navan
/
Daily-Dose
mirror of https://github.com/navanchauhan/Daily-Dose.git
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Added daily report

This commit is contained in:
Navan Chauhan 2022-02-16 12:47:14 +00:00
parent ee588394dd
commit a1bd0116b3
3 changed files with 847 additions and 2 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

208
archive-covid-19/16 February, 2022.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,208 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>16 February, 2022</title>
<style type="text/css">
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
</style>
<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
<body>
<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>Mediating Function of Awe from Collective Threat to Self-transcendental Values and Eudaimonia</strong> -
<div>
How do people react to collective threats such as natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic? One consequence of such catastrophic events is the emotional impact on those who feel threat without actual harm as well as those who experienced direct harm. The current study demonstrated that such threat enhances self-transcendent values that further leads to general well-being, mediated by the emotion of awe. Two surveys were conducted immediately after a severe typhoon hit Japan (Study 1) and during the early phases of the COVID-19 spread in Japan (Study 2). Predisposition to feel negative awe predicted participants’ attention to both collective threat events, which led to an affirmation of self-transcendent values and general well-being. Furthermore, when participants were asked to recall a collective threat (vs. control event), they felt more awe which led to more engaged meaning making during the event, in turn predicting their affirmation of self-transcendent values.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/yt3c4/" target="_blank">Mediating Function of Awe from Collective Threat to Self- transcendental Values and Eudaimonia</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The evolution of depressive symptomatology across three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic: A 17-month representative longitudinal study of the adult population</strong> -
<div>
This 17-month longitudinal study on a representative sample of 4,361 Norwegian adults employs an observational ABAB design across six repeated assessments and three pandemic waves to systematically investigate the evolution of depressive symptomatology across all modifications of viral mitigation protocols (VMPs) from their onset to termination. Using Latent Change Score Models to analyze 26,166 observations, the study empirically corroborates that critical fluctuations in depressive symptomatology within and across individuals occur during the first three months of the pandemic, after which symptom profiles are predominantly consolidated throughout the pandemic period. Contrary to established belief, female sex, young age, lower education and preexisting psychiatric diagnosis only served as adequate predictors of the initial shocks to symptomatology observed during the onset of the pandemic, and did not adequately predict subsequent change observed in symptoms within and across individuals. Population-level analyses demonstrated that symptom levels increased in accordance with the presence and strictness of VMPs and were unrelated to COVID-19 incidence rates. Upon predominant termination of VMPs, population-level symptoms began declining, while large heterogeneity was present across the adult population. Detrimental long-term adversities were revealed by 10% of the adults. These individuals displayed chaotic adaptation to the pandemic and its VMPs, exhibiting substantial increases in clinical levels of symptomatology ensuing partial re-opening of society and through the remainder of the pandemic, with these deleterious symptoms projected to remain heightened ahead. Frequency of quarantine exposure was incrementally tied with increases in contemporaneously experienced and long-term depressive adversities, with information obtainment through unmonitored sources further associated with contemporaneous and long-term states of heightened symptomatology.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/kqm4j/" target="_blank">The evolution of depressive symptomatology across three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic: A 17-month representative longitudinal study of the adult population</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Differences in Vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 Replication Derived mRNA: Implications for Cell Biology and Future Disease</strong> -
<div>
Codon optimization describes the process used to increase protein production by use of alternative but synonymous codon changes. In SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines codon optimizations can result in differential secondary conformations that inevitably affect a protein’s function with significant consequences to the cell. Importantly, when codon optimization increases the GC content of synthetic mRNAs, there can be an inevitable enrichment of G-quartets which potentially form G-quadruplex structures. The emerging G-quadruplexes are favorable binding sites of RNA binding proteins like helicases that inevitably affect epigenetic reprogramming of the cell by altering transcription, translation and replication. In this study, we performed a RNAfold analysis to investigate alterations in secondary structures of mRNAs in SARS-CoV-2 vaccines due to codon optimization. We show a significant increase in the GC content of mRNAs in vaccines as compared to native SARS-CoV-2 RNA sequences encoding the spike protein. As the GC enrichment leads to more G-quadruplex structure formations, these may contribute to potential pathological processes initiated by SARS-CoV-2 molecular vaccination.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/bcsa6/" target="_blank">Differences in Vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 Replication Derived mRNA: Implications for Cell Biology and Future Disease</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Assessing the Profile of Unvaccinated COVID-19 Individuals in African American and Latinx Communities in Eastern Pennsylvania</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Throughout US history, chronic and infectious diseases have severely impacted minority communities due to lack of accessibility to quality healthcare, accurate information, and underlying racism. These fault lines in the care of minority communities in the US have been further exposed by the rise of COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined the factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African American and Latinx communities in Eastern Pennsylvania (PA). Methods: Survey data was collected in July 2021 in Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton, PA. The 203 participants (38.7% Black, 27.5% Latinx) completed the 28-question survey of COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in either English or Spanish. Results: Out of a total of 181 participants that met inclusion criteria of completed surveys, results indicate that 63.5% (n=115) were acceptant of the COVID-19 vaccine whereas the remainder 36.5% (n=66) were hesitant. Binary logistic regression results showed that age, concern for vaccine efficacy, race, knowledge on the vaccine, and belief that the COVID-19 virus is serious significantly influenced COVID vaccine hesitancy. Minorities were more likely to be hesitant toward vaccination (OR: 2.77, 95% CI: 1.13, 6.79) than non- Hispanic whites. Those who believed the COVID vaccine was ineffective (OR: 8.29, 95% CI: 3.78,18.2), and that the virus is not serious (OR: 8.28, 95% CI: 1.11, 61.8) showed the greatest odds of hesitancy. Conclusions: Contributing factors of vaccine hesitancy in minority communities were age, concern for vaccine efficacy, and education. Understanding and addressing the barriers to COVID-19 vaccination in minority groups is essential to decreasing transmission and controlling this pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.11.22270504v1" target="_blank">Assessing the Profile of Unvaccinated COVID-19 Individuals in African American and Latinx Communities in Eastern Pennsylvania</a>
</div></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An observation and restoration model for the COVID-19 incidence curves</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sanitary crisis of the past two years has focused the public9s attention on quantitative indicators of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily reproduction number Rt, defined by the average number of new infections caused by a single infected individual at time t, is one of the best metrics for estimating the epidemic trend. In this paper, we give a complete observation model for sampled epidemiological incidence signals obtained through periodic administrative measurements. The model is governed by the classic renewal equation using an empirical reproduction kernel, and subject to two perturbations: a time-varying gain with a weekly period and a white observation noise. We estimate this noise model and its parameters by extending a variational inversion of the model recovering its main driving variable Rt. Using Rt, a restored incidence curve, corrected of the weekly and festive day bias, can be deduced through the renewal equation. We verify experimentally on many countries that, once the weekly and festive days bias have been corrected, the difference between the incidence curve and its expected value is well approximated by an exponential distributed white noise multiplied by a power of the magnitude of the restored incidence curve.
</p>
</div></li>
</ul>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.13.22270901v1" target="_blank">An observation and restoration model for the COVID-19 incidence curves</a>
</div>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 mortality and excess mortality among working-age Californians, by occupational sector: March 2020 through November 2021</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background During the first year of the pandemic, essential workers faced higher rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 mortality than non-essential workers. It is unknown whether disparities in pandemic-related mortality across occupational sectors have continued to occur, amidst SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccine availability. Methods We obtained data on all deaths occurring in the state of California from 2016 through 2021. We restricted our analysis to California residents who were working age (18–65 years at time of death) and died of natural causes. Occupational sector was classified into 9 essential sectors; non-essential; or not in the labor market. We calculated the number of COVID-19 deaths in total and per capita that occurred in each occupational sector. Separately, using autoregressive integrated moving average models, we estimated total, per-capita, and relative excess natural-cause mortality by week between March 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021, stratifying by occupational sector. We additionally stratified analyses of occupational risk into regions with high versus low vaccine uptake, categorizing high-uptake regions as counties where at least 50% of the population completed a vaccination series by August 1, 2021. Findings From March 2020 through November 2021, essential work was associated with higher COVID-19 and excess mortality compared with non-essential work, with the highest per-capita COVID-19 mortality in agriculture (131.8 per 100,000), transportation/logistics (107.1), manufacturing (103.3), and facilities (101.1). Essential workers continued to face higher COVID-19 and excess mortality during the period of widely available vaccines (March through November 2021). Between July and November 2021, emergency workers experienced higher per-capita COVID-19 mortality (113.7) than workers from any other sector. Essential workers faced the highest COVID-19 mortality in counties with low vaccination rates, a difference that was more pronounced during the period of the Delta surge in Summer 2021. Interpretation Essential workers have continued to bear the brunt of high COVID-19 and excess mortality throughout the pandemic, particularly in the agriculture, emergency, manufacturing, facilities, and transportation/logistics sectors. This high death toll has continued during periods of vaccine availability and the delta surge. In an ongoing pandemic without widespread vaccine coverage and anticipated threats of new variants, the US must actively adopt policies to more adequately protect essential workers.
</p>
</div></li>
</ul>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.22270958v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 mortality and excess mortality among working-age Californians, by occupational sector: March 2020 through November 2021</a>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Required COVID-19 Vaccination Certification to Attend Certain U.S. Professional Football Games in Fall 2021: A Natural Experiment</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Four U.S. National Football League teams required vaccination certification against the SARS-CoV-2 virus of attendees at home games during the 2021 season. Using daily data on confirmed cases and vaccinations in counties surrounding these stadiums and stadiums that did not require certification, this study estimates the effects of the certification policy. Ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the change in community spread of the virus after home games and away games relative to weeks that the teams did not play (bye weeks). Compared to counties in metropolitan areas near stadiums with no certification requirement, counties near stadiums that had a vaccination requirement had significantly less cases 14 days after home games. In the six weeks leading up to the beginning of the season, percent vaccinated increased in counties that were near stadiums requiring vaccination certification only if the prevalent preseason vaccination rate was relatively low. Required vaccination certification at venues for large gatherings appear to slow virus spread generally in nearby communities and increases vaccination percentages in areas with lower prevalent vaccination percentages.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.13.22270900v1" target="_blank">Required COVID-19 Vaccination Certification to Attend Certain U.S. Professional Football Games in Fall 2021: A Natural Experiment</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Clinical and economic benefits of lenzilumab plus standard of care compared with standard of care alone for the treatment of hospitalized patients with Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) from the perspective of National Health Service England</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Purpose: Estimate the clinical and economic benefits of lenzilumab plus standard of care (SOC) compared with SOC alone in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the National Health Service (NHS) England perspective. Methods: A cost calculator was developed to estimate the clinical benefits and costs of adding lenzilumab to SOC in newly hospitalized COVID-19 patients over 28 days. The LIVE-AIR trial results informed the clinical inputs: failure to achieve survival without ventilation (SWOV), mortality, time to recovery, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) use. Base case costs included drug acquisition and administration for lenzilumab and remdesivir and hospital resource costs based on level of care required. Clinical and economic benefits per weekly cohort of newly hospitalized patients were also estimated. Results: In all populations examined, specified clinical outcomes were improved with lenzilumab plus SOC over SOC treatment alone. In a base case population aged &lt;85 years with C-reactive protein (CRP) &lt;150 mg/L, with or without remdesivir, adding lenzilumab to SOC was estimated to result in per patient cost savings of 1,162 British Pounds (GBP). In a weekly cohort of 4,754 newly hospitalized patients, addition of lenzilumab to SOC could result in 599 IMV uses avoided, 352 additional lives saved, and over 5.5 million GBP in cost savings. Scenario results for per-patient cost savings included: 1) aged &lt;85 years, CRP &lt;150 mg/L, and receiving remdesivir (3,127 GBP); 2) Black patients with CRP &lt;150 mg/L (9,977 GBP); and 3) Black patients from the full population (2,369 GBP). Conversely, in the full mITT population, results estimated additional cost of 4,005 GBP per patient. Conclusion: Findings support clinical benefits for SWOV, mortality, time to recovery, time in ICU, time on IMV, and ventilator use, and an economic benefit from the NHS England perspective when adding lenzilumab to SOC for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.11.22270859v1" target="_blank">Clinical and economic benefits of lenzilumab plus standard of care compared with standard of care alone for the treatment of hospitalized patients with Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) from the perspective of National Health Service England</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>An extended SIR model with vaccine dynamics for SARS-CoV-2 adaptation rate</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by infection with a SARS-CoV-2 virus, a RNA virus characterized by high mutation and replication rates. From epidemiological perspective, the trajectory in time of viral adaptation is determined by two opposite forces: (a) proportion of the population who has acquired immunity, exerting thereby a selective pressure on the virus and (b) proportion of infected people in the population, measuring the net viral load in the population. We calculate both the number of advantageous mutations in the population that have accumulated by time t and the amount of viral adaptation transmitted to a susceptible compartment, the latter being called the Evolutionary Infectivity Profile (EIP). To this end we employ first a simple compartmental SIR model with a single parameter describing reduction in transmission due to vaccination. Then we switch to a model which actuates the full vaccine dynamics, including vaccination rate and short duration of immunity. In our models we have never come across a situation where vaccination plays a dominant role in driving new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Nevertheless if the vaccination rate is not high enough, the EIP would continuously grow with time, pointing to a fruitful field for proliferation of genetically variable SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.11.22270784v1" target="_blank">An extended SIR model with vaccine dynamics for SARS-CoV-2 adaptation rate</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Is this Herpes or Syphilis?: Latent Dirichlet Allocation Analysis of Sexually Transmitted Disease-Related Reddit Posts During the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) are common and costly, impacting approximately one in five people annually. Reddit, the sixth most used internet site in the world, is a user-generated social media discussion platform that may be useful in monitoring discussion about STD symptoms and exposure. Objective: This study sought to define and identify patterns and insights into STD related discussions on Reddit over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We extracted posts from Reddit from March 2019 through July 2021. We used a machine learning text mining method, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), to conduct a text analysis to identify the most common topics discussed in the Reddit posts. We then used word clouds, qualitative topic labelling, and spline regression to characterize the content and distribution of topics observed. Results: Our extraction resulted in 24,311 total posts. LDA Coding showed that with 8 topics for each time period we achieved high coherence values (pre-COVID=0.41, pre- vaccine=0.42; post-vaccine=0.44). While most topic categories remained the same over time, the relative proportion of topics changed and new topics emerged. Spline regression revealed some key terms had variability in the percentage of posts that coincided with COVID-19 pre- and post- periods, while others were uniform across the study periods. Conclusions: Our studys use of Reddit is a novel way to gain insights into STD symptoms experienced, potential exposures, testing decisions, common questions, and behavior patterns (e.g., during lock down periods). For example, reduction in STD screening may result in observed negative health outcomes due to missed cases, which also impacts onward transmission. As Reddit use is anonymous, users may discuss sensitive topics with greater detail, and more freely than in clinical encounters. Data from anonymous Reddit posts may be leveraged to enhance understanding of the distribution of disease and need for targeted outreach/screening programs. This study demonstrates Reddit has feasibility and utility to enhance understanding of sexual behaviors, STD experiences, and needed health engagement with the public.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.13.22270890v1" target="_blank">Is this Herpes or Syphilis?: Latent Dirichlet Allocation Analysis of Sexually Transmitted Disease-Related Reddit Posts During the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Reliable estimation of SARS-CoV-2 anti-spike protein IgG titers from single dilution optical density values in serologic surveys</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, there is a need for reliable and scalable seroepidemiology methods to estimate incidence, monitor the dynamics of population-level immunity, and guide mitigation and immunization policies. Our aim was to evaluate the reliability of normalized ELISA optical density (nOD) at a single dilution as a predictor of SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin titers derived from serial dilutions. Methods: We conducted serial serological surveys of a community-based cohort from the city of Salvador, Brazil after two sequential COVID-19 epidemic waves. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein immunoglobulin G (anti-S IgG) ELISA (Euroimmun AG) was performed with serial 3-fold dilutions of sera from 54 of the 1101 cohort participants. We estimated interpolated ELISA titers, used parametric models to fit the relationship between nOD at a single 1:100 dilution and interpolated titers, and assessed the correlation between changes in nOD and changes in titers. Results: The relationship between nOD at a single 1:100 dilution and interpolated titers fit a log-log curve, with a residual standard error of 0.304. We derived a conversion table of nOD to interpolated titer values. Additionally, there was a high correlation between changes in nOD and changes in interpolated titers between paired serial samples (r = 0.836, ρ = 0.873). Changes in nOD reliably predicted increases and decreases in titers, with 98.1% agreement (κ = 95.9%). Conclusion: Single nOD measurements can reliably estimate SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers, significantly reducing time, labor, and resource needs when conducting large-scale serological surveys to ascertain population-level changes in exposure and immunity.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.13.22270904v1" target="_blank">Reliable estimation of SARS-CoV-2 anti-spike protein IgG titers from single dilution optical density values in serologic surveys</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Mobility restrictions as a pandemic response</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID19 pandemic has caused a large number of infections and fatalities, causing administrations at various levels to use different policy measures to reduce viral spread by limiting public mobility. This paper analyzes the complex association between the stringency of restrictions, public mobility, and reproduction rate (R-value) on a national level for Germany. The goals were to analyze; a) the correlation between government restrictions and public mobility and b) the association between public mobilities and virus reproduction. In addition to correlations, a Gaussian Process Regression Technique is used to fit the interaction between mobility and R-value. The main findings are that: (i) Government restrictions has a high association with reduced public mobilities, especially for non-food stores and public transport, (ii) Out of six measured public mobilities, retail, recreation, and transit station activities have the most significant impact on COVID19 reproduction rates. (iii) A mobility reduction of 30% is required to have a critical negative impact on case number dynamics, preventing further spread.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article- html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.11.22270865v1" target="_blank">Mobility restrictions as a pandemic response</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Oral administration of S-217622, a SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitor, decreases viral load and accelerates recovery from clinical aspects of COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
In parallel with vaccination, oral antiviral agents are highly anticipated to act as countermeasures for the treatment of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Oral antiviral medication demands not only high antiviral activity but also target specificity, favorable oral bioavailability, and high metabolic stability. Although a large number of compounds have been identified as potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro, few have proven to be effective in vivo. Here, we show that oral administration of S-217622, a novel inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro, also known as 3C-like protease), decreases viral load and ameliorates the disease severity in SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters. S-217622 inhibited viral proliferation at low nanomolar to sub-micromolar concentrations in cells. Oral administration of S 217622 demonstrated eminent pharmacokinetic properties and accelerated recovery from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in hamster recipients. Moreover, S-217622 exerted antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs), including the highly pathogenic Delta variant and the recently emerged Omicron variant. Overall, our study provides evidence that S-217622, an antiviral agent that is under evaluation in a phase II/III clinical trial, possesses remarkable antiviral potency and efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 and is a prospective oral therapeutic option for COVID-19.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480338v1" target="_blank">Oral administration of S-217622, a SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitor, decreases viral load and accelerates recovery from clinical aspects of COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Reduced antigenicity of Omicron lowers host serologic response</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant of concern (VOC) contains fifteen mutations on the receptor binding domain (RBD), evading most neutralizing antibodies from vaccinated sera. Emerging evidence suggests that Omicron breakthrough cases are associated with substantially lower antibody titers than other VOC cases. However, the mechanism remains unclear. Here, using a novel geometric deep-learning model, we discovered that the antigenic profile of Omicron RBD is distinct from the prior VOCs, featuring reduced antigenicity in its remodeled receptor binding sites (RBS). To substantiate our deep-learning prediction, we immunized mice with different recombinant RBD variants and found that the Omicron’s extensive mutations can lead to a drastically attenuated serologic response with limited neutralizing activity in vivo, while the T cell response remains potent. Analyses of serum cross-reactivity and competitive ELISA with epitope-specific nanobodies revealed that the antibody response to Omicron was reduced across RBD epitopes, including both the variable RBS and epitopes without any known VOC mutations. Moreover, computational modeling confirmed that the RBS is highly versatile with a capacity to further decrease antigenicity while retaining efficient receptor binding. Longitudinal analysis showed that this evolutionary trend of decrease in antigenicity was also found in hCoV229E, a common cold coronavirus that has been circulating in humans for decades. Thus, our study provided unprecedented insights into the reduced antibody titers associated with Omicron infection, revealed a possible trajectory of future viral evolution and may inform the vaccine development against future outbreaks.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.15.480546v1" target="_blank">Reduced antigenicity of Omicron lowers host serologic response</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Milk of cow and goat, immunized by recombinant protein vaccine ZF-UZ-VAC2001(Zifivax), contains neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and remains active after standard milk pasteurization</strong> -
<div>
Here we report the first experimental validation of the possibility for obtaining immune milk with neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 from vaccinated cow and goat using recombinant protein human vaccine, ZF-UZ-VAC2001. In the period of two weeks after first vaccination, we detected the neutralizing antibodies against coronavirus in the blood serum of vaccinated animals. The neutralizing activity, in its peak on the 21st days after receiving the third dose (77th day from first dose), was effective in Neutralization Test using a live SARS-CoV-2 in Vero E6 cells, even after 120-fold serum titration. Colostrum of the first day after 3rd dose vaccinated cow after calving had a greater activity to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 compared to colostrum of subsequent three days (4.080 /ml vs 2.106, 1.960 and 1.126 /ml), goat milk (1,486 /ml), and cow milk (0.222 /ml) in MAGLUMI(R) SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody competitive chemiluminescence immunoassay. We observed a positive correlation of receptor-binding domain (RBD)-specific IgG antibodies between the serum of actively immunized cow and milk-feeding calf during the entire course of vaccination (r = 0.95, p = 0.027). We showed an optimal regime for immune milk pasteurization at 62.5{degrees}C for 30 min, which retained specific neutralizing activity to SARS-CoV-2, potentially useful for passive immunization against coronavirus infection threats.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480298v1" target="_blank">Milk of cow and goat, immunized by recombinant protein vaccine ZF-UZ-VAC2001(Zifivax), contains neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and remains active after standard milk pasteurization</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of Full Versus Fractional Doses of COVID-19 Vaccines Given as a Booster in Adults in Australia - Mongolia, Indonesia, Australia Coronavirus (MIACoV).</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Tozinameran - Standard dose;   Biological: Tozinameran - fractional dose;   Biological: Elasomeran - standard dose;   Biological: Elasomeran - fractional dose<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Murdoch Childrens Research Institute;   Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations;   PATH;   The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity<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>Zofin to Treat COVID-19 Long Haulers</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Zofin;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:  <br/>
Organicell Regenerative Medicine;   Proxima Clinical Research, Inc.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID19 Oral Vaccine Consisting of Bacillus Subtilis Spores</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Bacillus subtilis<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   DreamTec Research Limited;   Middle East Cell and Gene Therapy;   National Institute of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Daily Oral Administration of Food Supplement NLC-V in Patients Diagnosed With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: NLC-V<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Todos Medical, Ltd.<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>Fourth COVID-19 Vaccine Dose- mRNA1273</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: mRNA1273 vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sheba Medical Center<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study Design of the Diacerein in Patients With Covid-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Diacerein;   Drug: placebo capsules<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Campinas, Brazil;   Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo<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>HEART Rate Variability Biofeedback in LOng COVID-19 (HEARTLOC)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback (HRV-B)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Leeds;   University of Manchester;   Leeds Comunity Healthcare NHS Trust<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>Fourth BNT162b2 COVID-19 Vaccine Dose</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: BNT162b2 vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sheba Medical Center<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Study of the Immunogenicity and Safety of SCTV01C in Population Aged ≥12 Years and Previously Vaccinated With Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01C;   Biological: Comirnaty<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech 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>Effects of Aerobic Exercise in Patients With Post COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: High-intensity interval aerobic exercise training;   Other: Control Group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Gazi University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of SCTV01E in Population Aged ≥18 Years Previously Fully Vaccinated With mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Sars-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01E;   Biological: Comirnaty<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of SCTV01C and SCTV01E in Population Aged ≥12 Years Previously Fully Vaccinated With Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01C;   Biological: SCTV01E;   Biological: Sinopharm inactivated COVID-19 vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of SCTV01C in Population Aged ≥18 Years and Previously Fully Vaccinated With Either Inactivated or mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine or Previously Diagnosed With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01C;   Biological: Sinopharm inactivated COVID-19 vaccine;   Biological: Comirnaty<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech 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>Immunogenicity and Safety of the SpikoGen COVID-19 Vaccine in Children Aged 5 to &lt;12 Years and 12 to &lt;18 Years Compared With Adults Aged 18 to 40 Years</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Low-dose SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein + Advax-SM adjuvant;   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein + Advax-SM adjuvant<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:  <br/>
Cinnagen;   Vaxine 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>Safety and Immunogenicity of COVI-VAC as a Booster Dose in Adults Previously Vaccinated Against COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: COVI-VAC<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Codagenix, Inc<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>A Suite of TMPRSS2 Assays for Screening Drug Repurposing Candidates as Potential Treatments of COVID-19</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 is the causative viral pathogen driving the COVID-19 pandemic that prompted an immediate global response to the development of vaccines and antiviral therapeutics. For antiviral therapeutics, drug repurposing allowed for rapid movement of existing clinical candidates and therapies into human clinical trials to be tested as COVID-19 therapies. One effective antiviral treatment strategy used early in symptom onset is to prevent viral entry. SARS-CoV-2 enters ACE2-expressing cells when…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The oral drug nitazoxanide restricts SARS-CoV-2 infection and attenuates disease pathogenesis in Syrian hamsters</strong> - A well-tolerated and cost-effective oral drug that blocks SARS-CoV-2 growth and dissemination would be a major advance in the global effort to reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Here, we show that the oral FDA-approved drug nitazoxanide (NTZ) significantly inhibits SARS-CoV-2 viral replication and infection in different primate and human cell models including stem cell-derived human alveolar epithelial type 2 cells. Furthermore, NTZ synergizes with remdesivir, and it broadly inhibits…</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>Boosting with Omicron-matched or historical mRNA vaccines increases neutralizing antibody responses and protection against B.1.1.529 infection in mice</strong> - The B.1.1.529 Omicron variant jeopardizes vaccines designed with early pandemic spike antigens. Here, we evaluated in mice the protective activity of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine against B.1.1.529 before or after boosting with preclinical mRNA-1273 or mRNA-1273.529, an Omicron-matched vaccine. Whereas two doses of mRNA-1273 vaccine induced high levels of serum neutralizing antibodies against historical WA1/2020 strains, levels were lower against B.1.1.529 and associated with infection and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern type and biological sex affect efficacy of molnupiravir in dwarf hamster model of severe COVID-19</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) have triggered distinct infection waves in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, culminating in currently all-time high incidence rates of VOC omicron. Orally available direct-acting antivirals such as molnupiravir promise to improve disease management and limit SARS-CoV-2 spread. However, molnupiravir efficacy against VOC delta was questioned based on clinical trial results and its potency against omicron is unknown. This study evaluates…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Identification of a conserved drug binding pocket in TMEM16 proteins</strong> - The TMEM16 family of calcium-activated membrane proteins includes ten mammalian paralogs (TMEM16A-K) playing distinct physiological roles with some implicated in cancer and airway diseases. Their modulators with therapeutic potential include 1PBC, a potent inhibitor with anti-tumoral properties, and the FDA-approved drug niclosamide that targets TMEM16F to inhibit syncytia formation induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here, we report cryo-EM structures of TMEM16F associated with 1PBC and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhaled heparin polysaccharide nanodecoy against SARS-CoV-2 and variants</strong> - The heparin polysaccharide nanoparticles block the interaction between heparan sulfate/S protein and inhibit the infection of both wild-type SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus and the mutated strains through pulmonary delivery.Image 1.</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-covalent SARS-CoV-2 M(pro) inhibitors developed from in silico screen hits</strong> - M^(pro), the main protease of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is essential for the viral life cycle. Accordingly, several groups have performed in silico screens to identify M^(pro) inhibitors that might be used to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections. We selected more than five hundred compounds from the top-ranking hits of two very large in silico screens for on-demand synthesis. We then examined whether these compounds could bind to M^(pro) and inhibit its protease…</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>In silico discovery of novel inhibitors from Northern African natural products database against main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2</strong> - The recent outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019), caused by a novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, has led to public health emergencies worldwide where time is as important as equipment to save lives. Antimalarial drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine derivatives are used in emergencies but they are not suitable for patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems. Since there are no approved drugs for this disease, science is challenged to find vaccines and new drugs….</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>Development of SARS-CoV-2 variant protein microarray for profiling humoral immunity in vaccinated subjects</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 is quickly evolving from wild-type to many variants and spreading around the globe. Since many people have been vaccinated with various types of vaccines, it is crucial to develop a high throughput platform for measuring the antibody responses and surrogate neutralizing activities against multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants. To meet this need, the present study developed a SARS-CoV-2 variant (CoVariant) array which consists of the extracellular domain of spike variants, e.g., wild-type,…</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>Human inhalable antibody fragments neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 variants for COVID-19 therapy</strong> - As of December 2021, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), remains global emergency and novel therapeutics are urgently needed. Here we describe human single chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies (76clAbs) that block an epitope of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein essential for ACE2-mediated entry into cells. 76clAbs neutralize the delta variant and other variants being monitored (VBMs) and inhibit spike-mediated pulmonary…</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>Grammatical evolution-based design of SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitors</strong> - A series of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (SARS-CoV-2-M^(pro)) inhibitors were modeled using evolutive grammar algorithms. We have generated an automated program that finds the best candidate to inhibit the main protease, M^(pro), of SARS-CoV-2. The candidates were constructed based on a pharmacophore model of the above-mentioned target; relevant moieties of such molecules were modified using data-basis sets with similar chemical behavior to the reference moieties. Additionally, we used the SMILES…</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 mechanism of action of Jing Fang Bai Du San in the treatment of COVID-19 using docking and network pharmacology</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), severely infects people and has rapidly spread worldwide. JingFangBaiDu San (JFBDS) has been used to treat prevalent epidemic pathogens, common cold, headache, cough due to lung-cold, and other symptoms; however, its treatment for COVID-19 is unknown. Molecular docking and network pharmacology were applied to obtain ingredient-protein structures and the herb- ingredient-disease target…</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 randomized, double-blind phase I clinical trial of two recombinant dimeric RBD COVID-19 vaccine candidates: Safety, reactogenicity and immunogenicity</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Vaccine candidates were safe and immunogenic, and induced live-virus neutralizing antibodies against SARS- CoV-2. The highest values were obtained when outer membrane vesicles were used as adjuvant.</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>Inhibition of Protein N-Glycosylation Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) extensively N-glycosylates its spike proteins, which are necessary for host cell invasion and the target of both vaccines and immunotherapies. These N-glycans are predicted to modulate spike binding to the host receptor by stabilizing its open conformation and host immunity evasion. Here, we investigated the essentiality of both the host N-glycosylation pathway and SARS-CoV-2 N-glycans for infection. Ablation of host N-glycosylation…</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>Genome-Wide Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 Cytopathogenic Proteins in the Search of Antiviral Targets</strong> - Therapeutic inhibition of critical viral functions is important for curtailing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We sought to identify antiviral targets through the genome-wide characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) proteins that are crucial for viral pathogenesis and that cause harmful cytopathogenic effects. All 29 viral proteins were tested in a fission yeast cell-based system using inducible gene expression. Twelve proteins, including eight…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SOCIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR MOBILE ROBOTS IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT TECHNOLOGY</strong> - The emergency department (ED) is a safety-critical environment in which healthcare workers (HCWs) are overburdened, overworked, and have limited resources, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. One way to address this problem is to explore the use of robots that can support clinical teams, e.g., to deliver materials or restock supplies. However, due to EDs being overcrowded, and the cognitive overload HCWs experience, robots need to understand various levels of patient acuity so they avoid disrupting care delivery. In this invention, we introduce the Safety-Critical Deep Q-Network (SafeDQN) system, a new acuity-aware navigation system for mobile robots. SafeDQN is based on two insights about care in EDs: high-acuity patients tend to have more HCWs in attendance and those HCWs tend to move more quickly. We compared SafeDQN to three classic navigation methods, and show that it generates the safest, quickest path for mobile robots when navigating in a simulated ED environment. We hope this work encourages future exploration of social robots that work in safety-critical, human-centered environments, and ultimately help to improve patient outcomes and save lives. Figure 1. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN349443355">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A SYSTEM BASED ON DEEP LEARNING FOR ANALYZING DELAYED ENHANCEMENT MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING TO IDENTIFY COVID 19 AND METHOD THEREOF</strong> - The present invention discloses a system based on deep learning for analyzing delayed enhancement magnetic resonance imaging to identify COVID 19 and method thereof. The method and system include, but not limited to, a processing unit adapted to process the data based on deep learning data modelling in the magnetic resonance imaging associated with the digital image scanning system for diagnosis COVID 19 with the spatial resolution that each frame is deposited is 256 * 256, and being creating that level and vertical resolution respectively are 256 pixels (pixel), the read/write address that the read/write address of each image element, which is controlled by processing unit and forms circuit and finishes; And the data that will be stored in memory are input to a real-time microcontroller, it is characterized in that: analyze and compare by the Multi-source Information Fusion analytical system by using the real-time microcontroller to deliver the D/A changer then, digital signal is become analogue signal output. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN348041194">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FOLDABLE KIDS NEST</strong> - The objective of the present invention is to provide a bird’s nest bag which allows a kid to sleep or sit inside. According to the embodiment of the present invention, the bird nest bag is used to isolate kids below 2 years, who are affected by COVID-19. The netted portion of the bag allows a clear visibility to check on the user by the medical assistants, during emergency situations. The children below two years of age can be isolated in the bags for a shorter duration. (Refer Fig. 1) - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN350377146">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IDENTIFICATION AND ALARM SYSTEM FOR FACIAL CORONA MASK USING CNN BASED IMAGE PROCESSING</strong> - tThe covid-19 epidemic is the world’s largest wake-up call for people to pay attention to their own and society’s health. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a segment of the population that has been exposed to the covid-19 virus and has generated antibodies without developing any significant illnesses and is continuing to be healthy. This indicates that a significant section of the population, even excluding the elderly, lacks the necessary bodily immunity to combat a Viral infection. As terrible as covid-19 is on a global scale, developing personal health standards and preventative measures for any pathogenic virus as a community would have spared many lives. In’this work, a camera is combined with an image processing system to recognise facial masks, which may be improved in a variety of ways. First and foremost, this method is meant to identify masks on a single person’s face. While this method is efficient in identifying someone has a mask, it does not ensure that they will wear it all of the time. The most effective update for this task is to install a camera with a wide field of view so that many individuals can be seen in the frame, and the faces of those who aren’t wearing markings can be identified, as well as the number of people and the timing. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN346889253">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ANTIMICROBIAL SANITIZING FORMULATION</strong> - An antimicrobial sanitizing formulation, comprising, i) isopropyl alcohol in the range of 0.1%- 80% w/w, ii) an emollient in the range of 0.1%-15% w/w, iii) hydrogen peroxide in the range of 0.1 0.13% w/w, iv) citric acid in the range of 0.1% to 2.0% w/w, v) silver nitrate in the range of 0.1% to 0.5% w/w, and vi) a fragrance imparting agent in the range of 0.1% to 2.0% w/w. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN346888094">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A HEALTH BAND WITH A BIOMETRIC MODULE AND WORKING METHOD THEREOF</strong> - The present invention discloses a health band with a biometric module and method thereof. The assembly includes, but not limited to, a plurality of sensors configured to gather health data associated with a predefined symptom of a medical condition of a user; a memory unit configured to store the data and an interface, which is configured to determine the medical condition using the data;a processing unit configured to execute the application; and a notification facility configured to provide a notification upon receiving from the interface an instruction associated with the notification, wherein the notification is associated with a drug reminder and the like. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN346889061">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RNA 검출 방법</strong> - 본 발명은 RNA의 분석 및 검출 방법에 관한 것이다. 특히, 본 발명은 특히, 본 발명은 짧은 염기서열의 RNA까지 분석이 가능하면서도 높은 민감도 및 정확도로 정량적 검출까지 가능하여 감염증, 암 등 여러 질환의 진단 용도로도 널리 활용될 수 있다. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=KR346026620">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>黄芩黄酮活性成分及其制剂在制备预防和/或治疗炎症风暴药物中的应用</strong> - 本发明公开了黄芩黄酮活性成分及其制剂在制备预防和/或治疗炎症风暴药物中的应用。所述黄芩黄酮活性成分选自下述至少一种：黄芩素、汉黄芩素和千层纸素A。炎症风暴是一种机体对外界刺激的过度免疫反应和炎症反应，以炎症细胞因子的快速大量释放为特征。炎症风暴可由许多感染或非感染性疾病引起，并与疾病的严重程度和多器官功能障碍综合征的发生密切相关。减少炎症风暴的发生有助于降低器官损伤和减缓疾病进程，尤其对危重症患者的治疗至关重要。本发明发现，黄芩素、汉黄芩素、千层纸素A均具有不同程度抑制小鼠细胞因子风暴的作用。黄芩素能改善炎症风暴引发的肺损伤和炎性细胞浸润。因此黄芩黄酮活性成分可用于制备防治炎症风暴的药物。 - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=CN349220813">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>一种预防和/或治疗炎症风暴的药物组合物及其制剂与应用</strong> - 本发明公开了一种预防和/或治疗炎症风暴的药物组合物、制剂及其应用。该药物组合物，由黄芩素、汉黄芩素和千层纸素A组成，其中，黄芩素、汉黄芩素、千层纸素A的质量比为0.25<sub>1.5：0.5</sub>7：1。本发明提供的自微乳包括下述组分：药物磷脂复合物、油相、乳化剂和助乳化剂；其中，所述药物磷脂复合物由上述药物组合物和磷脂材料复合而成。本发明的实验结果表明在LPS诱导的系统性炎症风暴小鼠模型中，黄芩素、汉黄芩素和千层纸素A的组合物及其自微乳制剂均具有不同程度抑制小鼠细胞因子风暴的作用。本发明为炎症风暴的临床治疗提供了一种安全、有效、经济的解决方案。 - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=CN349220821">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>胸部CT图像识别方法、装置、计算机设备和存储介质</strong> - 本申请涉及一种胸部CT图像识别方法、装置、计算机设备和存储介质。所述方法针对CT图像特点，设计轻量级的胸部CT图像识别网络更快速准确地识别出胸部CT图像。引入X‑DMFF模块，提升模型性能且降低计算成本。在DMS模块中引入Swin‑Transformer与残差学习，提取更多尺度的空间特征信息并对特征信息不断重用，提升模型分类效果。 - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=CN349501044">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

637
archive-daily-dose/16 February, 2022.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,637 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>16 February, 2022</title>
<style type="text/css">
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
</style>
<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
<body>
<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>Why Ukraine Is on a Precipice</strong> - A potential Russian troop withdrawal has not changed the four factors that U.S. officials assess have brought Europe to the brink of its largest conflict since the Second World War. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-ukraine-is-on-a-precipice">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How the Kosovo Air War Foreshadowed the Crisis in Ukraine</strong> - Twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the NATO bombing campaign to justify their own actions. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-the-kosovo-air-war-foreshadowed-the-crisis-in-ukraine">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Autocrats, Not Terrorists, Are Increasingly Taking Americans Hostage</strong> - The effort to free Danny Fenster, a journalist imprisoned by Myanmar’s junta, shows a new threat to U.S. citizens worldwide. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/autocrats-not-terrorists-are-increasingly-taking-americans-hostage">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When Eartha Kitt Disrupted the Ladies Who Lunch</strong> - Scott Calonico’s documentary short “Catwoman vs. the White House” reconstructs an unexpected moment of activism during the Vietnam War. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/when-eartha-kitt-disrupted-the-ladies-who-lunch">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why the Threat of More Economic Sanctions May Not Deter Vladimir Putin</strong> - The sanctions under consideration by the U.S. and Europe don’t appear to include two measures that could cause real financial pain for the Russian leader and his associates. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-threat-of-more-economic-sanctions-may-not-deter-%20vladimir-putin">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Vanessa Hudgens, Disney’s purity craze, and the slow death of the celebrity nude</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A drawing of people standing around and discussing a blurred-out representation of a nude photo
of a celebrity taking up the entire wall behind them." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eF2QBw0TPBQAYPnq-
wqTCQJmPRI=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70515897/VOX.0.jpg"/></figure></li>
</ul>
<figcaption>
Efi Chalikopoulou for Vox
</figcaption>
<pre><code>&lt;/figure&gt;</code></pre>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The giant celebrity nude photo scandal that left no cultural footprint.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lbR7UR">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T54kZY">
In 2007, <em>High School Musical</em> star Vanessa Hudgens, the new darling of the Disney Channel, had her personal nude photographs leaked to the internet. One of the oddest things about what ensued was how loud the outrage was when the leak occurred in 2007, and how little anyone seems to think about it now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vEgWDm">
Hackers first leaked Hudgens’s private photos after the release of <em>High School Musicals 1 </em>and <em>2</em> but before <em>3</em>. The world was shocked. Disney moms <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN0746838620070908">pronounced</a> Hudgens “ruined.” OK! <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071017191515/http://ok-magazine.com/news/view/2031">confidently reported</a> that she would be dropped from <em>High School Musical 3</em> and replaced by one of the Cheetah Girls. <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/vanessa-hudgens-talks-about-dealing-with-her-nude-photo-scandal/">Hudgens released a chagrined statement</a> taking responsibility for the photos (“I want to apologize to my fans, whose support and trust means the world to me”), and Disney made its own statement regretting Hudgens’s “lapse in judgment.” Days after the pictures leaked, <a href="https://www.justjared.com/2007/09/13/vanessa-hudgens-church/">Hudgens was photographed by paparazzi at a church</a>, as though to cleanse her reputation. “Baby V she is no longer :(” <a href="https://www.justjared.com/2007/09/06/vanessa-hudgens-nude-photo/">lamented Just Jared</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rvl6Bv">
But today, the moment barely figures in Hudgens’s public image. Now 33 years old, Hudgens is remembered as that girl from <em>High School Musical</em>, from <em>Grease Live</em>, from <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/11/16/18097764/netflix-princess-switch-review"><em>The Princess Switch</em></a>. Most people associate her with singing and dancing, with her luminous smile, with <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-51941986">lightly offensive TikToks</a> about how we should just let some people die of Covid, with a bunch of direct-to-streaming movies that you know ahead of time are going to be as bland and weirdly satisfying as a fast food burger. So many other female stars have had nude photo scandals by now that who can remember Vanessa Hudgens’s? It barely rates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vgriqm">
Looking at how fast and furious the flame of public reaction burned in the response to Hudgens’s photos makes for a vivid illustration of just how fast and how drastically the ways we talk about women’s sexuality have changed over the past 15 years — and, in small and crucial ways, how they haven’t.
</p>
<h3 id="Vp1HlA">
“A woman’s worth lies in her ability — or refusal — to be sexual”
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AZ2sHq">
When Vanessa Hudgens’s nude photos leaked, we were in the penultimate year of the Bush administration, and one year away from the publication of the book that best chronicled the sexual mores of the era: Jessica Valenti’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-purity-myth-how-america-s-obsession-with-virginity-is-hurting-young-
women/9781580053143"><em>The Purity Myth</em></a><em>: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tZSpXV">
“More than 1,400 purity balls, where young girls pledge their virginity to their fathers at a promlike event, were held in 2006 (the balls are federally funded),” Valenti reported. “Facebook is peppered with purity groups that exist to support girls trying to ‘save it.’ Schools hold abstinence rallies and assemblies featuring hip hop dancers and comedians alongside religious leaders. … Whether it’s delivered through a virginity pledge or a barely dressed tween pop singer writhing across the television screen, the message is the same: A woman’s worth lies in her ability — or refusal — to be sexual.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F97Sun">
Hudgens was one of the girls whose worth lay in her refusal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d8qvBM">
She became famous at age 15, when she starred opposite a baby-faced Zac Efron in the Disney Channel original movie <em>High School Musical</em>. The flick, a quasi-retread of <em>Grease</em> in which absolutely everyone was too pure to be pink, became a massive hit, picking up <a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-08-09-high-school-musical2_N.htm">160 million viewers</a> after its premiere in 2006. And Hudgens’s palpable innocence was at the center of it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MLTx3I">
Hudgens played Gabriella, a sweet nerd newly arrived at East High. Terrified of being boxed in as the scary math genius at her new school the way she had been at her last, Gabriella instead finds herself accidentally auditioning for the winter musical, facing down East High’s intimidating theater kids in the process. Inspired by Gabriella’s beauty, innocence, and bravery, Zac Efron’s Troy, the macho school jock, admits that he, too, loves to sing and dance, and he, too, auditions for the winter musical.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mws8Md">
Gabriella is an icon of sorts for Disney’s ideal of femininity at the time, an example of the kind of girl Disney thought the little girls in the audience should aspire to be. We are told she is smart, a quality mainly demonstrated by her offscreen win at academic decathalon, and that she is kind, a quality mainly demonstrated by her ability to be nice to other boys when the plot demands that Troy become jealous. She is afraid of the spotlight because nice girls are not ambitious, but when pushed into it against her will, she performs admirably. She is unfailingly supportive of Troy’s hopes and dreams, because <em>High School Musical</em> is very much a showcase for Troy in which Gabriella features mainly as a lovely trophy. At the start of the third act of each movie, she breaks up with him to teach him that he has strayed from the path of goodness, and then she sings a sad ballad and then Troy sings an angry ballad.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xPIISW">
Disney Channel’s key demographic was and remains kids between the ages of 6 and 14, so any suggestion of sex was out of the question. So pure is Gabriella’s relationship with Troy that they don’t even kiss onscreen until the end of <em>High School Musical 2</em>. Gabriella wears sensible mid- length skirts and one-piece swimsuits. (Efron, it must be admitted, does take off his shirt in the final movie, in a moment that caused audible yelping from the audience when I saw it in theaters in 2008. As ever, boys get more leeway in these things.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hkAgby">
Like many of pop culture’s good girls, Gabriella’s goodness is emphasized by a bad girl foil, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale). Sharpay, too, is sexless. Her badness is emphasized not by any suggestion of Rizzo- like sluttiness, but by her hyperfemininity, her girly obsession with pink, and her <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22391942/paris-hilton-sex-tape-revenge-porn-south-park-stupid-spoiled-whore-video-
playset-pink-stupid-girl">Hilton-esque</a> tiny dog. Sharpay is the reckless striver to Gabriella’s passive achiever. While Gabriella eschews the spotlight unless pushed, Sharpay issues her demands each movie in a rapid-paced “I want” song, and her vindictive scheming is always what sets the plot in motion. At the end of each movie, Sharpay is punished for her high-maintenance ways, while Gabriella is rewarded for her passivity and sweetness.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AE2DAZ">
Gabriella’s passivity and her sexual purity are closely linked. As Valenti lays out in <em>The Purity Myth</em>, the virginal ideal of the Bush era was essentially an ideal by absence: absence of desire, of provocation, of wants of one’s own. “We’re defined by what we don’t do,” Valenti concludes. “Our ethics are the ethics of passivity.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kEHwAL">
Disney’s good girls were often held up as the role models families needed in the age of <em>Girls Gone Wild</em> raunch culture, a wholesome and much-needed antidote to the Disney-gone-bad <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22565683/britney-spears-conservatorship-testimony">Britneys</a> and Christinas of the world. But Disney’s virginal ideal was less a counter to the midriff-baring bad girls of the ’00s than she was the other side of the same old virgin/whore coin. Valenti cites Lakshmi Chaudhry’s <em>In These Times</em> on this issue.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RJPuYi">
“Make no mistake, raunch is Republican,” wrote Chaudhry. “The sexuality that reigns supreme in Bush World bears the basic imprimaturs of right-wing ideology: gross materialism, sexual hypocrisy, and acquiescence in the name of empowerment. It is in every sense a conservative wet dream come true.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gVtWJh">
It doesn’t take much, in other words, to flip the switch from a good girl to a bad girl. Which is why when pictures leaked of Vanessa Hudgens posing naked, effectively giving the lie to the Gabriella persona, watching moms knew immediately what was going to happen to her: She’d be ruined.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0tQhnM">
And she almost was. But then, faster than you would have thought, the story died away.
</p>
<h3 id="jkBe2M">
“Who do you want to see naked?”
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y996q3">
Hudgens’s nude photographs were first reported by the National Enquirer in September 2007, and within a week they were scattered across the internet on different sites. The reaction was as bad as by now we should know to expect.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Age0U2">
The conventional wisdom of the era was that only sluts and stupid girls took nude photos of themselves, and that once the photos existed, no one could reasonably expect to keep them out of the public’s hands. While from the perspective of the 2020s, Hudgens was clearly the victim of a gross invasion of her privacy, in 2007 Hudgens was expected to take the blame for the photos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B3edm2">
Hudgens took her medicine. She accepted the blame, kept her head down, and finished out her term in the <em>High School Musical</em> franchise with a minimum of scandal. But while she sweated out the consequences of her hacker’s actions, the context of this whole story was about to change very rapidly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Oy9sRM">
The Hudgens photo scandal didn’t only emerge at the tail end of the virginity-obsessed Bush era. It also emerged at the beginning of the camera phone era. The development in technology meant that nude photos were in the process of becoming an increasingly common part of modern courtship — and celebrity nude photos showing up on the internet, in turn, were about to become a staple of the gossip press.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="394Blf">
The same year that Hudgens’s nudes leaked, Kim Kardashian saw her sex tape hit the internet after her boyfriend intentionally leaked it. In 2009, hackers leaked nudes of Rihanna, Leighton Meester, and Ashley Greene, among others. In 2010, nudes leaked of Hayley Williams, Blake Lively, Jessica Alba, Kat Dennings, Miley Cyrus, Christina Aguilera, Amber Rose, and Kesha. In 2011, it was Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johansson, and Madonna.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MTNeeG">
“Now we’re to the point where two celebs can have nude leaks in one day and no one hardly bats an eye,” <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/05/the-complete-
history-of-nude-celebrity-photo-leaks_401061/">mused the pop culture website Complex in 2012</a>. (Olivia Munn and Christina Hendricks were the celebs in question.) “We have it so easy these days. Who do you want to see naked?” All you had to do was wait. The internet would deliver.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ykxsbD">
As this veritable flood of nude celebrity photos made its way onto the internet, the stories we told about those photos began to shift. At a certain point, people had to admit, taking nude pictures seemed less like a particularly kinky perversion and more like just a thing a lot of people were doing these days. It might not even be particularly shameful.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q3JuBf">
WIth this change in the narrative, a new and more uncomfortable question began to emerge. Was it possible that it was not the women who were wrong for photographing their own naked bodies, but instead the hackers who stole those pictures and distributed them across the internet? Was it possible that it was even wrong for regular people on the internet just to look at the pictures, even if they weren’t the ones who stole them?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aXpGrq">
In 2014, hackers released a massive photo dump of nude celebrity selfies. The private pictures of dozens of famous actresses raced across the internet, including photos of Jennifer Lawrence, then at arguably the height of her fame. By now, there was a new conventional wisdom in the air when it came to the subject of nude photos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z4ghb0">
“Consider this,” <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/09/celebrity-nude-photo-leaks-essays">instructed Complex</a>. “These women, regardless of their public persona, are entitled to privacy and to express their sexuality however they wish. It’s their basic human right. These women have lives, too.” We were a long way from, “Who do you want to see naked?” and it had only been two years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yeuRNK">
The scandal that had once threatened to ruin Vanessa Hudgens drifted gently out of public consciousness. What young female celebrity hadn’t had a nude photo scandal by now? And who didn’t realize that the fault lay with the hackers and not the celebrity?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VW9LZu">
By the time Me Too rocketed into public focus in 2017, the idea that only sluts and morons took nude photos of themselves and that the public was entitled to see all the naked pictures of actresses it wanted had well and truly died. But the other half of the binary Hudgens represented — the Gabriella half, the archetype of innocence and virginity and passivity — that half would be harder to shake.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BFn1aU">
Gabriella is still a beloved archetype of teen innocence and youth. She still represents a powerful ideal of who girls should be: unambitious and unneedy, undesiring and uncomplaining, smart and kind but only insofar as those traits remain unthreatening to men. And she lives on in a thousand network police procedurals and children’s TV shows, in web series and YA novels, in Hallmark movies and Netflix rip-offs of Hallmark movies alike. In the <em>Princess Switch</em> franchise, one of those Netflix rip-offs of a Hallmark movie, Hudgens plays three characters, and she only meaningfully departs from the Gabriella archetype in one of them. (Fiona’s more of a Sharpay.)
</p>
<p class="c-end-para" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="coSGpa">
This character is good less because of what she does than because of what she doesn’t do, her virtue inscribed in the negative space where her character should be. She is, as Valenti argued, good by default, good by virtue of her passivity. She’s what girls learn, still, that they should aspire to be. And it’s hard to imagine that she will ever die.
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The hidden epidemic</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A miniature shopping cart full of different colored pills." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/nVnOOCmx0p3s9HGMG6HKkoIo3uA=/320x0:5440x3840/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70515848/GettyImages_1224983070.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
According to a new study, the epidemic of drug-resistant pathogens is worse than researchers previously thought. | Clare Jackson/EyeEm via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Antibiotic resistance is approaching a crisis point, and the world needs to act.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y86Yra">
Two years ago, the CDC made a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2019/11/14/20963824/drug-resistance-antibiotics-cdc-report">disturbing prediction</a>: Without radical change to antibiotic use practices, drug-resistant pathogens,<strong> </strong>which at that point were estimated to cause 700,000 deaths globally every year,<strong> </strong>could<strong> </strong>kill 10 million people per year by 2050.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vBLj8H">
A recent report published in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02724-0/fulltext"><em>The</em> <em>Lancet</em></a>, however, found that the toll from antibiotic resistance is worsening even faster than expected.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nhr6r5">
Last month’s Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) project report estimates that, in 2019, about 1.27 million people died directly due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which means cases where the patient wouldn’t have died had their infection been treatable with standard antibiotics. The total rises to 4.95 million deaths once fatalities associated<em> </em>with a drug-resistant infection, meaning that a patient died while having an identified antibiotic-resistant infection but it wasn’t clearly the immediate cause of death, are also included.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mWCwqJ">
The report includes data on 23 pathogens and 88 pathogen-drug combinations in 204 countries and territories in 2019, with statistical modeling used to produce estimates for regions missing data.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PNL3dS">
The new numbers means that AMR is now among the leading causes of death worldwide, exceeding the toll of HIV/AIDS and malaria (<a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/gbd/summaries/diseases/hiv-aids.pdf">864,000</a> and <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/gbd/summaries/diseases/malaria.pdf">643,000</a> deaths in 2019 respectively, according to the Lancet’s <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/gbd">Global Burden of Disease study</a>).<strong> </strong>HIV research attracts close to $50 billion per year in funding, but as Ramanan Laxminarayan of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy noted in a <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00087-3/fulltext">commentary</a> published along with the <em>Lancet</em> study, “global spending on addressing AMR is probably much lower than that.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pd6jef">
In the last century, antibiotics have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5354621/">revolutionized medicine</a>, massively cutting down mortality from common infectious diseases, while drastically improving the safety of major surgery and recovery rates from trauma. By one estimate, antibiotics have extended average human life expectancy by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369527419300190">more than 20 years</a> since their discovery over a century ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="98SxF4">
But the overuse of antibiotics, whether in human patients or <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2016/12/antibiotics-and-animal-agriculture-a-
primer#:~:text=Antibiotics%20used%20in%20animal%20agriculture%20contribute%20to%20the%20threat%20of,for%20use%20on%20the%20farm.">in livestock</a>, results in bacteria adapting to the drugs, leading them to become less effective over time. If the pace of resistance isn’t halted — whether through more judicious use of the drugs or through the development of new classes of antibiotics — it will likely lead to soaring deaths from common infections and surgical complications, sending us back to a world where a minor cut could potentially once again be lethal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FhzVCv">
We can avoid this fate, but it will require coordinating a global response before it’s too late.
</p>
<h3 id="rGHpQM">
Antibiotic resistance, explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a9xEA8">
Antibiotics are drugs that kill or prevent reproduction of disease-causing bacteria, without directly harming the patient’s cells. The invention of the first antibiotics changed everything, offering nothing short of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/11/penicillin-coronavirus-florey-wwii-
infection/">miraculous cure</a> for severe pneumonia or wound infections that might have otherwise left patients dead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bMu0DJ">
But due to their ability to rapidly reproduce — staphylococcus, for example, can double every <a href="https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-019-5604-6">two hours</a> when colonizing the human nose — and to directly exchange fragments of genetic code, bacterial pathogens evolve far more rapidly than multicellular organisms like humans. When a mutation arises that conveys resistance to an antibiotic, a large population of resistant pathogens can rapidly result, and the mutation can then be shared with other lineages of pathogen if they come into contact with each other.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U6W0r9">
Every time a patient is treated with antibiotics while a given pathogen is present, it’s a roll of the dice for a new resistance mutation to emerge. This isn’t just for human patients; the use of antibiotics for disease prevention and faster growth of livestock, which accounts for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7434449/">two-thirds of the total medically important antibiotics</a> sold by weight in the US, is also a major contributor to AMR.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="72spQk">
Resistance can develop with remarkable speed. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, was <a href="https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/staph/mrsa/basics.html#:~:text=Transmission-,History,)%20all%20beta%2Dlactam%20antibiotics">first documented in 1961</a>, just one year after the antibiotic methicillin was introduced. MRSA is actually something of a misnomer, as the pathogen is resistant to two major classes of antibiotics, penicillins and cephalosporins.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HVqhOB">
The <a href="https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20150902/the-history-of-mrsa">first outbreak was documented</a> in a Boston hospital in 1968, and for several decades most MRSA infections were seen in hospitals or other health care settings. However, by the early 2000s, community-acquired cases were rising even as hospital spread decreased. In 2019, according to the <em>Lancet</em> report, MRSA directly caused more than 100,000 deaths.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NeoQQA">
Resistance is the inevitable result of using antibiotics. The best we can hope for is to delay it, mitigate the consequences, and buy time for the development of new antibiotics that bacteria haven’t yet evolved resistance to.
</p>
<h3 id="h0oEOn">
How to resist antibiotic resistance
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ikxyRy">
The <em>Lancet</em> study identifies three ways to slow the march of antibiotic resistance: more selective use of antibiotics, tighter infection control measures, and rapid investment in new treatments.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PKyf2l">
While the best practices for antibiotic usage in medicine are well established, they’re <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0503-unnecessary-
prescriptions.html">not always followed</a>. Antibiotics are only effective against bacterial infections — meaning they’ll do nothing for a viral illness like influenza — and should be given only when medically necessary for an identified bacterial infection. However, a 2016 <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27139059/">study</a> estimates that 30 percent of the antibiotic prescriptions given in clinic visits are unnecessary.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ImMfbI">
Treatment should always start with the most narrow-spectrum antibiotic, saving for later the “big guns” — broad spectrum antibiotics, which are important to keep in reserve so they remain effective with the sickest patients, as well as newer drugs with less established resistance. Once treatment is started, it’s important for patients to finish the full course; incomplete treatment can result in a surviving population of the disease pathogen, selected for resistance, which can then infect others and spread.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jakmhu">
Cutting down on the use of antibiotics in farming is also essential. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050507/">low-dose, prolonged</a> regimens given to increase the rate of growth in farm animals creates ideal conditions for pathogens to evolve resistant strains, at which point these pathogens can spread to affect humans. Denmark has been a world leader here, <a href="https://www.saveourantibiotics.org/the-issue/learning-from-
others/#:~:text=Denmark%20has%20also%20banned%20the,if%20reductions%20are%20not%20achieved.">drastically restricting</a> non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in healthy animals solely for disease prevention and faster weight gain, but the US has yet to follow suit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eMOVPR">
Preventing the transmission of infections within hospitals is also an essential measure to minimize the death toll from resistant bacteria; hospital-acquired infections are a major concern, with an estimated <a href="https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/health-care-associated-
infections#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20study%20by,one%20of%20these%20infections%20annually.">650,000 cases annually</a> in the US alone, and drug-resistant pathogens are much harder to treat, so maintaining isolation measures and the appropriate use of protective equipment is key.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dnl1V1">
One complication is that patients can be asymptomatic carriers without being sick, unknowingly spreading resistant bacteria. US hospitals will often test all newly admitted patients for MRSA and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE), two of the most common community- transmitted antibiotic resistant pathogens, so that carriers can be isolated from patients at risk of severe illness.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iNvnIe">
This means that reliable testing and data collection is essential to keep track of and slow the spread of resistant bacteria. That’s a particular challenge for lower-income countries; they lack the resources to test and screen patients as reliably, and they often have a shortage of and sanitation supplies. Those failings matter for rich countries as well — a globalized world means that novel resistant pathogens anywhere will present a risk elsewhere.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GB0f2c">
These control measures can buy time for pharmaceutical research companies to invest in developing new generations of antibiotics to replace existing treatments as pathogens acquire resistance to them. But progress on new antibiotics has been slow. Truly novel options — not simply tweaks on existing drugs — are what is most needed to stop drug-resistant pathogens, but the last entirely original class of antibiotics, lipopeptides, was discovered <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.4137/PMC.S14459">in the late 1980s</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OGIcH7">
Despite the desperate need, pharmaceutical companies are less incentivized to overcome the scientific, regulatory, and financial challenges involved in approving a new antibiotic — especially when the opportunity for profit is limited. Successfully developing an effective and nontoxic new antibiotic is a long and complex process; <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/data-visualizations/2019/five-year-analysis-shows-continued-
deficiencies-in-antibiotic-development">since 2014</a>, more than half of the drugs being tested were discontinued before reaching the approval stage. According to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02884-3#ref-
CR1">2017 estimate</a>, a single successful antibiotic costs $1.5 billion to bring to market, whereas the expected annual revenue per drug is less than $50 million per year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vQPM42">
Since the most powerful antibiotics are held in reserve as much as possible and then prescribed only as short-term treatment for acute infections, they bring in much less revenue than drugs for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9Z8LcS">
As <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/14/20963824/drug-resistance-antibiotics-cdc-
report">Kevin Outterson</a>, a Boston professor who studies antibiotic resistance, told my colleague Sigal Samuel, the problem is that “this is a product where we want to sell as little as possible. The ideal would be an amazing antibiotic that just sits on a shelf for decades, waiting for when we need it. That’s great for public health, but it’s a freaking disaster for a company.” Governments and other funders need to respond by implementing <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7872909/">financial incentives</a> for companies, funding academic research, or other significant changes to the current regulatory framework.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="INsYt2">
There is some good news on this front. The use of animal antibiotics <a href="https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/cvm-updates/fda-releases-
annual-summary-report-antimicrobials-sold-or-distributed-2020-use-food-
producing?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=govdelivery">decreased by 3 percent</a> between 2019 and 2020, and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/28/uk-risks-falling-behind-on-reducing-farm-antibiotics-after-eu-
ban">EU recently banned</a> antibiotic administration to healthy animals. But this is far from enough.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7JoZtO">
Antimicrobial resistance has been a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/antibiotic-resistance-could-be-
the-next-hidden-pandemic-uk-experts.html">hidden epidemic</a>, less visibly front and center than Covid-19, but the world cannot afford to wait to act until it reaches a crisis point.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Can Facebook monopolize the metaverse?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Mark Zuckerberg’s face appearing on a screen behind him." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/t3O387gGBUukCdWjTjQPNIjWWME=/582x0:5238x3492/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70515776/GettyImages_1182969866.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Meta Ceo Mark Zuckerberg. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The company’s new direction is already sparking government scrutiny.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="un9T4O">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sRuxjk">
<em>This story is part of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/e/22586957"><em>a Recode series about Big Tech and antitrust</em></a><em>. Over the next few weeks, we’ll cover what’s happening with </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22821277/apple-iphone-antitrust-app-
store-privacy"><em>Apple</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22836368/amazon-antitrust-ftc-
marketplace"><em>Amazon</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22893117/microsoft-activision-antitrust-
big-tech"><em>Microsoft</em></a><em>, Meta, and Google.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IdVkZP">
It wasn’t immediately clear what Mark Zuckerberg wanted to do with Oculus when Facebook <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/22/facebook-
oculus-rift-acquisition-virtual-reality">bought the virtual reality headset maker back in 2014</a>. Those plans are now coming into focus: Facebook is now called Meta, and it’s not just a social media company, it’s a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22799665/facebook-metaverse-meta-zuckerberg-oculus-vr-ar">metaverse company.</a> And as the new name implies, Meta wants to win in this space, just as Facebook won in social media.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4m3cIz">
But a growing group of regulators, politicians, and advocacy groups are raising concerns about Meta’s plans in this realm.
</p></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rz6bgn">
The company formerly known as Facebook spent nearly two decades cementing its position as the biggest social media company in the world — in large part by buying other social media startups, like Instagram and WhatsApp. Critics have accused Mark Zuckerberg and his company of using <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/6/21505027/congress-big-tech-antitrust-report-facebook-google-amazon-apple-
mark-zuckerberg-jeff-bezos-tim-cook">a “copy-acquire-kill” strategy</a> to pressure its would-be competition into selling or risk being crushed by Facebook.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Zugul">
Now, some are concerned that Meta may be employing the same tactics in the metaverse, a concept that Zuckerberg <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-
letter/">describes as</a> “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” In practical terms, the metaverse is a virtual space where people wearing AR/VR headsets can interact with each others’ avatars, play games, have meetings, and so on. While Meta is still in the early stages of developing the futuristic hardware and software that will make this possible, the company is already a market leader. Meta’s VR headsets made up an estimated <a href="https://www.counterpointresearch.com/xr-headset-shipments-almost-triple-yoy-q1-2021/">75 percent of all AR/VR headset shipments in the first quarter of 2021</a>. And as Recode’s Peter Kafka has reported, the social media giant has been <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22776461/facebook-meta-metaverse-monopoly">quietly buying up companies in the metaverse</a>, acquiring at least five AR/VR-related companies in the past year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9lteuo">
Regulators are paying attention. The FTC and several state attorneys general are investigating whether Meta is using monopolistic practices in the AR/VR market, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-14/meta-s-oculus-unit-faces-ftc-
led-probe-of-competition-practices?sref=qYiz2hd0">according to a January Bloomberg report</a>. The Information reported that the FTC is taking a close look at <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ftc-slows-meta-platforms-
metaverse-strategy-by-extending-antitrust-probe-of-vr-deal?rc=eh9iin">Meta’s planned acquisition of Within</a>, the company behind the popular VR fitness game Supernatural. In a new report highlighting Meta’s metaverse-related acquisitions, the Tech Oversight Project, an antitrust advocacy group, claimed that the company was using “its same playbook to squash potential competition,” as it has in the past.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A
person stands in front of the Meta company sign at 1 Hacker Way taking a selfie." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/HVPPLH5DmedtrBAVtN9bgnsYN_0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23243745/GettyImages_1349983171.jpg"/> <cite>Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021 to reflect the company’s new focus on the metaverse.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cOCJzB">
Meta’s critics are especially skeptical about the company buying up metaverse companies because of its contentious acquisitions in the past, particularly Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC and 48 states and territories <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22166437/facebook-instagram-ftc-
attorneys-general-antitrust-monopoly-whatsapp">sued Facebook over these purchases</a> at the end of 2020, drawing on internal emails showing how Facebook executives allegedly strategized to get rid of the company’s competitors, including Zuckerberg saying that it’s “better to buy than compete.” The states’ case was dismissed (a decision the states are appealing), but the FTC’s is still going. Meta now argues that the government is backtracking and going after deals that it approved years ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aEqaYo">
Antitrust regulators argue that Meta is an unbeatable social media behemoth, but in recent weeks, Meta has suffered a series of setbacks that might make it harder for that argument to stand. After a fourth-quarter earnings report showed shrinking user growth on the Facebook app, Meta’s stock price took a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/2/2/22915110/facebook-meta-user-growth-decline-first-time-metaverse-mark-
zuckerberg-tiktok-competition-earnings">historic dip</a>, losing more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/facebooks-232billion-drop-in-value-sets-all-time-record.html">$250 billion in market value</a> in a day, the largest ever single-day drop for a US company. Executives blamed the bad news, in part, on competition from TikTok, which is popular with younger users Facebook is struggling to attract.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zs85FG">
That Meta is losing relevance in the social media market is a very real threat for the company. It’s also why, even though the technology is still largely hypothetical, the potential regulation of the metaverse — not social media regulation — could become the more worrisome long-term threat for Meta, one that could slow down the company at a time when it needs to reinvent itself to succeed.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="jWfdIT">
<q>“No one can put a product on the market at the price they’re at today”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="txt52F">
For users, the debate is also about who will control the metaverse. Many leading technologists say the rise of the metaverse is akin to the invention of the mobile web or the internet itself. And if this new alternate reality really is this powerful, then whoever controls it — whether that’s Meta, a handful of other Big Tech companies, or smaller companies — could become the tech giants of the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Rcaxzh">
“Without the ability for other companies to compete with Facebook and their money, then you’re really only giving Facebook the opportunity to create for VR,” said Stephanie Llamas, founder of the metaverse market research firm VoxPop. “And that means we might be missing out on really cool stuff.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DyZQz7">
We don’t know yet if Facebook will establish a monopoly in the metaverse because the metaverse doesn’t fully exist. The AR/VR ecosystem that exists today is just one part of what Zuckerberg and other business leaders see as a whole host of new technologies that will ultimately support the metaverse — or many metaverses. <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-glasses/">Apple</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ar+headset+verge&amp;oq=google+ar+headset+verge&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l4j69i60l2j69i61.2791j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">Google</a> are reportedly working on headsets that could compete with the Meta Quest, while other major players like Microsoft and Sony are expanding their existing AR/VR product lines. Microsoft, for one, recently <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/18/22889342/microsoft-activision-antitrust-games-streaming-gamepass">spent nearly $70 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard</a>, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, a deal that could have major implications for the development of the metaverse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lDSDHB">
“Investing in and building products that consumers want is the key to success,” said Meta company spokesperson Christopher Sgro. “We cannot build the metaverse alone — collaboration with developers, creators, and experts will be critical. As we invest in the metaverse, we know that we face fierce competition from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Snap, Sony, Roblox, Epic, and many others at every step of this journey.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KSzR5z">
Some people in Washington want to take action before Meta has the chance to corner an emerging market once again. That may require changing existing antitrust laws, which critics say are too narrow. Antitrust regulations have also historically relied on the cost of goods to consumers and don’t take into account the modern digital economy, where services like Facebook and Instagram are free. Whatever regulators and lawmakers decide to do with Meta will have reverberations throughout Silicon Valley and might define the fight to break up Big Tech.
</p>
<h3 id="ci1Sw7">
Anti-competitive concerns in the metaverse
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lems68">
Some competitors are already complaining that Meta isn’t playing fair in the new metaverse market. Mark Zuckerberg has said that he wants the metaverse to allow other companies to build in this space. But some independent developers argue that Meta isn’t as open as it says it is.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Md8Gzz">
One big issue: Some AR/VR hardware companies say Meta is discounting its VR headsets to the point that it’s hard for smaller startups to compete. Meta’s Quest 2 headset currently costs $299, which is several hundred dollars below any comparable device on the market. The FTC is reportedly <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-14/meta-s-oculus-unit-faces-ftc-led-probe-of-competition-
practices">looking into</a> the possibility that Meta is selling Quest headsets at a loss in an attempt to undercut competitors and drive them out of the market, a practice known as predatory pricing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7bRkL0">
“No one can put a product on the market at the price they’re at today, with the same kind of capabilities,” Stan Larroque, founder of the Paris-based AR/VR <a href="https://www.inputmag.com/gaming/startup-lynx-is-building-a-facebook-free-vr-headset-that-
looks-awesome">startup Lynx</a>, told Recode. The company plans to release its first consumer headset, which Larroque says will have more advanced features than the Quest 2, for $700. “My name is not Mark Zuckerberg. I cannot sell my product at a loss.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0AAvhb">
Larroque added that Meta has tried to poach his team of engineers with offers of higher salaries, but his staff stayed on. Larroque also said he’s spoken with various regulatory agencies and lawmakers in the US and Europe about Meta’s business practices. Meta declined to comment on Larroque’s claims.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pqGkPZ">
But Meta’s lower price for its headsets is not necessarily an antitrust violation. Predatory pricing cases are very difficult to prove. The <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-
laws/single-firm-conduct/predatory-or-below-cost">current law</a> says below-cost pricing is only illegal if it’s done by a dominant company in order to run competitors out of business, allowing it to raise its prices above market levels to recoup its losses once it has a monopoly. Courts generally see low prices as good for consumers, even if they come at the expense of competitors.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A person wearing a virtual reality
headset sits with a laptop on a leather couch and points to one side. A neon sign on the wall behind spells out
“immersed.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OmN1zla9jeXOsZZHf37UeIdl6xI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23243733/GettyImages_1238364073.jpg"/> <cite>Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A person wearing a Meta Quest 2 (formerly called Oculus) headset. The headsets are some of the most popular VR consumer hardware devices on the market.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tsE4v3">
Another topic that’s come under scrutiny is whether Meta’s metaverse is truly open to third-party software developers. Currently, Meta <a href="https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/section/554169918379884/">operates an AR/VR app store</a> — similar to Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store — for which developers can create software for its headset. Meta, like Apple and Google, takes a 30 percent cut of any purchases made in the apps. Meta has also required users to sign in with Facebook accounts, a requirement that’s raised concerns about the company creating a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/21455665/facebook-oculus-vr-indie-developers-power-monopoly-concerns">walled garden</a>. (Following <a href="https://www.engadget.com/oculus-facebook-login-account-policy-backlash-160034955.html">an outcry from many gamers</a>, Meta said it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/28/22751297/meta-oculus-quest-need-
facebook-account-login-password">plans to end</a> the Facebook account requirement.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8XTTqY">
Developers have raised other concerns about how Meta operates its app store. Some have accused the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/facebook-accused-of-squeezing-rival-startups-in-virtual-
reality">company of blocking rival apps</a> from being carried on Meta’s Quest AR/VR app store, or of copying the competition outright. For example, Meta’s Horizon Worlds social space is <a href="https://uploadvr.com/horizon-worlds-
paintball/">similar to the popular game Rec Room</a>, and the company’s “Horizon Workrooms” virtual work conferencing software looks a lot like a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/15/21434946/augmented-reality-future-remote-work-
spatial-zoom-calls-feel-like-real-life">collaboration app from a company called Spatial</a>. (Spatial has <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/15/22834652/spatial-vr-nft-virtual-world-galleries-pivot">since pivoted to NFTs rather than VR</a>; the company’s head of growth Jacob Loewenstein told Recode that the reason for the pivot wasn’t because Meta copied Spatial but because of growing business opportunities around NFTs, artists, and creators.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KImEJE">
Meta has also acquired some of the most popular third-party games for the Quest headset, including not only Supernatural <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/facebook-buys-beat-saber-vr-game-maker-beat-games.html">but also Beat Saber</a>, which is one of the most popular games in VR and currently listed among top-selling games in Meta Quest’s app store.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bdz1tK">
“I’ve spoken to a lot of developers who feel they don’t even have a chance to enter the market because Facebook is buying up the technology that they’re trying to develop,” Llamas, from VoxPop, said. On the other hand, Meta’s AR/VR can be beneficial for the industry since the company can pour resources into developing startups and hardware to scale to a wider audience, she added.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FkiecG">
In response to concerns about whether its AR/VR platform is truly open to third-party developers, Meta pointed to the fact that the company still allows the games it has acquired to run on third-party gaming systems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MV5NnE">
As AR/VR becomes a more mainstream technology — and as Quest headsets capture a larger share of the market — whether or not Meta is giving its own products an advantage will become a higher stakes battle.
</p>
<h3 id="yYOLD9">
How Meta became an antitrust target
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YM02ap">
The metaverse is still very much part of a hypothetical future, which makes accusations that Meta is monopolizing it now tough to prove. And while Meta has had issues with the FTC in the past — including a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/7/24/20708359/facebook-ftc-settlement-criticism-5-billion-privacy-review-
antitrust-mark-zuckerberg">record $5 billion fine</a> over Facebook privacy violations a few years ago — the agency allowed it to acquire the companies that helped it become the dominant force it still is today. The FTC is reconsidering that now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pNnglM">
In their lawsuits against Meta, the FTC and attorneys general argued that the company’s acquisitions and anti-competitive practices helped it dominate social media and protected it from competition in up-and- coming spaces like mobile and messaging, which it was unable to do on its own. Other companies found their access to Facebook’s platform restricted or limited if they worked with competitors or were competitors themselves.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="4eMaP4">
<q>“There’s a real problem in Washington where we’re always fighting the fight from five years ago”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yiFYNa">
The FTC is <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-
proceedings/191-0134/facebook-inc-ftc-v">now asking</a> for the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp — along with any other asset that is found to illegally harm competition — to be undone. This would effectively break up the company now known as Meta.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xHSj5d">
Meta says the FTC hasn’t proved that Meta has a social media monopoly. Meta Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer Newstead said that the FTC “cleared these acquisitions years ago,” and that the government “now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final.” Meta has scored one victory in the case, when a judge <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/28/22554634/ftc-states-
antitrust-cases-against-facebook-federal-court-dismissed-for-now">threw out</a> the states’ lawsuit and said the FTC needed to make a better case that Meta had a social media monopoly. The FTC <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/19/22632826/facebook-ftc-lawsuit-antitrust-monopoly-lina-khan-instagram-whatsapp-path-
circle">refiled</a> a longer, more detailed complaint that so far has been allowed to move forward over Meta’s objections.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oMLvzH">
Meanwhile, other parts of the world may have lost some of their appetite for Meta mergers. The company’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/15/21259965/facebook-giphy-gif-acquisition-buy-
instagram-integration-cost">attempt </a>to buy Giphy, a generator and database of GIFs, is being fought by antitrust regulators in the United Kingdom, which fined the company millions of dollars and ordered it to sell Giphy off (Meta has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-owner-meta-says-it-will-pay-new-2-million-uk-
fine-2022-02-04/">appealed</a>, and the acquisition is on hold until it’s resolved). But after more than a year of scrutiny, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-15/meta-closes-1-billion-kustomer-deal-after-
regulatory-review?sref=qYiz2hd0">Meta’s $1 billion acquisition</a> of customer service software company Kustomer finally went through after Meta secured approval from regulators in the UK, US, and EU, so not every Meta merger is being blocked.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mm2ba0">
In any case, Meta maintains that it has plenty of competitors, an argument that may be helped by its <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/2/2/22915110/facebook-meta-user-growth-decline-first-time-
metaverse-mark-zuckerberg-tiktok-competition-earnings">recent quarterly earnings</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kfP2F9">
“If Facebook is losing market power, that would be relevant to the FTC’s lawsuit,” Rutgers Law professor Michael Carrier said. “The suit challenges Facebook’s conduct not just at the time of the acquisitions but also continuing to the present.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x5FIO9">
The history of antitrust cases against big, disruptive technology companies shows that the government doesn’t have to win to have an impact. The DOJ sued IBM and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22893117/microsoft-
activision-antitrust-big-tech">Microsoft</a> for monopolizing the mainframe and operating system markets, respectively. Those cases ended up being dropped or settled, but miring the companies in years of litigation during technological shifts allowed for competitors to emerge.
</p>
<h3 id="5lYTcf">
Meta’s unclear future
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z7krkh">
The IBM and Microsoft cases show how antitrust action can distract or discourage tech companies from new markets; in those cases, personal computing and the mobile internet, respectively. It’s still too early to say if Meta will be similarly impacted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iP3HQH">
The cases also show the gap between the fast-moving technology industry and the government’s response, which is notoriously slow. It can take decades for antitrust cases to be resolved. Attempts to reform legislation can take even longer.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r7CRre">
“There’s a real problem in Washington where we’re always fighting the fight from five years ago, or sometimes we’re fighting the fight from 10 years ago. And it makes it really difficult to ever get ahead of things,” Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge, said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5eKIGy">
The FTC isn’t ignoring the metaverse, either. When the agency re-filed its complaint against Meta last year, it included a new section about the metaverse. The agency noted that Meta’s pattern of cutting off access to its platform for developers who work with competitors, or whose apps directly compete with Meta’s services, is “likely” to occur whenever the company faces competition from new technologies. The metaverse was cited as an example of one of those new technologies.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Lina Khan testifies at her confirmation hearing
in April 2021." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KHX_3JVaacDMJo_ZIBuDJKH5vkg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23243767/GettyImages_1232440091.jpg"/> <cite>Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Lina Khan testifies at her Federal Trade Commission confirmation hearing in April 2021.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X2mIwJ">
That doesn’t mean the agency can do something about Meta and its metaverse ambitions anytime soon. Antitrust cases are tough enough to prove in established markets, let alone emerging ones. But that may be a fight the FTC or the DOJ’s antitrust division — which was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/facebook-accused-of-squeezing-rival-startups-in-virtual-
reality">reportedly</a> looking into Facebook’s VR acquisitions back in 2020 — wants to take on, now that both are led by vocal critics of Big Tech’s power over the economy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZCD5Hz">
“The argument that the VR market is too new [or] unknown could have worked a few years ago, but today, it could provide an enticing test case for agencies intent on showing that they will vigorously enforce the antitrust laws against ‘nascent competitors,’” Carrier explained.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PlUaxN">
The FTC may get some help from lawmakers. Bipartisan <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22529779/antitrust-
bills-house-big-tech">antitrust bills</a> specifically targeted at Big Tech companies and digital platforms are making their way through Congress. One bill, the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, would forbid dominant companies from acquiring competitors — or potential competitors — in order to reinforce their monopoly power. If it passes, Meta may not be able to continue to make acquisitions in certain markets, including the metaverse, according to Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute of Local Self-Reliance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UCwjnl">
But the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act seems to have stalled in Congress, which has yet to give any of the Big Tech antitrust bills a floor vote in either house. The bill’s Senate co-sponsors, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tom Cotton, didn’t comment to Recode on its progress. Advocates have become increasingly worried at how little time is left in this session.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RdhzCo">
In the meantime, the FTC and the DOJ are currently working on new merger guidelines that the agencies said will better address modern markets and what they will consider when deciding whether to approve mergers. But it will be at least a year before those guidelines are complete.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OM7Q0X">
There are other hurdles when it comes to regulators’ plans to rein in Meta. Without increased funding from Congress, the FTC has limited resources and has to pick its battles, especially when it comes to fighting massive companies, including the other Big Tech companies, that can afford an army of lawyers to fight back. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/15/22398320/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-
chair-big-tech-antitrust-competition-law-amazon">FTC chair Lina Khan</a> may decide an emerging market like AR/VR isn’t the hill she wants to die on.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4rxZEa">
There’s still a lot we don’t know about how exactly the metaverse will shake out. It’s possible that Meta’s plans may fail not just due to regulation, but business realities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C42aVc">
Putting aside the debate about competing tech giants in the metaverse, the masses may not want to engage with this alternate reality at all. Zuckerberg’s announcements about the metaverse have been met with a good deal of <a href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-metaverse-meta-explained-or-not-120032885.html">confusion</a> and <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/20/facebooks-metaverse-for-work-draws-hope-but-mostly-skepticism/">skepticism</a>. And let’s not forget that, a decade ago, Google Glass — that company’s early attempt at an augmented reality headset — notoriously flopped because it just wasn’t popular with everyday users, many of whom found it <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/tech/mobile/negative-google-glass-reactions/index.html">privacy-invasive</a> and <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/01/google-glass-failed-because-it-just-wasnt-cool">uncool</a>. Only about a quarter of Americans have ever used an AR or VR headset, and just 28 percent say they’re excited by the technology, <a href="https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/07/07/exclusive-nearly-one-quarter-americans-used-vr-ar-
headset">according to a July Morning Brew-Harris poll</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="waXfxk">
And let’s not forget Meta’s history of <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22762596/how-to-fix-facebook-mark-zuckerberg">privacy problems and content moderation issues</a> that have contributed to users losing trust in the company. That means people might be reluctant to give Meta more access to even more personal data that AR/VR headsets can collect, like our eye movements and facial expressions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BMbPAb">
Regardless of how successful or not Meta’s business plans in the metaverse are, having the looming threat of regulation hanging over its head isn’t helping. Regulation could slow Meta during a critical moment for the company when it needs to reinvent itself. What’s clear is that no matter what happens, regulators are trying to get ahead of the metaverse, and Meta won’t be able to skate by as easily as it has in the past.
</p>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Glenn Maxwell set to miss Pakistan tour, start of IPL</strong> - The Australian all-rounder’s wedding is scheduled for next month</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>AFI’s entry standards for Indian Open throws meet</strong> - Only athletes who are 18 and above are eligible to attend the event</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>Praggnanandhaa to face Giri, Carlsen in succession</strong> - First event of the $1.6 million 2022 Meltwaters Champions Chess Tour</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>Rasputin shines</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2022 | Shreyas Iyer appointed as Kolkata Knight Riders’ new captain</strong> - Iyer has captained Delhi Capitals to their only IPL final in 2020</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>Himachal Pradesh CM Jai Ram Thakur prays at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh</strong> - Endowments Minister Vellampalli Srinivas, TTD Chairman Y. V. Subba reddy, EO K. S. Jawahar reddy and others were present</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>Assembly session to begin on Friday</strong> - Balagopal to present Budget on March 11</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>Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections | BJP Govt in U.P. means control over ‘mafia raj’, ‘goonda raj’: PM Modi</strong> - PM Modi said BJP will get people’s support in the remaining five phases of polling in U.P. as well</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>IIT Madras sets up chair on innovation and product development</strong> - Alumnus offers $1,60,000 in endowment</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>Assembly met on 61 days in 2021 despite pandemic: Speaker</strong> -</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>Ukrainians wary of Russian claims of withdrawal</strong> - Kyiv says it wants to see evidence that Russia really is moving troops away from the border.</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>Hungary and Poland lose EU funding fight over laws</strong> - The two states had challenged an EU rule that allows funds to be conditional on democratic standards.</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>Hungarian election: Orban faces toughest race so far</strong> - An independent conservative will try to topple the right-wing Fidesz government in polls on 3 April.</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>Kylian Mbappe: Paris St-Germain striker says he has not made a decision on his future</strong> - Paris St-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe says he has not decided his future after scoring the winner against Real Madrid in their Champions League last-16 first-leg tie.</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>Ten dead and 11 missing as Spanish trawler sinks off Canada</strong> - Three crew members have been found and rescue efforts are continuing for other survivors.</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>Google should kill Stadia</strong> - In two years, Google hasn’t shown a single significant advantage in cloud gaming. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1831905">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Flood of malicious junk traffic makes Ukrainian websites unreachable</strong> - DDoS temporarily take out sites as Ukraine stares down Russian soldiers at its border. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1834626">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Omicron wave was brutal on kids; hospitalization rates 4X higher than delta’s</strong> - Incidental cases do not account for the jump in hospitalizations, the authors found. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1834596">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The robber fly is an aerodynamic acrobat that can catch its prey in midflight</strong> - Roboticists can learn a lot about avoiding obstacles while pursuing a target from the flies. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1833834">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>With relief, researchers find an explanation for dark-matter-poor galaxies</strong> - We’d seen galaxies with little dark matter, but had no explanation for them. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1834586">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>A lady had lost her husband almost four years ago. Her daughter was constantly calling her to get back into the dating world. Finally, she said she’d go out, but didn’t know anyone. Her daughter immediately replied, "Mom, I have someone for you to meet!</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Well, it was an immediate hit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
They took to one another and after dating for six weeks, he asked her to join him for a weekend in Spain.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Their first night there, she undressed as he did.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
There she stood nude, except for a pair of black panties, he in his birthday suit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Looking her over, he asked, “Why the black panties?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
She replied “My breasts you can fondle, my body is yours to explore, but down there I am still mourning.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He knew he was not going to get lucky that night.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The following night was the same, she stood there wearing the black panties and he was in his birthday suit but now he was wearing a black condom.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
She looked at him and asked, “What’s with the black condom?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He replied, "I want to offer my deepest condolences.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/stnibu/a_lady_had_lost_her_husband_almost_four_years_ago/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/stnibu/a_lady_had_lost_her_husband_almost_four_years_ago/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>For the past 20 years my wife has been complaining about me not putting the cap back on the toothpaste.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Last anniversary, I decided to change this bad habit and make my wife happy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
For a week, I was diligent, always capping the toothpaste. I was expecting my wife to thank me, but she never did it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Finally last night, she turned and looked at me and said - “why have you stopped brushing your teeth?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Marriage is a difficult relationship I tell you.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/WorldlyReplacement63"> /u/WorldlyReplacement63 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/sti6ia/for_the_past_20_years_my_wife_has_been/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/sti6ia/for_the_past_20_years_my_wife_has_been/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>My Hawaiian HOA passed a noise ordinance so strict that I can’t even laugh out loud.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
All i can do is a low ha.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/KarmicComic12334"> /u/KarmicComic12334 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/sthjgl/my_hawaiian_hoa_passed_a_noise_ordinance_so/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/sthjgl/my_hawaiian_hoa_passed_a_noise_ordinance_so/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Are people born with a photographic memory….</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
….or does it take time to develop ?
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/VERBERD"> /u/VERBERD </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/stg616/are_people_born_with_a_photographic_memory/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/stg616/are_people_born_with_a_photographic_memory/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Joe wanted to buy a Harley motorcycle. He didn’t have much luck until one day, he came across a Harley with a ‘for sale’ sign on it …</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The bike looked better than a new one, even though it was 10 years old. It was shiny and in great condition.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He buys it and asks the seller how he kept it in such great condition for 10 years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘Well, it’s quite simple,’ says the seller, ’whenever the bike is outside and it’s gonna rain, rub Vaseline on the chrome as it protects it from the rain, and he hands Joe a jar of Vaseline.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
That night, his girlfriend, Sandra, invites him over to meet her parents and naturally, they ride the bike there. Just before they enter the house, Sandra stops him and says, ‘I have to tell you something about my family.’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘When we eat dinner, we don’t talk. In fact, the FIRST person who says anything during dinner has to do the dishes.’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘No problem,’ He says, and in they go.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Joe is shocked.Right in the middle of the living room is a huge stack of dirty dishes. In the kitchen is another huge stack of dishes. Piled up on the stairs, in the corridor, everywhere he looks dirty dishes. They sit down to dinner, and sure enough, no one says a word.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As dinner progresses, Joe decides to take advantage of the situation. He leans over and kisses Sandra. No one says a word. He reaches over and fondles her breasts. Nobody says a word. So he stands up, grabs her, rips her clothes off, throws her on the table and screws her, right there in front of her parents. His girlfriend is a little flustered, her dad is obviously livid and her mom horrified when he sits back down, but no one says a word.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He looks at her mom. She’s got a great body too. Joe grabs mom, bends her over the table, pulls down her panties, and screws her every which way but loose right there on the dinner table. She has a big orgasm and Joe sits down. His girlfriend is furious, her dad is boiling and mom is beaming from ear to ear, but still … . Total silence.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
All of a sudden there is a loud clap of thunder and it starts to rain. Joe remembers his bike so he pulls the jar of Vaseline from his pocket, but as he stands up the father immediately shouts: ‘Ok, ok, I’ll go do the fuckin’ dishes!!’
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/SalzaMaBalza"> /u/SalzaMaBalza </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/st8iar/joe_wanted_to_buy_a_harley_motorcycle_he_didnt/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/st8iar/joe_wanted_to_buy_a_harley_motorcycle_he_didnt/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

4
index.html
View File

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long