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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>Enteric adenovirus F41 genetic diversity comparable to pre-COVID-19 era: validation of a multiplex amplicon-MinION sequencing method</strong> -
<div>
Human adenovirus F41 causes acute gastroenteritis in children, and has recently been associated with an apparent increase in paediatric hepatitis of unknown aetiology in the UK, with further cases reported in multiple countries. Relatively little is known about the genetic diversity of adenovirus F41 in otherwise-healthy individuals; and it is unclear what, if any, impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on viral diversity in the UK. Methods that allow F41 to be sequenced from clinical samples without the need for viral culture are required to provide the genomic data to address these questions. We therefore evaluated an overlapping-amplicon method of sequencing adenovirus genomes from clinical samples using Oxford Nanopore technology. We applied this method to a small sample of adenovirus species F-positive extracts collected as part of standard care in the East of England region in January-May 2022. This method produced genomes with &gt;75% coverage in 13/22 samples and &gt;50% coverage in 19/22 samples. We identified two F41 lineages present in paediatric patients in East of England in 2022. Where F41 genomes from paediatric hepatitis cases were available (n=2), these genomes fell within the diversity of F41 from the UK and continental Europe sequenced before and after the 2020-21 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analyses suggest that overlapping amplicon sequencing is an appropriate method for generating F41 genomic data from high virus load clinical samples, and currently circulating F41 viral lineages were present in the UK and Europe before the COVID-19 pandemic.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/6jku5/" target="_blank">Enteric adenovirus F41 genetic diversity comparable to pre-COVID-19 era: validation of a multiplex amplicon-MinION sequencing method</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Longitudinal analyses after COVID-19 recovery or prolonged infection reveal unique immunological signatures after repeated vaccinations</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: To strategically develop preventive and therapeutic measures against coronavirus disease 2019 and its causative virus, SARS-CoV-2, it is critical to fully characterize immune response and sustained immune activation following viral infection and vaccination. However, the mechanisms controlling intrapersonal variation in antibody titers against SARS-CoV-2 antigens remain unclear. To gain further insights into how we can optimize therapeutic and preventive care, we performed a robust molecular and cellular investigation of immune responses in infected, recovered, and vaccinated individuals. Methods: We evaluated the expression of 29 cytokines and assessed their correlation with neutralizing potency. We further investigated memory B-cell response in patients infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain or other variants of concern, and in vaccinated individuals. Results: Correlation analyses showed that the relationship between neutralizing activity and cytokine expression differed according to disease severity and viral strain. Furthermore, long-term longitudinal analyses revealed that post-vaccination neutralizing potential was more strongly associated with various cytokine expression levels in recovered patients than in naive individuals. Notably, we found a similar distribution of virus-specific antibody gene families in triple-vaccinated individuals and a patient with COVID-19 pneumonia for one year. Conclusion: Our results showed that distinct immune responses occur depending on the viral strain suggesting that therapeutic options should be selected on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, longitudinal analyses revealed biomarker candidates that correlated with repeated vaccination that may be applicable to therapies regulating specific immune responses and novel monoclonal antibodies.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.03.22278353v1" target="_blank">Longitudinal analyses after COVID-19 recovery or prolonged infection reveal unique immunological signatures after repeated vaccinations</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Real-life evaluation of a rapid antigen test (DPP SARS-CoV-2 Antigen) for COVID-19 diagnosis of primary healthcare patients, in the context of the Omicron-dominant wave in Brazil</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Rapid antigen tests play an important role in the monitoring and mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it provides an easy, fast and efficient diagnosis with minimum infrastructure requirements. However, as new variants of concern continue to emerge, mutations in the virus genome may impair the recognition of the mutated antigen by the tests. Therefore, it is essential to re-assess the test9s sensitivity as the virus mutation profile undergoes significant changes. Here, we prospectively accessed the performance of the DPP SARS-CoV-2 Antigen test in the context of an omicron-dominant real-life setting. We evaluated 347 unselected individuals (all-comers) from a public testing center in Brazil, performing the rapid antigen test diagnosis at point-of-care with fresh samples. The combinatory result from two distinct RT-qPCR methods was employed as reference and 13 samples with discordant PCR results were excluded. The assessment of the rapid test in 67 PCR-positive and 265 negative samples revealed an overall sensitivity of 80.5%, specificity of 99.2% and positive/negative predictive values higher than 95%. However, we observed that the sensitivity was dependent on the viral load (sensitivity in Ct&lt;31 = 93.7%; Ct&gt;31 = 47.4%). Furthermore, we were able to confirm that the positive samples evaluated in the study were Omicron (BA.1/BA.1.1) by whole-genome sequencing (n=40) and multiplex RT-qPCR (n=17). Altogether, the data obtained from a real-life prospective cohort supports that the rapid antigen test sensitivity for the Omicron remains high and underscores the reliability of the test for COVID-19 diagnosis in a setting with high disease prevalence and limited PCR testing capability.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278277v1" target="_blank">Real-life evaluation of a rapid antigen test (DPP SARS-CoV-2 Antigen) for COVID-19 diagnosis of primary healthcare patients, in the context of the Omicron-dominant wave in Brazil</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Nano assembly of plasmonic probe-virus particles enabled rapid and ultrasensitive point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 detection</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The current COVID-19 global pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) coronavirus has become a major public health concern. The ability to identify the presence of virus in infected hosts with sufficient speed and sensitivity is critical to control the epidemic timely. Here, we use self-assembly of arrayed gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on the coronavirus which we call the plasmo-virus particle, to achieve a rapid, sensitive, sample preparation-free assay enabling direct detection of SARS-CoV-2 in a point-of-care (POC) setting. The AuNPs of the plasmo-virus particle serve as plasmonic nanoprobes that specifically bind to the spike protein (S-protein) sites on the surface of SARS-CoV-2. Optical interactions between the self-assembled plasmonic nanoprobes generate multiple modes of highly enhanced plasmonic coupling. Measuring changes of the multimode plasmonic coupling-induced extinction peaks allows for quantifying SARS-CoV-2 at low titers with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.4 x 10^1 pfu/mL. Using a miniaturized standalone biochip reading device, we further demonstrate the nano assembly assay for smartphone-operated SARS-CoV-2 detection for viral transport medium (VTM) samples within 10 min without any sample purification steps. We anticipate that the high sensitivity and speed of the POC detection performance of this biosensor technology could be broadly accepted for timely personalized diagnostics of infectious agents under low-resource settings.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.01.22278286v1" target="_blank">Nano assembly of plasmonic probe-virus particles enabled rapid and ultrasensitive point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 detection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Effects of allocation concealment and blinding in trials addressing treatments for COVID-19: A methods study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective: Assess the impact of allocation concealment and blinding on the results of trials addressing COVID-19 therapeutics. Data sources: World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 database and the Living Overview of the Evidence (L-OVE) COVID-19 platform by the Epistemonikos Foundation (up to February 4th 2022) Methods: We included trials that compared drug treatments, antiviral antibodies and cellular therapies with placebo or standard care. For the five most commonly reported outcomes, if sufficient data were available, we performed random-effects meta-regression comparing the results of trials with and without allocation concealment and trials in which both healthcare providers and patients were blinded with trials in which healthcare providers and/or patients were aware of the intervention. A ratio of odds ratios (ROR) &gt; 1 or a difference in mean difference (DMD) &gt; 0 indicates that trials without allocation concealment or open-label trials produced larger effects than trials with allocation concealment or blinded trials. Results: As of February 4th 2022, we have identified 488 trials addressing COVID-19 drug treatments and antiviral antibodies and cellular therapies. Of these, 436 trials reported on one or more of our outcomes of interest and were included in our analyses. We found that trials without allocation concealment probably overestimate mortality (ROR 1.14 [95% CI 0.92 to 1.41]), need for mechanical ventilation (ROR 1.26 [95% CI 0.97 to 1.64]), admission to hospital (ROR 1.93 [95% CI 0.83 to 4.48]), duration of hospitalization (DMD 1.94 [95% CI 0.86 to 3.02]), and duration of mechanical ventilation (DMD 2.64 [95% CI -0.90 to 6.18]), but results were imprecise. We did not find compelling evidence that double-blind and open-label trials produce consistently different results for mortality (ROR 1.00 [95% CI 0.87 to 1.15]), need for mechanical ventilation (ROR 1.03 [95% CI 0.84 to 1.26]), and duration of hospitalization (DMD 0.47 days [95% CI -0.38 to 1.32]). We found that open-label trials may overestimate the beneficial effects of interventions for hospitalizations (ROR 1.87 [95% CI 0.95 to 3.67] and duration of mechanical ventilation (DMD 1.02 days [95% CI -1.30 to 3.35]), but results were imprecise. Conclusion: We found compelling evidence that, compared to trials with allocation concealment, trials without allocation concealment may overestimate the beneficial effects of treatments. We did not find evidence that trials without blinding addressing COVID-19 interventions produce consistently different results from trials with blinding. Our results suggest that consideration of blinding status may not be sufficient to judge risk of bias due to imbalances in co-interventions. Evidence users may consider evidence of differences in co-interventions between trial arms when judging the trustworthiness of open-label trials. We suggest, however, evidence users to remain skeptical of trials without allocation concealment.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.03.22278348v1" target="_blank">Effects of allocation concealment and blinding in trials addressing treatments for COVID-19: A methods study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Real-world uptake of COVID-19 vaccination among individuals expressing vaccine hesitancy: a registry-linkage study</strong> -
<div>
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Background: Uptake of COVID-19 vaccination remains suboptimal in the United States and other settings. Though early reports indicated that a strong majority of people were interested in receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the association between vaccine intention and uptake is not yet fully understood. Methods: During 24 February-5 December 2021, we enrolled California residents receiving molecular tests for SARS-CoV-2 infection who had not yet received any COVID-19 vaccine doses. Unvaccinated participants provided information on their intentions to receive COVID-19 vaccination in a telephone-administered survey. We matched study participants with a state-wide immunization registry and fit a Cox proportional hazards model comparing time to vaccination among those unvaccinated at study enrollment by vaccination intention (willing, unsure, or unwilling). Findings: Among 864 participants who were unvaccinated at the time of interview, 272 (31%) had documentation of receipt of COVID-19 vaccination later; including 194/423 (45.9%) who had initially reported being willing to receive vaccination, 41/185 (22.2%) who reported being unsure about vaccination, and 37/278 (13.3%) who reported unwillingness to receive vaccination. Adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for registry-confirmed COVID-19 vaccination were 0.49 (95% confidence interval: 0.32-0.76) and 0.21 (0.12-0.36) for participants expressing uncertainty and unwillingness to receive vaccination, respectively, as compared with participants who reported being willing to receive vaccination. Time to vaccination was shorter among participants from higher-income households (aHR 3.30 [2.02-5.39]) and who reported co-morbidities or immunocompromising conditions (aHR 1.54 [1.01-2.36]); time to vaccination was longer among participants who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection (aHR 0.60 [0.43-0.84]). Sensitivity of self-reported COVID-19 vaccination status was 82% (80-85%) overall, and 98% (97-99%) among those referencing vaccination records; specificity was 87% (86-89%). Interpretation: Reported willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccination was an imperfect predictor of real-world vaccine receipt. Improving messaging about the importance of COVID-19 vaccination, regardless of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection status, may improve vaccine uptake among populations who express hesitancy to initiate vaccination.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278300v1" target="_blank">Real-world uptake of COVID-19 vaccination among individuals expressing vaccine hesitancy: a registry-linkage study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Immune response against SARS-CoV-2 of primary healthcare personnel in a commune of Santiago, Chile: follow-up at 6 months.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, spread rapidly around the world with almost 600 million cases and 6.3 million deaths today. The most affected were health workers with at least three times the risk of contracting the disease than the general community. Most studies on seroprevalence in health workers focus on hospital care establishments and what happens in Primary Health Care (PHC) has not been investigated with the same intensity. Objectives: to determine the prevalence and know the variation of antibody titers for SARS-CoV-2 in serial samples of primary healthcare personnel from the commune of La Pintana. Method: an analytical observational study with a cross-sectional and a longitudinal component, carried out from November 2020 to June 2021. The first component consisted of an IgG antibody seroprevalence study performed at baseline (time 0) in volunteer of a universe of 900 workers. The longitudinal component considered the monitoring of IgG antibodies in those who presented a positive result at baseline and the analysis of neutralizing antibodies in a random sub-sample of 50% of them. Additionally, sociodemographic and clinical information was collected via a questionnaire. Univariate, bivariate, and longitudinal analyses were performed to evaluate differences in antibodies. The study was approved by the Universidad del Desarrollo9s Scientific Ethics Committee. Results: 463 primary healthcare workers participated, mostly women and with a median of 38 years; doctors and nurses represented 9.5% each and 14.7% had a history of COVID-19. The seroprevalence at baseline was 22.3% and was associated with younger age, being a doctor and having been in close contact of a case. IgG titers increased with the vaccine, but decreased over time. At the 6-month follow-up, 76% had neutralizing antibodies. Those belonging to indigenous peoples had higher IgG levels and higher rates of neutralizing antibodies. Conclusion: Healthcare workers were highly affected by COVID-19, and the medical profession and younger age were factors associated with increased risk. Antibodies decrease over time, highlighting the importance of follow-up studies, as well as the importance of vaccination boosters in healthcare workers, especially those in PHC.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.03.22278369v1" target="_blank">Immune response against SARS-CoV-2 of primary healthcare personnel in a commune of Santiago, Chile: follow-up at 6 months.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 convalescent plasma for the treatment of immunocompromised patients: a systematic review.</strong> -
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Immunosuppressed patients have increased risk for morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 because they less frequently mount antibody responses to vaccines and often cannot tolerate small-molecule antivirals. The Omicron variant of concern of SARS-CoV-2 has progressively defeated anti-Spike mAbs authorized so far, paving the way to a return to COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) therapy. In this systematic review we performed a metanalysis of 6 controlled studies (including 2 randomized controlled trials; totaling 368 treated patients and 1119 control), an individual patient data analysis of 125 case reports/series (totaling 265 patients), and a descriptive analysis of 13 uncontrolled large case series without individual patient data available (totaling 358 patients). The metanalysis showed a risk ratio for mortality of 0.61 in treatment with CCP versus standard of care for immunosuppressed COVID-19 patients. On the basis of this evidence, we encourage initiation of high-titer CCP from vaccinees (hybrid plasma) in immunocompromised patients.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.03.22278359v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 convalescent plasma for the treatment of immunocompromised patients: a systematic review.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Prediction, scanning and designing of TNF-α inducing epitopes for human and mouse</strong> -
<div>
Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-) is a pleiotropic pro-inflammatory cytokine that plays a crucial role in controlling signaling pathways within the immune cells. Recent studies reported that the higher expression levels of TNF- is associated with the progression of several diseases including cancers, cytokine release syndrome in COVID-19 and autoimmune disorders. Thus, it is the need of the hour to develop immunotherapies or subunit vaccines to manage TNF- progression in various disease conditions. In the pilot study, we have proposed a host-specific in-silico tool for the prediction, designing and scanning of TNF- inducing epitopes. The prediction models were trained and validated on the experimentally validated TNF- inducing/non-inducing for human and mouse hosts. Firstly, we developed alignment free (machine learning based models using composition of peptides) methods for predicting TNF- inducing peptides and achieved maximum AUROC of 0.79 and 0.74 for human and mouse hosts, respectively. Secondly, alignment based (using BLAST) method has been used for predicting TNF- inducing epitopes. Finally, a hybrid method (combination of alignment free and alignment-based method) has been developed for predicting epitopes. Our hybrid method achieved maximum AUROC of 0.83 and 0.77 on an independent dataset for human and mouse hosts, respectively. We have also identified the potential TNF- inducing peptides in different proteins of HIV-1, HIV-2, SARS-CoV-2 and human insulin. Best models developed in this study has been incorporated in a webserver TNFepitope (https://webs.iiitd.edu.in/raghava/tnfepitope/), standalone package and GitLab (https://gitlab.com/raghavalab/tnfepitope).
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.502430v1" target="_blank">Prediction, scanning and designing of TNF-α inducing epitopes for human and mouse</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Geospatial disparities in federal COVID-19 test-to-treat program</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Paxlovid is authorized for the treatment of COVID-19 and must be used within the first 5 days of symptom onset. This limited window for initiating treatment makes rapid access critical. Federal Test-to-Treat programs provide tests, prescriptions, and medication in one visit3. Objective: The objective of this study was to map the location of and identify disparities in access to Test-to-Treat programs in the United States (U.S.). Methods: We obtained location data for public providers of Paxlovid and Test-to-Treat programs in the contiguous U.S. and examined their spatial distribution at the zip code tabulation area level. We defined zip codes as underserved if there was no Test-to-Treat program located within the zip code or within 20 miles of its boundaries. Results: More than 52,000,000 people, representing 16% of the continental U.S. population, do not have access to a Test-to-Treat program in their zip code or within 20 miles. The majority of zip codes representing metropolitan areas have a Test-to-Treat program within 20 miles (77%). In contrast, only 30% of small towns and 23% of rural areas have nearby access. Zip codes with a high proportion of Hispanic and Black residents were likely to have access to nearby Test-to-Treat programs (72%, 70%). In contrast, zip codes with a high proportion of Native American residents were likely to be underserved (70%). About half of high-poverty zip codes do not have access to a Test-to-Treat program within 20 miles. Discussion: Disparities in outcomes related to COVID-19 have been apparent since the beginning of the pandemic and continue to grow. While the multi-dimensional measure of social vulnerability was used to expand the federal Test-to-Treat program, some populations remain without access.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278349v1" target="_blank">Geospatial disparities in federal COVID-19 test-to-treat program</a>
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<li><strong>Fast and accurate maximum-likelihood estimation of Birth-Death Exposed-Infectious epidemiological model from phylogenetic trees</strong> -
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The birth-death exposed-infectious (BDEI) model describes the transmission of pathogens featuring an incubation period (when the host is already infected but not yet infectious), for example Ebola and SARS-CoV-2. In a phylodynamics framework, it serves to infer such epidemiological parameters as the basic reproduction number R0, the incubation period and the infectious time from a phylogenetic tree (a genealogy of pathogen sequences). With constantly growing sequencing data, the BDEI model should be extremely useful for unravelling information on pathogen epidemics. However, existing implementations of this model in a phylodynamic framework have not yet caught up with the sequencing speed. While the accuracy of estimations should increase with data set size, existing BDEI implementations are limited to medium data sets of up to 500 samples, for both computing time and numerical instability reasons. We improve accuracy and drastically reduce computing time for the BDEI model by rewriting its differential equations in a highly parallelizable way, and by using a combination of numerical analysis methods for their efficient resolution. Our implementation takes one minute on a phylogenetic tree of 10 000 samples. We compare our parameter estimator to the existing implementations on simulated data. Results show that we are not only much faster (50 000 times), but also more accurate. An application of our method to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra-Leone is also convincing, with very fast calculation and precise estimates. Our BDEI estimator should become an important tool for routine epidemiological surveillance. It is available at github.com/evolbioinfo/BDEI.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278328v1" target="_blank">Fast and accurate maximum-likelihood estimation of Birth-Death Exposed-Infectious epidemiological model from phylogenetic trees</a>
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<li><strong>The health impact of long COVID during the 2021-2022 Omicron wave in Australia: a quantitative burden of disease study</strong> -
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Objectives To quantify the morbidity impact of long COVID in Australia during the 2021-2022 Omicron wave in comparison to acute COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, and to other causes of morbidity and mortality in Australia. Design Burden of disease study using inputs from previously published population-based case-control, cross-sectional, or cohort studies. Setting Australia Participants People with symptomatic COVID-19 infection from 10/12/21 to 09/04/22. Main outcomes measured Years lived with disability (YLDs) from acute COVID-19 and long COVID measured as the product of the prevalence, duration and severity of each long COVID symptom determined from existing literature, summed across all long COVID symptoms and applied to the population of COVID-19 surviving cases in Australia during the 2021-2022 Omicron wave. Additionally, acute COVID YLDs and years of life lost from COVID deaths were estimated to generate total COVID-19 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Results During the Omicron wave in Australia, 5,300 (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 2,200-8,400) YLDs were attributable to long COVID, accounting for 74% of the overall YLDs from COVID-19 infections in this period. The overall DALYs due to COVID-19 in this four-month period were 51,000 (95% UI 21,000-80,900), comprising 2.4% of total DALYs. This is comparable to the health loss caused by dementia and drug use disorders. Conclusion Long COVID requires consideration in pandemic policy planning given it is responsible for the majority of the total morbidity loss from COVID-19, even during an Omicron wave in a highly vaccinated population. Further research into the symptom profile and duration of long COVID following Omicron infection, and more robust severity measurement, will allow for more accurate estimation of long COVID morbidity.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.01.22278219v1" target="_blank">The health impact of long COVID during the 2021-2022 Omicron wave in Australia: a quantitative burden of disease study</a>
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<li><strong>COVID-19 illness, SARS-CoV2 infection, and subsequent suicidal ideation in the French nationwide population-based EpiCov cohort : a propensity score analysis of more than 50,000 individuals.</strong> -
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Symptomatic COVID-19 appears to be associated with suicidal ideation but longitudinal evidence is still scarce. SARS-CoV2-induced neurological damages might underline this association, but findings are inconsistent. We therefore investigated the association between COVID-19 disease and subsequent suicidal ideation in the general population, using both self-reported symptoms and serology as well as inverse probability weighting to draw as near as possible to the direct association. Using data from the nationwide French EpiCov cohort, COVID-19 disease was assessed through 1) COVID-19 illness (self-reported symptoms of sudden loss of taste/smell or fever alongside cough, shortness of breath or chest oppression, between February and November 2020), and 2) SARS-CoV2 infection (Spike protein ELISA test screening in dried-blood-spot samples). Suicidal ideation was self-reported between December 2020 and July 2021. Inverse probability weighting with propensity scores was used as an adjustment strategy, leading to balanced sociodemographic and health-related factors between the exposed and non-exposed groups of both COVID-19 disease measures. Then, modified Poisson regression models were used to investigate the association of COVID-19 illness and SARS-CoV2 infection with subsequent suicidal ideation. Among 52,050 participants from the EpiCov cohort, 1.68% [1.54%-1.82%] reported suicidal ideation in the first half of 2021, 9.57% [9.24%-9.90%] had a SARS-CoV2 infection in 2020 and 13.23% [12.86%-13.61%] reported COVID-19 symptoms in 2020. COVID-19 illness in 2020 was associated with higher risks of subsequent suicidal ideation in the first half of 2021 (Relative Riskipw [CI95%]= 1.43 [1.20-1.69]) while SARS-CoV2 infection in 2020 was not (RRipw = 0.88 [0.69-1.12]). If COVID-19 illness was associated with subsequent suicidal ideation, the exact role of SARS-CoV2 infection with respect to suicide risk has yet to be clarified. Psychological support should be offered to persons recovering from symptomatic COVID-19 in order to minimize suicidal ideation risk. Moreover, if such psychological support is to be implemented, serology status alone does not seem a relevant criterion to define persons who suffered from COVID-19 to prioritize.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278311v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 illness, SARS-CoV2 infection, and subsequent suicidal ideation in the French nationwide population-based EpiCov cohort : a propensity score analysis of more than 50,000 individuals.</a>
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<li><strong>Healthcare workers’ worries and Monkeypox vaccine advocacy during the first month of the WHO Monkeypox alert: Cross-sectional survey in Saudi Arabia</strong> -
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Background: Monkeypox virus re-surged in May 2022 as a new potential global health threat with outbreaks bursting in multiple countries across different continents. This study was conducted during the first month of the WHO announcement to assess the healthcare workers (HCWs) within Saudi Arabia, exploring their perception, worries, and vaccine acceptance for Monkeypox in-line with the resolving COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A national cross-sectional survey was conducted between May 27 and June 10, 2022, in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected on the sociodemographic and job-related characteristics, COVID-19 infection status, HCWs9 worry levels of Monkeypox compared to COVID-19 and its sources, their perceptions, awareness, and HCWs9 Monkeypox vaccination advocacy. Results: Among the 1130 HCWs who completed survey, 41.6% already developed COVID-19. Still, 56.5% were more worried from COVID-19 compared to Monkeypox, while the rest were more worried of Monkeypox disease. The main reason for their worry among 68.8% of the participants was development of another worldwide pandemic post COVID-19, followed by their worry of acquiring the infection themselves or their families (49.6%). Most HCWs (60%) rated their self-awareness of Monkeypox disease as moderate to high. Males and those who previously developed COVID-19 were significantly less likely to worry about Monkeypox. The worry about Monkeypox developing into a pandemic and the perception of Monkeypox being a severe disease correlated significantly positively with the odds of high worry from the disease. Regarding participants9 advocacy for HCWs9 vaccination against Monkeypox disease, those who developed COVID-19 previously and those who supported application of tighter infection control measures compared to the current ones to combat the disease were significantly predicted to agree for vaccination. 74.2% of the surveyed HCWs perceived that they need to read more about the Monkeypox disease after the survey. Conclusion: During the first month of the WHO9s Monkeypox international alert, about half of HCWs in this study were more worried about Monkeypox disease as compared to COVID-19, and its possible progression into another pandemic. In addition, the majority were in favor of applying tighter infection prevention measures to combat the disease. The current study highlights areas needed for healthcare administrative about the HCWs9 perceptions and readiness for Monkeypox especially in the event of any occurrence of local or international pandemic.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278317v1" target="_blank">Healthcare workers’ worries and Monkeypox vaccine advocacy during the first month of the WHO Monkeypox alert: Cross-sectional survey in Saudi Arabia</a>
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<li><strong>An integrated epidemiologic and economic model to assess optimal COVID-19 pandemic policy</strong> -
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Background Identifying optimal COVID-19 policies is challenging. For Victoria, Australia (6.6 million people), we ranked 44 policy packages (two levels of stringency of public health and social measures [PHSMs]; providing respirators during infection surges; 11 vaccination schedules of current and next-generation vaccines) in the context of 64 future SARS-CoV-2 variants (combinations of transmissibility, virulence, immune escape, and incursion date). Methods We used an agent-based model to estimate morbidity, mortality, and costs over 18 months from 1 April 2022 for each scenario. Policies were ranked on cost-effectiveness (health system only and health system plus GDP perspectives), deaths and days exceeding hospital occupancy thresholds. Findings The median number of infections across the 44 policies was 6.2 million (range 5.4 to 7.1 million). Higher stringency PHSMs ranked better from a health system perspective, but not a health system plus GDP perspective. The provision of respirators to replace surgical/cloth masks had minimal impact. Vaccinating all ages was superior to nil further vaccination and targeted vaccination of individuals aged ≥60 years. Averaging over 64 future SARS-CoV-2 variant scenarios the optimal policy was a multivalent vaccine for all age groups with higher stringency PHSMs and no respirator provision. For the SARS-CoV-2 variant scenario approximating recent BA.4/5, Omicron-targeted vaccines were more likely optimal even with a three-month delay compared to boosting with current-generation vaccines. Interpretation Modelling that accommodates future scenarios with uncertainty, and that can be rapidly updated as new data arises, can provide a framework for pandemic decision making.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.01.22278262v2" target="_blank">An integrated epidemiologic and economic model to assess optimal COVID-19 pandemic policy</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>Puerto Rico COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Study</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Educational intervention<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Puerto Rico;   National Institutes of Health (NIH);   National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)<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>A Study to Learn About a New COVID-19 RNA Vaccine Candidate as a Booster Dose in COVID-19 Vaccine-Experienced Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: BNT162b5 Bivalent (WT/OMI BA.2);   Biological: BNT162b2 Bivalent (WT/OMI BA.1)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   BioNTech SE;   Pfizer<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>Monitoring the Efficacy of a Probiotic Dietary Supplement SmartProbio C in Patients With Severe COVID-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Dietary Supplement: SmartProbio C;   Dietary Supplement: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Medi Pharma Vision;   Veterinary Research Institute;   Brno University Hospital<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>An Observer-blind, Cohort Randomized, Exploratory Phase 3 Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of Recombinant Covid-19 Vaccine, mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine and Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Trimeric S-protein Subunit Vaccine as 4th Dose in Individuals Primed/ Boosted With Various Regimens</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AstraZeneca/Fiocruz;   Biological: Pfizer/Wyeth;   Biological: Clover SCB-2019<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   D’Or Institute for Research and Education;   Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;   University of Oxford<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>Effect of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program on Post Hospitalization Severe COVID- 19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Combination Product: respiratory exercises - incentive spirometer - walking<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Fayoum University Hospital<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>Physiotherapy in Post COVID-19 Syndrome Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Cognitive behavioral principles-based treatment program;   Other: Control intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad de Granada<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>Rehabilitation for People With Post COVID-19 Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Multidimensional intervention;   Other: Control intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad de Granada<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>rSIFN-co Among Healthy Subjects and Subjects With Mild or Asymptomatic COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: rSIFN-co Nasal Spray;   Drug: Placebo Nasal Spray<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sichuan Huiyang Life Science and Technology Corporation<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>A CHW Intervention to Identify and Decrease Barriers to COVID 19 Testing &amp; Vaccination</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Vaccine Hesitancy;   COVID-19 Testing;   Community Health Workers<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Community Health Worker led curriculum<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science;   Los Angeles County Department of Public Health;   National Library of Medicine (NLM)<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>Study to Evaluate Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 Vaccine in Children 6 Months to &lt; 12 Years</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Biological/Vaccine: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Initial Vaccination Period);   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Open Label Crossover Vaccination period);   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Booster Vaccination);   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<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>Lollipop COVID-19 Testing Study</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS CoV 2 Infection;   COVID-19 Pandemic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Lollipop Swab<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Wisconsin, Madison<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>SWITCH ON: Analysing the Immunogenicity of Additional Booster Vaccinations in HCW</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid-19 Vaccination<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Direct boost mRNA;   Drug: Direct boost adeno;   Drug: Post-poned boost mRNA;   Drug: Post-poned boost adeno<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Erasmus Medical Center;   ZonMw (Funding organisation, The Hague, The Netherlands);   LUMC, University Hospital (Leiden, The Netherlands);   UMCG, University Hospital (Groningen, The Netherlands);   AUMC, University Hospital (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety of BBIBP-Cov Coadministered With PPV23 and IIV4 in Hemodialysis Population</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Hemolysis;   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: coadministration;   Biological: COVID-19 vaccine;   Biological: IIV4+PPV23<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   China National Biotec Group Company Limited;   Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention;   Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention;   Guizhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention;   Xiangya Hospital of Central South University;   Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd.;   Chengdu Institute of Biological Products Co.,Ltd.;   Shanghai Institute Of Biological Products<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety and Immunogenicity Study of a Booster Dose of the Investigational CV0501 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adults at Least 18 Years Old</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: CV0501 (3 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (6 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (12 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (25 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (50 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (75 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (100 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (150 μg);   Biological: CV0501 (200 μg)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   GlaxoSmithKline<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 Distraction Methods On Fear And Anxiety In Children Before The Covid 19 Test</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Anxiety;   Fear<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: The Kaleidescope;   Behavioral: The visual illusion cards<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Ondokuz Mayıs University<br/><b>Completed</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>Ursolic acid and SARS-CoV-2 infection: a new horizon and perspective</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2) has been identified as the source of a world coronavirus pandemic in 2019. Covid-19 is considered a main respiratory disease-causing viral pneumonia and, in severe cases, leads to acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although, extrapulmonary manifestations of Covid-19 like neurological, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal have been confirmed. Exaggerated immune response and release of a high…</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>Peptidic defective interfering gene nanoparticles against Omicron, Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants and influenza A virus in vivo</strong> - Defective interfering genes (DIGs) are short viral genomes and interfere with wild-type viral replication. Here, we demonstrate that the new designed SARS-CoV-2 DIG (CD3600) can significantly inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 including Alpha, Delta, Kappa and Omicron variants in human HK-2 cells and influenza DIG (PAD4) can significantly inhibit influenza virus replication in human A549 cells. One dose of influenza DIGs prophylactically protects 90% mice from lethal challenge of A(H1N1)pdm09…</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>Coronaviruses exploit a host cysteine-aspartic protease for replication</strong> - Highly pathogenic coronaviruses including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)^(1,2), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)³, and SARS-CoV-1⁴ vary in their transmissibility and pathogenicity. However, infection by all three viruses results in substantial apoptosis in cell culture^(5-7) and in patient tissues^(8-10), suggesting a potential link between apoptosis and pathogenesis of coronaviruses. Here we show that a cysteine-aspartic protease of 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>Mast cells promote viral entry of SARS-CoV-2 via formation of chymase/spike protein complex</strong> - The pulmonary pathological findings associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) result from the release of multiple proinflammatory cytokines, which causes the subsequential damage of the lungs. The current study was undertaken to investigate the responses of mast cells to viral inoculation and their contribution to host defenses from the point of view of viral entry. Pseudovirions, in which the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 was incorporated, triggered…</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>Fatty Acid Synthase inhibitor TVB-3166 prevents S-acylation of the Spike protein of human coronaviruses</strong> - The Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses mediates host cell entry and is S-acylated on multiple phylogenetically conserved cysteine residues. Multiple protein acyltransferase enzymes have been reported to post-translationally modify Spike proteins; however, strategies to exploit this modification are currently lacking. Using resin-assisted capture mass spectrometry, we demonstrate here the Spike protein is S-acylated in SARS-CoV-2-infected human and monkey cells. We further show…</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>Cell surface SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein modulates innate and adaptive immunity</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein (N) induces strong antibody (Ab) and T cell responses. Although considered to be localized in the cytosol, we readily detect N on the surface of live cells. N released by SARS-CoV-2-infected cells or N-expressing transfected cells binds to neighboring cells by electrostatic high-affinity binding to heparan sulfate and heparin, but not other sulfated glycosaminoglycans. N binds with high affinity to 11 human chemokines, including CXCL12β, whose chemotaxis of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Exploration of Novel Lichen Compounds as Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro: Ligand-Based Design, Molecular Dynamics, and ADMET Analyses</strong> - In the year 2019-2020, the whole world witnessed the spread of a disease called COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2. A number of effective drugs and vaccine has been formulated to combat this outbreak. For the development of anti-COVID-19 drugs, the main protease (Mpro) is considered a key target as it has rare mutations and plays a crucial role in the replication of the SARS CoV-2. In this study, a library of selected lichen compounds was prepared and used for virtual screening against SARS-CoV-2…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PEDOT:PSS in Solution Form Exhibits Strong Potential in Inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 Infection of the Host Cells by Targeting Viruses and Also the Host Cells</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a global pandemic with over 5 million fatalities. Vaccines against this virus have been globally administered; however, SARS-CoV-2 variants with spike protein mutations are continuously identified with strong capability to escape vaccine-elicited protection. Due to the high mutation rate and transmission ability, the development of a broad-spectrum SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor is highly in demand. In this study, the effect of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rational design of AAVrh10-vectored ACE2 functional domain to broadly block the cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 variants</strong> - The frequently emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants have weakened the effectiveness of existing COVID-19 vaccines and neutralizing antibody therapy. Nevertheless, the infections of SARS-CoV-2 variants still depend on angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor-mediated cell entry, and thus the soluble human ACE2 (shACE2) is a potential decoy for broadly blocking SARS-CoV-2 variants. In this study, we firstly generated the recombinant AAVrh10-vectored shACE2 constructs, a kind of adeno-associated…</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 protective effect of xanthenone against LPS-induced COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) by modulating the ACE2/Ang-1-7 signaling pathway</strong> - OBJECTIVE: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is an inflammatory lung disease that has a high rate of morbidity and mortality. It’s an acute diffusive lung injury caused by the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines into the lungs. Specific microRNAs have been identified to play a crucial role in the renin-angiotensin system signaling pathways the main pathophysiological pathway responsible for ARDS. Since the ARDS life-threatening complication associated with COVID-19 is an ongoing…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of natural RNA modifications on the activity of SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase</strong> - RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) plays the key role in replication of RNA viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. Processive RNA synthesis by RdRp is crucial for successful genome replication and expression, especially in the case of very long coronaviral genomes. Here, we analyzed the activity of SARS-CoV-2 RdRp (the nsp12-nsp7-nsp8 complex) on synthetic primer-templates of various structures, including substrates with mismatched primers or template RNA modifications. It has been shown that RdRp…</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>Porcine Deltacoronavirus Infection Cleaves HDAC2 to Attenuate Its Antiviral Activity</strong> - Protein acetylation plays an important role during virus infection. Thus, it is not surprising that viruses always evolve elaborate mechanisms to regulate the functions of histone deacetylases (HDACs), the essential transcriptional and epigenetic regulators for deacetylation. Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV), an emerging enteropathogenic coronavirus, causes severe diarrhea in suckling piglets and has the potential to infect humans. In this study, we found that PDCoV infection inhibited cellular…</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>“Intention to receive COVID-19 vaccine among healthcare workers: a comparison between two surveys”</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Present study showed an undesirable rate of intention to receive COVID-19 vaccine among healthcare workers, especially decreasing over the time, emphasize the need of interventions to promote healthcare workers’ intention to receive the vaccine and reduce the spread of COVID-19 disease.</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>APOE interacts with ACE2 inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 cellular entry and inflammation in COVID-19 patients</strong> - Apolipoprotein E (APOE) plays a pivotal role in lipid including cholesterol metabolism. The APOE ε4 (APOE4) allele is a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular diseases. Although APOE has recently been associated with increased susceptibility to infections of several viruses, whether and how APOE and its isoforms affect SARS-CoV-2 infection remains unclear. Here, we show that serum concentrations of APOE correlate inversely with levels of cytokine/chemokine in 73 COVID-19…</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>Bovine coronavirus nucleocapsid suppresses IFN-β production by inhibiting RIG-I-like receptors pathway in host cells</strong> - The present study aimed to explore if bovine coronavirus nucleocapsid (BCoV N) impacts IFN-β production in the host cells and to reveal further molecular mechanism of BCoV pathogenesis. Human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 T cells were transiently transfected with pMyc-BCoV-N recombinant plasmids, then infected with the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Expression levels of beta interferon (IFN-β) mRNA were detected using RT-qPCR. The results showed that BCoV N gene was 1347 bp that was consistent…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Upstart Union Challenging Starbucks</strong> - Baristas nationwide are remarkably organized. Is the company’s C.E.O., Howard Schultz, using firings, store closures, and legal delays to thwart them? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-upstart-union-challenging-starbucks">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The New Fight Over an Old Forest in Atlanta</strong> - The plans for an enormous police-training center—dubbed Cop City by critics—have ignited interest in one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/the-new-fight-over-an-old-forest-in-atlanta">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Sinkhole That Swallowed a Mexican Farm</strong> - A bottled-water company tapped an ancient aquifer that thousands of people and businesses share. Then came the protests. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-sinkhole-that-swallowed-a-mexican-farm">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Win for Abortion Rights in Kansas</strong> - Voters went to the polls in historic numbers to reject Republicans’ plans. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/the-daily/a-win-for-abortion-rights-in-kansas">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Bad Democratic Bet in the G.O.P. Primaries</strong> - Will Democrats come to regret the tactic of boosting extreme, election-denying Republican candidates? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-bad-democratic-bet-in-the-gop-primaries">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Should you get another Covid-19 vaccine booster now or wait for the new shots?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Two cartoon characters in white lab coats hold up medicine vials in celebration." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hyPfSVBdv7CvH-4VQlAKXUW53U0=/417x0:7084x5000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71207491/GettyImages_1387208392.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images/iStockphoto
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Covid-19 cases are rising again, but redesigned vaccines are on the horizon.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xHSNUd">
You counted the days until your vaccine appointment, posted a selfie with a bandage on your arm, and diligently came back weeks later for the follow-up shot, already making plans to enjoy <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22336425/summer-2021-post-pandemic-vaccine-hot-girl">hot vax summer</a>. But new Covid-19 variants stepped out of the shadows, and health officials recommended that everyone get a booster dose. You got yours and thought you were done. Then omicron spawned its own subvariants that started infecting people even if they already had Covid-19 and their boosters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6LcrPU">
So, do you need another Covid-19 shot?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EjU2Cd">
For many people, right now, the unsatisfactory answer is “it depends.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ikaHzE">
Last week, the US government announced it was buying <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/07/29/biden-harris-administration-secures-66-million-doses-modernas-variant-specific-covid-19-vaccine-booster-for-potential-use-in-fall-winter-2022.html">66 million doses</a> of Moderna’s variant-specific Covid-19 vaccine booster, adding to the 105 million doses of reformulated vaccines purchased from Pfizer earlier. The companies say they will likely be available in October and November.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R2M9ST">
“We must stay vigilant in our fight against COVID-19 and continue to expand Americans’ access to the best vaccines and treatments,” wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement. “As we look to the fall and winter, we’re doing just that.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ElOHFI">
But federal officials also said that they weren’t yet changing the eligibility guidelines for a fourth dose. Currently, they’re recommended only for people over the age of 50 and people who are immunocompromised. Everyone else will likely have to wait until the fall to get the go-ahead from regulators.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MwZrcU">
Some experts, though, think it might be worth getting a second booster now if you face a high risk of Covid-19 exposure or if your previous dose was ages ago. The rise of BA.5 has spooked many of them, despite evidence the virus causes <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#hospitalizations-severity">less severe disease now</a> than at any other point during the pandemic. And despite the surge in cases, <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_select_00">death trends have hardly moved</a>, indicating that the previous crop of vaccines is still doing its main job of preventing severe illness for most people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GF3QMM">
Adding to the confusion is that public health measures like face mask mandates and social distancing requirements are disappearing, increasing the chances of exposure. So managing the risks and response to Covid-19 is almost entirely up to you, the individual, and that can be tricky when there are so many moving parts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BJq8IE">
To add a little clarity, here are answers to some key questions about Covid-19 vaccine boosters.
</p>
<h3 id="amS9WX">
Who needs to get boosted and when? Should I get the original now or wait for the remix?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YKWMHE">
The current <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines</a> recommend a first booster shot for everyone 5 years old and up to be administered at least five months out from the initial doses of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines — the vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. People who received the one-dose Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccine should get an mRNA booster at least two months out from the initial dose.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a0rRwQ">
As for second boosters, if you’re over 50 or immunocompromised and the timing from your first doses works out, you should get the shot right away, says <a href="https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/1972/andrew-stanley-pekosz">Andrew Pekosz</a>, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University. “A booster now is going to help you avoid the hospital, and it’s something you need to do,” he explained.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
<aside id="ha03Kl">
<q>If you’re not in a high-risk group — under 50 and pretty healthy — there’s no need to rush</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7sbW72">
If you’re not in a high-risk group — under 50 and pretty healthy — there’s no need to rush, according to Pekosz. Severe disease rates in people without other preexisting health conditions are extremely low. “I don’t think, right now, there’s a good reason to have relatively healthy individuals get a booster,” said Pekosz.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vMraPQ">
US <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/politics/covid-booster-shots.html">health officials were concerned</a> that if someone in this lower-risk category gets boosted now, they may have to wait longer to get a newer vaccine, since the minimum interval between boosters is several months. Getting booster shots too close together may not lead to an effective immune response and could also raise the risk of rare complications like myocarditis.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2ROCeY">
Because they’re expecting a larger spike in cases later this year, health officials want to allocate more resources to a fall vaccination campaign rather than trying to get younger people boosted now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L2WMyL">
However, other researchers said that depending on an individual’s risk and exposure to Covid-19, it might make sense to get topped up right away. “I think there should be flexibility and permissiveness,” Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/politics/covid-booster-shots.html">New York Times</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TmTktr">
One factor is that the revamped vaccines offer better protection against the newer variants than the original formulations (more on that below), but the improvement may not be worth waiting for.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lFDhPm">
“To people asking, ‘Should I take the fourth dose now or wait for the new one,’ it’s not so much better that I would wait, because we’re in the middle of a wave. You should take what you can get now,” said <a href="https://immunology.utoronto.ca/faculty/tania-watts">Tania Watts</a>, a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto. But while the bivalent vaccine isn’t perfect, it offers enough advantages to make it a preferred choice when it does become available. “I’ll probably take the bivalent vaccine when it’s available, because even if it’s incremental, it’s what we have,” she said.
</p>
<h3 id="EIkKYX">
What makes the booster shots different? How effective are they?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hs0DKD">
The reformulated booster doses of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna that the government is preparing to distribute this fall are “bivalent.” That means they contain the tools to target the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and its omicron variant.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DrgfYm">
Rather than delivering a whole inert virus or a fragment of it as conventional vaccines do, mRNA vaccines give human cells the genetic instructions for making pieces of the virus. In the case of the Covid-19 vaccines, they serve as an assembly manual for the spike protein of the virus. The bivalent vaccines contain mRNA instructions for making the spike protein of the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and the spike protein common to the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
</p>
<aside id="G8GcQu">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TKAjYq">
After you get a vaccine, your immune system revs up and starts making antibodies, which are proteins that bind to the virus and can stop it from causing an infection. If you have high levels of antibodies that can neutralize a virus, this usually means you’re well protected against infection. Antibody production, however, tapers off over time, so a vaccinated individual may be vulnerable to an infection after a few months. A booster shot ramps antibody production back up.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ja1z2J">
But antibodies attach best to very particular sites on the virus. If those sites mutate, as they have with the recent SARS-CoV-2 variants, antibodies become less effective at blocking infection. The bivalent vaccines restore some of this protection.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QGSHq1">
In clinical trials, the bivalent vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech did increase the level of neutralizing antibodies to omicron subvariants by less than two-fold compared to the original versions of their boosters. But the first round of booster shots raised antibody levels <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.19.21266555v1.full-text">25-fold or more</a>, a result that’s led some researchers to say the bivalent shots aren’t a big enough improvement over the existing formula. That’s part of why there is some debate over getting boosters now to protect against the rising BA.5 wave versus waiting for a more targeted shot later this year. (Researchers have also noted that the results arose from trials of several hundred individuals, whereas the initial vaccines were tested in tens of thousands of people.)
</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang">
<aside id="soA3dY">
<q>Getting Covid-19 shots too close together can interfere with how your immune system recognizes new variants</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XcLPWI">
One issue with deploying bivalent Covid-19 vaccines in the fall is that by the time they’re widely available, another variant or subvariant will likely be in circulation. That could erode their advantage over the original shots.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="19vd7l">
Another is that antibodies are not the whole story. They do decline and can leave an opening for infection, but other parts of the immune system can readily switch back on and stop an infection from causing too much damage. So far, researchers have found that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/23272815/covid-19-universal-vaccine-long-term-immunity-antibodies-b-cells">immune system’s memory cells</a> — B cells and T cells — are still holding strong against the new variants in most people, even though they were trained with an earlier version of the virus.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="psvruP">
And from a public health standpoint, the biggest concern isn’t preventing infection but preventing severe disease, where the virus causes enough damage to send people to the hospital or kill them. The initial Covid-19 vaccines still do the job of preventing severe disease well. A second round of boosters could blunt another surge of infections, but it’s not clear if that alone would be worth the money and effort, especially when tactics like face masks and social distancing also prevent infection. The risks from disease are also declining. There are now multiple effective treatments for Covid-19, too, so getting sick isn’t as dangerous as it used to be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H4lmZi">
“We’ve spent $3 billion on these bivalent vaccines. Is that really how you’re going to best spend your money, given how uncomfortably scant those data were?” said Paul Offit, director of vaccine education at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “There are, I think, other strategies out there.”
</p>
<h3 id="Go2Ayy">
What if I just had Covid-19?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6dtz4c">
With the recent surge of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/23200811/covid-19-omicron-ba5-reinfection-vaccine-paxlovid">BA.5 omicron subvariant</a>, lots of people who were previously infected or vaccinated are getting infected again, especially since many received their first booster more than six months ago. But surviving an infection can also boost protection against Covid-19 for a period of time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X1ldWm">
“A Covid infection in a vaccinated person — essentially that functions as a booster,” Pekosz said. “So you probably don’t need to get a booster for anywhere from three to six months after your Covid infection.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ywtDAt">
Some researchers showed that “<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.abn8014">hybrid immunity</a>” from vaccination and infection in an individual could boost the overall immune system response and prevent future infections. But omicron subvariants like BA.5 have <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/COVID-hybrid-immunity-omicron-17281211.php">managed to evade even this heightened protection</a> in some people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qUVb8x">
This isn’t just due to changes in the virus and waning immunity. People are also letting their guards down. Schools, offices, stores, and public venues are reopening to full capacity while fewer people are masking and distancing, so the likelihood of being exposed to the virus has gone up.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bPBV7n">
In general, though, the timing of your last infection or booster is a better gauge of when you need another shot than the specific formulation of the next booster, according to Pekosz.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YXG5x1">
“I say that carefully because that’s kind of against some of the CDC guidelines,” he said. “But I think the scientific community is appreciating the fact that infection of vaccinated persons functions as a booster.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BQo1Zq">
That said, there are no firm rules about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/well/live/booster-after-covid.html">how soon to get boosted</a> after recovering from Covid-19. If you haven’t had a booster dose, some health experts recommend getting it <a href="https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/covid-booster-after-having-covid-19.html">as soon as you are no longer contagious</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="re3Y1v">
Will we need a new one every year?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wMTgOy">
It’s hard to say. Again, the original vaccines still do a good job of preventing deaths from Covid-19, and recent studies show that the immune system’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/23272815/covid-19-universal-vaccine-long-term-immunity-antibodies-b-cells">long-term memory</a> still holds up well against the newer variants.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
<aside id="Bg6IJi">
<q>Scientists are working on vaccines that could cover the spectrum of current and future coronavirus variants</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BB2nNY">
But the virus is also changing. If a new variant arises that leads to a spike in severe disease or death, then it may be necessary. Given the current pace of mutations and patterns of immunity, that could become an annual development. “The way we are with vaccines now, I see us probably needing these bivalent or multivalent vaccines every year for the coronavirus season,” said Watts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dqaziH">
At the same time, scientists are working on vaccines that could cover the spectrum of current and future coronavirus variants and investigating techniques that build up durable and longer-lasting immunity. It’s possible that a future universal Covid-19 vaccine could end up being the last one needed for most people (more on that below).
</p>
<h3 id="FlOvzU">
Is the testing and approval process any different?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="19Rinc">
With billions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines already administered around the world, there is a massive trove of information available about the safety and efficacy of the shots. So health regulators are using a more streamlined approval process for boosters that could get them into arms sooner. The <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23191165/covid-variant-trials-vaccine-booster-fda">Food and Drug Administration</a> said it will not require new clinical trials for boosters targeting the most recent SARS-CoV-2 variants. This approach is similar to how influenza vaccines are reformulated year to year.
</p>
<h3 id="76tmHK">
What happens if too few people get boosted?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8T9Bx5">
So far, <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-additional-dose-totalpop">34.5 percent of people</a> who are eligible for boosters in the US have gotten them, so the uptake has been low. If that trend continues with the reformulated shots, individuals will likely be protected, but the virus will continue spreading. That will give it more opportunities to mutate in dangerous ways.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xg7Xjm">
However, vaccines are not just a tool to protect individuals, but a way to protect the population at large since they lower rates of transmission and relieve burdens on the health system. This extends beyond the US. As the pandemic has demonstrated over and over, problems in other countries don’t stay in other countries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2pSiCO">
“We have to think of Covid-19 as a global disease [and] really have to make an even stronger effort here in the US to get vaccines out into the world,” said Pekosz.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zwuiJQ">
Otherwise, we risk repeating the same patterns of new variants causing renewed surges in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
</p>
<h3 id="cFcnPE">
Should I hold out for a universal vaccine?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oJYLvd">
Universal Covid-19 vaccines are an exciting prospect, but they’re likely years away. These vaccines coach the immune system to target parts of the virus that rarely mutate or they serve up a sampler platter of potential viral mutations, allowing the immune system to practice responding to a spectrum of threats.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mu0w93">
“It represents areas that have to be high priorities for research, but are probably not going to be the immediate solutions to our current SARS-CoV-2 problems,” Pekosz said.
</p>
<aside id="Qy0KUO">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eHdefO">
But what if we sprayed a firehose of money at universal vaccines the way we did with the first Covid-19 vaccines?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Da1XYl">
“What Operation Warp Speed taught me was that you could do this,” said Offit, referring to the US government’s $11 billion Covid-19 vaccine research initiative that funded dozens of vaccine approaches and guaranteed purchases of doses even if they didn’t work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="81Ly9N">
Offit argued that a <a href="https://www.vox.com/22876661/universal-covid-19-vaccine-variants-omicron">universal vaccine</a> should be a higher priority than simply remixing Covid-19 vaccines as boosters. “I think that’s money much better spent than on a questionable bivalent strategy,” he said. Even so, the research is still in early phases and plenty of laboratory and clinical testing lies ahead.
</p>
<h3 id="dRODKr">
Does getting a booster come at the expense of someone in a low-income country?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ejCiX">
Given what we said earlier about the need to vaccinate the world and the ongoing vaccine inequities leaving many of the most vulnerable unprotected against Covid-19, it’s reasonable to ask whether there’s an opportunity cost to getting a fourth shot when nearly one-third of humanity has yet to receive their first.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HHmPwZ">
But experts say that your booster shot isn’t the main problem. Closing international vaccination gaps requires strategy and action from the government, not individuals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cDnB9J">
“Once a vaccine gets into your local pharmacy, it’s really not going to be pulled back and sent someplace else,” Pekosz said. “The US government needs to sort of realistically assess what the means are for vaccines here and send surplus vaccines directly to other countries as opposed to stockpiling them here in the US.”
</p>
<h3 id="qHQo1q">
What’s stopping me from getting more shots if I want them?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8FsoP2">
Nothing, really. With the widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines, you can get a shot free at most pharmacies and clinics, and there isn’t a robust way to check how many doses you’ve had. There have been tales of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-allegedly-up-to-90-covid-vaccine-shots-vaccination-card-sales/">people</a> <a href="https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/84-year-old-bihar-man-gets-covid-vaccine-12-times-says-every-shot-made-him-feel-better-358740">around</a> <a href="https://www.fox5ny.com/news/man-gets-vaccinated-up-to-10-times-in-single-day">the world</a> getting vaccinated a dozen times or more.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2q8bwp">
But for the reasons outlined above, it’s a bad idea. Getting Covid-19 shots too close together can interfere with how your immune system recognizes new variants, and it can raise the risks of some rare side effects.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DpTXMx">
Whether or not you should get a shot now depends on your specific risk level: how much you’re exposed and how vulnerable you are if you get sick. If you’re under 50 but pregnant, diabetic, obese, asthmatic, or have another risk factor for severe Covid-19, talk to a health professional about the best timing for you.
</p></li>
<li><strong>How state governments are reimagining American public housing</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FYmWIIjXbBXI0_tsNQmR4xDS_C8=/217x0:3684x2600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71207380/GettyImages_1240423375.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Vacant homes in Providence, Rhode Island, are seen though a chain link fence in April, shortly before ground was broken on a new affordable housing project. | Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
States are remembering that they can own housing, too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rTDri1">
What if one of the answers to America’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/8/17/22628750/how-the-us-made-affordable-homes-illegal">housing crisis</a> is something that’s been staring us in the face?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bKGPGq">
Public housing — but not exactly the kind most people think of.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nm4PVZ">
Even before the pandemic, the nation <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-14/housing-shortage-spreads-across-us-becoming-coast-to-coast-crisis">had too few homes</a> available to buy or rent. <a href="https://nlihc.org/oor">Housing prices</a> were eating up bigger chunks of people’s budgets every year — and that was all before inflation started wreaking havoc on American bank accounts. Now, with the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23206038/inflation-cpi-economy-prices">to try to rein in inflation</a>, one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/business/housing-market-crisis-supply.html?referringSource=articleShare">unfortunate but entirely predictable consequence</a> is a reduction in home construction. With mortgage rates going up, fewer people are looking to buy, which means fewer private developers are launching projects compared to a year ago, unwilling to risk not landing a buyer. Housing experts warn that the longer this all drags on, the harder it will be to get new projects started later, worsening an already serious housing shortage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QjogfA">
To prevent this grim spiral, a small but growing number of analysts and lawmakers are <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-social-housing-can-save-California-from-a-17271843.php#:~:text=By%20using%20revenue%20from%20market,the%20cost%20of%20housing%20statewide.">turning their sights to an idea</a> that has fallen mostly out of favor over the last 50 years: what if the government steps in to develop its own housing? Specifically, state and local governments.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NjQt0U">
In June the Rhode Island legislature approved <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/23/ri-general-assembly-approves-13-billion-dollar-budget-races-toward-end-session/7713060001/">$10 million</a> in its state budget for a new pilot program to build mixed-income public housing. It’s one of several state and local governments starting to get into a game that’s historically been the federal government’s purview.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HYmbV1">
K. Joseph Shekarchi, a Democrat who serves as the state’s <a href="https://thepublicsradio.org/episode/house-speaker-joe-shekarchi">powerful</a> House speaker, pushed to include this funding as one way to tackle Rhode Island’s affordable housing crisis. “I think housing authorities in Rhode Island are one of the best-kept secrets. They produce clean, affordable, low-income housing that are really well-maintained and high quality,” he told Vox. “So with this $10 million, we want to see if there’s an appetite for incentivizing housing authorities to increase their housing stock.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FHfNWG">
Governments have successfully addressed past housing shortages through publicly developed housing in places like <a href="https://citymonitor.ai/housing/red-vienna-how-austrias-capital-earned-its-place-in-housing-history">Vienna</a>, <a href="https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/20634-good-and-affordable-housing-for-everybody.html">Finland</a>, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-08-30/how-singapore-helped-90-of-households-to-own-their-homes-video">Singapore</a>, but citing these examples often leads to glazed eyes and weary skepticism that such models could ever work in the US, with our more meager welfare systems and our strong cultural attitudes toward private homeownership. America’s<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/public-housing">958,000 units</a> of federal public housing have also long suffered from reputation problems both <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/watchdog-newsletter/us-ignored-public-housing/">real</a> and <a href="https://beltmag.com/national-public-housing-museum-reconsidering-public-housing-america/">exaggerated</a>, with many seen as ugly, dirty, or unsafe. Few understand that many of the woes of American-style public housing have had to do with rules Congress passed nearly 100 years ago that predictably crippled its success and popularity, rules like <a href="https://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1937-Housing-Act.html">restricting the housing</a> to only the very poor.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7q06nT">
“There’s just real skepticism that governments can do things well, and there’s the stigma of American public housing driven by racist and classist policy choices that have undermined public housing here in ways that European and Asian public housing programs have not,” said Alex Lee, a California state representative, who <a href="https://eastcountytoday.net/california-social-housing-act-introduced-by-assemblymember-alex-lee/">introduced a bill this year</a> to create new publicly owned mixed-income housing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YhlRWJ">
Lee prefers the term “social housing” — to help differentiate his vision from the segregated, income-restricted, and underfunded public housing that has defined the American model. “But just because there were mistakes made doesn’t mean we’re doomed to repeat them,” he added.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZEzQaZ">
Lee’s legislation commanded wide support from <a href="https://a25.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220420-social-housing-act-sails-through-housing-committee">powerful constituencies</a> in California, and <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2053">passed</a> through both his chamber and the state Senate’s housing committee. Though his bill is now <a href="https://a25.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220629-social-housing-stalls-senate-governance-and-finance-committee">stalled out</a>, experts say it went farther than anyone expected on its first try, and Lee has pledged to keep pushing next year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gZeCrT">
In Colorado, lawmakers just <a href="https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb22-232">passed a bill</a> creating a new state office <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2022/07/15/colorado-middle-income-housing-authority/">to develop 3,500 new housing units</a> targeted to middle-class families. And in Hawaii, lawmakers recently <a href="https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SB&amp;billnumber=2583&amp;year=2022">passed</a> several <a href="https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SB&amp;billnumber=2251&amp;year=2022">bills</a> that make it easier for the state to build mixed-income condos with 99-year leases, similar to how public housing <a href="https://www.99.co/singapore/insider/leasehold-property-99-years/">works in Singapore</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5iDSOb">
But where this model may already most clearly demonstrate the government’s power to increase housing supply is in Montgomery County, Maryland — a suburb just outside Washington, DC. The local public housing authority there is on track to build <a href="https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/COUNCIL/resources/EconomicDevelopment/affordable.html">nearly 9,000</a> new publicly owned mixed-income apartments over the coming years, by leveraging relatively small amounts of public money to create a revolving fund that can finance short-term construction costs. One of their initial projects — <a href="https://www.hocmc.org/images/files/committee/2022/20220422_Development_and_Finance_Committee_Packet_web_Version_1_20220420.pdf">268 new apartment</a> units located near a planned bus rapid transit line — is set to be finished this year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aKfNTu">
“What I like about what we’re doing is all we have effectively done is commandeered the private American real estate model,” said Zachary Marks, the <a href="https://www.hocmc.org/extra/751-zachary-marks-chief-real-estate-officer.html">chief real estate officer</a> for Montgomery County’s housing authority. “We’re replacing the investor dudes from Wall Street, the big money from Dallas.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PYKJYo">
State and local governments don’t have the best track record at quickly spinning up new affordable housing, and most public housing authorities lack staff like Marks, experienced in this kind of real estate acquisition. But the public sector can start with acknowledging they have the tools and resources that make it easier to build even in weak economic periods, plus no voracious investor to satisfy at the end of a project. Governments could even step in now to buy half-finished housing from companies that suddenly find themselves unable to make their financing math work.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/s0DLknyTLKAK4oBZ-LqFjYO8VA8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23920543/HillandaleGateway__Rendering1_080322_.png"/> <cite>Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission</cite>
<figcaption>
The Hillandale Gateway development in Montgomery County, Maryland, includes affordable housing. It just got permit approval and work on the site is slated to begin early next year.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WRnQyD">
While Montgomery County is a liberal area in a blue state, Marks notes there’s nothing about what they’re doing [with <a href="https://apps.montgomerycountymd.gov/BASISCAPITAL/Common/Project.aspx?ID=P767511">the Housing Production Fund</a>] that heavily relies on government subsidies, which is typical of traditional affordable housing projects. “This kind of project is better for the taxpayer, it avoids a concentration of poverty, and it’s very capitalist in my view,” he said. “A lot of this is just convincing governments that you don’t even know how powerful you actually are.”
</p>
<h3 id="UUOEag">
States can become public developers in different ways
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PPQzWx">
When Meghan Kallman was first elected to the Rhode Island state Senate in 2020, she knew she wanted to <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/story/opinion/2021/10/11/opinion-kallman-and-speakman-arpa-funds-can-help-solve-ris-affordable-housing-crisis/5996121001/">focus on housing</a>. The pandemic had intensified <a href="https://oneneighborhoodbuilders.org/severe-shortage-of-affordable-housing-in-rhode-island-means-families-with-the-lowest-incomes-suffer-most/">housing insecurity</a> in her district, and Rhode Island ranked near the bottom nationally for building new units. And while an early 1990s law already required every Rhode Island city and town to have at least 10 percent of its housing be affordable to low and moderate-income households, <a href="https://www.wpri.com/news/politics-government/ri-panel-to-study-why-most-cities-towns-miss-10-affordable-housing-goal/#:~:text=The%20Low%20and%20Moderate%20Income,be%20classified%20as%20%E2%80%9Caffordable.%E2%80%9D">only six out of 39 municipalities</a> actually met that target in 2020.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zQ4Zz0">
Kallman said this all showed more aggressive state action was needed. With the backing of Reclaim RI, an activist group formed by leaders of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, Kallman proposed the <a href="http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText22/SenateText22/S2939.pdf">Create Homes Act</a>, legislation to launch a new state agency that could build, own, and operate housing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IFLC1u">
The idea, Kallman explained, is to have an agency that could develop plans not only for increasing housing supply but also for maintaining and repairing existing housing stock. She introduced it near the end of this year’s session, and though it didn’t pass, it <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/16/ri-housing-crisis-state-could-start-building-its-own-affordable-units-workforce-housing/9779515002/">picked up significant support</a>, including Rhode Island’s Senate President Dominick Ruggerio. Kallman thinks they’re well positioned to get it over the finish line in 2023.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUuQJ6">
“What would it look like to have a system where rental units are state-administered, and it falls into the category of a public good that people can avail themselves of?” she asked. “I think that’s a really interesting proposal and something I’m really excited to support and see how it works out.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zTBVFJ">
Andrew Friedson, a Montgomery County councilmember who has been leading efforts in Maryland to address his region’s housing shortage, told Vox he’s been supporting the public development idea because “there is now much broader recognition and understanding” that governments have to be more aggressive. “The status quo and even marginal improvements are not going to come anywhere close to meeting the need,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ud3x9g">
Indeed, states typically have not attempted any of this. While states since the 1980s have taken a leading role in funding and administering affordable rental housing, developing and owning mixed-income housing has not been something governments in the US have done, or even seen as their responsibility.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FvzPrM">
Mark Shelburne, a national housing policy consultant, said the public developer idea holds promise. “It’s pretty rare that someone actually has a truly new idea in this space,” he said. “Pretty much every idea out there has already been said before — and who knows, maybe at some point in history someone had this same concept and we’ve all just forgotten — but I will say this does seem like a new idea today.” Shelburne added that the concept “absolutely can be viable” if the authorizing legislation is set up properly and flexibly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OzcA9Y">
Paul Williams, the founder and director of the Center for Public Enterprise, <a href="https://www.publicenterprise.org/">a recently launched think tank</a>, has been <a href="https://housingchronicle.substack.com/p/carving-out-a-path-for-public-developers">leading efforts</a> to <a href="https://www.noemamag.com/public-housing-for-all/">promote the idea</a> of state and local public housing developers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6zKjvX">
It’s not an immediate fix —<strong> </strong>“getting out of this mess will take no less than 20 years,” he wrote <a href="https://www.noemamag.com/public-housing-for-all/">in an essay last August</a> on solving the housing crisis — but it’s one of the only viable solutions he sees.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YeFWiz">
“Congress is not going to fund new public housing, we can’t even get them to <a href="https://www.nahro.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CAPITAL_FUND_BACKLOG_One-Pager.pdf">fund the capital backlog</a>,” Williams told Vox, referring to the billions of dollars needed for outstanding repairs and maintenance of existing federal housing units. “So getting local and state governments to create public enterprises to do public development is what I see as the way to move this forward.”
</p>
<h3 id="K6V5kU">
States are rediscovering their self-interest
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5hLfSH">
Why did states retreat from developing their own affordable housing, anyway? Part of the reason is that the federal government stepped up to the plate, with the Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949, and establishing the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965. States and local governments were happy to let HUD take over, but when federal public housing started to lose support in Congress in the 1970s, and the Reagan and Clinton administrations slashed HUD’s budget in the ’80s and ’90s, there was no real state and local infrastructure around to fill the void.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HSWVRv">
Shekarchi, the Rhode Island House speaker, noted that housing has always been a difficult and complicated issue, and on the local level, many communities balk at any hint of affordable housing construction and associated tax increases. “Many people don’t want it because they think affordable housing means more traffic or diminishing of home values or crime or drugs or low-income people,” he said. “And I think state government is reflective of those views. We have two-year election cycles and legislators are reflective of the public.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gelJQB">
But despite these NIMBY attitudes, some local policymakers are beginning to recognize their own self-interest in stepping up on housing development, capitalizing on tools and public ownership that can create value and be reinvested into the community.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PWdf6M">
“Both because we don’t have to meet the private sector return requirements, and because it’s much easier to set policy on things that you own, all of that [revenue] just gets poured back into overall housing production and operation,” said Marks, of Montgomery County. “A lot of the time I’m talking to people about the short-term benefits [of our development model], but frankly the biggest benefit is that value that we’re creating very slowly over 20 years, so that the people sitting in my chair in two or three decades will have a ton of resources that can be realizable by them then, to continue the mission.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bBPRKj">
Stanley Chang, a state senator in Hawaii who has been leading efforts in his state to promote social housing, says he spent a lot of time visiting places like Vienna and Singapore to understand regions that actually solved their housing shortages. “I’m not arguing we should copy-and-paste but I do think we should learn the lessons from these places,” Chang said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BffAIo">
Kallman, the Rhode Island state senator, says she doesn’t view her proposed public developer bill as a revenue generator for the state, though she acknowledges it could indeed turn out to be one. “For me this is primarily about the state stepping up,” she said. “To solve a housing problem that is affecting huge numbers of people.”<em><strong> </strong></em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>The inflation prices that broke us</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Shredded dollar bills." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0oz0hu4xSnebXlE02iCZHBye3Fk=/0x0:1999x1499/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71207276/GettyImages_142943504.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Inflation is a complete and total bummer. | Steven Puetzer/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
From chicken tenders to tampons, the price hikes that are irking people most.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ff7gci">
Peter Lewis recognizes that <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/3/2/22956966/inflation-explained-by-eggs">eggs</a> aren’t the biggest expenditure in the world. But amid today’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22994731/inflation-rate-russia-gas-prices-jerome-powell">levels of inflation</a>, the price increase on the consumer staple really gets to him. “I tend to buy the same things every week, and for some reason, with eggs, I just eat a lot of them, and I notice the prices on them,” he says. The 18 extra-large eggs he buys were $3.18 in early 2021; now, they’re $5.12. Over the weekend, Lewis spent nearly $100 at his local Walmart on food for him and his wife, an amount he doesn’t believe he’s ever hit before. “It’s not like we’re buying a whole shopping cart.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u0LLIC">
Inflation is ugly. For consumers, it is painful in ways big and small. People’s wages <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22933594/pay-raise-price-inflation-employers-great-resignation">aren’t keeping up with rising prices</a>, meaning some are having to make important cutbacks to stay afloat. Beyond the economic hardship imposed by inflation, there’s also a real psychological toll. People are paying more attention to prices than they have in the past, and they’re noticing increases on the items most familiar to them — increases that may not be the biggest, but that are nevertheless irksome.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<div id="S7hZJ7">
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PUzwD5">
“Price increases hurt because we don’t evaluate the price of eggs in absolute terms, we evaluate it with regard to what we used to pay for them,” says Deborah Small, a professor of behavioral marketing at Yale School of Management. “A price increase is like a loss, and we feel pain when we experience that loss.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mH8mHs">
With <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22549250/inflation-consumer-prices-lumber-used-cars-gas">the way inflation is going lately</a>, that feeling of loss abounds.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jP1nrQ">
At today’s current inflation levels, practically everybody has taken a look at the price of something and thought, “Wait a minute, what?” For some people, it’s on big-ticket items such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/11/22774773/inflation-housing-market-home-prices-biden-build-back-better">homes</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22991412/new-car-prices-high-inflation">cars</a>. For others, it’s on small-ticket stuff that nevertheless leaves them taken aback, wondering how in the world a package of paper towels is $5 more than it was just months ago, or whether that bag of chips <a href="https://qz.com/2129426/inflation-and-supply-chain-snags-are-shrinking-your-products/">used to be</a> a little bigger for the same price. Often, we notice changes more when it’s stuff we buy habitually. And, of course, all those little price increases add up.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="qjTHKZ">
<q>“An extra $50 a week is a killer”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vkKKEq">
Lewis, 71, and his wife are okay — they’re retired now, had good corporate jobs their whole lives, saved a lot, and rode out a few bull markets. But he can’t help but worry about others. “I look at Walmart, I see families shopping there, and I know an extra $50 a week is a killer for those people,” he says.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="qI2HsH"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BPv0x7">
Inflation is a common topic now, basically all the time and everywhere. At the start of August, my Vox colleagues and I talked about where inflation had shown up in people’s lives and what had just kind of broken them. Because this is the year 2022 and I work in online media, I asked that question on Twitter. There was a variety of responses, but overwhelmingly, the most common place people hit a breaking point on inflation was at the grocery store.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t23MTG">
Hila Paldi, who owns a Pilates studio in New York, told me she hit her wall on bacon, a key ingredient for her son’s beloved homemade bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. The package she gets used to be $8.99 at her local supermarket, and when she went to buy it recently, it was $12.99. “I went to the manager, and I said, ‘Is this right, or is this a mistake?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s the price now,’” she says. So she didn’t buy it. “Honestly, this is something we can totally live without.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nT0i9K">
Drew Ober, an engineer in Indianapolis, told me the thing getting to him the most was frozen chicken tenders. He likes to have them on hand at home because they’re an easy work-from-home lunch or lazy dinner. “I do hesitate almost every time now,” he says. He pulled up some old grocery receipts to make sure he was right, telling me he’d bought a 48-ounce bag of chicken tenders in April 2021 for $8.79. Now, it’s listed as $11.99. Much of the time he still gets them, though he also feels less guilty about going to restaurants to get them instead. “It doesn’t feel like I’m saving as much anymore buying groceries.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KiIhjs">
It’s not just prices going up at the store that is bothering consumers — it’s also sizes going down, which is what happened to Tony Sarthou, a father of two hungry teens in New Jersey. “Doritos and Oreos, for better or for worse, are very key staples in our kitchen,” he says. But lately, he’s noticed the packaging is getting smaller — a phenomenon referred to as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/08/1103766334/shrinkflation-globally-manufacturers-shrink-package-sizes">shrinkflation</a>, where companies just give you less for the same amount of money. On multiple occasions, Sarthou says he and his wife have walked down the grocery store aisle, looked at the prices and sizes of the packages, and just walked away. “The sizes are getting smaller, the price is either the same or more often than not, higher.” They’re starting to swap out for generic or private-label brands.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wePqVq">
Many people wonder whether the price hikes — or the package shrinkage — was really necessary. Wasn’t there some sort of reward for being loyal to a local grocery store? Sure, there have been supply issues on chicken tenders because of worker shortages and the bird flu, but was that really it? How much were the makers of Oreos — owned by American food conglomerate Mondelez — really saving by giving you slightly fewer cookies?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HE3eJG">
“I really don’t see how this is trickling down to us, I don’t see where it makes sense,” says Dorothy, a teacher in New York and mother of two, who asked for her last name to be withheld to protect her privacy. Her family has special dietary needs — she has severe food allergies, her husband is a vegetarian — that force them to make some “tough decisions.” On organic strawberries for $7.99, the answer is “Are you kidding me?” A half-gallon of ice cream for $4.79 is a “Hell no,” and pasta for $2.49 a box “just isn’t going to happen.” She writes a list before going to the store, and if the item isn’t on the list, it doesn’t get bought. “We don’t go on vacation, home improvements have been halted,” she says of how her family is adjusting. “It seems outrageous.”
</p>
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As Julia Carpenter noted in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-adjust-your-brain-for-rising-inflation-11649764867?mod=Searchresults_pos1&amp;page=1">Wall Street Journal</a>, people understand price tags by way of the items that make up their daily budgets. They use a handful of mental benchmarks to gauge their inflation expectations. David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, told the WSJ people take these benchmarks and then “they totally extrapolate that to the economy at large.”
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<q>“What inflation has done is it has made people pay more attention”</q>
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Beyond everyday items, having inflation on the brain is likely making people think more about prices than they normally would, explains Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University’s business school. “Consumers’ knowledge of prices is generally really bad. By and large, in normal conditions, most of us don’t know prices of most of the regular things that we buy,” he says. “What inflation has done is it has made people pay more attention as a general rule.”
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And, in turn, people feel more annoyed. Especially as the total amount of everything moves up.
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Dholakia <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/06/if-youre-going-to-raise-prices-tell-customers-why">advises companies</a> about pricing strategy and notes that just because consumers express anger about prices doesn’t mean they always change their behavior. There’s a “huge gap” between what people say and what they do. “They’ll complain,” he says, “but they’ll still pay the higher price.”
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That was the case for Andrea from Missouri, who also requested anonymity. Earlier this year, she paid nearly $25 for a single box of o.b. tampons on Amazon (they generally cost under $10). Amid the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/well/live/tampon-shortage.html">tampon shortage</a>, she couldn’t find them at Target or Walmart, and she didn’t want to switch brands. She says she thought, “Well, Amazon is technically a black market, maybe you can find them there.” Andrea recognized she was being taken advantage of by the seller and that the price was “ridiculous,” but she clicked to buy anyway. “I know people gotta do what they gotta do to survive, and I’m not super mad at that person,” she says of the Amazon tampon-flipper. “I wanted them desperately.”
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Now, she can find her tampons at a more reasonable price, but they’re still more expensive than they used to be, as is everything. Andrea, who works in data analysis, has gotten a raise over the past couple of years, but inflation has made it basically obsolete. “How is it I make the 75th percentile of income in the county and yet I am struggling and can’t save money?” she says. “I’m still broke.” She’s divorced, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22788620/single-living-alone-cost">being single is expensive</a>. She jokes she could find another husband, but she doesn’t really want to — she likes being alone. “When you’re in your late 40s, if there’s any men out there, you probably don’t want them.”
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In recent days, I’ve spoken to many people about the specific places and moments in their lives where they really felt at a breaking point over inflation.
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<q>“$19 for a 12-pack of Coors … come on”</q>
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For Vanessa Santos, who had not one but two Covid babies, it was trying to buy new professional outfits to go back to work meetings. “It’s made me start picking up my workout routine post-baby so I can fit into my old clothes,” she says. For Kail Zepeda, a father of four in New Jersey, his moment of shock came when car dealers asked him to pay $11,000 over sticker price for a new car, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22991412/new-car-prices-high-inflation">a phenomenon many buyers on the market are running into</a>. “It’s insane right now,” he says.
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I heard from people about asparagus, butter, and donuts, about vacations, apartment rentals, and beer. “$19 for a 12-pack of Coors … come on,” one person commented on Twitter. “Was buying what I thought was a half dozen bagels, realized in the check-out aisle that there were only 5 in the bag and almost lost it,” wrote another.
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Ober, the Indianapolis engineer, says gas prices get to him, too, but in a different way. Where he lives, there aren’t really great substitutes to owning a car and driving yourself places. “I feel more helpless to it,” he says. “You can kind of cut back on where you’re going, but I mean, it’s harder to do.”
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Existing as a consumer in the current economy <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/6/8/23158436/economy-inflation-recession-odds-stock-market">just feels really bad</a>. It’s like we’re all being constantly pricked by a thousand tiny needles, all of which sting; every once in a while, one really hits a nerve.
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There will be an end at some point, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23169673/fed-interest-rate-hike-inflation-recession-stock-market-debt">but that will probably hurt</a>, too. American consumers, especially younger ones, aren’t used to inflation, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23013102/american-consumers-expectations-anger-entitled">many aren’t used to having to make sacrifices</a> or be as thoughtful about their purchases. The entire situation is just not ideal.
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As for Lewis, this is not his first rodeo on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22994731/inflation-rate-russia-gas-prices-jerome-powell">inflation</a>. He remembers what it was like to watch prices creep up in the 1970s, the last time inflation was a major problem in the United States, as a young professional living in Manhattan. “I just assumed it would continue forever,” he says. It didn’t — the end to the country’s inflation issue <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/13/23188455/inflation-paul-volcker-shock-recession-1970s">was eventually brought to a forceful and painful end</a>.
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Given those memories, he worries about what’s ahead. “I realized what it takes to stop it, and it’s not a pretty picture,” he says. He remembers his friends losing their jobs as the country fell into a recession, and the neverending paranoia that he could be next. He also remembers that while inflation’s acceleration stopped, most prices didn’t come back down, either. “It just kind of stayed,” Lewis, who now lives in Florida, says. “For most things, if they drop, it will be minor.”
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In other words, that breaking point you’ve reached on inflation isn’t going to un-break itself anytime soon.
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<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>Birkin Blower, One Wish and Summer Night please</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>Truly Epic, Tycoonist and Divine Ray excel</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>Indian wrestlers girded to continue supremacy</strong> - India had won 12 medals, including five golds, covering all categories in Gold Coast</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>Third round of National motorcycle racing in Chennai</strong> - Rajini Krishnan headlines the 20-race card weekend action</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>Chess trivia: The Partisan and a Satyajit Ray classic</strong> - An ambitious new thriller makes it to reading lists and later this month, filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’ will be showcased at the Venice International Film Festival</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>More than 71,000 cases pending in Supreme Court; of which 10,000 cases await disposal for over a decade</strong> - In a written reply, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said 71,411 cases as on August 2 were pending before the top court, which included over 56,000 civil matters and over 15,000 criminal matters.</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>Army recruitment rally under ‘Agnipath’</strong> - To be conducted at Suryapet on Oct. 15 to 31</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>TS lags behind in Centre’s SVAMITVA for creating accurate digital land records</strong> - Only five villages covered through drone flying more than two years after the scheme is launched</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>KTU receives over 7,000 applications for digital certificates after BTech results announcement</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>Rainfall continues in Hassan</strong> - Two houses damaged in Ankapura in Hassan taluk</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: No sleep in Ukraine’s relentlessly bombed city</strong> - Sleep is near impossible in Mykolaiv, the southern port under almost constant Russian battack.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: IAEA says Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant out of control</strong> - Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated at Zaporizhzhia, the UN’s nuclear chief says.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Banned Russian oligarchs exploited UK secrecy loophole</strong> - A BBC investigation links a little-known type of company to fraud, terrorism and money laundering.</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>Nord Stream 1: The 12-metre turbine threatening Europe’s gas supply</strong> - The vital pipeline component is stuck in Germany as Russia refuses to take it back after repairs.</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>French sailor survives 16 hours in capsized boat in Atlantic</strong> - The 62-year-old French sailor survived thanks to an air bubble before being rescued by divers.</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>North Korea-backed hackers have a clever way to read your Gmail</strong> - SHARPEXT has slurped up thousands of emails in the past year and keeps getting better. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871426">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>With help from BA.5, new COVID hospitalizations quadrupled since April</strong> - More people are getting seriously ill as BA.5 floods country and protection wanes. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871427">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>With solar arrays now operational, Lucy’s got some shimmering to do</strong> - We still have to wait three years before the first asteroid flyby. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871375">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>As Earth spins faster, Meta joins fight against leap seconds</strong> - Leap seconds cause network turmoil. Meta wants to end them before the next one. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871355">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>50 state AGs vow action against carriers that bring foreign robocalls to US</strong> - AGs send demands to carriers allegedly responsible for most foreign robocalls. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871384">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<li><strong>A pirate walked into a bar.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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He had a wooden leg, an eye patch and a hook for a hand. The bartender was curious. “How did you get that wooden leg?” he asked.
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The pirate took a swig of ale. “’Twas a terrible sea battle. I stood bravely, directly facing 12 cannons.All they managed to hit was my leg.”
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The bartender said “What about your hook?”
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The pirate took another long swig. “Arrrr, twas the day the British navy caught me. They tied me to the mast, I escaped by gnawing my own hand off.”
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The bartender was growing sceptical. “And how did you get that eyepatch?”
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The pirate took another swig. “Twas a mutiny. Me own crew left me marrooned on a desert island. But I had no fear. I lay down on the sand to wait to be rescued. As i looked up, a seagull flew over and pooped in me eye.”
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The bartender said “That’s ridiculous, no one loses an eye from bird muck.”
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The pirate finished his ale in one gulp, and grimaced. “Twas the first day with the hook.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ExtraSure"> /u/ExtraSure </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfgaqz/a_pirate_walked_into_a_bar/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfgaqz/a_pirate_walked_into_a_bar/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Blondes</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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A young blonde, out of money and down on her luck, needed some quick cash. Desperate, she decided to kidnap a child and hold it for ransom…
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She went to the local playground, randomly grabbed a kid, took him behind a nearby building, and in a stern voice she told him, “You’ve been kidnapped, young man!”
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Once the kid understood what was happening and was sitting quietly, she wrote a ransom note that said, “I’ve kidnapped your kid. Tomorrow morning at 7 o’clock, put $10,000 in a brown paper bag and leave it under the pine tree next to the slides, on the south side of the playground.” She signed it “Blondie”…
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She pinned the note to the kid’s striped tee-shirt and then sent him home to show his parents…
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The next morning, the blonde went to the playground, looked under the pine tree, and there it was, the brown paper bag. She looked in the bag, and the $10,000 she demanded was there, along with a note that said, "How could you do this to a fellow blonde?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Jackie-Daytona-"> /u/Jackie-Daytona- </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfoo7b/blondes/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfoo7b/blondes/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Everyone knows why 6 was afraid of 7, but do you know why 10 was scared?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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10 was in the middle of 9 11.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Primary_Budget_8050"> /u/Primary_Budget_8050 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfu3uj/everyone_knows_why_6_was_afraid_of_7_but_do_you/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfu3uj/everyone_knows_why_6_was_afraid_of_7_but_do_you/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>There once was a king who was 12 inches tall.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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He was a terrible king but a great ruler.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/WyPay101"> /u/WyPay101 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfvjhv/there_once_was_a_king_who_was_12_inches_tall/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfvjhv/there_once_was_a_king_who_was_12_inches_tall/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>My husband calls me a sex object</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Everytime he wants sex, I object
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Express_Shake3980"> /u/Express_Shake3980 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfckz9/my_husband_calls_me_a_sex_object/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wfckz9/my_husband_calls_me_a_sex_object/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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