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<title>24 March, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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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>Evaluating global interest in biodiversity and conservation</strong> -
<div>
The first target of the Convention for Biological Diversity (Aichi target 1) was to increase public awareness towards the values of biodiversity and actions needed to conserve it - a key prerequisite for other conservation targets. Nevertheless, monitoring success in achieving this target at a global scale is difficult. However, the increased digitization of human life in recent decades offers an insight in people’s interests at an unprecedented scale, which allows a more comprehensive evaluation of success towards Aichi target 1 than previously attempted. Here, we used Google search volume data to evaluate global interest in biodiversity and its conservation, and investigated their correlates across countries. We found that during 2013-2020 global searches for biodiversity increased, driven mostly by searches for charismatic fauna. However, searches for conservation actions, driven mostly by searches for national parks, decreased since 2019 likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We further found that economic inequality was negatively correlated with interest in biodiversity and conservation, while purchasing power was indirectly positively correlated through increased education and research. Our results suggest partial success towards achieving Aichi target 1, in that interest in biodiversity has increased widely, but not for conservation. We suggest that increased outreach and education efforts towards neglected aspects of biodiversity and conservation are still needed. Popular topics in biodiversity and conservation could be leveraged to increase awareness of other topics, with attention to local socioeconomic contexts.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/vy65n/" target="_blank">Evaluating global interest in biodiversity and conservation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Adverse outcomes in SARS-CoV-2 infected pregnant mice are gestational age-dependent and resolve with antiviral treatment</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy is associated with severe COVID-19 and adverse fetal outcomes, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Moreover, clinical studies assessing therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy are limited. To address these gaps, we developed a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. Outbred CD1 mice were infected at embryonic day (E) 6, E10, or E16 with a mouse adapted SARS-CoV-2 (maSCV2) virus. Outcomes were gestational age-dependent with greater morbidity, reduced pulmonary function, reduced anti-viral immunity, greater viral titers, and more adverse fetal outcomes occurring with infection at E16 (3rd trimester-equivalent) than with infection at either E6 (1st trimester-equivalent) or E10 (2nd trimester-equivalent). To assess the efficacy of ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir (recommended for pregnant individuals with COVID-19), we treated E16-infected dams with mouse equivalent doses of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. Treatment reduced pulmonary viral titers, decreased maternal morbidity, and prevented adverse offspring outcomes. Our results highlight that severe COVID-19 during pregnancy and adverse fetal outcomes are associated with heightened virus replication in maternal lungs. Ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir mitigated adverse maternal and fetal outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection. These findings prompt the need for further consideration of pregnancy in preclinical and clinical studies of therapeutics against viral infections.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.23.533961v1" target="_blank">Adverse outcomes in SARS-CoV-2 infected pregnant mice are gestational age-dependent and resolve with antiviral treatment</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Understanding technostress in the gig economy – A Job Demands-Resources analysis of Chinese couriers</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic has given the global e-commerce market a strong boost and concerns have been raised about intensified work stress and its consequences on health and safety. China has soon become the market leader and the rapid adoption of last-mile technology and app-based work models means that work stress associated with the use of technology (“technostress”) is under-researched. This study set out to explore what work stressors couriers in China experience and how techno-stressors interacted with other work stressors, following the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework. We conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with frontline couriers in May-June 2021 in China. Five major themes were identified: general (working conditions), algorithmic management, customer sovereignty, economic precarity and networked support. A novel contribution of the study is the identification of a new stressor: techno-dominance that we define as technology-induced worker vulnerability when labour relations and managerial functions traditionally fulfilled by humans are replaced by technology systems. It can be characterised as algorithmic controls, opaque system logic, extended social controls and lack of organizational (human) support. Technology associated benefits were categorised as techno-resource, including flexible hours, intelligent systems and app-based information &amp; trainings. Some benefits were conditional, e.g. gamification where participants became motivated or frustrated depending on their job skills, suggesting potential moderators for the demands-stress relationship. Interactions between techno-stressors and other working conditions were also found, as techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity and techno-dominance intensified work stress.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.13.22279887v3" target="_blank">Understanding technostress in the gig economy – A Job Demands-Resources analysis of Chinese couriers</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Hyaluronan in COVID-19 morbidity, a bedside-to-bench approach to understand 1 mechanisms and long-term consequences of hyaluronan</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: We have previously shown that lungs from deceased COVID-19 patients are filled with hyaluronan (HA). In this translational study, we investigated the role of HA in all stages of COVID-19 disease, to map the consequences of elevated HA in morbidity and identify the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2-induced HA production. Methods: Lung morphology was visualized in 3D using light-sheet fluorescence microscopy. HA was verified by immunohistochemistry, and fragmentation was determined by gas-phase electrophoretic molecular mobility analysis. The association of systemic HA in blood plasma and disease severity was assessed in patients with mild (WHO Clinical Progression Scale, WHO-CPS, 1-5) and severe COVID-19 (WHO-CPS 6-9), during the acute and convalescent phases and related to lung function. In vitro 3D-lung models differentiated from primary human bronchial epithelial cells were used to study effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on HA metabolism. Findings: Lungs of deceased COVID-19 patients displayed reduced alveolar surface area compared to healthy controls. We verified HA in alveoli and showed high levels of fragmented HA both in lung tissue and aspirates. Systemic levels of HA were high during acute COVID-19 disease, remained elevated during convalescence and associated with reduced diffusion capacity. Transcriptomic analysis of SARS-CoV-2-infected lung models showed dysregulation of HA synthases and hyaluronidases, both contributing to increased HA in apical secretions. Corticosteroid treatment reduced inflammation and, also, downregulated HA synthases. Interpretation: We show that HA plays a role in COVID-19 morbidity and that sustained elevated HA concentrations may contribute to long-term respiratory impairment. SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers a dysregulation of HA production, leading to increased concentrations of HA that are partially counteracted by corticosteroid treatment. Treatments directly targeting HA production and/or degradation can likely be used early during infection and may alleviate disease progression and prevent long-term lung complications.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.10.23285332v2" target="_blank">Hyaluronan in COVID-19 morbidity, a bedside-to-bench approach to understand 1 mechanisms and long-term consequences of hyaluronan</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Mathematical modelling of COVID-19 transmission dynamics with vaccination: A case study in Ethiopia</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Mathematical modelling is critical for better understanding disease dynamics and developing strategies to manage rapidly spreading infectious diseases. Forecasting is an important aspect of infectious disease modeling, and it is critical for health care planning and disease containment. In this work, we consider a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission with vaccination where the total population was subdivided into nine disjoint compartments, namely, Susceptible(S), Vaccinated with the first dose<span class="math inline">(<em>V</em><sub>1</sub>)</span>, Vaccinated with the second dose<span class="math inline">(<em>V</em><sub>2</sub>)</span>, Exposed <span class="math inline">(<em>E</em>)</span>, Asymptomatic infectious <span class="math inline">(<em>I</em><sub><em>a</em></sub>)</span>, Symptomatic infectious <span class="math inline">(<em>I</em><sub><em>s</em></sub>)</span>, Quarantined <span class="math inline">(<em>Q</em>)</span>, Hospitalized <span class="math inline">(<em>H</em>)</span> and Recovered <span class="math inline">(<em>R</em>)</span>. We computed a reproduction parameter, <span class="math inline"><em>R</em><sub><em>v</em></sub></span>, using the next generation matrix. Analytical and numerical approach is used to investigate the results. In the analytical study of the model: we showed the local and global stability of disease-free equilibrium, the existence of the endemic equilibrium and its local stability, positivity of the solution, invariant region of the solution, transcritical bifurcation of equilibrium and conducted a sensitivity analysis of the model. From these analyses, we found that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable for <span class="math inline">$R_v&amp;lt;1$</span> and unstable for <span class="math inline">$R_v&amp;gt;1$</span>. A locally stable endemic equilibrium exists for <span class="math inline">$R_v&amp;gt;1$</span>, which shows the persistence of the disease if the reproduction parameter is greater than unity. The model is fitted to cumulative daily infected cases and vaccinated individuals data of Ethiopia from May <span class="math inline">01, 2021</span> to January $ 31,2022$. The unknown parameters are estimated using the least square method with the built-in MATLAB function 9lsqcurvefit9. Finally, we performed different simulations using MATLAB and predicted the vaccine dose that will be administered at the end of two years. From the simulation results, we found that it is important to reduce the transmission rate, infectivity factor of asymptomatic cases and increase the vaccination rate, quarantine rate to control the disease transmission. Long-term simulation results show oscillatory dynamics, indicating that COVID-19 may reemerge. Predictions show that the vaccination rate has to be increased from the current rate to achieve a reasonable vaccination coverage in the next two years.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272758v2" target="_blank">Mathematical modelling of COVID-19 transmission dynamics with vaccination: A case study in Ethiopia</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Acute anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with higher levels of everyday altruism</strong> -
<div>
Threatening situations have been shown to influence prosocial and altruistic behaviour in laboratory studies. However, it is unknown whether those effects would transfer to a real-life crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined the impact of changing COVID-19 threat on everyday altruism. Specifically, we investigated the association between defensive emotions associated with varying levels of perceived threat imminence, and reported frequency of altruistic behaviours. A sample of 600 United States residents was recruited online via Prolific at 4 different timepoints in March and April (n=150 each week). We collected self-report measures of everyday altruism, Perceived COVID-19 threat, and defensive emotions associated with varying threat imminence (anticipatory versus acute anxiety). Linear mixed effects models were used to predict variation in everyday altruism as a function of perceived COVID-19 threat and defensive emotions. Our results revealed a clear and consistent association between acute anxiety in response to the pandemic, and frequency of altruistic behaviours. No significant association was found between altruism and less acute defensive responses. These results suggest acute defensive emotions associated with higher threat imminence may promote altruistic action during a real-life crisis.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/n3t5c/" target="_blank">Acute anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with higher levels of everyday altruism</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Estimating the Impact of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) on Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: A Causal Inference Approach</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Traditional machine learning (ML) approaches learn to recognize patterns in the data but fail to go beyond observing associations. Such data-driven methods can lack generalizability when the data is outside the independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) setting. Using causal inference can aid data-driven techniques to go beyond learning spurious associations and frame the data-generating process in a causal lens. We can combine domain expertise and traditional ML techniques to answer causal questions on the data. Hypothetical questions on alternate realities can also be answered with such a framework. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) on mortality in COVID-19 patients from an observational dataset of over 120,000 patients. With the help of medical experts, we hypothesize a causal graph that identifies the causal and non-causal associations, including the list of potential confounding variables. We use estimation techniques such as linear regression, matching, and machine learning (meta-learners) to estimate the causal effect. On average, our estimates show that taking PrEP can result in a 2.1% decrease in the death rate or a total of around 2,540 patients lives saved in the studied population.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.16.23287365v1" target="_blank">Estimating the Impact of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) on Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: A Causal Inference Approach</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A standardised differential privacy framework for epidemiological modelling with mobile phone data</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of mobile phone data for monitoring human mobility patterns has become increasingly common, both to study the impact of travel restrictions on population movement and epidemiological modelling. Despite the importance of these data, the use of location information to guide public policy can raise issues of privacy and ethical use. Studies have shown that simple aggregation does not protect the privacy of an individual, and there are no universal standards for aggregation that guarantee anonymity. Newer methods, such as differential privacy, can provide statistically verifiable protection against identifiability but have been largely untested as inputs for compartment models used in infectious disease epidemiology. Our study examines the application of differential privacy as an anonymisation tool in epidemiological models, studying the impact of adding quantifiable statistical noise to mobile phone-based location data on the bias of ten common epidemiological metrics. We find that many epidemiological metrics are preserved and remain close to their non-private values when the true noise state is less than 20, in a count transition matrix, which corresponds to a privacy-less parameter  per release. We show that differential privacy offers a robust approach to preserving individual privacy in mobility data while providing useful population-level insights for public health.  Importantly, we have built a modular software pipeline to facilitate the replication and expansion of our framework.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.16.23287382v1" target="_blank">A standardised differential privacy framework for epidemiological modelling with mobile phone data</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Coverage of state-initiated contact-tracing during COVID-19 and factors influencing it: evidence from real-world data</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Contact tracing has been one of the central non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented worldwide to try to control the spread of Sars-CoV-2, but its effectiveness strongly depends on its ability to detect contacts. To investigate this issue, we analysed an extensive operational database of SARS-CoV-2 tests in Geneva and used permutations statistics to estimate the number of secondary infectious contacts occurring at the same address. Results show that manual contact tracing captured on average 41% of the secondary infections occurring at the address, with variation in time from 23% during epidemic peaks to 60% during low epidemic activity. The under-reporting of contacts is influenced by both socio-economic and structural factors. People living in wealthy neighbourhoods are less likely to report contacts (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.6) People living in buildings are also less likely to report contacts, with an aOR of 1.08 to 3.14 depending on the variant of concern, the size of the building and if the building had shops. This under-reporting of contacts in buildings decreased during periods of mandatory mask wearing and restriction of private gathering, highlighting the importance of public measures in reducing unnoticed infections in shared spaces. More effective contact tracing strategy should be partly digitalized to avoid saturation of contact tracing capacity during high activity of the pandemics. Public message and outreach should communicate on avoiding unnoticed infectious contacts in large building and may benefit from targeting specific population, such as those in wealthy areas.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.22.23287577v2" target="_blank">Coverage of state-initiated contact-tracing during COVID-19 and factors influencing it: evidence from real-world data</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Modelling the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on workplace transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the home-delivery sector</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective: We aimed to use mathematical models of SARS-COV-2 to assess the potential efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions on transmission in the parcel delivery and logistics sector. Methods: We developed a network-based model of workplace contacts based on data and consultations from companies in the parcel delivery and logistics sectors. We used these in stochastic simulations of disease transmission to predict the probability of workplace outbreaks in this settings. Individuals in the model have different viral load trajectories based on SARS-CoV-2 in-host dynamics, which couple to their infectiousness and test positive probability over time, in order to determine the impact of testing and isolation measures. Results: The baseline model (without any interventions) showed different workplace infection rates for staff in different job roles. Based on our assumptions of contact patterns in the parcel delivery work setting we found that when a delivery driver was the index case, on average they infect only 0.14 other employees , while for warehouse and office workers this went up to 0.65 and 2.24 respectively. In the large-item delivery setting this was predicted to be 1.40, 0.98, and 1.34 respectively. Nonetheless, the vast majority of simulations resulted in 0 secondary cases among customers (even without contact-free delivery). Our results showed that a combination of social distancing, office staff working from home, and fixed driver pairings (all interventions carried out by the companies we consulted) reduce the risk of workplace outbreaks by 3-4 times. Conclusion: This work suggests that, without interventions, significant transmission could have occured in these workplaces, but that these posed minimal risk to customers. We found that identifying and isolating regular close-contacts of infectious individuals (i.e. house-share, carpools, or delivery pairs) is an efficient measure for stopping workplace outbreaks. Regular testing can make these isolation measures even more effective but also increases the number of staff isolating at one time. It is therefore more efficient to use these isolation measures in addition to social distancing and contact reduction interventions, rather than instead of, as these reduce both transmission and the number of people needing to isolate at one time.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.17.22272414v3" target="_blank">Modelling the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on workplace transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the home-delivery sector</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Covid-19 dashboard and back to the question of the cost of science</strong> -
<div>
Perhaps a very large portion of humankind, if not the vast majority, owes some sincere gratitude to the JHU Covid-19 dashboard.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/mvhxr/" target="_blank">The Covid-19 dashboard and back to the question of the cost of science</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Risk-Benefit Balance in the COVID-19 “Vaccine Hesitancy” Literature: An Umbrella Review Protocol</strong> -
<div>
“Vaccine hesitancy” has been described as a major public health problem, especially in the COVID-19 era. Identified factors driving “hesitancy” include the concerns of recipients with the safety, side effects, and risk-benefit ratio of COVID-19 vaccines1 — a proper assessment and disclosure of which are critical to the requisite process of informed consent. However, the expert literature has given little attention to the evidence informing these concerns, focusing instead on features of the recipients themselves to explain the phenomenon of so-called “hesitancy”. This umbrella review will expand the scope of research on “vaccine hesitancy” by examining how the safety, side effects, and risk-benefit ratio concerns of recipients of COVID-19 vaccines are addressed in the expert literature. We will include systematic reviews on COVID-19 “vaccine hesitancy” that examine hesitancy in any population involved with COVID-19 vaccination decisions for themselves or as caretakers (e.g., decisions about “vaccinating” their children) to capture the broadest possible range of perspectives on the phenomenon of interest. Only completed, published, and refereed systematic reviews in English will be included. We will search PubMed, the Epistemonikos COVID-19 platform (COVID-19 L·OVE), and the WHO Global Research on COVID-19 Database to locate quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies reviews. Reviews that meet the inclusion criteria will undergo quality assessment (AMSTAR) and data extraction. Two reviewers will independently conduct title and abstract screening and extract and synthesize the data. Disagreements will be resolved through full team discussion. Subgroup analyses will be performed to compare findings according to social indicators of target populations, country location of the first author, and other contextual factors. Thematic analysis and synthesis will be used to “transform the data” into themes by applying a deductive-inductive approach. Frequency distributions will be calculated to assess the strength of support for each theme. Findings will be presented in tabular and narrative forms to facilitate their interpretation. Informed consent is a fundamental bioethical principle in medical research and practice. Insufficient attention to the concerns of vaccine recipients about these matters, compounded by a neglect to discuss the evidence-base informing these concerns, may contribute to the very problem that the COVID-19 “vaccine hesitancy” expert literature purports to address. This is especially true of an intervention based on novel technologies and intended to be delivered on a global scale. Identifying if and how the expert literature engages with these concerns is critical.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/c3j2f/" target="_blank">The Risk-Benefit Balance in the COVID-19 “Vaccine Hesitancy” Literature: An Umbrella Review Protocol</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Evolving antibody evasion and receptor affinity of the Omicron BA.2.75 sublineage of SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2.75 has diversified into multiple subvariants with additional spike mutations, and several are expanding in prevalence, particularly CH.1.1 and BN.1. Here, we investigated the viral receptor affinities and neutralization evasion properties of major BA.2.75 subvariants actively circulating in different regions worldwide. We found two distinct evolutionary pathways and three newly identified mutations that shaped the virological features of these subvariants. One phenotypic group exhibited a discernible decrease in viral receptor affinities, but a noteworthy increase in resistance to antibody neutralization, as exemplified by CH.1.1, which is apparently as resistant as XBB.1.5. In contrast, a second group demonstrated a substantial increase in viral receptor affinity but only a moderate increase in antibody evasion, as exemplified by BN.1. We also observed that all prevalent SARS-CoV-2 variants in the circulation presently, except for BN.1, exhibit profound levels of antibody evasion, suggesting this is the dominant determinant of virus transmissibility today.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.22.533805v1" target="_blank">Evolving antibody evasion and receptor affinity of the Omicron BA.2.75 sublineage of SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>How influenza vaccination changed over the COVID-19 pandemic?</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Vaccination for seasonal influenzas is particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the influenza vaccination coverage in the U.S. was far lower than the targeted rate. Objective: To examine how people9s actual uptake of the influenza vaccine and the disparity of the vaccination changed during the pandemic. Methods: A survey was conducted online in November 2022. Respondents were asked for influenza vaccination during each of the three latest seasons, prior influenza vaccination history, and COVID-19 vaccination. A linear regression model was used to estimate how the respondents9 change in influenza vaccination was associated with their demographics, COVID-19 vaccination status, and other related variables. Results: Nearly 70% of US adults had influenza vaccine each season during past the three seasons of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prevalence of influenza vaccination varied markedly across demographics. Non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and people with low educational attainment were more likely to see relatively negative changes in their level of influenza vaccination. Respondents who uptook their COVID-19 vaccine in 2022 increased their level of influenza vaccine more than those who uptook the vaccine in 2021. Conclusions: Our study indicated that influenza vaccination increased during the pandemic compared with before the pandemic. The disparity of influenza vaccination by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status may enlarge during the pandemic. Tailored interventions were needed to target some groups to promote their vaccination uptake.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.21.23287546v1" target="_blank">How influenza vaccination changed over the COVID-19 pandemic?</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Neck pain, dry eye and Sjogren’s syndrome in Latin American students during the first wave of COVID-19: Frequencies and associated factors</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Introduction: Virtual classes brought many changes to the lives of students, not only the fact of being more exposed to screens, but also because of the repercussions. Aim: To determine the factors associated with suffering from neck pain, dry eye and Sjogren9s syndrome in students in Latin America during the first wave of COVID-19. Methodology: Analytical cross-sectional study, using the COM and DEQ-5 scales, neck pain and dry eye/Sjogren9s syndrome, respectively, were measured; socio-educational variables were associated with them. Discussion: Of the 3939 students, those who lived in Panama, Chile and Bolivia were the ones who suffered the most from these pathologies. These pathologies were associated with the greater number of hours of computer use (all values p&lt;0,001) and sex (all values p&lt;0,002), medical students had more frequent dry eye and Sjogren9s syndrome (both p&lt;0,031), Graduate students had more neck pain (p&lt;0.001), but college students had less dry eye (p=0.025) and those at private universities had more neck pain (p=0.024). Discussion: Important results of these three pathologies were found, this serves so that students can be evaluated in depth in each university, for a specialized diagnosis and try to avoid medium and long-term consequences for the constant use of electronic devices. Conclusion: Neck pain, dry eye and Sjogren9s syndrome in students were associated with more hours of computer use and female sex, medical students had more frequent dry eye and Sjpogren9s syndrome, graduate students had more neck pain, university students had less dry eye and those from private universities had more neck pain.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.21.23287540v1" target="_blank">Neck pain, dry eye and Sjogren’s syndrome in Latin American students during the first wave of COVID-19: Frequencies and associated factors</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Performance Evaluation of the CareSuperb™ COVID-19 Antigen Home Test</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: CareSuperb COVID-19 Antigen Home Test Kit<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   AccessBio, Inc.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of Safety &amp; Efficacy of MIR 19 ® Inhalation Solution in Patients With Mild COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MIR 19 ®;   Combination Product: Standart therapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Research Center - Institute of Immunology Federal Medical-Biological Agency of Russia<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LACTYFERRIN™ Forte and ZINC Defense™ and Standard of Care (SOC) vs SOC in the Treatment of Non-hospitalized Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Sesderma LACTYFERRIN™ Forte and Sesderma ZINC Defense™;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Jose David Suarez, MD;   Sesderma S.L.;   Westchester General Hospital Inc. DBA Keralty Hospital Miami;   MGM Technology Corp<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>MP0420 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MP0420;   Drug: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Molecular Partners AG;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>AZD7442 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AZD7442;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   AstraZeneca;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PF-07304814 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: PF-07304814;   Drug: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Pfizer;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Suspended</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>VIR-7831 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: VIR-7831;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Vir Biotechnology, Inc.;   GlaxoSmithKline;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BRII-196/BRII-198 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: BRII-196;   Biological: BRII-198;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Brii Biosciences Limited;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LY3819253 (LY-CoV555) for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: LY3819253;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Eli Lilly and Company;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Use of E-health Based Exercise Intervention After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training using an e-health tool<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Norwegian University of Science and Technology;   University of Oslo<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Study for the Efficacy and Safety of Ropeginterferon Alfa-2b in Moderate COVID19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: P1101 (Ropeginterferon alfa-2b);   Procedure: SOC<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Taiwan University Hospital<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase I Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine(Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (CHO cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Kinesio Tape Versus Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercise In Post COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Pursed lip breathing;   Other: Cognitive Behavior Therapy;   Other: Diaphragmatic breathing exercise;   Other: Kinesio tape<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect Of Calcitriol On Neutrophil To Lymphocytes Ratio And High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein Covid-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Calcitriol;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universitas Sebelas Maret<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
</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>The antiviral activity of a small molecule drug targeting the NSP1-ribosome complex against Omicron, especially in elderly patients</strong> - INTRODUCTION: With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 mutant strains, especially the epidemic of Omicron, it continues to evolve to strengthen immune evasion. Omicron BQ. 1 and XBB pose a serious threat to the current COVID-19 vaccine (including bivalent mRNA vaccine for mutant strains) and COVID-19-positive survivors, and all current therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are ineffective against them. Older people, those with multimorbidity, and those with specific underlying health conditions remain at…</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>Dynamics of factors associated with rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths in African countries</strong> - CONCLUSION: In African countries, internal movement restrictions enacted to inhibit COVID-19, had the opposite effect and enabled COVID-19 spread. Low Education levels and high unemployment were associated with having higher death rates from COVID-19. More studies are needed to understand the impact of tourism on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases arising from other regions on African countries, in order to put in place adequate control protocols.</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>Antiviral activity of marine sulfated glycans against pathogenic human coronaviruses</strong> - Great interest exists towards the discovery and development of broad-spectrum antivirals. This occurs due to the frequent emergence of new viruses which can also eventually lead to pandemics. A reasonable and efficient strategy to develop new broad-spectrum antivirals relies on targeting a common molecular player of various viruses. Heparan sulfate is a sulfated glycosaminoglycan present on the surface of cells which plays a key role as co-receptor in many virus infections. In previous work,…</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>[Translated article] Paradoxical interaction between nirmatrelvir/ritonavir and voriconazole in a patient with COVID-19</strong> - This case is based on a drug interaction between nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (approved drug for COVID-19) and voriconazole is presented, possibly derived from the bidirectional effect of ritonavir on the 2 main voriconazole metabolizing enzymes (cytochrome P450 3A and 2C19) ritonavir inhibits the former and induces the latter respectively. According to the main pharmacotherapeutic information databases, in the interaction between both drugs, a decrease in the area under the curve of voriconazole is…</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>Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator modulators attenuate platelet activation and aggregation in blood of healthy donors and COVID-19 patients</strong> - No abstract</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Intravenous ravulizumab in mechanically ventilated patients hospitalised with severe COVID-19: a phase 3, multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled trial</strong> - BACKGROUND: The complement pathway is a potential target for the treatment of severe COVID-19. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of ravulizumab, a terminal complement C5 inhibitor, in patients hospitalised with severe COVID-19 requiring invasive or non-invasive mechanical ventilation.</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>Diphenyl Diselenide and SARS-CoV-2: <em>in silico</em> Exploration of the Mechanisms of Inhibition of Main Protease (M<sup>pro</sup>) and Papain-like Protease (PL<sup>pro</sup>)</strong> - The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has prompted global efforts to develop therapeutics. The main protease of SARS-CoV-2 (M^(pro)) and the papain-like protease (PL^(pro)) are essential for viral replication and are key targets for therapeutic development. In this work, we investigate the mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 inhibition by diphenyl diselenide (PhSe)(2) which is an archetypal model of diselenides and a renowned potential therapeutic agent. The in vitro inhibitory concentration of (PhSe)(2) against…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New workflow predicts drug targets against SARS-CoV-2 via metabolic changes in infected cells</strong> - COVID-19 is one of the deadliest respiratory diseases, and its emergence caught the pharmaceutical industry off guard. While vaccines have been rapidly developed, treatment options for infected people remain scarce, and COVID-19 poses a substantial global threat. This study presents a novel workflow to predict robust druggable targets against emerging RNA viruses using metabolic networks and information of the viral structure and its genome sequence. For this purpose, we implemented pymCADRE and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Coronavirus subverts ER-phagy by hijacking FAM134B and ATL3 into p62 condensates to facilitate viral replication</strong> - ER-phagy is a form of autophagy that is mediated by ER-phagy receptors and selectively degrades endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Coronaviruses have been shown to use the ER as a membrane source to establish their double-membrane vesicles (DMVs). However, whether viruses modulate ER-phagy to drive viral DMV formation and its underlying molecular mechanisms remains largely unknown. Here, we demonstrate that coronavirus subverts ER-phagy by hijacking the ER-phagy receptors FAM134B and ATL3 into p62…</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 cell-free platform to measure coronavirus membrane fusion</strong> - Here we present a protocol to measure coronavirus-mediated membrane fusion, an essential event in coronavirus cell entry. The approach uses nanoluciferase (Nluc) “HiBiT”-tagged corona virus-like particles (VLPs) and Nluc “LgBiT”-containing extracellular vesicles (EVs) as proxies for virus and cell, respectively. VLP-EV membrane fusion allows HiBiT and LgBiT to combine into measurable Nluc, which signifies virus fusion with target cell membranes. We highlight assay utility with methods to assess…</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 Comprehensive Effects of Carassius auratus Complex Formula against Lipid Accumulation, Hepatocarcinogenesis, and COVID-19 Pathogenesis via Stabilized G-Quadruplex and Reduced Cell Senescence</strong> - Carassius auratus complex formula (CACF) is a traditional Chinese medicine known for its antidiabetic effects. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and there are currently no effective therapies for advanced HCC. This study explores the comprehensive effects and possible mechanisms of CACF on HCC. The results show that CACF reduces the viability of hepatoma cells in vitro, while benefiting normal hepatocytes. In addition, CACF inhibits hepatoma cell…</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 novel Nsp9-interacting host factor H2BE promotes PEDV replication by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated apoptosis</strong> - Porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED) caused by porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV) has led to significant economic losses in the swine industry worldwide. Histone Cluster 2, H2BE (HIST2H2BE), the main protein component in chromatin, has been proposed to play a key role in apoptosis. However, the relationship between H2BE and PEDV remains unclear. In this study, H2BE was shown to bind and interact with PEDV nonstructural protein 9 (Nsp9) via immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry (IP-MS). Next, we…</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>Durability and Surface Oxidation States of Antiviral Nano-Columnar Copper Thin Films</strong> - Antiviral coatings that inactivate a broad spectrum of viruses are important in combating the evolution and emergence of viruses. In this study, nano-columnar Cu thin films have been proposed, inspired by cicada wings (which exhibit mechano-bactericidal activity). Nano-columnar thin films of Cu and its oxides were fabricated by the sputtering method, and their antiviral activities were evaluated against envelope-type bacteriophage Φ6 and non-envelope-type bacteriophage Qβ. Among all of the…</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>Evaluation of Broad Anti-Coronavirus Activity of Autophagy-Related Compounds Using Human Airway Organoids</strong> - To deal with the broad spectrum of coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), that threaten human health, it is essential to not only drugs develop that target viral proteins but also consider drugs that target host proteins/cellular processes to protect them from being hijacked for viral infection and replication. To this end, it has been reported that autophagy is deeply involved in coronavirus infection. In this study, we used airway organoids to…</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>Myocarditis: causes, mechanisms, and evolving therapies</strong> - INTRODUCTION: Myocarditis is a severe lymphocyte-mediated inflammatory disorder of the heart, mostly caused by viruses and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Recently, myocarditis as a rare adverse event of mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 has caused global attention. The clinical consequences of myocarditis can be very severe, but specific treatment options are lacking or not yet clinically proven.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Secret Joke at the Heart of the Harvard Affirmative-Action Case</strong> - A federal official wrote a parody of Harvard’s attitude toward Asian Americans and shared it with the dean of admissions. Why did a judge try to hide that from the public? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-secret-joke-at-the-heart-of-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Advice for Alvin Bragg from Former Trump Prosecutors</strong> - The Manhattan District Attorney faces huge legal and political challenges, but the former President’s antics could help the prosecution’s case. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/advice-for-alvin-bragg-from-former-trump-prosecutors">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Ukrainian Philosopher’s Reluctant Departure from Kharkiv</strong> - Irina Zherebkina, who spent the first year of the war under bombardment in Kharkiv, still believes that peace must be imagined into being. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/a-ukrainian-philosophers-reluctant-departure-from-kharkiv">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Trolled by Trump, Again</strong> - Thoughts after a week of waiting and waiting for the indictment that the former President promised. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trolled-by-trump-again">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Racial Politics of the N.B.A. Have Always Been Ugly</strong> - A new book argues that the real history of the league is one of strife between Black labor and white ownership. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-racial-politics-of-the-nba-have-always-been-ugly">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Native American histories show rebuilding is possible — and necessary — after catastrophe</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V56QOg8g4OfQYGGu0M0nVemhdnE=/900x0:6300x4050/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72068471/Vox_Doomerism_Indigenous_Final_2.0.jpg"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What the Medicine Wheel, an indigenous American model of time, shows about apocalypse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2WI0ED">
<em>Part of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23632673/against-doomerism"><em><strong>Against Doomerism</strong></em></a><em> from </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight?itm_campaign=hloct22&amp;itm_medium=article&amp;itm_source=intro"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, Vox’s home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1qrIrI">
In the dead of winter of late 2020 in the city of Shikaakwa, on the frozen shores of Ininwewi-gichigami, there is no pandemic. The high-rise buildings downtown are vertical forests, with balconies and rooftops designed as an outgrowth of nature. The Anishinaabe people bustle through a city of their own design. They watch the championship game of baagaadowewin in sports bars on high-definition flat-screens. They speak Anishinaabemowin into their smartphones on crowded public transportation, drink coffee, debate politics, argue with their families, and gather around communal fires in the middle of the downtown area.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QTEAYK">
Shikaakwa doesn’t exist. I made it up. It’s the setting of my first novel, <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-peacekeeper-b-l-blanchard/17359125?gclid=Cj0KCQiA3eGfBhCeARIsACpJNU_28etctkOW7hcxlThBnNLTb_Z1uo7S23hSNWHg1CSz5fVaWd1mcocaAlfJEALw_wcB"><em>The Peacekeeper</em></a>, an alternate history in which the Americas were never colonized. Shikaakwa is in the place of the city now most often called Chicago. Ininwewi-gichigami now appears on maps as Lake Michigan. Anishinaabe is what my people, the Ojibwe/Chippewa, and my tribe, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, call ourselves. The Anishinaabemowin language, also known as Ojibwe, <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/native-american-languages-act-twenty-years-later-has-it-made-difference">was suppressed</a> and, in many cases, illegal to speak until the 1970s. The sport of baagaadowewin was eventually appropriated into lacrosse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SGcW6B">
Shikaakwa as I imagined it could never exist — I created it from my 21st-century perspective, which is inescapably shaped by the trajectory the world actually took. Native societies experienced centuries of forced removal and genocide, and much of what we once had is lost and can’t be re-created.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uE49Ca">
Lately, the news has felt particularly doomy, dominated by fears of a looming apocalypse due to <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/170527/climate-google-maps-air-quality-wildfires">climate change</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/01/23/what-how-doomsday-clock/">nuclear war</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/oxford-scientists-warn-ai-deadly-nuclear-weapons">artificial intelligence</a>. This is understandable — any of these existential threats could irrevocably change the world, and what would lie beyond is unknowable. Native people know a thing or two about that; the world as we knew it ended long ago, and it continued to end again and again and again. Yet we also know that there’s a future even after the apocalypse has come and gone. Rather than conceptualizing time as a linear march toward calamity (or, for optimists, toward the dream of utopia), it can be viewed as a wheel that we cycle through repeatedly, from creation to destruction to recreation.
</p>
<aside id="PKDTtD">
<div>
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</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SM44c1">
The Indigenous experience embodies this cycle, providing evidence of a future after disaster. We’re still here, after all, even if the context we live in would be just as unimaginable to our pre-colonial ancestors as a city on the present-day Great Lakes truly untouched by colonial history is to me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="63BnI0">
The world we know today will eventually be destroyed, too, whether by our changing climate or some other world-altering force we can’t predict or imagine. But the problem with the doomerist streak that’s taken hold of so much of our zeitgeist is that it just stops there, creating a moral hazard that lets us stop imagining the future. Something new will always be rebuilt on top of what’s destroyed, and we can never abandon our obligation to keep creating it.
</p>
<h3 id="DLrdEc">
The medicine wheel, an Anishinaabe model of time
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eqFMKz">
There’s a stereotype that Native people are stoic and steeped in wisdom. I am no authority and certainly no expert, and I don’t purport to have any wisdom to share. I’m an urban Anishinaabekwe from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who’s lived most of her life in California. I cannot speak for every Anishinaabe person, let alone every Native person. Our experiences and perspectives are as varied as any other group of people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GoM1VQ">
In Anishinaabe tradition, as well as in many other Native cultures, the medicine wheel represents the ever-churning cycle of life. Broken into four equal segments of yellow, black, red, and white, it starts on the right-hand side, reflecting the east as the source of the rising sun and beginning of all things. The four segments represent, among other things, the four directions, the four seasons, the four sacred medicines (tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass), and the four stages of life (birth, youth, adulthood, and elder).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Uzz5BG">
The medicine wheel can also represent the repeating cycle of creation, destruction, and re-creation that has defined all of human history but has particular resonance for Indigenous communities. This cycle is reflected in the <a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/movementtowardsreconciliation/chapter/the-creation-story/">Anishinaabe creation story</a>: The world was created by Kiche Manitou (the Great Spirit), then destroyed in a great flood, and then re-created by the Sky Woman, who fell from the sky while pregnant, clutching a handful of seeds. Seeking refuge on the back of a turtle, she created Turtle Island, the Earth anew.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BtxDr8">
Our histories have been one never-ending turn of this wheel: We create, they destroy, and we create something new out of the ashes of what was left behind, saving what we can, and creating new things from the memories of the old. What’s re-created isn’t necessarily superior or inferior to what was destroyed. It is simply different.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5iZpD9">
In hindsight, the Americas’ pre-colonial past can be imagined as a generative period of creation. For centuries, we were a continent of self-governing tribes that responsibly managed and lived in concert with the land. We built cities, trade networks that stretched from the Arctic to the Andes, and a system of governance so sophisticated that it eventually <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/10/23/democracy-project-allison-barlow/">influenced</a> American democracy. There was no reason to believe we wouldn’t live this way forever.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PrneHQ">
Anishinaabe tradition teaches that when you create something, you’re not just creating for the moment — you’re creating for the future as well. We learn to make decisions from a <a href="https://theseventhgeneration.org/blog-the-seventh-generation-principle/">seventh-generation perspective</a>, which you may recognize as a <a href="https://www.seventhgeneration.com/">green marketing slogan</a>, but, like so many aspects of American culture, it was our idea first. It’s taught a couple of ways: One is to consider how each decision you make will impact others and the Earth seven generations in the future. We’re also taught to consider the impact of decisions in the context of the three generations that came before you, your own generation, and the three generations ahead of you: Will it honor your past and lay the foundation for a good future?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ISYDIB">
In either case, you are taught to look beyond the horizon of what you can see and consider the kind of world your decisions will create. But we also recognize that the present is like smoke: visible and real, but ephemeral and impossible to hold on to. What we create lingers until either something replaces it or it is destroyed.
</p>
<h3 id="iliihD">
Colonialism brought destruction, but also re-creation, to Indigenous America
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dZrThw">
It’s easy to feel as though the world is in a unique period of destruction. Housing, health care, and education are <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/08/11/the-cost-of-living-in-america-helping-families-move-ahead/">increasingly unaffordable</a>; hard-won civil rights are being <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/6/24/23181720/supreme-court-dobbs-jackson-womens-health-samuel-alito-roe-wade-abortion-marriage-contraception">stripped away</a>; democracy is under threat <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/6/15/22522504/republicans-authoritarianism-trump-competitive">each day by a major American political party</a>; climate change will have <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/23424728/climate-change-un-report-cop27-ndc-2030-target-emissions">devastating global impacts</a>, however much we do now to mitigate it.
</p>
<aside id="jVa0gz">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FOceqc">
These things aren’t exactly comparable to Indigenous history, but they do share a feeling of senseless and irrecoverable loss. Over the centuries, my people have been the victims of a coordinated effort to destroy us culturally, ethnically, and biologically. The dispossession of Indigenous people did not end with the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, though that’s usually when US schools stop teaching Native history because it is generally regarded as the end of the Native armed resistance against the American government. In the early 20th century, two of my great-grandmother’s cousins were sent to an <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/code-talkers/boarding-schools/">Indian boarding school</a>, where they were forcibly sterilized. In 1953, less than a decade after my Anishinaabe grandfather and his brother fought in World War II, the US government began a formal program of <a href="https://www.tribalselfgov.org/resources/milestones-tribal-self-governance/">tribal termination</a>, with the goal of eliminating Native nations’ independence and requiring Natives on reservations to move to urban areas and assimilate into American life and culture. This practice continued until well into the Vietnam War era and did not officially end until it was repealed by Congress in 1988.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l5g5mw">
The United States has tried to breed us out of existence through <a href="https://nativegov.org/resources/blood-quantum-and-sovereignty-a-guide/">blood quantum</a> laws, which classify people as Native only if a certain percentage of their ancestors were “full-blood” Native Americans, whatever that means. If you fell below the required threshold, you were no longer legally Native. After a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/03/31/134421470/native-american-intermarriage-puts-benefits-at-risk">few generations of intermarriage</a>, that’s pretty easy to do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ItGlba">
The blood quantum system still exists, both officially and informally. If you want to get a tuition waiver as a tribe member in Michigan, you <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/divisions/dei/indian-tuition-waiver">must be</a> at least one-quarter Native. I don’t look the way most people expect an Anishinaabekwe to look; whatever you’re picturing, I’m probably not it. When I share my affiliation and heritage, the first question I am often asked is what percentage I am. As the <a href="https://ictnews.org/archive/indians-horses-and-dogs">old saying goes</a>, only dogs, horses, and Indians are classified this way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zBNZND">
Indigenous sovereignty continues to be attacked and contested, like just last year, when the US Supreme Court partially <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narrows-native-americans-oklahoma">walked back</a> a ruling that held that most of Oklahoma was Indian land. It will be like this as long as our persistence as independent nations is seen as in conflict with the United States. <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/women/committee/cloak-invisibility">Rates of violence</a> against Indigenous women are appallingly high and under-covered compared to white victims. The name of the sports teams at my mother’s high school in Marquette, Michigan, <a href="https://mqtathletics.com/">is still the Redmen</a>, despite decades of <a href="https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/01/16/northern-michigan-episcopalians-speak-out-in-favor-of-retiring-high-schools-redmen-nickname/">debate and requests</a> for change.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nZa7EU">
You could say, and many people do, that the past five centuries have constituted one long period of destruction. It absolutely has been. Entire nations, cultures, and languages have been lost, and so much has been lost even among those of us whose traditions and cultures survived. At the same time, you might also see it as part of a cycle of destruction and re-creation, of Native people re-creating and facing the destruction of what we’d rebuilt, only to rebuild it again and again and again. The US government did everything it could to destroy us, yet we are still here.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rTGZX1">
More than 100 years ago, pursuant to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/2/23/8090157/native-american-theft">the Dawes Act</a>, which converted the Native American system of communal land ownership into a private property system, the US government came to the Anishinaabeg across Michigan, including to my family in the Upper Peninsula. They offered a deal: My family could stay on the land that had been theirs for at least the past 5,000 years, but they had to stop communal farming and parcel out the land in individual 160-acre allotments for each nuclear family. If they wanted to stay, they would have to forget who they were and start living like white people. After each family got their 160 acres, the remaining land was taken by the government and made available for purchase by white settlers. While it had been US policy <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/civilizing-native-people.htm">since the time of George Washington</a> to “assimilate” and “civilize” Native peoples by forcing them to give up collective life and farming, this attempted to enforce it once and for all.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Js7of">
My family took the deal. Because of that difficult choice, my great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, and their children lived on and continue to live on the land. Their allotments have been bought, sold, and traded over the last century, and our ideas of culture, identity, and self have been both destroyed and rebuilt over that same period. Yet we are still fishing the same lakes and streams, still hunting in the same woods, still sitting around fires telling stories long into the night. You can even hear Anishinaabemowin spoken, though it’s often learned far later in life. My father didn’t learn to speak it until he was in his 60s.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7tIYoO">
White people bought the land that remained after it was parceled out, farmed it, paved over it, built landfills and factories and power plants, and hollowed out what was inside with pipelines and mines, belching smog and carbon and CFCs into the sky. The same thing was done to the Odawaa, the Haudenosaunee, the Neshnabé, the Hocągara, the Diné, the Myaamia, the Mamaceqtaw, the Maskoutench, the Meshkwahkihaki, the Othâkîwa, the Giiwigaabaw, the Shawanwaki, the Wyandot, the Lakota, and the more than 500 other nations living on land now under US jurisdiction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CHZWt3">
This has happened on a wide scale — Native perseverance and reinvention alongside ongoing colonialism that threatens to swallow up what we have left. Native Americans have integrated into settler colonial society, too. We obtain college degrees, work in offices and hospitals and government and retail shops, fly in airplanes, drive cars, write novels, direct movies and television, talk on cellphones, paint portraits and landscapes, compete in the Olympics, and walk in space. I’m a lawyer and a published author, and I’m also Native. As a percentage of both professions, the share of Native Americans rounds to zero. This means that, statistically speaking, I don’t exist, yet obviously I do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZLbned">
Perhaps it’s colonial society’s drive to destroy and replace that makes it inclined to see today’s global challenges as apocalyptic. For us, though, extinction was never an option. Because Native people maintained and continue to fight for self-determination, we still have a future.
</p>
<h3 id="th7H9d">
Indigenous futurism re-creates a Native-centered world
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aCQjOR">
I’m often asked how, in the world of <em>The Peacekeeper</em>, colonization was avoided; it’s never directly addressed in the book. To my mind, so many things had to go wrong for it to happen that any number of small differences in the course of history could have led to vastly different outcomes, and therefore any and all theories can be true. Thinking through these contingencies is important, but I find it more valuable to see the alternatives that could’ve existed. Colonialism wasn’t inevitable. The horrors of the past 500 years did not have to happen. The potential calamities of the next 500 years can likewise be avoided.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VAuCba">
<a href="https://lithub.com/writing-toward-a-definition-of-indigenous-futurism/">Indigenous futurism</a> is a movement in art and literature, particularly through speculative and science fiction, that explores the present and future through an Indigenous-centered lens. This is what I aimed to do in creating Shikaakwa, considering what Indigenous communities might look like today if the historical fact of colonialism had gone differently, the benefits and limits of a Native restorative justice system, and how our relationship to the earth would drive urban development.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OsY26Y">
Some Indigenous futurist literature explicitly <a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/postcards-from-the-apocalypse/">responds</a> to the idea of apocalypse, and of Indigenous people having lived through one. I wanted to write a story in which the apocalypse was more or less inconceivable, where Indigenous people engage with one another and with their own value systems rather than with colonial invaders. Creating the world in <em>The Peacekeeper</em> was an act of re-creation like in the medicine wheel; it imagines a world radically unlike our own; at the same time, it’s a re-creation of what still might be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xYPe0O">
Earth is a resilient planet that knows how to re-create out of destruction. Over 4 billion years ago, it collided with the planet Theia and created the moon. Volcanic eruptions eventually yield flower-covered meadows. We humans are a clever species; we eventually walked on that same moon born of destruction. One day we, with all of our conflicts here on earth, will be gone, too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="POUtV5">
Viewing the universe through cycles of creation, destruction, and re-creation gives a wider, more expansive sense of time in which an individual life is a tiny part of a greater whole. Even human existence is just one blip in this greater scheme. Rather than viewing this as something tragic, there is some comfort in being able to see our impermanence and insignificance in the history of the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pzp0pX">
There’s no way of knowing where we are on the turn of the wheel; it’s too big for us to see at any given moment. But it will turn again — and we have the power, and the obligation, to give the best options to humanity and to all creation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pe3b4h">
<em>B.L. Blanchard is an author, lawyer, and enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her debut novel, </em>The Peacekeeper<em>, was named a 2023 Michigan Notable Book.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>Love Is Blind’s fourth season is its villain era</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A young woman with long dark hair wearing a pink strapless romper sitting on a couch." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KoRzZSJoabq6HB6rIZJ98V9WEpY=/901x0:3600x2024/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72109646/Love_Is_Blind_S4_E1_UHD_00_16_12_12R.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Irina is one of this year’s <em>Love Is Blind</em> contestants. She is a terrific terror. | Courtesy of Netflix
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Netflix dating show’s contestants are not okay.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x2uK2B">
Like a golden ticket from eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka to “visit” his factory, the fourth season of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/27/21152664/love-is-blind-spoilers-finale">Netflix’s <em>Love Is Blind</em></a> is not what it pretends to be. It’s not an “experiment,” it’s not about love, and — like the international moppets who got sucked into Wonka’s chocolate pipes or exploded into something huge and blue — it’s only an opportunity to experience humiliation, destruction, and dashed dreams.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JEMAw5">
To be fair, little has changed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ibqDrb">
This year, as the show has done for the past three seasons, contestants — men and women separated by sex but united by their search for love — still enter “pods,” small rooms with a Wayfair-looking sofa and a shared wall. There, they talk to their prospective matches, every interaction filmed, in the hope that they’ll find love through conversation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JEDusZ">
“Positano is my favorite place,” one of the female contestants this season yells in her windowless couch room. She hopes that the person on the other side of the wall also shares a favorable view of the luxurious Italian beach town on the Amalfi coast.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rwPh9K">
I’m not entirely sure what she’s worried about. No one on the show has ever said, “I hate Positano,” or, “I love to vacation among sewer rats.” But she is worried, making sure a man she can’t see finds her acceptable.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kktjF2">
The ultimate goal for the Positano-lover and her cohort is to find love (sight unseen), and then advance out of the pods and see their match. But to do so, contestants must first get engaged. After that engagement, they have a mini vacation to test physical attraction, and four weeks to decide if they’re going to get married. The first season yielded two couples that are still married to this day, proving that, in certain cases, love can be blind.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fxH2wU">
But as time has gone on, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23464762/love-is-blind-cole-zanab-season-3">show has pivoted</a> away from its initial questions about whether it’s possible to find true connection under these unusual circumstances and whether that’s preferable to the current real-world dating economy. Not unlike Wonka’s factory, <em>Love Is Blind</em> has morphed into something fearsome and self-contained: a look at just how dysfunctional relationships created under these extremely unrealistic pressures can be. Season four, full of villains, backstabbing, and multiple addenda to the initial rules, is perhaps the most cynical yet. Obviously, I cannot stop watching.
</p>
<h3 id="JXW0Et">
<em>Love Is Blind</em> is leaning into its villain era
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="88bl7N">
Unlike seasons past, the fourth season of <em>Love is Blind</em> goes into the depths of what life is like for contestants in the pod stage of the show. Not only in the pods, where cast members do things like draw or listen to music or play games with each other through the wall (if you consider a version of beer pong a game), but also in their segregated living quarters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MGrzfN">
While watching a man and woman color together in the pods isn’t particularly romantic or stimulating, there’s plenty to see in their common living space, which effectively amounts to a college dorm.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TWWbpU">
In the women’s area, everyone lounges around at all hours, faux fur throws wrapped around their shoulders or waists. It seems that women who aren’t currently in a pod talking to a man are encouraged to hang around talking about what just happened in said pod with one or two of the other dozen female strangers they’re living with. There’s barely any kind of Bechdel test-passing conversation between the women, no talk about personal hobbies or what the <a href="https://twitter.com/iithinkheknows/status/1394401438932033538?s=20">FTC’s duties</a> are or what day of the week it is — only the men have those conversations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hppZvr">
This familiarity with one another — and one another’s love lives — creates tension because, in many cases, multiple women are going after the same guy (and vice versa). More than we’ve seen in any other installment of the show, cliques are formed. The sharpest division on the women’s side is between the women who dislike a contestant named Irina and the two who like Irina, one of whom is Irina herself.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Five young women sitting with drinks and laughing." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SI3aDuvczK-QlweBN1GzY8zs1m4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24528834/Love_Is_Blind_S4_E1_UHD_00_01_31_12R.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>
If I were on <em>Love Is Blind</em>, I would be in athleisure all day. These women, in their dresses, are stronger than I am.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gj0ejE">
“I think I’m a bombshell, but when I was younger I had really, really bad acne,” Irina says in her introductory confessional. The show identifies her as “25” and a “business owner” but does not elaborate on what kind of business Irina runs. (In my heart, I believe it’s soup-based.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vRy7M4">
“Like, really, really bad acne. And I would always be like, ‘Guys don’t wanna date me because I have really bad acne.’” she continues. While Irina goes on to say that it’s who she is on the inside that counts, all the audience knows about who Irina is on the inside is someone still preoccupied with how she had, like, really, really bad acne.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j4n2cz">
The other women in the house do not dislike Irina because of her past acne but because she is constantly gossiping with her bestie Micah. At one point, the two find out one of their castmates has been rejected. Irina cackles, then sneaks up closer to hear the woman detail the gory bits of her dumping. That gives us something else we know about Irina: She deeply enjoys other women’s failures.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4jYaGx">
Irina’s psychological warfare escalates when she tells Zach, her No. 1 match, that Bliss, her rival for his affections, is treating Irina poorly. Zach isn’t privy to what’s going on at the <em>Love Is Blind</em> women’s residence hall; he hasn’t seen Irina bully and gossip. She paints herself as the victim and Zach takes her side.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l56Nv8">
The show has had problematic contestants before — women who wanted the same man, couples with palpable incompatibility, men who deserve to be single — but a villain who is actively sabotaging her fellow contestants is a first.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u8XSRg">
I found myself rooting against Irina for all her sneakiness but slowly realized that that implies there’s actually some kind of prize to be won on <em>Love Is Blind.</em> The show is much more cynical than that. Given what we’ve seen over previous seasons — emotional terrorism, divorce, constant miscommunication, a man with flies in his toilet, a woman who forced her fiancé to wear a <a href="https://www.insider.com/love-is-blind-stars-reveal-they-still-dress-in-costumes-2022-3">full-body corn costume</a> — there are no winners on <em>Love Is Blind</em>. Even if Irina “wins,” she still loses.
</p>
<h3 id="GxULt9">
How <em>Love Is Blind</em> abandoned its gimmick
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ny2uQT">
The word that comes up in <em>Love Is Blind</em> over and over, no matter the episode or season, is “experiment.” It’s a convenient way of making the television show sound more scientific and less exploitative than it is. Over the course of the four seasons, however, that experiment has shifted somewhat as the results produced other findings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PvixK1">
The possibility of “finding true love sight unseen,” it turns out, makes for less addictive television than some of the other hypothetical outcomes of gathering together a bunch of people who want to be on TV and letting them know they need to fall in love if they want camera time. It’s possible to find couples that will get married and stay together, but it’s also possible that much more chaotic dynamics will form. In the case of first-season <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/29/21157983/love-is-blind-reunion-spoilers-marriages-breakups">cast member Jessica</a>, her unrequited feelings for an already-engaged co-star and her determination to stay on the show despite all good sense eclipsed the show’s happy endings. Sure, co-stars Cam and Lauren seem like actual soulmates, but during a bout of sadness, Jessica fed her dog wine. That’s what we all remember.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hKe5RJ">
The messiness continued in season two with a love triangle between Shaina, Shayne, and Natalie. Shayne chose to marry Natalie instead of Shaina even though Shaina and Shayne talked about her crop tops a lot. Similar disaster ensued in season three when Cole chose Zanab over Colleen, but verbally told Colleen, the woman he explicitly did not choose, that he was more attracted to her.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A woman sitting on a couch with her face in her hand." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k5Jo2u6Ei3VZSPYy0JIZk6sbx-E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24528840/Love_Is_Blind_S4_E2__Native__00_18_33_18R.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>
This woman just heard some bad news from a man she’s never met.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="45j7cD">
Off the top of my head, I couldn’t name the happy couples from those seasons. But I could easily name all the unhappy people and their damage. I don’t think I’m alone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MOGZEK">
Producers figured out that it was easy to manipulate these contestants’ feelings and expectations into spiky melodrama. In each season, the powers that be pulled levers, like increasing the amount of time the cast would hang out with one another or doing away with the unspoken assumption that contestants wouldn’t be in contact with their exes from the pods.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UgWLgw">
Seeing someone outside of the pods, being attracted to them, and then making a move on them theoretically defeats the entire purpose of the show. But man, it’s good TV.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TDGYCq">
Given the psychological drama, it’s not a surprise that none of season two’s couples survived and only two of season three’s couples are still standing (for now). The third season also featured the first time a couple — <a href="https://people.com/tv/love-is-blind-sk-breaks-silence-on-cheating-allegations-relationship-with-raven/">Raven and SK</a> — didn’t get married at the altar, got back together after the show stopped filming, and then broke up because of a cheating scandal. Since producers amped up the emotional chaos and the number and type of interactions on the show, cast member animus and fantastically rancid relationships have also increased.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t6hi5I">
The fourth season follows suit, continually bringing together the couples in the hope of sparking unrequited attraction-fueled clashes. The show also, for the first time, allows someone to break their engagement and ask their second choice to marry them. That’s not how it’s supposed to go! You can’t just have do-overs! The title of this show isn’t<strong> </strong><em>Love Is Blind, But Whoa Did You Get a Look at Her?!</em>
</p>
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These wrinkles complicate the already-existing, extremely complicated relationships, stirring up the potential for even more drama and sabotage. Aside from one pair, everyone seems much better off single. I suppose there’s relief in failure because, if the gimmicks of <em>Love Is Blind</em> efficiently worked, then viewers at home would have to ask ourselves questions about our own ideas of relationships and romance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eTl5GT">
This isn’t to say that the emotional terrorism of season four isn’t entertaining, because it extremely is — much more so than watching people gush about Positano to each other. But the experiment in season four isn’t about whether love is blind anymore. It’s about what people will endure to be on this show.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The bosses still aren’t back in charge</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Illustration of a man’s head and shoulders seen amid rows of cubicles. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rDvxuOziCOucYF8Rx9F-OaAS3Bs=/0x55:1929x1502/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72109544/GettyImages_97235901.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images/CSA Images RF
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
How much power do workers really have now?
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The pandemic sent American workers on a roller coaster ride, one that’s upended the state of worker power. A worker’s power has always been linked to their ability to demand change — change in pay, in benefits, in working conditions — at their job. Three years after lockdowns swept across the United States, people are no longer quitting at record levels, and some bosses are <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23161501/return-to-office-remote-not-working">forcing workers back to the office</a>. Yet workers still have more power than they did before the pandemic. And that’s not likely to disappear anytime soon.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0h4IYX">
How we got here — and even where “here” is — is complicated. At the start of the pandemic, companies laid off workers en masse, causing unemployment to jump to its <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21250490/april-jobs-report-unemployment">highest rate</a> since the Great Depression and leaving workers with few options and little leverage. Then, thanks in part to government stimulus, the economy came roaring back, and employers couldn’t find enough workers to staff their operations. That ushered in an <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22841490/work-remote-wages-labor-force-participation-great-resignation-unions-quits">era of worker power</a> dubbed the Great Resignation, in which workers were readily able to quit their jobs in exchange for better offers, driving up wages and prompting employers to propose all sorts of perks. Extended unemployment benefits came and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22638555/unemployment-extension-benefits-biden">went</a>, but worker power remained.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dLgrmh">
Beginning last year, however, fears of an economic recession caused many to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-16/billionaire-ross-says-recession-would-spur-people-back-to-office?sref=qYiz2hd0">speculate</a> that that era is over. The economy shrank for <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/28/23282473/gdp-recession-economy">two consecutive quarters</a>, which is typically an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/28/23282473/gdp-recession-economy">indication of a recession</a>, and in an attempt to stifle runaway inflation, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, which presumably would have slowed the economy and job growth. But the country <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth">kept adding jobs</a>, and the labor market has generally been considered very good. That’s not what you’d expect of an economy in the doldrums.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r6LEPV">
Then things got weirder still. The jobs market isn’t as tight now as it was last year, and some of the nation’s biggest companies, especially tech companies, are <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/16/23642978/facebook-meta-layoffs-bad">laying off tens of thousands of workers</a>. Yet nationwide, unemployment remains <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE">near 50-year lows</a>, and people are still more likely to quit their jobs — and less likely to be laid off — than they were before the pandemic.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="8JX3Hv">
<q>“The balance of power started drifting back a little bit toward employers, but broadly speaking, it’s still in the hands of workers” </q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="odDvNa">
It’s a confusing time, to say the least. And just how much power workers currently have is an open question that both employees and employers are grappling with. Some people say the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/layoffs-labor-market-bosses-power-workplace-11675347655">bosses are back in charge</a>. Of course, many of the people saying this are executives who want a return to the way things were, or have a stake in commercial real estate, which has <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-13/banking-s-next-threat-it-might-be-commercial-real-estate">taken a hit</a> from the rise of remote work. But while the fundamental power dynamic between an employee and an employer inherently favors the latter, the last three years have represented a rapid rise in power — one that still exists today and is more than just a blip.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e36IVJ">
“The balance of power started drifting back a little bit toward employers, but broadly speaking, it’s still in the hands of workers,” Rand Ghayad, head of economics and global labor markets at LinkedIn, said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wIhxj9">
We spoke to a dozen experts about the evolving state of worker power in the United States. They pointed to trends like continued <a href="https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker">wage growth</a> and increased worker activism as evidence that worker power remains strong. There’s also the fact that, while many things have returned to their pre-pandemic “normal,” <a href="https://www.kastle.com/safety-wellness/getting-america-back-to-work/">office occupancy has not</a>.
</p>
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What the future holds for American workers remains uncertain. An unpredictable economy, shifting conversations around the role of work in our lives, and a resurgent but challenged union movement could push worker power in one way or another.
</p>
<h3 id="X0l4CI">
The state of worker power
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gx1HBh">
If the Great Resignation was emblematic of workers taking back their power, the extent to which workers are still willing to quit shows how enduring that power is. In January, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm">nearly 4 million people quit</a> their jobs — the monthly<strong> </strong>number was well over 4 million all last year — whereas the pre-pandemic baseline was closer to 3 million in a given month.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2vDj6t">
“There’s really strong demand for workers,” explained Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “When there’s more competition for workers, that gives the person who’s selling their labor, the worker, more bargaining power than they would have otherwise.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="StUYI0">
Correspondingly, rates of layoffs are lower than they were pre-pandemic, suggesting that employers are still having difficulty holding on to workers and are loath to lose the ones they already have. Even as headlines about downsizing surged at the beginning of the year, layoff rates were just 1.1 percent of all employment, matching the lowest rate in 2019, which already had abnormally low layoffs. There are still roughly two open jobs for every unemployed worker.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gjrdcv">
Workers are also illustrating their power by achieving higher wages, either through asking or through leaving their job for another — a practice that has caused employers to raise wages on their own. That has meant wages <a href="https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker">continue to rise</a> at a faster rate than they did before the pandemic. Wages grew an impressive <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm#:~:text=In%20February%2C%20average%20hourly%20earnings,have%20increased%20by%204.6%20percent.">4.6 percent in February</a>, compared to the year earlier, while pre-pandemic growth was typically under 3 percent. Notably, though, most of that recent growth has been <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm">mitigated by inflation</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kmbuvX">
Additionally, when workers have been called back to the office, they have felt comfortable <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/08/22/apple-workers-launch-petition-slamming-return-to-office-order/">petitioning</a> their employers — privately and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-01/starbucks-sbux-corporate-staff-slam-return-to-office-mandate-anti-union-push?sref=qYiz2hd0">publicly</a> — to continue working from home. And when that doesn’t work, they’re simply <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23161501/return-to-office-remote-not-working">refusing to abide by</a> the return to office orders.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dUg60C">
“As a lot of organizations start to put mandated returns to office in place, shortly afterward we’ve also seen them walk them back, partially because employees are just not willing to comply with them,” said Caitlin Duffy, a research director of Gartner’s human resource practice. Companies still don’t feel it’s in their power to force workers back, according to Duffy, who cited data that showed just 14 percent of organizations said they were willing to implement a negative consequence for not meeting those onsite requirements.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="amUJUg">
That willingness of employees to fight for what they want is also turning up in more organized labor actions. The number of strikes was <a href="https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/news/research/strikes-52-2022-labor-action-tracker">up 52 percent in 2022</a>, compared to a year earlier, and is still elevated, according to data from Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8pGcXI">
“People stopped banging their pots and pans at 6 pm or whatever, and now people are saying, wait a minute, we deserve more, and so they’re willing to continue to rise up and fight back,” said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2qc6Hv">
Americans’ <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/8/30/23326654/2022-union-charts-elections-wins-strikes">approval of unions</a>, especially among <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/working-people-want-a-voice/">young people</a> — as well as a number of very public union campaigns and contract negotiations, like those at Starbucks and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/03/ups-teamsters-labor-fight-union-contract.html">UPS</a> and among <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/3/21/23650526/lausd-strike-los-angeles-teacher-salary-wages">teachers</a> — could also make labor issues more central for more Americans. Already, union organizing and actions are happening in industries where such efforts had once been considered impossible.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EEK2cD">
“The people who are actually making the lattes and restocking the grocery shelves and shipping all those packages that enabled us to stay home are rising up and saying we’re not going to take it anymore,” Shuler said.
</p>
<h3 id="iDlKkq">
What’s behind worker power?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DGXkzf">
The reasons people feel empowered to quit or strike or ask for higher wages are myriad, but at its heart, the enduring trend is possible because hiring is still strong. The economy added more than <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">300,000 jobs in February</a>. That was <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/10/jobs-report-february-2023.html">higher than analysts expected</a>, given that the Federal Reserve has continued to raise interest rates in an effort to slow hiring, among other things.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5kxkL1">
“As long as there are unfilled openings, people still have a say in what they want, and employers have to compromise in order to fill these openings,” LinkedIn’s Ghayad said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4Ao0ky">
That imbalance is partly due to demographic changes that have contributed to fewer workers and lower workforce participation. The pandemic caused many baby boomers who were nearing retirement to retire early, making the <a href="https://www.economicmodeling.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Demographic-Drought-Bridging-the-Gap.pdf">looming crisis </a>of an aging workforce happen earlier than expected, according to Glenn Spencer, senior vice president of employment policy at the US Chamber of Commerce. Also contributing to the tight US labor market were the lasting effects of lowered immigration rates earlier in the pandemic as well as ongoing child care concerns, he explained. And then there were more than a million deaths, many of which were among working-age people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="77KT3F">
“You start to add all that together, and it predicts a worker shortage,” Spencer said.
</p>
<div class="c-wide-block">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W8rUJW8MNlTxVppNOtW4SBOPNUo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24529122/GettyImages_97232626.jpg"/> <cite>Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5ryf2n">
There are also less tangible reasons workers feel empowered. For many, the danger and death of the pandemic caused people to reconsider work’s central place in their lives. If work isn’t the most important thing in your life, decisions around staying or leaving a job became somewhat easier in the past couple of years.<strong> </strong>Nearly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-coworkers-are-less-ambitious-bosses-adjust-to-the-new-order-11672441067">40 percent of workers</a> said their work has become less important to them in the last three years.<strong> </strong>As Gartner’s Duffy put it, more and more Americans are “questioning the purpose of their day-to-day work.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GkBlnm">
The pandemic also heightened the disparity between employers and employees, motivating workers to demand more, both on an individual level and through collective organizing like unions. Corporations are taking in <a href="https://thehill.com/business/3756457-corporate-profits-hit-record-high-in-third-quarter-amid-40-year-high-inflation/">record profits</a>, while everyday Americans contend with <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT">dwindling savings</a>, high prices, and wages that, despite their growth, are <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm">not keeping up with inflation</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pr9QFb">
“Workers are angry because the wealth gap has grown so great. They had been suffering, and during Covid, they were suffering acutely,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “Employers exploited the opportunity to make money and then didn’t share any of it.”
</p>
<h3 id="7Quvsi">
What’s next for worker power?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0VtIB">
Just how long worker power remains this elevated depends in part on the health of the economy, and for now there’s little consensus around <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2023/2/3/23584939/jobs-report-economy-federal-reserve-inflation-recession-jay-powell">whether it’s doing well</a>. As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to weaken economic growth and combat inflation, job growth could likely be a casualty. But just <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23519248/economy-2023-inflation-recession-federal-reserve-predictions">how extensive that is depends</a> on whether the Fed is able to engineer a so-called “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/23614066/inflation-soft-landing-economy-recession">soft landing</a>” that doesn’t trigger a recession.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6pALEI">
While a severe recession would shift the balance of power more to bosses, the current situation has been a historical anomaly, so it’s difficult to tell how extensive that shift will be, according to Jim Link, chief human resources officer for the Society for Human Resource Management.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mV5MB7">
“What’s throwing our economist friends off a little bit is that this series of things, all coming together at once, is somewhat unique in the history of industrialized working,” said Link. “And therefore, we may not really know what to expect.” If layoffs do start happening in a meaningful way — that is, they expand beyond <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/business/economy/staffing-layoffs.html">just the tech industry</a> — and job openings dry up, workers could have less power than they do now because they’ll have fewer options. They’ll lack leverage when it comes to demanding change.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="62AxOS">
<q>“You always hear technology will replace workers … but it never quite plays out that way”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NmPBmS">
But that defeatist outlook ignores the idea that American workers themselves have changed how much value they place on work in the first place. Most Americans have to work for a living, but what they’re willing to tolerate to make that living isn’t what it used to be. When times are better, workers will leave bad jobs for greener pastures, according to Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="deQy5E">
“If your workforce strategy and your workforce culture is determined by the economy, then you’re doing something wrong,” Neeley said. “So in bad times, you’re going to impose your will, and in good times, you’re going to step back because you feel like you have to tolerate it. That is terrible workforce planning.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="weDJ8K">
This is all assuming we don’t encounter some revolutionary advancements when it comes to how we do work — something we may be witnessing now. New technologies like AI and machine learning have the potential to change work and, by extension, worker power. Coding projects that used to take weeks can be <a href="https://twitter.com/chr1sa/status/1637462880571498497?s=61&amp;t=hNyXLgQCJRMkSLQXd2q1Lw">done in hours</a> with this new tech. Work time-sucks like creating PowerPoint presentations and drafting emails <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/16/23643806/ai-microsoft-word-powerpoint-office-google-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-automation-jobs-work">supposedly can be outsourced to AI assistants</a>. But it’s too early to tell whether tools like <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/7/23498694/ai-artificial-intelligence-chat-gpt-openai">ChatGPT</a>, AI software that generates responses a lot like a human’s, will invalidate or simply augment existing jobs by allowing workers to spend their time on something else.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SWBihX">
“You always hear technology will replace workers — it’s the same story since the dawn of time,” Spencer from the US Chamber of Commerce said. “But it never quite plays out that way. Technological advances tend to enhance worker productivity, and that creates its own demand.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="itv1qu">
It’s also possible that AI might actually be a boon for worker power, according to Harvard’s Neeley, since the young people most capable of implementing these new technologies at companies are also those most likely to want flexibility in where and when they work and how they’re treated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ziKsEe">
“You need your tech people, you need your data scientists, you need people who can help you do that digital transformation,” Neeley said. “If you want more tech in your organization to meet the moment, you’ve got to be flexible.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yXtvLU">
Worker power in the United States doesn’t mean just one thing, and it isn’t reliant on a single thing. It’s propped up by demographic trends and pandemic anomalies as well as changing ideals among American workers. That power has already outlasted expectations and defied what many thought possible for work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LmrSR4">
None of this means that work is somehow fixed or that there isn’t much more that needs to change. What we know is that the possibility for employees to better their working lives is outlasting the worst of the pandemic.
</p>
<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>Count Of Savoy and Son Of A Gun impress</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2023 | Opening pair, spinners hold key for RR; fast bowling department a cause of concern</strong> - Barring a few changes here and there and some injuries, RR has managed to to keep its core team intact</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>Indian Premier League 2023 | Hardik Pandya similar to Dhoni as captain, says Sai Kishore</strong> - Sai Kishore said the new rule of having an ‘Impact Player’ in IPL will make it more manageable than what it was in domestic circuit.</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>IPL 2023 | Pant irreplaceable, Warner will open, ‘Impact Player’ rule negates all-rounders’ role: Ponting</strong> - A young Mumbai all-rounder Aman Hakim Khan has caught Ponting’s attention and the Delhi Capitals head coach seemed interested in his talent having watched a couple of net sessions at the Feroz Shah Kotla</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>Delhi Capitals will sorely miss ‘heart and soul’ Pant: Ponting</strong> - He’s a huge loss and it doesn’t matter who we bring in in that role, we will still miss Rishabh, says Delhi Capitals head coach</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>Death penalty awarded in Manimala twin murder case</strong> - Man killed his relative and her husband on August 28, 2013.</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>Delhi excise policy case: Court to pronounce order on Manish Sisodia’s bail on March 31</strong> - Manish Sisodia’s bail plea in the money laundering case will be heard by this court on March 25, 2023</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>Amritpal Singh’s alleged close aide visited Thailand 18 times in 13 years</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Janjati Suraksha Manch to hold rallies demanding de-listing of ‘converted tribals’ from the ST list</strong> - In the past three months, the SJM is the third organisation directly or indirectly backed by the RSS to raise its voice against reservation and other benefits for tribals who have converted to other religions</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>Nadda terms Rahul ‘casteist’, BJP to run campaign against ‘anti-OBC remarks’ of Congress leader</strong> - BJP aiming at overturning the “Mandal Vs Kamandal” fissure being attempted by SP, RJD over Ramcharitmanas after Rahul Gandhi’s conviction.</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>King Charles’s France visit postponed after pension protests</strong> - France’s Elysée Palace says the decision was taken because of a 10th day of action planned on Tuesday.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: How a Russian child’s drawing sparked a police investigation</strong> - Masha, now 13, is in a children’s home after Russian authorities placed her father under house arrest.</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>Do Kwon: Fugitive ‘cryptocrash’ boss arrested in Montenegro</strong> - Terraform Labs’ Do Kwon has also been charged with fraud by US prosecutors.</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>Claude Lorius: Pioneering French climate change scientist dies aged 91</strong> - His expeditions to Antarctica helped prove that humans were responsible for global warming.</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>Ron DeSantis says his Ukraine remarks ‘mischaracterised’</strong> - The Republican was criticised in the US and Ukraine for calling the war a “territorial dispute”.</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>The Ars Technica GOG collection: Our picks from GOG’s big Spring Sale</strong> - Ars staff hand-picked some classic and modern PC games for this DRM-free sale. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1925871">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rocket Report: German launch company loses backer; Soyuz-5 may be in trouble</strong> - “Shooting rockets off in the middle of Los Angeles or Dallas doesn’t make a lot of sense.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1926250">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Egad! 7 key British PCs of the 1980s Americans might have missed</strong> - These bedrocks of the UK computer industry didn’t get much love in the states. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1922835">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>TikTok CEO fails to convince Congress that the app is not a “weapon” for China</strong> - Passing a data privacy bill is “the only way to stop TikTok,” committee says. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1926478">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Meta slams telco fee proposal, says ISPs should pay their own network costs</strong> - Meta: “Our investments in content drive the business model of telecom operators.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1926460">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I gave a woman my umbrella yesterday</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
That brings the total number of women I’ve made wet this year to -1
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/h3llofaRide"> /u/h3llofaRide </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1204seu/i_gave_a_woman_my_umbrella_yesterday/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1204seu/i_gave_a_woman_my_umbrella_yesterday/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My wife threatened to leave me due to my obsession with ‘The Monkees’. I didn’t think she was serious.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And then I saw her face…
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MikeHunt1905"> /u/MikeHunt1905 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11zxoby/my_wife_threatened_to_leave_me_due_to_my/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11zxoby/my_wife_threatened_to_leave_me_due_to_my/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I went to the zoo today and there were 2 baguettes in a cage</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sign said they were bread in captivity.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MrRickSter"> /u/MrRickSter </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/120ezh7/i_went_to_the_zoo_today_and_there_were_2/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/120ezh7/i_went_to_the_zoo_today_and_there_were_2/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My wife was just in a minor accident. She’s told the police that the man she hit was on his phone and drinking a Coke at the time</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
But they keep going on about how he can do what he wants in his own living room.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Gil-Gandel"> /u/Gil-Gandel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/120do92/my_wife_was_just_in_a_minor_accident_shes_told/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/120do92/my_wife_was_just_in_a_minor_accident_shes_told/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why are gay men so stylish?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
You spend enough time in the closet, you oughta find something good
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Motasim09"> /u/Motasim09 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11zgi2k/why_are_gay_men_so_stylish/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11zgi2k/why_are_gay_men_so_stylish/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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