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<title>29 July, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Phenotypic grouping of Catheter-Associated Escherichia coli from COVID-19 isolation wards using Hierarchical clustering in Surabaya</strong> -
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Introduction Moderate to critical COVID-19 patients may be indicated for urinary catheter use due to risk of immobility and ventilator or oxygen use. In intensive care units, 18-81.7% of all patients use urinary catheter. Almost all patients with urinary catheter suffered from bacteriuria in 30 catheter-days. Hospital associated isolate tracing is mainly performed using complex molecular tests that is not vastly available. This study aims to trace catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) isolates using common hierarchical clustering method that is vastly available Methods This is a descriptive study presenting collection of Escherichia coli culture data performed by dr. Soetomo Public Hospital microbiology laboratory from 26 March 2020- 31 March 2021. Hierarchical clustering were performed using statistical software using Ward s clustering method. Results There are 36 E.coli associated with CAUTI. Isolate biochemistry profile and minimum inhibitory concentrations profiles were clustered into 3 clades for each profile. A total of 9 cluster combinations were found. Cluster ID 1 was melibiose fermenters, Cluster ID 2 was non-Arginine utilizer, and Cluster ID-3 was Arginine utilizer. Cluster MIC A consist of third generation Cephalosporin resistant isolates, Cluster MIC C was multi-susceptible isolates. Chi-square test between cluster ID and MIC showed no significant differences between number of isolates per group (X2, p = .430, CI = 95%). Conclusion CAUTI associated E.coli is divided into 9 clusters. This indicates no cluster dominates the isolates, thus CAUTI is not caused by hospital transmission but normal flora carried by the admitted patient.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.26.23293190v1" target="_blank">Phenotypic grouping of Catheter-Associated Escherichia coli from COVID-19 isolation wards using Hierarchical clustering in Surabaya</a>
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<li><strong>High connectivity and human movement limits the impact of travel time on infectious disease transmission</strong> -
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The speed of spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the importance of understanding how infections are transmitted in a highly connected world. Prior to vaccination, changes in human mobility patterns were used as non-pharmaceutical interventions to eliminate or suppress viral transmission. The rapid spread of respiratory viruses, various intervention approaches, and the global dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 underscore the necessity for epidemiological models that incorporate mobility to comprehend the spread of the virus. Here, we introduce a metapopulation susceptible exposed infectious recovered (SEIR) model parameterised with human movement data from 340 cities in China. Our model replicates the early case trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic. We then use machine learning algorithms to determine which network properties best predict spread between cities and find travel time to be most important, followed by the human movement Weighted Personalised PageRank. However, we show that travel time is most influential locally, after which the high connectivity between cities reduces the impact of travel time between individual cities on transmission speed. Additionally, we demonstrate that only significantly reduced movement substantially impacts infection spread times throughout the network.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.26.23293210v1" target="_blank">High connectivity and human movement limits the impact of travel time on infectious disease transmission</a>
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<li><strong>Integrating Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS) into infectious disease outbreak and epidemic response: an umbrella review and operational framework</strong> -
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Introduction Infectious disease outbreaks have a substantial impact on people9s psychosocial well-being. Yet, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions are not systemically integrated into outbreak and epidemic response. Our review aims to synthesise evidence on the effectiveness of MHPSS interventions in outbreaks and propose a framework for systematically integrating MHPSS into outbreak response. Methods We conducted an umbrella review in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for umbrella reviews. Results We identified 23 systematic literature reviews, 6 of which involved meta-analysis, and only 30% (n=7) were of high quality. Most of the available literature was produced during COVID-19 and focused on clinical case management and medical staff well-being, with scarce evidence on the well-being of other outbreak responders and MHPSS in other outbreak response pillars. Conclusion Despite the low quality of the majority of the existing evidence, MHPSS interventions have the potential to improve the psychological well-being of those affected by and those responding to outbreaks. They also can improve the outcomes of the outbreak response activities such as contact tracing, infection prevention and control, and clinical case management. Our proposed framework would facilitate integrating MHPSS into outbreak response and hence mitigate the mental health impact of outbreaks. Review registration PROSPERO CRD42022297138.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.27.23293219v1" target="_blank">Integrating Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS) into infectious disease outbreak and epidemic response: an umbrella review and operational framework</a>
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<li><strong>The Impact of Post Embryo Transfer SARS-CoV-2 Infection on Pregnancy in In Vitro Fertilization: A Prospective Cohort Study</strong> -
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Abstract Importance: Limited knowledge exists on the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection after embryo transfer, despite an increasing number of studies exploring the impact of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection on IVF outcomes. Objective: This prospective cohort study aimed to assess the influence of SARS-CoV-2 infection at various time stages after embryo transfer on pregnancy outcomes in patients undergoing conventional in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection-embryo transfer (IVF/ICSI) treatment. Design: The study was conducted at a single public IVF center in China. Setting This was a population-based prospective cohort study. Participants: Female patients aged 20 to 39 years, with a body mass index (BMI) between 18 and 30 kg/m2, undergoing IVF/ICSI treatment, were enrolled from September 2022 to December 2022, with follow-up until March 2023. Exposure: The pregnancy outcome of patients was compared between those SARS-CoV-2-infected after embryo transfer and those noninfected during the follow-up period. Main Outcomes and Measures: The pregnancy outcomes included biochemical pregnancy rate, implantation rate, clinical pregnancy rate, and early miscarriage rate. Results: A total of 857 female patients undergoing IVF/ICSI treatment were included in the analysis. We observed the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection within 10 weeks after embryo transfer. The biochemical pregnancy rate and implantation rate were lower in the infected group than the uninfected group (58.1% vs 65.9%; 36.6% vs 44.0%, respectively), but no statistically significant. Although, the clinical pregnancy rate was significant lower in the infection group when compared with the uninfected group (49.1%vs 58.2%, p &lt; 0.05), after adjustment for confounders, this increased risk was no longer significant between the two groups (adjusted OR, 0.736, 95% CI, 0.518-1.046). With continued follow-up, a slightly higher risk of early miscarriage in the infected group compared to the uninfected group (9.3% vs 8.8%), but it was not significant (adjusted OR, 0.907, 95% CI, 0.414-1.986). Conclusions and Relevance: The study9s findings suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection within 10 weeks after embryo transfer may have not significantly affect pregnancy outcomes. This evidence allays concerns and provides valuable insights for assisted reproduction practices.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.25.23293116v1" target="_blank">The Impact of Post Embryo Transfer SARS-CoV-2 Infection on Pregnancy in In Vitro Fertilization: A Prospective Cohort Study</a>
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<li><strong>Mask exposure during COVID-19 changes emotional face processing</strong> -
<div>
Faces are one of the key ways that we obtain social information about others. They allow people to identify individuals, understand conversational cues, and make judgements about other’s mental states. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, widespread mask-wearing practices were implemented, causing a shift in the way Americans typically interact. This introduction of masks into social exchanges posed a potential challenge – how would people make these important inferences about others when a large source of information was no longer available? We conducted two studies that investigated the impact of mask exposure on emotion perception. In particular, we measured how participants used facial landmarks (visual cues) and the expressed valence and arousal (affective cues), to make similarity judgements about pairs of emotion faces. Study 1 found that participants with higher levels of mask exposure used cues from the eyes to a greater extent when judging emotion similarity than participants with less mask exposure. Study 2 measured participants’ emotion perception in both April and September 2020 – before and after widespread mask adoption – in the same group of participants to examine changes in the use of facial cues over time. Results revealed an overall increase in the use of visual cues from April to September. Further, as mask exposure increased, people with the most social interaction showed the largest increase in the use of visual facial cues. These results provide evidence that a shift has occurred in how people process faces such that the more people are interacting with others that are wearing masks, the more they have learned to focus on visual cues from the eye area of the face.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/yjfg3/" target="_blank">Mask exposure during COVID-19 changes emotional face processing</a>
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<li><strong>Scoring epidemiological forecasts on transformed scales</strong> -
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Forecast evaluation is essential for the development of predictive epidemic models and can inform their use for public health decision-making. Common scores to evaluate epidemiological forecasts are the Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS) and the Weighted Interval Score (WIS), which can be seen as measures of the absolute distance between the forecast distribution and the observation. However, applying these scores directly to predicted and observed incidence counts may not be the most appropriate due to the exponential nature of epidemic processes and the varying magnitudes of observed values across space and time. In this paper, we argue that transforming counts before applying scores such as the CRPS or WIS can effectively mitigate these difficulties and yield epidemiologically meaningful and easily interpretable results. Using the CRPS on log-transformed values as an example, we list three attractive properties: Firstly, it can be interpreted as a probabilistic version of a relative error. Secondly, it reflects how well models predicted the time-varying epidemic growth rate. And lastly, using arguments on variance-stabilizing transformations, it can be shown that under the assumption of a quadratic mean-variance relationship, the logarithmic transformation leads to expected CRPS values which are independent of the order of magnitude of the predicted quantity. Applying a transformation of log(x + 1) to data and forecasts from the European COVID-19 Forecast Hub, we find that it changes model rankings regardless of stratification by forecast date, location or target types. Situations in which models missed the beginning of upward swings are more strongly emphasised while failing to predict a downturn following a peak is less severely penalised when scoring transformed forecasts as opposed to untransformed ones. We conclude that appropriate transformations, of which the natural logarithm is only one particularly attractive option, should be considered when assessing the performance of different models in the context of infectious disease incidence.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.23.23284722v2" target="_blank">Scoring epidemiological forecasts on transformed scales</a>
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<li><strong>Prolonged exposure to lung-derived cytokines is associated with inflammatory activation of microglia in patients with COVID-19</strong> -
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Neurological impairment is the most common finding in patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19. Furthermore, survivors of pneumonia from any cause have an elevated risk of dementia. Dysfunction in microglia, the primary immune cell in the brain, has been linked to cognitive impairment in murine models of dementia and in humans. Here, we report a transcriptional response in human microglia collected from patients who died following COVID-19 suggestive of their activation by TNF- and other circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines. Consistent with these findings, the levels of 55 alveolar and plasma cytokines were elevated in a cohort of 341 patients with respiratory failure, including 93 unvaccinated patients with COVID-19 and 203 patients with other causes of pneumonia. While peak levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines were similar in patients with pneumonia irrespective of etiology, cumulative cytokine exposure was higher in patients with COVID-19. Corticosteroid treatment, which has been shown to be beneficial in patients with COVID-19, was associated with lower levels of CXCL10, CCL8, and CCL2 - molecules that sustain inflammatory circuits between alveolar macrophages harboring SARS-CoV-2 and activated T cells. These findings suggest that corticosteroids may break this cycle and decrease systemic exposure to lung-derived cytokines and inflammatory activation of microglia in patients with COVID-19.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.28.550765v1" target="_blank">Prolonged exposure to lung-derived cytokines is associated with inflammatory activation of microglia in patients with COVID-19</a>
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<li><strong>New design strategies for ultra-specific CRISPR-Cas13a-based RNA-diagnostic tools with single-nucleotide mismatch sensitivity</strong> -
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The pressing need for clinical diagnostics has required the development of novel nucleic acid-based detection technologies that are sensitive, fast, and inexpensive, and that can be deployed at point-of-care. Recently, the RNA-guided ribonuclease CRISPR-Cas13 has been successfully harnessed for such purposes. However, developing assays for detection of genetic variability, for example single-nucleotide polymorphisms, is still challenging and previously described design strategies are not always generalizable. Here, we expanded our characterization of LbuCas13a RNA-detection specificity by performing a combination of experimental RNA mismatch tolerance profiling, molecular dynamics simulations, protein, and crRNA engineering. We found certain positions in the crRNA-target-RNA duplex that are particularly sensitive to mismatches and establish the effect of RNA concentration in mismatch tolerance. Additionally, we determined that shortening the crRNA spacer or modifying the direct repeat of the crRNA leads to stricter specificities. Furthermore, we harnessed our understanding of LbuCas13a allosteric activation pathways through molecular dynamics and structure-guided engineering to develop novel Cas13a variants that display increased sensitivities to single-nucleotide mismatches. We deployed these Cas13a variants and crRNA design strategies to achieve superior discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 strains compared to wild-type LbuCas13a. Together, our work provides new design criteria and new Cas13a variants for easier-to-implement Cas13-based diagnostics.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.26.550755v1" target="_blank">New design strategies for ultra-specific CRISPR-Cas13a-based RNA-diagnostic tools with single-nucleotide mismatch sensitivity</a>
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<li><strong>Butyrate Protects against SARS-CoV-2-induced Tissue Damage in Golden Hamsters.</strong> -
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Butyrate, produced by gut microbe during dietary fiber fermentation, plays anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects in chronic inflammation diseases, yet it remains to be explored whether butyrate has protective effects against viral infections. Here, we demonstrated that butyrate alleviated tissue injury in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-infected golden hamsters with supplementation of butyrate before and during the infection. Butyrate-treated hamsters showed augmentation of type I interferon (IFN) response and activation of endothelial cells without exaggerated inflammation. In addition, butyrate regulated redox homeostasis by enhancing the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) to inhibit excessive apoptotic cell death. Therefore, butyrate exhibited an effective prevention against SARS-CoV-2 by upregulating antiviral immune responses and promoting cell survival.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.27.550811v1" target="_blank">Butyrate Protects against SARS-CoV-2-induced Tissue Damage in Golden Hamsters.</a>
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<li><strong>Multiscale modelling of chromatin 4D organization in SARS-CoV-2 infected cells</strong> -
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SARS-CoV-2 is able to re-structure chromatin organization and alters the epigenomic landscape of the host genome, though the mechanisms that produce such changes are still poorly understood. Here, we investigate with polymer physics chromatin reorganization of the host genome, in space and time upon SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. We show that re-structuring of A/B compartments is well explained by a remodulation of intra-compartment homotypic affinities, which leads to the weakening of A-A interactions and enhances A-B mixing. At TAD level, re-arrangements are physically described by a general reduction of the loop extrusion activity coupled with an alteration of chromatin phase-separation properties, resulting in more intermingling between different TADs and spread in space of TADs themselves. In addition, the architecture of loci relevant to the antiviral interferon (IFN) response, such as DDX58 or IFIT, results more variable within the 3D single-molecule population of the infected model, suggesting that viral infection leads to a loss of chromatin structural specificity. Analysis of time trajectories of pairwise gene-enhancer and higher-order contacts reveals that such variability derives from a more fluctuating dynamics in infected case, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 alters gene regulation by impacting the stability of the contact network in time. Overall, our study provides the first polymer-physics based 4D reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 infected genome with mechanistic insights on the consequent gene misregulation.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.27.550709v1" target="_blank">Multiscale modelling of chromatin 4D organization in SARS-CoV-2 infected cells</a>
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<li><strong>A nine-year investigation of industry payments to emergency physicians in the United States between 2013 and 2021</strong> -
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Objectives To examine the characteristics and trends in the industry payments to emergency physicians since the inception of the Open Payments Database in 2013 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Methods Using the Open Payments Database between August 2013 and December 2021, this population based cohort study examined all research and general payments made by the healthcare industry to emergency physicians registered in the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System in the United States. We performed descriptive analyses on payment data and generalized estimating equations for payment trends. Results Among 50,483 active emergency physicians, 28,678 (56.8%) accepted a total of $457,640,796.73 payments from the healthcare industry between 2013 and 2021. 56.6% and 1.3% of all emergency physicians received general and research payments, respectively. 20.8% ($94.98 million) of overall industry payments were general payments. Median general and research payments per-physician (interquartile range) were $133.21 ($44.78-$355.77) and $62,842.97 ($10,320.00-$273,285.28), respectively. The top 1% of emergency physicians received 86.2% of overall general payments, respectively. The number of physicians receiving general payments decreased by 2.9% (95% CI: -3.2 to -2.5, p&lt;0.001) annually between 2014 and 2019 and 47.8% (95% CI: -49.8 to -45.6, p&lt;0.001) in 2020. Although there were no significant changes in research payments before the COVID-19 pandemic, the research payments significantly increased by 69.4% (95% CI: 28.9 to 122.7, p&lt;0.001) in 2021 compared to those in 2020. Conclusions The majority of emergency physicians accepted general payments from the healthcare industry, but the number of emergency physicians accepting general payments significantly decreased since the inception of the Open Payments Database.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.23293098v1" target="_blank">A nine-year investigation of industry payments to emergency physicians in the United States between 2013 and 2021</a>
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<li><strong>Industry payments to anesthesiologists in the United States between 2014 and 2022</strong> -
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Background: Financial relationships between physicians and the healthcare industry could be beneficial to improve patient care, but could lead to conflicts of interest. However, there was no study specifically evaluating the extent of financial relationships between anesthesiologists and the healthcare industry in the United States. Methods Using the Open Payments Database between 2014 and 2022, this longitudinal cross-sectional study examined the size, prevalence and trends of general (non-research) payments made by the healthcare industry to all anesthesiologists in the United States. Results: Over the nine-year period, 67.0% of all anesthesiologists received general payments totaling $272.0 million over nine years, while 21.0% to 35.3% of anesthesiologists received one or more general payments each year. Median annual general payments to anesthesiologists ranged from $57 to $115. The top 1%, 5%, and 10% of anesthesiologists received 73.4%, 90.3%, and 94.8% of all general payments, respectively. There were no constant yearly trends in the total amounts and per-anesthesiologist general payments between 2014 and 2019, but significant declines occurred in 2020, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pain medicine physicians received the highest median general payments of $4,426 in nine-year combined total amounts, followed by addiction medicine ($431), critical care medicine ($277), and general anesthesiology ($256). Conclusion: This study reveals significant financial relationships between the healthcare industry and anesthesiologists, with a disproportionate concentration of payments among a minority of anesthesiologists. While no clear trends in payments were evident before the pandemic, there was a substantial reduction during the COVID-19 outbreak.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.23293096v1" target="_blank">Industry payments to anesthesiologists in the United States between 2014 and 2022</a>
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<li><strong>Age- and sex-specific differences in immune responses to BNT162b2 COVID-19 and live-attenuated influenza vaccines in UK adolescents</strong> -
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Key to understanding COVID-19 correlates of protection is assessing vaccine-induced immunity in different demographic groups. Sex- and age-specific immune differences have a wide impact on outcomes from infections and immunisations. Typically, adult females make stronger immune responses and have better disease outcomes but suffer more adverse events following vaccination and are more prone to autoimmune disease. To understand better the mechanisms underlying these differences in vaccine responses, we studied immune responses to two doses of BNT162b2 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in an adolescent cohort (n=34, ages 12-16), an age group previously shown to make significantly greater immune responses to the same vaccine compared to young adults. At the same time, we were able to evaluate immune responses to the co-administered live attenuated influenza vaccine, which has been shown to induce stronger immune responses in adult females. Blood samples from 34 adolescents taken pre- and post-vaccination with COVID-19 and influenza vaccines were assayed for SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG and neutralising antibodies, and cellular immunity specific for SARS-CoV-2 and endemic betacoronaviruses. IgG targeting influenza lineages contained in the influenza vaccine was also assessed. As previously demonstrated, total IgG responses to SARS-CoV-2 Spike antigens were significantly higher among vaccinated adolescents compared to adults (aged 32-52) who received the BNT162b2 vaccine (comparing infection-naive, 49,696 vs 33,339; p=0.03; comparing SARS-CoV-2 previously-infected, 743,691 vs 269,985; p&lt;0.0001) by MSD v-plex assay. However, unexpectedly, antibody responses to BNT162b2 and the live-attenuated influenza vaccine were not higher among female adolescents compared to males; among infection-naive adolescents, antibody responses to BNT162b2 were higher in males than females (62,270 vs 36,951 p=0.008). No sex difference was identified in vaccinated adults. These unexpected findings may result from the introduction of novel mRNA vaccination platforms, generating patterns of immunity divergent from established trends, and providing new insights into what might be protective following COVID-19 vaccination.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.23293091v1" target="_blank">Age- and sex-specific differences in immune responses to BNT162b2 COVID-19 and live-attenuated influenza vaccines in UK adolescents</a>
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<li><strong>WEIRD or not: A Cross-Cultural Behavioral Economic Assessment of Demand for HIV and COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> -
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Background: Despite empirical evidence supporting vaccine effectiveness, vaccine hesitancy continues to thrive. Demand as a behavioral economic process provides useful indices for evaluating vaccine acceptance likelihood in individuals and groups. Using this framework, our study investigates the dynamics governing vaccine acceptance in two culturally dissimilar countries. Methods: Hypothetical purchase tasks (HPTs) assessed how Nigerian and US participants varied vaccine acceptance as a function of hospitalization risks due to vaccination (N = 109). Aggregate and individual demand indices (Q0 and Pmax) were computed with nonlinear regressions. Secondary analyses were conducted using repeated measures ANOVAs with vaccine type (COVID-19 and HIV) as the within-subject factor; country, age, and socioeconomic status as between-subjects factors; demand indices served as dependent variables. Results: Demand indices varied significantly as a function of vaccine type (F(1, 57) = 17.609, p &lt; .001, ηp2 = .236). Demand for HIV vaccines was higher relative to COVID-19 vaccines. Interactions between vaccine type and country of origin (F(1, 56) = 4.001, p = .05, ηp2 = .067) were also significant with demand for HIV vaccines among Nigerian respondents higher than that of COVID-19 vaccines. This was reversed for US participants. Interactions between vaccine type, country of origin and age were also significant (F(2, 51) = 3.506, p &lt; .05, ηp2 = .121). Conclusions: These findings provide evidence that vaccine type can influence demand. The relationship between demand and vaccine type also varies as a function of country of origin and age. Significance, limitations, and future directions are also discussed.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.23293101v1" target="_blank">WEIRD or not: A Cross-Cultural Behavioral Economic Assessment of Demand for HIV and COVID-19 Vaccines</a>
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<li><strong>Fight or Flight: Emergency Healthcare Workers Willingness to Work during Crises and Disasters: A cross-sectional multicentre study in the Netherlands</strong> -
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Objective: Expanding staff levels is a strategy for hospitals to increase surge capacity. This study aimed to evaluate whether emergency healthcare workers (HCWs) are willing to work (WTW) during a crises or disaster and which working conditions would influence their decision. Methods: HCWs of emergency departments (ED) and intensive care units (ICU) of five Dutch hospitals were surveyed about elevens disaster scenarios. For each scenario, HCWs were asked about their WTW and which conditions would influence their decision. Knowledge and perceived risk and danger was assessed per scenario. Results: 306/630 HCWs completed the survey. An influenza epidemic, SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and natural disaster were associated with highest WTW rates (69.0%, 63.7% and 53.3% respectively). WTW was lowest in nuclear incident (4.6%) and dirty bomb (3.3%) scenarios. WTW was higher in physicians than in nurses. Male ED HCWS, single HCWs and childless HCWs were more often WTW. Personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety of HCWs family were the most important working conditions. Perceived knowledge scored lowest in dirty bomb, biological and nuclear incident scenarios. These scenarios rated highest with regards to perceived danger. Conclusions: WTW depended on disaster type, profession and working department. Provision of PPE and safety of HCWs family were found to be predominant working conditions.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.25.23293139v1" target="_blank">Fight or Flight: Emergency Healthcare Workers Willingness to Work during Crises and Disasters: A cross-sectional multicentre study in the Netherlands</a>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Exercise Training on Patients With Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Smell in COVID-19 and Efficacy of Nasal Theophylline (SCENT 3)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: theophylline;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Washington University School of Medicine<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lymph Node Aspiration to Decipher the Immune Response of Beta-variant Recombinant Protein Booster Vaccine (VidPrevtyn Beta, Sanofi) Compared to a Bivalent mRNA Vaccine (Comirnaty Original/Omicron BA.4-5, BioNTech-Pfizer) in Adults Previously Vaccinated With at Least 3 Doses of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Procedure: Lymph node aspiration / Blood sampling<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Trial of the Candidate Vaccine MVA-SARS-2-S in Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: MVA-SARS-2-S;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf;   German Center for Infection Research;   Philipps University Marburg Medical Center;   Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich;   University Hospital Tuebingen;   CTC-NORTH<br/><b>Withdrawn</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunoadsorption vs. Sham Treatment in Post COVID-19 Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Fatigue;   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Procedure: Immunoadsorption vs. sham immunoadsorption<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Hannover Medical School<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Non-ventilated Prone Positioning in the COVID-19 Population</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Proning;   Oxygenation;   Length of Stay<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Proning group;   Other: Control group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>HD-Tdcs and Pharmacological Intervention For Delirium In Critical Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Delirium;   Critical Illness<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Active HD-tDCS;   Combination Product: Sham HD-tDCS<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Suellen Andrade;   City University of New York<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety, Efficacy, and Dosing of VIX001 in Patients With Neurological Symptoms of Post Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS).</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Cognitive Impairment;   Neurological Complication<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: VIX001<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Neobiosis, LLC<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study on the Safety and Immune Response of a Booster Dose of Investigational COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent High dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Medium dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Low dose;   Biological: CV0601 Monovalent High dose;   Biological: Control vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   GlaxoSmithKline;   CureVac<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PROTECT-APT 1: Early Treatment and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Upamostat;   Drug: Placebo (PO)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine;   Joint Program Executive Office Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense Enabling Biotechnologies;   FHI Clinical, Inc.;   RedHill Biopharma Limited<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Evaluation of the Safety and Efficacy of Randomized Placebo Versus the 8-aminoquinoline Tafenoquine for Early Symptom Resolution in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease and Low Risk of Disease Progression</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID 19 Disease;   Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease;   SARS-CoV-2;   Infectious Disease;   Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Tafenoquine Oral Tablet;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   60P Australia Pty Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Impact of COVID-19 on Sinus Augmentation Surgery</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Bone Loss<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Procedure: Sinus lift in patients with positive COVID-19 history;   Procedure: Sinus lift with negative COVID-19 history<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Expressive Interviewing Agents to Support Health-Related Behavior Change</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Mental Stress<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Expressive Interviewing<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Michigan;   University of Texas at Austin<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety of an Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Coadministered With Two Attenuated Vaccines</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection;   Varicella;   Measles;   Mumps;   Rubella<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine coadministered with vricella vaccine;   Biological: Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine coadministered with MMR;   Biological: Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine administered alone<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention;   China National Biotec Group Company Limited<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Impact of Breathing Exercises and Meditation on Improving Quality of Life in Glaucoma Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Glaucoma;   Depression;   Anxiety;   Quality of Life;   Sleep Disorder<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Breathing Exercises followed by Meditation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Lawson Health Research Institute<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PARP14 is a writer, reader and eraser of mono-ADP-ribosylation</strong> - PARP14/BAL2 is a large multidomain enzyme involved in signaling pathways with relevance to cancer, inflammation, and infection. Inhibition of its mono-ADP-ribosylating PARP homology domain and its three ADP-ribosyl binding macro domains has been regarded as a potential means of therapeutic intervention. Macrodomains-2 and -3 are known to stably bind to ADP-ribosylated target proteins; but the function of macrodomain-1 has remained somewhat elusive. Here, we used biochemical assays of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Modulation of type I interferon responses potently inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication and inflammation in rhesus macaques</strong> - Type I interferons (IFN-I) are critical mediators of innate control of viral infections but also drive the recruitment of inflammatory cells to sites of infection, a key feature of severe coronavirus disease 2019. Here, IFN-I signaling was modulated in rhesus macaques (RMs) before and during acute SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) infection using a mutated IFN-α2 (IFN-modulator; IFNmod), which has previously been shown to reduce the binding and signaling of endogenous…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Investigating the promising SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitory activity of secoiridoids isolated from <em>Jasminum humile</em>; <em>in silico</em> and <em>in virto</em> assessments with structure-activity relationship</strong> - The proteolytic enzyme 3 C-like protease (3Clpro or M^(pro)) is considered the most important target for SARS-CoV-2 which could be attributed to its crucial role in viral maturation and/or replication. Besides, natural phytoconstituents from plant origin are always promising lead compounds in the drug discovery area. Herein, the previously isolated and identified seven compounds from Jasminum humile (J. humile) were examined in vitro and in silico against the SARS-CoV-2 M^(pro). First, the Vero…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Structural Transitions of Papain-like Cysteine Proteases: Implications for Sensor Development</strong> - The significant role of papain-like cysteine proteases, including papain, cathepsin L and SARS-CoV-2 PLpro, in biomedicine and biotechnology makes them interesting model systems for sensor development. These enzymes have a free thiol group that is suitable for many sensor designs including strong binding to gold nanoparticles or low-molecular-weight inhibitors. Focusing on the importance of the preservation of native protein structure for inhibitor-binding and molecular-imprinting, which has…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 NSP1 induces mRNA cleavages on the ribosome</strong> - In severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the non-structural protein NSP1 inhibits translation of host mRNAs by binding to the mRNA entry channel of the ribosome and, together with the 5’-untranslated region (UTR) of the viral mRNAs, allows the evasion of that inhibition. Here, we show that NSP1 mediates endonucleolytic cleavages of both host and viral mRNAs in the 5’UTR, but with different cleavage patterns. The first pattern is observed in host mRNAs with cleavages…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Complete Protection from SARS-CoV-2 Lung Infection in Mice Through Combined Intranasal Delivery of PIKfyve Kinase and TMPRSS2 Protease Inhibitors</strong> - Emerging variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2 can significantly reduce the prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy of vaccines and neutralizing antibodies due to mutations in the viral genome. Targeting cell host factors required for infection provides a complementary strategy to overcome this problem since the host genome is less susceptible to variation during the life span of infection. The enzymatic activities of the endosomal PIKfyve phosphoinositide kinase and the serine protease TMPRSS2 are…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Proteolytic cleavage and inactivation of the TRMT1 tRNA modification enzyme by SARS-CoV-2 main protease</strong> - Nonstructural protein 5 (Nsp5) is the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 that cleaves viral polyproteins into individual polypeptides necessary for viral replication. Here, we show that Nsp5 binds and cleaves human tRNA methyltransferase 1 (TRMT1), a host enzyme required for a prevalent post-transcriptional modification in tRNAs. Human cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhibit a decrease in TRMT1 protein levels and TRMT1-catalyzed tRNA modifications, consistent with TRMT1 cleavage and inactivation by…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Cyproheptadine on Ventilatory Support-free Days in Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19: An Open-label, Randomized Clinical Trial</strong> - CONCLUSION: In patients with COVID-19 and in need of ventilatory support, the use of cyproheptadine plus usual care, compared with usual care alone, did not increase the number of ventilatory support-free days in 28 days.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Potential pharmacokinetic interactions with concurrent use of herbal medicines and a ritonavir-boosted COVID-19 protease inhibitor in low and middle-income countries</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic sparked the development of novel anti-viral drugs that have shown to be effective in reducing both fatality and hospitalization rates in patients with elevated risk for COVID-19 related morbidity or mortality. Currently, nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid™) fixed-dose combination is recommended by the World Health Organization for treatment of COVID-19. The ritonavir component is an inhibitor of cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A, which is used in this combination to achieve needed…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Alpha-ketoglutarate supplementation reduces inflammation and thrombosis in type 2 diabetes by suppressing leukocyte and platelet activation</strong> - The interplay between platelets and leukocytes contributes to the pathogenesis of inflammation, thrombosis and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in type 2 diabetes (T2D). Our recent studies described alpha-ketoglutarate (αKG), a Krebs cycle intermediate metabolite as an inhibitor to platelets and leukocytes activation by suppressing phosphorylated-Akt (pAkt) through augmentation of prolyl hydroxylase-2 (PHD2). Dietary supplementation with a pharmacological concentration of αKG significantly…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Computational analysis of spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (Omicron variant) for development of peptide-based therapeutics and diagnostics</strong> - In the last few years, the worldwide population has suffered from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The WHO dashboard indicated that around 504,079,039 people were infected and 6,204,155 died from COVID-19 caused by different variants of SARS-CoV-2. Recently, a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 (B.1.1.529) was reported by South Africa known as Omicron. The high transmissibility rate and resistance towards available anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs/vaccines/monoclonal antibodies, make Omicron a variant of concern. Because…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A case of T-cell-Epstein-Barr virus-haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and sustained remission following ruxolitinib therapy</strong> - CONCLUSION: EBV viraemia requires adequate treatment to control EBV-associated HLH as rituximab may be insufficient, and corticosteroid resistance can result in continued EBV infection in CD8^(+) T cells. This entity is known as T-cell-EBV-HLH. Ruxolitinib is a novel treatment strategy in this specific context and has several advantages, including inhibition of corticosteroid resistance to promote apoptosis of EBV-infected T cells.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Neuroimaging findings in adolescent gaming disorder: a systematic review</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: A number of key brain regions are affected in adolescent gaming disorder. These findings can help clinicians understand adolescent presentations with gaming disorder from a neurobiological perspective. Future studies should focus on forming a robust neurobiological and clinical framework for adolescent gaming disorder.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A high-throughput screening system for SARS-CoV-2 entry inhibition, syncytia formation and cell toxicity</strong> - CONCLUSION: A BSL-2 compatible assay system that is equivalent to the infectious SARS-CoV-2 is a promising tool for high-throughput screening of large compound libraries for viral entry inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 along with toxicity and effects on syncytia. Studies using clinical isolates of SARS-CoV-2 are warranted to confirm the antiviral potency of the leads and the utility of the screening system.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rapid genetic screening with high quality factor metasurfaces</strong> - Genetic analysis methods are foundational to advancing personalized medicine, accelerating disease diagnostics, and monitoring the health of organisms and ecosystems. Current nucleic acid technologies such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) rely on sample amplification and can suffer from inhibition. Here, we introduce a label-free genetic screening platform based on high quality (high-Q) factor silicon nanoantennas functionalized with nucleic acid fragments….</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Boss and His Botched Coverup</strong> - The latest charges against Donald Trump show him and his Mar-a-Lago band to be as lame as the Watergate plumbers. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trump-indictment-the-boss-and-his-botched-coverup">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why Did Economic Forecasters Get Their Recession Call Wrong?</strong> - Not only has the economy outperformed predictions but it’s growing at a faster rate than experts think is sustainable in the long run. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-did-economic-forecasters-get-their-recession-call-wrong">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How UPS and the Teamsters Staved Off a Strike—for Now</strong> - With work stoppages under way or looming in a variety of industries, is the U.S. in the midst of a “hot labor summer”? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-ups-and-the-teamsters-staved-off-a-strike-for-now">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Regina Spektor on “Home, Before and After,” and a Trip to the Boundary Waters</strong> - The singer talks to the music critic Amanda Petrusich about her most recent album, and the writer Alex Kotlowitz makes an annual pilgrimage to the northern woods of Minnesota. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/regina-spektor-on-home-before-and-after-and-a-trip-to-the-boundary-waters">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Heat Waves and the Sweep of History</strong> - This burning summer is taking us out of human time. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/heat-waves-and-the-sweep-of-history">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>People online are drinking laundry detergent again</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A drawing of a box of borax pouring into a drinking glass with ice cubes." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-2-0P91kJ67eT4CPKgfmhSt96-o=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72495162/PaigeVickers_Vox_Borax.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Paige Vickers / Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The borax challenge was never just a dangerous TikTok trend.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TMIcyA">
<em>Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only; the writers are not recommending drinking Borax. Just don’t.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7X8qrJ">
The video has all the emblems of someone sharing their recipe for a nutritious smoothie: ingredients laid out on the counter, captions touting their health benefits. But Leah Anduiza, who posts on <a href="https://www.vox.com/tiktok">TikTok</a> as <span class="citation" data-cites="thetruthaboutparasites">@thetruthaboutparasites</span>, is not telling her 47,000 followers to add a little spinach to a fruit smoothie for an extra boost of iron. Instead, she’s making a solution of borax and water, a concoction she says she drinks daily with her morning coffee.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YxI1cz">
Borax is a chemical compound containing boron that’s sold as a laundry detergent or cleaning agent. Ingesting it can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Drinking it or bathing in it can cause skin rashes. Take borax for long enough and you could end up with anemia, according to the <a href="https://www.poison.org/articles/can-borax-treat-inflammation">National Capital Poison Center</a>. But in several online enclaves, borax is one of many dubious substances in the medicine cabinet of misinformation, touted as a cure for everything from arthritis to cancer. Drinking borax is not a new phenomenon. But on TikTok, it became a trend.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3HInop">
The #boraxchallenge has more than 34 million views and counting on TikTok. Click on the hashtag and it’s not difficult to find videos of people sharing their “journey” of ingesting laundry detergent. And if you spend enough time looking at these videos, TikTok will feed you even more.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I1EYaZ">
“I simply add it to my lemon water every morning,” one TikTok user says in a video with 20,000 views, as she showed herself squeezing lemon juice into a bright green cup as cheerful music plays in the background. “Just a pinch or two a day.” Todd Mendlesohn, a former bodybuilder with 25,000 followers on TikTok, promised his audience that a “pre-workout” drink of borax, baking soda, and Celtic sea salt would give them “the biggest pump on the planet.” That video has more than 150,000 views.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1b7Nny">
These kinds of popular health-adjacent TikTok videos tend to be imbued with a sense of accessibility. If the person showing their recipe for a health drink says it made them feel better, maybe it’ll also work for you. That sentiment can swiftly lead to dangerous trends, in which the individual videos shake off the context in which they were created, bursting in and out of view with a quickness that avoids deep examination. And this is exactly why health misinformation works so well on TikTok. But as the platform’s collective attention moves on to the next trend, real people can still get hurt.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N2yrz6">
Melissa, who posts on TikTok as <span class="citation" data-cites="athenavondusseldorf">@athenavondusseldorf</span> and declined to give her full name out of concerns about harassment, was hopeful when she saw a TikTok video recommending borax water. “I’m in a desperate amount of pain and I have been jumping through hoops with doctors for 8 years trying to get some relief,” she said in a DM, explaining that she’s been diagnosed with a painful spinal condition. A TikTok video — she can’t remember which one she saw first — prompted her to do more research. She found a <a href="https://www.vox.com/youtube">YouTube</a> video of a woman who replaced her toothpaste with borax. <a href="https://www.vox.com/google">Google</a> results led her to an article on the NIH website about the potential benefits of boron supplements. She bought some borax and mixed a teaspoon into her water bottle — a dosage she settled on after watching how much TikTokers were adding to their concoctions. She drank borax water for two days before posting her own TikTok video about the experience that’s titled “I poisoned myself.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="veYpbE">
“I had to call out of work. I was throwing up. I had such a headache that I felt like my brain was swelling,” Melissa said in the video. She knew better, she said. Her instincts were telling her that drinking laundry detergent was a bad idea. But she was in a lot of pain, her doctors weren’t helping, and it seemed like so many other people had tried borax with great results.
</p>
<h3 id="ji4mza">
The latest dangerous internet challenge
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gWOALJ">
Some people are calling the borax challenge “the Tide Pod challenge for boomers,” referencing the 2018 moral panic about teens <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/1/4/16841674/tide-pods-eating-meme-tide-pod-challenge">filming themselves eating Tide Pods</a> for social media clout. There’s a delicious irony in this framing: While the panic about the Tide Pod challenge vastly outpaced the rather limited popularity of the so-called trend among actual teens at the time, it’s easy to establish that a bunch of adults really are filming themselves preparing and drinking borax. But upon closer examination, the comparison has deeper cracks: Enterprising internet users are actually trying to monetize the borax challenge.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TuJIL2">
The borax challenge is part of a cottage industry of health misinformation that extends beyond TikTok. But thanks to TikTok’s trend culture, the people making money by pushing these dangerous tips and treatments are finding a new audience that’s ultimately being directed to an established network of snake oil salespeople and miracle cure peddlers spread across the internet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bT4JiV">
Misinformation also benefits from the cycle of a controversial social media trend. First, the idea gains attention, and as the trend spreads, its dubious claims draw outrage that leads to video removals. Eventually, the platform cracks down, which simply emboldens the trend’s loyal followers with the idea that “they” are trying to censor the truth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WNa4Ek">
It’s tricky to track the impact of trends like this, said Rachel Moran, who studies health misinformation as a postdoc scholar at the University of Washington. “Especially when the trend involves ingesting a substance that is typically thought of as toxic, it’s unclear how many people who show interest online will actually perform the behavior offline,” she said. “People may be more inclined to try drinking borax if they can post about it online and go viral, but similarly the everyday non-posting user watching the video may see it as a trend fit only for (wannabe) <a href="https://www.vox.com/influencers">influencers</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kyX5Ub">
As people saw — and researched — the practice of drinking borax, they stumbled into an existing network that had been promoting the practice for years. On <a href="https://www.vox.com/facebook">Facebook</a>, there’s a private group with more than 40,000 members devoted to ingesting or bathing in borax. Recent posts are filled with requests for advice on dosage from people who want to start drinking borax after seeing it online. Some of those who have started their borax “journey” even ask for help dealing with the fallout.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8bvjLx">
“I have an awful aftertaste, and my mouth is dry,” wrote one user after drinking borax for the first time. Others asked for advice, including dosage, for giving borax to their children and their pets. In another recent post, an anonymous member asked for advice after their mother soaked in borax water. “She’s been throwing up since 2:00am,” the anonymous poster wrote. She was not drinking water. “I’m worried cause she’s almost 86 …” Someone replied, “She’s detoxing. That’s good.” An administrator for the group declined to answer questions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8YE8fy">
TikTok told Vox that it didn’t believe drinking borax was a trend on their platform and that the majority of videos posted on the topic were by people trying to debunk it. Many of the most popular videos promoting borax consumption have since been removed, either by the creator of the video or by TikTok moderators. Many of the removals seem to coincide with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2023/07/20/whats-this-new-borax-tiktok-trend-here-are-the-dangers/">increased</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/drinking-borax-tiktok-trend-medical-authorities-debunk-rcna95526">media</a> attention to the phenomenon at the end of last week, as popular TikTok creators called out and condemned the presence of these videos on the app. TikTok’s <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en/mental-behavioral-health/?cgversion=2023#3">community guidelines</a> ban videos that promote dangerous practices, including viral challenges.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ArvE1m">
Anduiza, the influencer who helped kick-start the borax trend on TikTok several months ago, has paused posting about borax on her TikTok account, and her popular borax recipe video was removed by TikTok for violating their misinformation rules. And yet, she has since been using her social media presence to funnel people to other platforms. Her personal website advertises free and paid advice on undergoing a “parasite detox” that includes ingesting borax, and directs people to the products she sells, including a holistic wellness multi-level marketing scheme called Amare. She also steers people to her 6,000-member private Facebook group and to an Amazon page where she earns affiliate links when people buy the detox products she recommends, including borax. Anduiza did not return multiple requests for comment.
</p>
<h3 id="IE7rLm">
Why misinformation thrives on TikTok
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PHFYt9">
Personal anecdotes from those who “cured” themselves of the incurable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/they-turn-to-facebook-and-youtube-to-find-a-cure-for-cancer--and-get-sucked-into-a-world-of-bogus-medicine/2019/06/25/6df3ddae-7cdc-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html">have long been health misinformation’s most powerful currency</a>. For years, these testimonials have been shared in private Facebook groups, cheerful <a href="https://www.vox.com/instagram-news">Instagram</a> posts, and slickly produced YouTube videos, in targeted advertisements and in Google results. But TikTok is an anecdote-amplifying machine. On TikTok, reaching a huge audience of well-meaning viewers can be as simple as telling a good story, backed by the right music and lighting.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PtG7o9">
To Casey Fiesler, an associate professor at the University of Colorado who studies online communities, the borax challenge videos were reminiscent of viral TikTok recipes. Instead of dropping a block of feta in a pan and roasting it with tomatoes, however, they’re romanticizing drinking borax as part of a wellness lifestyle. And as those videos find an audience, they become embedded in the structure of TikTok’s algorithmic incentives to keep engaging with content. Once it’s embedded, the pathways toward misinformation multiply.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NVGJql">
One video with nearly 2 million views, posted in June and still available on TikTok, claims to unveil the “borax conspiracy” by rehashing the arguments of a 2012 article by the same name that claims “Big Pharma” is covering up the benefits of drinking borax. At the top of the video, TikTok has displayed a suggested search for “Borax health benefits” that led to a river of videos promoting the benefits of ingesting borax. TikTok’s search results have also included a list of related search terms “benefits of borax for dogs,” “can dogs ingest borax for health benefits,” “borax benefits for arthritis,” “benefits of borax for men.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZFIX2">
“It fits the mold of what becomes popular on the platform: ‘alternative’ health advice that is cheap, accessible, and explained through a scientific-adjacent explanation that feels familiar,” said Moran, the misinformation expert.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bnewHB">
Not all of those trends are explicitly harmful. Things like the “<a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/the-sleepy-girl-mocktail">sleepy girl mocktail</a>” and the “<a href="https://www.poison.org/articles/internal-shower">internal shower</a>” are mostly guilty of overstating the benefits of a food or supplement that is safe to eat, according to Moran. And as these topics spread to people outside of their intended audience, there’s often a counter trend of outrage that turns up the volume.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="irfUCL">
“An interesting thing about TikTok is that the content that gets spread a lot isn’t necessarily the content that people like,” said Fiesler. “It gains a foothold with both the audience who agrees with it and wants to believe it, and the audience who doesn’t believe it and knows that it’s misinformation and wants to warn people.”
</p>
<h3 id="Nb1N0A">
What can be done about the challenge cycle?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IJDEYn">
Addressing misinformation online generally is tricky. TikTok’s cultural swiftness certainly doesn’t help. “When these ‘new’ trends go viral, the conversation intensifies and then dissipates so quickly it’s hard for us to grasp how and when the information became important,” said Moran. Things go from “new” to deeply familiar so quickly that it’s hard to find room for even well-meaning audiences to question their veracity. While some of the most widely shared borax-drinking videos on TikTok were removed, new videos promoting the practice are still being posted and finding audiences.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vQjONG">
This is what Chem Thug, an account run by a chemistry PhD candidate and their wife, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid harassment, set out to address. In mid-July, they posted a supercut of TikTok creators enthusiastically undertaking the “borax challenge” as word of the trend spread. The compilation was intended to be shocking to their 175,000 followers and communicate that yes, people really are drinking borax. In fact, some people have been posting videos of themselves drinking borax on TikTok for months, or even years. Then, Chem Thug hops on camera to warn viewers against drinking laundry detergent. “Don’t eat shit out of the f-ing laundry box, people!” the video says before walking through a review of scientific literature on the dangers of ingesting borax.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QNRR6J">
Chem Thug’s video quickly gained nearly 2 million views.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hz1hcp">
“I am a firm believer in good faith at first,” Chem Thug said in an interview. “I try to find the kernel of truth from which sprouted all the lies, you know? I like to believe that if they’re given accurate information or as close to accurate information as possible, they’ll come to the logical conclusion.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QO0Y3R">
For a time, Chem Thug’s video was among the top results on TikTok for searches related to borax, which was part of the purpose of making it. Chem Thug knew the attention would die down eventually, but not the presence of this dangerous misinformation on TikTok. Months from now, they hope that someone searching for borax’s health benefits might see this video instead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l4SgOv">
Then Chem Thug ran into a major obstacle to their work addressing TikTok’s misinformation trends: TikTok’s moderation practices. Just before their video hit 2 million views, the platform removed it for violating its rules, sending a message to the Chem Thug account that it flagged its content for promoting dangerous activities. TikTok restored the video six days later.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NHRt0Z">
The trend cycle had advanced. The dangerous borax challenge sparked outrage, which led to attention and media coverage and that ultimately drew action from TikTok’s moderators — which wasn’t always directed at the right users. Even without intervention by moderators, TikTok trends don’t last very long, and the borax challenge will fade away, just like almost everything else that bursts into popularity on the app. But soon something else will trend that is dangerous or misleading or nonsense, and the spotlight will turn in that direction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9h7HN1">
The experience was frustrating for Chem Thug. “I’m out here trying to tell people how to not kill themselves,” they said. “You know what I mean?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iFIUtY">
Meanwhile, new members continued to flock to the Facebook group that promotes drinking borax. One recent post simply asks, “Is it safe to start taking borax while breastfeeding?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fg4vJT">
Then, that afternoon, the Facebook group was no longer available to view. When asked why, an administrator replied, they’d “decided to pause the group till all this TikTok stuff settles down.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nXOqZe">
<em>Abby Ohlheiser is a freelance reporter and editor who writes about technology, religion, and culture. Their work has appeared previously on </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23738987/racism-ai-automated-bias-discrimination-algorithm"><em>Vox</em></a><em> and in the </em><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/abby-ohlheiser/"><em>Washington Post</em></a><em>, Mashable, the Revealer, the New Humanist, Slate, and the </em><a href="https://archives.cjr.org/author/abby-ohlheiser/"><em>Columbia Journalism Review</em></a><em>, among other places. They have an MA in religious studies and journalism from New York University and a book in the works on American evangelicalism and far-right media.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>3 reasons the US might actually fix inflation without a recession</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A plane coming in for landing." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QWyLbSobNaslUCTOmSjtGaeq1kY=/274x0:4653x3284/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72495103/GettyImages_184382742.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A “soft landing” from last year’s inflation crisis appears increasingly plausible. | Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Is it time to celebrate the economy’s “soft landing” yet?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MaAr4E">
The <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy">US economy</a> is looking good. A “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/23614066/inflation-soft-landing-economy-recession">soft landing</a>” — getting last year’s skyrocketing inflation under control without a recession — appears increasingly plausible. All of its structural inequities largely persist, of course, but wages are strong, unemployment is low, and the economy is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/business/economy/us-economy-gdp-q2.html">still growing</a>. The Federal Reserve is <a href="https://twitter.com/jeannasmialek/status/1684278410309259264">no longer projecting</a> the US will enter a recession in the near term.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hp3SfS">
It’s worth remembering just how unlikely this all seemed a year ago. As the Federal Reserve started to hike interest rates to try to fight inflation, many commentators regarded some kind of a recession as <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2022/06/22/actually-a-recession-is-inevitable-00041577">a fait accompli</a>. After all, if you look at <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/29/federal-reserve-recession-inflation-rates-00021119">the history</a>, an inflation crisis has usually required an economic downturn, which means a lot of people losing their <a href="https://www.vox.com/labor-jobs">jobs</a> and feeling financial pain, in order to get prices under control.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PU2HDs">
It’s too early to declare victory. Inflation is still not as low as the Fed would like. But the US economy is outperforming most of its peers in both productive growth and slowing inflation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2nok5S">
So how did we get here? I endeavored to find out and find a way to tell the story of the past 18 months for those of us who might not intuitively know that an inverting of the yield curve can predict a recession until we read <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/14/20805404/yield-curve-inversion-recession-10-year-2-year">a Vox explainer on the subject</a>. (TL;DR: When yields on short-term Treasury bonds are higher than those of long-term bonds, this is an <em>inversion</em> of the typical pattern and implies investors are anticipating a recession.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f5D7cy">
To be clear, the landing could still get bumpy. US-<a href="https://www.vox.com/china">China</a> trade tensions could flare up. We may not have heard the last of weaknesses in the banking sector exposed by <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23634433/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-silvergate-first-republic-fdic">Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse</a>. Another unexpected disaster, geopolitical or natural, can never be ruled out. And the gridlock in Washington could make it more difficult to respond if such a thing occurs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NBapJW">
But, the bottom line is, according to Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, who recently briefed <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">President Joe Biden</a> on the economy: “The likelihood of recession has lessened, and the likelihood of soft landing has increased.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OMk6ec">
No single explanation will suffice and economists still disagree about what exactly is driving the gears of the economy. But I spoke with a handful of leading experts. Here are three theories that, taken together, explain how the US might pull this off.
</p>
<h3 id="ELbqOy">
<ol type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Pandemic-related economic disruptions have dissipated
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8UkHQb">
The shock that the Covid-19 pandemic sent through the economy in the spring of 2020 was unprecedented. But even as economic activity picked back up in the months to come, it was not the pre-pandemic economy. Spending habits changed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dZ8vf6">
Instead of buying a gym membership, people bought a Peloton for their home. Some people moved to a new house in a new neighborhood and, rather than ride on public <a href="https://www.vox.com/transportation">transportation</a> as they had, they purchased cars, maybe a used car, to adjust to their new post-pandemic life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="acLcGe">
But at the same time, people were buying more of those goods — more Pelotons, more furniture, more home-based tech, more cars — the supply chains for those products were being disrupted by the pandemic. Production stopped or slowed as factories shut down. Trade dropped considerably and prices rose in response given the high demand, the first step toward an inflation crisis. Housing prices were soaring as people decided to move; at the same time, new construction was hobbled by supply constraints.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="naozsx">
“It’s almost like wartime change in the composition of demand,” Josh Bivens, chief economist of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me. “We tried to shove a bunch of that demand into sectors whose global supply chains were collapsing because of Covid.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HkxZyJ">
Meanwhile, the service side of the economy largely collapsed and 22 million people lost their jobs in a very short time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fPs9sD">
There was something unusual about this period of historically high unemployment: Many workers still had a lot of cash, thanks to the pandemic relief bills passed by <a href="https://www.vox.com/congress">Congress</a>. Even as the economy started reopening and businesses tried to rapidly hire back many of the people they had laid off, workers could be choosy. <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9751256/Chetty_MoralHazard.pdf">Research has found</a> that people who have more savings tend to take longer to find work. It makes intuitive sense too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jPA9WK">
And if somebody lost their job for whatever reason, there were plenty of other positions available. That combination of low unemployment and plentiful job openings is unusual, and it propped up workers but also helped create the inflation crisis. People who have more money tend to spend more money and, given Covid’s constraints on supply, that is also going to increase prices.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7foPIC">
This apparent overheating was at its peak last summer when, at the same time, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia-invasion-ukraine">Russian invasion of Ukraine</a> had led to <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy">energy prices</a> skyrocketing. The US was looking at 9 percent inflation, and the Fed, which up to that point had also regarded
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yI8JFW">
But Bivens and other experts I spoke to said that they believed these effects were always going to be transitory. As the economy got further away from the disruptions of the past few years, inflation would slow naturally, without intervention.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="85SRMC">
The slowdown in housing prices in particular, and their secondary effects, take a long time to show up in inflation data. Consumer spending was also bound to cool off. Peterson said she has been surprised by the persistence of consumers’ “revenge spending” — people spending on travel and other entertainment after a few years in which that was practically impossible. One theory for why: Goods people pay for on a credit card are not as exposed to rate hikes as a loan on a car or a major purchase — but she also said that spending would inevitably ease as people start to run out of their excess savings from the pandemic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f5iner">
One major financial firm’s forecasting team said they attributed about 40 percent of price increases last year to these transitory factors. That still left an inflation problem, but a more modest one than the headline numbers would have suggested.
</p>
<h3 id="dJBuqH">
<ol start="2" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">The labor market has been gradually normalizing
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fbua1H">
Supply chain problems were not something the Fed was equipped to deal with, and those factors have largely been normalizing on their own. The roaring labor market, however, was a more obvious target for the Fed’s fiscal policy once inflation became unpalatable.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bRy6es">
Here is why many experts saw a soft landing as difficult to pull off: The Federal Reserve had made clear it was going to raise rates, because inflation had reached untenable levels and something had to be done, and it’s hard to control the effects of those rate increases. The expectation is that they will lead to a slowdown in business and consumer spending, which leads to layoffs, which leads to less spending. That’s how you end up in a recession.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FtFXuz">
But the labor market has proven stubbornly resistant: More than 200,000 jobs were added in <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">June</a>, and unemployment stayed stuck at 3.6 percent despite a year of rate hikes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NkpzH3">
Part of the explanation is that certain sectors — such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care">health care</a>, business services, and entertainment — are still rehiring from their losses during the pandemic. Companies have also been holding on to workers. Peterson told me her company’s recent surveys of CEOs have found executives were expecting a recession, but they expected it to be mild, so they were less interested in preemptively making cuts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zFoDBV">
The abundance of job openings also prevented a jump in unemployment, even as interest rates started to rise. Usually, when somebody loses a job, they have to cut back on their spending, which then has more knock-on effects: Less consumer spending leads to more layoffs leads to less spending. That’s why the unemployment rate tends to rise sharply in a short period, if you look back at historical trends.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ckC34R">
But lately, it’s been so easy for people to find work that we haven’t set off the vicious chain reaction that can lead to a recession. Instead, companies have been cutting back on their job openings over the past year (<a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.a.htm">from 11,400 in May 2022 to 9,800 in May 2023</a>) more gradually. The labor market has been settling down, rather than all crashing down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H9754z">
And with job openings gradually decreasing, wage growth has also been cooling. The fear was that low employment would keep driving wages higher, which would keep pushing prices up. That potentially toxic combination of prices and wages rising together led to the Fed’s initial decision to increase interest rates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zdHXjZ">
But after peaking last spring, <a href="https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/">nominal wage growth has steadily come down</a>, from 5.8 percent in April 2022 to 4.4 percent in June 2023. Historically healthy, but more in line with the pre-pandemic trend lines.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A graph from the Economic Policy Institutes shows the change in private-sector nominal average earnings over the last 20 years. It peaks in 2020 and again in the spring of 2022, before settling at 4.4 percent this year." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1sRRSRUG3gukhZWj__zk5OK_sfo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24815793/143451_29261.png"/> <cite>Economic Policy Institute</cite>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h4Meek">
This was the goal, the controlled — or “soft” — landing out of last year’s inflation crisis that the Fed was aiming for but many people didn’t think it could pull off. The fear was that the economy couldn’t move in this gradual way, that once the Fed kicked things off with a rate hike, the labor market would spin downward until we hit a recession.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z4nA4w">
But instead, propped up by some of the unusual features of the post-pandemic, a soft landing is in sight. One other factor deserves credit, odd enough: the American consumer.
</p>
<h3 id="ul4BSL">
<ol start="3" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">People didn’t freak out
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OqN1eM">
The economy is really humanity as a macroorganism. All of our individual habits and our expectations feed off one another, creating reality as much as experiencing it. That is why, once people started to expect a recession amid the inflation crisis, there was a fear that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy no matter the Fed’s aim for a soft landing. People and businesses who are expecting a recession tend to spend less, which leads to layoffs, which leads to less spending.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dYgo0D">
Likewise, expectations of inflation can lead to more inflation. Businesses preemptively increase prices, and a similar spiral gets underway.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UgRG9j">
But, despite an initial false alarm that contributed to the Fed’s decision to intervene last summer, Americans’ expectations about long-term inflation were always pretty low. People expected inflation to be high in the short term, but not in the long term, according to <a href="https://en.macromicro.me/charts/22021/MIT-Expected-Inflation-Rate">the University of Michigan’s consumer survey</a>. Even short-term expectations have normalized in the past few months, after running hot for most of last year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BrcQNO">
Why did we keep our heads? Some experts see it as a long-term win for fiscal policy. After the stagflation crisis of the 1970s and 80s, the prime directive for central banks has been to keep inflation in check. Consumers, therefore, have come to expect low inflation. So even though inflation took off in the wake of the pandemic, it may have been easier for people to accept it would be temporary, because they’ve become accustomed to low inflation as the default state of the economy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iGXTg9">
And because consumers and businesses weren’t panicking, the Federal Reserve didn’t have to either. One forecaster at a major financial firm described the effect this way: Early on, financial leaders were saying that inflation likely wouldn’t get down to target levels until 2025 because they thought it would be exceedingly difficult to wrangle the beast. A lot of economic pain, engineered by the Fed itself, would be necessary in the meantime.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CxnkMj">
But over time, the premise behind a 2025 timeline has shifted. With inflation cooling off while the economy still looks healthy, the Fed can afford to take the more gradual approach. Everybody is keeping calm and carrying on.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CESgUL">
“If the economy is doing really well, inflation is going in the right direction, let that ride,” Bivens said. “Don’t mess with it.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>This tick’s spit can make you allergic to meat</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Close-up photograph of a brown lone star tick with a whitish spot on it’s back and four legs. Photograph taken in a lab in Morrill Hall at the University of Illinois in 2017." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2q13u_V1uu_rz3SwK0HGkyrJSZw=/449x109:1453x862/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72494241/1240890390.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
The female lone star tick sports a distinctive white dot on its back. | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why cases of alpha-gal syndrome are on the rise.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uaZZOZ">
Very little can stop the average American from eating beef — and quite a lot of it. On a per-capita basis, Americans <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=103767#:~:text=The%20latest%20USDA%20forecast%20indicates,than%20the%202012%E2%80%9321%20average.">eat nearly</a> 60 pounds of red meat a year, equivalent to more than one quarter-pound hamburger every other day. But there’s one obstacle to our meat-loving tendencies that may not be surmountable: the tiny but aggressive <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases/tickID.html">lone star tick</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jPQhJq">
The tick (named for the female’s distinctive white dot on its back) can spread something called sugar alpha-gal via its spit. That sugar can trigger <a href="https://apnews.com/article/meat-allergy-lone-star-tick-alphagal-b0f4024e70c379cd553f003b149175e3">alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS,</a> a condition that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha%2Dgal%20syndrome%20(AGS),other%20products%20containing%20alpha%2Dgal.">causes</a> hives, nausea, heartburn, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, and a drop in blood pressure, among other symptoms, in sufferers around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha%2Dgal%20syndrome%20(AGS),other%20products%20containing%20alpha%2Dgal.">two to six hours</a> after they eat beef, pork, and other mammal products. Essentially, sufferers become severely allergic to red meat.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BZYWUC">
Since researchers first linked the syndrome to ticks in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/0e6d0ae6342f48f3a83da6a642fc18c2">2011</a>, there have been more than <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-bites.html">110,000 suspected cases</a>. But new research released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that the true number of sufferers between 2010 and 2022 may be as high as 450,000 people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DNTka8">
“I think those of us who live in it never thought the number was actually that low,” Dr. Jeffrey Wilson, an allergist and immunologist with the University of Virginia Health system, said of the confirmed number of cases. “I think the CDC report is one of the first, best attempts to get a good idea of what the real epidemiology of alpha-gal is.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WvBmZc">
If accurate, the CDC’s AGS estimates would place an allergy to red meat as the 10th most common <a href="https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/23404983/food-allergy-allergic-reaction-peanuts-egg-soy-wheat-shellfish-health">food allergy</a> in the country, Dr. Scott Commins, a co-author of the CDC papers on AGS and a University of North Carolina researcher, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/meat-allergy-lone-star-tick-alphagal-b0f4024e70c379cd553f003b149175e3">told the Associated Press</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6QrMEt">
AGS does not always <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20428705#:~:text=Symptoms%20of%20alpha%2Dgal%20syndrome,get%20any%20more%20tick%20bites.">last for life</a>, and is manageable by avoiding red meat, but if unaddressed it can be more than just a dietary nuisance — it can be deadly. “If a severe allergic reaction occurs, this can potentially be life-threatening,” Commins wrote Vox in an email. “We refer to that as anaphylaxis and numerous reports of anaphylaxis from AGS exist … Many patients carry an epinephrine auto-injector (epi-pen) for emergency situations.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rwllX3">
In the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-bites.html">CDC’s press release</a>, Ann Carpenter, an epidemiologist with the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the CDC and lead author of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a1.htm?s_cid=mm7230a1_w">one of the papers</a> released Thursday, said, “Alpha-gal syndrome is an important emerging public health problem, with potentially severe health impacts that can last a lifetime for some patients … It’s critical for clinicians to be aware of AGS so they can properly evaluate, diagnose, and manage their patients and also educate them on tick-bite prevention to protect patients from developing this allergic condition.”
</p>
<h3 id="XbP7Ac">
Don’t panic just yet
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9tMK5W">
Given the potential severity of AGS, the CDC’s reports raised clear alarm bells. One of the papers reported a spike in positive, lab-confirmed AGS cases, rising from <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a2.htm?s_cid=mm7230a2_w">13,371</a> in 2017 to 18,885 in 2021. (The larger number of up to 450,000 cases in the CDC report is an estimate, based on a survey of <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care">health care</a> professionals.) Additionally, while the lone star tick was previously found primarily in the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases/tickID.html">South</a>, the CDC report revealed that Suffolk County, New York, and Bedford County, Virginia, actually have the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a2.htm?s_cid=mm7230a2_w">highest number of suspected AGS cases</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NBnF4D">
But scientists are still in the early stages of getting a fix on AGS. “Studying [AGS] is hard. I think for the most part, we’re just getting a better understanding of where the syndrome actually is,” Wilson said. “Is it slowly expanding or moving? It may be. In that study, Suffolk County, New York, lit up. But I think what that mostly tells us is that there are a lot of lone star ticks in Long Island. It’s not a brand new development, there’ve been a lot of lone star ticks on Long Island for some time.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RwQpjP">
Some of the confusion may come down to just how unknown AGS is in the medical world — a second set of CDC findings <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a1.htm?s_cid=mm7230a1_w">showed</a> that many health care workers remain uninformed about the syndrome.<strong> </strong>Forty-two<strong> </strong>percent of 1,500 surveyed general practitioners, internists, pediatricians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-bites.html">reported</a> they did not know what AGS was. Thirty-five percent of the respondents <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a1.htm?s_cid=mm7230a1_w">reported</a> they could not confidently diagnose or manage the syndrome.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qJD26W">
But given the regionality of the illness, this shouldn’t be too concerning. “There’s a lot of parts of this country where you’re just not going to see [AGS], or it’s going be very rare,” said Wilson of the illness. “I think it’s almost not surprising that you’re going to have primary providers in many parts of the country who just aren’t going to know much about alpha-gal, or aren’t going to feel comfortable dealing with it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DQyA3h">
Another reason for the inability of health care providers to accurately diagnose the illness could be the delayed onset of the condition in relation to the food that causes the reaction, said Commins. Someone with AGS may not develop hives or gastrointestinal symptoms until hours after they’ve eaten red meat.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IIpUeO">
Additionally, not everyone who tests positive for the alpha-gal antibody will develop a red meat allergy, said Wilson. “It’s necessary, but not sufficient,” he said. The number of people who test positive for the blood marker is higher than the number who actually experience the symptoms of the syndrome.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OcUrwi">
Still, the higher number of estimated AGS cases aligns with a worrying increase in other tick-borne illnesses. As of 2018, ticks accounted for <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6717e1.htm">77 percent</a> of reported vector-borne diseases in the US, according to the CDC. Lyme disease accounted for 82 percent of the reported cases — between 1991 and 2018 Lyme disease cases per 100,000 people <a href="https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-lyme-disease">nearly doubled</a> from 3.74 to 7.21 reported cases — and the report also showed a rise in spotted fever rickettsioses, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis cases.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CUcemF">
Ironically, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22567258/ticks-spreading-lyme-disease-deer-mice-reforestation-climate-change">increased forest coverage</a> because of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22567258/ticks-spreading-lyme-disease-deer-mice-reforestation-climate-change">reforestation efforts and a reduction in farming</a> and a growing deer population (a major food source for many kinds of ticks) could be driving the trend. “Ticks that have made the biggest moves over the last few decades are those that rely heavily on deer as a reproductive host,” Thomas Mather, a professor and disease ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22567258/ticks-spreading-lyme-disease-deer-mice-reforestation-climate-change">previously told Vox’s Benji Jones</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="cHLtJj">
What can we do about alpha-gal syndrome?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6kHDKw">
<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7230a1.htm?s_cid=mm7230a1_w">No treatment or cure</a> for AGS exists. Therefore, the best way to protect oneself involves avoiding tick bites altogether. The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/avoid/on_people.html">CDC recommends</a> doing so by wearing an EPA-registered insect repellant and long pants and socks while outdoors. Once inside, put your clothes in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes, shower, and check yourself and your pets for the bugs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7HbONo">
And if you do discover a tick, removing it the proper way can save you from some types of tick-borne illnesses, including Lyme disease, which usually requires a tick to be attached to a person for between <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/transmission/index.html#:~:text=In%20most%20cases%2C%20a%20tick,chances%20of%20getting%20Lyme%20disease.">36 to 48 hours</a> to spread.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lAMOfF">
Use tweezers to hold the tick where it’s attached to your skin and steadily pull upwards. Afterward, clean the area. The CDC does <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/removal/index.html#:~:text=Use%20clean%2C%20fine%2Dtipped%20tweezers,the%20mouth%2Dparts%20with%20tweezers.">not recommend</a> using any other method for removal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HcI88W">
The more tick bites you get, the more likely you’ll experience prolonged AGS symptoms. So, even if you’ve already been bitten once, it’s not too late to start protecting yourself.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aAHO8R">
“Alpha-gal certainly in some of our patients can wane over time … for people who continue to get more tick bites it’s less likely to go away,” said Wilson. “For people who change their habits and do things to be more proactive about avoiding ticks, it’s more likely to go away over time.”
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Shooters Manu Bhaker, Elavenil Valarivan win gold in World University Games</strong> - Pragati and Aman Saini enters the compound mixed team event final to ensure another archery medal for India</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“Umpiring issue was raised because India did not win”: Bangladesh women’s cricket skipper Nigar Sultana</strong> - Opening up on the bitterly contested series, Bangladesh skipper Nigar Sultana Joty said the umpiring issue was raised because India did not win</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | Supreme Court asks Centre, six States to respond to plea on lynchings; INDIA MPs to visit Manipur, and more</strong> - Here is a select list of stories to start the day</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cannot restrain IPL matches on the basis of IPS officer’s ‘bald statements’, says Madras High Court</strong> - Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu dispose of a 2018 PIL petition filed by G. Sampath Kumar with liberty to approach the Board of Control for Cricket in India if he comes across specific instances of betting or match-fixing</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>F1 Belgian Grand Prix 2023 | Leclerc starts on pole after Verstappen gets grid penalty</strong> - Runaway F1 championship leader Max Verstappen had the fastest time in qualifying for the rain-hit Belgian Grand Prix</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Take up issues such as VSP sale and railway zone, Vijaya Sai Reddy tells Purandeswari</strong> - In a tweet, YSRCP Rajya Sabha member Vijaya Sai Reddy advises BJP State president Purandeswari to ‘not be with one party and work for another’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Education in mother tongue initiating a new form of justice for students in India: PM Modi</strong> - Marking the third anniversary of the National Education Policy, Modi said that with its advent, the country had begun to shun the belief that Indian languages were a ‘sign of backwardness’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala government’s J.C. Daniel award for filmmaker T.V. Chandran</strong> - The jury observed that Mr. Chandran through his works had paved the way for the growth of the parallel cinema movement in Malayalam</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>YSRCP govt. ignored irrigation projects in A.P., alleges former Minister</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bengal panchayat poll violence carried out as per instructions of Mamata: Anurag Thakur</strong> - West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, for the last 8-9 years, has been giving shelter to hooligans and criminals for her political benefit, Anurag Thakur alleged</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wagner could pose as migrants to enter EU, PM Morawiecki warns</strong> - Some Russian mercenaries are near the city of Grodno, close to Poland and Lithuania, Mr Morawiecki says.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dnipro: Russian missiles hit apartment block and security service building</strong> - Nine people are injured and the top floor of an apartment block is almost completely destroyed.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine moves Christmas Day in snub to Russia</strong> - Ukraine will now mark Christmas Day on 25 December - the latest step to distance itself from Russia.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russia’s new tactic for cutting off Ukraine’s grain</strong> - Russia has started targeting Ukraine’s alternative routes for exporting its grain.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Greek fires at Nea Anchialos prompt blasts forcing F-16s to evacuate base</strong> - Residents escape by boat and the air force evacuates fighter planes as an ammunition depot explodes.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Instead of obtaining a warrant, the NSA would like to keep buying your data</strong> - The agency opposes an amendment that prevents it from using data brokers. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1957520">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The 2023 Porsche Cayman GT4 RS is the best sports car on sale today</strong> - Transplanting the 911 GT3’s flat-six engine created a remarkable car. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1957399">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Communal stargazing using your phone: The Unistellar eQuinox 2, reviewed</strong> - Stargaze with up to 10 of your friends no matter how bad the light pollution is. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1957544">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches world’s most massive communications satellite [Updated]</strong> - SpaceX has again launched a competitor’s satellite, this time a 10-ton behemoth. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1956756">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>European satellite plunges back to Earth in first-of-its-kind assisted re-entry</strong> - “This is quite unique, what we are doing here.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1957604">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I yelled “Cow!”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I yelled “Cow!” at a woman on a bike. She gave me the finger. Then she plowed her bike straight into the cow.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Insteadly"> /u/Insteadly </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cbkcs/i_yelled_cow/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cbkcs/i_yelled_cow/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Thai STD</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A man engaged in a wild sex spree in Thailand. Eventually, though, after he returned to the U.S., his risk-taking catch up with him, and he developed a disease in his penis, which turns green and scaley.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He goes to his regular doctor, who sends him to a specialist, who sends him to a surgeon. The surgeon recommends a radical course of treatment involving exorbitantly expensive experimental drugs, followed by a penis-ectomy, leaving the man pissing into a bag and unable to have sex for the rest of his life. “Only in this way can I save your life,” the surgeon says solemly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Dejected, depressed and suicidal, the man leaves the surgeon’s office and wanders aimlessly into the night. The next morning, have walked around all night, the man finds himself on the docks, and sees a Thai doctor’s office just opening up. Thinking he has nothing to lose, he goes in, and the doctor sees him at once. The man explains everything, and tells the doctor the advice he’d received. Hearing all this, the doctor laughs loud and long.
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“I’ve seen this condition many times,” he assures the man. “You should relax.” Feeling a little hope, the man asks “you mean I don’t need to have my penis amputated?”
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“Of course not!,” the doctor says confidently. “Everything will be fine. Go home. Get some sleep. Wait five to seven days, and penis falls off all by himself.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/SD_Anon"> /u/SD_Anon </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15clkgn/thai_std/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15clkgn/thai_std/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man had a [Long] penis</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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He had a 25 inch long package.
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It created difficulties in his life as it was not easy to move around with it and women were afraid of him too.
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One day he was wondering to himself how he could change his penis and his life into a normal one while walking down a road, there, he came across a Sage, meditating.
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He went to the Sage and told him about his pathos. He asked him for help.
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The Sage instructed him to go to a certain mountain’s foot where a magical frog lives in a cave behind the waterfall. He must propose that frog and every time it says ‘NO’ his penis will get 5 inches shorter.
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He did as he was told and proposed to the frog, the frog said ‘NO’, his dick got 5 inches shorter.
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He did it again and the frog again said ‘NO’ and it got shorter.
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Now with a 15 inch long schlong, he thought to himself if loses another 5 inches, his penis will become of the perfect size.
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So, he proposed the frog again, this time, the frog got angry and replied ‘NO’ ‘NO’ ‘NO’.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/RAl3l3Y"> /u/RAl3l3Y </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15c37p7/a_man_had_a_long_penis/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15c37p7/a_man_had_a_long_penis/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The 3 Stages of a Man’s Sex Life:</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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Tri-weekly
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Try Weekly
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Try Weakly
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</ol>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Idonevawannafeel"> /u/Idonevawannafeel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cd5qv/the_3_stages_of_a_mans_sex_life/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cd5qv/the_3_stages_of_a_mans_sex_life/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My cousin was going on and on about how an onion is the only food that can make you cry without eating it.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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So I hit him in the face with a coconut.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/crowdedconscience"> /u/crowdedconscience </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cjxyv/my_cousin_was_going_on_and_on_about_how_an_onion/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15cjxyv/my_cousin_was_going_on_and_on_about_how_an_onion/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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