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<title>24 October, 2022</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the circulation of other pathogens in England</strong> -
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The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated prevention measures did not only impact on the transmission of COVID-19 but also on the spread of other infectious diseases in an unprecedented natural experiment. Here, we analysed the transmission patterns of 22 different infectious diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Our results show that the COVID-19 prevention measures generally reduced the spread of pathogens that are transmitted via the air and the faecal-oral route. Moreover, the COVID-19 prevention measures resulted in the sustained suppression of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases also after the removal of restrictions, while non-vaccine preventable diseases displayed a rapid rebound. Despite concerns that a lack of exposure to common pathogens may affect population immunity and result in large outbreaks by various pathogens post-COVID-19, only four of the 22 investigated diseases and disease groups displayed higher post- than pre-pandemic levels without an obvious causative relationship. Notably, this included chickenpox for which an effective vaccine is available but not used in the UK, which provides strong evidence supporting the inclusion of the chickenpox vaccination into the routine vaccination schedule in the UK. In conclusion, our findings provide unique, novel insights into the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the spread of a broad range of infectious diseases.
</p>
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281366v1" target="_blank">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the circulation of other pathogens in England</a>
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<li><strong>Development of Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) Assays Using Five Primers Reduces the False-positive Rate in COVID-19 Diagnosis</strong> -
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The reverse-transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) is a cheaper and faster testing alternative for detecting SARS-CoV-2. However, high false-positive rate due to misamplification is one of the major limitations. To overcome misamplifications, we developed colorimetric and fluorometric RT-LAMP assays. The assay performances was verified by the gold-standard RT-qPCR technique on 150 clinical samples. Compared to other primer sets with six primers (N, S, and RdRp), E-ID1 primer set, including five primers, performed superbly on both colorimetric and fluorometric assays, yielding sensitivities of 89.5% and 100%, respectively, with a limit of detection of 20 copies/uL. The colorimetric RT-LAMP had a specificity of 97.2% and an accuracy of 94.5%, while the fluorometric RT-LAMP obtained 96.9% and 98%, respectively. No misamplification was evident even after 120 minutes, which is crucial for the success of this technique. These findings are important to support the use of RT-LAMP in the healthcare systems in fighting COVID-19.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.22281181v1" target="_blank">Development of Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) Assays Using Five Primers Reduces the False-positive Rate in COVID-19 Diagnosis</a>
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<li><strong>Comparison of the risk of hospitalisation among BA.1 and BA.2 COVID-19 cases treated with Sotrovimab in the community in England</strong> -
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Objectives Sotrovimab is one of several therapeutic agents that have been licensed to treat people at risk of severe outcomes following COVID-19 infection. However, there are concerns that it has reduced efficacy to treat people with the BA.2 sub-lineage of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV-2 variant. We compared individuals with the BA.1 or BA.2 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant treated Sotrovimab in the community to assess their risk of hospital admission. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study of individuals treated with Sotrovimab in the community and either had BA.1 or BA.2 variant classification. Results Using a Stratified Cox regression model it was estimated that the hazard ratios (HR) of hospital admission with a length of stay of two or more days was 1.17 for BA.2 compared to BA.1 (95% CI 0.74-1.86) and for such admissions where COVID-19 ICD-10 codes was recorded the HR was 0.98 (95% CI 0.58-1.65). Conclusion These results suggest that the risk of hospital admission is similar between BA.1 and BA.2 cases treated with Sotrovimab in the community.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281171v1" target="_blank">Comparison of the risk of hospitalisation among BA.1 and BA.2 COVID-19 cases treated with Sotrovimab in the community in England</a>
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<li><strong>Design of effective outpatient sentinel surveillance for COVID-19 decision-making: a modeling study</strong> -
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Background: Decision-makers impose COVID-19 mitigations based on public health indicators such as reported cases, which are sensitive to fluctuations in supply and demand for diagnostic testing, and hospital admissions, which lag infections by up to two weeks. Imposing mitigations too early has unnecessary economic costs, while imposing too late leads to uncontrolled epidemics with unnecessary cases and deaths. Sentinel surveillance of recently-symptomatic individuals in outpatient testing sites may overcome biases and lags in conventional indicators, but the minimal outpatient sentinel surveillance system needed for reliable trend estimation remains unknown. Methods: We used a stochastic, compartmental transmission model to evaluate the performance of various surveillance indicators at reliably triggering an alarm in response to, but not before, a step increase in transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The surveillance indicators included hospital admissions, hospital occupancy, and sentinel cases with varying levels of sampling effort capturing 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100% of incident mild cases. We tested 3 levels of transmission increase, 3 population sizes, and condition of either simultaneous transmission increase, or lagged increase in older population. We compared the indicators9 performance at triggering alarm soon after, but not prior, to the transmission increase. Results: Compared to surveillance based on hospital admissions, outpatient sentinel surveillance that captured at least 20% of incident mild cases could trigger alarm 2 to 5 days earlier for a mild increase in transmission and 6 days earlier for moderate or strong increase. Sentinel surveillance triggered fewer false alarms and averted more deaths per day spent in mitigation. When transmission increase in older populations lagged increase in younger populations by 14 days, sentinel surveillance extended its lead time over hospital admissions by an additional 2 days. Conclusions: Sentinel surveillance of mild symptomatic cases can provide more timely and reliable information on changes in transmission to inform decision-makers in an epidemic like COVID-19.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281330v1" target="_blank">Design of effective outpatient sentinel surveillance for COVID-19 decision-making: a modeling study</a>
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<li><strong>Perceptions of COVID-19 risk, vaccine access, and confidence: a qualitative analysis of South Asians in Canada</strong> -
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Objectives: In the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), South Asians living in the Greater Toronto Hamilton and Vancouver Areas experienced specific barriers to accessing SARS-CoV-2 testing and receiving reliable health information. However, between June 2021 and February 2022, the proportion of people having received at least 1 dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was higher among this group (96%) than among individuals who were not visible minorities (93%). A better understanding of successful approaches and the challenges experienced by those who remain unvaccinated among this highly vaccinated group may improve public health outreach in subsequent waves of the current pandemic or for future pandemic planning. Using qualitative methods, we sought to explore the perceptions of COVID-19 risk, vaccine access, uptake, and confidence among South Asians living in Canada. Methods: In this qualitative study, we interviewed 25 participants between July 2021 and January 2022 in the Greater Toronto Hamilton and Greater Vancouver Areas (10 community members, 9 advocacy group leaders, 6 public health staff). We conducted initial and focused coding in duplicate and developed salient themes. Throughout this process, we held frequent discussions with members of the study9s advisory group to guide data collection as it relates to community engagement, recruitment, and data analysis. Results: Access to and confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine was impacted by individual risk perceptions; sources of trusted information (ethnic and non-ethnic); impact of COVID-19 and the pandemic on individuals, families, and society; and experiences with COVID-19 mandates and policies (including temporal and generational differences). Approaches that include community-level awareness and tailored outreach as it relates to language and cultural context were considered successful. Conclusion: Understanding factors and developing strategies that build vaccine confidence can guide our approach to increase vaccine acceptance in the current and future pandemics.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281321v1" target="_blank">Perceptions of COVID-19 risk, vaccine access, and confidence: a qualitative analysis of South Asians in Canada</a>
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<li><strong>Predicting COVID-19 mortality in Zambia - an Application of Machine Learning</strong> -
<div>
Background: The Corona virus, has caused havoc all over the world, it has left no country untouched resulting in millions of cases and deaths. In an effort to fight back, scientist and public health professionals have used every form of advancing technology to curb the spread, predict the unforeseen adverse events, improve preparedness, and bring the world under control once more. Objective: The objective of this study was to predict mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Zambia using ML methods from a number of predictors that have been shown to be predictive of mortality. Methods: This research used powerful ML models in predicting COVID-19 mortality in 1,433 hospitalized patients in Zambia. The feature importance analysis helped in identification of important factors. The ML models GB, RF, SVM, DT, LR, and NB were used the performance metrics checked for each model were accuracy, recall, specificity, precision, F1 Score, ROC-AUC, and PRC-AUC. Results: The feature importance analysis found that hospital length of stay (LOS) and white blood cell count were the most influential features, other factors arranged in order of reducing importance included: age, wave, diabetes, hypertension, and sex. The GB achieved accuracy of 91.5%, recall of 93.6%, F1 Score of 91.7%, and ROC-AUC of 96.9%. The RF achieved accuracy of 90.9%, recall of 93.8%, F1 Score of 91.2%, and ROC-AUC of 96.8%. The SVM achieved accuracy of 87.8%, recall of 91.2%, F1 Score of 88.2%, and ROC-AUC of 94.1%. The accuracy and ROC-AUC of other models were 88.2% and 90.7% respectively for DT, 81.9% and 90.1% respectively for LR, and 79.2% and 86.9% respectively for NB. Conclusion: The study successfully derived and validated multiple ML models that predicted mortality effectively with reasonably high performance in stated metrics. The GB was the best suited for the data in our study. GB was thus recommended for similar studies with RF as best alternative. Knowledge of underlying health conditions about patients (length of hospitalization (LOS), white blood cell count, age, sex, hypertension, diabetes, and other factors) can help healthcare providers offer lifesaving services on time, improve preparedness and decongest health facilities.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://thesiscommons.org/b5a6n/" target="_blank">Predicting COVID-19 mortality in Zambia - an Application of Machine Learning</a>
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<li><strong>Robust Machine Learning predicts COVID-19 Disease Severity based on Single-cell RNA-seq from multiple hospitals</strong> -
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has a highly variable disease severity. Possible associations between peripheral blood signatures and disease severity have been investigated since the emergence of the pandemic. Although several signatures were identified based on exploratory analyses of single-cell omics data, there are no state-of-the-art validated models to predict COVID-19 severity from comprehensive transcriptome profiling of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs). In this paper, we present a computational workflow based on a Multilayer perceptron network that predicts the necessity of mechanical ventilation from PBMCs single-cell RNA-seq data. The study includes patient cohorts from Bonn, Berlin, Stanford, and three Korean medical centers. Training and model validation are performed using Berlin and Bonn samples, while testing is performed on completely unseen samples from the Stanford and Korean datasets. Our model shows a high area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve (Korea: 1 (CI:1-1), Stanford: 0.86 (CI:0.81-0.9)), proving our models robustness. Moreover, we explain our models performance by identifying gene loci and cell types, which are most critical for the classification task. In summary, we could show that the expression of 15 genes and the cell type proportion of 29 PBMC classes distinguish between COVID-19 disease states.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22280983v1" target="_blank">Robust Machine Learning predicts COVID-19 Disease Severity based on Single-cell RNA-seq from multiple hospitals</a>
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<li><strong>Characterizing and Predicting Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection (PASC) in a Large Academic Medical Center in the US</strong> -
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Objective: The growing number of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) survivors who are affected by Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection (PACS) represent a worldwide public health challenge. Yet, the novelty of this condition and the resulting limited data on underlying pathomechanisms so far hampered the advancement of effective therapies. Using electronic health records (EHR) data, we aimed to characterize PASC-associated diagnoses and to develop risk prediction models. Methods: In our cohort of 63,675 COVID-19 positive patients seen at Michigan Medicine, 1,724 (2.7 %) had a recorded PASC diagnosis. We used a case control study design comparing PASC cases with 17,205 matched controls and performed phenome-wide association studies (PheWASs) to characterize enriched phenotypes of the post-COVID-19 period and potential PASC pre-disposing phenotypes of the pre-, and acute-COVID-19 periods. We also integrated PASC-associated phenotypes into Phenotype Risk Scores (PheRSs) and evaluated their predictive performance. Results: In the post-COVID-19 period, cases were significantly enriched for known PASC symptoms (e.g., shortness of breath, malaise/fatigue, and cardiac dysrhythmias) but also many musculoskeletal, infectious, and digestive disorders. We found seven phenotypes in the pre-COVID-19 period (irritable bowel syndrome, concussion, nausea/vomiting, shortness of breath, respiratory abnormalities, allergic reaction to food, and circulatory disease) and 69 phenotypes in the acute-COVID-19 period (predominantly respiratory, circulatory, neurological, digestive, and mental health phenotypes) that were significantly associated with PASC. The derived pre-COVID-19 PheRS and acute-COVID-19 PheRS had low accuracy to differentiate cases from controls; however, they stratified risk well, e.g., a combination of the two PheRSs identified a quarter of the COVID-19 positive cohort at a 3.5-fold increased risk for PASC compared to the bottom 50% of their distributions. Conclusions: Our agnostic screen of time stamped EHR data uncovered a plethora of PASC-associated diagnoses across many categories and highlighted a complex arrangement of presenting and likely pre-disposing features — the latter with a potential for risk stratification approaches. Yet, considerably more work will need to be done to better characterize PASC and its subtypes, especially long-term consequences, and to consider more comprehensive risk models.
</p>
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281356v1" target="_blank">Characterizing and Predicting Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection (PASC) in a Large Academic Medical Center in the US</a>
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<li><strong>Global prediction for monkeypox epidemic</strong> -
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The monkeypox epidemic has now spread all over the world and has become an epidemic of widespread concern in the international community. Before the emergence of targeted vaccines and specific drugs, it is necessary to numerically simulate and predict the epidemic. In order to better understand and grasp its transmission situation, and put forward some countermeasures accordingly, we predicted and simulated monkeypox transmission and vaccination scenarios using models developed for COVID-19 predictions. The results suggest the monkeypox epidemic will spread to almost all countries in the world by the end of 2022 based on modified SEIR model prediction. The total number of people infected with monkeypox will reach 100,000. The top five countries will be the United States, Brazil, Germany, France and Britain with more than 28000, 20000, 4000, 4500 and 4000 cases respectively. If 30% of the population is vaccinated, the number of infected people will drop by 35%.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22280978v1" target="_blank">Global prediction for monkeypox epidemic</a>
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<li><strong>Receipt of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza vaccines in California (USA) during the 2021-2022 influenza season</strong> -
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Background Despite lower circulation of influenza virus throughout 2020-2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, seasonal influenza vaccination has remained a primary tool to reduce influenza-associated illness and death. The relationship between the decision to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and/or an influenza vaccine is not well understood. Methods We assessed predictors of receipt of 2021-2022 influenza vaccine in a secondary analysis of data from a case-control study enrolling individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 testing. We used mixed effects logistic regression to estimate factors associated with receipt of seasonal influenza vaccine. We also constructed multinomial adjusted marginal probability models of being vaccinated for COVID-19 only, seasonal influenza only, or both as compared with receipt of neither vaccination. Results Among 1261 eligible participants recruited between 22 October 2021 - 22 June 2022, 43% (545) were vaccinated with both seasonal influenza vaccine and &gt;1 dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 34% (426) received &gt;1 dose of a COVID-19 vaccine only, 4% (49) received seasonal influenza vaccine only, and 19% (241) received neither vaccine. Receipt of &gt;1 COVID-19 vaccine dose was associated with seasonal influenza vaccination (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 3.72; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.15-6.43); this association was stronger among participants receiving &gt;1 COVID-19 booster dose (aOR=16.50 [10.10-26.97]). Compared with participants testing negative for SARS-CoV-2 infection, participants testing positive had lower odds of receipt of 2021-2022 seasonal influenza vaccine (aOR=0.64 [0.50-0.82]). Conclusions Recipients of a COVID-19 vaccine were more likely to receive seasonal influenza vaccine during the 2021-2022 season. Factors associated with individuals9 likelihood of receiving COVID-19 and seasonal influenza vaccines will be important to account for in future studies of vaccine effectiveness against both conditions. Participants who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in our sample were less likely to have received seasonal influenza vaccine, suggesting an opportunity to offer influenza vaccination before or after a COVID-19 diagnosis.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281343v1" target="_blank">Receipt of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza vaccines in California (USA) during the 2021-2022 influenza season</a>
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<li><strong>Abnormal renal function tests at presentation in severe COVID 19 pneumonia and its effect on clinical outcomes</strong> -
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Aim To determine the incidence of abnormal renal function tests at presentation in South Asian patients admitted with severe COVID 19 pneumonia and determine its effect on disease severity and clinical outcomes Methods This was a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted at the COVID Intensive care unit of a large tertiary care government hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. 190 patients admitted over five months from 1/5/2021 till 30/6/2021 were included in the study. Patient demographic characteristics, comorbidities, and clinical manifestations of COVID 19 infection were recorded. Laboratory values at the time of presentation, including Hemoglobin, NLR, platelets, blood urea nitrogen, glomerular filtration rate (GFR), inflammatory markers, liver function tests, and electrolytes were recorded. Patient outcome and need for mechanical ventilation were assessed 28 days after admission and compared with the incidence of abnormal renal functions at presentation. Results Mean GFR and BUN at presentation were 69.7 and 28.4 respectively. 109 (50.4%) patients had abnormal renal function tests at the time of presentation. 76 (40.0%) patients had low GFR and 33 (17.4%) had only raised BUN with normal GFR. Mean GFR was lower in non-survivors vs survivors (p-value 0.000) and in patients who required mechanical ventilation (p-value 0.008). Patients who had low GFR showed greater mortality than those with normal GFR (p-value 0.04) and were more likely to require mechanical ventilation (p-value 0.04). Conclusion Low GFR at presentation is common in patients with severe COVID 19 pneumonia and is associated with a higher in-hospital mortality rate and need for mechanical ventilation.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281382v1" target="_blank">Abnormal renal function tests at presentation in severe COVID 19 pneumonia and its effect on clinical outcomes</a>
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<li><strong>Association of viral variant and vaccination status with the occurrence of symptoms compatible with post-acute sequelae after primary SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> -
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Importance: Disentangling the effects of different SARS-CoV-2 variants and of vaccination on the occurrence of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) is crucial to estimate and potentially reduce the future burden of PASC. Objective: To determine the association of primary SARS-CoV-2 infection on the frequency of PASC symptoms by viral variant and vaccination status. Design: Cross-sectional questionnaire and SARS-CoV-2 serology (May/June 2022) performed within a prospective healthcare worker cohort (SURPRISE study). Setting: Multicenter study in nine healthcare networks from North-Eastern Switzerland. Participants: Volunteer sample of healthcare workers (HCW) from participating institutions. Of approximately 20000 eligible participants, 3870 registered for the cohort and 2912 were included in this analysis. Exposures: SARS-CoV-2 infection documented by positive nasopharyngeal swab (&gt;4 weeks ago), stratified by viral variant and vaccination status at time of infection, compared to absence of documented infection (no positive swab, negative serology). Main Outcome: Sum score of eighteen self-reported PASC symptoms. Results: Among 2912 participants (median age 44 years, 81.3% female), SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported by 1685 (55.9%) participants, thereof 315 (18.7%) during Wild-type, 288 (17.1%) during Alpha/Delta, and 1082 (64.2%) during Omicron circulation. Mean symptom number in previously infected participants significantly exceeded that of uninfected controls (0.39), but decreased with recency of the viral variant: 1.12 (p&lt;0.001) for Wild-type (median time since infection 18.5 months), 0.67 (p&lt;0.001) for Alpha/Delta (6.6 months), and 0.52 (p=0.005) for Omicron BA.1 (3.1 months) infected participants. After Omicron BA.1 infection, the mean symptom score was 0.49 (p=0.30) for those with at least 3 prior vaccinations and 0.71 (p=0.028) with 1-2 previous vaccinations compared to 0.36 for unvaccinated individuals. Adjusting for confounders, Wild-type (adjusted risk ratio [aRR] 2.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.08-3.83) and Alpha/Delta infection (aRR 1.93, 95% CI 1.10-3.46) showed significant associations with the outcome, whereas Omicron BA.1 infection (aRR 1.29, 95% CI 0.69-2.43) and vaccination before infection (aRR 1.27, 95% CI 0.82-1.94) did not. Conclusions and Relevance: Previous infection with pre-Omicron variants was the strongest risk factor for reporting PASC symptoms in this HCW cohort. A definite influence of prior vaccination on the prevention of PASC after Omicron BA.1 infection was not measurable.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.22281349v1" target="_blank">Association of viral variant and vaccination status with the occurrence of symptoms compatible with post-acute sequelae after primary SARS-CoV-2 infection</a>
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<li><strong>Psychological Distress and Perceived Discrimination Among Chinese International Students One Year into COVID-19: A Preregistered Comparative Study</strong> -
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Background and Objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese international students (CISs) experienced increased distress associated with a combination of unique and universal stressors, among which discrimination against Chinese is especially harmful. Therefore, studying correlates of distress among CISs, including the association between discrimination and distress and factors intensifying or attenuating this link, may yield important insights into prevention and intervention efforts. Design: We adopted a cross-sectional self-report design. Methods: Our study compared depression and anxiety between CISs (N = 381) and Chinese students in Chinese colleges (CSCCs; N = 306) and examined correlates of distress including the association between discrimination and distress as well as moderators on this link within CISs. Results: Compared to CSCCs, CISs reported greater depression and anxiety. Depression was associated with being female, older, non-heterosexual, increased discrimination, decreased self- esteem, coping flexibility, perceived social support, and satisfaction with online learning. Anxiety was associated with being female, heterosexual, in undergraduate years, increased discrimination, decreased self-esteem, subjective socioeconomic status, coping flexibility, and satisfaction with online learning. High perceived social support and being heterosexual weakened the association between discrimination and distress (anxiety and depression). Conclusions: Our study underscored the impact of the pandemic and related discrimination on CISs and highlighted individual differences that may warrant attention.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/mtk7w/" target="_blank">Psychological Distress and Perceived Discrimination Among Chinese International Students One Year into COVID-19: A Preregistered Comparative Study</a>
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<li><strong>Diversity, composition, and networking of saliva microbiota distinguish the severity of COVID-19 episodes as revealed by an analysis of 16S rRNA variable V1-V3 regions sequences</strong> -
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Background: Studies on the role of the oral microbiome in SARS-CoV-2 infection and severity of the disease are limited. We aimed to characterize the bacterial communities present in the saliva of patients with varied COVID-19 severity to learn if there are differences in the characteristics of the microbiome among the clinical groups. Methods: We included asymptomatic subjects with no previous COVID-19 infection or vaccination; patients with mild respiratory symptoms, positive or negative for SARS-CoV-2 infection; patients that required hospitalization because of severe COVID-19 with oxygen saturation below 92%, and fatal cases of COVID-19. Saliva samples collected before any treatment were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR. Oral microbiota in saliva was studied by amplification and sequencing of the V1-V3 variable regions of 16S gene using a Illumina MiSeq platform. Results: We found significant changes in diversity, composition, and networking in saliva microbiota of patients with COVID-19, as well as patterns associated with severity of disease. The presence or abundance of several commensal species and opportunistic pathogens were associated with each clinical stage. Patterns of networking were also found associated with severity of disease: a highly regulated bacterial community (normonetting) was found in healthy people whereas poorly regulated populations (disnetting) were characteristic of severe cases. Conclusions: Characterization of microbiota in saliva may offer important clues in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and may also identify potential markers for prognosis in the severity of the disease.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.20.513136v1" target="_blank">Diversity, composition, and networking of saliva microbiota distinguish the severity of COVID-19 episodes as revealed by an analysis of 16S rRNA variable V1-V3 regions sequences</a>
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<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 nsp3-4 suffice to form a pore shaping replication organelles</strong> -
<div>
Coronavirus replication is associated with the remodeling of cellular membranes resulting in the formation of double-membrane vesicles (DMVs). Recently, a pore spanning DMV was identified as a putative portal for viral RNA transcription and replication products providing a novel target for antiviral intervention. However, the exact components and the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 pore remain to be determined. Here, we investigate the structure of DMV pores by in situ cryo-electron tomography combined with subtomogram averaging. We reveal non-structural proteins (nsp) 3 and 4 as minimal components forming a DMV spanning pore and show that nsp3 Ubl1-Ubl2 domains are critical for inducing membrane curvature and DMV formation. Altogether, SARS-CoV-2 nsp3-4 has a dual role by driving the biogenesis of replication organelles and forming DMV-spanning replicopores.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.21.513196v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 nsp3-4 suffice to form a pore shaping replication organelles</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>Recombinant Omicron-Delta COVID-19 Vaccine (CHO Cell)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant Omicron-Delta COVID-19 Vaccine (CHO Cell);   Biological: Inactivated COVID-19 vaccine (Vero Cell)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biologic Pharmacy Co., Ltd.;   First Affiliated Hospital Bengbu Medical College<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 III Study to Evaluate Immunogenicity and Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine EuCorVac-19 in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: EuCorVac-19;   Biological: ChAdOx1<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   EuBiologics Co.,Ltd<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Testing and Vaccine Literacy for Women With Criminal Legal System Involvement</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Tri-City COVID Attitudes Study<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Kansas Medical Center<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>JT001 (VV116) for the Treatment of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Mild to Moderate COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: JT001;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Shanghai Vinnerna Biosciences Co., Ltd.;   Sponsor GmbH<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>Information Provision and Consistency Framing to Increase COVID-19 Booster Uptake</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Vaccines<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Reminder that facilitates action;   Behavioral: Consistency framing;   Behavioral: Information provision about the uniqueness of the bivalent booster;   Behavioral: Information provision about bivalent booster eligibility;   Behavioral: Information provision about the severity of COVID-19 symptoms<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of California, Los Angeles<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>Respiratory Muscles After Inspiratory Muscle Training After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Diaphragm Injury<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   RWTH Aachen University;   Philipps University Marburg Medical Center<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Simulation Education on Nursing Students</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic;   Simulation of Physical Illness<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Simulation training;   Other: Control Group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Mehmet Akif Ersoy University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>OPtimisation of Antiviral Therapy in Immunocompromised COVID-19 Patients: a Randomized Factorial Controlled Strategy Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Immunodeficiency<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Paxlovid 5 days;   Drug: Paxlovid 10 days;   Drug: Tixagevimab and Cilgavimab<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   ANRS, Emerging Infectious Diseases;   University Hospital, Geneva<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>Boost Intentions and Facilitate Action to Promote Covid-19 Booster Take-up</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Vaccines<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Eligibility reminder;   Behavioral: Link to a narrow set of vaccine venues;   Behavioral: Link to a broad set of vaccine venues;   Behavioral: Doctors’ recommendation and value of vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of California, Los Angeles<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 Prompt to Bundle Covid-19 Booster and Flu Shot</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Vaccines<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Reminder to boost protection against COVID-19;   Behavioral: Flu Tag Along;   Behavioral: COVID-19 Booster &amp; Flu Bundle<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of California, Los Angeles<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>COVID-19 MP Biomedicals SARS-CoV-2 Ag OTC: Clinical Evaluation</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: iCura COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Home Test;   Device: RT-PCR Test<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   MP Biomedicals, LLC;   EDP Biotech<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>COVID-19 MP Biomedicals Rapid SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Test Usability</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Sars-CoV-2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Rapid SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Test<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   MP Biomedicals, LLC;   EDP Biotech<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety and Immunogenicity of AdCLD-CoV19-1 OMI as a Booster: A SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Preventive Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Vaccines<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AdCLD-CoV19-1 OMI (Part A);   Biological: AdCLD-CoV19-1 OMI (Part B);   Other: Placebo (Part B)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cellid Co., Ltd.<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>Safety and Dosage of a Computerized Cognitive Training Program for Cognitive Dysfunction After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19;   Post Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Cognitive Dysfunction;   Cognitive Impairment<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: CCT Long COVID<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad Antonio de Nebrija<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 Preliminary Exploratory Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of Omicron Variant Bivalent Vaccine V-01-B5</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: V-01/V-01-B5;   Biological: V-01-351/V-01-B5;   Biological: V-01<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Livzon Pharmaceutical Group Inc.<br/><b>Active, not 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>Serial thrombin generation and exploration of alternative anticoagulants in critically ill COVID-19 patients: Observations from Maastricht Intensive Care COVID Cohort</strong> - CONCLUSION: In a sub-group of mechanically ventilated, critically ill COVID-19 patients, despite apparent adequate anti-coagulation doses evaluated by anti-Xa levels, thrombin generation potential remained high during ICU admission independent of age, sex, body mass index, APACHE II score, cardiovascular disease, and smoking status. These observations could, only partially, be explained by (anti)coagulation and thrombosis, inflammation, and multi-organ failure. Our in vitro data suggested that…</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>Investigation of Embelin synthetic hybrids as potential COVID-19 and COX inhibitors: Synthesis, Spectral analysis, DFT calculations and Molecular docking studies</strong> - Embelin (2, 5-dihydroxy-3-undecyl-1,4-benzoquinone), a benzoquinone isolated from fruits of Embelia ribes has miscellaneous biological potentials including; anticancer, anti-inflammation, antibiotic, and anti-hyperglycemic activities. Also, embelin down-regulates the overexpression of inflammatory pathways like NF-kB, TACE, TNF-α, and other cytokines. Furthermore, embelin fascinated synthetic interest as a pharmacologically active compound. The present article involves the design, synthesis, DFT…</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>Does Coronavirus Disease 2019 Kill More Elderly Men than Women Due to Different Hormonal Milieu</strong> - Preliminary data depicts a much greater prevalence and high case-fatality rate in advanced age males as compared to age-matched women with severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 infections with high morbidity, mortality, high referral, and admission to intensive care unit with severe sequelae. However, the literature search revealed both for and against studies in this context. Thus, at present, in light of the mixed studies, it cannot be established whether low testosterone levels in…</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>Microwave Assisted Synthesis of 2-amino-4-chloro-pyrimidine Derivatives: Anticancer and Computational Study on Potential Inhibitory Action against COVID-19</strong> - We report microwave synthesis of seven unique pyrimidine anchored derivatives (1-7) incorporating multifunctional amino derivatives along with their in vitro anticancer activity and their activity against COVID-19 in silico. 1-7 were characterized by different analytical and spectroscopic techniques. Cytotoxic activity of 1-7 was tested against HCT116 and MCF7 cell lines, whereby 6 exhibited highest anticancer activity on HCT116 and MCF7 with EC(50) values of 89.24±1.36 µM and 89.37±1.17 µM,…</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>Integrated computational approach towards identification of HSPG and ACE2 mimicking moieties for SARS-CoV-2 inhibition</strong> - A key step to inhibit severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is to prevent the entry of the virus into the host cells. The receptor-binding domains (RBDs) of spike proteins of SARS-CoV and other human coronaviruses utilize heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) as the primary receptors for their accumulation on the cell surface and then scan for binding to the main entry receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 share structurally…</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 interplay between the airway epithelium and tissue macrophages during the SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - The first line of antiviral immune response in the lungs is secured by the innate immunity. Several cell types take part in this process, but airway macrophages (AMs) are among the most relevant ones. The AMs can phagocyte infected cells and activate the immune response through antigen presentation and cytokine release. However, the precise role of macrophages in the course of SARS-CoV-2 infection is still largely unknown. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the role of AMs during the SARS-CoV-2…</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>Longitudinal cellular and humoral immune responses after triple BNT162b2 and fourth full-dose mRNA-1273 vaccination in haemodialysis patients</strong> - Haemodialysis patients respond poorly to vaccination and continue to be at-risk for severe COVID-19. Therefore, dialysis patients were among the first for which a fourth COVID-19 vaccination was recommended. However, targeted information on how to best maintain immune protection after SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations in at-risk groups for severe COVID-19 remains limited. We provide, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time longitudinal vaccination response data in dialysis patients and controls…</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>microRNA 1307 Is a Potential Target for SARS-CoV-2 Infection: An <em>in Vitro</em> Model</strong> - microRNAs (miRs) are proposed as critical molecular targets in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our recent in silico studies identified seven SARS-CoV-2 specific miR-like sequences, which are highly conserved with humans, including miR-1307-3p, with critical roles in COVID-19. In this current study, Vero cells were infected with SARS-CoV-2, and miR expression profiles were thereafter confirmed by qRT-PCR. miR-1307-3p was the most highly expressed miR in the infected cells; we, therefore, transiently…</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>Recent advances in transition metal-catalyzed reactions of chloroquinoxalines: Applications in bioorganic chemistry</strong> - The importance of the quinoxaline framework is exemplified by its presence in the well-known drugs such as varenicline, brimonidine, quinacillin, etc. In the past few years, preparation of a variety of organic compounds containing the quinoxaline framework has been reported by several research groups. The chloroquinoxalines were successfully used as substrates in many of these synthetic approaches due to their easy availability along with the reactivity especially towards a diverse range of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Move and countermove: the integrated stress response in picorna- and coronavirus-infected cells</strong> - Viruses, when entering their host cells, are met by a fierce intracellular immune defense. One prominent antiviral pathway is the integrated stress response (ISR). Upon activation of the ISR - typically though not exclusively upon detection of dsRNA - translation-initiation factor eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2) becomes phosphorylated to act as an inhibitor of guanine nucleotide-exchange factor eIF2B. Thus, with the production of ternary complex blocked, a global translational arrest…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Medications for early treatment of COVID-19 in Australia</strong> - Early treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections can prevent hospitalisation and death in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who have one or more risk factors for serious COVID-19 progression. While early treatment presents a range of logistical challenges, clinicians are nevertheless aided by a growing number of approved medications for early treatment of COVID-19. Medications include drugs that inhibit SARS-CoV-2 viral replication,…</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>Ganoderma microsporum immunomodulatory protein acts as a multifunctional broad-spectrum antiviral against SARS-CoV-2 by interfering virus binding to the host cells and spike-mediated cell fusion</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: GMI, an FDA-approved dietary ingredient, acts as a multifunctional broad-spectrum antiviral against SARS-CoV-2 and could become a promising candidate for preventing or treating SARS-CoV-2 associated diseases.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Therapeutic use of calpeptin in COVID-19 infection</strong> - This perspective considers the benefits of the potential future use of the cell permeant calpain inhibitor, calpeptin, as a drug to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Recent work has reported calpeptin’s capacity to inhibit entry of the virus into cells. Elsewhere, several drugs, including calpeptin, were found to be able to inhibit extracellular vesicle (EV) biogenesis. Unsurprisingly, because of similarities between viral and EV release mechanisms,…</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 ZBP1 induces cell death-independent inflammatory signaling via RIPK3 and RIPK1</strong> - ZBP1 is an interferon-induced cytosolic nucleic acid sensor that facilitates antiviral responses via RIPK3. Although ZBP1-mediated programmed cell death is widely described, whether and how it promotes inflammatory signaling is unclear. Here, we report a ZBP1-induced inflammatory signaling pathway mediated by K63- and M1-linked ubiquitin chains, which depends on RIPK1 and RIPK3 as scaffolds independently of cell death. In human HT29 cells, ZBP1 associated with RIPK1 and RIPK3 as well as…</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>Post COVID-19 neuropsychiatric complications and therapeutic role for TNF-α inhibitors: a case series study</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this report is the first case series study that suggests TNF inhibitors in the treatment of post-COVID-19 syndrome, especially neuropsychological complications. However, future studies should evaluate the best therapeutic options for this syndrome.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Would a Nation of Sports Gamblers Look Like?</strong> - A well-worn maxim in gambling says you should assume everyone is lying to you at all times. This rule also seems to apply to debates about online sports betting. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-would-a-nation-of-sports-gamblers-look-like">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joe Biden’s Walk-and-Chew-Gum Campaign</strong> - The President says the midterms are “the most consequential” elections in recent history, but he’s not acting like he means it. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/joe-bidens-walk-and-chew-gum-campaign">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>After Liz Truss’s Resignation, Britain Urgently Needs a General Election</strong> - Common sense, basic decency, and the U.K.’s reputation as a healthy democracy demand one. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-liz-trusss-resignation-britain-urgently-needs-a-general-election">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Jonathan Lethem Reads “Narrowing Valley”</strong> - The author reads his story from the October 31, 2022, issue of the magazine. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/jonathan-lethem-reads-narrowing-valley">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Voters Can and Can’t Learn from John Fetterman’s Stroke</strong> - Health is rarely the thing that differentiates a competent politician from an incompetent one. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-voters-can-and-cant-learn-from-john-fettermans-stroke">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>How do you make a movie about a monster?</strong> -
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<img alt="Two women stand on a doorstep, a head silhouetted in front of them." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Cfr6atnkoJ3gIHWgS-6QK45Pp_I=/178x0:1099x691/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71535743/shesaidcover.0.jpg"/>
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Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in <em>She Said.</em> | Universal Pictures
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
<em>She Said</em>, <em>Women Talking</em>, and pushing Harvey out of the spotlight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cQ2U0c">
Five years ago, New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/6/16432526/harvey-weinstein-allegations-whos-involved">broke the story</a> of Harvey Weinstein’s gross and violent abuse of his power in the New York Times; two years later, in 2019, they <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/she-said-breaking-the-sexual-harassment-story-that-helped-ignite-a-movement-jodi-kantor/12087798">wrote a book</a> about it. What makes their book so riveting — it is absolutely engrossing, required reading — is its meticulous attention to the two-inches-forward, one-inch-back work of reporting such an explosive story. Getting the facts right, crafting a legally and ethically airtight expose, and dodging the best defenses that power and money can buy is not easy. They pulled it off, and the book explains how.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o4Zf5b">
But Twohey and Kantor’s book is mostly about texting reluctant sources and being rebuffed by frightened victims, and while it’s great on the page, none of that is inherently cinematic. So I was delighted, and startled, to realize that the film adaptation of <em>She Said</em> (out November 18) nabs the tone and tenor brilliantly, with Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan starring as Twohey and Kantor. How it treated the menacing presence of Weinstein himself is even more brilliant.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AlK4uY">
I watched the film adaptation of <em>She Said </em>on a cold October day in New York, just blocks away from the Times Square building where the journalists did their work and, eventually, confronted Weinstein himself. I’d just realized that morning, thanks to my Facebook “memories,” that the story broke five years earlier. Somehow, it had been five long years since <a href="https://www.vox.com/metoo">#MeToo</a>. I remember the heady feeling that hung in the air at that time — a sense that something in Hollywood and the world at large was changing, that long-accepted exploitation was being punished, and that nothing would ever be the same. It was frightening. It was thrilling.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="19ECKp">
Now, as the film approaches its November release, Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence for sex crimes in New York. He’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jailed-harvey-weinstein-faces-rape-trial-los-angeles-2022-10-20/">on trial in Los Angeles</a> on rape charges, with arguments starting on Monday, October 24; he also <a href="https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-authorises-indecent-assault-charges-against-harvey-weinstein">faces charges in London</a>. He’s 70 years old and, according to his attorney, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/harvey-weinstein-asks-court-to-pause-civil-suit-because-of-severe-health-issues-and-risk-of-incrimination-4095424/">in poor health</a>. It’s fairly safe to say he’ll die in jail. He’s a pariah in the industry that coddled him for so long, a response that feels at times as much like an attempt to purge something from their conscience as any actual fit of virtue. (After all, a powerful person accused of abusing their power today seems as likely to complain of “<a href="https://www.vox.com/22384308/cancel-culture-free-speech-accountability-debate">cancel culture</a>” as to apologize.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5satGp">
But Weinstein, and everything that came after his downfall, still looms over the industry. TV and movies — from the richly complex <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23385471/tar-review-cate-blanchett-field"><em>Tár</em></a>, about a female conductor who takes advantage of a youthful protege, to the upcoming second season of HBO’s <em>The Vow</em>, which unpacks the abuses of self-help guru and NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere — feel like they couldn’t have existed without the Weinstein story jolting everyone awake. Say “Harvey” out loud, and everyone knows who you’re talking about. And in casual conversations, fresh accusations against other figures tend to get measured mentally against his crimes — it’s like Weinstein is a measuring stick by which almost everyone else seems bad, but not <em>as</em> bad. If we punish him sufficiently, you can almost hear the cultural subconscious musing, then maybe everything can go back more or less to normal. As if it’s the man who matters, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/24/16490858/weinstein-toback-faraci-knowles-assault-shelter-film-community">not the system</a>.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Three white women and a Black man are grouped around what appears to be a very important telephone call." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XTeteZEKdGcSMbrXX0kupY4FaNc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24129832/shesaid1.jpg"/> <cite>Universal Pictures</cite>
<figcaption>
Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan, Andre Braugher, and Patricia Clarkson in <em>She Said</em>.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fvmCz8">
Weinstein’s shadow is nearly impossible to grapple with effectively, and the industry is still scrambling, in part because <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/times-up-metoo-advocacy-what-happened-into-it.html">efforts like Time’s Up have flailed</a> and in part because so much of the Hollywood that might make a movie about him is in some way complicit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kRSmzO">
But the bigger reason is simply that Harvey fought hard his whole career to cast that shadow. He was so effective that, eventually, most of the industry fell beneath it. (One of the most satisfying moments in <em>She Said</em> comes when we find out that when Weinstein met with Martin Scorsese, it was <em>Weinstein</em> who was nervous because Scorsese “hates him.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vfavU1">
The extent to which Harvey had the industry in his thrall — and the way his presence smothered so many, whether or not he directly assaulted them — was <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/29/21112386/the-assistant-interview-weinstein-julia-garner-kitty-green">richly illustrated in <em>The Assistant</em></a>, Kitty Green’s phenomenal 2019 film starring Julia Garner. The central character is a young woman with a new job in the film industry; for the most part, we follow her through her day doing menial tasks, like making travel arrangements and sheepdogging visitors through the office. We never catch a clear glimpse of her boss and only hear his voice a little.
</p>
<aside id="msmLS1">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EjHFcK">
But we know it’s Harvey. You can feel him in the room even when he’s not there, the threat of his temper is thick and stifling in the air. Watching <em>The Assistant</em>, you <em>feel</em> the anxiety and dread that came with crossing his path. To have the sun blocked out by his shadow. A worse movie would have had him thundering through the room, leering and shouting, making explicit what’s felt much more viscerally in a vacuum. (See, for instance, the portrayal of Roger Ailes in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/18/21021182/bombshell-review-fox-news">abysmal 2019 movie <em>Bombshell</em></a>.) Without him there physically, our imaginations work to fill in the details.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bOcHCU">
Which is in a sense what we’ve all been doing for years. You may not have known Harvey, but you probably know someone like him. Your memories fill in the blanks. Even in disgrace, men like him tend to suck up all the air in the room, to inevitably drive the discourse back to themselves. As <em>She Said</em> richly illustrates, identifying yourself can bring down more abuse from the public, so many choose to remain as anonymous as possible. So we’re still sitting here five years later, using “Weinstein” as a shorthand, and we will be for a long time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Ie6Ur">
That’s what makes a movie like <em>She Said</em> or its <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23345084/women-talking-review-tiff-augustine">upcoming inadvertent companion piece <em>Women Talking</em></a> so effective: both center the women, instead of their attackers, by pushing the latter off-screen as much as possible. <em>She Said</em> is the story of two women who haven’t directly been the victims of the man they’re investigating but live, as the film shows, in a few key scenes, in a culture that fosters him and others like him. In one scene, Mulligan (as Twohey) screams at a man in a bar who simply will not leave them alone. In another, Kazan (as Kantor) discovers, to her sinking horror, that her young daughter knows the word “rape” — though not its full meaning — because kids at school throw it around.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A group of Mennonite women have been talking; now they’ve turned to look at something outside the frame." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IKxVzbhHkglN7ROuzB8kW3HfDqo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24129834/womentalking.jpg"/> <cite>United Artists Releasing</cite>
<figcaption>
The women of <em>Women Talking</em>.
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jBH5Cn">
Similarly, in <em>Women Talking</em>, a group of Mennonite women that have been systematically raped by men from their community for years, must decide how to move forward. Do they stay and fight? Should they leave and establish a new community? Is it better to just remain and hope things get better? The movie spends nearly all of its runtime in a barn loft with the women as they talk through what to do next.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9XbCPK">
<em>She Said</em> focuses on Twohey, Kantor, and the women who stepped forward because they are taking action in much the way that <em>Women Talking</em> spends nearly all its time with the women who are trying to decide how to deal with their own heinous assaulters. Both movies show women trying to figure out what it would take not just to be sure the offenders are met with justice but to build a world where ongoing acceptance of their offenses is unthinkable in the first place.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oryvs9">
Not only does keeping the abusers off-screen keep our focus on the women taking their fates into their own hands, but it also starves the abusers of exactly what they want: attention. The chance to brush accusations away. The chance to put themselves back in the center of the story.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3ea6vu">
Both <em>She Said</em> and <em>Women Talking</em> carry their theses in their titles: that the goal of the abuser is to keep his victim silent and that talking is how their power can be broken, at least if the right person is listening. But neither end in a proclamation of triumph because victims who raise their voices aren’t suddenly free. In <em>She Said</em>, Weinstein victims, played in particularly extraordinary performances by Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton (as well as Ashley Judd, as herself), remind us that there are thousands of these stories, and none are simply resolved now. The wounds leave scars.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="frikvG">
Five years later, we’re still trying to walk out of Harvey’s shadow; <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/20/1130332451/kevin-spacey-anthony-rapp-verdict">other accused abusers</a> are escaping their own consequences. It’s their names that still dominate the headlines, their toxicity that still attracts those desperate to maintain their stranglehold on power. It’s ironic, but illuminating, that snatching the spotlight away from them — the only thing that can truly break their power, that turns the focus from the man to the system that enabled him — falls to those who know, all too well, that changing the world happens not with one splashy story, but an inch at a time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KB8TkP">
She Said<em> opens in theaters on November 18. </em>Women Talking<em> opens in theaters on December 2. </em>The Assistant<em> is streaming on Hulu and is available to rent or purchase on digital platforms.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>The existence of the last slave transport ship was denied. A new documentary reveals the truth.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A Black man with dreadlocks stands facing a sunset over the ocean." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dIke_50x8CQPZ2cmGG0zcvfysW8=/452x0:1596x858/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71535636/DESCENDANT_Still__1_Emmett_Lewis.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Emmett Lewis in <em>Descendant.</em> | Netflix
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Inconvenient history, long buried, finally gets the spotlight in Netflix’s Descendant.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DpeQ5U">
In 1808, two generations before the Civil War began, it became illegal to import humans to sell as slaves in America. But importation went on long after that, and the final ship bearing enslaved people reached American shores in the 1860s, just a few years before the 13th Amendment made enslaving a human illegal. Named the Clotilda, the ship’s human cargo was sold into slavery in Alabama. The ship itself was destroyed, burned, and sunk upriver, to hide the evidence. The punishment for importing slaves was severe, and the men who broke the laws to become rich from it didn’t want to be caught.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f7gnK4">
But for almost 150 years, the existence of the Clotilda was more or less denied because it was written out of the official record. The reason for that is almost painfully simple: Powerful families in Mobile, where the ship made landfall, were still benefiting from inherited wealth accumulated in the slavery era. But in Africatown — an enclave founded by 31 formerly enslaved people and many survivors of the Clotilda — the story was kept powerfully alive, and residents became activists to demand its inclusion in the historical record.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3OL3cr">
<em>Descendant</em> tells the true story of the ship and the descendants of the enslaved people who have fought hard to establish the truth of the Clotilda’s existence, both to better understand their own roots and to prove to the world that the crime actually happened. It declares that history cannot be brushed aside because it makes some people feel bad to remember it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7TcF6p">
Director Margaret Brown, who grew up in the white part of Mobile, has explored the racial history of her hometown before, most notably in her 2008 film <em>The Order of Myths</em>, about the <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/56532-segregated-mardi-gras-in-mobile-alabama/">segregated Mardi Gras celebrations</a> in Mobile. In <em>Descendant</em>, she leans heavily on the stories told by the residents and activists of Africatown. The result has heavy significance in a country ablaze with battles over whether the truth of slavery and other history can be taught with frankness to schoolchildren. <em>Descendant</em> demonstrates that when we ignore the real story, it doesn’t just steal people’s history from them. It impoverishes the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9pdWxC">
<em>Descendant</em> made a splash at its Sundance premiere in early 2022, where it won a special jury prize, and landed on the <a href="https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81486267">Obamas’ slate of films</a> at Netflix, where it debuted on October 21. I spoke with Brown and the film’s award-winning producer, Essie Chambers, about the hard work of telling this story, its implications for the future, and the big reason it all matters. The following conversation was edited and condensed for clarity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pwj6zv">
<strong>The story you’re telling in </strong><em><strong>Descendant</strong></em><strong> is literally true, but it also feels like a metaphor for something much larger: for the way people often try to ignore inconvenient history and hope it just goes away, as well as the involvement we all have in our history even if we are merely descendants of the people who experienced it directly. </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E2j3uq">
<strong>When you were beginning to work on the project, did you anticipate that it would have such far-reaching implications? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WS5LU0">
<strong>Margaret Brown, director:</strong> I knew about it because I’m from there. Africatown is part of Mobile, where I’m from, but it’s a little bit further away. It was annexed by the city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xWyJ8R">
This film started with this community I’d already been involved with. But I think there were some flashes in my mind of images that started it. I started reading <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zora-Neale-Hurston-Life-Letters/dp/0385490364">Zora Neale Hurston’s letters</a> and got really obsessed with her and who she was. The film eventually became more focused on the community, but I was obsessed with her voice.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xGFQs4">
But I learned more about it as I worked on the film because two environmental organizations in town were already doing work there before we started. When you enter a story, you try to go in with an open mind and see what’s there, and I walked into a community that’s an incredibly activist community. The first thing we did was go to so many meetings, just to see what was going on. You’re immediately struck that there are people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who go to meetings every day. It’s very inspiring. I just opened my ears and tried to be present.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JtgVPO">
<strong>Essie Chambers, producer:</strong> I was immediately struck, when I joined Margaret, that when we talk about metaphors, what’s happening [in Africatown] is very much part of the history of Black America. So to be entering this at a moment when people like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Clint Smith and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/20/20813842/1619-project-new-york-times-conservatives-slavery">the 1619 Project</a> are re-centering Black American history — the way that intersected with this story was mind-blowing.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two rows of houses line a street, with lush trees nearby." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xIMaM6nDKcpo8rLLp9gem4HlhfI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126989/DESCENDANT_Still__2_Africatown.jpg"/> <cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>
Africatown, an enclave outside of Mobile, Alabama, founded by formerly enslaved people and populated in large part by their descendants.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q8Zr82">
<strong>I saw the film as part of Sundance this past January, </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/22911366/tantura-descendant-riotsville-downfall-review-documentary-sundance"><strong>where there were a number of movies about</strong></a><strong> powerful people trying to ban the telling of true history because it made people uncomfortable. That’s a big element in this film as well. Did you encounter resistance as you were making the film, too? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fhhUa5">
<strong>Brown: </strong>I made another film there in 2008 called <em>The Order of Myths</em>. In that film, a lot of white Mobilians talked to me because it was about segregated Mardi Gras and my grandfather was part of the white Mardi Gras. So he opened all these doors for me, and all these white people talked to me. The film is about whiteness, more than anything else.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yxwqf3">
After that film came out and the city saw it, a lot of people who are in power were silent. People who would possibly be involved in the fate of Africatown kept putting off interviews. So there was this wall that wasn’t there before. I think the film is about these questions of justice and reparations, and I think when things become about money, white people get scared.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hd6eRj">
<strong>Chambers: </strong>In terms of the typical definition of reparations — like a stimulus package or something — that’s not something they’re actively discussing. But I think that there are all kinds of ways to look at reparations. There are land trusts and a lot of issues with the land. And I mean, the [powerful family the] Meahers still own a lot of land in Africatown.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WrRBKT">
So you have a crime that was committed. You have the most intact slave ship in history that has ever been found. You have the only group of people descended from Africans who established a community after being enslaved. It’s living history. There’s a possibility that DNA could [show] a direct line in a way that there has never been before in this kind of a scenario. I know that there are other examples of reparations that other cities are grappling with and actually acting upon.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lx1gme">
<strong>Chambers: </strong>It’s a testament to the vitality of oral traditions. Oral history is not a lesser history. We were taught the history of a country that doesn’t exist — what does it mean? These people and their collective memory are what got us to this moment. What’s next is our responsibility, and our collective memory, and how we are going to hold people accountable and make sure that we change the narrative.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nDBVGS">
I’m a Black woman and I grew up in an all-white community in a small town. And [in school we] would get to the chapter on slavery and they would ask if I wanted to stand and speak. That was my experience of learning about slavery. It was horrifying.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="voJNSm">
So I think for Black Americans who have this incredibly rich history of passing stories down, it’s a complicated relationship to slavery, where we were taught to experience a lot of shame around it. I felt embarrassment and shame because I didn’t understand all of it. Imagine encountering <em>this</em> kind of story in a history book! It’s so inspiring.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YpJxEA">
<strong>I would imagine people will see this movie and immediately wonder how they can get involved. </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iQiFQu">
<strong>Brown: </strong>The reason we worked with a company like Participant is that when a film ends, you have this weird postpartum feeling: What am I going to do now? You pour yourself into the film, but then there’s the impact campaign, which is real life. There are introductions being made [to organizations that already exist] and ways to amplify the work they’re already doing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NFyygw">
<strong>I guess that’s one big argument in favor of having a film like this premiere on a major streaming service, right? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SNx7y1">
<strong>Brown: </strong>Hell yeah.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vALcPO">
<strong>Do you think there’s also an argument to be made specifically for telling this kind of story in the documentary form, rather than in a scripted film? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XIemic">
<strong>Brown: </strong>Yeah, I’m sure there will be one. But I consider myself an artist, not a journalist, though I guess I’m kind of a journalist. When we shot this film, we imagined it big in a theater, with these majestic people telling their story. Our characters are so inspiring.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A Black woman looks at the camera. She is wearing a purple top and there are trees in the background." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1aoRoC95R-EA-YcsKVCSTMfmlGA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126986/DESCENDANT_Still__4_Veda_Tunstall.jpg"/> <cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>
One descendant, Veda Tunstall, in <em>Descendant.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VgqhFq">
<strong>The film’s images are really beautiful too.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FMGo93">
<strong>Brown: </strong>Yeah, our cinematographers Zac Manuel and Justin Zweifach shot Garrett Bradley’s [Oscar-nominated documentary] <em>Time</em> too. We always imagined it majestic and large, befitting the story. But there’s power in the Netflix platform, with millions of subscribers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3G7IbY">
The moment that really sticks in my mind is very early on, when we were in development. We were driving down a shell-lined road through Africatown’s Lewis Quarters. They’re surrounded by the lumber yards and you can smell the chemical plants. It’s very loud. Then you get down the road, and there’s this tiny community that is very well kept and very proud. It’s like this little hamlet. I’d been there years before.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MaYvq9">
But I was in the car with two other collaborators in the film, and we all just teared up. We were like, “How do we translate this feeling of being in this moment right now?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CzBrUA">
So for years, I was trying to figure out what the shot was that would communicate that feeling. I was just like, “How do I communicate the smells, the feelings, what this moment is?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hvOp5U">
<strong>I feel like you really experience the place through the film. I’ve never been there, but I feel like I have now. That kind of visual splendor is often left out of nonfiction filmmaking, but it goes a long way toward creating an emotional experience for the audience.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="18U5be">
<strong>Chambers: </strong>That’s [Margaret’s] signature. Visual poetry.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Pock4">
<strong>Brown: </strong>I wanted people to feel the emotions that we felt as a team and talked about. Making the film was very collaborative. We were always discussing choices. We were always trying to figure out where my blind spots as a white person were.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uiYStT">
The film ends at a point where there’s a lot of things that could happen to the fate of Africatown. How does the city as an entity respond to this story? Are they going to support the efforts of the people in Africatown who have been carrying their story through generations, through all these iterations? Or are they going to try to grab the money for themselves? That’s something we have wondered about as a team.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t0dFKK">
All those silent, powerful forces, they’re all still there. So we’ll have to see how they respond.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RmL0Mp">
Descendant <em>premiered on Netflix on October 21.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>We tasted Beyond Meat’s new plant-based steak tips. Here’s how they measure up to the real thing.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f4zHXjjvv17nGRTL2snZO59mAVM=/225x0:1576x1013/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71535511/is_it_steak_board_1.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Christina Animashaun/Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
It’s delicious, but opinions vary on texture and how close it comes to tasting like steak from a real cow.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JKYpUw">
In the late 2010s, Beyond Meat ushered in the next generation of plant-based meat products, winning over consumers with its new-and-improved take on the veggie burger. Then it wowed Wall Street in 2019 when it had the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-02/beyond-meat-makes-history-with-biggest-ipo-pop-since-08-crisis">most successful stock market debut</a> in over a decade.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0rJBVh">
But 2022 hasn’t been as kind to the plant-based meat giant: Amid <a href="https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/08/05/Beyond-Meat-Q2-CEO-under-pressure-as-firm-posts-97.1m-loss-on-sales-1.6-to-147m-lowers-guidance">declining sales</a>, Beyond Meat recently announced it will lay off 19 percent of its staff by the end of the year. Its stock price has tumbled, and it recently told shareholders it expects to <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/10/14/beyond-meat-layoffs-nose-biting-executive-doug-ramsey-coo-cuts-sales-outlook/">bring in less revenue</a> this year than originally forecasted, citing increased competition and high inflation.
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In response, Beyond Meat is doing what all food companies do when they’re at risk of losing market share — they’re pushing out something new: plant-based steak.
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It’s not a rib-eye or T-bone, but steak “tips” — the kind of meaty chunks meant to be used, say, in a taco, stir-fry, or sandwich. Though a number of small startups have steak-like products on the market, this is the first one that will be widely available and one of the rare products employing “whole muscle” technology (more on this later).
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Last week, a few Vox colleagues and myself — a mix of vegetarians and omnivores — got an early chance to try it in the form of a plant-based Philly cheesesteak (with dairy-free cheese), prepared by a DC-area chef. The verdict: delicious with some varying opinions on texture and just how close it comes to tasting like steak from a cow.
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“This is uncanny,” said Libby Nelson, Vox’s policy editor. “My parents are from Nebraska, where they have a lot of beef, and I have a pretty high bar. Steak feels like the one thing I would never want to go artificial on … but my initial thoughts are very pro — they’ve done a good job with this.” She said that if she hadn’t been told it was meat-free, she might have assumed it was real beef.
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Li Zhou, a politics reporter, was squishy on the texture: “I feel like there’s a little toughness that’s missing that you would get from steak.” Keren Landman, a health and science reporter, agreed, though she did like the “little fibers” in each bite.
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Christian Paz, a politics reporter, added, “I also like that there was a sensation that there were little pockets of fat distributed in it, which is something that I really enjoy in a regular meat sandwich — the sense that it’s not all lean meat, that there is some textural difference within it as you’re biting a piece.”
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Jonquilyn Hill, a podcast producer, said it wasn’t good enough to fool her into thinking it was real beef: “It is very good, but as a person who eats meat, it’s very obviously not meat. I think it’s the texture. When I think of steak, I always think of sitting down and using a knife and fork. … It’s more like the meat that’s used for Philly cheesesteaks that you’d get from the freezer section.”
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The reactions reminded me of how much expectation can change what we think of food. Cooked alone, does plant-based meat taste exactly like the animal meat they’re intended to replicate? Almost never. But when used in a dish with oil, spices, and vegetables, and put on a bed of rice or in between two pieces of bread, it’s much harder to tell whether it’s plant- or animal-based, hence Nelson’s “uncanny” comment.
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So much of our perceptions around food are based on how we expect it to taste, which is why people — even <a href="https://www.cityline.tv/video/meat-or-vegan-professional-chefs-take-the-taste-test/">professional chefs</a> — can be easily fooled into <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LADbible/videos/716133149092360/">thinking they’re eating animal meat</a> when it’s really <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvR6bVj0RfI">plant-based meat</a>. The perceived inferiority of plant-based meat might be a bigger barrier to its growth than how it actually tastes. (That, and price — on Instacart, a 10-ounce package of Beyond Meat steak tips costs $7.99, or 80 cents per ounce, compared to 69 cents per ounce for real, low-cost steak tips — a 16 percent cost difference.)
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Starting today, the Beyond Meat steak tips will be available nationwide in more than 5,000 Kroger and Walmart locations as well as some Albertsons (Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco) and Ahold (Giant, Stop &amp; Shop) stores. It’s also available to food distributors, so it could start showing up on restaurant menus soon.
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Since beef is far and away the most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study">carbon-intensive food</a>, any market share Beyond Meat steak tips can seize will represent a win for the environment — and a steak made of faba bean protein and wheat gluten is clearly an animal welfare win. When it comes to nutrition, there’s a <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/plant-based-meat">longstanding debate</a> as to whether or not plant-based meat is healthier than animal meat, but Beyond Meat steak tips provide comparable nutrition to the real thing. Beyond Meat scores a point for having zero cholesterol but loses a point for the high sodium content: 300 milligrams to the 55 milligrams of sodium in a 3-ounce serving of Steak-Umm sliced steaks.
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What separates the steak tips from most plant-based meat offerings is that it’s made with “whole muscle” technology, what some in the field call the “<a href="https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/25552-plant-based-startup-develops-whole-muscle-products">holy grail</a>” of plant-based meat. Most of the plant-based meat you’ve tried is made using “chop and form” technology — essentially taking a bunch of ingredients and mashing them together, which is why most products in the sector mimic ground meat in burgers or nuggets. Whole muscle, on the other hand, is meant to imitate whole cuts of meat like steak, which gives it the more fibrous texture some of my colleagues noticed.
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Can the plant-based category catch fire again?
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In many corners of the media, the excitement over the dawn of plant-based meat has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/06/18/lifeless-market-for-meatless-meat/?sh=7721a5428f24">curdled</a> into predictions of its <a href="https://thetakeout.com/beyond-meat-layoffs-fake-meat-downfall-1849666272">demise</a> — or at least it remaining a <a href="https://foodinstitute.com/focus/plant-based-meat-deceleration-signals-niche-future/">niche</a>.
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There’s no doubt that plant-based meat has been struggling at the drive-thru. Many trials of plant-based meats at fast food franchises and chain restaurants have <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/which-fast-food-has-fake-meat-not-many-serve-beyond-meat-impossible-foods">flopped</a>, including some from Beyond Meat. And some of the world’s largest traditional meat companies have lost faith: JBS is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/meatpacker-jbs-close-us-plant-based-foods-business-planterra-2022-10-03/">closing its plant-based manufacturing facility</a> in Colorado, while Maple Leaf Foods is <a href="https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/10/13/Big-Meat-retrenches-as-meat-alternatives-lose-their-luster">downsizing</a> its vegetarian operations.
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But there are bright spots as well. <a href="https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/09/06/Conagra-Brands-Gardein-talks-alt-meat-There-s-no-way-the-space-supports-20-manufacturers-making-plant-based-burger-patties">Gardein’s</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-plant-based-meat-movement-is-down-but-not-out/2022/10/07/3144ab8e-4634-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html">Impossible Foods’</a> retail sales are up, and food conglomerates <a href="https://www.fooddive.com/news/nestle-plant-based-growth-despite-slowdown/631759/">Nestlé</a> and <a href="https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/06/17/Is-the-party-over-for-meat-alternatives-It-s-just-getting-started-says-ADM">ADM</a> are as bullish as ever on plant-based food, saying that consumer demand and growth potential remain strong. Despite several failed vegan fast food launches in the US, like McDonald’s Beyond Meat <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/24/plant-based-meat-failed-impossible-burger-mcdonalds-beyond-meat">McPlant</a> and Impossible Foods’ sausage topping at <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/which-fast-food-has-fake-meat-not-many-serve-beyond-meat-impossible-foods?leadSource=uverify%20wall">Little Caesars</a>, the industry still believes in its promise: Taco Bell is testing a carne asada product with Beyond Meat, while Burger King is testing an Impossible chicken sandwich.
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The real concern centers on grocery store sales data. US supermarket sales of plant-based meat are indeed stagnant, with <a href="https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2021-Plant-Based-State-of-the-Industry-Report-1.pdf">no sales growth in 2021</a> and a slight decline from September 2021 to September 2022, according to an analysis of IRI data by the market research firm 210 Analytics. Number of units sold is down 11 percent during that time period.
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But the context is critical: Plant-based meat grocery sales jumped a whopping <a href="https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/COR-SOTIR-Plant-based-meat-eggs-and-dairy-2021-0504.pdf">45 percent</a> in 2020 as consumers panic-bought groceries and cooked a whole lot more than normal. The 2021 and 2022 slowdown isn’t necessarily stagnation — it just wasn’t possible to sustain that 45 percent growth. Taking a longer view, plant-based meat grocery sales went up <a href="https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2021-Plant-Based-State-of-the-Industry-Report-1.pdf">19 percent</a> from 2019 to 2021.
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Beyond Meat, in particular, <a href="https://investors.beyondmeat.com/static-files/8c75d2f4-6988-478c-b628-f8ff1f4a51d2">blames</a> its performance on increased competition. When it launched, it had much of the plant-based meat aisle to itself; that’s no longer the case. High inflation is another culprit, which may be causing consumers to cut costs by switching back to animal meat. It tends to be cheaper than plant-based meat due, in large part, to the simple fact that the price of real meat is artificially low because of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22298043/meat-antitrust-biden-vilsack">lack</a> of labor, environmental, and animal welfare regulations.
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Anne-Marie Roerink of 210 Analytics told me over email that lack of repeat purchases may be an even bigger pain point for the plant-meat industry: “[T]he willingness to try plant-based meat has been very high for years, yet we’re not seeing much of a second or especially third purchase rate. And that’s where most of the pressure comes from.”
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If the stagnation continues, the sector will be in trouble, but year-to-year sales data for one sliver of the market, especially amid a pandemic, can only tell us so much about the long-term health of a burgeoning industry.
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And the US isn’t the center of the meat-free universe. While the McPlant (made with Beyond Meat) failed in the US, McDonald’s <a href="https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/mcdonalds-delighted-with-demand-for-vegan-mcplant-41945487.html">says</a> it is “delighted” with customer demand for the McPlant in Ireland, where it’s a permanent menu item (as well as at McDonald’s in the UK, Austria, and the Netherlands). Beyond Meat also has permanent menu items with Pizza Hut in Canada, Europe, and Latin America.
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According to Innova Market Insights, a market research firm, plant-based meat sales are expected to<strong> </strong>grow 10 to 15 percent in the UK, Germany, China, and the Netherlands from 2021 to 2023.
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Beyond Meat will be able to own a niche in the meat-free category since it’ll have the only widely available plant-based steak product, but it may soon have serious competition, as Impossible Foods says a plant-based filet mignon is <a href="https://twitter.com/jtemple/status/1580302499533029376/photo/1">on the way</a>.
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While the Beyond Meat steak tips won’t fulfill cravings for a full-on hunk of steak, a Beyond Meat rib-eye or T-bone may be in the works. “From the beginning, we said if you walk into a butcher shop or if you go to the meat aisle in retail, anything that you see there, [we have] projects that we’re either working on or plan to work on,” says Dariush Ajami, chief innovation officer of Beyond Meat.
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Roerink says such innovation will be key in maintaining and growing market share: “I think we are much too early in the innovation cycle of plant-based meat to declare them over like I see in many headlines. There are still lots of new players, products, and ingredients entering this space and,<strong> </strong>importantly, [there’s a] realization that the current items need to deliver better on a cleaner ingredient list and better taste. That means these companies will continue to innovate.”
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And given the endless hunger of American consumers for novelty at the grocery aisle and the fast food joint, they had better.
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</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ICC Twenty20 World Cup | South Africa-Zimbabwe match abandoned due to rain</strong> - The powerplay was reduced to three overs per side with four bowlers allowed to bowl a maximum of two overs each</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>ICC Twenty20 World Cup | Taskin Ahmed helps Bangladesh secure first ever Super 12 win</strong> - Bangladesh posted 144 for eight against the Netherlands in a Super 12 game of the T20 World Cup</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 Rights Watch says Qatar has detained and mistreated LGBTQ+ people ahead of World Cup</strong> - Organisers of the World Cup say that everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or background, is welcome</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>NBA suspends Heat forwards Martin, Jovic for 1 game apiece</strong> - Martin and Jovic will miss Monday's Raptors-Heat game. Both Martin and Koloko were whistled for technical fouls and ejected from Saturday's matchup</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | Boris Johnson pulls out of U.K. Conservative leadership race; Kerala Governor demands nine V-Cs to tender their resignations by today, and more</strong> - A select list of stories to read before you start your day.</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>Ukrainian club urges FIFA to remove Iran from World Cup</strong> - Ukraine’s top soccer club has urged FIFA to remove Iran from the World Cup because of the country’s alleged military support to the Russian invasion</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>Chhattisgarh eyes 110 lakh MT paddy procurement in 2022-23</strong> - The paddy procurement drive will begin on November 1, Chhattisgarh's statehood day, and conclude on January 31 next year</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>BJP threatens to gherao Odisha CM’s residence on October 31</strong> - Police claimed that Archana Nag befriended and provided feminine company to rich and influential persons, like politicians, businessmen and film producers and took pictures of their intimate moments</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>Manipur govt. starts removing illegal construction around Loktak lake</strong> - Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren has been saying that all illegal constructions will be removed if the owners turn a deaf ear to the official announcement.</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>John Shaw, husband of Kiran Mazumdar dies</strong> - John Shaw was a foreign promoter and on the advisory Board of various Biocon Group Companies</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>Ukraine war: Russian spy chief blames West for nuclear tension</strong> - The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service falsely accuses the West of nuclear war threats.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: The cost of occupation in Kherson region</strong> - As Ukraine retakes territory, villagers tell the BBC about their precarious life under Russian rule.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Massive Russian strikes target energy grid - Zelensky</strong> - Ukraine’s president says the attacks were on a “very wide” scale, but power was restored in many areas.</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>Russian fighter plane crashes in Siberian city of Irkutsk</strong> - The Sukhoi Su-30 military plane was on a test flight when it came down in Irkutsk, authorities say.</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>Dietrich Mateschitz: Red Bull co-owner &amp; energy drink giant dies aged 78</strong> - Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz, a major global business figure as a result of his energy drinks empire, dies aged 78.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The weekend’s best deals: Google Pixel 7, Apple MacBooks, 4K TVs, and more</strong> - Dealmaster also has iPads, Nest smart home, and some of our favorite wearables. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892146">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hydrogen-powered startups shine at the Paris Auto Show</strong> - An SUV with removable hydrogen-filled pods and a stylish sedan caught our attention. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1891960">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware</strong> - If you haven’t patched CVE-2022-22954 yet, now would be an excellent time to do so. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892156">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New AI tool colorizes black-and-white photos automatically [Updated]</strong> - Automatically add color to old photos, then refine the colors with a written caption. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892071">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Myth, busted: Formation of Namibia’s fairy circles isn’t due to termites</strong> - Plants are “ecosystem engineers” that survive by forming optimal geometric patterns. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1891663">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<li><strong>Mike and his wife Sara went to the state fair every year, and every year Mike would say, “Sara, I’d like to ride in that airplane.”….</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Sara always replied, “I know, Mike, but that airplane ride costs fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars.”
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One year Mike and Sara went to the fair, and Mike said, “Sara, I’m eighty-five years old. If I don’t ride that airplane, I might never get another chance.”
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Sara replied, “Mike, that airplane ride costs fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars.”
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The pilot overheard them and said, “Folks, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take you both up for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say one word, I won’t charge you; but if you say one word, it’s fifty dollars.”
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Mike and Sara agreed, and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of twists and turns, rolls and dives, but not a word was spoken. He did all his tricks over again but still not a word. When they landed, the pilot turned to Mike and said, “My, my, I did everything I could think of to get you to yell out, but you didn’t.”
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Mike replied, “Well, I was gonna say something when Sara fell out, but fifty dollars is fifty dollars.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/JoeKing4Real"> /u/JoeKing4Real </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ybooyk/mike_and_his_wife_sara_went_to_the_state_fair/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ybooyk/mike_and_his_wife_sara_went_to_the_state_fair/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>A man buys a paint factory in a small town.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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He visits the local volunteer fire department to see for himself if they’d be able to handle a fire at his plant. What he finds convinces him they could not…the whole fire department consists of one old pumper truck and a bunch of volunteers he finds less than reliable. He tells them “Boys, I’m sorry to tell you this but I’m not confident you could handle a fire at my plant. I’m going to contract with the nearby big-city fire department”.
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A few months later the unthinkable happens and the plant catches fire. The owner calls the big-city fire department, and when they show up the fire chief decides that it’s just too dangerous to approach the plant. He decides to set up a roadblock to prevent anyone from going near it, and they begin to wait it out. Just then the local boys come barreling down the road, fire bell clanging and siren blaring . The driver is waving his arms to get the big-city firemen to move out of the way, and crashes right through the barricades. They smash through an overhead door into the plant, set up a few hoses and start fighting the fire. The guys without hoses grab shovels and start flinging dirt onto the fire.
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The big-city fire chief sees this and shouts “C’mon boys, let’s get in there and help ’em out!” After a few hours their efforts pay off, and they manage to save a large portion of the plant. The owner is happy as he can be, and tells the local fire chief “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen! Thank you! I’m going to write you a check and donate $10,000 to your fire department! Do you have any idea how you’re going to spend it?” The local chief thinks for a moment and says:
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“Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do with the rest, but first thing tomorrow morning that fire engine is getting new brakes!”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Waldron1943"> /u/Waldron1943 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc4ogx/a_man_buys_a_paint_factory_in_a_small_town/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc4ogx/a_man_buys_a_paint_factory_in_a_small_town/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Stone.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Sam died and left $50,000 in his will for an elaborate funeral.
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As the last attenders left, Sam’s wife Rose turned to her oldest friend Sadie and said: “Well, I’m sure Sam would be pleased.”
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“I’m sure you’re right,” replied Sadie, who leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Tell me, how much did it really cost?”
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“All of it,” said Rose. “Fifty thousand.”
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“No!” Sadie exclaimed. “I mean, it was very nice, but really… $50,000?!”
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Rose nodded. “The funeral was $6,500. I donated $500 to the church for the priest’s services. The food and drinks were another $500. And the rest went towards the memorial stone.”
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Sadie computed quickly. “$42,500 for a memorial stone? Exactly how big is it?”
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“Seven and a half carats”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/harrygatto"> /u/harrygatto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc58tg/stone/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc58tg/stone/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Why are the Great Pyramids in Egypt?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Because they’re too heavy and big to take to the British Museum
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Hairy-Fox3412"> /u/Hairy-Fox3412 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ybpyn8/why_are_the_great_pyramids_in_egypt/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ybpyn8/why_are_the_great_pyramids_in_egypt/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>I think my local garage is ripping me off…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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does anyone else think £500 for a Tesla exhaust is a lot?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AdeptLengthiness8886"> /u/AdeptLengthiness8886 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc4ybm/i_think_my_local_garage_is_ripping_me_off/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yc4ybm/i_think_my_local_garage_is_ripping_me_off/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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