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<title>04 August, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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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>Getting culturally appropriate health messages out in a hurry: Developing a communications campaign for COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American community.</strong> -
<div>
Background. Developing health communication materials can be time-consuming. During infectious disease outbreaks, health communication materials to limit the spread of the disease are needed promptly, which hampers the ability to get input from the target audience. This paper proposes a strategy to rapidly develop culturally appropriate communication materials with adequate community feedback. Context. Our strategy is illustrated using a communication campaign to encourage COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American enclave in New Orleans. The community has a high vulnerability to COVID-19 infection due to their isolation from mainstream public health information and COVID-19 related stigma and discrimination. Programmatic elements. The project included community-based COVID-19 testing services and communication activities to increase awareness of the testing centers and encourage frequent testing. Our proposed strategy involves two main components: 1) use of a research team with existing trust relationship with the target community and that includes researchers from that community, and 2) use of a cultural broker and community-based gatekeepers. Free PCR tests were offered daily at a community-based health center. Another community-based organization promoted testing and issued referrals. We developed brochures and posters to increase awareness of the testing services. The cultural broker and community-based partners helped identify key message concepts that were salient for the target audience, as well as the objectives and content of the materials, which were then reviewed by the entire team. The entire team provided feedback on mock-ups of the materials and subsequent revisions. Finalized materials were placed at both partner organizations and at strategic locations throughout the community and supplemented with newspaper advertisements and community outreach. Discussion. During infectious disease outbreaks there is a need to rapidly develop new health communication materials. Our proposed strategy strikes a balance between the need to disseminate new materials with minimal delay and the need for community input by using a research team with an established trust relationship with the community, cultural brokers, and community-based gatekeepers. Effective planning for public health emergencies must start long before the crisis occurs. Collaborations between researchers and community leaders should be developed and nurtured, and community representatives should be involved throughout the entire project.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/a9r8d/" target="_blank">Getting culturally appropriate health messages out in a hurry: Developing a communications campaign for COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American community.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Challenges faced by Madagascar’s protected area network during COVID-19 were very real</strong> -
<div>
We appreciate Andrianambinina at al. engaging with our paper “Elevated fires during COVID-19 lockdown and the vulnerability of protected areas” published in Nature Sustainability in May 2022. In their response, Andrianambinina et al. question the extent to which protected area management in Madagascar was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and our interpretation that the patterns we observe in excess fires are a result of this. They also question our use of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) as the source of shape files for Madagascar’s protected areas. We respond to these points in turn.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/a4zf3/" target="_blank">Challenges faced by Madagascar’s protected area network during COVID-19 were very real</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Neutralizing antibody responses and cellular responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 omicron subvariant BA.5 after an mRNA severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccine dose in kidney transplant recipients</strong> -
<div>
We examined the anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein IgG antibody and neutralizing antibody titers and cellular immunity in 73 uninfected recipients and 17 uninfected healthy controls who received three doses of a coronavirus 2019 mRNA vaccine. Neutralizing antibody titers were evaluated using GFP-carrying recombinant SARS-CoV-2 with spike protein of B.1.1, omicron BA.1, or BA.5. For cellular immunity, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were stimulated with peptides corresponding to spike protein antigens of B.1.1, BA.1, and BA.5; spike-specific CD4/CD8 memory T cells were evaluated using intracellular cytokine staining. The median IgG antibody titers were 7.8 AU/mL in recipients and 143.0 AU/mL in healthy controls (p &lt; 0.0001). Neutralizing antibody titers against all three viral variants were significantly lower in recipients (p &lt; 0.0001). The number of spike-specific CD8 + memory T cells significantly decreased in recipients (p &lt; 0.0001). Twenty recipients and seven healthy controls additionally received a bivalent omicron-containing booster vaccine, and IgG antibody and neutralizing antibody titers increased in both groups; however, the increase was significantly lower in recipients. Recipients did not gain sufficient immunity with a third dose of vaccine, suggesting a need to explore methods other than vaccines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.551424v1" target="_blank">Neutralizing antibody responses and cellular responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 omicron subvariant BA.5 after an mRNA severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccine dose in kidney transplant recipients</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Genetic architecture and shared mechanisms of common ′neglected′ diseases</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The authors have withdrawn this manuscript owing to the paper being rewritten with a stronger focus on COVID-19 upon request from UK Biobank and to comply more clearly with the primary care data usage agreement. An updated version will be re-uploaded as soon as possible. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding authors.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.23.23290408v2" target="_blank">Genetic architecture and shared mechanisms of common ′neglected′ diseases</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Health inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 infection during the second wave in England: REACT-1 study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract Background The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection caused high levels of hospitalisation and deaths in late 2020 and early 2021 during the second wave in England. Severe disease during this period was associated with marked health inequalities across ethnic and sociodemographic subgroups. Methods We analysed risk factors for test-positivity for SARS-CoV-2, based on self-administered throat and nose swabs in the community during rounds 5 to 10 of the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study between 18 September 2020 and 30 March 2021. Results Compared to white ethnicity, people of Asian and black ethnicity had a higher risk of infection during rounds 5 to 10, with odds of 1.46 (1.27, 1.69) and 1.35 (1.11, 1.64) respectively. Among ethnic subgroups, the highest and the second-highest odds were found in Bangladeshi and Pakistan participants at 3.29 (2.23, 4.86) and 2.15 (1.73, 2.68) respectively when compared to British whites. People in larger (compared to smaller) households had higher odds of infection. Health care workers with direct patient contact and care home workers showed higher odds of infection compared to other essential/key workers. Additionally, the odds of infection among participants in public-facing activities or settings were greater than among those not working in those activities or settings. Interpretation Planning for future severe waves of respiratory pathogens should include policies to reduce inequality in risk of infection by ethnicity, household size, and occupational activity.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.23293491v2" target="_blank">Health inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 infection during the second wave in England: REACT-1 study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Questions of ethics during the Covid-19 pandemic emerging from problems of data fraud and health risks</strong> -
<div>
In more than two years of the global health crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, ethical issues regarding health data have been emerging quickly to the central focus of the global scientific community. Many papers have been retracted because of data problems, including those from prestigious journals. For example, two papers in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) were retracted due to concerns regarding the veracity of datasets. Elisabeth Bik, an academic image sleuth, has found that 4% of more than 20000 biomedical papers she checked contained problematic image duplications; her efforts have led to at least 172 retractions. When the lives and well-being of countless people are at stake, and all eyes are on science, such mistakes could be (and have been) disruptive toward public trust, which might further fuel conspiracy theories, science-denying, and anti-vax attitudes. We require health data of good ethical standards, but who will be responsible if such standards are not met?
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/v7mtd/" target="_blank">Questions of ethics during the Covid-19 pandemic emerging from problems of data fraud and health risks</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>What a world-class research paper taught us</strong> -
<div>
Our research lab back then published a review paper in HSSComms on January 18, 2022. That paper presented the principles and systemic thinking endorsing the foundational concepts of this collaborative platform. Only two months after our publication, a group of scientists from Sweden published another paper evaluating scientific advice regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, an extremely hot topic and highly debatable throughout the pandemic. The Swedish paper has taught us something invaluable, which we would like to share here with the community.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/kdpw9/" target="_blank">What a world-class research paper taught us</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Call for papers: Science lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The SM3D Portal invites colleagues to provide their perspectives, assessments, and analyses on science’s involvement in coping with the epidemic to the “Science lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic” collection. The collection is intended to supplement academic efforts to generate insightful lessons from the COVID-19 catastrophe and to create measures to safeguard our communities from future pandemics.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/av78z/" target="_blank">Call for papers: Science lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 made some population groups more miserable than others</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of suffering to many people across the whole world. The disease not only directly devastated people’s health but also disrupted normal lifestyles and increased the risk of mental health issues [1,2]. A recent study by Kim et al. (2022) published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine (IF 3.508, according to JCR 2022) [3] revealed that the prevalence of stress, depression, and suicidal attempts did not change significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before. However, the 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2020 group had a higher rate of depression. The study employed data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2019 and 2020, with a sample of &gt;=19-year-old 11,873 participants. The research sample is highly representative of the Korean population.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/bdv98/" target="_blank">COVID-19 made some population groups more miserable than others</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Tetherin restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication despite antagonistic effects of Spike and ORF7a</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 infection induces interferon-stimulated genes, one of which encodes Tetherin, a transmembrane protein inhibiting the release of various enveloped viruses from infected cells. Previous studies revealed that SARS-CoV encodes two Tetherin antagonists: the Spike protein (S) inducing lysosomal degradation of Tetherin, and ORF7a altering its glycosylation. SARS-CoV-2 ORF7a has also been shown to antagonize Tetherin. Therefore, we here investigated whether SARS-CoV-2 S is also a Tetherin antagonist and compared the abilities and mechanisms of S and ORF7a in counteracting Tetherin. SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 S reduced Tetherin cell surface levels in a cell type-dependent manner, possibly related to the basal protein levels of Tetherin. In HEK293T cells, under conditions of high exogenous Tetherin expression, SARS-CoV-2 S and ORF7a reduced total Tetherin levels much more efficiently than the respective counterparts derived from SARS-CoV. Nevertheless, ORF7a from both strains was able to alter Tetherin glycosylation. The ability to decrease total protein levels of Tetherin was conserved among S proteins from different SARS-CoV-2 variants (D614G, Cluster 5, , {gamma}, {delta}, o). While SARS-CoV-2 S and ORF7a both colocalized with Tetherin, only ORF7a directly interacted with the restriction factor. Despite the presence of two Tetherin antagonists, however, SARS-CoV-2 replication in Caco-2 cells was further enhanced upon Tetherin knockout. Altogether, our data show that endogenous Tetherin restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication, and that the antiviral activity of Tetherin is partially counteracted by two viral antagonists with differential and complementary modes of action, S and ORF7a.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.28.550997v1" target="_blank">Tetherin restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication despite antagonistic effects of Spike and ORF7a</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Human Microglia Atlas (HuMicA) Unravels Changes in Homeostatic and Disease-Associated Microglia Subsets across Neurodegenerative Conditions</strong> -
<div>
Dysregulated microglia activation, leading to neuroinflammation, is currently considered to be of major relevance in the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases. The initial M1/M2 dual activation classification for microglia is now considered outdated. Even the "disease-associated microglia" (DAM) phenotype, firstly described in mice, has proven insufficient to precisely represent the multitude of microglia phenotypes in pathology. In this study, we have constructed a transcriptomic atlas of human brain immune cells by integrating single-nucleus (sn)RNA-seq datasets from multiple neurodegenerative conditions. Sixteen datasets were included, comprising 295 samples from patients with Alzheimer's disease, autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Lewy body diseases, COVID-19, and healthy controls. The integrated Human Microglia Atlas (HuMicA) dataset included 60,557 nuclei and revealed 11 microglial subpopulations distributed across all pathological and healthy conditions. Among these, we identified four different homeostatic clusters as well as pathological phenotypes. These included two stages of early and late activation of the DAM phenotype and the disease-inflammatory macrophage (DIM) phenotype, which was recently described in mice, and is also present in human microglia, as indicated by our analysis. The high versatility of microglia is evident through changes in subset distribution across various pathologies, suggesting their contribution to the establishment of pathological phenotypes. Our analysis showed overall depletion of four substates of homeostatic microglia, and expansion of niche subpopulations within the DAM and DIM spectrum across distinct neurodegenerative pathologies. The HuMicA is an invaluable resource tool used to support further advances in the study of microglia biology through healthy and disease settings.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.550767v1" target="_blank">The Human Microglia Atlas (HuMicA) Unravels Changes in Homeostatic and Disease-Associated Microglia Subsets across Neurodegenerative Conditions</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Frequency of Atypical Pulmonary Manifestations of COVID-19 Patients on Chest CTscan: A cross-sectional study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Chest CT examination is significant in COVID-19 diagnosis due to its high sensitivity. Although typical chest CT findings have been discussed thoroughly in the literature throughout the pandemic, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of the atypical conclusions during the start of the Omicron variant insurgency and compare the results to studies conducted before its outbreak. Methods: 606 confirmed COVID-19 cases were included in this study based on inclusion and exclusion criteria during January and February 2022. Demographic information of patients, including age and sex, was recorded. The computed tomography (CT) examination was carried out using a 100-slice scanner (Philips Brilliance 6 CT Scanner). One radiology attending and one resident evaluated SARSCoV- 2 RT-PCR-positive patients for atypical pulmonary CT findings. The obtained data were evaluated using R software version 4.1.1. Results: 55% of patients were female, and the median age was 56 (IQR: 42, 69 59% of patients had atypical findings on their pulmonary CT examination. These findings showed that pleural abnormalities were the most frequent atypicalfindings, with pleural thickening being the most common (17%). The double halo sign represented the least frequent atypical sign (0.2%). Conclusion: Atypical findings were more prevalent in this study than its predecessors, while we acknowledge that other factors, such as study design and patient population, could have impacted it. The presence of atypical signs generally was not correlated with specific demographic groups, while some of these signs were more frequent in some groups.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.28.23293261v1" target="_blank">Frequency of Atypical Pulmonary Manifestations of COVID-19 Patients on Chest CTscan: A cross-sectional study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms in a prospective cohort of COVID-19 survivors</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Purpose: To analyze the prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in patients who survived moderate and severe forms of COVID-19 and the risk factors for LUTS six months after hospital discharge. Materials and Methods: In this prospective cohort study, patients were evaluated six months after being hospitalized due to COVID-19. LUTS were assessed using the International Prostate Symptom Score. General health was assessed through the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the EQ5D-L5 scale, which evaluates mobility, ability to perform daily activities, pain and discomfort and completed a self-perception health evaluation. Results: Of 255 participants, 54.1% were men and the median age was 57.3 [44.3 / 66.6] years. Pre-existing comorbidities included diabetes (35.7%), hypertension (54.5%), obesity (30.2%) and physical inactivity (65.5%). 124 (48.6%) had a hospital stay &gt;15 days, 181 (71.0%) were admitted to an ICU and 124 (48.6%) needed mechanical ventilation. Median IPSS score was 6 [3-11] and did not differ between men and women. Moderate to severe LUTS affected 108 (42.4%) patients (40.6% men and 44.4% women; p=0.610). Nocturia (58.4%) and frequency (45.9%) were the most prevalent symptoms and urgency was the only symptom that affected men (29.0%) and women (44.4%) differently (p=0.013). LUTS significantly impacted the quality of life of 60 (23.5%) patients with women more severely affected (p=0.004). Preexisting diabetes, hypertension and self-perception of worse general health were associated with LUTS. Conclusions: LUTS are highly prevalent and bothersome six months after hospitalization due to COVID-19. Assessment of LUTS may help ensure appropriate diagnosis and treatment in these patients.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.23293500v1" target="_blank">Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms in a prospective cohort of COVID-19 survivors</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Graphical Learning and Causal Inference for Drug Repurposing</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract Gene expression profiles that connect drug perturbations, disease gene expression signatures, and clinical data are important for discovering potential drug repurposing indications. However, the current approach to gene expression reversal has several limitations. First, most methods focus on validating the reversal expression of individual genes. Second, there is a lack of causal approaches for identifying drug repurposing candidates. Third, few methods for passing and summarizing information on a graph have been used for drug repurposing analysis, with classical network propagation and gene set enrichment analysis being the most common. Fourth, there is a lack of graph-valued association analysis, with current approaches using real-valued association analysis one gene at a time to reverse abnormal gene expressions to normal gene expressions. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel causal inference and graph neural network (GNN)-based framework for identifying drug repurposing candidates. We formulated a causal network as a continuous constrained optimization problem and developed a new algorithm for reconstructing large-scale causal networks of up to 1,000 nodes. We conducted large-scale simulations that demonstrated good false positive and false negative rates. To aggregate and summarize information on both nodes and structure from the spatial domain of the causal network, we used directed acyclic graph neural networks (DAGNN). We also developed a new method for graph regression in which both dependent and independent variables are graphs. We used graph regression to measure the degree to which drugs reverse altered gene expressions of disease to normal levels and to select potential drug repurposing candidates. To illustrate the application of our proposed methods for drug repurposing, we applied them to phase I and II L1000 connectivity map perturbational profiles from the Broad Institute LINCS, which consist of gene-expression profiles for thousands of perturbagens at a variety of time points, doses, and cell lines, as well as disease gene expression data under-expressed and over-expressed in response to SARS-CoV-2.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.29.23293346v1" target="_blank">Graphical Learning and Causal Inference for Drug Repurposing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Loss of severe respiratory syncytial virus infection-associated antibody function during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic mitigation measures</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Studies have linked reduced respiratory syncytial virus-specific Fc-mediated phagocytic function and complement deposition to more severe infection. This study shows a loss of these functions during the first year of COVID-19 pandemic. These findings corroborate other data supporting a general waning of RSV antibody functions in absence of viral circulation.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.30.23292881v1" target="_blank">Loss of severe respiratory syncytial virus infection-associated antibody function during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic mitigation measures</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>Effect of Natural Food on Gut Microbiome and Phospholipid Spectrum of Immune Cells in COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: Freeze-dried Mare Milk (Saumal)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Exercise Training on Patients With Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase 2/3 Open-Label Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of an XBB.1.5 (Omicron Subvariant) SARS CoV-2 rS Vaccine.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: XBB.1.5 Vaccine (Booster);   Biological: XBB.1.5 Vaccine (single dose)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Safety and Immune Response Study to Evaluate Varying Doses of an mRNA Vaccine Against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 10μg;   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 30μg;   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 100μg;   Drug: Placebo<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>A Phase 3, Randomized, Double-Blinded Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of Omicron Subvariant and Bivalent SARS-CoV-2 rS Vaccines in Adolescents Previously Vaccinated With mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: NVX-CoV2601 co-formulated Omicron XBB.1.5 SARS-CoV-2 rS vaccine;   Biological: Prototype/XBB.1.5 Bivalent Vaccine (5 µg)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<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>Non-ventilated Prone Positioning in the COVID-19 Population</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Proning;   Oxygenation;   Length of Stay<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Proning group;   Other: Control group<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center<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>HD-Tdcs and Pharmacological Intervention For Delirium In Critical Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Delirium;   Critical Illness<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Active HD-tDCS;   Combination Product: Sham HD-tDCS<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Suellen Andrade;   City University of New York<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>RECOVER-VITAL: Platform Protocol, Appendix to Measure the Effects of Paxlovid on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID-19;   Long COVID<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Paxlovid 25 day dosing;   Drug: Paxlovid 15 day dosing;   Drug: Control<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Kanecia Obie Zimmerman<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study on the Safety and Immune Response of a Booster Dose of Investigational COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent High dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Medium dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Low dose;   Biological: CV0601 Monovalent High dose;   Biological: Control vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   GlaxoSmithKline;   CureVac<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>RECOVER-NEURO: Platform Protocol, Appendix_A to Measure the Effects of BrainHQ, PASC CoRE and tDCS Interventions on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID;   Long Covid19;   Long Covid-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: BrainHQ/Active Comparator Activity;   Other: BrainHQ;   Other: PASC CoRE;   Device: tDCS-active;   Device: tDCS-sham<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Directed Topical Drug Delivery for Treatment for PASC Hyposmia</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post Acute Sequelae Covid-19 Hyposmia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Beclomethasone;   Other: Placebo;   Device: Microsponge<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RECOVER-NEURO: Platform Protocol to Measure the Effects of Cognitive Dysfunction Interventions on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID;   Long Covid19;   Long Covid-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: BrainHQ/Active Comparator Activity;   Other: BrainHQ;   Other: PASC CoRE;   Device: tDCS-active;   Device: tDCS-sham<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Impact of COVID-19 on Sinus Augmentation Surgery</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Bone Loss<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Procedure: Sinus lift in patients with positive COVID-19 history;   Procedure: Sinus lift with negative COVID-19 history<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Telerehabilitation for Post COVID-19 Condition</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID;   Chronic Fatigue Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Telerehabilitation program based on cardiorespiratory principles<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Université de Sherbrooke;   Hotel Dieu 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>Immunogenicity and Safety of Concomitant Administration of Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccines With Influenza Vaccines</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Immune Response;   Safety<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: bivalent BNT162b2 mRNA original/omicron BA.4-5 vaccine;   Biological: quadrivalent influenza vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Catholic Kwandong University;   Korea University Guro Hospital<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Novel computational and drug design strategies for inhibition of monkeypox virus and <em>Babesia microti</em>: molecular docking, molecular dynamic simulation and drug design approach by natural compounds</strong> - CONCLUSION: These advanced computational strategies reported that 11 lead compounds, including dieckol and amentoflavone, exhibited high potency, excellent drug-like properties, and no toxicity. These compounds demonstrated strong binding affinities to the target enzymes, especially dieckol, which displayed superior stability during molecular dynamics simulations. The MM/PBSA method confirmed the favorable binding energies of amentoflavone and dieckol. However, further in vitro and in vivo…</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>Reflections on access to care for heavy menstrual bleeding: Past, present, and in times of the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> - The symptom of heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) affects at least a quarter of reproductive-age menstruators. However, given the variance in diagnosing the underlying causes, barriers, and inequity in access to care for HMB, and therefore reporting of HMB, this figure is likely to be a gross underestimate. HMB can have a detrimental impact on quality of life. From the limited reports available it is estimated that around 50%-80% of people with HMB do not seek care for this debilitating symptom, and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibition by components of <em>Glycyrrhiza uralensis</em> of 3CLpro and HCoV-OC43 proliferation</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). 3CLpro is a key enzyme in coronavirus proliferation and a treatment target for COVID-19. In vitro and in silico, compounds 1-3 from Glycyrrhiza uralensis had inhibitory activity and binding affinity for 3CLpro. These compounds decreased HCoV-OC43 cytotoxicity in RD cells. Moreover, they inhibited viral growth by reducing the amounts of the necessary proteins (M, N,…</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 engineered recombinant protein containing three structural domains in SARS-CoV-2 S2 protein has potential to act as a pan-human coronavirus entry inhibitor or vaccine antigen</strong> - The threat to global health caused by three highly pathogenic human coronaviruses (HCoV), SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, calls for the development of pan-HCoV therapeutics and vaccines. This study reports the design and engineering of a recombinant protein designated HR1LS. It contains 3 linked molecules, each consisting of three structural domains, including a heptad repeat 1 (HR1), a central helix (CH), and a stem helix (SH) region, in the S2 subunit of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein. It was…</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>Structural-Based Virtual Screening of FDA-Approved Drugs Repository for NSP16 Inhibitors, Essential for SARS-COV-2 Invasion Into Host Cells: Elucidation From MM/PBSA Calculation</strong> - NSP16 is one of the structural proteins of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) necessary for its entrance to the host cells. It exhibits 2’O-methyl-transferase (2’O-MTase) activity of NSP16 using methyl group from S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) by methylating the 5-end of virally encoded mRNAs and shields viral RNA, and also controls its replication as well as infection. In the present study, we used in silico approaches of drug repurposing to target and inhibit the SAM…</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>Invalidation of geraniin as a potential inhibitor against SARS-CoV-2 main protease</strong> - Recently, geraniin has been identified as a potent antiviral agent targeting SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro). Considering the potential of geraniin in COVID-19 treatment, a stringent validation for its Mpro inhibition is necessary. Herein, we rigorously evaluated the in vitro inhibitory effect of geraniin on Mpro using the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence polarization (FP), and dimerization-dependent red fluorescent protein (ddRFP) assays. Our data indicate that…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Crystal structures of main protease (M<sup>pro</sup>) mutants of SARS-CoV-2 variants bound to PF-07304814</strong> - There is an urgent need to develop effective antiviral drugs to prevent the viral infection caused by constantly circulating SARS-CoV-2 as well as its variants. The main protease (M^(pro)) of SARS-CoV-2 is a salient enzyme that plays a vital role in viral replication and serves as a fascinating therapeutic target. PF-07304814 is a covalent inhibitor targeting SARS-CoV-2 M^(pro) with favorable inhibition potency and drug-like properties, thus making it a promising drug candidate for the treatment…</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>Direct blue 53, a biological dye, inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection by blocking ACE2 and spike interaction in vitro and in vivo</strong> - COVID-19 is a global health problem caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has led to over 600 million infections and 6 million deaths. Developing novel antiviral drugs is of pivotal importance to slow down the epidemic swiftly. In this study, we identified five azo compounds as effective antiviral drugs to SARS-CoV-2, and mechanism study revealed their targets for impeding viral particles’ ability to bind to host receptors. Direct Blue 53, which displayed the strongest inhibitory impact, inhibited five…</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>Chicoric Acid Presented NLRP3-Mediated Pyroptosis through Mitochondrial Damage by PDPK1 Ubiquitination in an Acute Lung Injury Model</strong> - Chicoric acid (CA), a functional food ingredient, is a caffeic acid derivative that is mainly found in lettuce, pulsatilla, and other natural plants. However, the anti-inflammatory effects of CA in acute lung injury (ALI) remain poorly understood. This study was conducted to investigate potential drug usage of CA for ALI and the underlying molecular mechanisms of inflammation. C57BL/6 mice were given injections of liposaccharide (LPS) to establish the in vivo model. Meanwhile, BMDM cells were…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Therapeutic effects of tea polyphenol-loaded nanoparticles coated with platelet membranes on LPS-induced lung injury</strong> - Patients with ALI (acute lung injury)/ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) are often septic and with poor prognosis, which leads to a high mortality rate of 25-40%. Despite the advances in medicine, there are no effective pharmacological therapies for ALI/ARDS due to the short systemic circulation and poor specificity in the lungs. To address this problem, we prepared TP-loaded nanoparticles (TP-NPs) through the emulsification-and-evaporation method, and then the platelet membrane vesicles…</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>Combination of Chinese herbal medicine and conventional western medicine for coronavirus disease 2019: a systematic review and meta-analysis</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Potentially, CHM listed in this study, as an adjunctive therapy, combining with CWM is an effective and safe therapy mode for COVID-19. However, more high-quality RCTs are needed to draw more accurate conclusions.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 main protease targeting potent fluorescent inhibitors: Repurposing thioxanthones</strong> - The coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is the major focus of the whole world due to insufficient treatment options. It has spread all around the world and is responsible for the death of numerous human beings. The future consequences for the disease survivors are still unknown. Hence, all contributions to understand the disease and effectively inhibit the effects of the disease have great importance. In this study, different thioxanthone based molecules, which are known to be fluorescent compounds,…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Identification of a small chemical as a lysosomal calcium mobilizer and characterization of its ability to inhibit autophagy and viral infection</strong> - We previously identified GAPDH as one of the cyclic adenosine diphosphoribose (cADPR)’s binding proteins and found that GAPDH participates in cADPR-mediated Ca^(2+) release from ER via ryanodine receptors (RyRs). Here we aimed to chemically synthesize and pharmacologically characterize novel cADPR analogues. Based on the simulated cADPR-GAPDH complex structure, we performed the structure-based drug screening, identified several small chemicals with high docking scores to cADPR’s binding pocket…</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>Discovery and evaluation of active compounds from Xuanfei Baidu formula against COVID-19 via SARS-CoV-2 M<sup>pro</sup></strong> - CONCLUSION: Acteoside is regarded as a representative active natural compound in XFBD to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2, which provides the antiviral evidence and some insights into the identification of SARS-CoV-2 M^(pro) natural inhibitors.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Neurological side effects and drug interactions of antiviral compounds against SARS-CoV-2</strong> - CONCLUSION: Neurological side effects and drug interactions must be considered for antiviral compounds against SARS-CoV-2. Further studies are required to better evaluate their efficacy and adverse events in patients with concomitant neurological diseases. Moreover, evidence from real-world studies will complement the current knowledge.</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>Many Senior Republicans Are Still Reluctant to Break with Trump</strong> - Since the filing of new charges against the ex-President, many G.O.P. politicians—including some of Trump’s rivals in the primary—have already adopted his framing of the Justice Department’s case. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/are-republicans-finally-breaking-with-trump-over-the-january-6th-indictment-no">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Trump’s Offense Against Democracy Itself</strong> - At last, the former President’s “fraud,” “deceit,” and “lies” are called out in court. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trumps-offense-against-democracy-itself">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The New Trump Indictment and the Reckoning Ahead</strong> - With the former President still far ahead of the rest of the Republican field, the American electorate is headed for a crucial test. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-new-trump-indictment-and-the-reckoning-ahead">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Trump’s Subdued Courtroom Appearance</strong> - At his arraignment on Thursday, the former President sat fragile and meek in the defendant’s seat. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/trumps-subdued-courtroom-appearance">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Former Federal Prosecutor Explains the Latest Trump Indictment</strong> - The case will hinge on proving whether the former President truly believed that the election was stolen as he attempted to overturn it. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-former-federal-prosecutor-explains-the-latest-trump-indictment">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why it’s so hard to get health insurance to pay for therapy</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A person’s hands in the foreground are in focus while the therapist in the background is blurred." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q1rF70yE6N2QONy1ZggsYfK-xzk=/374x0:6347x4480/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72513534/GettyImages_1435001168.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Finding a therapist or other mental health care treatment and getting health insurance to cover those services continues to be a struggle, despite a 2008 “parity” law. | Getty Images/iStockphoto
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Are you paying for mental health treatment out of pocket? It’s not supposed to be that way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Whn9Qk">
At a time when it seems Americans don’t agree on much, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/health/cnn-kff-mental-health-poll-wellness/index.html#:~:text=With%2090%25%20of%20Americans%20saying,employers%2C%20schools%20or%20religious%20organizations.">we agree on this</a>: The US is in the throes of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/mental-health">mental health</a> crisis, one that predates the pandemic but which the pandemic made impossible to ignore.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C806CE">
Yet finding a mental health provider and, crucially, getting health insurance to cover their services continues to be a struggle.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FOy98c">
Longstanding federal laws are supposed to ensure that health insurers cover mental health care just as they do physical treatments. But 15 years after Congress passed a policy that was supposed to achieve “parity” for mental health care, we still don’t have it. It seems to be much easier to get insurers to pay for a broken bone or high blood pressure medication than it is to get addiction treatment or find a therapist.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3AEwk2">
A recent survey of nearly 2,800 US patients <a href="https://www.mhtari.org/Survey_Conducted_by_NORC.pdf">found</a> that 40 percent of patients who had sought in-network mental health care had to make four or more calls to find a provider who would see them — compared to just 14 percent for physical health care. More than half of patients said they had had a claim for mental health care denied three or more times, compared to about one-third who had the same experience with physical services
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xsW3Q9">
Now the Biden administration is taking new steps to hold health insurers accountable and, they hope, make it easier for Americans to get mental and behavioral health care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SVox4n">
But those are promises that have been made before. Experts sound cautiously optimistic about Biden’s proposal, but it’s too early to say if this time it’s different.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uIBNzk">
Congress has been trying for decades to force insurers to cover mental health care. The first mental health parity law was <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950754/">passed in the late ’90s</a> as a bipartisan consolation prize of sorts after Bill Clinton’s health care reform plans fizzled out. It was viewed as largely symbolic. Health insurers have an annual limit for how much patients can pay out of pocket for care, and the law required that the limit for mental health care costs be no higher than for other medical services. But given how unregulated the health insurance market was at the time, it did not have much of a practical effect. Sometimes health insurers didn’t cover mental health care at all. On the individual market, health insurers would disqualify people from coverage if they had mental health needs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kLP87d">
But in 2008, Congress took another pass at improving coverage for mental health services, attaching a bill to the must-pass financial bailout and establishing the rules that exist today. (The Affordable Care Act then extended these requirements to insurance sold on the law’s insurance marketplaces.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VMwSde">
The 2008 law went substantially further than the previous version of parity had. It did not require insurers to cover mental health care, though a combination of state and federal regulations have led to most insurance products in the US covering some mental health services. And if a health plan does cover that care, the law created certain standards that it must meet:
</p>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tDNzSd">
Insurers cannot place quantitative limits for inpatient or outpatient mental health services that were more stringent than the limits for other services. For example, a plan couldn’t limit a person to one day in a mental health treatment facility while covering five days for another type of hospital stay.
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5JVhIl">
Insurers cannot charge higher copays or require higher out-of-pocket payments for mental health services than for physical care. They also are required to count any out-of-pocket payments by the patients toward their overall annual deductible.
</li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xK9Ns3">
Insurers are also supposed to eliminate or reduce other barriers to care, such as requirements for referrals. If they don’t pay mental health providers enough, leading few providers to work with their health plan, that’s also something they’re supposed to fix.
</li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ihreGe">
It was a paradigm shift for health insurers. According to JoAnn Volk, co-director of the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms, insurance underwriters have told her that, prior to the parity law and the ACA’s ban on preexisting conditions, insurers would try to identify people with mental health issues in order to deny them coverage. Now, federal law was requiring them to provide benefits that were as generous for mental health as they were for other medical care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="waVPz9">
“It is a massive shift,” Volk said. “You can’t avoid those people. You have to pay for what they need.”
</p>
<h3 id="WgR8fG">
What’s gone wrong with mental health parity — and Biden’s plan to fix it
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V4CyJk">
Although the 2008 law was a big shift for insurers, it’s still a struggle for too many people to get mental health care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e2NZnB">
The law itself doesn’t judge insurers based on patients’ actual ability to see a provider. Instead, it’s about paperwork/procedure: On paper, insurers cannot limit visits or inpatient stays and, according to experts, they usually do meet those mandates. A provider network, on paper, needs to be up to standard. But a doctor can be in-network and not taking new patients — a phenomenon that policy wonks call a phantom or ghost network.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hQXrqU">
Nevertheless, outcomes can still suggest that plans are failing to achieve true parity in mental health coverage. And the data does strongly suggest insurers have failed to meet the standards set by the 2008 legislation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rTicMA">
An <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/01/biden-mental-health-parity-behavioral-workforce-shortages">insufficient number of mental health professionals</a> (a 31,000-clinician shortage is projected for 2025) and the difficulty of finding one who is in your insurer’s provider network have conspired to make it too difficult for too many Americans to get mental health care.
</p>
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According to <a href="https://www.milliman.com/-/media/milliman/importedfiles/ektron/addictionandmentalhealthvsphysicalhealthwideningdisparitiesinnetworkuseandproviderreimbursement.ashx">a Milliman research report</a>, US patients were five times more likely to use an out-of-network provider in 2017 for both inpatient and outpatient mental health care than they were for all other medical services. One in five office mental health visits was with an out-of-network provider. Reimbursement rates for primary care were 20 percent higher than they were for mental health care, on average. And those disparities actually got worse over the course of the 2010s.
</p>
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All in all, the US has made it hard to find a mental health provider and hard to pay for their services. (Even if your provider does cover some of an out-of-network bill, the patient’s share will be higher than it would have been in-network). And this is with the parity law in effect.
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What’s gone wrong? Some of the problem lies in the design of the law and its emphasis on procedure over outcomes. “It doesn’t guarantee great access — that patients can see the doctor they need and get the treatments they need,” Volk said.
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Some of it is administrative. Enforcement of the parity rules is spread across the US Labor Department, Medicare and Medicaid, and state regulators. It has <a href="https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/articles/addressing-mental-health-parity-enforcement-activities">picked up more in the past few years</a>, with lawsuits filed by state regulators against major insurers and administrative actions by the feds, but had been lax up to that point. The rules were slow to take effect in the first place, with the last of the initial regulations issued in 2016.
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Some of it is cultural. Unfortunately, given the scale of mental health need in the US, insurers have a strong financial incentive to be stingy with covering mental health care. They are aided by the unavoidable reality that a lot of providers and patients have gotten used to working outside of insurance for mental health services. Patients pay their therapist directly, and that’s it. Now the health system is asking those providers to start dealing with the same paperwork that plagues other clinicians.
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“They’re not used to doing the bookkeeping, the credentialing,” Volk said. But she stressed that was a small part of the problem compared to insurer compliance. “I don’t think insurers and plans have held up their part of the bargain.”
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To address that problem, the Biden administration is taking new steps to strengthen enforcement of the parity rules. It is going to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/25/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-takes-action-to-make-it-easier-to-access-in-network-mental-health-care/">require</a> insurers to perform an audit of their mental health benefits and specifically network adequacy, reimbursement rates, and how insurers use tools like prior authorization to limit access to mental health services. The goal is to perform a more outcomes-oriented evaluation of parity compliance, Volk said.
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“It’s definitely a step forward,” she told me.
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Administration officials have also been <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2023/07/25/biden-proposes-sweeping-mental-health-changes-00107931">threatening</a> the possibility of fines and additional legal actions to force health plans to follow the law.
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The ultimate impact will depend on the follow-through. Congress has continued to tinker with the parity rules, including the 2020 amendment requiring insurers to perform a parity analysis that Biden is building upon, an implicit recognition of the failure thus far to actually achieve that elusive goal.
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And with seemingly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/health/children-mental-health-treatment/index.html">each new data point</a> on the state of America’s mental health, the stakes for getting this right could only grow greater.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Lessons from a Barbenheimer summer</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Photo illustration of a tub of popcorn in the foreground and movie posters for Oppenheimer and Barbie in the background." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dwQbmNRI4x334lpoNxN37wG2g6w=/258x0:4367x3082/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72513445/1569956602.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
<em>Barbie</em> and <em>Oppenheimer</em> led July 2023, the second biggest month at the movies on record. | Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What we can learn from July’s record-breaking movie month.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mJJNda">
For a few years, every summer movie season has felt like the weirdest one. There was the year when blockbusters started to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/13/17102186/summer-movie-season-preview-2018">balloon</a> far beyond the margins of “summer.” There was the pandemic summer, when there were <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/8/28/21317675/hollywood-blockbuster-canceled-covid-wagner-jaws">no blockbusters at all</a>. The summer of 2021, with its in-between state and slowly reopening theaters, was headlined by <a href="https://www.vox.com/22612909/annette-review-streaming-summer-2021-movies">a lot of really strange films</a>. And last year’s off-kilter maximalism was so extra, even for spectacle blockbuster season, that <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23321982/three-thousand-years-everything-elvis-summer-2022">I called it</a> the “summer of swirly, googly, bombastic, over-the-top <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies">movies</a>.”
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The summer blockbuster season of 2023 seems on paper like the first normalish one in a long while. All of the elements are there. There have been franchise installments (<em>Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One</em>, <em>Fast X</em>), superhero installments (<em>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</em>, <em>The Flash</em>), and long-tail nostalgia sequels (<em>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</em>). Alongside them are heavily marketed monster hits (the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23789864/barbenheimer-barbieheimer-barbie-oppenheimer-release-memes-double-feature"><em>Barbenheimer</em></a> juggernaut), a couple of low-budget specialty breakouts (<em>Sound of Freedom</em> and <em>Talk to Me</em>), respectable art-house releases (<em>Past Lives</em>), and a few scattered family movies raking in solid bucks (<em>Elemental</em> and, if you squint, <em>Super Mario Bros</em> too).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KkJtu2">
And after years of paltry returns, this summer’s been a whopper: July 2023 is <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/08/barbie-oppenheimer-july-box-office-record-1235452876/#recipient_hashed=173591735bf2ecaa720d57a784f22c2c1172262dad0379f4de6925b1de3679c8&amp;recipient_salt=4cb1b5c2372ebd6360517dddbc22c3fac70eb76defef45853cf8ff4c98efcb01">the second-biggest month</a> in box office returns in history. (The crown still belongs to July 2011, when the final <em>Harry Potter</em> movie was released.)
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Yet the lines haven’t fallen in the usual places. <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1896449537/"><em>Mission: Impossible</em></a>, <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl209683969/"><em>Fast X</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2776598017/"><em>Indiana Jones</em></a> didn’t do nearly as well as some of their predecessors, an unexpected occurrence. All three opened well below the previous film in the series (in Indy’s case, <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2321253889/">$40 million below</a>) and have been slower to earn as well. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.vox.com/23762065/elemental-review-pixar-disney"><em>Elemental</em></a>, while raking in decent money, still struggled in comparison to its older Pixar siblings, and <em>The Flash</em> was <a href="https://hypebeast.com/2023/7/warner-bros-dc-comics-the-flash-loses-200-million-usd-worst-box-office-flip-superhero-film-history">an unqualified flop</a>.
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Not long ago, franchise films, superheroes, and Pixar releases were the backbone of summer blockbuster season; even last year, the No. 1 movie was <a href="https://www.vox.com/23141487/top-gun-maverick-us-military-hollywood-oscar-winner-best-sound"><em>Top Gun: Maverick</em></a>. True to form, this summer did start (in April, because what is time anymore) with <em>Super Mario Bros</em>, which became a monster worldwide hit. Perhaps that was predictable, given the popularity of Mario and his buddies around the world.
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But other hits have been less predictable. <em>Sound of Freedom</em>, for instance, a movie about child sex trafficking, was propelled along by deploying the “movie <em>THEY</em> don’t want you to see” culture war marketing playbook <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23794355/sound-of-freedom-controversy-true-story-qanon">at a conservative audience</a>. The movie’s <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/sound-of-freedom-box-office-analysis-crowdfunding-pay-it-forward-1234881363/">unusual ticket sales model</a> guarantees seats sold, if not <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/debug/sound-of-freedom-amc-ticket-sales/">butts in those seats</a>, but money’s what matters, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23794355/sound-of-freedom-controversy-true-story-qanon"><em>Sound of Freedom</em></a><em> </em>has made bank, grossing more than $150 million in its US-based release. (That’s about $10 million more than what <em>M:I - Dead Reckoning Part One</em> has made in the US, though when you add the latter’s worldwide sales it comes out to nearly $450 million.)
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That number has built some buzz around <em>Sound of Freedom</em>, which isn’t exactly the kind of spectacle- and effects-driven movie you go to in order to turn off your brain and enjoy your popcorn. But neither is <em>Oppenheimer</em>. Christopher Nolan remains one of the few reliably commercial blockbuster directors whose work is also genuinely challenging, and his three-hour biopic about the father of the atomic bomb — a movie which is almost entirely just men in rooms, talking about physics and politics — grossed $180 million in the US alone before its second week was over.
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<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Jim Caviezel in Sound of Freedom" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9aCe3OhWiUtb3pvbJ2XyHnjj8bA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24827941/soundoffreedom.jpg"/> <cite>Angel Studios</cite>
<figcaption>
<em>Sound of Freedom</em> was among the films that propelled a major box office bump this summer.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L45gSv">
That is astonishing on its own, but part of the reason <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23800888/oppenheimer-review-physics-donne-trinity-christopher-nolan-fission-fusion-manhattan-project"><em>Oppenheimer</em></a> did so well, as anyone paying half an iota of attention realizes, is, hilariously, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23800753/barbie-review-bible-eden"><em>Barbie</em></a>, which got linked with <em>Oppenheimer</em> in a clever portmanteau, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23789864/barbenheimer-barbieheimer-barbie-oppenheimer-release-memes-double-feature">spawned a meme with real-life box office consequences</a>, and ended up grossing over twice what <em>Oppenheimer</em> did just in the US in its first two weeks. (It stands to reason that the female-coded <em>Barbie</em> also got an <em>Oppenheimer</em> bump from men who felt the Barbieheimer phenomenon gave them an excuse to see a movie they’d otherwise feel weird about. Thanks, society!)
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On the surface, the two couldn’t be more different. Below the skin, they’re practically siblings, both wrestling with power, apocalypse, and existential dread. But that’s not why people went to see <em>Barbie</em> and <em>Oppenheimer</em>. It’s not why they saw <em>Sound of Freedom</em>, either, if we want to get real about it.
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Put on your time-travel hat and sail back to 1975 for a moment, and then flick on a TV. There’s almost certainly a shark on it. Universal Pictures spent <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/jaws-how-massive-promotion-built-799579/">about $1.8 million marketing</a> <em>Jaws —</em> a bit over $11 million in 2023 dollars. Set against the estimated $150 million spent marketing <em>Barbie, </em>that’s a tiny sum. But in the mid-70s, it was unheard of. A staggering $800,000 of it went toward TV ads, including 24 30-second commercials that aired in primetime on each major network in the two days before the film’s release. If you hadn’t read the novel it was based on, you might not know what it was about, but what you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was that you had to go see <em>Jaws</em>.
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<em>Jaws</em> set the rules in 1975: A blockbuster is not just an evening out or a random choice you make at the ticket counter. A blockbuster is defined by a huge theatrical rollout, preceded by advertising blanketed so thickly that people kind of get sick of it, copious tie-in merchandise, and a sense of urgency. (<em>Independence Day</em> <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/1/15885388/independence-day-movie-advertising-blockbuster">outdid itself</a> in that department.)
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For a blockbuster to really hit it big, the audience has to be convinced that this is the best thing for them to do with their time, money, and friends. You’ve got to go see it or you’ll be left out. It’s an event. From the start, these kinds of films have tapped into a very particular kind of marketing: the kind that appeals to our human need to belong.
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That’s what Barbenheimer somehow recaptured, and why people showed up in elaborate costumes to see the movies. The <em>Sound of Freedom</em> audience felt the same urgency through a campaign largely conducted through word of mouth: Your friends saw this movie, they posted about it, they want you to see it too, and it’s your moral duty to do so — plus, you want to talk about it.
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There’s a lesson in this story for an industry that has been fixated on platform-agnostic “content” for so long. You know what’s not (or at least rarely) an event? A movie that’s spat out onto a streaming platform that you can watch whenever you want, wherever you want, probably by yourself. That’s true for movies or for TV, and the industry used to know this. (Remember “Must-See TV”?) We still occasionally recapture the magic, as the excitement around the final season of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/29/20828679/succession-hbo-guide-season-four-episode-recaps-news-finale-waystar-royco"><em>Succession</em></a> or bigger shows like <a href="https://www.vox.com/house-of-the-dragon"><em>House of the Dragon</em></a> demonstrate.
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Believe it or not, people actually like to have their lives interrupted by the art they find entertaining. People don’t feel urgency around entertainment that they can get to whenever they want; if anecdotal experience is any indication, they’ll just never get around to it. The things that excite us, that cause us to spend money (which is, in the end, the point for the distributors) are happenings. We plan and save and post about Taylor Swift concerts and <em>Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> drops, and we rearrange our schedules to make sure we can engage with them when everyone else is. Movies aren’t different, and movie theaters, done right, are the perfect venue for event-izing screen-based entertainment — which, when we get down to it, is still just about the cheapest night-out activity there is.
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The fact that the summer of <em>Barbie</em> is also the summer of strikes should tell us something. Most of what the writers and actors are striking about has to do with changes wrought by the propulsive, weirdly death-wish-style push toward content sent down tubes at consumers’ convenience. The most likely use of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a> in that context is just to generate more of it more cheaply. But will anyone be watching?
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The Barbieheimer weekend was for me, a film critic, one of the most heartening things I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t mind if people liked or hated the movies, what was exciting was watching people get excited to see them, and then, even more importantly, to talk about them. Yes, the “discourse” (especially on social media) sometimes made me want to bang my head on the counter, but that’s part of what’s great about giant communal forms of entertainment, and in the end, I loved it.
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That weekend also revealed that there’s a long way to go if the theatrical experience will be saved. I’ve spoken with many people who say they avoid theaters largely because their local multiplexes are shoddy big-box operations that are dirty or loud or disruptive and that films are often projected poorly or in the wrong format. During screenings of <em>Oppenheimer</em> in particular, <a href="https://www.joblo.com/oppenheimer-70mm-presentations-technical-difficulties-multiple-theaters/">widespread issues</a> made it clear that the <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/movie-theater-projector-amc-regal.html">art of great projection</a> is in danger of going extinct, in part because nearly all movies are shot and projected digitally now, and in part because movie theaters are understaffed.
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But despite what it has going against it, the movie industry isn’t dead yet, and movies don’t have to die. Recapturing the art of creating an event out of a movie might be an uphill climb for an industry that has been fixated on other matters, but if Hollywood wants to keep itself from the brink, it’s a lesson they’re going to have to agree, finally, to re-learn.
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<li><strong>The creator of Black Mirror is okay with tech. People, on the other hand …</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A cheerleader with both arms held up in a V." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EylM_4A-_peDtXrvEsPpreVgI-0=/717x0:3268x1913/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72513371/Black_Mirror_n_S6_E1_00_34_36_03_copy.0.png"/>
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A scene from “Joan is Awful,” the first episode of the newest season of <em>Black Mirror</em>. | Netflix
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A chat with Charlie Brooker about AI, creativity, and why tech can be like growing an extra limb.
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It’s tough to remember, but in 2011, lots of us felt pretty good about our Silicon Valley overlords. The iPhone was going fully mainstream, <a href="https://www.vox.com/facebook">Facebook</a> felt like a fun place to share ideas, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/twitter">Twitter</a> was going to somehow liberate us from tyrants.
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That was also the year <em>Black Mirror</em> debuted in the UK (it would come to <a href="https://www.vox.com/netflix">Netflix</a> in the US five years later) and offered a different point of view: What if all of this shiny new stuff wasn’t good for us, at all?
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Since then, we’ve had a real reckoning about tech — or, at a minimum, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/6/22702798/verge-tech-survey-2021-trust-privacy-security-facebook-amazon-google-apple-pandemic">our views about tech have gotten much more complicated</a>.
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Which, it turns out, is the way <em>Black Mirror</em> creator Charlie Brooker has always felt about this stuff: “I love technology, I love computers,” he told me this week on the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/black-mirror-creator-charlie-brooker-says-tech-isnt/id1080467174?i=1000623260389"><em>Recode Media</em> podcast</a>. “But I’m also a natural worrier. I’m somebody who catastrophizes at the drop of a hat. And so I’m often worried when some new development or gizmo will give us power, and the responsibility that comes with that. And how easy it is to misuse that, or the unintended consequences or obvious clumsy consequences. … Usually our technologies give with one hand and sort of slap us round the back of the head with the other.”
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Brooker often gets credit for creating scripts that seem eerily prescient on issues we’re just about to confront, and he pulled that off again with the newest season of <em>Black Mirror</em>, which debuted earlier this summer. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Is_Awful">Its first episode</a>, which aired on Netflix just as writers and actors began to worry that Hollywood wanted to replace them with <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a>, features a tech executive who finds out her life has been turned into a Netflix-style show that’s been entirely created by an AI.
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Brooker, not surprisingly, isn’t very interested in using AI to help create his shows. But as we discussed, there’s a bit of nuance there: Current generative AI tech uses existing images and text to help create new, or at least newish, stuff. And writers like Brooker have always used other people’s work to inspire their own. Or in his words: “parasitically hoovering up something” someone else wrote. But I wouldn’t expect a ChatGPT version of <em>Black Mirror</em> anytime soon.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kVaeiC">
You can read excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below, and you can listen to the whole thing <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/black-mirror-creator-charlie-brooker-says-tech-isnt/id1080467174?i=1000623260389">here</a>.
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/peter-kafka-on-media">Peter Kafka</a><strong> </strong>
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How do you feel about the fact that people use <em>Black Mirror</em> as shorthand for “tech dystopia”?
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Charlie Brooker
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On the one hand, I’m delighted, obviously. It’s free publicity for the show. But equally, it’s often depressing on a human level that that’s the stuff we’re looking at and confronted by a lot of the time.
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But it’s not always about technology. When people say that, sometimes they’re talking about talking about a fucked-up situation. People will often say “black mirror” as shorthand for a fucked-up situation. If you look at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_Mirror)">our first-ever episode with the prime minister and the pig</a>, that’s the very definition of a sort of fucked-up situation.
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Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jVvw8I">
What do you make of the fact that you’ve been making this show for more than a decade, and it’s very popular, so clearly people in Silicon Valley have seen it. And you’re saying, “This vision of the future that I have is bad. This is not good.” And then [tech executives] come out and say, “We think this is <em>great</em>. We’re going to productize this.” Whether it’s VR goggles or AI-generated people or whatever. What do you think of that disconnect?
</p>
<h4 id="I2Yo5w">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fFroyX">
One thing I would say is that sometimes, clearly in the show, I’m highlighting something and saying, “This is bad.” Usually, however, the technology isn’t actually the villain. We’ve done an episode with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)">autonomous robot killer dogs going around killing people</a>.
</p>
<h4 id="gofUaf">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EWhtk9">
Not positive.
</p>
<h4 id="ihT9yK">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XZPDYH">
Not really a positive read on that. But they were still presumably created by a human in that story.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y8vCGh">
But most of the time, when an episode is classically <em>Black Mirror</em>, you’ve got something that’s actually quite miraculous. That as a viewer, you can see the desirability of it. You can see why it would be useful, you can see why it would be transformative and in many ways extremely positive. And it’s usually the human beings, the messy human beings who are using this stuff in the story, who manage to balls things up.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NboHUy">
And I guess that that reflects how I feel about a lot of things. In real life, I’m pretty geeky and techie. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/dec/11/charlie-brooker-i-love-videogames">I used to be a video games journalist</a> and I kind of love all this stuff. I love technology, I love computers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3W3Ru9">
But I’m also a natural worrier. I’m somebody who catastrophizes at the drop of a hat. It may come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the show. And so I’m often worried about some when new development or gizmo will give us power, and the responsibility that comes with that. And how easy it is to misuse that, or the unintended consequences or obvious clumsy consequences. And we see that time and time again with things. Usually our technologies give with one hand and sort of slap us round the back of the head with the other.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UQhjfy">
But that’s been the case with the printing press, it’s been the case with everything. I wouldn’t want to delete this stuff from existence necessarily.
</p>
<h4 id="MgEMnz">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CLFsoT">
Your show started in 2011. Back then, we were enormously optimistic about consumer technology, whether it was iPhones or social media. Serious people thought Twitter might bring democracy to the Middle East. Things have swung back dramatically in the opposite direction. Do you think that was always inevitable?
</p>
<h4 id="tkZ42A">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nHs831">
We were clearly looking at it through extremely rose-tinted goggles at the time. That was the thing in a way, I was tapping into in my head, certainly in some of those early episodes. Most <a href="https://www.vox.com/apple">Apple</a> adverts looked to me like — have you seen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green">Soylent Green</a>?
</p>
<h4 id="VCNaDs">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bAzDNi">
Of course.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CQSNNX">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5UHCxy">
There’s a bit where somebody is euthanized — an old guy is euthanized. And he’s taken into a sort of euthanasia clinic and the last thing he’s shown is images of the natural world which has now been destroyed. And it sort of moves him to tears and then he’s killed and turned into food, basically.
</p>
<h4 id="XrYZVG">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OnasJ4">
Which <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/the-man-who-would-make-eating-obsolete/361058/">someone in Silicon Valley</a> thought would be a <a href="https://soylent.com/">good brand</a>.
</p>
<h4 id="5SN9uu">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nMAzOK">
Well, there you go. I mean, that’s the ultimate sort of example. But the imagery there — the sort of pleasant imagery that this guy was shown against this extremely dystopian black backdrop — that was the sense I was always getting from sort of Apple ads at the time. They just seemed to be showing everybody having fun and dancing and smiling. And you just think, “Well, hang on a minute. Things usually aren’t this positive.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Eytr9">
And if we suddenly have extremely powerful tools at our disposal, we will do incredible things. We will also make incredible fuckups. So that seemed to me a well-founded concern I had that I felt wasn’t reflected at the time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I19HDV">
And I remember the positivity around the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#:~:text=The%20Arab%20Spring%20(Arabic%3A%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B9,to%20corruption%20and%20economic%20stagnation.">Arab Spring</a> and people feeling that Twitter was bringing democracy to the Middle East. And now that all seems extremely naive. I think it was always inevitable that we were going to cock things up a bit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mIthdY">
But I wouldn’t want to be just completely cynical. The analogy I always use is that — especially something like social media — it’s like we’ve suddenly grown an extra limb, which is amazing because it means you could juggle and scroll through your iPhone at the same time. But it also means that we’re not really sure how to control it yet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7poGnh">
I do get frustrated sometimes when people characterize the show as “the tech is bad show” sort of thing. And I think sometimes I react to that probably too much.
</p>
<h4 id="1bJLoK">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JVCEQe">
You mentioned AI at the beginning of this conversation. In the space of a year we went from, “Look at this interesting AI art, isn’t that cool or trippy?” to, “Oh, AI could write a script with Chat GPT” to, “Now <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-ai-company-that-wants-to-remake-hollywood/id1080467174?i=1000617093057">maybe AI is going to make a whole movie or a TV show</a>.” Do you think about AI as a tool and/or as a threat?
</p>
<h4 id="r5b3I3">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w4teue">
I think it’s kind of both. The thing that actually depresses me almost more than anything else is — I’ve got two kids and one of them is 9 years old and he’s getting into drawing and he’s good. Really good, especially for his age. He’s proudly drawing, doodling away. And I was looking at this, and encouraging him, well done. And then the next thought that arrived was, “Yeah, but I mean, being an illustrator, that’s no career path these days, is it?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TOazPL">
And then our oldest is really into coding. And I’m thinking, yeah, but are you learning? Is this like learning mathematics, and now the calculators come along and render that like… a machine’s just going to do the icky bits of coding for you.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="43EHGB">
So I do very much worry about what the impact on employment generally is going to be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="51RiHF">
I toyed around with all those things, <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/home/">Midjourney</a> and stuff, like anyone else. And it’s telling — the images that go viral, that sort of thing; the things that are appealing are all kind of mashups, aren’t they? They’re all combinations of things. So I would type in, “Show me Jack the Ripper in the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9683735/Great-British-Bake-famous-tent-erected-Hall-Hotel-Essex-series-12.html">Great British Bake Off tent</a>” or something like that. “Show me Boris Johnson shaking hands with Paddington Bear on the set of Seinfeld.” Because it’s parasitically hoovering up stuff that we humans have made or created or are. So quite quickly, with the AI art, there was something generic about it. Either it was riffs on existing IP or it was fairly somehow sort of too slick, like an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune">auto-tuned vocal</a>.
</p>
<h4 id="tpiVwZ">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rq3qUb">
Yeah, you can see it.
</p>
<h4 id="BofbvZ">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kIzS9Q">
And things like Chat GPT, I can totally see the value in using it as a sort of hyperpowered <a href="https://www.vox.com/google">Google</a>. “Oh, quick: List 10 <a href="https://www.vox.com/labor-jobs">jobs</a> that somebody in Victorian England might have done.” I can imagine that as a writing tool. And the scary thing is I can imagine people using it to generate something that they then claim to own, which isn’t good enough to actually pass muster, that you’d have to then hire a human in, cheaply, to knock into shape.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9TOXQw">
It should be like the tools in Photoshop. I’m not scared by most of the tools in Photoshop. I think they’re super useful for artists.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7K2JOU">
Hopefully one outcome is it makes us up our game. It’s interesting at the moment, that we’ve had a lot of formulaic <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies">movies</a> and stuff. Not to slight superhero movies — it’s just that there’s a lot of them.
</p>
<h4 id="xyICry">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1TInV2">
And the audience seems exhausted.
</p>
<h4 id="sEAq7Q">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="okrppw">
Exhausted. Because I think that it <em>does</em> feel like you could say to Chat GPT, “Knock out the beats of a superhero [movie].” You know what the story beats are going to be.
</p>
<h4 id="PAoYI3">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PnovgZ">
Do you imagine using it? I’ve talked to folks who say, “Yeah, it’s good to make a terrible first draft, because I’d rather look at a bad first draft than a blank page,” or, “I can kick around ideas and a hundred ideas will be bad but one will be good. And that’s useful for me.”
</p>
<h4 id="Qut5eb">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C23DMv">
I don’t think it’s at the point where it could write an even serviceable <a href="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/write-vomit-draft-important/">vomit draft</a>. I don’t know that I trust its ability to generate an idea. Now riffing on an idea that you’ve got yourself? I can potentially see that.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q3zFfa">
But because it’s hoovering up other people’s stuff … Another thing I did [with Chat GPT] was type in, “Give me an idea for a <em>Black Mirror</em> episode.” And it immediately came back with things that … were fairly generic. They were emulation software’s idea of what a <em>Black Mirror</em> story is. And that just made me feel kind of self-parasitic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1Z1S1U">
It’s just leeching off me. And I’d be quite cross if somebody else was using it to leech off me. It’s probably seen somewhere that <em>Black Mirror</em> is a bit like <em>The Twilight Zone</em>, so it’s probably leeching off Rod Serling. It’s probably leeching off <em>RoboCop</em>, <em>Starship Troopers</em> — all these brilliant things that I found very influential …
</p>
<h4 id="OGzr4v">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k2skTH">
And you did [that] as a human. You took all that stuff …
</p>
<h4 id="I9WK5Y">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jdMEZ7">
So, yeah, I mean, I can see that argument as well. Certainly, there’s episodes of <em>Black Mirror</em> that are directly inspired … We did an episode called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Callister">USS Callister,”</a> which is a sort of <em>Star Trek</em> story. And it’s very directly inspired by an episode of <em>The Twilight Zone</em> called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life_(The_Twilight_Zone)">It’s a Good Life</a>,” where there’s an ultra-powerful 6-year-old boy, who can …
</p>
<h4 id="UkHG4B">
Peter Kafka<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MUkpot">
It’s terrifying.
</p>
<h4 id="xuRNxo">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LXt1YM">
It’s terrifying and it still holds up today, and it’s absolutely chilling and terrifying. And I was trying to think of, weirdly, a very different story idea to do with people in the workplace, put into a musical, like a virtual musical, like <em>Grease the Musical</em>. And they wouldn’t know what their roles were. So I might be Sandy and you might be Danny, but we wouldn’t know — the real us wouldn’t know. I was sort of toying around with that idea, and then I thought, “God, you could do so many powerful things.” And as soon as I thought — “Well, what if this is a story about a tyrant? I remember that <em>Twilight Zone</em> episode …”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QyIp5b">
So now that is an example of me, I guess, parasitically hoovering up something that Rod Serling wrote, putting it through my own little AI in my brain. I guess you just call it “I.” There’s nothing artificial about it. Just my I.
</p>
<h4 id="etobjO">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Oa9u9J">
And you created something wholly new. It’s one of your best episodes, most acclaimed.
</p>
<h4 id="XOaICE">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0HjfuA">
I’m very proud of that episode. But hopefully that’s a different process because I’m saying, I owe Rod Serling a debt there. There was a heavy influence. I suppose [AI] feels like this is doing it on an industrial scale.
</p>
<h4 id="efjJJg">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jqho6T">
And you recoil at that. As you know, right now there’s a debate, with the actors and writers strike, about how much AI we are going to allow into our entertainment. Do you think that that’s a real fear for writers and actors — that studios would really want to use AI to replace much of what they do?
</p>
<h4 id="ouucEh">
Charlie Brooker<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="imdTBx">
I think it’s a real fear. I think the fear with writing is that the studio could use it to generate vomit drafts of things, and then hire human writers to depressingly rewrite it. And make it human. And that’s a very depressing state of affairs.
</p>
<h4 id="s4o4ES">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cN1Om6">
But let me just play devil’s advocate for a second. Because it’s very standard in your business to have someone write a draft, and then fire that person, and then bring in multiple people, multiple times, to come and make that draft better. Or oftentimes worse.
</p>
<h4 id="O39ie8">
Charlie Brooker
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Objou">
That’s very cynical! I’ve grown up in the old Britain, where it’s quite different here — the ruthless sort of Hollywood side of writing looks terrifying to me! I’ve had a very lucky existence as a writer. Maybe I’ve got too rose-y tinted a view.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>England’s Alex Hales retires from international cricket with immediate effect</strong> - Hales, who made his international debut against India in August 2011 in a T20I at Manchester, represented England in 11 Tests, 70 One-Day Internationals and 75 T20Is.</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>Zak Crawley looks to test India with Bazball approach next year, wants to adapt to pitches</strong> - India will host England in a five-match Test series next year, and talks are already on about whether the latter would be able to follow their aggressive brand of cricket on Indian pitches.</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>With Broad retiring, Anderson’’s experience will be required in India: Nasser Hussain</strong> - Anderson, the highest wicket-taking quick in Test cricket, would be more than keen to tour India for the series, scheduled to commence in January next year, after an ordinary bowling effort during the recently concluded Ashes</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>Debutant Tilak Varma’s knock in vain as India loses opening T20I against West Indies</strong> - With 37 needed off the last 30 balls and six wickets in hand, India self-destructed to end at 145 for nine in 20 overs to lose the first T20 against West Indies by four runs.</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>India begins with a 7-2 thrashing of China; Malaysia beats Pakistan</strong> - Malaysia beats Pakistan</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>Curbs on laptop, PC imports to check IT hardware with in-built security loopholes</strong> - The government has introduced this policy in order to protect the security interest of the country and its citizens</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>Speed up development works in Itchapuram, Minister Botcha Satyanarayana tells officials</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>Here are the big stories from Karnataka today</strong> - Welcome to the Karnataka Today newsletter, your guide from The Hindu on the major news stories to follow today. Curated by Nalme Nachiyar.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch | What caused Yamuna’s devastating floods?</strong> - A video examining the reasons behind the Yamuna flooding around Delhi and how it has forced several people to shift to relief camps</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>Rajasthan Cabinet approves formation of 19 new districts, three divisions in State</strong> - Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced in the Assembly the formation of 19 new districts and three divisions in March</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>Russian ship hit in Novorossiysk, Black Sea drone attack, Ukraine sources say</strong> - Ukraine intelligence sources say the Olenegorsky Gornyak was damaged during a strike at Novorossiysk.</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>Andrew Tate’s Romania house arrest lifted</strong> - The controversial influencer faces rape and human trafficking charges, which he denies.</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>Putin opponent Alexei Navalny braces for new verdict as Kremlin clamps down</strong> - Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny could see decades added to his time behind bars.</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’s invisible battle to jam Russian weapons</strong> - Ukrainian and Russian electronic warfare units are trying to gain the upper hand on the battlefield.</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>Ousted Niger leader warns of Russian threat</strong> - Mohamed Bazoum warns that the region could fall to Russian influence via the Wagner group.</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>Rocket Report: Lack of transparency on Ariane 6, Drastic cuts Down Under</strong> - “They should really aim for full reusability by 2026.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1958601">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Trans-Atlantic joint venture aims to build new ‘international’ space station</strong> - Airbus replaces Lockheed Martin as habitat builder for the planned Starlab space station. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1958766">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Even people who bought Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses don’t want to use them</strong> - That’s not stopping Meta from making second-gen Stories, WSJ report claims. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1958740">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>iPhone sales are down, but Apple’s subscriptions are growing fast</strong> - Services and wearables were bright spots in an otherwise relatively slow quarter. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1958758">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Waymo will expand rideshares to Austin, Texas, its fourth city</strong> - Waymo say testers will be taking rides “this fall.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1958728">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Convincing your girlfriend that she’s crazy is called gaslighting and it’s a dick move.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Convincing her that she’s a robot with artificial intelligence and implanted memories is called bladerunning and it’s a Philip K. Dick move.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Make_the_music_stop"> /u/Make_the_music_stop </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hvm94/convincing_your_girlfriend_that_shes_crazy_is/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hvm94/convincing_your_girlfriend_that_shes_crazy_is/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Barack Obama walks into a bar, but he is invisible.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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After attracting the bartender’s attention, the bartender says “Ok, I’ll bite. Why are you invisible?”
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Barack says “Well, I found a bottle on the beach and…then I rubbed it.” “And then…importantly…A genie came out.” “The genie said I could have…3 wishes.”
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For my first wish, I said “Let me say this, and this is profoundly important…I want Michelle to marry me…I love her,…and I think America will love her too.” That wish was granted.
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For my second wish, I said “Like all patriotic Americans, I am deeply patriotic…and I want to be President…of the United States…so I can serve my country.” That wish was granted too.
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And then, for my third wish, I started by saying “Let me be clear…”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/JoeWilliams2501"> /u/JoeWilliams2501 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15h8ez7/barack_obama_walks_into_a_bar_but_he_is_invisible/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15h8ez7/barack_obama_walks_into_a_bar_but_he_is_invisible/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Where do BAD rainbows go?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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Where do BAD rainbows go?
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To Prism……It’s a light sentence, but it gives them time to refract.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DocRogue2407"> /u/DocRogue2407 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hk63y/where_do_bad_rainbows_go/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hk63y/where_do_bad_rainbows_go/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Forty years ago, I got a phone call from a solicitor…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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Forty years ago, I got a phone call from a solicitor asking to speak to my husband.
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I told him my husband wasn’t home at the moment.
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He called several more times, and again, my husband wasn’t home.
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Getting tired of his phone calls, I finally said to him to hang on a minute.
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…
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I came back shortly and said in a very deep voice,
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“This is Peter. How can I help you?”
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He proceeded to give his Hustle to me.
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When he finished, I said, “You need to speak to my wife.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/notaredditreader"> /u/notaredditreader </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hkhs9/forty_years_ago_i_got_a_phone_call_from_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hkhs9/forty_years_ago_i_got_a_phone_call_from_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My gender studies teacher asked me how I viewed lesbian relationships…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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Apparently “in 4K” was the wrong answer.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/tytorthebarbarian"> /u/tytorthebarbarian </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hwazz/my_gender_studies_teacher_asked_me_how_i_viewed/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15hwazz/my_gender_studies_teacher_asked_me_how_i_viewed/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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