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<title>04 January, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>A CLOSER LOOK AT INDIRECT CAUSES OF DEATH AFTER HURRICANE MARIA USING A SEMIPARAMETRIC MODEL</strong> -
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The Covid-19 pandemic as well as other recent natural emergencies have put the spotlight on emergency planning. One important aspect is that natural disasters or emergencies often lead to indirect deaths and studying the behavior of indirect deaths during emergencies can guide emergency planning. While many studies have implied a large number of indirect deaths in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria; the specific causes of these deaths have not being carefully studied. In this paper, we use a semiparametric model and mortality data to evaluate cause of death trends. Our model adjusts for cause of death effect potentially varying over time while also inferring on how long excess deaths occurred. From September 2017 to March 2018, after adjusting for intra-annual variability and population displacement, we find evidence of significant excess deaths due to Alzheimer9s/Parkinson, heart disease, sepsis, diabetes, renal failure, and pneumonia &amp; influenza. In contrast, for the same time period we find no evidence of significant excess deaths due to cancer, hypertension, respiratory diseases, cerebrovascular disease, suicide, homicide, falling accidents and traffic accidents.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.03.23284158v1" target="_blank">A CLOSER LOOK AT INDIRECT CAUSES OF DEATH AFTER HURRICANE MARIA USING A SEMIPARAMETRIC MODEL</a>
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<li><strong>The time between vaccination and infection impacts immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants</strong> -
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, long-term immunity against SARS-CoV-2 will be globally important. Official weekly cases have not dropped below 2 million since September of 2020, and continued emergence of novel variants have created a moving target for our immune systems and public health alike. The temporal aspects of COVID-19 immunity, particularly from repeated vaccination and infection, are less well understood than short-term vaccine efficacy. In this study, we explore the impact of combined vaccination and infection, also known as hybrid immunity, and the timing thereof on the quality and quantity of antibodies produced by a cohort of 96 health care workers. We find robust neutralizing antibody responses among those with hybrid immunity against all variants, including Omicron BA.2, and we further found significantly improved neutralizing titers with longer vaccine-infection intervals up to 400 days. These results indicate that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses undergo continual maturation following primary exposure by either vaccination or infection for at least 400 days after last antigen exposure. We show that neutralizing antibody responses improved upon secondary boosting with greater impact seen after extended intervals. Our findings may also extend to booster vaccine doses, a critical consideration in future vaccine campaign strategies.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.23284120v1" target="_blank">The time between vaccination and infection impacts immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants</a>
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<li><strong>Genomic characterization and molecular evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil</strong> -
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The SARS-CoV-2 is the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and is plaguing the world since the end of 2019. Different lineages have been discovered ever since and the Gamma lineage, which started the second wave of infections, was first described in Brazil, one of the most affected countries by pandemic. Describing the viral genome and how the virus behaves is essential to contain its propagation and to the development of medications and vaccines. Therefore, this study analyzed SARS-CoV-2 sequenced genomes from Esteio city in Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil. We also comparatively analyzed genomes of the two first years of the pandemic from Rio Grande do Sul state for understanding their genomic and evolutionary patterns. The phylogenomic analysis showed monophyletic groups for Alpha, Gamma, Delta and Omicron, as well as for other circulating lineages in the state. Molecular evolutionary analysis identified several sites under adaptive selection in membrane and nucleocapsid proteins which could be related to a prevalent stabilizing effect on membrane protein structure, as well as majoritarily destabilizing effects on C-terminal nucleocapsid domain.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.23284121v1" target="_blank">Genomic characterization and molecular evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Post-Exposure Prophylaxis with SA58 (anti-COVID-19 monoclonal antibody) Nasal Spray for the prevention of symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 in healthy adult workers: A randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study</strong> -
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BACKGROUND This study has assessed a new Anti-COVID-19 Monoclonal Antibody Nasal Spray (SA58) for post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) against symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS We conducted an efficacy study in adults aged 18 years and older within three days of exposure to a SARS-CoV-2 infected individual. Recruited participants were randomized in a ratio of 3:1 to receive SA58 or placebo. Primary endpoints were laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 within study period. FINDINGS A total of 1,222 participants were randomized and dosed (SA58, n=901; placebo, n=321). Median of follow-up was 2.25 days and 2.79 days for SA58 and placebo, respectively. Adverse events occurred in 221 of 901 (25%) and 72 of 321 (22%) participants with SA58 and placebo, respectively, with no significant difference (P=0.49). All adverse events were mild in severity. Laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 developed in 7 of 824 participants (0.22 per 100 person-days) in the SA58 group vs 14 of 299 (1.17 per 100 person-days) in the placebo group, resulting in an estimated efficacy of 80.82% (95%CI 52.41%-92.27%). There were 32 SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR positives (1.04 per 100 person-days) in the SA58 group vs 32 (2.80 per 100 person-days) in the placebo group, resulting in an estimated efficacy of 61.83% (95%CI 37.50%-76.69%). A total of 21 RT-PCR positive samples were sequenced. 21 lineages of SARS-CoV-2 variants were identified, and all were the Omicron variant BF.7. INTERPRETATION SA58 Nasal Spray showed favorable efficacy and safety in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection or symptomatic COVID-19 in healthy adult workers who had exposure to SARS-CoV-2 within 72 hours.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.28.22283666v2" target="_blank">Post-Exposure Prophylaxis with SA58 (anti-COVID-19 monoclonal antibody) Nasal Spray for the prevention of symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 in healthy adult workers: A randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study</a>
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<li><strong>Risk of Suicide Attempts and Self-Directed Violence after SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Outcomes from an Emulated Trial of a Nationwide Observational Matched Cohort of US Veterans</strong> -
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Importance: The negative health-related effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection may include increased risk for self-directed violence. Objective: To assess suicide attempts and other self-directed violence risk among US Veterans with a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to matched uninfected Veterans. Design, Setting, and Participants: Using a target trial emulation design supported by comprehensive electronic health records from the US Veterans Health Administration, Veterans who had a positive PCR test between March 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021 were matched with non-infected comparators. Monthly matching was anchored to first positive PCR test for each patient. Groups were followed for one-year thereafter. Exposure: Positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR. Main Outcomes and Measures: Suicide attempts and self-directed violence documented in electronic health records by a VHA provider. Hazard ratios (HR) for time to first suicide attempt and self-directed violence (separate models) for the infected versus comparator group were measured using Cox regression models. Analyses were performed for short-term (days 1-30), long-term (days 31-365) and one-year (days 1-365) and further stratified by age and prior self-directed-violence history. Sensitivity analyses included censoring to address comparators crossing over by later testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. Results: Among the 1,190,974 Veterans included, during the one-year period after the index date; 3,078 (0.258%) had a suicide attempt and 2,887 (0.242%) had self-directed violence. Regardless of follow-up duration, the HRs for suicide attempts and self-directed violence were higher for the infected group. For suicide attempts, short-term HR=2.54 (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 2.05 to 3.15), long-term HR=1.30 (CI: 1.19 to 1.43) and one-year HR= 1.41 (CI: 1.30, 1.54). For self-directed violence, short-term HR=1.94 (CI: 1.51 to 2.49), long-term HR=1.32 (CI: 1.20 to 1.45), and one-year HR=1.38 (CI:1.26, 1.51). Conclusions and Relevance: In matched cohorts, Veterans who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test had a higher risk of suicide attempt and self-directed violence that were greatest within the first 30 days and present for at least one year following. These findings highlight the importance of assessing patient experiences of suicide attempt and other forms of self-directed violence during different time periods post-infection to identify opportunities to augment prevention efforts and support those affected.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.23.22283902v2" target="_blank">Risk of Suicide Attempts and Self-Directed Violence after SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Outcomes from an Emulated Trial of a Nationwide Observational Matched Cohort of US Veterans</a>
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<li><strong>Genomic assessment of invasion dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1</strong> -
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SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) arise against the backdrop of increasingly heterogeneous human connectivity and population immunity. Through a large-scale phylodynamic analysis of 115,622 Omicron genomes, we identified &gt;6,000 independent introductions of the antigenically distinct virus into England and reconstructed the dispersal history of resulting local transmission. Travel restrictions on southern Africa did not reduce BA.1 importation intensity as secondary hubs became major exporters. We explored potential drivers of BA.1 spread across England and discovered an early period during which viral lineage movements mainly occurred between larger cities, followed by a multi-focal spatial expansion shaped by shorter distance mobility patterns. We also found evidence that disease incidence impacted human commuting behaviours around major travel hubs. Our results offer a detailed characterisation of processes that drive the invasion of an emerging VOC across multiple spatial scales and provide unique insights on the interplay between disease spread and human mobility.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.23284109v1" target="_blank">Genomic assessment of invasion dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1</a>
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<li><strong>Estimating long-term vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 variants: a model-based approach</strong> -
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With the ongoing evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, variant-adapted vaccines are likely to be required. Given the challenges of conducting clinical trials against a background of widespread infection-induced immunity, updated vaccines are likely to be adopted based on immunogenicity data. We extended a modelling framework linking immunity levels and protection and fitted the model to vaccine effectiveness data from England for three vaccines (Oxford/AstraZeneca AZD1222, Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2, Moderna mRNA-1273) and two variants (Delta and Omicron) to predict longer-term effectiveness against mild disease, hospitalisation and death. We use these model fits to predict the effectiveness of the Moderna bivalent vaccine (mRNA1273.214) against the Omicron variant using immunogenicity data. Our results suggest sustained protection against hospitalisation and death from the Omicron variant over the first six months following boosting with the monovalent vaccines but a gradual waning to moderate protection after 1 year (median predicted vaccine effectiveness at 1 year in 65+ age group: AZD1222 38.9%, 95% CrI 31.8%-46.8%; BNT162b2 53.3%, 95% CrI 49.1%-56.9%; mRNA-1273 60.0%, 95% CrI 56.0%-63.6%). Furthermore, we predict almost complete loss of protection against mild disease over this period (mean predicted effectiveness at 1 year 7.8% for AZD1222, 13.2% for BNT162b2 and 16.7% for mRNA-1273). Switching to a second booster with the bivalent mRNA1273.214 vaccine against Omicron BA.1/2 is predicted to prevent nearly twice as many hospitalisations and deaths over a 1-year period compared to administering a second booster with the monovalent mRNA1273 vaccine. Ongoing production and administration of variant-specific vaccines are therefore likely to play an important role in protecting against severe outcomes from the ongoing circulation of SARS-CoV-2.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.03.23284131v1" target="_blank">Estimating long-term vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 variants: a model-based approach</a>
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<li><strong>Machine Learning Algorithms to Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
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The ongoing novel COVID-19 global pandemic is one of the health emergencies in 21st century after hundred years of Spanish flu that affected almost all the countries in the world. The objective of this study is to generate STM and LTM real-time out of sample forecasts of the future COVID-19 confirmed and death cases respectively for the top five mostly affected countries in the world namely USA, India, Brazil, Russia and UK. As of January 17, 2021, it has caused a pandemic outbreak with more than 94.5 million confirmed cases and more than 2 million reported deaths worldwide. Due to extreme robust behaviour in the univariate time series data, forecasting of both COVID-19 confirmed and death cases has become the exigent task for the government officials, healthcare workers, economists, corporate leaders, government, decision makers, public-policy makers, and scientific experts to allocate health resources. To solve this problem different hybrid approaches are applied which eliminate both linear and non-linear errors of the time series datasets and the predictions of for these countries will be practical to act as forewarning for all.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.31.22284091v1" target="_blank">Machine Learning Algorithms to Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>A Phase 2/3 observer-blind, randomized, controlled study to determine the safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine in Indian children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 years</strong> -
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Background: A recombinant, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine, SII-NVX-CoV2373 was manufactured in India and evaluated in Indian children and adolescents to assess safety and immunogenicity. Methods: This was a Phase 2/3 observer-blind, randomized, controlled study in children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 years. Participants were randomly assigned in 3:1 ratio to receive two doses of SII-NVX-CoV2373 or placebo on day 1 and day 22. Solicited adverse events (AEs) were collected for 7 days after each vaccination. Unsolicited AEs were collected for 35 days following first dose and serious AEs (SAEs) and adverse events of special interest (AESI) were collected throughout the study. Anti S IgG and neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 were measured at baseline, day 22, day 36 and day 180. Variant immune responses were assessed in a subset of participants at baseline, day 36 and day 180. Primary objectives were to demonstrate non-inferiority of SII-NVX-CoV2373 in each pediatric age group (12 to 17 years and 2 to 11 years, separately) to that in adults in terms of ratio of titers of both anti-S IgG and neutralizing antibodies 14 days after the second dose (day 36). Non-inferiority was to be concluded if the lower bound of 95% CI of the ratio was &gt;0.67. Results: A total of 920 children and adolescents (460 in each age cohort; 12 to 17 years and 2 to 11 years) were randomized and vaccinated. The demographic and baseline characteristics between the two groups were comparable in both age groups. After the second dose, there were more than 100-fold rise in anti-S IgG GMEUs and more than 84-fold rise in neutralizing antibodies GMTs from baseline in the participants who received SII-NVX-CoV2373. The GMTs in both age groups were non-inferior to those observed in Indian adults. The seroconversion rate was ≥ 98% (anti-S IgG) and ≥ 97.9% (neutralizing antibodies) in both age groups, respectively. Similar findings were seen in the baseline seronegative participants. SII-NVX-CoV2373 also showed robust responses against various variants of concern. Injection site pain, tenderness, swelling, erythema and fever, headache, malaise, fatigue, myalgia, arthralgia, nausea and vomiting were the common solicited adverse events which were transient and resolved without any sequelae. Throughout the study, only two causally unrelated SAEs and no AESI were reported. Conclusion: SII-NVX-CoV2373 has been found safe and well tolerated in children and adolescents of 2 to 17 years. The vaccine was highly immunogenic and the immune response was non-inferior to that in adults.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.03.23284130v1" target="_blank">A Phase 2/3 observer-blind, randomized, controlled study to determine the safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine in Indian children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 years</a>
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<li><strong>Participant Demographics and Testing Trends: A Community Pandemic Response Program</strong> -
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Objective: This study aimed to identify demographic characteristics of test participants and changes in testing participation over time in a community pandemic-response program launched in a college town in California, USA. Methods: We described overall testing participation, identified demographic characteristics of frequent testers, and evaluated changes in testing participation over four different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: A total of 770,165 tests were performed between November 18, 2020, and June 30, 2022, among 89,924 residents of Yolo County (41.1% of population), with significant participation from racially/ethnically diverse participants and across age groups. Most positive cases (49.9%) were captured during Omicron, which also corresponds to the period with the highest daily participation (895 per 100K population). The proportion of participants which we considered “frequent testers” (28.9% vs. 39.7%, <i>p</i>&lt;0.0001) and individuals that tested once (39.5% vs. 47.9%, <i>p</i>&lt;0.0001) increased significantly from Delta to Omicron. Women (58.8%), participants of age 19-34 years (38.8%), and White (53.2%) tested more frequently throughout the program. The proportion of tests conducted among Latinos remained steady around 18% over time, with the exception of the post-Omicron period (13%). Conclusion: The unique features of a pandemic response program that supported community-wide access to free asymptomatic testing provides a unique opportunity to evaluate adherence to testing recommendations, and testing trends over time. Identification of individual and group-level factors associated with testing behaviors is essential to improve access and protect communities at-large.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.23284119v1" target="_blank">Participant Demographics and Testing Trends: A Community Pandemic Response Program</a>
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<li><strong>Outcomes After Percutaneous Tracheostomy in Patients with COVID-19: A Single-Center Series of 377 Cases</strong> -
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Introduction: The COVID 19 pandemic was highlighted by a rise in hospital admissions secondary to respiratory decompensation. This was accompanied by an increase in ICU admissions, endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. As a consequence, tracheostomies became essential in preventing complications of prolonged intubation and to facilitate weaning from sedation and mechanical ventilation. With the lack of international consensus on tracheostomy technique and optimal timing, we present our experience with 377 percutaneous tracheostomies performed on critically ill COVID 19 patients. Objective: To report the outcomes of critically ill patients with COVID 19 who underwent percutaneous tracheostomy during a period of 24 months. Methods: A retrospective single-center electronic chart review was performed on all ICU patients who underwent percutaneous tracheostomy after respiratory failure secondary to COVID 19 between March 2020 to March 2022. Results: A total of 377 percutaneous tracheostomies were performed. The mean duration between intubation and percutaneous tracheostomy was 17.4 days (3 to 61). The study included 222 males (59%) and 155 females (41%). The mean age of patients was 56.2 years (17-94), with a mean BMI was 31.3 (14 to 68). The commonest comorbidities among patients were diabetes mellitus (50%) and hypertension (48%). Complications were encountered in 85 cases (23%), with the commonest overall complication being minor bleeding. 203 patients (54%) were weaned from sedation. The mean duration between tracheostomy and weaning from sedation was 7.5 days (1 to 47 days). 156 patients (41%) were weaned from MV. The mean duration between tracheostomy and weaning from MV was 12.9 days (1 to 58 days). There was a total of 236 (63%) deaths reported during the period of this study. No deaths were attributable to the surgical procedure. Conclusion: Percutaneous tracheostomy can be safely performed in patients with COVID 19. With lack of conclusive objective data regarding the optimal timing for tracheostomy, we recommend that tracheostomy be performed as soon as possible after the 7th day endotracheal intubation. Key Words: Percutaneous tracheostomy, COVID 19, Critically ill, ICU
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.28.22283971v2" target="_blank">Outcomes After Percutaneous Tracheostomy in Patients with COVID-19: A Single-Center Series of 377 Cases</a>
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<li><strong>On the changing role of individuals in different age groups in propagating the Omicron epidemic waves in France</strong> -
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Background: There is limited information on the role of individuals in different age groups in propagating SARSCoV2 epidemics driven by the Omicron variants. In France, vaccination coverage for the 2nd booster for COVID19 is limited and largely restricted to persons aged over 60y. Methods: We examined the role of individuals in different age groups in propagating four waves of the Omicron epidemic in France using previously developed methodology based on the relative risk (RR) statistic that measures, for each age group, the change in the proportion of that age group among all COVID19 cases before the peak of an epidemic wave vs. after the peak of an epidemic wave. Higher value of the RR statistic for a given age group suggests a disproportionate depletion of susceptible individuals in that age group during the ascent period of the epidemic (due to increased contact rates and/or susceptibility to infection). Results: For the Spring wave (March 14 through May 15), the highest RR estimate belonged to children aged 10 to 19y (RR=1.92 (95% CI (1.18,3.12)), followed by adults aged 40 to 49y (RR=1.45 (1.09,1.93)) and children aged 0 to 9y (RR=1.31 (0.98,1.74)). For the Summer wave (June 27 through Aug. 21), the highest RR estimate belong to children aged 0 to 9y (RR=1.61 (1.13,2.30)) followed by children aged 10 to 19y (RR=1.46 (0.72,2.93)) and adults aged 20 to 29y (RR=1.43 (0.91,2.23)). For the Autumn wave (Sep. 18 through Nov. 12), the highest RR estimate belonged to children aged 10 to 19y (RR=1.64 (0.72,3.73)), followed by adults aged 30 to 39y (RR=1.35 (0.8,2.27)) and 20 to 29y (RR=1.21 (0.66,2.22)). For the Autumn - Winter Wave (Nov. 22 through Dec. 29), the highest RR estimate belonged to persons aged 30 to 39y (RR=1.47 (0.8,2.67)), followed by persons aged 40 to 49y (RR= 1.29 (0.81,2.07)) and persons aged over 80y (RR= 1.27 (1.07,1.5)). Conclusions: Increasing booster vaccination coverage for COVID19 for all adults, as possibly for children should help mitigate the spread of Omicron infection in the community. The estimate for the RR statistic in persons aged over 80y for the Autumn - Winter Omicron wave suggests that additional effort should be considered for preventing the spread of Omicron infection in elderly persons, including in Long-Term Care facilities.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283867v2" target="_blank">On the changing role of individuals in different age groups in propagating the Omicron epidemic waves in France</a>
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<li><strong>COVID-associated pulmonary aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients</strong> -
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Purpose: The opportunistic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus infects the lungs of immunocompromised hosts, including patients undergoing chemotherapy or organ transplantation. More recently however, immunocompetent patients with severe SARS-CoV2 have been reported to be affected by COVID-19 Associated Pulmonary Aspergillosis (CAPA), in the absence of the conventional risk factors for invasive aspergillosis. This paper explores the hypothesis that contributing causes are the destruction of the lung epithelium permitting colonization by opportunistic pathogens. At the same time, the exhaustion of the immune system, characterized by cytokine storms, apoptosis, and depletion of leukocytes may hinder the response to Aspergillus infection. The combination of these factors may explain the onset of invasive aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients. Methods: We used a previously published computational model of the innate immune response to infection with Aspergillus fumigatus. Variation of model parameters was used to create a virtual patient population. A simulation study of this virtual patient population to test potential causes for co-infection in immunocompetent patients. Results: The two most important factors determining the likelihood of CAPA were the inherent virulence of the fungus and the effectiveness of the neutrophil population, as measured by granule half-life and ability to kill fungal cells. Varying these parameters across the virtual patient population generated a realistic distribution of CAPA phenotypes observed in the literature. Conclusions: Computational models are an effective tool for hypothesis generation. Varying model parameters can be used to create a virtual patient population for identifying candidate mechanisms for phenomena observed in actual patient populations.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.18.500514v2" target="_blank">COVID-associated pulmonary aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients</a>
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<li><strong>Social assistance beneficiaries’ access to social services in a digitalised and centralised social assistance system</strong> -
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The digitalisation of public services has become topical particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when due to the social distancing restrictions, face-to-face services were limited or non-existent. Using statistical data on red flag notifications in the SA system (2017-2020) and survey data on social work professionals from 2021, we assess the ability of the Finnish SA system to identify clients in need of other than financial support and the clients’ access to social work in a system where cash and care are separated. Our findings show that the red flag system primarily identified need for social counselling in case of financial problems while social and health problems were often not recognised. We argue that the SA reform separating last resort benefits from social services changed not only the way citizens apply for social assistance benefits but also created pressure for new forms of social work.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rku9y/" target="_blank">Social assistance beneficiaries’ access to social services in a digitalised and centralised social assistance system</a>
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<li><strong>Nirmatrelvir Resistance in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron_BA.1 and WA1 Replicons and Escape Strategies</strong> -
<div>
The antiviral component of Paxlovid, nirmatrelvir (NIR), forms a covalent bond with Cys145 of SARS-CoV-2 nsp5. To explore NIR resistance we designed mutations to impair binding of NIR over substrate. Using 12 Omicron (BA.1) and WA.1 SARS-CoV-2 replicons, cell-based complementation and enzymatic assays, we showed that in both strains, E166V imparted high NIR resistance (~55-fold), with major decrease in WA1 replicon fitness (~20-fold), but not BA.1 (~2-fold). WA1 replicon fitness was restored by L50F. These differences may contribute to a potentially lower barrier to resistance in Omicron than WA1. E166V is rare in untreated patients, albeit more prevalent in paxlovid-treated EPIC-HR clinical trial patients. Importantly, NIR-resistant replicons with E166V or E166V/L50F remained susceptible to a) the flexible GC376, and b) PF-00835231, which forms additional interactions. Molecular dynamics simulations show steric clashes between the rigid and bulky NIR t-butyl and {beta}-branched V166 distancing the NIR warhead from its Cys145 target. In contrast, GC376, through-wiggling and jiggling- accommodates V166 and still covalently binds Cys145. PF-00835231 uses its strategically positioned methoxy-indole to form a beta-sheet and overcome E166V. Drug design based on strategic flexibility and main chain-targeting may help develop second-generation nsp5-targeting antivirals efficient against NIR-resistant viruses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.31.522389v1" target="_blank">Nirmatrelvir Resistance in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron_BA.1 and WA1 Replicons and Escape Strategies</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>A Clinical Study to Assess Preliminary Efficacy, Safety and Tolerability of HH-120 Nasal Spray in COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19)<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: HH-120 Nasal Spray<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Beijing Ditan Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy and Safety of Anti-COVID-19 Antibody SA58 Nasal Spray to Prevent Infection in High-risk Populations</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: SA58 Nasal Spray<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinovac Life Sciences 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>Efficacy and Safety of SA58 Nasal Spray in Close Contact With COVID-19 People</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SA58 Nasal Spray;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Sinovac Life Sciences Co., Ltd.;   Beijing Ditan Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine in Population Aged 18 Years and Above</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: One dose group;   Biological: Two doses group;   Biological: Aged 18-59 years;   Biological: Aged 60 years old and above<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Guangzhou Patronus Biotech Co., Ltd.;   Yantai Patronus Biotech Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity of Heterologous Versus Homologous Prime Boost Schedule With mRNA and Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: CoronaVac/CoronaVac;   Biological: CoronaVac/BNT162b2<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Institut Pasteur de Tunis<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine as a Booster Vaccination in Population Aged 18 Years and Above</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (CHO Cell) LYB001;   Biological: ZF2001<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Guangzhou Patronus Biotech Co., Ltd.;   Yantai Patronus Biotech Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The KIN-FAST Trial (KIN001 For Accelerated Symptoms Termination) in Non Hospitalized Patients Infected With SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: KIN001;   Drug: KIN001-Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Kinarus AG<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>The Application of Ursodeoxycholic Acid for the Prevention of Novel Coronavirus Infections</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Ursodeoxycholic acid<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Institute of Hematology &amp; Blood Diseases Hospital<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>Sars-COV-2 Immunity in immunoCOmpromised Populations</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS CoV 2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Humoral immunity<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Maria Goossens;   Université Libre de Bruxelles;   Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium;   Mensura EDPB;   Erasme hospital<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety, Tolerability and Pharmacokinetic Characteristics Evaluation on GST-HG171 Tablets</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: GST-HG171;   Drug: placebo of GST-HG171<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Fujian Akeylink Biotechnology 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>Benefits of an Aerobic and Strength Rehabilitation Program With Post- SARS-CoV-2 Patients Moderate-severe</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Aerobic plus strength group;   Other: Aerobic group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de la Fundación Jiménez Díaz<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>The Effect of Amantadine on Post-COVD-19 Fatigue</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Amantadine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences<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>Enhanced External Counterpulsation to Treat Long COVID Fatigue</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Procedure: Enhanced external counterpulsation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sheba Medical Center<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>Effectiveness of Rapid Antigen Testing of Students for COVID-19 in Reducing Absences From Schools in Bangladesh</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   School Absenteeism<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Rapid Antigen Testing (RAT) for COVID-19<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh;   Columbia 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>Jing Si Herbal Tea for Long-Coronavirus Disease(COVID) Gut-brain Interaction</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Healthy Subjects;   COVID-19 Pneumonia;   Irritable Bowel Syndrome;   Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Dietary Supplement: Jing Si Herbal Tea Liquid Packet;   Dietary Supplement: Jing Si Herbal Tea Liquid Packet Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Targeting Spike Glycans to Inhibit SARS-CoV2 Viral Entry</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 Spike harbors glycans which function as ligands for lectins. Therefore, it should be possible to exploit lectins to target SARS-CoV-2 and inhibit cellular entry by binding glycans on the Spike protein. Burkholderia oklahomensis agglutinin (BOA) is an antiviral lectin that interacts with viral glycoproteins via N-linked high mannose glycans. Here, we show that BOA binds to the Spike protein and is a potent inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 viral entry at nanomolar concentrations. Using a variety…</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>Data-driven drug discovery for drug repurposing</strong> - To improve the decreased efficiency of drug discovery and development, drug repurposing (also called drug repositioning) has been expected, that it is a strategy for identifying new medical indications for approved, investigational or suspended drugs. Particularly, according to the rapid expansion of medical and life science data and the remarkable technological progress of AI technology in recent years, the approach of computational drug repurposing has been attracted as one of the applications…</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>Endogenous G-quadruplex-forming RNAs inhibit the activity of SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase</strong> - Replication of RNA viruses is catalysed by virus-specific polymerases, which can be targets of therapeutic strategies. In this study, we used a selection strategy to identify endogenous RNAs from a transcriptome library derived from lung cells that interact with the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of SARS-CoV-2. Some of the selected RNAs weakened the activity of RdRp by forming G-quadruplexes. These results suggest that certain endogenous RNAs, which potentially form G-quadruplexes, can…</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>Prospective mode of action of Ivermectin: SARS-CoV-2</strong> - The well-known anti-helminthic drug ivermectin (IVM) has been established as an example of drug repurposing for the management of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Various study has been done to understand the inhibitory mechanism of IVM against SARS-CoV-2 targets. Broadly, IVM has been categorized as a host-directed agent and the proposed mechanism involves inhibition of the IMPα/ß1-mediated nuclear import of viral proteins. In addition, in vitro/in vivo and molecular docking/dynamic simulation studies…</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>Circulating microRNAs as emerging regulators of COVID-19</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infectious disease caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a global pandemic that has high incidence rates, spreads rapidly, and has caused more than 6.5 million deaths globally to date. Currently, several drugs have been used in the clinical treatment of COVID-19, including antivirals (e.g., molnupiravir, baricitinib, and remdesivir), monoclonal antibodies (e.g., etesevimab and tocilizumab), protease inhibitors…</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 ability of low- and High-SES schools to inhibit learning losses during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> - The study examined whether the pandemic-induced digital distance learning affected the ability of educational units to inhibit learning losses and whether their SES compositions modified those effects. By applying random-intercept multinomial regression models to educational units’ average test scores comparing the 2019-2021 period to the 2017-2019 period based on data from the National Assessment of Basic Competencies in Hungary, the results indicated that educational units were less likely to…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of a series of nucleoside analogs as effective anticoronaviral-2 drugs against the Omicron-B.1.1.529/BA.2 subvariant: A repurposing research study</strong> - Mysterious evolution of a new strain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the Omicron variant, led to a new challenge in the persistent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) battle. Objecting the conserved SARS-CoV-2 enzymes RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and 3’-to-5’ exoribonuclease (ExoN) together using one ligand is a successful new tactic to stop SARS-CoV-2 multiplication and COVID-19 progression. The current comprehensive study investigated most nucleoside…</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 snake venom-analog peptide that inhibits SARS-CoV-2 and papain-like protease displays antithrombotic activity in mice arterial thrombosis model, without interfering with bleeding time</strong> - CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate the antithrombotic activity of the peptide (p-BthTX-I)(2) K possibly by kallikrein inhibition, suggesting its strong biotechnological potential.</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>Diagnostic performance between in-house and commercial SARS-CoV-2 serological immunoassays including binding-specific antibody and surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT)</strong> - This study aimed to evaluate the correlation between in-house and commercial binding-specific IgG antibodies and between in-house and commercial SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization tests (sVNT). Samples from healthcare workers who received vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 were tested for RBD-specific antibody, S-specific antibody, and in-house ELISA, commercial sVNT, and in-house sVNT, against wild-type SARS-CoV-2. Three hundred and five samples were included in the analysis. The correlation…</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>Comparison of humoral immunogenicity in solid organ transplant recipients after third-dose mRNA vaccine with homologous or heterologous schedules: An observational study</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of the schedule, the neutralization inhibition rate against the Omicron variant was poor; therefore, additional preventive measures are required in such high-risk populations.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New insights into the mucosal immune pathogenesis of IgA nephropathy from the perspective of COVID-19 vaccination</strong> - Large-scale SARS-CoV-2 vaccination is one of the key strategies to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there are increasing reports of IgA nephropathy following COVID-19 vaccination. The clinical manifestation, treatment and prognostic effects are different in IgAN patients who have had an onset after the first and second dose of vaccination, as well as new and recurrent IgAN patients. These conditions bring about a relatively important window for understanding the pathogenesis of IgAN. Gd-IgA1…</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>Ginkgolides and bilobalide for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and COVID-19: potential mechanisms of action</strong> - Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible degenerative illness of the central nervous system with characteristic histological alterations, known as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). Aggregation of plaques and tangles in the brain induces neurotoxicity and synaptic dysfunction, eventually contributing to neuronal cell death and neurodegeneration. Recent studies have revealed that COVID-19 has a great impact on the development of AD, directly or indirectly, by facilitating the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Identification of potent COVID-19 main protease inhibitors by loading of favipiravir on Mg<sub>12</sub>O<sub>12</sub> and Zn<sub>12</sub>O<sub>12</sub> nanoclusters: an <em>in silico</em> strategy for COVID-19 treatment</strong> - Pandemic new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) virus has increased throughout the world. There is no effective treatment against this virus until now. Since its appearance in Wuhan, China in December 2019, SARS-CoV-2 becomes the largest challenge the world is opposite today, including the discovery of an antiviral drug for this virus. Several viral proteins have been prioritized as SARS-CoV-2 antiviral drug targets, among them the papain-like protease (PLpro) and the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Exploring the binding capacity of lactic acid bacteria derived bacteriocins against RBD of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant by molecular simulations</strong> - The changes in the SARS-CoV-2 genome have resulted in the emergence of new variants. Some of the variants have been classified as variants of concern (VOC). These strains have higher transmission rate and improved fitness. One of the prevalent were the Omicron variant. Unlike previous VOCs, the Omicron possesses fifteen mutations on the spike protein’s receptor binding domain (RBD). The modifications of spike protein’s key amino acid residues facilitate the virus’ binding capability against…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A bibliometric analysis of autophagy in lung diseases from 2012 to 2021</strong> - CONCLUSION: The study of autophagy in lung diseases is still in the development stage. The information published in these articles has helped researchers understand further the hot spots and development trends in the field more and learn about the collaboration network information regarding authors, countries, and institutions, as well as the paper citation correlation. More studies have been performed to gain deeper insights into the pathogenesis of autophagy by focusing on the links and…</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 Kevin McCarthy Will Do to Gain Power</strong> - The Republican leader’s ambition has always been his defining characteristic. Attempting to placate both Trumpists and moderates may lead to his downfall. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/26/what-kevin-mccarthy-will-do-to-gain-power">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What the Wars and Crises of 2022 Foreshadow for 2023</strong> - Tyrants and thugocrats have tightened their hold amid challenges to democracies, but they face problems, too. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2022-in-review/what-the-wars-and-crises-of-2022-foreshadow-for-2023">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>From Climate Exhortation to Climate Execution</strong> - The Inflation Reduction Act finally offers a chance for widespread change. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/from-climate-exhortation-to-climate-execution">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Behind the Humiliation of Kevin McCarthy</strong> - The G.O.P. has gone from being a disciplined party of limited government to a party of anti-government protest to, now, a party of performative verbiage. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/behind-the-humiliation-of-kevin-mccarthy">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Case for Wearing Masks Forever</strong> - A ragtag coalition of public-health activists believe that America’s pandemic restrictions are too lax—and they say they have the science to prove it. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/the-case-for-wearing-masks-forever">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Your stuff is actually worse now</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A pile of smashed computer parts on the floor" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nYVac-0vxG2IiKVFjI1x_Qhqg6c=/312x0:5304x3744/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71821657/GettyImages_152832047.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Walter Zerma/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
How the cult of consumerism ushered in an era of badly made products.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="49XEAF">
My beloved 10-year-old black bra finally broke last Christmas. The elastic had some slack and it’d been fraying for a while, but its death sentence came when the underwire popped out the side. While it wasn’t particularly special — just a normal T-shirt bra — it was comfortable and had clearly lasted a long time. So, I did what any sensible person who is afraid of change would do: bought the exact same thing, from the same brand, again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hoyFjc">
I eagerly waited for my shipment of my new bras (in two trendy colorways!) to come in. When they arrived, I noticed that there were a few key differences: there was a new fourth clasp, the band was tighter, and the material was a whole lot softer. Certainly, these were improvements, I thought.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lq6tz8">
I was wrong.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u3kGnp">
Within a few washes, the hooks had become mangled, unable to neatly adhere themselves to the clasps. Instead, they would claw at my back. The straps frayed quicker than I expected. Nothing changed in my care; I had assumed that because I treated my previous bra carelessly throughout my teens and college years, these new versions could withstand similar conditions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dg4264">
I felt unmoored for months. Why would the same item be worse years later? Shouldn’t it be better? But here’s the thing: My lackluster bra is far from the only consumer good that’s faced a dip in comparative quality. All manner of things we wear, plus kitchen appliances, personal tech devices, and construction tools are among the objects that have been stunted by a concerted effort to simultaneously expedite the rate of production while making it more difficult to easily repair what we already own, experts say.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="51M18U">
In the 10 years since I bought that old bra, new design norms, shifting consumer expectations, and emboldened trend cycles have all coalesced into a monster of seemingly endless growth. We buy buy buy, and we’ve been tricked — for far longer than the last decade — into believing that buying more stuff, <em>new</em> stuff is the way. By swapping out slightly used items so frequently, we’re barely pausing to consider if the replacement items are an upgrade, or if we even have the option to repair what we already have. Worse yet, we’re playing into corporate narratives that undercut the labor that makes our items worth keeping.
</p>
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“If you change the style regularly, people get tired of the style,” says <a href="https://www.risd.edu/academics/industrial-design/faculty/matthew-bird">Matthew Bird</a>, a professor of industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design. “They start to treat cars like sweaters — it’s become grossly accelerated. The pressure to make more stuff, of course, lowers the quality of what’s being made, because the development and testing is just accelerated even more.”
</p>
<h3 id="PEFrvp">
The design process, explained
</h3>
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Design is more than the mere aesthetics of an object; it can also be a solution to a problem. These problems do not necessarily have to be physical or tangible — systems and virtual environments are also subject to design. Ideally, design is the marriage of appearance and utility that creates a considered end result.
</p>
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When we’re producing objects or services for millions of people, we’re talking about industrial design, or the professionalization of these processes at scale. <a href="https://www.idsa.org/what-industrial-design">According to the Industrial Designers Society of America</a>, industrial designers often focus on three things: appearance, functionality, and manufacturability. That last part is where the most change is happening.
</p>
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Historically, Bird says, if a craftsperson wanted to make something — say, a tea kettle — you would adjust it with each attempt. Maybe the first iteration was hammered metal and the handles were uncomfortable. Perhaps the next was ceramic, but it didn’t sing when the water was ready. You would go back to the drawing board. “Eventually in a couple of generations of tea kettles, I would be making the perfect form that did everything perfectly,” Bird says. “It’s all great because I was responding to my customers one at a time and it was handmade.”
</p>
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The first major shift came when the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/6/1/23138463/how-the-world-became-rich-industrial-revolution-koyama-rubin">Industrial Revolution</a> introduced machinery and tooling into the design process, exponentially increasing the scale of production. Now, instead of hammering out one kettle, you could use a machine to stamp out the parts. Rinse and repeat. However, if you designed a bad tea kettle, you would be stuck with thousands of them — a huge, expensive mistake. This is still the case.
</p>
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While machines have dramatically increased how much can be produced and how fast, humans are still mostly involved every step of the way from ideation to production. Today, nearly everything is assembled by human hands, even if some parts are 3D printed, cast, or spun by machines. “You’ve done all these other steps, and then you have the person who sits there and actually puts these pieces together,” says <a href="https://twitter.com/lingerie_addict?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Cora Harrington</a>, a writer and lingerie expert. “It doesn’t matter how complicated. It doesn’t matter how simple. We don’t have robots that put together our clothing automatically, so it’s all done by an expert.”
</p>
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The Great Depression, too, changed the very nature of consumerism. The economy desperately needed stimulation — and consumer goods were one way to do it. It was around this period that advertising heavyweight <a href="https://libraries.mit.edu/150books/2011/03/02/1915/">Earnest Elmo Calkins</a> laid out a selling strategy that came to define purchasing habits for the next century: “consumer engineering,” or how advertisers and designers could artificially create demand, often by making older objects seem undesirable. Real estate broker Bernard London is often credited with coining this process as “planned obsolescence” through his <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/London_%281932%29_Ending_the_depression_through_planned_obsolescence.pdf">1932 paper</a> that suggested the government put a lease on products’ life. “That’s when manufactured products started to be sort of done in season for the cycles and fashion,” Bird says.
</p>
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Fast-forward a handful of decades, and now several generations of people are conditioned to buy the new thing and to keep replacing it. Companies, in turn, amp up production accordingly. It’s less so that objects are intended to break — functional planned obsolescence, if you will — but rather that consumer mindsets are oriented around finding the better object. But “better” doesn’t always mean long-lasting when companies are incentivized to produce faster, and faster, and faster.
</p>
<h3 id="sIs2OH">
Cutting corners and moving fast
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rCnVby">
Let’s circle back to the bra I bought a decade ago and its lesser younger sibling.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kdafyI">
When I spoke to Harrington, the lingerie expert, about my dilemma, her first question for me was about price. To my recollection, the old bra and the new one were about the same: somewhere between $30-$40. That, for Harrington, was the key: In the last 10 years, in the wake of the climate crisis and the pandemic and steady and then skyrocketing inflation, the cost of fabric, other materials, and labor have all increased.
</p>
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It can be difficult for consumers to recognize that the landscape has changed because they’re not primed to see the full picture, Harrington explains. She mentions how when she writes about the state of fast fashion, she often gets pushback from new readers who say their older fast fashion pieces have lasted a long time. “Yes! Many of us bought cheap clothing 10 years ago that’s still fine,” she says. “But 10 years ago, our clothing was higher quality than it is now. That is actually part of the point.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iw5Wz7">
It’s actually impossible to buy the same bra I had in high school for the same price. It’s simply more expensive to produce now than it was then.
</p>
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“People don’t exactly want to pay more for all that stuff,” Harrington says. “So what has to happen if everything is more expensive and the customers still want to pay the same price, something has to be cut and that’s often going to be the quality of the garment.”
</p>
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Usually that’s accomplished with a change in material. This could be a thinner, new-to-market fabric, or a more fragile clasp, for instance. The average customer isn’t going to know the difference, especially when shopping online. “There is an entire generation of consumers at this point that doesn’t actually know what high-quality clothing feels like and looks like,” Harrington says. “It gets easier, I think, for consumers to just not know any better.”
</p>
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The electronics industry is also susceptible to material changes because products are competing against each other on price point, says Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of the <a href="https://www.repair.org/aboutus">Repair Association</a>.
</p>
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“Even though designers may say, ‘Oh, this is just as good,’ the components themselves are increasingly plastic instead of metal,” she says. “They’re using more glue instead of screws. There’s some definite design trends that are making these things not work very long. A friend of mine was a big HP reseller and he said that it used to be that you could take that $4,000 HP LaserJet that you’d have in your office, drop it off the back of a truck, and plug it in. It would still work. But that was no longer the case as new generations came around and they were made with more and more plastic.”
</p>
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Then there’s the classic way companies keep costs low: <a href="https://time.com/4374377/slavery-developed-developing-world-index-slave-labor/">underpaying and overworking workers</a>. The speed at which workers are expected to produce and deliver goods is faster than ever before — and speed will always be at odds with quality. An <a href="https://clutch.co/logistics/resources/how-two-day-delivery-impacts-small-businesses">increase in consumer demand</a> for same-day or two-day delivery, as well as the hunger for real-time <a href="https://goodonyou.eco/micro-trends/">microtrends</a>, are both incentivizing companies to churn, churn, churn.
</p>
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Take a gander at ultra-fast fashion giant Shein’s <a href="https://observer.com/2022/04/shein-fast-fashion-value-100b-fundraising/">$100 billion valuation</a>. Social media <a href="https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/social-medias-influence-accelerates-fast-fashion-culture-environment-pollution/134242/">helps accelerate</a> the trend cycle even further. Consumers are buying <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-price-of-fast-fashion-11567096637">five times more clothing</a> than they did back in the 1980s. In order to produce goods that fast, both the quality of the item and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/style/garment-workers-around-the-world.html">quality of life for workers</a> have to take a hit. This is happening alongside a decrease of prices for the consumer (not rooted in reality!) to encourage more trend-oriented shopping and <a href="https://earthyroute.com/blogs/slow-fashion-series/what-are-fast-fashion-hauls-and-why-are-they-dangerous-for-you-and-the-planet">haul buying</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gpGC6p">
“Time is money,” Harrington says. “Even as poor or cheap as that garment worker’s labor is, it’s still a significant part of the garment because there is no way to replace that labor. Some of what you’re seeing in that race to the bottom is that literally the time is not being spent in making the thing that would help the thing last longer. If you spend cheap money on something, you cannot expect it to be high quality. You have to make a choice there.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EFcWkA">
Finally, there are shifts in production methods that help companies avoid higher labor costs. Again, robots do not wholesale make our things, but for products like phones, computers, remote controls, and the like, it’s often cheaper to design in a way that reduces human labor. This can mean using as few parts as possible; if you can design by plate or by chunk, especially if the object has to be manually completed, it’ll save a lot of time, and therefore money.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C8KBJj">
“In the design of objects, they’re trying to reduce the amount of labor, and that changes what the object is,” Bird says. “That produces cheaper goods, but it doesn’t necessarily produce better goods.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PTPI63">
While pinching pennies can sometimes lead to interesting solutions to old problems, a whole new suite of issues tends to unfurl. For the fashion industry, it’s easy to look at the rise of synthetic materials, which offer utility for exercise clothing as well as a way to avoid using animal products. Synthetic fabrics, however, are made from petroleum and have propelled the industry to become one of the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-fashion-industry-environmental-impact/?leadSource=uverify%20wall">top carbon polluters</a> in the world. Synthetics also have a paradox problem: They fall apart easier, but they don’t entirely <a href="https://www.voguebusiness.com/sustainability/fashion-biodegradable-material-circularity-cotton">decompose</a> as well as natural material.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eUOnEZ">
The tech industry has similarly had to contend with the fallout of seemingly improving on products while at the same time simplifying design elements to save money. Apple’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/4/21246223/macbook-keyboard-butterfly-magic-pro-apple-design">butterfly keyboard</a> is a prime example; the thinner keyboard was great for reducing a laptop’s weight, but the keys got stuck all the time. Because the keyboard was designed to be one piece, a consumer couldn’t fix a single stuck key by themselves without the right equipment — they had to go to the Apple Store to either replace the keys or the whole keyboard. Kitchen appliances and other utilitarian objects are now also suffering the same fate with the inclusion of techy selling points (touchscreen blenders, automatic espresso machines, those goofy fridges with the screens on them), but with little maintenance infrastructure or the ability to repair those new features, Gordon-Byrne says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RofKIF">
“One of the problems being a designer is that you solve some problems and in the process of solving them, you invent all these new problems,” Bird says. “That’s just an inherent part of design. There’s no way to not do that. If you’re creating innovation, you’re also creating future problems.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s9Nj0s">
So the cycle continues.
</p>
<h3 id="0QPxxV">
What it takes to keep what you own
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7vpvVg">
Design has shifted more toward manufacturability and appearance than functionality, when it should be a balance of all three. Arguably, it’s nearly impossible for corporations to avoid participating in the trend cycle as long as consumers have an appetite for more — whether it’s a predilection for cooler clothing or whatever new incremental, yet buzzy technology just came out. At the same time, the blame does not lie on consumers’ shoulders; corporations are responsible for creating and stoking the “new and more is better” culture we have today.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FgmeFj">
Perhaps if companies took the first step and made their products feel timeless both in form and function, there’d be less demand for new things and a decreased pressure for speed. But major corporations will almost certainly never go for that, and it’s unlikely the majority of consumers will unlearn current buying habits.
</p>
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“A better iPhone would be one that I can use for 20 years and keep upgrading,” Bird says. “But that’s not how we define better, right? Nobody wants an iPhone 14 because it will last for 10 years. They want it because it has a fancier camera or whatever.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o1laIO">
Even if you do want to hop off the treadmill of constantly buying and keep what you already have, companies have made that harder too. Your goods probably have a shorter lifespan than they did years ago, and if you want to repair them — especially tech — you’ll come up against major barriers.
</p>
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For years, Apple <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/08/29/apple-opening-up-repair-parts-and-tools-to-more-third-party-repair-shops">opposed right-to-repair laws</a>, claiming they would expose company secrets. Because their <a href="https://www.treehugger.com/the-pentalobe-screw-and-apples-war-against-self-repair-4857481">screws are proprietary</a>, you need special equipment to open up a device. This meant swinging by the dreaded Genius Bar or an authorized third-party shop to fix a broken screen until 2021, when Apple <a href="https://www.engadget.com/apple-user-iphone-repair-policy-change-173047862.html">announced</a> it would finally sell the parts required to open (and therefore fix) a device following years of activism from folks like Gordon-Byrne and pressure from regulators. Apple’s products still remain some of the toughest to repair on your own, <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability">according to iFixit</a>, but the company is not alone in opposing right-to-repair; Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, John Deere, and General Electric have all spent billions <a href="https://pirg.org/articles/who-doesnt-want-the-right-to-repair-companies-worth-over-10-trillion/">lobbying against right-to-repair laws</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qoLyoO">
“Why I’m fighting so hard for a right to repair is that nobody is telling me I can’t sew a button,” Gordon-Byrne says. “Nobody is refusing to sell me a needle and thread. Where that’s exactly what’s happening with technology. It shouldn’t happen. That level of control should not be their level.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YqByhq">
There is hope thanks to consumer action, says Gordon-Byrne. New York was the first to pass a <a href="https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/new-york-governor-signs-historic-digital-right-to-repair-bill-into-law/#:~:text=The%20signing%20of%20the%20bill,go%20through%20the%20device%20manufacturer.">right-to-repair law</a> last month, and the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/07/ftc-announces-three-right-repair-cases-do-your-warranties-comply-law">Federal Trade Commission</a> has been investigating the issue.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uAUSc0">
“I see this every day,” Gordon-Byrne says. “Consumers are so much more powerful politically, legislatively than they ever dream — and it’s not the act of voting. That’s probably the least powerful thing. The most powerful thing is for a consumer to literally pick up the phone, call their local representative. Let me tell you, when I sit down with a legislator, I can hand them a list of 400 names of their own constituents that say, ‘I want my right to repair.’ That’s huge. That moves the needle. It moves the ball.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fjLsu9">
Learning how to fix your own stuff can be simultaneously overwhelming and empowering, says Zach Dinicola, the founder of <a href="https://www.mrmixer.store/">Mr. Mixer</a>, a company that repairs KitchenAids in Kansas and other parts of the Midwest. It’s a “crying shame” that there are efforts to make it harder to fix things on your own, he said, which is why he <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@mr..mixer?lang=en">shares tutorials</a> with more than 450,000 followers on TikTok.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EJXY8s">
“I think that there are more people who want to fix it,” he says. “They just don’t necessarily know it’s an option. People don’t know what they don’t know. There’s a DIY person in all of us. If someone can present the information in a format that’s easy to follow along, more people would be willing to do that.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yM2BM8">
The beauty of fixing an object and keeping it around in your life, Dinicola continues, is that they become very sentimental. “That’s one thing that I just know from being in this business,” he says. “These mixers really become part of the family, especially when they’re handed down from grandmother to mother. I’ve worked on third- and fourth-generation mixers that have been handed down from great grandma to grandma to mom to daughter.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fR8nsw">
You could probably say the same thing for vintage clothing — what’s better than getting a chic leather purse from your mom’s closet or the cool secondhand shop in your neighborhood? Although no one is prohibiting people from repairing clothing, the lack of quality in modern fashion means it’s important to be thoughtful about what you’re buying and how you’re <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/guides/tmagazine/how-to-take-care-of-your-clothes">taking care</a> of what you already own. Knowing <a href="https://twitter.com/lingerie_addict/status/1556753030871146497">what material your clothing is made of</a> is key to knowing how to wash and dry it, which can elongate its life. “If I visit the tab for fabric composition and there’s nothing there, it’s an instantaneous red flag,” Harrington says. “You want to know what fibers are in the garments you’re buying. That in and of itself is something everyone can do. That can be the first step toward getting more familiar with what quality garments might look and feel like.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eu17Z4">
I hate to say that the onus is on us, but in many ways it is. Corporations aren’t going to do this work for us, or without us. Consumers need to be able to identify quality, learn to take care of what they own, and advocate for regulations and legislation wherever right-to-repair doesn’t yet exist. Buy less or secondhand, and when you do buy something new — it happens! — make sure to do your research.
</p>
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</p></li>
<li><strong>Veterinary medicine has a factory farming problem</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An image of two people in lab coats, their faces in shadow, looking at a clipboard. Behind them is a pig and a farm house, the sky a dramatic ombre of yellow and red. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CD2IwlIqLoft5rIBJiVqUKFZdNI=/167x0:1607x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71821506/animal_cruelty_board_1c.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Christina Animashaun/Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
To fight the cruel meat industry, veterinarians have to fight their own profession.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j5CENm">
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the premier organization that represents <a href="https://www.avma.org/news/avma-marks-100000-member-milestone">most</a> of America’s <a href="https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/market-research-statistics-us-veterinarians">121,000 veterinarians</a>, might not seem like an obvious target for protests. But at the organization’s annual convention last summer, disruptions were anticipated — animal activists had been gearing up to protest the AVMA for months. Outside the<strong> </strong>conference in downtown Philadelphia, they unfurled an enormous banner that read, “TELL AVMA: STOP ROASTING ANIMALS ALIVE.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hqFZXw">
The protesters were referring to the AVMA’s backing of a method of mass culling animals on factory farms known as<strong> </strong>“ventilation shutdown plus.”<strong> </strong>It involves sealing off the animals’ housing and turning up the heat to lethal temperatures so that they die of heatstroke over the course of hours,<strong> </strong>like a dog dying in a hot car. The method, known as VSD+ for short, was <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation">used widely</a> by<strong> </strong>the poultry and egg industries to cull tens of millions of chickens and turkeys during this past year’s bird flu epidemic.
</p>
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It is also widely thought to be the most cruel, distressing option for exterminating animals — a practice that opponents say amounts to essentially cooking animals to death.
</p>
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Yet it continues to be commonly deployed, in part because of AVMA policy. While the organization says ventilation shutdown alone, without the addition of extra heat or carbon dioxide, is not recommended, it <a href="https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/resources/AVMA-Guidelines-for-the-Depopulation-of-Animals.pdf">deems</a> VSD+ “permitted in constrained circumstances” if more preferred methods aren’t available. This finding became the basis for the US Department of Agriculture’s bird flu containment policy, allowing VSD+ to rapidly become a meat <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/06/us-bird-flu-outbreak-millions-of-birds-culled-in-most-inhumane-way-available">industry default</a>. The method’s prevalence has drawn the attention of federal lawmakers: Sen. <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23471771/cory-booker-meat-farming-industrial-agriculture-accountability-act">Cory Booker</a> (D-NJ) and Rep. <a href="https://jayapal.house.gov/2022/12/14/jayapal-introduces-animal-welfare-bill-to-prevent-inhumane-killing-of-slaughter-bound-animals/">Pramila Jayapal</a> (D-WA) both recently introduced bills to end its use.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Three activists hold a large banner that reads “TELL AVMA: STOP ROASTING ANIMALS ALIVE. AVMAShamScience.com”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bOGpo1ucNporG4ZaMZqRS9Ma7Ms=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24324079/1._AVMA_protest_photo.jpg"/> <cite>Direct Action Everywhere</cite>
<figcaption>
Activists protest outside the AVMA’s summer 2022 convention.
</figcaption>
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In her past work as an emergency veterinarian,<strong> </strong>Gwendolen Reyes-Illg has cared for numerous animals suffering from heatstroke.<strong> </strong>Its symptoms are almost too disturbing to print: “chunks of mucosa and blood come pouring out of the rectum, and vomiting of blood is common as well,” as Reyes-Illg told me for a previous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/08/theyre-cooking-them-alive-calls-to-ban-cruel-killing-methods-on-us-farms">story</a>. While Reyes-Illg treats her patients’ heatstroke, with VSD+, that same condition is induced on purpose, with the AVMA’s stamp of approval. “I think if you surveyed the veterinarians in the United States, the vast majority of them have no idea that this is happening, and if they knew they would be outraged,” said Reyes-Illg, who is a veterinary advisor to the Animal Welfare Institute and is among the veterinarians organizing to withdraw their profession’s support for VSD+. More than<strong> </strong>1,500 vets have signed a <a href="https://www.vavsd.org/take-action-against-vsd#signup">petition</a><strong> </strong>urging the AVMA to stop condoning the method. So far, their efforts have been unsuccessful<strong>. </strong>
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The controversy over ventilation shutdown represents the most recent, high-profile example of long-simmering tensions over veterinary medicine’s values. While the public associates veterinarians with cats and dogs, imagining it as a job for animal lovers, veterinary medicine is also deeply embedded in the factory farm system. Veterinarians provide the research, expertise, and scientific and moral authority that allows the US to raise <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-meat?country=~USA">nearly 10 billion</a> land animals in intensive confinement every year.
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“At present, the official stance of the veterinary profession in the US often serves to legitimize practices that cause extreme, prolonged pain and suffering on a massive scale, such as intensive confinement and the use of heatstroke as a method of mass on-farm killing,” Reyes-Illg said in an email. “The veterinary profession helps shield such practices from questioning and criticism.” But a new generation of veterinarians is challenging what they see as the<strong> </strong>“corporate capture” of their profession, as vet Crystal Heath put it, by the meat industry and other sectors that kill animals for profit.
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If they’re successful, they argue, they could help topple a crucial pillar of support for factory farming. While the AVMA doesn’t control what methods meat producers choose to use, the veterinary profession’s positions inform legislation and rule-making around how animals are allowed to be treated. The USDA’s rules on how to kill poultry birds due to avian flu, for example, are taken directly from AVMA guidelines. Vets are also, in my experience, the preferred excuse used by the meat industry and regulators to justify extreme cruelty. Ask an agriculture department bureaucrat why they’re condoning mass extermination via heatstroke, and they’re likely to shrug and say, it’s AVMA-approved (that is almost verbatim what I was told by Chloe Carson, who was then the communications director for Iowa’s agriculture department, in April).
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“The AVMA is critical in our political system for animal welfare, so Congress tends to think of the AVMA when it comes to animal things,” said<strong> </strong>livestock veterinarian James Reynolds, a professor at Western University’s vet school. “Congress will take no action until the AVMA changes its position” on how animals are treated in the food system.
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The schism in veterinary medicine is long in the making
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While VSD+ has emerged as a flashpoint among vets only in the last few years, conflicts over factory farming have been long in the making. The US Supreme Court will soon release its decision on a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/03/supreme-court-proposition-12-pig-gestation-crates-california-animal-welfare-law">pork industry lawsuit</a> that could strike down one of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22576044/prop-12-california-eggs-pork-bacon-veal-animal-welfare-law-gestation-crates-battery-cages">strongest</a> farm animal protection laws in the country. Under challenge is California’s Proposition 12, which bans the sale of pork raised using gestation crates — narrow metal cages, not much bigger than an adult pig, where pregnant pigs are kept for most of their lives, unable to turn around or stretch their limbs.<strong> </strong>Pigs are often <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-science/article/abs/comparison-of-the-welfare-of-sows-in-different-housing-conditions/FA72AA4582E7FD4E86147341736FBE7F#access-block">observed</a> biting the bars of the crates, among other signs of distress. But in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-468/228285/20220617124311471_21-468%20Amicus%20BOM.pdf">brief</a> filed in June, the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, an organization closely tied to the pork industry, urged the Court to strike down Prop 12. “Proposition 12 is likely to harm animal welfare rather than help it,” the group argued.
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When she read that brief, Reyes-Illg remembers, “I was horrified that this might be the sole message the Supreme Court would hear from veterinarians about gestation crates.” She led an effort to submit a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-468/233565/20220815174931670_Broom%20et%20al.%20amicus%20brief%20-%20Natl%20Pork%20v.%20Ross%20-%20No.%2021-468.pdf">brief</a> to the court, which was signed by 378 veterinarians and animal welfare scientists,<strong> </strong>refuting the swine veterinarians’ claims as inaccurate and driven by pork industry interests. “The weight of the scientific evidence strongly supports the conclusion that gestation crates cause profound, avoidable suffering and deprive pigs of a minimally acceptable standard of welfare,” they wrote.
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<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Four pigs are seen inside gestation crates — small cages about the size of their bodies. One bites the cage bars and appears distressed." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cz0ZyIAE-FxfQbP4kJCs1bzbRWQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24323993/WAM26888.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media</cite>
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Pigs inside a gestation crate facility in Canada.
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Gestation crates have been a topic of <a href="https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2014-05-01/odds-over-welfare">heated debate</a> in the AVMA. Its policy statement on housing for pregnant pigs <a href="https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/avma-policies/pregnant-sow-housing">says</a> they should be provided with “adequate quality and quantity of space that allows sows to assume normal postures and express normal patterns of behavior” and that there are “advantages and disadvantages” to different systems, including gestation crates. The organization hasn’t, in any document I could find, taken a position on gestation crate bans like Prop 12, but it declined to comment on a question about this.
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In an email in March that was obtained by Vox through a public records request, Michael Costin, assistant director of the AVMA’s division of animal and public health, alerted the AASV about the federal PIGS Act, a House <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/7004/text">bill</a> that would ban gestation crates. “You may want to touch base with the AASV reps so they are prepared when this comes to them,” he wrote, noting that the AVMA’s animal agriculture liaison committee and animal welfare committee have representatives from AASV on them. “I assume AASV would oppose this bill.” Costin didn’t respond to requests for comment on the correspondence.
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The gap between veterinarians like Reyes-Illg and those aligned with industry reflects a longtime debate in veterinary ethics: Should vets represent the interests of animals, or those of the humans who own and profit from them?
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Veterinary medicine encompasses society’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/2/24/22947967/gordon-ramsay-lamb-sauce-joke-tiktok-the-meat-paradox">paradoxical relationship</a> with nonhuman animals, from love and companionship to commodification and killing. Today, most US veterinarians <a href="https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/market-research-statistics-us-veterinarians">care for</a> companion animals, like cats, dogs, and other pets,<strong> </strong>but it wasn’t always that way. Modern veterinary medicine has its origins in treating animals raised for food and horses used for transportation. “I don’t think there’s any question that in North America, organized veterinary medicine” — institutions like the AVMA — “by and large reflects that history,” said Lisa Moses, a veterinarian and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School.<strong> </strong>“The people who are the national spokespeople for veterinary medicine are still very much entrenched in food production and in the agriculture industry in a way that the majority of practicing veterinarians are not.”
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These disparities, combined with the factory farm-ification of animal agriculture, have led to a “growing schism between the companion animal side of the field and the food animal production side of the field,” Moses said. <strong> </strong>
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As meat production industrialized, the profession accommodated it. “The veterinary response was largely a technocratic one, technological, and very much politically aligned with animal production,” said Susan Jones, a science historian at the University of Minnesota and a veterinarian. Economic shifts in agriculture necessarily drove changes in how industry vets viewed their patients, “seeing animals less as living sentient beings and seeing them more as production units,” Jones said. “This means that [vets] don’t see animals anymore as individuals in need of health care or welfare considerations. You see them as populations.”
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Professional backlash for criticizing factory farming can be steep
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Veterinarian Crystal Heath, who is one of the best-known critics of her profession’s relationship with the meat industry,<strong> </strong>seeks every opportunity to start conversations about how vets could end the biggest harms facing animals, like ventilation shutdown, rather than participate in them. She arrived at the AVMA convention in late July with that goal in mind. On her first day there, she and her friend Daniela Castillo, a fellow vet pushing for change in the profession, said they noticed being watched by a security guard. When they approached to ask him what was going on, he explained that he’d been told to look out for them because they might be protesting. “Obviously, we’re being surveilled,” Heath said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/drcrystalheath/status/1553154952452874241">video</a> posted to Twitter that evening. “It seems like the AVMA is extremely unwelcoming and is not supportive of people who are doing animal advocacy.” The AVMA declined to comment on these allegations.
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Heath, a Berkeley-based shelter veterinarian who devotes much of her time to spaying and neutering cats and dogs,<strong> </strong>was used to this kind of treatment. Her advocacy has made her a lightning rod within the profession. While she’s hardly the first vet to voice misgivings about factory farming, she’s done so particularly publicly — often bringing her critiques to social media, engaging with audiences outside the profession, and posting <a href="https://twitter.com/drcrystalheath/status/1569361115506954242">examples</a> of veterinarians conducting gruesome research on the meat industry’s behalf. “We should use our innovation to end the exploitation of animals instead of devising more macabre killing methods,” she said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/drcrystalheath/status/1565434273057779712">tweet</a> last fall.<strong> </strong>And although she grew up steeped in animal agriculture, she’s now vegan, which can feel like an existential threat to industry veterinarians.
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“I was vice president of my 4H club,” an organization that trains kids in animal agriculture, Heath said. “I raised goats; I was an animal science major.” Now, she said, some veterinary colleagues view her as biased for repudiating animal agriculture, but she points out that the bias runs both ways: “I could easily argue that <em>you</em> have a biased perspective because you are committed to eating animal products. I look at all of these people who they consider to be unbiased, and they all work for industry.”
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A 2020 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/new-documents-reveal-how-the-animal-agriculture-industry-surveils-and-punishes-critics/">story in the Intercept</a> revealed how Heath was branded an extremist and targeted for her advocacy by the meat industry. A flier of unknown provenance had circulated on Facebook, displaying her photo under the warning “BEWARE” and claiming she supported the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, radical groups from an earlier era of animal activism, which she said she knew nothing about at the time. “I got kicked out of all the veterinary Facebook groups that I relied on on a daily basis for networking,” she remembers. Some livestock vets openly berated her. “Crystal your deranged activism here and throughout the animal agriculture industry is quite annoying,” one vet commented on a post she made in a Facebook group. “[Y]ou’re literally, by name, a topic of conversation in board rooms from Ag business to organized veterinary medicine across the nation. Your name is literally toxic.” <strong> </strong>
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Heath regularly receives messages from vets and veterinary students who sympathize with her but say they’re afraid to speak out because of the potential consequences for their careers. Daniela Castillo, who’s worked extensively in shelters and spay-and-neuter, said that she’s been ridiculed so much for being vegan that she’s considered leaving veterinary medicine — a problem she feels is compounded by being a woman of color in an <a href="https://datausa.io/profile/soc/veterinarians">overwhelmingly white</a> profession. “People become so defensive,” she said. “They either get angry or they treat you as a joke.”
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<h3 id="ibCeGn">
“It’s not science when you have a bias at the beginning”
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Heath realized that veterinarians needed a support network to be able to withstand industry retaliation. In fall 2020, she founded <a href="https://www.ourhonor.org/">Our Honor</a>,<strong> </strong>a nonprofit that helps vets challenge unethical practices in their profession. It was a few months after the public learned about ventilation shutdown — not in the poultry industry, but<strong> </strong>in the pork industry. Due to meatpacking plant shutdowns at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, meat producers couldn’t slaughter as many animals as they normally do — so, instead, they <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23471771/cory-booker-meat-farming-industrial-agriculture-accountability-act">killed and disposed of</a> millions of them. Activists from the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere were tipped off that Iowa Select Farms was using ventilation shutdown plus, a then little-known method, to exterminate its pigs.<strong> </strong>In an investigation later <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-ventilation-shutdown-coronavirus/">covered</a> by the Intercept, the activists secretly planted recorders and captured audio of the pigs shrieking for two-and-a-half hours as they were killed with high heat and steam.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Aerial view of a truck full of dead pigs, with a worker nearby moving four large dead pigs that are not the ground. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uXfHdKM6rdEX5UHt0fE6OFpBxbs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24324038/Worker_untying_dead_pigs_close_up_.JPG"/> <cite>Direct Action Everywhere</cite>
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A worker moves dead pigs after a mass cull at Iowa Select Farms in 2020.
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These revelations, and the fact that the AVMA considered VSD+ acceptable, galvanized a coalition of farm animal advocacy groups and veterinarians who are AVMA members. They petitioned the AVMA and <a href="https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2021-09-15/hod-recommends-depopulation-policy-sent-expert-panel-further-consideration">submitted a resolution</a> to its House of Delegates, a voting body that guides the organization’s policy, to re-classify VSD+ as “not recommended” in its guidelines. They wrote <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/06/avian-flu-chickens-birds-why-are-we-accepting-mass-slaughter-animals-through-heatstroke/">op-eds</a> and ran an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer ahead of this summer’s AVMA convention that read: “You wouldn’t say it’s okay to roast an animal alive. So why would the American Veterinary Medical Association?”
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The European Union <a href="https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.2903/j.efsa.2020.6195">considers</a> any type of VSD to be a method that’s “likely to be highly painful” and “must never be used.” But the AVMA hasn’t changed its position, and there are signs that it doesn’t intend to. In<strong> </strong>2021, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association <a href="https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/259/4/javma.259.4.415.xml">published</a> a case study of ventilation shutdown plus, by veterinarian Angela Baysinger and three other vets, in which 243,016 pigs were killed with temperatures reaching as high as 170 degrees Fahrenheit.<strong> </strong>To achieve heat that intense, the paper notes, “commercial-grade mobile steam generators typically used in the railroad industry to heat railcars were obtained.” The study measured the animals’ “time to silent.” “I think that report was published as a way to validate what they were doing and lend legitimacy to” ventilation shutdown, Heath said. Baysinger, who is <a href="https://www.aasv.org/aasv/contacts.html">vice president</a> of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians and serves on the AVMA’s animal welfare committee, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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The <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/14/killing-chickens-bird-flu-vsd/">only research</a> on VSD+ in poultry birds cited in the AVMA’s guidelines is an unpublished, poultry industry-funded report, which has been <a href="https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/AWI-Letter-AVMA-Depopulation-Panel-Oct-2021.pdf">criticized and accused</a> of lacking scientific validity.<strong> </strong>At the International Symposium on Animal Mortality Management this past June, Cia Johnson, the head of the AVMA’s animal welfare division, said: “We need data from you … Even if it’s not published, if it’s a case report, if it’s proprietary data, if it’s unpublished data, the panel needs it. Some of these methods are at risk of leaving the guidelines. I think you probably have an idea of what those methods might be. We need data to support them staying in the document.” Johnson didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
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“This intrigues me: AVMA leadership actually put out calls for research to support ventilation shutdown. That’s not science. It’s not science when you have a bias at the beginning,” said James Reynolds, the Western University professor.<strong> </strong>“Their position is completely unreasonable. Not founded on reason, not founded on science.”
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<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A hen is seen inside a glass cage and hooked up to electrodes. She appears collapsed on her side and panting. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dsq_legabP_bbqKvBaaqPHdHwjY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24324065/Screen_Shot_2022_12_29_at_12.30.07_PM.png"/> <cite>Footage by North Carolina State University obtained by Animal Outlook via public records request.</cite>
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Screenshot from footage of 2016 ventilation shutdown experiments conducted at North Carolina State University, which are cited in AVMA guidelines.
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Heath and her allies aren’t giving up, despite the AVMA’s intransigence. In the fall, they gathered 278 signatures to submit yet another resolution to change ventilation shutdown plus’s<strong> </strong>status to “not recommended,” for the AVMA’s House of Delegates to vote on at its <a href="https://www.avma.org/about/house-delegates/hod-resolutions-and-proposed-bylaw-amendments">next meeting</a> this month. But the AVMA didn’t allow the resolution to move forward, citing procedural reasons.
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The AVMA declined an interview for this story, but said in a statement that it “believes animals should only be depopulated in emergency situations, and only after all other options are considered and found not to be viable … Alternatives are exhaustively sought, but when thousands to millions of animals are impacted by such emergencies, depopulation is sometimes the only option. In many cases, the method used to depopulate the animals is limited or dictated by the situation (e.g., containment to control disease spread, natural disaster, or other unprecedented urgent situation). Selecting a depopulation method often involves ‘least bad’ choices; however, failing to depopulate animals in a timely manner can lead to even worse suffering for those animals and/or pose unacceptable health and safety risks for the people who are caring for them.”
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Entrenched factory farming prevents vets from asking bigger ethical questions
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Even knowing how livestock veterinarians see their roles, it’s hard not to wonder how they can willingly inflict so much suffering on animals. One answer might be that they believe, or their vocation has convinced them to believe, that there’s no other choice. “Veterinarians are stretched way, way, way too thin, and are almost always inevitably overwhelmed with work,” Lisa Moses, the bioethicist from Harvard,<strong> </strong>said. “And that does not allow you to have the mental space to ask big-picture questions. You’re just trying to figure out how to get through terrible situations as best as you can.”
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Often in her advocacy, Heath said, livestock vets ask her: What else do you expect us to do? If meeting America’s demand for abundant cheap meat sometimes requires inflicting great suffering, their thinking goes, that’s the price we have to pay. “I personally believe [ventilation shutdown] is a compromise — a necessary compromise, and an unfortunate compromise,” poultry veterinarian Simon Shane, who criticized Heath and other opponents of VSD+ in a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nWbMK_t8sQ6QgbGVT83XCDGPi-bwIFUS/view">blog post</a>, told me. “People who have protested against ventilation shutdown should provide a viable alternative.”<strong> </strong>Pressed on whether not raising so many animals in intensive confinement could be a viable alternative, he replied, “I’m in the business of feeding people” and, later, “I really don’t want to get involved in a fruitless discussion on ethics and morality.”<strong> </strong>
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Other vets argue that instead of taking the American system of meat production for granted, the profession could actively challenge it. “If the only way to ensure that large swaths of our patients are not routinely killed by heatstroke is to put in place restrictions on CAFO [factory farm] size, then core principles of veterinary medical ethics, like the duties of beneficence and nonmaleficence, require that our profession advocate for such restrictions,” Reyes-Illg wrote in a letter to the AVMA on behalf of the Animal Welfare Institute in May.<strong> </strong>In June, at a continuing education <a href="https://whova.com/web/asce_202206/">course</a> held by the American College of Animal Welfare, Cia Johnson was<strong> </strong>asked whether the AVMA has considered studying ways to reduce the need to mass cull animals. “Not at this time,” she replied. <strong> </strong>
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The idea of cutting down meat production is a non-starter in the veterinary community, vets interviewed for this story agree, even though it’s considered a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7">necessary</a> part of addressing climate change and would surely be better for animals. When she took livestock medicine courses in vet school, Reyes-Illg said in an email, “The message I got was that pig vets had to work with industry somehow — there was never any mention that veterinarians might have a role in disrupting the ongoing expansion and intensification of animal agriculture.”
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Outside North America, veterinary groups often espouse a different philosophy. “At the British Veterinary Association, we encourage everyone to consider the environmental impact of their dietary choices and have long campaigned for a ‘less and better’ approach to consuming meat,” Justine Shotton, the British Veterinary Association’s then-president, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11151149/Should-vets-vegan-Nurse-argues-contradictory-treat.html">told</a> the Daily Mail last summer.
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This is the discussion that forward-thinking vets in the US dream of having. “If all the AVMA is doing is thinking about depopulation, then that’s all we’re going to get,” Heath said. “But the more the AVMA could put energy and thought into scaling down animal agriculture, then we have the possibility of moving things in the right direction.” For now, though, she and fellow animal advocates are laser-focused on ending the worst meat industry practices — on making the bad system we have a little less bad. She’s looking forward to the AVMA’s next conference this month, where she plans to keep starting conversations the AVMA would rather not have.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Kevin McCarthy’s once-in-a-century House speakership failure</strong> -
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W3dD9OAEJhzBE2ior1bN16nGBEg=/200x0:3667x2600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71819604/AP23003591553441a.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks after a closed-door meeting with the GOP Conference as he pursues the speaker of the House role as the 118th Congress convenes on January 3 in Washington, DC. | Alex Brandon/AP
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Republican Kevin McCarthy failed to become House speaker on the first ballot, something that hasn’t happened in a century.
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On Tuesday, the House of Representatives met to elect a new speaker and begin the 118th Congress. But after five hours and three separate ballots, they adjourned without a speaker being chosen and with members not yet officially sworn in. Despite winning the majority of votes, Republican <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/2022-midterms-kevin-mccarthy-is-the-man-in-the-maga-middle.html">Kevin McCarthy</a> was unable to muster the absolute majority constitutionally necessary to be elected speaker. It was the first time in a century that Congress required more than one ballot to elect a speaker.
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The California Republican faced a rebellion from the hard-right members of his conference who made a series of interlocking demands that mixed the political, the procedural, and the personal. While Democrats held united and voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries, Republican dissidents split their votes. Ten voted for Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/15/23458870/kevin-mccarthy-gop-majority-house-speaker">ran as a stalking horse opponent</a> against McCarthy in an internal ballot of the GOP conference in November. Nine scattered their votes for candidates like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL).
</p>
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The rebels were members of the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom had been loyal supporters of Donald Trump and backers of an uncompromising brand of conservative politics. While some had roots in a Tea Party brand of conservatism like Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), many were MAGA bomb throwers who have come to political prominence more recently, like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). However, not all of the three dozen or so members of the House Freedom Caucus members were opposed to McCarthy. Some, like Reps. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Jordan, have been vocal supporters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IE0oDw">
On the second ballot, the rebels consolidated around Jordan, despite the fact that the Ohio Republican gave a speech nominating McCarthy. All 19 anti-McCarthy Republicans voted for Jordan while all Democrats remained united around Jeffries, and McCarthy’s supporters stood by the California Republican. The margins remained almost unchanged on the third ballot, with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) voting for Jordan after supporting McCarthy on the first two ballots. This set the stage for a political impasse that is unprecedented in modern history. <strong> </strong>
</p>
<h3 id="BIcRI4">
What do McCarthy’s opponents want?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="twWqCI">
The short answer is less power for McCarthy and more power for the right wing of the House Republican Conference. Part of their demands include efforts to weaken the office of speaker generally and enable rank-and-file members of the House — and, in particular, rank-and-file members of the House GOP — to have more influence over legislation. In recent years, speakers from both parties have centralized more and more authority in their own hands. This has meant members have less opportunity to introduce amendments, that most key legislation is negotiated by leadership in both parties, and it is presented for a vote in a handful of comprehensive bills such as the 2022 social spending bill Democrats dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BhotRt">
They also want to increase their leverage on McCarthy. One key point of contention has been a procedural question called the “motion to vacate,” which allows for an up or down vote on whether the position of speaker should be declared vacant and a new vote held. This was used by Republican rebels in 2015 to force out then-Speaker John Boehner. At the time, any individual member could force a vote on this question. Boehner was managing a fractious House GOP conference then, albeit with a far larger majority than Republicans have now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WPXYlE">
Under House Democrats, the House rules were changed so that only party leaders could offer the motion. McCarthy’s critics want to return this precedent. With Republicans holding a nominal majority of five in the House, the motion to vacate threat functions as a sword hanging over any speaker. It means that a mere handful of Republicans would have the leverage to oust McCarthy from the speakership at any moment. Needless to say, McCarthy had been dead set against this. However, a recent offer he made to win critics was to lower the threshold to five for a motion to vacate. In other words, five members would have to jointly offer the motion to force a vote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9BUdfl">
But more than this, they also want to shape the GOP agenda with hard-right members on influential committees and guaranteed votes on priorities like term limits, a balanced budget, and border security. From their perspective, past Republican Congresses have failed to hold Democrats accountable. <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/matt-gaetz-gets-a-scandal-as-wild-as-him.html">Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)</a> told reporters before the vote, “Our position is that if Kevin McCarthy is the Speaker of the House, and we don’t have an ability to ensure that there is oomph behind the agenda and energy behind our oversight, [then not much else matters].” Gaetz went on, “I’m not here to participate in some puppet show where we pass a bunch of messaging bills, send them to the Senate, watch them die, fail to use leverage, and don’t hold the Biden administration accountable.”
</p>
<h3 id="phLCZm">
What does everyone else think?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vGoJSO">
Most rank-and-file Republicans are not happy. Speaking to reporters before the vote on Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) said of McCarthy’s critics, “[I]t was all about controlling the committees and trying to fundamentally put people in positions where they can raise more money. This has nothing to do with bettering our country.” She described those willing to vote against the Republican leader as “the radical 2 percent.” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) expressed frustration that this could delay Republicans from getting started trying to pass their agenda as well. “You really have to go out of the gates fast in that first quarter to have an effect … so there’s no time to waste right now.”
</p>
<h3 id="gKeogQ">
What happens now?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TXT1W6">
Speaking to reporters before the vote, McCarthy said, “I have the record for the longest speech ever on the floor. I don’t have a problem getting a record for the most votes [held in a speaker election].” The record is 133 rounds of voting, which were cast over two months in 1856 to pick a new speaker. As of now, with this many votes for someone else that would need to swing his way, it looks as though McCarthy has a chance at exceeding that distinction too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qjbbhk">
<em><strong>Update, January 3, 6 pm ET:</strong></em><em> This story has been updated with the result of the third ballot and adjournment.</em>
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Milli, Time and Rue St Honore’ show out</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Galahad, Shamrock, Philosophy, Siege Courageous, King Of War and Knight In Hooves catch the eye</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Lukshmi Vilas Palace Grounds to host the vintage and classic car show, the 21 Gun Salute International Concours d’Elegance, 2023</strong> - In a first, the prestigious 21 Gun Salute International Concours d’Elegance, 2023, a vintage and classic car show, moves to a new venue - The Lukshmi Vilas Palace Grounds in Vadodara</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>Aus vs SA 3rd Test | Aussies reign on gloomy Day 1, Proteas frustrated</strong> - The match is a dead rubber after Australia sealed the series with wins in Melbourne and Brisbane, but Pat Cummins's side can book their place in the World Test Championship final with another victory</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>Rishabh Pant set to be shifted to Mumbai for treatment of his ligament injury</strong> - Any sports-related injury diagnosis and prognosis for Rishabh Pant will be done by BCCI's list of doctors</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>Surge in casual contract of buses brings a fortune to KSRTC</strong> - Schools hiring buses for trips and political parties taking buses on rent for rallies helps Mysuru division earn ₹2.51 crore on December 31 alone; New Year rush and hiring of buses bring ₹1.70 crore on January 1</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala School Kalolsavam 2023: Make-up artistes, costume makers and jewellery dealers are back in business</strong> - After losing two full seasons due to COVID-19 pandemic, they have finally broken free from the lull</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>Police do not work under any pressure: Araga Jnanendra</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Workshop on organic farming</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch | Have you tried street food in Bengaluru’s Kammanahalli?</strong> - A video on street food in Bengaluru’s Kammanahalli</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>Makiivka: Russia blames missile attack on soldiers’ mobile phone use</strong> - Russia now says 89 soldiers were killed in the attack in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk region.</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>European weather: Winter heat records smashed all over continent</strong> - From Spain to Latvia, national and regional records for January are broken across the continent.</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>Makiivka: Russia points fingers after deadliest Ukraine attack</strong> - The deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers at Makiivka in Ukraine prompt recriminations in Russia.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season</strong> - World Cup skiers will race on artificial snow this Saturday as the Alps see record high temperatures.</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>Black Eyed Peas in Polish row over rainbow armbands</strong> - A minister brands the band’s “LGBT promotion” on Poland’s New Year’s Eve TV special a disgrace.</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>Key Bitcoin developer calls on FBI to recover $3.6M in digital coin</strong> - So much for enthusiasts championing the decentralization of cryptocurrencies. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1907434">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VW’s next electric car for the US is the ID.7 sedan</strong> - VW says it has listened to feedback and has improved the user experience. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1907195">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nvidia unveils a broad range of efficient new laptop GPUs, from RTX 4050 to 4090</strong> - Mobile RTX 4050 can supposedly beat an RTX 3070 with just one-third the power use. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1907374">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tale from the crypt: Researchers conduct “virtual autopsy” of mummified toddler</strong> - Remains were likely those of Reichard Wilhelm, who died after contracting pneumonia. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892136">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LG’s 2023 OLED TVs claim to boost brightness by up to 70%</strong> - LG’s brighter TVs come as Samsung Display’s QD-OLED is poised to hit 2,000 nits. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1907299">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>why didn’t 4 ask out 5?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Because 4 was 2²
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/yomommafool"> /u/yomommafool </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102f5eo/why_didnt_4_ask_out_5/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102f5eo/why_didnt_4_ask_out_5/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I want to know who has the best Chuck Norris Joke</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
My favourite: God took a rest on the 7th day, Chuck Norris took over
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Routine-Security-914"> /u/Routine-Security-914 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10300in/i_want_to_know_who_has_the_best_chuck_norris_joke/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10300in/i_want_to_know_who_has_the_best_chuck_norris_joke/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hi, I’m Buzz Aldrin. Second person to step on the moon.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Neil before me.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/heyandy1"> /u/heyandy1 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102hnh4/hi_im_buzz_aldrin_second_person_to_step_on_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102hnh4/hi_im_buzz_aldrin_second_person_to_step_on_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A beautiful woman went up to the bar in a quiet rural pub. She gestured alluringly to the bartender who approached her immediately.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The woman seductively signaled that he should bring his face closer to hers. As he did, she gently caressed his full beard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Are you the manager?” she asked, softly stroking his face with both hands. “Actually, no,” he replied. “Can you get him for me? I need to speak to him,” she said, running her hands beyond his beard and into his hair.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I’m afraid I can’t,” breathed the bartender. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes. I need for you to give him a message,” she continued, running her forefinger across the bartender’s lip and slyly popping a couple of her fingers into his mouth and allowing him to suck them gently.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“What should I tell him?” the flustered bartender managed to stammer.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Tell him,” she whispered, "There’s no toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels in the ladies room.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/yomommafool"> /u/yomommafool </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102faz6/a_beautiful_woman_went_up_to_the_bar_in_a_quiet/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102faz6/a_beautiful_woman_went_up_to_the_bar_in_a_quiet/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sperm Bank</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I paid a visit to the sperm bank last week, the lady asked if i could masturbate in the cup. I replied “I’m good but i don’t think i’m ready to compete in a tournament yet”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MrJamieC1975"> /u/MrJamieC1975 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102b7iu/sperm_bank/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/102b7iu/sperm_bank/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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