How anxiety predicts interpersonal curiosity during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediation effect of interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency -
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+With the worldwide implementation of quarantine regulations to suppress the spread of the COVID-19, anxiety, interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency may decrease individuals’ desire to seek interpersonal information and thus might have negative effects on their interpersonal curiosity. Through behavioral paradigms and scales, two studies were conducted (Study 1: n = 570; Study 2: n = 501). We explored the prediction effects of anxiety to interpersonal curiosity and the mediating roles played by interpersonal distance and autistic tendency during the COVID-19. We found that interpersonal distance and autistic tendency mediated and suppressed the positively predictive effect of state anxiety on interpersonal curiosity. Our research provides insights into the relationships among anxiety, curiosity, interpersonal distancing, and autistic tendency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research provides insights into the relationships among anxiety, curiosity, interpersonal distancing, and autistic tendency during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Effects of COVID-19 Mental Health Interventions among Community-based Children, Adolescents, and Adults: A Living Systematic Review of Randomised Controlled Trials -
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+Background: Scalable interventions to address COVID-19 mental health are needed. Our objective was to assess effects of mental health interventions for community-based children, adolescents, and adults. Methods: We searched 9 databases (2 Chinese-language) from December 31, 2019 to March 22, 2021. We included randomised controlled trials with non-hospitalised, non-quarantined participants of interventions to address COVID-19 mental health challenges. We synthesized results descriptively but did not pool quantitatively due to substantial heterogeneity of populations and interventions and concerns about risk of bias. Findings: We identified 9 eligible trials, including 3 well-conducted, well-reported trials that tested interventions designed specifically for COVID-19 mental health challenges, plus 6 trials of standard interventions (e.g., individual or group therapy, expressive writing, mindfulness recordings) minimally adapted for COVID-19, all with risk of bias concerns. Among the 3 COVID-19-specific intervention trials, one (N = 670) found that a self-guided, internet-based cognitive-behavioural intervention targeting dysfunctional COVID-19 worry significantly reduced COVID-19 anxiety (standardized mean difference [SMD] 0.74, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.90) and depression symptoms (SMD 0.38, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.55) in Swedish general population participants. A lay-delivered telephone intervention for homebound older adults in the United States (N = 240) and a peer-moderated education and support intervention for people with a rare autoimmune condition from 12 countries (N = 172) significantly improved anxiety (SMD 0.35, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.60; SMD 0.31, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.58) and depressive symptoms (SMD 0.31, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.56; SMD 0.31, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.55) 6-weeks post-intervention, but these were not significant immediately post-intervention. No trials in children or adolescents were identified. Interpretation: Internet-based programs for the general population and lay- or peer-delivered interventions for vulnerable groups may be effective, scalable options for public mental health in COVID-19. More well-conducted trials, including for children and adolescents, are needed.
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Multi-site Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Mutation Detection Using a Multiplex Real-time RT-PCR Assay -
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+Background. SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19, which can be fatal and is responsible for a global pandemic. Variants with increased transmissibility or the potential to evade immunity have emerged and represent a threat to global pandemic control. Variants of concern (VOC) can be identified by sequencing of viral RNA, or by more rapid methods for detection of subsets of signature mutations. Methods. We developed a multiplex, real-time RT-PCR assay (cobas SARS-CoV-2 Variant Set 1) for the qualitative detection and differentiation of three key SARS-CoV-2 mutations in the viral spike protein: del 69-70, E484K and N501Y. Analytical sensitivity and accuracy were evaluated at three testing sites using clinical specimens from patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 variants belonging to several different lineages, including B.1.1.7, B.1.351, and P.1. Results. The limit of detection for E484K was between 180 and 620 IU/mL for the three different isolates tested. For N501Y, the LOD was between 270 and 720 IU/mL (five isolates), while for del 69-70, it was 80 - 92 IU/mL (two isolates). Valid test results were obtained with all clinical specimens that were positive using routine diagnostic tests. Compared to sequencing (Sanger and next-generation), test results were 100% concordant at all three loci; no false positive or false negative results were observed. Conclusions. Data collected at three independent laboratories indicates excellent performance and concordance of cobas SARS-CoV-2 Variant Set 1 with sequencing. New sets of primers and probes that target additional loci can be rapidly deployed in response to the identification of other emerging variants.
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Japan’s Covid mitigation strategy and its epidemic prediction -
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+The COVID-19 epidemic curve in Japan was constructed based on daily reported data from January 14, 2020 until April 20, 2021. A SEIR compartmental model was used for the curve fitting by updating the estimation per wave. In the current vaccination pace of 1/1000, restrictions (state of emergency in Japan) would be repeated 4 times until the end of next March. In the case of 1/500, another round of restriction would be required in the summer 2021, after which the infection would be mitigated. In the case of 1/250, there would be no need for restriction after the current spring restriction. The scenario of completing the vaccination of 110 million people by the end of March 2020 corresponds to the case of 1/250 in this curve. When considering the likely spread of variant with greater infectiousness (here we assume 1.3 times greater than the original virus), 1/500 pace of vaccination would not be enough to contain it and need several series of restrictions. There are currently several variants of concern that are already spreading in urban areas in this country. In the new stage of the replacement of variants, if the vaccination pace could not be quadrupled from the current pace, Japan could not become a zero covid (zero corona) country at least one year.
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Precision Health Diagnostic and Surveillance Network uses S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) combined with sequencing technologies to identify emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. -
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+Several genomic epidemiology tools have been developed to track the public and population health impact of SARS-CoV-2 community spread worldwide. A SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern (VOC) B.1.1.7, known as 501Y.V1, which shows increased transmissibility, has rapidly become the dominant VOC in the United States (US). Our objective was to develop an evidenced-based genomic surveillance algorithm that combines RT-PCR and sequencing technologies to identify VOCs. Deidentified data were obtained from 508,969 patients tested for COVID-19 with the TaqPath COVID-19 RT-PCR Combo Kit (ThermoFisher) in four CLIA certified clinical laboratories in Puerto Rico (n=86,639) and in three CLIA certified clinical laboratories in the US (n=422,330). TaqPath data revealed a frequency of S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) >47% for the last week of March 2021, in both Puerto Rico and US laboratories. The monthly frequency of SGTF in Puerto Rico steadily increased exponentially from 4% in November 2020 to 47% in March 2021.The weekly SGTF rate in US samples was high (>8%) from late December to early January, and then also increased exponentially through April (48%). The exponential increase in SGFT prevalence in Puerto Rico is concurrent with a sharp increase in VOCs among all SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Puerto Rico uploaded to GISAID (n=461). B.1.1.7 frequency increased from <1% in the last week of January 2021 to 51.5% of viral sequences from Puerto Rico collected in the last week of March 2021. The exponential increase in SGTF and B.1.1.7 prevalence in Puerto Rico and US requires an urgent response. According to the proposed evidence-based algorithm, approximately 50% of all positive samples should be managed as potential B.1.1.7 carriers with VOC quarantine and contact tracing protocols while their lineage is confirmed by WGS in surveillance laboratories. Patients infected with VOCs should be effectively triaged for isolation, contact tracing and follow-up treatment purposes.
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Fatal COVID-19 outcomes are associated with an antibody response targeting epitopes shared with endemic coronaviruses -
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+It is unclear whether prior endemic coronavirus infections affect COVID-19 severity. Here, we show that in cases of fatal COVID-19, antibody responses to the SARS-COV-2 spike are directed against epitopes shared with endemic beta-coronaviruses in the S2 subunit of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This immune response is associated with the compromised production of a de novo SARS-CoV-2 spike response among individuals with fatal COVID-19 outcomes.
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Multicentric Evaluation of a Novel Point of Care Electrochemical ELISA Platform for SARS-CoV-2 Specific IgG and IgM Antibody Assay -
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+New diagnostics technologies for the efficient detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies is very crucial to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the context of emerging vaccination paradigms. Herein, we report on a novel point-of-care Electrochemical ELISA platform with disposable screen printed electrodes functionalized with SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein S1, to enable fast and accurate quantitative estimation of total antibody concentration (IgG and IgM) in clinical samples. The quantification is performed with a comparison of electrochemical redox current against the current produced by the spiked monoclonal antibodies with known concentration. The assay is validated through multicentric evaluation against 3 different FDA authorized Laboratory standard techniques, using both EDTA whole blood and serum samples. We demonstrate that the proposed assay has excellent sensitivity and specificity, making it a suitable candidate for epidemiological surveys and quantification of antibodies in COVID-19 vaccination programs.
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Interpretation of temporal and spatial trends of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in San Francisco Bay Area wastewater -
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+Wastewater surveillance for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA can be integrated with COVID-19 case data to inform timely pandemic response. However, more research is needed to apply and develop systematic methods to interpret the true SARS-CoV-2 signal from noise introduced in wastewater samples (e.g., from sewer conditions, sampling and extraction methods, etc.). In this study, raw wastewater was collected weekly from five sewersheds and one residential facility, and wastewater SARS-CoV-2 concentrations were compared to geocoded COVID-19 clinical testing data. SARS-CoV-2 was reliably detected (95% positivity) in frozen wastewater samples when reported daily new COVID-19 cases were 2.4 or more per 100,000 people. To adjust for variation in sample fecal content, crAssphage, pepper mild mottle virus, Bacteroides ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and human 18S rRNA were evaluated as normalization biomarkers, and crAssphage displayed the least spatial and temporal variability. Both unnormalized SARS-CoV-2 RNA signal and signal normalized to crAssphage had positive and significant correlation with clinical testing data (Kendall9s Tau-b=0.43 and 0.38, respectively). Locational dependencies and the date associated with testing data impacted the lead time of wastewater for clinical trends, and no lead time was observed when the sample collection date (versus the result date) was used for both wastewater and clinical testing data. This study supports that trends in wastewater surveillance data reflect trends in COVID-19 disease occurrence and presents approaches that could be applied to make wastewater signal more interpretable and comparable across studies.
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Risk assessment for long and short range airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, indoors and outdoors, using carbon dioxide measurements. -
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+A quantitative analysis of the viral transmission risk in public spaces al- lows us to identify the dominant mechanisms that a proactive public health policy can act upon to reduce risk, and to evaluate the reduction of risk that can be obtained. The contribution of public spaces to the propa- gation of SARS-CoV-2 can be reduced to a level necessary for a declining epidemic, i.e. an overall reproduction rate below one. Here, we revisit the quantitative assessment of indoor and outdoor transmission risk. We show that the long-range aerosol transmission is controlled by the flow rate of fresh air and by the mask filtering quality, and is quantitatively re- lated to the CO2 concentration, regardless the room volume and the num- ber of people. The short-range airborne transmission is investigated ex- perimentally using dedicated dispersion experiments performed in two shopping malls. Exhaled aerosols are dispersed by turbulent draughts in a cone, leading to a concentration inversely proportional to the squared dis- tance and to the flow velocity. We show that the average infection dose, called the viral quantum, can be determined from epidemiological data in a manner consistent with biological experimental data. Practical implications. The results provide quantitative guidance useful for making rational public health policy decisions to prevent the dominant routes of viral transmission through reinforced ventilation, air purification, mechanical dispersion using fans, and incentivizing the wear- ing of correctly fitted, quality facial masks (surgical masks, possibly cov- ered by another fabric mask, or non-medical FFP2 masks). Taken to- gether, such measures significantly reduce the airborne transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2.
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Risk of vaccine preventable diseases in UK migrants: a serosurvey and concordance analysis, 2020 -
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+We conducted a serosurvey in 2020, amongst 149 adult migrants living in the United Kingdom, to determine seroprotection rates for measles, varicella zoster, and rubella. Findings suggest a gap in seroprotection against measles (89.3%). Younger migrants and those from Europe and Central Asia may be more susceptible; self-reported vaccine/disease status is a poor predictor of seroprotection. Understanding factors associated with seroprotection among migrants is critical for informing the delivery of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
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Supporting Families to Protect Child Health: Parenting Quality and Household Needs During the COVID-19 Pandemic -
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+Background: Supportive parenting is critical for promoting healthy child development in the face of stressors, such as those occurring during COVID-19. Here, we address a knowledge gap regarding specific household risk factors associated with parenting quality during the pandemic and incorporate first-person accounts of family challenges and needs. Methods: Mixed methods were applied to data collected between April 14th - 28th, 2020 from the “Parenting During the Pandemic” survey. Participants included 656 primary caregivers (e.g., mothers, fathers, foster parents) of least one child age 1.5-8 years of which 555 (84.6%) responded to at least one parenting questionnaire. Parenting quality was assessed across stressful, negative, and positive parenting dimensions. Household risk was examined across pandemic-linked (e.g., caregiver depression, unmet childcare needs) and stable factors (i.e., annual income, mental illness history). Significant correlates were examined with regressions in Mplus. Thematic analysis identified caregiver challenges and unmet needs from open-ended questions. Findings: Caregiver depression, higher child parity, unmet childcare needs, and relationship distress predicted lower-quality parenting. Caregiver depression was the most significant predictor across every parenting dimension, with analyses indicating medium effect sizes, ds = .39 - .73. Qualitative findings highlighted severe strains on parent capacities including managing psychological distress, limited social supports, and too much unstructured time. Interpretations: Lower quality parenting during COVID-19 is associated with multiple household and pandemic risk factors, with caregiver depression consistently linked to parent-child relationship disruptions. Focused efforts are needed to address caregiver mental health to protect child health as part of the pandemic response.
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SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, variants of interest and lineage A.27 are on the rise in Côte d’Ivoire -
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+SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI) are heavily altering the COVID-19 pandemic9s course due to their increased transmissibility, virulence and immune escape abilities. Data on their spread in western sub-Saharan Africa is however still scarce. We therefore sequenced viral genomes from SARS-CoV-2 cases identified in central and northern Côte d9Ivoire between May 2020 and March 2021. We report the introduction of VOC B.1.1.7 as early as mid-January 2021, followed by detection of a single case of VOC B.1.351, as well as VOI B.1.525. Since early 2021 VOC/VOI are gradually dominating the SARS-CoV-2 virus pool in Côte d9Ivoire, as seen in other regions of the world. Intriguingly, we also find that another lineage, A.27, has also been on the rise over the same period. In sum, this study highlights again the extremely rapid local diffusion of VOC, VOI and possibly A.27, and the importance of further reinforcing capacities for genomic surveillance on the African continent.
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Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in COVID-19 patients and in-hospital mortality: results from the Brazilian Registry using a propensity score matched analysis -
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+Around 5% of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients develop critical disease, with severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In these cases, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) may be considered when conventional therapy fails. This study aimed to assess the clinical characteristics and in-hospital outcomes of COVID-19 patients with ARDS refractory to standard lung-protective ventilation and pronation treated with ECMO support and to compare them to patients who did not receive ECMO. Patients were selected from the Brazilian COVID-19 Registry. At the moment of the analysis, 7,646 patients were introduced in the registry, eight of those received ECMO support (0.1%). The convenience sample of patients submitted to ECMO was compared to control patients selected by genetic matching for gender, age, comorbidities, pronation, ARDS and hospital, in a 5:1 ratio. From the 48 patients included in the study, eight received ECMO and 40 were matched controls. There were no significant differences in demographic, clinical and laboratory characteristics. Mortality was higher in the ECMO group (n = 7; 87.5%) when compared with controls (n = 17; 42.5%), (p=0.048). In conclusion, COVID 19 patients with ARDS refractory to conventional therapy who received ECMO support had worse outcomes to patients who did not receive ECMO. Our findings are not different from previous studies including a small number of patients, however there is a huge difference from Extracorporeal Life Support Organization results, which encourages us to keep looking for our best excellence.
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A Rapid and Reliable Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry Method for SARS-CoV-2 Diagnostics from Gargle Solutions and Saliva -
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+We describe a rapid liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) method for the direct detection and quantitation of SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein in gargle solutions and saliva. The method is based on a multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mass spectrometry approach with a total cycle time of 5 minutes per analysis and allows the detection and accurate quantitation of SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein as low as 500 amol/ul. We improved the sample preparation protocol of our recent piloting SARS-CoV-2 LC/MS study regarding sensitivity, reproducibility, and compatibility with a complementary reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis of the same sample. The aim of this work is to promote diagnostic tools that allow identifying and monitoring SARS-CoV-2 infections by LC/MS methods in a routine clinical environment.
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The first GAEN-based COVID-19 contact tracing app in Norway identifies 80% of close contacts in “real life” scenarios. -
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+The COVID-19 response in most countries depends on testing, isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine, which is labor- and time consuming. Therefore, several countries worldwide launched Bluetooth based apps as supplemental tools. We evaluated the new Norwegian GAEN (Google Apple Exposure Notification) based contact tracing app 9Smittestopp9 under two relevant simulated scenarios, namely standing in a queue and riding public transport. We compared two configurations (C1: 58/63 dBm; C2: 58/68 dBm) with multiple weights (1.0-2.5) and time thresholds (10-15 min), by calculating notification rates among close contacts (≤2 meters, ≥15 min) and other non-close contacts. In addition, we estimated the effect of using different operating systems and locations of phone (hand/pocket) using Chi2. C2 resulted in significantly higher notification rates than C1 (p-value 0.05 - 0.005). The optimal setting resulted in notifications among 80% of close contacts and 34% of other contacts, using C2 with weights of 2.0 for the low and 1.5 for the middle bucket with a 13-minutes time threshold. Among other contacts, the notification rate was 67% among those ≤2 meters for <15 minutes compared to 19% among those >2 meters (p=0.004). Significantly (p-values 0.046 - 0.001) lower notification rates were observed when using the iOS operating systems or carrying the phone in the pocket instead of in the hand. This study highlights the importance of testing and optimizing the performance of contact tracing apps under 9real life9 conditions to optimized configuration for identifying close contacts.
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A Phase 3 Randomized, Double-Blind Placebo Controlled, Multi-regional Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of GT0918 for the Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19 Male Patients - Condition: COVID-19 Intervention: Drug: GT0918 tablets or placebo Sponsor: Suzhou Kintor Pharmaceutical Inc, Not yet recruiting
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Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for Prevention of COVID-19 - Conditions: Covid19; COVID-19 Prevention Interventions: Drug: Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ); Other: Standard care; Other: Placebo Sponsor: Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Recruiting
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A Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO Cell) for COVID-19 - Condition: COVID-19 Interventions: Biological: low-dose Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO cell); Biological: high-dose Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO cell); Biological: placebo Sponsors: National Vaccine and Serum Institute, China; Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd; Beijing Zhong Sheng Heng Yi Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd.; Zhengzhou University Recruiting
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Safety and Efficacy of Niclosamide in Patients With COVID-19 With Gastrointestinal Infection - Condition: Covid19 Interventions: Drug: Niclosamide; Drug: Placebo Sponsor: AzurRx BioPharma, Inc. Recruiting
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tDCS for Post COVID-19 Fatigue - Condition: Post Covid-19 Patients Intervention: Device: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Sponsor: Thorsten Rudroff Recruiting
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A Immunobridging and Immunization Schedules Study of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated - Condition: Covid19 Interventions: Biological: 3-doses schedule 1 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated; Biological: 3-doses schedule 2 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated; Biological: 3-doses schedule 3 of COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated; Biological: 2 doses of vaccine Sponsors: China National Biotec Group Company Limited; Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd. Not yet recruiting
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Convalescent Plasma as Adjunct Therapy for COVID-19 - Condition: COVID-19 Intervention: Biological: Convalescent plasma treatment Sponsors: National Institute of Health Research and Development, Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia; Indonesian Red Cross; Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology Recruiting
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Selenium as a Potential Treatment for Moderately-ill, Severely-ill, and Critically-ill COVID-19 Patients. - Condition: Covid19 Interventions: Drug: Selenium (as Selenious Acid); Other: Placebo Sponsors: CHRISTUS Health; Pharco Pharmaceuticals Not yet recruiting
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Protecting Our Community: COVID-19 Testing - Conditions: SARS-CoV-2; Covid19 Intervention: Diagnostic Test: Home-based SARS-CoV-2 test kit Sponsors: Montana State University; National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS); University of Washington; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Salish Kootenai College Recruiting
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Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Nasopharyngeal Swabs by Using Multi-Spectral Screening System - Condition: Covid19 Intervention: Diagnostic Test: AP-23 Sponsor: Fable Biyoteknoloji San ve Tic A.S Recruiting
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Estradiol and Progesterone in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients - Condition: Covid19 Interventions: Other: Placebo injection and placebo pill; Drug: Estradiol Cypionate 5 MG/ML; Drug: Progesterone 200 MG Oral Capsule Sponsor: Tulane University Not yet recruiting
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Safety, Tolerability and PK of Ensovibep (MP0420 - a New Candidate With Potential for Treatment of COVID-19) - Condition: COVID-19 Interventions: Drug: Ensovibep; Drug: Placebo Sponsor: Molecular Partners AG Recruiting
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#SafeHandsSafeHearts: An eHealth Intervention for COVID-19 Prevention and Support - Condition: Covid19 Intervention: Behavioral: eHealth for Covid-19 prevention and support Sponsor: University of Toronto Recruiting
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COVID-19 Vaccination Take-Up - Conditions: Covid19; Vaccination Interventions: Behavioral: Financial incentives; Behavioral: Convenient scheduling link; Behavioral: Race concordant; Behavioral: Gender concordant Sponsors: University of Southern California; Contra Costa Health Services; J-PAL North America, State and Local Innovation Initiative; National Bureau of Economic Research Roybal Center; National Institute on Aging (NIA) Not yet recruiting
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PROphylaxis for paTiEnts at Risk of COVID-19 infecTion -V - Condition: Covid19 Interventions: Drug: Niclosamide; Drug: Placebo Sponsors: Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; LifeArc; Kidney Research UK (KRUK); UNION therapeutics; Addenbrookes Charitable Trust Recruiting
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From PubMed
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beta-D-N 4-hydroxycytidine (NHC) Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Through Lethal Mutagenesis But Is Also Mutagenic To Mammalian Cells - Mutagenic ribonucleosides can act as broad-based antiviral agents. They are metabolized to the active ribonucleoside triphosphate form and concentrate in the genomes of RNA viruses during viral replication. β-D-N 4-hydroxycytidine (NHC, the initial metabolite of molnupiravir) is more than 100-fold more active than ribavirin or favipiravir against SARS-CoV-2, with antiviral activity correlated to the level of mutagenesis in virion RNA. However, NHC also displays host mutational activity in an…
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Identification of phytocompounds from Houttuynia cordata Thunb. as potential inhibitors for SARS-CoV-2 replication proteins through GC-MS/LC-MS characterization, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a massive viral disease outbreak of international concerns. The present study is mainly intended to identify the bioactive phytocompounds from traditional antiviral herb Houttuynia cordata Thunb. as potential inhibitors for three main replication proteins of SARS-CoV-2, namely Main protease (Mpro), Papain-Like protease (PLpro) and ADP ribose phosphatase (ADRP) which control the replication process. A…
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Current understanding on molecular drug targets and emerging treatment strategy for novel coronavirus-19 - SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped positive-sense RNA virus, contain crown-like spikes on its surface, exceptional of large RNA genome, and a special replication machinery. Common symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 include cough, common cold, fever, sore throat, and a variety of severe acute respiratory disease (SARD) such as pneumonia. SARS-CoV-2 infects epithelial cells, T-cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells and also influences the production and implantation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines….
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Covid-19 Clinical Course and Blood Groups: Turkish Population-Based Study - CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that ABO and Rh blood groups do not have any impact on the rate of hospital admission, hospital and ICU stay, MV support, and CFR.
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The Contribution of Biophysics and Structural Biology to Current Advances in COVID-19 - Critical to viral infection are the multiple interactions between viral proteins and host-cell counterparts. The first such interaction is the recognition of viral envelope proteins by surface receptors that normally fulfil other physiological roles, a hijacking mechanism perfected over the course of evolution. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the etiological agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has successfully adopted this strategy using its spike…
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Role of epithelial-endothelial cell interaction in the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection - CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluates the role of endothelial cells in the development of clinical disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, and the importance of endothelial cell-epithelial cell interaction in the pathogenesis of human COVID-19 diseases.
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Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for the Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19: A Fiction, Hope or Hype? An Updated Review - In December 2019, the novel coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) that began in China had infected so far more than 109,217,366 million individuals worldwide and accounted for more than 2,413,912 fatalities. With the dawn of this novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), there was a requirement to select potential therapies that might effectively kill the virus, accelerate the recovery, or decrease the case fatality rate. Besides the currently available antiviral medications for human immunodeficiency…
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Network pharmacology approach to decipher signaling pathways associated with target proteins of NSAIDs against COVID-19 - Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) showed promising clinical efficacy toward COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) patients as potent painkillers and anti-inflammatory agents. However, the prospective anti-COVID-19 mechanisms of NSAIDs are not evidently exposed. Therefore, we intended to decipher the most influential NSAIDs candidate(s) and its novel mechanism(s) against COVID-19 by network pharmacology. FDA (U.S. Food & Drug Administration) approved NSAIDs (19 active drugs and one…
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Self-Assembling Nanoparticle Vaccines Displaying the Receptor Binding Domain of SARS-CoV-2 Elicit Robust Protective Immune Responses in Rhesus Monkeys - SARS-CoV-2 caused the COVID-19 pandemic that lasted for more than a year. Globally, there is an urgent need to use safe and effective vaccines for immunization to achieve comprehensive protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Focusing on developing a rapid vaccine platform with significant immunogenicity as well as broad and high protection efficiency, we designed a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) displayed on self-assembled ferritin nanoparticles. In a 293i cells…
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Uncoupling of macrophage inflammation from self-renewal modulates host recovery from respiratory viral infection - Tissue macrophages self-renew during homeostasis and produce inflammatory mediators upon microbial infection. We examined the relationship between proliferative and inflammatory properties of tissue macrophages by defining the impact of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, a central regulator of self-renewal, in alveolar macrophages (AMs) . Activation of β-catenin by Wnt ligand inhibited AM proliferation and stemness, but promoted inflammatory activity. In a murine influenza viral pneumonia model,…
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Mechanistic insights into the inhibitory activity of FDA approved ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2: old drug with new implications - The novel corona virus (Covid-19) has become a great challenge worldwide since 2019, as no drug has been reported yet. Different clinical trials are still under way. Among them is Ivermectin (IVM), an FDA approved drug which was recently reported as a successful candidate to reduce SARS-CoV-2 viral load by inhibiting Importin-α1 (IMP-α1) protein which subsequently affects nuclear transport of viral proteins but its basic binding mode and inhibitory mechanism is unknown. Therefore, we aimed to…
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Investigation of potential inhibitor properties of ethanolic propolis extracts against ACE-II receptors for COVID-19 treatment by molecular docking study - The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)-related carboxypeptidase, ACE-II, is a type I integral membrane protein of 805 amino acids that contains 1 HEXXH-E zinc binding consensus sequence. ACE-II has been implicated in the regulation of heart function and also as a functional receptor for the coronavirus that causes the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In this study, the potential of some flavonoids presents in propolis to bind to ACE-II receptors was calculated with in silico. Binding…
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SARS-COV-2 induced Diarrhea is inflammatory, Ca (2+) Dependent and involves activation of calcium activated Cl channels - Diarrhea occurs in 2-50% of cases of COVID-19 (∼8% is average across series). The diarrhea does not appear to account for the disease mortality and its contribution to the morbidity has not been defined, even though it is a component of Long Covid or post-infectious aspects of the disease. Even less is known about the pathophysiologic mechanism of the diarrhea. To begin to understand the pathophysiology of COVID-19 diarrhea, we exposed human enteroid monolayers obtained from five healthy…
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The Great Deceiver: miR-2392’s Hidden Role in Driving SARS-CoV-2 Infection - MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs involved in post-transcriptional gene regulation that have a major impact on many diseases and provides an exciting avenue towards antiviral therapeutics. From patient transcriptomic data, we have discovered a circulating miRNA, miR-2392, that is directly involved with SARS-CoV-2 machinery during host infection. Specifically, we found that miR-2392 was key in driving downstream suppression of mitochondrial gene expression, increasing inflammation,…
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The SARS-CoV-2 protein ORF3a inhibits fusion of autophagosomes with lysosomes - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. How SARS-CoV-2 regulates cellular responses to escape clearance by host cells is unknown. Autophagy is an intracellular lysosomal degradation pathway for the clearance of various cargoes, including viruses. Here, we systematically screened 28 viral proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and identified that ORF3a strongly inhibited autophagic flux by blocking the fusion of autophagosomes with…
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From Patent Search
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IMPROVEMENTS RELATED TO PARTICLE, INCLUDING SARS-CoV-2, DETECTION AND METHODS THEREFOR - - link
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A COMPREHENSIVE DISINFECTION SYSTEM DURING PANDEMIC FOR PERSONAL ITEMS AND PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPE) TO SAFEGUARD PEOPLE - The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to an enormous demand for gadgets / objects for personal protection. To prevent the spread of virus, it is important to disinfect commonly touched objects. One of the ways suggested is to use a personal UV-C disinfecting box that is “efficient and effective in deactivating the COVID-19 virus. The present model has implemented the use of a UV transparent material (fused silica quartz glass tubes) as the medium of support for the objects to be disinfected to increase the effectiveness of disinfection without compromising the load bearing capacity. Aluminum foil, a UV reflecting material, was used as the inner lining of the box for effective utilization of the UVC light emitted by the UVC lamps. Care has been taken to prevent leakage of UVC radiation out of the system. COVID-19 virus can be inactivated in 5 minutes by UVC irradiation in this disinfection box - link
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UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING SYSTEM FOR MENTAL HEALTH MONITORING OF PERSON DURING THE PANDEMIC OF COVID-19 - - link
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USE OF IMINOSUGAR COMPOUND IN PREPARATION OF ANTI-SARS-COV-2 VIRUS DRUG - - link
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Compositions and methods for the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) infection - - link
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用于检测新型冠状病毒的试纸和试剂盒 - 本发明涉及生物技术和免疫检测技术领域，具体涉及一种用于检测新型冠状病毒的试纸和试剂盒。所述试纸或试剂盒含有抗体1和/或抗体2，所述抗体1的重、轻链可变区的氨基酸序列分别如SEQ ID NO:1‑2所示，所述抗体2的重、轻链可变区的氨基酸序列分别如SEQ ID NO:3‑4所示。本发明对于大批量的新型冠状病毒样本，包括新型冠状病毒突变（英国、南非）与非突变株的人血清、鼻咽拭子等样本的检测有普遍检测意义，避免突变株的漏检。 - link
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Fahrgastleitsystem und Verfahren zum Leiten von Fahrgästen -
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Die Erfindung betrifft ein Fahrgastleitsystem zum Leiten von mit einem Fahrzeug (1) mit wenigstens zwei Türen (2.L, 2.R) transportieren Fahrgästen (3), mit wenigstens einem Sensor (4) zur Überwachung der Fahrgäste (3), wenigstens einem Anzeigemittel (5) zur Ausgabe von Leitinformationen, wenigstens einem Aktor zum Öffnen oder Verriegeln einer Tür (2.L, 2.R) und wenigstens einer Recheneinheit (7). Das erfindungsgemäße Fahrgastleitsystem ist dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass die Recheneinheit (7) dazu eingerichtet ist durch Auswertung vom wenigstens einen Sensor (4) erzeugter Sensordaten zu erkennen an welcher Tür (2.L, 2.R) des Fahrzeugs (1) Fahrgäste (3) ein- und/oder aussteigen möchten und wenigstens eine Tür (2.L, 2.R) für einen Ausstieg festzulegen und/oder wenigstens eine Tür (2.L, 2.R) für einen Einstieg festzulegen, sodass eine Anzahl an Begegnungen von sich durch das Fahrzeug (1) bewegender Fahrgäste (3) und/oder aus dem Fahrzeug (1) aussteigenden und/oder in das Fahrzeug (1) einsteigenden Fahrgästen (3) minimiert wird.
Vorrichtung zum Desinfizieren, der Körperpflege oder dergleichen -
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Vorrichtung zum Desinfizieren, der Körperpflege oder dergleichen mittels einer flüssigen oder cremigen Substanz (20), dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass die Vorrichtung mit einem elektrisch betriebenen Erinnerungs-Modul und einem Vorratsbehälter (10) für die Substanz (20) versehen ist, die Substanz (20) in dosierter Menge zur Ausgabeöffnung (9) gefördert wird und die Vorrichtung dazu geeignet ist, am Körper oder der Kleidung einer Person getragen zu werden.
Gebrauchter Schnellteststreifen als Probenmaterial für eine Nachtestung -
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Die Erfindung betrifft ein Verfahren zur laborbasierten Überprüfung und/oder weiteren Ausdifferenzierung einer im Schnelltestverfahren erhaltenen Diagnose einer Infektionskrankheit, wobei im Rahmen des Schnelltestverfahrens eine flüssige Patientenprobe auf ein Objekt aus einem porösen Material aufgetragen wird und wobei dieses Objekt nach Trocknung der flüssigen Patientenprobe an das diagnostische Labor übermittelt wird. Im Labor werden dann die eingetrockneten Probenreste aus dem porösen Material ausgelöst und analysiert.
针对新型冠状病毒核衣壳蛋白的抗体或其抗原结合片段及其应用 - 本发明提供了一种针对新型冠状病毒核衣壳蛋白的抗体或其抗原结合片段及其应用，所述抗体选自mAb6抗体、mAb7抗体、mAb8抗体和mAb9抗体中的任意一种；且所述抗体由保藏号为CCTCC NO：C2020236、CCTCC NO：C2020237、CCTCC NO：C2020238或CCTCC NO：C2020239的杂交瘤细胞分泌。利用所述抗体能够检测环境样品和/或生物样品中新型冠状病毒或者其抗原的存在情况。此外，本发明还提供了利用所述抗体制备得到的新型冠状病毒检测试剂盒，能够在感染病毒早期就检测出核衣壳蛋白，为临床检测新型冠状病毒提供了快速、准确的手段。 - link
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+ 08 May, 2021
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+Daily-Dose
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Inside India’s COVID-19 Surge - At a hospital in New Delhi, supplies and space are running out, but the patients keep coming. - link
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Biden’s Great Economic Rebalancing - The President is looking to correct a capitalist economy that has gone askew, and reclaim a lost vision of shared prosperity. - link
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Facebook and the Normalization of Deviance - The trouble with waiting to address problems long after you know that they exist. - link
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Did a University of Toronto Donor Block the Hiring of a Scholar for Her Writing on Palestine? - Activists refer to a “Palestine exception to free speech” in North American universities. - link
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The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition - Mariame Kaba, a New York City-based activist and organizer, is at the center of an effort to “build up another world.” - link
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From Vox
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Virginia Republicans’ messy, Trumpy race to pick a nominee for governor -
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+State Sen. Amanda Chase, seen here at a 2020 open-carry protest in Virginia, is one of the most explicitly pro-Trump candidates now running to be Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee in Virginia. | Eze Amos/Getty Images
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+The Republicans running for governor in Virginia signal a lot about the future of the GOP.
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+GALAX, Virginia — Republican gubernatorial candidate Kirk Cox was several minutes into a wonky election security answer at a diner when January 6 came up again.
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+Did President Joe Biden win the election? Cox avoided directly answering the question at this recent event, though he had previously acknowledged that reality, the one GOP frontrunner willing to do so.
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+Instead, he refocused on proposals like voter ID requirements, which are popular with lots of voters. But now, Lin, a Trump supporter who had posed the Biden question, had another one. She wanted to know whether he agreed with the Virginia Senate censuring one of its members, Amanda Chase, after she called the people who stormed the US Capitol that day in January “patriots.”
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+Did Cox support the “freedom of speech” of Chase, now one of Cox’s competitors for the Republican nomination?
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+“I’m very much for freedom of speech,” Cox answered.
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+“So you were against [the censure vote]?” asked Lin, who supports Chase in the race. “I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I need a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”
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+This narrow line on the 2020 election and cancel culture is one Republicans have had to dance along for months in courting voters before Saturday’s Virginia GOP gubernatorial convention.
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+The GOP has had a tough go of it statewide in the past few years in Virginia, with demographic changes helping push the state to become reliably Democratic. The party’s response — running further and further to the right — has only exacerbated the problem. But Virginia might not be lost to the right kind of Republican. At least not yet.
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+Republicans will choose their nominee in an “unassembled convention”; nearly 54,000 Republicans who successfully applied to be a delegate will be able to cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 drive-up locations around Virginia. It’s a process that has had more than a fewbumps along the way, including Chase alleging the party chose a convention over a primary to prevent her from becoming the nominee. It could also take several days to know the results — candidates have already sown doubt about the race.
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+“It’s going to make the Iowa caucuses look like a well-oiled machine,” a Democratic operative said, with a touch of hopeful glee.
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+The candidates represent a few ways the GOP could go in Virginia
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+Virginia last chose a Republican in a statewide election in 2009. Since then, the GOP has run candidates that its own insiders say don’t appeal to the state’s growing suburban population. They’re going to have to make inroads back into those communities to have a hope of winning, says Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics.
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+“I always look at, in the 2016 primaries, places where candidates like John Kasich and Marco Rubio did well against Trump: Those are the areas that have moved more toward the Democrats since — places like Loudon County, Hanover County, Chesterfield County,” Coleman said. “Maybe those voters are still open to the right type of Republican after voting for Hillary [Clinton] and Biden.”
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+But can they do that while turning out the 44 percent of the state that went for Trump?
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+The mix of contenders has been revealing.
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+Chase, the self-described “Trump in heels,” has dominated headlines in national media, saying things like the Derek Chauvin verdict made her “sick” because she worried about how cops would feel about it. And she’s popular with the base, at least according to a February poll and a more recent one conducted by Democrats.
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+Businessman and former lieutenant governor hopeful Pete Snyder is nearly as Trumpy, railing against the “woke” liberal establishment and highlighting endorsements from figures like Ken Cuccinelli and Sheriff David Clarke.
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+Meanwhile, newcomer and former private equity group executive Glenn Youngkin has surged to the top of some recentstraw polls by running a well-funded campaign that ticks all the conservative culture war boxes but alsotalks about appealing to “Trump Republicans, libertarians, and Democrats” to win in November.
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+Cox, a delegate in the Virginia House and formerly the body’s speaker, remains the establishment favorite. He touts his know-how on implementing conservative policies, telling Vox, “it’s very important to have the experience to know how to run the state and to make good decisions.”
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+But regardless of how candidates are positioning themselves, there are certain issues that keep coming up on the trail: support for law enforcement, the eradication of “critical race theory” from schools, and election integrity, to name a few.
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+And for some voters, like Heather, who attended Cox’s event in Galax, the last on that list is most important — or, more specifically, it’s the question of whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election that matters most.
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+“That’s a huge one,” she said. “That’s first and foremost for this election or any election.”
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+Virginia Republicans want to stay competitive — and keep conservatives on board
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+Here’s what it looks like: There are seven candidates running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, four in real contention (Youngkin, Chase, Cox, and Snyder). All of them tout their traditional conservative bona fides — being pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortion, pro-business, and the like. Many of them rail against Covid-related closures, praising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for keeping schools and businesses open throughout the pandemic.
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+“All across Virginia on day one, we are going to get every single school open — five days a week, every single week, with a real, live, breathing teacher in every classroom,” Snyder told a crowd at a brewery in Wytheville last weekend. “And folks, getting the schools open is only the beginning. We need to break the backs of this special interest monopoly of the teachers’ unions and bring real change to our schools.”
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+Closing message for #VAGOV candidate Pete Snyder (R), all on education. If he’s nominated at this Saturday’s convention, expect the message to continue into the general…https://t.co/WN1YxoIRA6
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+Given the country’s rate of vaccination, decreased community spread, and reopening, those pandemic issues might not be as relevant come November — or in 2022 and beyond. Trump, though, still will be.
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+At Snyder’s event, an emcee opened the afternoon by asking, “How many of you wish Donald Trump was president right now?” and a one-time Trump operator told the crowd they had to get to work to “defeat the socialists,” who “might even be worse than socialists, they’re bordering on communists.”
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+Youngkin, for his part, makes sure to note in his stump speech that he’s won praise from Trump, but he was also willing to criticize the former president’s tone as “a bit harsh” at a campaign event in northern Virginia.
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+Loyalty to Trump isn’t the key thing, argues Peter Doran, a former think tank CEO and one of the other three candidates recognized by the state party. (The others are former Roanoke Sheriff Octavia Johnson and retired Army Col. Sergio de la Peña.)
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+“Most Virginia Republicans are painted as these big hard-right, hard-conservative voters who only care about Donald Trump. That’s not true,” Doran said. “They care about their job. They care about what’s happening to their kids in this past year, and their education. And they care very deeply about the Republican Party’s failure to win over the past decade.”
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+Wilma, a mother of four and delegate in the convention, agreed, saying the GOP’s future relies on getting young people to understand conservative values like small government, constitutional rights, and concern about the deficit.
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+“My kids all look at the stimulus — it might be nice to get that money, that cash,” she said. “But eventually they know in the long run, they’re the generation that’s going to have to pay it back.”
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+The culture wars have consumed the GOP
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+Still, it’s no longer enough to tick the “fiscal conservative,” “Christian,” “gun owner,” and “anti-abortion” boxes. There are new ones on the list — keywords of the culture war issues the former president helped animate.
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+Take “critical race theory,” which Chase says is part of the reason she decided to homeschool her children.
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+As Vox’s Fabiola Cineas explained, “critical race theory is a framework for grappling with racial power and white supremacy in America.” But it’s also become a catch-all term for what the Trump administration thought was an effort to “indoctrinate” American students and workers with “divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies”:
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+“They’ve lumped everything together: critical race theory, the 1619 project, whiteness studies, talking about white privilege,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and UCLA and Columbia University law professor, told Vox. “What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history, that everything is behind us. None of these projects accept that it’s all behind us.”
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+It’s not just Chase using the term frequently: Almost all the candidates make sure to highlight their opposition to it; six have signed a pledge opposing critical race theory. As journalist Dave Weigel pointed out on Twitter, Youngkin went so far as to upload multiple video clips of him criticizing it.
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+One of the front-runners in the #VAGov GOP primary uploaded four videos in 24 hours about his opposition to critical race theory. pic.twitter.com/RjSuGf3Enx
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+Trump’s impact, though, is perhaps most evident in the obsession with election security.
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+On one hand, Amanda Chase’s stance on the 2020 election sets her apart from the rest of the party — so much so that she, her supporters, and some outsiders suspect the state party chose a convention rather than a primary to mitigate the risk of her ending up at the top of their ticket.
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+But none of the candidates can distance themselves too far from Trump’s lies and doubt-sowing about the 2020 election. They need only look to the US House to see the consequences of doing so.
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+This is the key here. Cheney is responding to massive movement across the party to validate 1/6, led by, but by no means limited, to Trump. She’s not the one forcing this conversation, what annoys her colleagues is she won’t ignore it. https://t.co/t6QzdKQTkn
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+Neither Youngkin nor Snyder will say Biden’s presidency is legitimate. Cox appears willing to do so (at least when he’s not at a diner in southwest Virginia).
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+And everyone has plans to improve election integrity. Youngkin promotes his “election security task force,” one plank of which is updating voter rolls monthly. He and Cox talk about making the state election commission nonpartisan. Snyder wants to “make Virginia No. 1 in ballot integrity.”
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+They’re all fairly anodyne-sounding proposals, but talking about things like that is a requirement for securing the nomination, says Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
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+“While they may not support what happened on January 6, they do want to offer a position that shows some sympathy to the position of Trump supporters,” Farnsworth said.
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+That doesn’t necessarily mean the rhetoric will dog them during the general election — Youngkin’s spokesperson said they believe election security isn’t a partisan issue, “it’s a democracy issue.”
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+And “Kirk Cox is an example of a candidate who accepts Biden as a legitimate president but nevertheless speaks in ways that gives some solace to Trump supporters,” Farnsworth pointed out, and moreover, it’s likely that “voters in November will not be dramatically impacted by what’s said in May.”
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+Still, the insistence on making America’s elections more secure helps perpetuate a world in which seven out of 10 Republican voters still say — per a recent CNN poll — that Biden didn’t win enough votes to be president.
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+Questioning election integrity is coming home to roost
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+And the continued questioning of elections has applied even to their own party’s choices. Some of those choices, admittedly, merit scrutiny from candidates extolling the importance of signatures on absentee ballots. But it also led Youngkin, Cox, and Chase to write to the party, demanding it not use “untested and unproven software that creates uncertainty, lacks openness and transparency, and is inconsistent with our calls as a party for safe and secure elections.”
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+Now, every ranked-choice ballot will be counted by hand, at a ballroom at the Richmond Marriott, race by race. Chair Rich Anderson detailed to the Virginia Scope’s Brandon Jarvis the lengths the Republican Party of Virginia is going to try to instill confidence in the process:
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+Each ballot “will be seen by several eyes at the same time” to guard against transposition of numbers.
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+An out-of-state independent oversight team will be present.
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+Each candidate can have two representatives in the counting room, a party spokesperson told Vox. And Anderson said they can “be pretty much right up on the ballots, and eyes on them,” because he wants “them to feel comfortable with the process, to understand it, and have confidence in the final outcomes.”
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+The news media can be on site to report, and Anderson says he’ll provide regular updates on social media as well.
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+They’ve also set aside money to livestream the counting process, because, Anderson said, “I just don’t want to repeat what was done in different places around the country where people were concerned about it being an opaque process.”
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+That’s left “no room” for any conspiracy theories about the counting to crop up, says John March, the state party communications director. Even so, there are bound to be some dissidents, and if it takes days, Coleman says he can “see the conspiracy theories now.”
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+“When you have a multi-candidate field in a multi-round election,” Farnsworth said, “the only sound bet is expecting that the party won’t get together and sing ‘kumbaya’ when this is all over.”
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+Do these Republicans even have a shot in a general election?
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+Virginia, once home to the capital of the Confederacy, has moved left enough in presidential races that on election night in 2020, the forecast group Decision Desk called it for Joe Biden right as polls closed. Trump ended up with just 44 percent of the vote here, Biden with 54.
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+But the GOP argues the state is not lost to them just yet.
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+In recent decades, Virginia had a peevish streak, electing a governor from the opposite party that just won the White House. The candidate to break that trend was former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — who’s running again this year.
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+And March points to the “unprecedented” level of interest in the convention as a sign of what’s to come: “54,000 people are getting involved on the grassroots level. … You don’t really see that, and that just shows how excited Virginia Republicans are.”
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+Without Trump on the ballot this year, there might be an opening — a slim one for the governorship, but a bigger one to flip competitive state House districts.The person Republicans choose on Saturday will matter a lot.
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+“One thing I do think that could bode well for them is even though he lost, in 2017 Ed Gillespie got more votes than any previous Republican nominee for governor,” Coleman pointed out. “So maybe if Youngkin or whoever else can get that type of Gillespie turnout, which is definitely a question mark, and Democrats can’t get that anti-Trump turnout, maybe it’s going to be closer.”
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+Even so, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the GOP to narrow margins in some areas, let alone retake them. Take Chesterfield County, which Republicans easily won for decades. In 2020, it went for Biden by more than 6 percentage points.
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+“Going forward,” Coleman says, “this may be the last potential cycle where the Republicans could win a county like Chesterfield, and that may not even be enough — it may be necessary but not sufficient.”
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+Democrats seem to think it won’t be.
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+“We’re ready for a fight; we expect a fight. We expect a tough race,” said David Turner, the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “But what I would say is you can’t report accurately on the state of Virginia without acknowledging there’s pre-Trump and there’s post-Trump, and we’re still post-Trump.”
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Why Democrats’ ambitions for health care are shrinking rapidly -
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+President Joe Biden seems to be scaling down his health care ambitions as he runs into the problem of how to pay for them. | Melina Mara/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
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+The Biden agenda has run into the hardest roadblock in health care: How do you pay for it?
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+As Joe Biden closed in on the Democratic Party’s nomination, with only Bernie Sanders still running against him, part of his pitch was that he knew how he’d pay for his proposals.
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+“The fact of the matter is, everything I call for I pay for,” Biden said in his final debate with Sanders on March 15, 2020.
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+But in practice, an $800 billion plan may be almost as politically daunting as a $32 trillion one.
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+“It’s still a monumental lift,” Kim Monk, who follows Congress for investment clients at Capital Alpha Partners, told me.
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+And that is forcing Biden to aim lower still.
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+Right now, in his proposed American Families Plan, Biden is asking Congress for $200 billion to expand the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies for health insurance premiums. The expansion already passed in the American Rescue Plan but expires after two years; the new proposal would make them permanent. The public option is nowhere to be found.
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+Meanwhile, the payment plan Biden proposed during his campaign and in his debate with Sanders — an increased tax on capital gains — will probably be used to pay for other parts of the Biden agenda, while a $450 billion savings proposal, favored by most Democrats in Congress, that would allow Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies was also left out of the Families Plan. Congressional Democrats were urging Biden to include the drug price idea and use the savings to pay for coverage expansions, such as lowering Medicare’s eligibility age.
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+It’s hard not to see one as related to the other. Biden’s plans for expanding health coverage — earlier Medicare eligibility, a public option — were modest compared to Sanders’s. But their fate, even as Biden proposes trillions in other new spending, shows that health care programs still have to pass a difficult test: They need to at least partially pay for themselves.
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+For decades, the norm has been that when Congress wants to pass a new expansion of health coverage, it will find the money to pay for at least some of that expansion from the health care industry, whether in the form of new taxes or spending cuts. Health care funds health care.
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+But that creates a huge political problem: The health care industry can block new reforms not by opposing the reforms themselves but by campaigning against the cuts or taxes used to pay for them. Doctors, hospitals, and health care companies retain a lot of influence in Congress; every congressional district has a hospital, as lobbyists happily point out.
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+So even as their ambitions for health care grow, as demonstrated by Biden’s embrace of the public option, Democrats find themselves caught in this trap.
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+Biden’s health care proposals still cost a lot of money — and that money has to come from somewhere
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+Nobody knows for sure why Biden dropped the Medicare negotiations proposal from the American Families Plan, even as he called for lawmakers to pass it this year on a bipartisan basis — an unlikely prospect — in his first address to Congress. The reporting has been circumspect.
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+But we do know the pharma industry has a massive war chest, refilled every year by member fees, and has promised to deploy it if any major drug pricing reform started moving through Congress. Drug manufacturers also enjoy their best public approval in years after delivering Covid-19 vaccines in record time.
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+“Why go after the very industry that basically is our lifeline out of the pandemic?” Monk said.
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+This is how the trap closes: When health care must pay for health care, the health care industry must take a hit in order to cover more people. That is something the industry’s immense lobbying apparatus usually wants to stop, and given its influence in the halls of Congress and in the White House, that can make anybody’s health care plan — whether it costs $800 billion or $32 trillion — a nonstarter.
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+Biden avoided this problem with the initial two-year expansion of the ACA subsidies in the American Rescue Plan by mostly not paying for it. But even in this age of deficit doves, the $200 billion to make that expansion, or any other major health care expansion, permanent would need to be paid for. That presents a massive political problem, even for Biden’s more modest (compared with Sanders’s) proposals.
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+“It was quite easy to get the health care industry on board for temporarily increasing ACA premium help without any budgetary offset to pay for it, as was the case in the American Rescue Plan,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for the Kaiser Family Foundation. Levitt framed that bill’s health care provisions as “all winners, no losers.”
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+“As soon as there starts being pressure to pay for health care enhancements,” he continued, “it becomes a zero-sum game with losers as well as winners.”
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+If Democrats are serious about expanding public programs, they can’t count on the health care industry as allies
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+The health care industry can be persuaded that the trade-off is worth it. It’s happened before.
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+The platonic ideal of this framework is the ACA itself, the 2010 law Biden says he wants to build on with this subsidy expansion and (eventually) a public option. About 80 percent of the ACA was covered by spending cuts (for Medicare payments to providers, for example) or new taxes (various new levies on pharma and health insurers and medical devices) targeted to the industry.
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+The industry bought into the law and didn’t oppose its passage. It took the deal that is at the heart of this long-held tradition: The coverage expansion would mean more paying customers. It might take a trim in payment rates or on new taxes, but it’d make up for it with more volume. And, as it turned out, more than 20 million people were covered by the law.
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+But the industry may not be willing to make the same kind of bargain with Biden because his proposals don’t have the same appeal. The Medicare expansion is opposed by many hospitals and doctors — Medicare pays lower rates than private health insurers; more people on Medicare means less reimbursement for them.
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+The industry opposes the public option, which would presumably set rates lower than private insurance so it could charge cheaper premiums, for the same reason. Considering more than half of America’s uninsured already qualify for Medicaid or the ACA, the public option is less a device for expanding coverage than a way to drive down health care costs. And that is exactly why the health care industry would fight fiercely to stop it.
+
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+The Biden administration still can, and has, taken steps to expand health coverage. An additional 4 million people qualify for ACA subsidies since Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. Nearly 1 million people have signed up for insurance during a special open enrollment period Biden started shortly after taking office.
+
+
+The administration is also bound by the rules and politics of the Senate. A public option may not be permissible under the “budget reconciliation” rules that allowed Democrats to move some legislation without any Republican votes. Some moderate Senate Democrats may be less enthused about the public option or even a Medicare expansion than some of their peers who are more progressive.
+
+
+But America still has the highest uninsured rate in the developed world and the highest health care costs. So long as the health care industry wields a veto pen over any plan that would cut into its profits to address those problems, little is going to change.
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+Democrats will have to find a way to escape this trap.
+
+
How to stop the next falling space rocket -
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+A Long March 5B rocket, carrying China’s Tianhe space station, lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in China’s Hainan province on April 29. | STR/AFP via Getty Images
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+International law governing rocket reentry is too lax.
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+“A satellite is crashing to Earth, and NASA sent us a fax?” Donna Moss says, clearly concerned. But few in the show shared her fear, because debris in space often falls out of orbit and is either burned up upon reentry or lands harmlessly somewhere on the planet.
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+
+The US government estimates around 200 to 400 tracked objects enter Earth’s atmosphere every year — roughly one a day — out of the 170 million pieces of space debris floating above our heads. The fallen items rarely make news, though, since they usually crash into the ocean, which covers about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, or sparsely populated areas.
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+A section of the Long March 5B rocket, which launched China’s new space station into orbit last week, is expected to hit somewhere on the planet either on Saturday or Sunday, experts say. At 10 stories and 18 tons (36,000 pounds), it’s one of the largest items in decades to spiral in an undirected dive toward the Earth.
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+Our latest prediction for CZ-5B rocket body reentry is: 09 May 2021 03:53 UTC ± 11 hours Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow this page for updates: https://t.co/p2AU9zE3y2pic.twitter.com/1depRKMk6f
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+— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) May 7, 2021
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+It could cause serious damage if it hits a major population zone, but so far few governments — especially the one in Beijing — seem overly concerned.
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+“The probability of this process causing harm on the ground is extremely low,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday. The White House and Pentagon, meanwhile, say they’re tracking the rocket and have no plans to shoot it out of the sky.
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+After speaking with experts, two things have become clear about this episode.
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+The first is that the idea of a large rocket hurtling toward Earth is understandably scary. It conjures up images of a city devastated by the impact, potentially injuring thousands.
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+Importantly, the chance of anything like that happening is infinitesimally small — like 1 in a 196.9 million chance small. While there have been a few bad incidents in the past, nothing on that scale has ever happened, and very likely won’t now.
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+
+The second is that it’s troubling this scenario could happen in the first place. Why is it possible for China, or any other space-faring nation, to launch massive rockets and let them fall to earth willy-nilly?
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+The answer to that is policy failure: Despite regulations on space flight and conduct, the issue of rocket reentry is loosely and poorly regulated, so countries cut corners and take their chances that a falling rocket won’t hit anything major.
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+“We’re in the realm of risk management, and states are willing to swallow the risk,” said Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in Britain.
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+But there’s always the more-than-zero chance that their luck runs out and a falling rocket sparks a catastrophe. Experts are unanimous that the falling Chinese rocket is a symptom of a much larger problem that needs solving sooner rather than later.
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+“If you don’t want any more of this kind of thing to happen, we need the big powers to step up,” said Bleddyn Bowen, a professor of space warfare and policy at the University of Leicester in the UK.
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+How to stop the next falling rocket
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+There’s a trope about space that it’s the “Wild West,” a phrase I often catch myself using. But the truth is that there have been rules governing operations in space for decades.
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+In the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and Liability Convention of 1972 are guidelines for how to punish a country that lets one of its rockets cause damage on Earth. Basically, those rules say that the offending state can be held liable by the victim nation. So, in this case, if the Chinese rocket were to land in the middle of New York City (which, again, is extremely unlikely to happen), the Biden administration could ask China to pay for damages and demand other recourse.
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+In other words, this is a state-to-state issue. “If the rocket lands on my house, I can’t go and sue China,” Northumbria’s Newman told me. That’d be UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s job to call up Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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+But that’s really it. There’s nothing in international law to stop any nation from letting any of the 900 rockets currently in orbit from falling in an unplanned way. “This isn’t illegal,” Newman said about the current saga of the Chinese rocket. “There is no sort of regulation on an international level on reentry.”
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+Individual countries essentially govern themselves when they make plans to launch a rocket into space. If the Chinese government is fine with the plan of an unplanned reentry, then that’s what’ll happen at the end of the mission.
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+Naturally, such plans cause frustration among space experts. “I think it’s negligent of them,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in the US, told the New York Times on Thursday. “I think it’s irresponsible.” Last year, in fact, another Chinese Long March 5B rocket burned up and pieces of metal fell onto a few buildings in the Ivory Coast.
+
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+But it’s important to remember two things.
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+First, China — and other leading space-faring nations like the US, Russia, Japan, and the European Union — know that the chance of hitting people or infrastructure is so small that they don’t feel the need to spend extra money and time to plan for a controlled reentry.
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+Ensuring a rocket splashes into, say, the Pacific Ocean, requires more fuel and staff work, which increases the cost of missions. For most space agencies grappling with small budgets, cutting costs on that part of the operation is worth the risk.
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+Second, and relatedly, China isn’t the only country taking their chances here; others, including the US, have as well, leading to some scary scenes.
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+In 1978, a Soviet satellite carrying a nuclear reactor crash-landed in northern Canada and spewed radioactive waste. The next year, the NASA-launched Skylab space station — America’s first one — fell out of orbit, with parts landing in the Indian Ocean and in Western Australia, though luckily hurting no one.
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+“Bad behavior was quite typical by the Americans and Soviets during the space race,” said Leicester’s Bowen. “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” he said of current complaints about the Chinese rocket.
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+While there are more safety measures now and technology has improved, experts say the main problem is still that space law is too lax on this issue. They point to the Ivory Coast incident last year, where the country decided not to seek recourse from China, potentially out of the desire not to anger a key economic partner.
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+So what has to change?
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+Experts say countries like China, the US, and others should leverage this moment and work through the United Nations to regulate rocket reentry. They should compel space programs to spend more to ensure their rockets land far away from people, and even wildlife, when possible. Even if the risk of a calamity is extremely low today, the fact that it’s more than zero is already too high.
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+“If this is good for anything, it’s an opportunity for everyone to take ownership of space as a domain of human activity and to want a say in how it’s governed,” said Northumbria’s Newman. “We’re now at the stage where this is generating concern.”
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+But until there’s political will for such action — and governments take the rocket reentry problem seriously — we’ll have more Chinese-rocket-type scares.
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+
From The Hindu: Sports
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Rishabh Pant donates undisclosed amount to procure oxygen cylinders and COVID-related kits - Several cricketers have already made contributions to help India’s fight against the unprecedented health crisis.
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Coronavirus | Fast bowler Prasidh Krishna tests positive - The BCCI is hoping that by the time the UK-bound players enter the bio-bubble in India on May 25, Krishna will test negative.
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Moscow Olympic gold medallist Ravinder Pal Singh succumbs to COVID-19 - Singh had also represented India in the Champions Trophy in Karachi (1980, 1983), Silver Jubilee 10-nation Cup in Hong Kong in 1983, 1982 World Cup in Mumbai and 1982 Asia Cup in Karachi, among other tournaments
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Zim vs Pak | Alis put Pakistan in strong position - Abid and Azhar notch up hundreds after the early dismissal of Imran Butt
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Table tennis | Sathiyan preparing in right earnest - Is working on small details of his game along with sparring partner Anirban
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From The Hindu: National News
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Hassan administration has reduced number of tests: MP - Prajwal Revanna, MP, has alleged that the Hassan district administration reduced the number of COVID-19 tests, considering the shortage of beds in the
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Canteens, training centres turn into COVID care centres - Corporates repurpose unused office space into temporary quarantine facilities
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Excise sleuths seize over 650 kg of ganja in Thiruvananthapuram city within two days - The consignment worth ₹3.25 crore, which is suspected to have been sourced from Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, was intended to be supplied among drug peddlers in the city
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No coronavirus cases in 180 districts in a week: Harsh Vardhan - The cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed 16.73 crore on Saturday, says the Health Minister
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Anurag Thakur says nations will remain grateful to 229 taxmen died of COVID-19 - The Finance Ministry was one of the hardest hit Ministries during the pandemic, Mr. Thakur said.
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From BBC: Europe
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German call to ban ‘Jewish star’ at Covid demos - The anti-Semitism commissioner urges officials to stop protesters “relativising” the Holocaust.
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European Super League: Real Madrid, Barcelona & Juventus defend plans in face of Uefa ‘threat’ - Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus defend their plans for a European Super League in the face of “threats” from Uefa.
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France launches campaign to end selfies on rail tracks as incidents rise - Rail operator SNCF says incidents of people taking serious risks have increased during the pandemic.
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#MeToo Serbia: ‘I thought I was the only one’ - Balkan women are sharing their sexual assault stories after Serbian actress Milena Radulovic went public with hers.
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Spy row revs up Czech-Russian tensions - The Czechs and Russians, ex-communist bloc allies, are in a new diplomatic Cold War.
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+
From Ars Technica
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+
It began as an AI-fueled dungeon game. Then it got much darker - AI algorithm created disturbing stories, including sex scenes involving children. - link
+
Windows 10 “Sun Valley” will do away with Windows 95 era icons - The results are more subtle than you might expect from a 25+ year visual update. - link
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Sony faces lawsuit over alleged “monopoly pricing” of PlayStation downloads - Proposed class action says Sony’s moves have increased prices for PlayStation games. - link
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96% of US users opt out of app tracking in iOS 14.5, analytics find - Some of the first data on user behavior exceeds advertisers’ worst fears. - link
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Ajit Pai promised cheaper Internet—real prices rose 19 percent instead - Home-Internet prices rose four times faster than inflation in Trump era. - link
+Two billionaire friends meet. After a casual conversation, one of them finally asks: So, how’s your home life?
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+The other answers: Couldn’t be better! I bought an elephant!
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+The other guy looks at him astonished: An elephant? Have you gone mad?
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+The guy replies, smiling: Oh, man, let me tell you, it’s the best purchase in my life! He’s grazing on the lawn, making it nice and even. Kids love him! Always riding his back and sliding down his trunk, keeps them outside instead of in front of the screen all day. My wife loves him too! He’s super strong, helps her with moving things around when I’m not home. And let me tell you, the best thing is: it’s kind and smart - the best pet I’ve ever had!
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+The other billionaire scratches his chin. ‘Yeah, that sounds… Kind of amazing actually! How much did you pay for him?’
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+The guy replies: ‘A million bucks! Worth every penny, it’s a steal at this price.’
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+The other billionaire says: ‘Sell him to me for two million?’
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+‘No, what are you saying? Sell him? His like family!’
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+‘Three million!’
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+‘I don’t know, man… You really can’t put a price on this kind of friendship and usefulness!’
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+‘Alright, five million!’
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+‘Five million?.. Well, okay man, I’ll sell him to you, but only because we’re friends’.
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+In a few weeks the two billionaires meet up again. The guy who bought the elephant is angry as hell. As soon as he sees the other guy, he starts yelling:
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+‘What THE HELL did you sell to me?? Not only does he NOT graze the lawn, he completely destroyed all my greenery and trees! There’s elephant dung EVERYWHERE, it smells even inside the house! And what was that about kids? They are TERRIFIED of the thing, it’s aggressive and massive, and scary! I cannot sleep because he trumpets ALL THE TIME. My wife has been having nightmares, and now I won’t hear the end of her bickering until I die! IT’S AWFUL, worst purchase in my life!’
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+The other billionaire looks at him and says:
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+‘Well, man, I don’t know what to say, with that attitude, you’ll never sell an elephant!’
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