said he was going to set me up for life. Of course, I was excited by the idea.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Until he blamed me for the murder he committed.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/incredibleinkpen"> /u/incredibleinkpen </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n81zvm/my_dad_said_he_was_going_to_set_me_up_for_life_of/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n81zvm/my_dad_said_he_was_going_to_set_me_up_for_life_of/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Warning to all men about eBay.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Be careful what you buy on eBay.
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If you buy stuff on line, be sure to
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check out the seller carefully.
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I just spent £95 + postage,
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on a penis enlarger.
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Bastards sent me a magnifying glass.
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The only instructions said, “Do not use in sunlight.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Buddy2269"> /u/Buddy2269 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n7zknq/warning_to_all_men_about_ebay/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/n7zknq/warning_to_all_men_about_ebay/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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