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Covid-19 Sentry

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Contents

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From Preprints

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From Clinical Trials

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From PubMed

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From Patent Search

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Daily-Dose

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Contents

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From New Yorker

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From Vox

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+Vox Quick Hits cover the big, important topics in news, politics, and pop culture in just a fraction of the time. +

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+2020 took one look at my podcast listening habits, laughed maniacally, and tore them to shreds. My commute disappeared, along with my gym membership and planned travel. I no longer had time to kill while making my way to an appointment, friend’s place, bar, restaurant, or movie theater. +

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+More critically, my brain started to short-circuit in March, fried from the deluge of news and stress and the blurring boundary between work and home life. I rarely had the mental capacity, let alone the time, for a 30- or 60-minute podcast. Listening started to feel more like a chore than a respite, which was a problem. And I’m willing to bet you’ve felt the same way. +

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+Luckily for me (and you, if this made you think “same”), Vox now has something to help with this exact problem: Vox Quick Hits. +

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+Vox Quick Hits isn’t a traditional podcast, but rather a playlist where you can hear a mix of short episodes from Vox podcasts you know and love, plus some brand-new series. You’ll get the concise yet deep explanations you need on everything from Biden’s first 100 days in office to the best Netflix binge-watch. +

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+Episodes are 10 minutes or less — perfect for squeezing into those random pockets of free time in your day. Three new episodes arrive in the Vox Quick Hits playlist each morning, Monday through Friday. (Except for Tuesdays, which will typically have two new episodes.) +

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+Your interests vary, so the types and topics of podcasts in your day-to-day lineup will too. But episodes will always arrive in this order: +

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+First, the most important news story of the day from Today, Explained. +

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+Next, an update on politics and policy. +

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+And the last episode will either cover pop culture or consumerism ... +

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+... or recommend your next book or binge-watch. +

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+You can find Vox Quick Hits and subscribe in all the usual podcast places. If you’re more of a smart-speaker person, you can find us on Google Nest and Home speakers, too. Just say: “Hey/Okay, YOU KNOW WHO, play the Vox Quick Hits podcast.”) +

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+Want more bite-sized content from Vox? Recode Daily, hosted by senior reporter Teddy Schleifer, focuses on the most important Silicon Valley people, businesses, and stories that are influencing the rest of the world. Hear a new episode each day, always 10 minutes or less, wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. +

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+May your brain feel less fried and more informed in 2021. +

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+After I cut off communication, there was still one compartmentalized way for us to talk. +

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+It was the end of August when I decided to Venmo my ex. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, and we hadn’t had a real conversation in months. It had been weeks because I blocked him on every platform I could. It had been months because most of our prior communication was one-sided and dripping with vitriol. +

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+Today, though, I had a request. I needed him to return the internet router, which lived with him at my old apartment. He was moving, and if the router wasn’t returned, I’d be charged $13 a month for the rest of my life. I was just settling into a freedom from his constant pings and was reluctant to reach out — but my sanity in exchange for monthly payments forever seemed steep. Instead, I opened Venmo and sent $1, coupled with a request to “plz plz” return the router to Optimum. He did. +

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+It was March when we broke up, a drawn-out process that lasted weeks and lives in my mind now as this dark, muddy thing. Mostly what I remember is it being cold, then warm. It was cold when I read his messages and then kicked the table and sliced my shin and cried and then went for a run. I laid in the park until the sun had set and both the grass and I had frosted over. +

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+The day I moved out it was warm, and sweat beaded on my neck and face as I carried my things from the U-Haul to my new apartment. I didn’t realize it then, but it was the first day of spring. +

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+It’s impossible to talk about my breakup without talking about the pandemic. New York got bad early but it worked out for me because no one could tell I was crying underneath sunglasses and a face mask. As the rest of the city ordered latex gloves and sanitized their groceries, I tried to scrub the past from my present. I sliced our joint credit card with sewing scissors. I stopped sharing my location and deleted messages. I asked him, told him, begged him to stop texting me. He didn’t. +

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+I learned early on that my romantic relationships do not easily translate to friendships. I don’t like mess, and I struggle to compartmentalize. I cannot let a person I once loved seep into the pockets of my new life, the ones I have thoughtfully carved out and filled with things that bring me comfort. It’s a practice in forgetting, and once you emerge from the blurriness of survival mode, the space that once fit this person so perfectly has shrunk. We weren’t meant to inhabit spaces so small. +

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+My ex, on the other hand, did everything he could to keep that space from closing. Instead of giving me time and distance, he sent daily reminders of his existence. It started with a restrained kindness — a photo he’d taken of me walking down the street, smiling and lighting a cigarette; a message saying he missed me; a job opening he thought I’d be good for. Then he was vindictive and petty. He told me he was doing great. Fantastic! Thriving without me. Sometimes he questioned if we had made the right decision in breaking up. I was frantic and weak from these constant pinpricks. +

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+Be gentle with yourself, friends and family told me when I shamefully admitted how much I had been drinking, how little I had been reading. Like gentleness and indulgence are the same. +

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+Many months in and right on schedule, his texts turned mean, and then they got meaner — the ugliest words anyone has ever sent me by way of little grey bubbles. I could barely reckon with the fact that this person had loved me, that my mom had given him her grandmother’s engagement ring. I tried to make sense of his words. An expression of anger was ultimately an expression of love, of caring, of falling apart, that’s what people told me. But meanness has never been a language I speak easily, and I was tired of interpreting. If there were any hope of salvaging even a cordial relationship, his last few texts sewed that space tightly shut. +

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+Blocking him across nearly every mode of communication felt like long-overdue liberation, and a feat for me, someone who doesn’t like absolutes. I was thorough in the job, too. I blocked him on Instagram and Twitter, and I banished his email addresses. I blocked his phone number from my phone and then a half-hearted apology slithered onto my laptop so I blocked him there too. A digital upheaval with only one tie left unsevered. +

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+When I tell someone that I only communicate with my ex on Venmo they usually laugh, because it’s actually very funny. I look at my feed and see tropical drink emojis and friends paying each other alongside inside jokes. It’s not a place for begrudging exes, but here we are. +

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+A few months after I instigated our new means of communication, he adopted the tactic. I received an unexpected alert one day in which he informed me that my health insurance would be expiring. For this information, he offered a dollar. +

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+Over the course of three years, my boyfriend and I had had many Venmo exchanges. Settling up on groceries, reimbursing for margaritas, paying half the rent. We turned to the app early in our breakup as well. He paid me for the furniture he sold, the table and credenza I had bought and assembled. But this was different — a step back, a renegotiation. +

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+It’s not something I often strive to do, flatten someone into two dimensions so they fit snugly into a single app. But moving our relationship to a place that’s almost entirely transactional has tidied a messy breakup. Our new relationship thrives on Venmo, mostly because we barely speak. We are kind (I used a double “plz”), doling out dollars like olive branches. He respects my boundaries, boundaries bolstered by Venmo’s capabilities and limitations, and in turn, has access to me in case of emergency. +

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+With one payment of a single dollar, I drew a line that I have yet to move and he has yet to cross. My reward is some much-needed quiet. +

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+Since March, like many others, my days have become slower, quieter. I stand in my kitchen each morning, waiting for coffee to brew, as my neighbor lets three petite dogs into his front yard. I’ve watched the tree outside my bedroom window transform from a bare wisp, to a lush green giant, to a weeping, fiery thing, and back again. Some things have to stay the same in order for us to realize how much others change. I don’t know when it happened, but my life got bright again. +

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+I have two cats. We used to share them but now they’re mine. Lately, Coconut, who’s always been skittish and independent, cuddles with me every night and every morning. For a moment I think of sending a payment to tell my ex about this new development; no one else would appreciate it in quite the same way. But I stop myself, feeling silly. I don’t want to make a mess. +

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+Rachel Ellison is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and HuffPost. +

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+There’s some good news for those who’ve already been infected with the coronavirus. +

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+For the nearly 100 million people around the world who’ve been infected with the coronavirus, new science offers some comfort: Reinfections appear to be rare, and you may be protected from Covid-19 for at least five months. +

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+The study, the largest of its kind, followed more than 20,000 health workers in the UK, regularly testing them for infection and antibodies. Between June and November, the researchers — from Public Health England (PHE) — found 44 potential reinfections out of the 6,614 participants who had tested positive for antibodies or had a previous positive PCR or antibody test when they joined the study. Meanwhile, of the 14,000-plus people who had tested negative for the virus at the start of the study, there were 409 new infections. +

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+Only two of the 44 potential reinfections were designated “probable” and the rest were considered “possible,” “based on the amount of confirmatory evidence available,” the health agency. Fifteen people — or 34 percent — had symptoms. +

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+So if all 44 reinfections are real, that translates to an 83 percent lower risk of reinfection compared to health workers who never had the virus. If only two are confirmed, that rate of protection goes up to 99 percent. Either way, it suggests natural immunity might provide a similar level of protection as the approved Covid-19 vaccines. +

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+But as with the vaccines, it’s not yet clear how long immunity after an infection lasts. Antibodies may fade after five months or last much longer, something the researchers behind the ongoing study, which will run for a total of 12 months, plan to investigate. +

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+“This [new] study does provide some comfort that naturally acquired antibodies are pretty effective in preventing reinfections,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale University, told Vox. The findings also square with another paper on health workers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December: Researchers found people who had Covid-19 antibodies were better protected from the virus for six months than people who did not. +

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+That said, Iwasaki said, “You can also interpret these data to mean that protection against reinfection is not complete — especially for people who had Covid during the first wave, say in March-April 2020.” +

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+People who had the virus may still be able to pass it on if reinfected +

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+The good news for individuals who have had Covid-19 also comes with a warning about the risk they can still pose to other people. While antibodies might protect against a second case of Covid-19 in most people, “early evidence from the next stage of the study suggests that some of these individuals carry high levels of virus and could continue to transmit the virus to others,” PHE warned in their press release. +

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+“We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total,” Susan Hopkins, a senior medical adviser at PHE and the study lead, said in a statement, “and we do not yet know how long protection lasts.” +

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+In other words, even if you’ve had Covid-19, while you’re unlikely to get really sick again anytime soon, you should still consider yourself a potential risk of spreading it to others if you catch the virus again and may be asymptomatic. That means continuing to take precautions — like mask-wearing and social distancing, Iwasaki added. And it’s one reason why immunologists have said people who’ve already been infected with the virus should still plan to get the vaccine when their turn comes. +

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+So there’s still a lot more to learn about immunity after Covid-19: How will the new coronavirus variants of concern affect it? Lab data from South Africa, where the 501Y.V2 variant has been spreading, suggest it might be able to escape antibodies produced by prior infections in some people. +

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+Who is most likely to have a strong immune response? We do have some evidence that different individuals mount different antibody responses after Covid-19 infections, but the PHE researchers found no statistically significant difference in rates of protection between people who reported symptoms and those who did not. It’s also possible factors like gender and disease severity influence the strength of a person’s immune response. +

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+For now, though, the research suggests that survivors of the virus might just help us get to herd immunity faster — if their immunity lasts long enough. But given the virus has only been known to humans for a little over a year, it may take a while to authoritatively answer the question. +

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From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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From Jokes Subreddit

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  • Covid-19

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