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<title>16 January, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>COVID-19 vaccine sceptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging</strong> -
<div>
To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes about vaccine safety and intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine. We surveyed 729 unvaccinated individuals from four countries in the early stages of the pandemic, and 472 unvaccinated individuals from two countries after two years of the pandemic. We found belief of vaccine safety strongly correlated with intention to vaccinate in the first sample and less strongly in the second. We also found that consensus messaging improved attitudes toward vaccination even for participants who did not believe the vaccine is safe nor intended to get it. The persuasiveness of expert consensus was unaffected by exposing participants’ lack of knowledge about vaccines. We conclude that highlighting expert consensus may be a way to increase support toward COVID-19 vaccination in those hesitant or sceptical.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/kgsy3/" target="_blank">COVID-19 vaccine sceptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>What is the impact of the COVID-19 on Inpatient Department (IPD) hospital admissions in India? - A 41months Cross-Sectional Study</strong> -
<div>
Abstract - The inpatient department or IPD is the dedicated unit of a hospital/healthcare facility for admitting patients from the OPD (outpatient department), ED (emergency department), or a referred patient usually from lower facilities for a planned care/procedure, for special medical problems that necessitate hospital admission for suitable care and consideration. The index case of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection in India was first suspected (based on clinical grounds) on 27th January 2020, an assumed case of covid-19 in Kerala with a that time recent voyage history of Wuhan, china was affirmed as SARS-CoV-2 virus infection positive case by the NIV (National Institute of Virology) situated at Pune in Maharashtra, on January 30th, 2020 as positive for COVID-19. As per the constitution of India Health is a subject matter of state, hence different states had reserved different percentages of beds in pre-existing health facilities for COVID-19 IPD patients, for example, the Delhi government had reserved 50% of pre-existing ICU (intensive care unit) and ward beds for COVID-19 IPD patient’s. Besides the other factors such as fear etc, this new arrangement of hospital care delivery and prioritization of needs of COVID-19 patients may have resulted in the general cancellations of other IPD patients elective procedures leading to a reduced IPD number of patients with diseases other than COVID-19, as priority was shifted to COVID-19 admitted patient’s and cases. The first author researcher of this study has found unusual prevalence in the figure of IPD (Inpatient Department) hospital admissions during his normal course of duties at health centres throughout the current ongoing COVID-19(coronavirus disease-2019) era. To know about the real scenario this epidemiological deductive study was done to confirm that, does the COVID-19 era have affected the number of IPD hospital admissions (positively or negatively) in India? The aim of this 41months comparative, quantitative, deductive, Cross-Sectional Research Study is to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the prevalence of IPD hospital admissions in India (other than COVID-19), across all public/private/rural/urban health facilities of 36 states and union territories registered on HMIS (Health Management Information System) of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India. The total mean number of IPD admissions for the 17 months (2020-2021) COVID-19 pandemic epoch, was 5387311 compared to 7435770 of IPD admission for the pre-pandemic 2 years (2018-2019). The total mean number of IPD admission decreased by 2048459 during the COVID-19 pandemic epoch i.e. 27.55% decrease is observed during COVID-19. This research study revealed that there is a significant decrease in IPD hospital admissions for various medical conditions other than COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic epoch which is a matter of concern for policy and decision-makers.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/5rmn4/" target="_blank">What is the impact of the COVID-19 on Inpatient Department (IPD) hospital admissions in India? - A 41months Cross-Sectional Study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Do Virtual Environments Close the Gender Gap in Participation in Question-and-Answer Sessions at Academic Conferences? In Search of Moderation by Conference Format</strong> -
<div>
Consistent with power and status differences between men and women in society, men tend to participate more than women do in question-and-answer (Q&amp;A) sessions at in-person academic conferences. This gap in participation in scientific discourse may perpetuate the status quo. The current research examines whether this gender gap in participation in Q&amp;A sessions extends to virtual conferences, which have become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to shifts in conference formats to enable asynchronous, anonymous, and/or simultaneous participation, we examined whether virtual conferences are more inclusive, and mitigate the gender gap in Q&amp;A participation. Across four virtual conferences that varied in gender representation and Q&amp;A structured format, men continued to take a disproportionate amount of time and space in Q&amp;A sessions. Disproportionate participation did not statistically significantly vary between in-person and virtual formats and did not systematically vary by how the Q&amp;A session was organized. In an all-chat virtual conference, gender differences in volubility were attenuated among higher status academics. Gendered participation and volubility were also impacted by which sub-discipline the presentation was in. Discussion considers the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for understanding the persistence of gender inequality in science. We encourage future research that attends to the cultural factors that promote or mitigate gender disparities in participation.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/hkba6/" target="_blank">Do Virtual Environments Close the Gender Gap in Participation in Question-and-Answer Sessions at Academic Conferences? In Search of Moderation by Conference Format</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Combined Use of Google Trends and Talkwalker for Infoveillance: Listening to Web Concerns About COVID-19 Vaccines in Italy (Abstract in English, Main Text in Italian)</strong> -
<div>
Introduction An infodemic is an information epidemic capable of compromising public health. Based on the World Health Organization indications, this manuscript proposes an infoveillance method suitable for listening to web concerns on health in order to develop adequate infodemiological responses. In particular, the case of COVID-19 vaccinations in Italy was investigated. Methods Web interest and concern in COVID-19 vaccines over the past week (January 8 – 14, 2023) was investigated via the websites Google Trends and Talkwalker by searching for appropriate keywords. Thanks to the analysis of related queries and topics, it was possible to determine and examine the most debated topics relating to specific side effects. Results Emotional reactions regarding COVID-19 vaccines have been negative in varying percentages between 40 and 70%, depending on the topic discussed. Feelings of alarm, derision, doubt, and anger were common (about 60%). The concerns were mainly about the effectiveness against recent COVID-19 variants and alleged side effects such as sudden death, tumors, myocarditis, prion disease, and high ferritin. The most used media among those scrutinized was Twitter (over 90% of interactions). The male audience participated more and showed more negativity than the female one. The age groups mainly involved were the under-45s. Discussion and conclusion This research discussed the combined use of Google Trends and Talkwalker to conduct rapid infoveillance surveys. The results found showed that the web public has many doubts about COVID-19 vaccines, including the appearance of very rare or unproved side effects. Based on the WHO infodemic management strategy, it is essential that this or similar approaches are adopted by health and government authorities to listen to the community and calibrate appropriate infodemiological responses aimed at preserving public health.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/8mv6g/" target="_blank">Combined Use of Google Trends and Talkwalker for Infoveillance: Listening to Web Concerns About COVID-19 Vaccines in Italy (Abstract in English, Main Text in Italian)</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>APPRAISE: Fast, accurate ranking of engineered proteins by receptor binding propensity using structural modeling</strong> -
<div>
Deep learning-based methods for protein structure prediction have achieved unprecedented accuracy. However, the power of these tools to guide the engineering of protein-based therapeutics remains limited due to a gap between the ability to predict the structures of candidate proteins and the ability to assess which of those proteins are most likely to bind to a target receptor. Here we bridge this gap by introducing Automated Pairwise Peptide-Receptor AnalysIs for Screening Engineered proteins (APPRAISE), a method for predicting the receptor binding propensity of engineered proteins. After generating models of engineered proteins competing for binding to a target using an established structure-prediction tool such as AlphaFold2-multimer or ESMFold, APPRAISE performs a rapid (under 1 CPU second per model) scoring analysis that takes into account biophysical and geometrical constraints. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that APPRAISE can accurately classify receptor-dependent vs. receptor-independent engineered adeno-associated viral vectors, as well as diverse classes of engineered proteins such as miniproteins targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, nanobodies targeting a G-protein-coupled receptor, and peptides that specifically bind to transferrin receptor and PD-L1. With its high accuracy, interpretability, and generalizability, APPRAISE has the potential to expand the utility of current structural prediction and accelerate protein engineering for biomedical applications.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.11.523680v1" target="_blank">APPRAISE: Fast, accurate ranking of engineered proteins by receptor binding propensity using structural modeling</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Incipient parallel evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron variant in South Brazil</strong> -
<div>
With the coexistence of multiple lineages and increased international travel, recombination and gene flow are likely to become increasingly important in the adaptive evolution of SARS-CoV-2. This could result in the incipient parallel evolution of multiple recombinant lineages. However, identifying recombinant lineages is challenging, and the true extent of recombinant evolution in SARS-CoV-2 may be underestimated. This study describes the first SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron recombinant case identified in Brazil. We demonstrate that the recombination breakpoint is at the beginning of Spike gene (S). The 5’ genome portion (circa 22 kb) resembles the AY.101 lineage (VOC Delta), and the 3’ genome portion (circa 8 kb nucleotides) is most similar to the BA.1.1 lineage (VOC Omicron). Furthermore, evolutionary genomic analyses indicate that the new strain emerged after a single recombination event between lineages of diverse geographical locations in December 2021 in South Brazil. This Deltacron, named AYBA-RS, is one out of almost 30 recombinants described this year. The submission of only four sequences in the GISAID database suggests that this Brazilian lineage had a minor epidemiological impact. On the other hand, the recent emergence of this and various other Deltacron recombinant lineages (i.e., XD, XF, and XS) suggests that gene flow and recombination may play an increasingly important role in the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain the evolutionary and population genetic theory that support this assertion, and we conclude that this stresses the need for continued genomic and epidemiological surveillance. This is particularly important for countries where multiple variants are present, as well as for countries that receive significant inbound international travel.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.06.511203v2" target="_blank">Incipient parallel evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron variant in South Brazil</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Variations in COVID-19 impacts by social vulnerability in Philadelphia, June 2020-December 2022</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Introduction: The study objective was to elucidate the relationship between social vulnerability and COVID-19 impacts in Philadelphia between June 2020 and December 2022. Methods: Using publicly available COVID-19 case, test, hospitalization, and mortality data for Philadelphia (June 7, 2020-December 31, 2022) and area-level social vulnerability data, we compared the incidence, test positivity, hospitalization, and mortality rates in high and low vulnerability neighborhoods of Philadelphia, characterized as scoring above or below the national median score on the social vulnerability index. We used linear mixed effects models to test the association between social vulnerability and COVID-19 incidence, test positivity, hospitalization, and mortality rates, adjusting for time and age distribution. Results: 90.4% of Philadelphians (n = 1,430,153) live in neighborhoods classified as socially vulnerable, based on scoring above the national median score on the social vulnerability index. COVID-19 incidence, hospitalization, and mortality rates were significantly elevated in the more vulnerable communities, with p &lt; 0.05, p &lt; 0.005, and p &lt; 0.001, respectively. The relative risks of COVID-19-related incidence, hospitalization, and death, comparing the more vulnerable neighborhoods to the less vulnerable neighborhoods, were 1.11 (95%CI: 1.10-1.12), 2.07 (95%CI: 1.93-2.20), and 2.06 (95%CI: 1.78-2.38), respectively. Thus, between June 7, 2020 and December 31, 2022, 32,573 COVID-19 cases, 9,409 hospitalizations, and 1,967 deaths would have been avoided in Philadelphias more vulnerable communities had they experienced the same rates of incidence, hospitalization, and death as the less vulnerable Philadelphia communities. Conclusions: These results highlight the disparate morbidity and mortality experienced by people living in more vulnerable neighborhoods in a large US city. Importantly, our findings illustrate the importance of designing public health policies and interventions with an equity-driven approach, with greater resources and more intensive prevention strategies applied in socially vulnerable communities.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.13.23284488v1" target="_blank">Variations in COVID-19 impacts by social vulnerability in Philadelphia, June 2020-December 2022</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Occupational Determinants of COVID-19 Cumulative Incidence and Vaccination Rate in the United States</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective We aim to study the relationship between occupation distribution within each county and COVID-19 cumulative incidence and vaccination rate in the United States. Methods We collected county-level data from January 22, 2020 up to December 25, 2021. We fit multivariate linear models to find the relationship of the percentage of people employed by 23 main occupations. Results Counties with more health-related jobs, office support roles, community service, sales, production and material moving occupations had higher COVID-19 cumulative incidence. During the uptick of the Delta COVID variant (stratified period July 1-Dec 25), counties with more transportation occupations had significantly more COVID-19 cumulative incidence than before. Significance Understanding the association between occupations and COVID-19 cumulative incidence on an ecological level can provide information for precision public health strategies for prevention and protecting vulnerable workers.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.13.22274536v1" target="_blank">Occupational Determinants of COVID-19 Cumulative Incidence and Vaccination Rate in the United States</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 VARIANT PREVALENCE ESTIMATION USING WASTEWATER SAMPLES</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The present work describes a statistical model to account for sequencing information of SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater samples. The model expresses the joint probability distribution of the number of genomic reads corresponding to mutations and non-mutations in every locus in terms of the variant proportions and the joint mutation distribution within every variant. Since the variant joint mutation distribution can be estimated using GISAID data, the only unknown parameters in the model are the variant proportions. These are estimated using maximum likelihood. The method is applied to monitor the evolution of variant proportions using genomic data coming from wastewater samples collected in A Coruna (NW Spain) in the period May 2021 - March 2022. Although the procedure is applied assuming independence among the number of reads along the genome, it is also extended to account for Markovian dependence of counts along loci in the aggregated information coming from wastewater samples.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.13.23284507v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 VARIANT PREVALENCE ESTIMATION USING WASTEWATER SAMPLES</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Coverage of primary and booster vaccination against COVID-19 by socioeconomic level: A nationwide cross-sectional registry study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
High and equitable COVID-19 vaccination coverage is important for pandemic control and prevention of health inequity. However, little is known about socioeconomic correlates of booster vaccination coverage. In this cross-sectional study of all Norwegian adults in the national vaccination program (N = 4,190,655), we use individual-level registry data to examine coverage by levels of household income and education of primary (≥2 doses) and booster (≥3 doses) vaccination against COVID-19. We stratify the analyses by age groups with different booster recommendations and report relative risk ratios (RR) for vaccination by 25 August 2022. In the 18-44 years group, individuals with highest vs. lowest education had 94% vs. 79% primary coverage (adjusted RR (adjRR) 1.15, 95%CI 1.14-1.15) and 67% vs. 38% booster coverage (adjRR 1.55, 95% CI 1.55-1.56), while individuals with highest vs. lowest income had 94% vs. 81% primary coverage (adjRR 1.10, 95%CI 1.10-1.10) and 60% vs. 43% booster coverage (adjRR 1.23, 95%CI 1.22-1.24). In the ≥45 years group, individuals with highest vs. lowest education had 96% vs. 92% primary coverage (adjRR 1.02, 95%CI 1.02-1.02) and 88% vs. 80% booster coverage (adjRR 1.09, 95%CI 1.09-1.09), while individuals with highest vs. lowest income had 98% vs. 82% primary coverage (adjRR 1.16, 95%CI 1.16-1.16) and 92% vs. 64% booster coverage (adjRR 1.33, 95%CI 1.33-1.34). In conclusion, we document large socioeconomic inequalities in COVID-19 vaccination coverage, especially for booster vaccination, even though all vaccination was free-of-charge. The results highlight the need to tailor information and to target underserved groups for booster vaccination.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.13.23284467v1" target="_blank">Coverage of primary and booster vaccination against COVID-19 by socioeconomic level: A nationwide cross-sectional registry study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Last Confirmed Case is Not the Last Infection and Catastrophic Outbreaks do Not Require Transmission</strong> -
<div>
Efforts made to prevent transmission of the infectious agent that causes an infectious disease in its capacity as a pathogen are praised and victory is declared after the last case of the expected outcomes of the event in which this disease occurs is confirmed. After all, it is assumed that such expected outcomes of the event in which the pathogen causes the infectious disease are manifestations of this disease and therefore that the last confirmed case in which such outcomes are observed is the last case of infection. But the results obtained by visualizing the reality in which the immunological concepts which have eluded us since the birth of the repeatedly proven germ theory are represented reveal that outcomes of the event in which the pathogen causes the infectious disease are not manifestations of this disease but rather consequences of the co-manifestation of different diseases in the spectrum of the infectious disease. These results enable us to account for the differences between such outcomes which, for instance, in patients with COVID-19 that the current theory of infectious disease pathogenesis expects to produce outcomes that affect the upper respiratory disease, include unexpected conditions such as the chronic ones seen in Long COVID patients and in patients with mpox, which this theory logically deduced to be a skin-affecting disease, include deadly conditions like encephalitis with the consequence that outcomes with such deadly conditions are attributed to underlying conditions even after Spain’s health ministry reported deaths from such outcomes in healthy individuals. And the consequence of the same results is that the last cases of expected outcomes such as those that affect the skin of individuals who are infected with the mpox virus are not the last cases of infection but rather the last cases in which such outcomes appear as the sterile causes of the non-infectious diseases that co-manifest with the infectious disease for the emergence of such outcomes disappear from the population in which undetected spread of the infectious agent occurred long before the widespread appearance of such expected outcomes that called attention to this pathogen or an earlier form of the pathogen, such as the smallpox virus, which is assumed to have been eradicated. It follows in the reality which was visualized to obtain these results that even as the disappearance of such outcomes is being celebrated, the sterile causes of non-infectious diseases which co-manifest with the infectious disease for the emergence of unexpected deadly outcomes, such as those with encephalitis and toxic shock, may be appearing in the population which is already harboring the pathogen silently. And without exciting cause or warning, such deadly outcomes will become widespread in our populations and will decimate them if the only treatments available at the time are still those that reduce viral replication which are unable to bring about the remission of such outcomes. Instead of celebrating the disappearance of cases when the sterile causes of the non-infectious diseases that co-manifest with mpox for the emergence of those expected skin-affecting outcomes disappear, we ought to quickly elucidate the conditions that permit the immunological mechanisms of infection and vaccination to bring about uneventful exposure to such sterile causes even after deadly outcomes of such events have already appeared as achieved by the vaccines of William Coley and Julius Wagner-Jauregg in some cases even at a time when nothing was known about the nature of such immunological mechanisms and the remission that followed therapeutic infection in such cases was attributed to fever.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/gb7ky/" target="_blank">The Last Confirmed Case is Not the Last Infection and Catastrophic Outbreaks do Not Require Transmission</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Changes to Family Caregiving of Older Adults and Adults with Disabilities during COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
The strict restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have disrupted the lives of many at-risk people and their family caregivers. This study explored how family caregivers perceived that family caregiving had changed during COVID-19 and the strategies they used to cope with these changes. We conducted 52 semi-structured interviews with family caregivers of adults over age 65 or adults with disabilities and analyzed the data through an inductive thematic analysis. Caregivers perceive the largest COVID-19-related caregiving changes to be limited social and physical contacts, changed caregiving tasks, reduced services and supports, and a new focus on vigilance and safety. Caregivers made numerous changes to caregiving, including keeping connected, keeping relatives occupied, getting support and services in new ways, and reducing caregiver stress.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/pb6ry/" target="_blank">Changes to Family Caregiving of Older Adults and Adults with Disabilities during COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Structure-based discovery of inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 Nsp14 N7-methyltransferase</strong> -
<div>
An under-explored target for SARS-CoV-2 is non-structural protein 14 (Nsp14), a crucial enzyme for viral replication that catalyzes the methylation of N7-guanosine of the viral RNA at 5-prime-end; this enables the virus to evade the host immune response by mimicking the eukaryotic post-transcriptional modification mechanism. We sought new inhibitors of the S-adenosyl methionine (SAM)-dependent methyltransferase (MTase) activity of Nsp14 with three large library docking strategies. First, up to 1.1 billion make-on-demand (tangible) lead-like molecules were docked against the enzyme SAM site, seeking reversible inhibitors. On de novo synthesis and testing, three inhibitors emerged with IC50 values ranging from 6 to 43 M, each with novel chemotypes. Structure-guided optimization and in vitro characterization supported their non-covalent mechanism. In a second strategy, docking a library of 16 million tangible fragments revealed nine new inhibitors with IC50 values ranging from 12 to 341 M and ligand efficiencies from 0.29 to 0.42. In a third strategy, a newly created library of 25 million tangible, virtual electrophiles were docked to covalently modify Cys387 in the SAM binding site. Seven inhibitors emerged with IC50 values ranging from 3.2 to 39 M, the most potent being a reversible aldehyde. Initial optimization of a second series yielded a 7 M acrylamide inhibitor. Three inhibitors characteristic of the new series were tested for selectivity against 30 human protein and RNA MTases, with one showing partial selectivity and one showing high selectivity. Overall, 32 inhibitors encompassing eleven chemotypes had IC50 values &lt;50 M and 5 inhibitors in four chemotypes had IC50 values &lt;10 M. These molecules are among the first non-SAM-like inhibitors of Nsp14, providing multiple starting points for optimizing towards antiviral activity.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.12.523677v1" target="_blank">Structure-based discovery of inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 Nsp14 N7-methyltransferase</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Pathogenesis of Breakthrough Infections with SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Syrian Hamsters</strong> -
<div>
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19, has evolved into multiple variants. Animal models are important to understand variant pathogenesis, particularly for those with mutations that have significant phenotypic or epidemiological effects. Here, cohorts of naive or previously infected Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) were infected with variants to investigate viral pathogenesis and disease protection. Naive hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 variants had consistent clinical outcomes, tissue viral titers, and pathology, while hamsters that recovered from initial infection and were reinfected demonstrated less severe clinical disease and lung pathology than their naive counterparts. Males had more frequent clinical signs than females in most variant groups, but few sex variations in tissue viral titers and lung pathology were observed. These findings support the use of Syrian hamsters as a SARS-CoV-2 model and highlight the importance of considering sex differences when using this species.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.12.523876v1" target="_blank">Pathogenesis of Breakthrough Infections with SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Syrian Hamsters</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Burden, Causation, and Particularities of long-COVID in African populations: A rapid systematic review</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The global estimated prevalence of long COVID-19 is 43%, and the most common symptoms found globally are fatigue, confusion, or lack of confusion, and dyspnea, with prevalence rates of 23%, 14%, and 13%, respectively. However, long COVID still lacks an overall review in African populations. The aim of this review was to determine the prevalence of long COVID, its most common symptoms, comorbidities, and pathophysiological mechanisms. Methods: A systematic review of long COVID in African populations was conducted. The random effects model was used to calculate the pooled prevalence rates (95% CI). If the results could not be pooled, a narrative synthesis was performed. Results: We included 14 studies from 7 African countries, totaling 6,030 previously SARS-CoV-2 infected participants and 2,954 long COVID patients. Long COVID had a pooled prevalence of 41% [26%-56%]. Fatigue, dyspnea, and confusion or lack of concentration were the most common symptoms, with prevalence rates (95% CI) of 41% [26%-56%], 25% [12%-38%], and 40% [12%-68%], respectively. Long COVID was associated with advanced age, being female, more than three long COVID symptoms in the acute phase, initial fatigue and dyspnea, post-recovery stress, sadness, and sleep disturbances, and loss of appetite at symptoms onset, mild, moderate, and severe, pre-existing obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and the presence of any chronic illness (P ≤0.05). According to our review, high micro clot and platelet poor plasma (PPP) viscosity explain the pathophysiology of long COVID. Conclusion: Long COVID prevalence in Africa was comparable to the global prevalence. However, the prevalence of the most common symptoms was higher in Africa. Comorbidities associated with long COVID may lead to additional complications in African populations due to hypercoagulation and thrombosis.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.13.23284305v1" target="_blank">Burden, Causation, and Particularities of long-COVID in African populations: A rapid systematic review</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>Digital Tools to Expand COVID-19 Testing in Exposed Individuals in Cameroon</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Digital based contact tracing<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation;   Find<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>Postural Changes and Severe COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Postural interventions based on pulmonary imaging<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Wuhan Union Hospital, China<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy and Safety of Jaktinib in Patients With COVID-19 Pneumoia</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Jaktinib;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang 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>Awaken Prone Positioning Ventinlation in COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Procedure: Awaken prone positioning ventilation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Southeast University, China<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of a Traditional Chinese Medicine Formulation on COVID-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Traditional Chinese Medicine Formulation;   Other: Placebo Treatment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   First Affiliated Hospital Xi’an Jiaotong 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>Study of SHEN26 Capsule in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SHEN26 dose 1;   Drug: SHEN26 dose 2;   Drug: SHEN26 placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shenzhen Kexing Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study on the Safety and Efficacy of Meplazumab for Injection in Severe Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Meplazumab for injection;   Other: Normal saline<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Pacific Meinuoke Bio Pharmaceutical Co Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bright Light Therapy for Post-COVID-19 Fatigue</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: Bright light therapy;   Device: Dim red light therapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Chinese University of Hong Kong<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>Study on the Safety and Efficacy of Meplazumab for Injection in Adults With Mild and Moderate COVID-19 Infections</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Meplazumab foe injection;   Other: Normal saline<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Pacific Meinuoke Bio Pharmaceutical Co Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of FB2001 for Inhalation in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Mild to Moderate COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: FB2001;   Drug: FB2001 placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Frontier Biotechnologies Inc.<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>UC-MSCs in the Treatment of Severe and Critical COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Mesenchymal Stem Cell;   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells;   Drug: paxlovid<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shanghai East 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>An Investigator Initiated, Randomized, Double-blinded, Placebo-controlled Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Safety, Immunogenicity and Efficacy of the Recombinant Two-component COVID-19 Vaccine (CHO Cell) in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Prevention of COVID-19 Caused by SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Yu Qin<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of Azvudine in Preventing SARS-Cov-2 Infection in Ousehold in China</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Azvudine;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Shanghai Henlius Biotech;   Huashan Hospital;   Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Industrial Development Co. Ltd.;   HeNan Sincere Biotech Co., Ltd<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study of Positive Emotions With Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Microdosing of mindfulness<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of California, Davis<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>Evaluation of the Outcome of Covid Patients Discharged Home on Oxygen Therapy</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Phone satisfaction questionnaire<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Centre Hospitalier René Dubos<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Relationship between behavioral inhibition/activation system and Internet addiction among Chinese college students: The mediating effects of intolerance of uncertainty and self-control and gender differences</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: These findings extend our understanding of how BIS/BAS influence Internet addiction among college students and suggest that not only should training approaches based on intolerance of uncertainty and self-control be fully considered, but different intervention programs should be focused on gender sensitivity to maximize the intervention effect.</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>miR-615 facilitates porcine epidemic diarrhea virus replication by targeting <em>IRAK1</em> to inhibit type III interferon expression</strong> - Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) in the Coronavirus family is a highly contagious enteric pathogen in the swine industry, which has evolved mechanisms to evade host innate immune responses. The PEDV-mediated inhibition of interferons (IFNs) has been linked to the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in virus-host interactions and IFN-I regulation. However, the mechanism by which the PEDV regulates IFN during PEDV infection has not yet been investigated in…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Eugenol Alleviates TGEV-Induced Intestinal Injury via Suppressing ROS/NLRP3/GSDMD-Dependent Pyroptosis</strong> - Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), a coronavirus, is one of the main causative agents of diarrhea in piglets and significantly impacts the global swine industry. Pyroptosis is involved in the pathogenesis of coronavirus, but its role in TGEV-induced intestinal injury has yet to be fully elucidated. Eugenol, an essential plant oil, plays a vital role in antiviral innate immune responses. We demonstrate the preventive effect of eugenol on TGEV infection. Eugenol alleviates TGEV-induced…</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>Relationship between toxicity and oxidative stress of the nanoencapsulated colchicine in a model of <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em></strong> - Drug repurposing allows searching for new biological targets, especially against emerging diseases such as Covid-19. Drug colchicine (COL) presents recognized anti-inflammatory action, while the nanotechnology purpose therapies with low doses, efficacy, and decrease the drug’s side-effects. This study aims to evaluate the effects of COL and colchicine nanocapsules (NCCOL) on survival, LC50, activity locomotor, and oxidative stress parameters, elucidating the toxicity profile in acute and chronic…</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>Flavonoids from the roots and rhizomes of Sophoratonkinensis and their in vitro anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity</strong> - Acute respiratory infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) had caused a global pandemic since 2019, and posed a serious threat to global health security. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has played an indispensable role in the battle against the epidemic. Many components originated from TCMs were found to inhibit the production of SARS-CoV-2 3C-like protease (3CLpro) and papain-like protease (PLpro), which are two promising therapeutic targets to inhibit…</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 in healthy adults of full dose versus half doses of COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1-S or BNT162b2) or full-dose CoronaVac administered as a booster dose after priming with CoronaVac: a randomised, observer-masked, controlled trial in Indonesia</strong> - BACKGROUND: Inactivated COVID-19 vaccines effectively prevent death, but their effectiveness for preventing infection or severe illness is known to decrease within 3-6 months following the second priming dose. Here we aimed to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of three potential booster vaccines administered as a full-dose homologous booster or full-dose or half-dose heterologous boosters among individuals primed with CoronaVac.</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>Preclinical development of kinetin as a safe error-prone SARS-CoV-2 antiviral able to attenuate virus-induced inflammation</strong> - Orally available antivirals against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are necessary because of the continuous circulation of new variants that challenge immunized individuals. Because severe COVID-19 is a virus-triggered immune and inflammatory dysfunction, molecules endowed with both antiviral and anti-inflammatory activity are highly desirable. We identified here that kinetin (MB-905) inhibits the in vitro replication of SARS-CoV-2 in human hepatic and pulmonary cell…</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>Why did air quality experience little improvement during the COVID-19 lockdown in megacities, northeast China?</strong> - To inhibit the COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak, unprecedented nationwide lockdowns were implemented in China in early 2020, resulting in a marked reduction of anthropogenic emissions. However, reasons for the insignificant improvement in air quality in megacities of northeast China, including Shenyang, Changchun, Jilin, Harbin, and Daqing, were scarcely reported. We assessed the influences of meteorological conditions and changes in emissions on air quality in the five megacities…</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>Multi-target activity of copper complexes; antibacterial, DNA binding, and molecular docking with SARS-CoV-2 receptor</strong> - A series of pendant-armed mixed-ligand copper(II) complexes of the type [CuL^(1-3)(diimine)] (1-6) have been synthesized by the reaction of pendant-armed ligands N,N-bis(2-(((E)-2-hydroxy-5-methylbenzylidene)amino)ethyl)benzamide (H(2)L(1)), N,N-bis(2-(((E)-2-hydroxy-5-methylbenzylidene)amino)ethyl)-4-nitrobenzamide (H(2)L(2)) and N,N-bis(2-(((E)-2-hydroxy-5-methylbenzylidene)amino)ethyl)-3,5-dinitrobenzamide (H(2)L(3)) with diimine = 2,2’-bipyridyl (bpy) or 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) in the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lidocaine inhibits influenza a virus replication by up-regulating IFNα4 via TBK1-IRF7 and JNK-AP1 signaling pathways</strong> - Influenza A viruses (IAV), significant respiratory pathogenic agents, cause seasonal epidemics and global pandemics in intra- and interannual cycles. Despite effective therapies targeting viral proteins, the continuous generation of drug-resistant IAV strains is challenging. Therefore, exploring novel host-specific antiviral treatment strategies is urgently needed. Here, we found that lidocaine, widely used for local anesthesia and sedation, significantly inhibited H1N1(PR8) replication in…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Soluble Signal Inhibitory Receptor on Leukocytes-1 Is Released from Activated Neutrophils by Proteinase 3 Cleavage</strong> - Signal inhibitory receptor on leukocytes-1 (SIRL-1) is an immune inhibitory receptor expressed on human granulocytes and monocytes that dampens antimicrobial functions. We previously showed that sputum neutrophils from infants with severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) bronchiolitis have decreased SIRL-1 surface expression compared with blood neutrophils and that SIRL-1 surface expression is rapidly lost from in vitro activated neutrophils. This led us to hypothesize that activated…</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>Toll-Like Receptor 4-Dependent Platelet-Related Thrombosis in SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: The study identifies 2 TLR4-dependent and independent pathways promoting platelet-dependent thrombus growth and suggests inhibition of TLR4. or p47phox as a tool to counteract thrombosis in SARS-CoV-2.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How to achieve carbon neutrality while maintaining economic vitality: An exploration from the perspective of technological innovation and trade openness</strong> - The significant drop in global carbon emissions in 2020 was credited to the enormous loss of economic activity from the impact of COVID-19. The challenge is now to reduce carbon emissions without causing massive disruption and damage to economic production. To achieve carbon neutrality while maintaining economic vitality, the impact of technological innovation and trade openness must be considered. This paper sets technological innovation and trade openness as core variables and establishes two…</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>Molecular mechanisms in chloroquine-exposed muscle cells elucidated by combined proteomic and microscopic studies</strong> - CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that CQ exposure (secondarily) impacts biological processes beyond lysosomal function and linked a variety of proteins with known roles in the manifestation of other neuromuscular diseases.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Predicting the systemic exposure and lung concentration of nafamostat using physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling</strong> - Nafamostat has been actively studied for its neuroprotective activity and effect on various indications, such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Nafamostat has low water solubility at a specific pH and is rapidly metabolized in the blood. Therefore, it is administered only intravenously, and its distribution is not well known. The main purposes of this study are to predict and evaluate the pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles of nafamostat in a virtual healthy population under various dosing…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Investigations of Joe Biden Begin</strong> - A new Republican House subcommittee and a new special counsel pose more of a political threat to the President than a legal one. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-investigations-of-joe-biden-begin">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Message for the Federal Reserve in the New Inflation Data</strong> - As a new report shows price pressures easing, should the central bank rethink its strategy of raising interest rates? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/a-message-for-the-federal-reserve-in-the-new-inflation-data">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>California’s Devastating Storms Are a Glimpse of the Future</strong> - Even as the state weathers a megadrought, climate change is increasing the risk of catastrophic floods. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/californias-devastating-storms-are-a-glimpse-of-the-future">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How Eric Adams Started Mentoring a Con Man</strong> - Eric Adams’s friends and allies have puzzled over his relationship with Lamor Whitehead, a fraudster Brooklyn church leader. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/how-eric-adams-started-mentoring-a-con-man">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Origins of Joe Biden’s Document Mess</strong> - At the end of his Vice-Presidency, all official documents should have been transferred to the National Archives. How did some end up elsewhere? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-origins-of-joe-bidens-document-mess">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Are we too worried about misinformation?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A graphic representation of a newspaper page with the words true and false acting as headlines." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zgmy67DwinlV-Z1ZlTek6Fjt6Ko=/0x689:5512x4823/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71870693/GettyImages_1314497914.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images/iStockphoto
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Resist trying to make things better”: A conversation with internet security expert Alex Stamos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z2i0Xu">
I’m old enough to remember when the internet was going to be great news for everyone. Things have gotten more complex since then: We all still agree that there are lots of good things we can get from a broadband connection. But we’re also likely to blame the internet — and specifically the big tech companies that dominate it — for all kinds of problems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PrzOwO">
And that blame-casting gets intense in the wake of major, calamitous news events, like the spectacle of the January 6 riot or <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/8/23545130/brazil-bolsonaro-supporters-lula">its rerun in Brazil this month</a>, both of which were seeded and organized, at least in part, on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram. But how much culpability and power should we really assign to tech?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2xDt8Q">
I think about this question all the time but am more interested in what people who actually study it think. So I called up Alex Stamos, who does this for a living: Stamos is the former head of security at Facebook who now heads up the <a href="https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io">Stanford Internet Observatory</a>, which does deep dives into the ways people abuse the internet.
</p>
<aside id="MYOUvI">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9QTiBW">
The last time <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20996869/facebook-political-ads-targeting-alex-stamos-interview-open-sourced">I talked to Stamos, in 2019</a>, we focused on the perils of political ads on platforms and the tricky calculus of regulating and restraining those ads. This time, we went broader, but also more nuanced: On the one hand, Stamos argues, we have overestimated the power that the likes of Russian hackers have to, say, influence elections in the US. On the other hand, he says, we’re likely overlooking the impact state actors have to influence our opinions on stuff we don’t know much about.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JrA990">
You can hear our entire conversation on the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recode-media/id1080467174"><em>Recode Media</em> podcast</a>. The following are edited excerpts from our chat.
</p>
<h4 id="8Djmk6">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gDDcBK">
I want to ask you about two very different but related stories in the news: Last Sunday, people stormed government buildings in Brazil in what looked like their version of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack">January 6 riot</a>. And there was an immediate discussion about <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-64223574">what role internet platforms like Twitter and Telegram</a> played in that incident. The next day, there was a study published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9"><em>Nature</em></a> that looked at the effect of Russian interference on the 2016 election, specifically on Twitter, which concluded that all the misinformation and disinformation the Russians tried to sow had essentially no impact on that election or on anyone’s views or actions. So are we collectively overestimating or underestimating the impact of misinformation and disinformation on the internet?
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="UkGaNM">
<q>“There was a massive overestimation of the capability of mis- and disinformation to change people’s minds — of its actual persuasive power”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<h4 id="EqjcEP">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ANFGrH">
I think what has happened is there was a massive overestimation of the capability of mis- and disinformation to change people’s minds — of its actual persuasive power. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, but we have to reframe how we look at it — as less of something that is done to us and more of a supply and demand problem. We live in a world where people can choose to seal themselves into an information environment that reinforces their preconceived notions, that reinforces the things they want to believe about themselves and about others. And in doing so, they can participate in their own radicalization. They can participate in fooling themselves, but that is not something that’s necessarily being done to them.
</p>
<h4 id="ox6PJ0">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KrmMSb">
But now we have a playbook for whenever something awful happens, whether it’s January 6 or what we saw in Brazil or things like the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-shootings">Christchurch shooting in New Zealand</a>: We say, “what role did the internet play in this?” And in the case of January 6 and in Brazil, it seems pretty evident that the people who are organizing those events were using internet platforms to actually put that stuff together. And then before that, they were seeding the ground for this disaffection and promulgating the idea that elections were stolen. So can we hold both things in our head at the same time — that we’ve both overestimated the effect of Russians reinforcing our filter bubble versus state and non-state actors using the internet to make bad things happen?
</p>
<h4 id="koCFqh">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="57dCBf">
I think so. What’s going on in Brazil is a lot like January 6 in that the interaction of platforms with what’s happening there is that you have kind of the broad disaffection of people who are angry about the election, which is really being driven by political actors. So for all of these things, almost all of it we’re doing to ourselves. The Brazilians are doing [it] to themselves. We have political actors who don’t really believe in democracy anymore, who believe that they can’t actually lose elections. And yes, they are using platforms to get around the traditional media and communicate with people directly. But it’s not foreign interference. And especially in the United States, direct communication with your political supporters via these platforms is First Amendment-protected.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MQ9QD6">
Separately from that, in a much smaller timescale, you have the actual kind of organizational stuff that’s going on. On January 6, we have all this evidence coming out from all these people who have been arrested and their phones have been grabbed. And so you can see Telegram chats, WhatsApp chats, iMessage chats, Signal, all of these real-time communications. You see the same thing in Brazil.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CPV72k">
And for that, I think the discussion is complicated because that is where you end up with a straight trade-off on privacy — that the fact that people can now create groups where they can privately communicate, where nobody can monitor that communication, means that they have the ability to put together what are effectively conspiracies to try to overthrow elections.
</p>
<h4 id="8TUD9w">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wqa8Oq">
The throughline here is that after one of these events happens, we collectively say, “Hey, Twitter or Facebook or maybe Apple, you let this happen, what are you going to do to prevent it from happening again?” And sometimes the platforms say, “Well, this wasn’t our fault.” Mark Zuckerberg famously said that idea was <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13594558/mark-zuckerberg-election-fake-news-trump">crazy</a> after the 2016 election.
</p>
<h4 id="FXUyA1">
Alex Stamos<strong> </strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NQfJ2s">
And then [former<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/13/facebook-role-in-capitol-protest/"> Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg] did that again, after January 6</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="DAGvlo">
“Resist trying to make things better”
</h3>
<h4 id="L74N2N">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bnPoNz">
And then you see the platforms do whack-a-mole to solve the last problem.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ay3DNH">
I’m going to further complicate it because I wanted to bring the pandemic into this — where at the beginning, we asked the platforms, “what are you going to do to help make sure that people get good information about how to handle this novel disease?” And they said, “We’re not going to make these decisions. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/27/21270280/facebook-twitter-youtube-coronavirus-pandemic-misinformation-political-controversy-face-masks">We’re not not epidemiologists</a>. We’re going to follow the advice of the CDC and governments around the world.” And in some cases, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/google-bans-ads-for-medical-face-masks-amid-coronavirus-outbreak.html">that information was contradictory or wrong</a> and they’ve had to <a href="https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10922326?hl=en">backtrack</a>. And now we’re seeing some of that play out with the release of the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394">Twitter Files</a> where people are saying, “I can’t believe the government asked Twitter to take down so-and-so’s tweet or account because they were telling people to go use ivermectin.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QDUAji">
I think the most generous way of viewing the platforms in that case — which is a view I happen to agree with — is that they were trying to do the right thing. But they’re not really built to handle a pandemic and how to handle both good information and bad information on the internet. But there’s a lot of folks who believe — I think quite sincerely — that the platforms really shouldn’t have any role moderating this at all. That if people want to say, “go ahead and try this horse dewormer, what’s the worst that could happen?” they should be allowed to do it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WoLY3n">
So you have this whole stew of stuff where it’s unclear what role the government should have in working with the platforms, what role the platforms should have at all. So should platforms be involved in trying to stop mis- or disinformation? Or should we just say, “this is like climate change and it’s a fact of life and we’re all going to have to sort of adapt to this reality”?
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="ROgJWZ">
<q>“People generally believe that if something is against their side, that the platforms have a huge responsibility. And if something is on their side, [the platforms] should have no responsibility.”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<h4 id="c2Nnf4">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bfBzdq">
The fundamental problem is that there’s a fundamental disagreement inside people’s heads — that people are inconsistent on what responsibility they believe information intermediaries should have for making society better. People generally believe that if something is against their side, that the platforms have a huge responsibility. And if something is on their side, [the platforms] should have no responsibility. It’s extremely rare to find people who are consistent in this.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xuXZoG">
As a society, we have gone through these information revolutions — the creation of the printing press created hundreds of years of religious war in Europe. Nobody’s going to say we should not have invented the printing press. But we also have to recognize that allowing people to print books created lots of conflict.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nS3KKP">
I think that the responsibility of platforms is to try to not make things worse actively — but also to resist trying to make things better. If that makes sense.
</p>
<h4 id="J5uI2Q">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gXS06u">
No. What does “resist trying to make things better” mean?
</p>
<h4 id="Vd5bWO">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v7fP64">
I think the legitimate complaint behind a bunch of the Twitter Files is that Twitter was trying too hard to make American society and world society better, to make humans better. That what Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and other companies should focus on is, “are we building products that are specifically making some of these problems worse?” That the focus should be on the active decisions they make, not on the passive carrying of other people’s speech. And so if you’re Facebook, your responsibility is — if somebody is into QAnon, you do not recommend to them, “Oh, you might want to also storm the Capitol. Here’s a recommended group or here’s a recommended event where people are storming the Capitol.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AA10TO">
That is an active decision by Facebook — to make a recommendation to somebody to do something. That is very different than going and hunting down every closed group where people are talking about ivermectin and other kinds of folk cures incorrectly. That if people are wrong, going and trying to make them better by hunting them down and hunting down their speech and then changing it or pushing information on them is the kind of impulse that probably makes things worse. I think that is a hard balance to get to.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OnFRHA">
Where I try to come down on this is: Be careful about your recommendation algorithms, your ranking algorithms, about product features that make things intentionally worse. But also draw the line at going out and trying to make things better.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OPpDqX">
The great example that everyone is spun up about is <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/">the Hunter Biden laptop story</a>. Twitter and Facebook, in doing anything about that, I think overstepped, because whether the New York Post does not have journalistic ethics or whether the New York Post is being used as part of a hacking leak campaign is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/business/media/hunter-biden-wall-street-journal-trump.html">the New York Post’s problem</a>. It is not Facebook’s or Twitter’s problem.
</p>
<h3 id="yjoram">
“The reality is that we have to have these kinds of trade-offs”
</h3>
<h4 id="5VMqMS">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FkGIJb">
Something that people used to say in tech out loud, prior to 2016, was that when you make a new thing in the world, ideally you’re trying to make it so it’s good. It’s to the benefit of the world. But there are going to be trade-offs, pros and cons. You make cars, and cars do lots of great things, and we need them — and they also cause lots of deaths. And we live with that trade-off and we try to make cars safer. But we live with the idea that there’s going to be downsides to this stuff. Are you comfortable with that framework?
</p>
<h4 id="abBInc">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qheego">
It’s not whether I’m comfortable or not. That’s just the reality. Any technological innovation, you’re going to have some kind of balancing act. The problem is, our political discussion of these things never takes those balances into effect. If you are super into privacy, then you have to also recognize that when you provide people private communication, that some subset of people will use that in ways that you disagree with, in ways that are illegal in ways, and sometimes in some cases that are extremely harmful. The reality is that we have to have these kinds of trade-offs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SWTJQE">
These trade-offs have been obvious in other areas of public policy: You lower taxes, you have less revenue. You have to spend less.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zhJgZZ">
Those are the kinds of trade-offs that in the tech policy world, people don’t understand as well. And certainly policymakers don’t understand as well.
</p>
<h4 id="gzKWGg">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m7MYTp">
Are there practical things that government can impose in the US and other places?
</p>
<h4 id="l50UlY">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TlZ7OP">
The government in the United States is very restricted by the First Amendment [from] pushing of the platforms to change speech. Europe is where the rubber’s really hitting the road. The <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package">Digital Services Act</a> creates a bunch of new responsibilities for platforms. It’s not incredibly specific on this area, but that is where, from a democratic perspective, there will be the most conflict over responsibility. And then you see in Brazil and India and other democracies that are backsliding toward authoritarianism, you see much more aggressive censorship of political enemies. That is going to continue to be a real problem around the world.
</p>
<h4 id="zD7QyK">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h1o5y0">
Over the years, the big platforms built pretty significant apparatuses to try to moderate themselves. You were part of that work at Facebook. And we now seem to be going through a real-time experiment at Twitter, where <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23440075/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-check-mark-verification">Elon Musk has said</a> ideologically, he doesn’t think Twitter should be moderating anything beyond actual criminal activity. And beyond that, it costs a lot of money to employ these people and Twitter can’t afford it, so he’s getting rid of basically everyone who was involved in disinformation and in moderation. What do you imagine the effect that will have?
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="7iPrbc">
<q>“One article about Donald Trump is not going to change your mind about Donald Trump. But one article about Saudi Arabia’s war [against Yemen] might be the only thing you consume on it.”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<h4 id="xUvepe">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NYLkPB">
It is open season. If you are the Russians, if you’re Iran, if you’re the People’s Republic of China, if you are a contractor working for the US Department of Defense, it is open season on Twitter. Twitter’s absolutely your best target.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BdV92r">
Again, the quantitative evidence is that we don’t have a lot of great examples where people have made massive changes to public beliefs [because of disinformation]. I do believe there are some exceptions, though, where this is going to be really impactful on Twitter. One is on areas of discussion that are “thinly traded.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Guhwsz">
The battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was the most discussed topic on the entire planet Earth in 2016. So no matter what [Russians] did with ads and content was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the amount of content that was on social media about the election. It’s just a tiny, tiny, tiny drop in the ocean. One article about Donald Trump is not going to change your mind about Donald Trump. But one article about Saudi Arabia’s war [against Yemen] might be the only thing you consume on it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7OfsDb">
The other area where I think it’s going to be really effective is in attacking individuals and trying to harass individuals. This is what we’ve seen a lot out of China. Especially if you’re a Chinese national and you leave China and you’re critical of the Chinese government, there will be massive campaigns lying about you. And I think that is what’s going to happen on Twitter — if you disagree, if you take a certain political position, you’re going to end up with hundreds or thousands of people saying you should be arrested, that you’re scum, that you should die. They’ll do things like send photos of your family without any context. They’ll do it over and over again. And this is the kind of harassment we’ve seen out of QAnon and such. And I think that Twitter is going to continue down that direction — if you take a certain political position, massive troll farms have the ability to try to drive you offline.
</p>
<h3 id="CfOzQ3">
“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)">Gamergate</a> every single day”
</h3>
<h4 id="Fz9gk3">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k5bWLs">
Every time I see a story pointing out that such-and-such disinformation exists on YouTube or Twitter, I think that you could write these stories in perpetuity. Twitter or YouTube or Facebook may crack down on a particular issue, but it’s never going to get out of this cycle. And I wonder if our efforts aren’t misplaced here and that we shouldn’t be spending so much time trying to point out this thing is wrong on the internet and instead doing something else. But I don’t know what the other thing is. I don’t know what we should be doing. What should we be thinking about?
</p>
<h4 id="ZUMuS7">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iyAQ5p">
I’d like to see more stories about the specific attacks against individuals. I think we’re moving into a world where effectively it is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)">Gamergate</a> every single day — that there are politically motivated actors who feel like it is their job to try to make people feel horrible about themselves, to drive them off the internet, to suppress their speech. And so that is less about broad persuasion and more about the use of the internet as a pitched battlefield to personally destroy people you disagree with. And so I’d like to see more discussion and profiles of the people who are under those kinds of attacks. We’re seeing this right now. [Former FDA head] Scott Gottlieb, who is on the Pfizer board, is showing up in the [<a href="https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1612814320777449474">Twitter Files</a>] and <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1612548694762745856?s=20&amp;t=wFI4lYpBLiRIlYyqpgXx7w">he’s getting dozens and dozens of death threats</a>.
</p>
<h4 id="kj5Sou">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Mi7lDV">
What can someone listening to this conversation do about any of this? They’re concerned about the state of the internet, the state of the world. They don’t run anything. They don’t run Facebook. They’re not in government. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20996869/facebook-political-ads-targeting-alex-stamos-interview-open-sourced">Beyond checking on their own personal privacy to make sure their accounts haven’t been hacked</a>, what can and should someone do?
</p>
<h4 id="WBZmG6">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tLAPiR">
A key thing everybody needs to do is to be careful with their own social media use. I have made the mistake of retweeting the thing that tickled my fancy, that fit my preconceived notions and then turned out not to be true. So I think we all have an individual responsibility — if you see something amazing or radical that makes you feel something strongly, that you ask yourself, “Is this actually true?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZigcOv">
And then the hard part is, if you see members of your family doing that, having a hard conversation about that with them. Because part of this is there’s good social science evidence that <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586">a lot of this is a boomer problem</a>. Both on the left and the right, a lot of this stuff is being spread by folks who are our parents’ generation.
</p>
<h4 id="Zh5ruB">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GvEdDJ">
I wish I could say that’s a boomer problem. But I’ve got a teen and a pre-teen and I don’t think they’re necessarily more savvy about what they’re consuming on the internet than their grandparents.
</p>
<h4 id="7kHHSn">
Alex Stamos
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QNbP4E">
Interesting.
</p>
<h4 id="qjYhp0">
Peter Kafka
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x8FXHA">
I’m working on it.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The biggest animal welfare crisis you’ve never heard of</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Hgg0j46tQ-QG4WM6gd6tThI0INs=/429x0:3900x2603/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71870629/WAM9943a.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Sheep in Australia are loaded for transport with an electric prod. | Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Me
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Farm animals starve and drown while shipped overseas for slaughter. Europe is considering a ban on the trade.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7fvCKI">
In 2019, a shocking accident at sea drew the world’s attention to one of the meat industry’s cruelest practices: the transport of live farm animals on long, perilous, and often fatal journeys by ship.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sLsMBF">
Late that year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/rescue-mission-for-14000-sheep-on-sinking-ship-abandoned-black-sea">the Queen Hind</a>,<strong> </strong>an export ship carrying more than 14,000 sheep from Romania for slaughter in <a href="https://www.palaureg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/QUEEN-HIND-MARINE-SAFETY-INVESTIGATION-REPORT-PALAU-FLAG-STATE.pdf">Saudi Arabia</a>, capsized, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/world/europe/sheep-rescue-ship-romania.html">resulting in the drowning</a> of nearly every animal. Disturbing images emerged of the corpses of sheep floating in the Black Sea.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8vBzQl">
That sinking was one of the deadliest for animals in recent history, but it wasn’t unique. High-profile reports of animals drowned or abused on ships have prompted a growing movement in Europe and other regions to end the live export of farm animals for slaughter. While the global live animal trade isn’t a focus for the farm animal welfare movement in North America, where exports are relatively less common and tend to occur by <a href="https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/fall-2018/usda-begins-enforcement-new-animal-export-rule">land rather than sea</a>, in Europe, it’s excoriated for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/13/eus-live-export-trade-puts-welfare-of-millions-of-animals-at-risk-report">cruelty</a> and has emerged as one of the most visible — and potentially winnable — fights for animal advocates.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Floating dead sheep are seen in the sea alongside a sideways partially capsized ship. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aPA_qfhoz-MQ_Kh91JhsCzabut0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356383/85755_20191125_sinking_Queen_Hind_Midia_RO_7.jpg"/> <cite>Animals International</cite>
<figcaption>
Drowned sheep after the capsizing of the Queen Hind off the Romanian port of Midia in the Black Sea.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YRn0Xf">
Countries including <a href="https://chronicle.lu/category/agriculture-viticulture/39727-luxembourg-prohibits-exports-of-live-animals-for-slaughter-to-third-countries">Luxembourg</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/29/new-zealand-bans-live-animal-exports-from-april-2023">New Zealand</a> recently banned the trade, and even Romania, a top sheep exporter, has been considering an end to the trade after the Queen Hind tragedy. In October, Germany <a href="https://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/148-tiertransporte.html#:~:text=Das%20Bundesministerium%20f%C3%BCr%20Ern%C3%A4hrung%20und,vom%201.%20Juli%202023%20zur%C3%BCckgezogen.">became</a> the biggest economy to announce it would end live export to countries outside the European Union, and called for an EU-wide ban on the practice. That came as a surprising policy reversal, given the importance of the livestock trade to the country. The EU is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/eu-revealed-to-be-worlds-biggest-live-animal-exporter">world’s biggest</a> livestock exporter, and Germany is one of the top players in that bloc, selling almost <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2021-01/2020_01_27_efa_transport_white_paper_0.pdf">315 million</a> cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry birds to other EU countries and almost 9 million animals outside the EU in 2019. <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2021-01/2020_01_27_efa_transport_white_paper_0.pdf"></a>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OC3T8a">
But the <a href="https://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/148-tiertransporte.html#:~:text=Das%20Bundesministerium%20f%C3%BCr%20Ern%C3%A4hrung%20und,vom%201.%20Juli%202023%20zur%C3%BCckgezogen.">German government</a>, according to its recent announcement, could “no longer stand by and watch as animals on long transports suffer or die in agony.”
</p>
<h3 id="c6GP3k">
Live animal export, explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VQFUtu">
Almost 2 billion of the world’s <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#number-of-animals-slaughtered">80 billion</a> or so land animals raised for food every year, the majority of them chickens, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/two-billion-and-rising-the-global-trade-in-live-animals-in-eight-charts">exported alive</a> to different countries, according to 2021 data from the United Nations. This can happen for a host of reasons: In an interconnected global economy, farm animals are traded just like other commodities, and different countries have become hyper-specialized in different parts of the livestock supply chain. Some nations produce a surplus of animals — either deliberately or as a by-product of their livestock industries — which are exported to other buyers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wQrglx">
Male calves born into Ireland’s booming dairy industry, for example, have no value in dairy production because they can’t make milk, so they’re sold to the Netherlands or Spain for fattening and then either slaughtered for veal or exported again for slaughter elsewhere. Other countries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/eu-revealed-to-be-worlds-biggest-live-animal-exporter">specialize</a> in breeding and exporting certain baby animals: Denmark, for example, is a leader in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/high-risk-of-injuries-in-denmarks-live-piglet-export-trade-audit-warns">piglet exports</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zSruFb">
And then there’s the demand side. Countries that can’t efficiently raise their own livestock because of limitations like low water supplies or warfare, like <a href="https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/water-politics-in-libya-a-crisis-of-management-not-scarcity/">Libya</a>, can find it cheaper to import animals, particularly when those animals come at a good price thanks to farm subsidies in their countries of origin. This also reduces the need for importing countries to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/30/this-one-has-heat-stress-the-shocking-reality-of-live-animal-exports">refrigerate fresh meat</a>.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A bar chart of numbers of animals exported by the top 10 biggest exporting countries. The highest is Germany its 315 million animals exported to other EU nations and 8.9 million exported to non-EU nations, and lowest is Slovakia, with 36.3 million exported to EU nations and 981.7 thousand exported outside the EU." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/soSdhfWV5wlAGFrrDh9mFijy4Mw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24357753/qSoGV_the_european_union_exports_hundreds_of_millions_of_animals_for_slaughter_abroad_2.png"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WWrog2">
But animals aren’t inanimate widgets on a spreadsheet, and when they’re hauled hundreds of miles by land and sea, they’re treated as cargo, not passengers, which means their welfare is the least of anyone’s concerns.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eyL2lj">
And animal transport is inherently stressful. Trucks and ships are miserable places for animals to be crowded into, and painful tools like <a href="https://mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/911/direct">electric prods</a>, boards, and sticks are used to force them on board. In the US, too, being trucked to slaughter is among the <a href="https://animaloutlook.org/investigations/animal-transport-torture/">worst parts</a> of a farm animal’s life. American truck transport conditions are so dire that, according to a recent analysis by the Guardian, more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/15/more-than-20-million-farm-animals-die-on-way-to-abattoir-in-us-every-year">20 million animals die</a> every year before they reach a slaughterhouse because of factors including physical trauma, slipping and falling in their own waste, lack of food and water, and extreme heat or cold.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HORkVU">
As bad as being transported by land can be, sea transport is even worse, increasing the length of time animals spend in transit to weeks or even months.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W0sSYv">
“Livestock vessels are terrible places for animals,” said Caroline Rowley, founder of Ethical Farming Ireland, a nonprofit that has long campaigned against Ireland’s export of cows, calves, and other livestock. Most ships used to transport farm animals are past their prime, and there’s the added risk of stormy weather and sinking — something livestock vessels like the Queen Hind are estimated to do at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/28/exclusive-livestock-ships-twice-as-likely-to-be-lost-as-cargo-vessels?ref=hvper.com">twice the rate</a> of standard freight ships. Delays at sea, which strain limited feed supplies and increase the buildup of excrement, stress, and injury, are another common risk.
</p>
<h3 id="q1aL5z">
Livestock ships are an animal welfare disaster
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="84kfCK">
Although much of what happens at sea goes unnoticed by the public, a run of recent tragedies pushed livestock shipping into international headlines. After the Queen Hind accident in 2019, a company tasked with bringing the ship back to shore discovered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/03/secret-decks-found-on-ship-that-capsized-killing-thousands-of-sheep">secret, unauthorized decks</a> on the vessel, raising concerns that it might have been carrying an unsafe number of animals. The Romanian government, which has helped the country become the EU’s top sheep trader, didn’t address allegations about secret decks but told me in a 2021 statement that the ship was carrying an appropriate number of animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fHr2TJ">
In 2020, <a href="https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL1141260/Animal-harm-What-to-do-about-livestock-carriers">41 people</a> and nearly 6,000 cows died after the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/typhoon-maysak-ship-with-43-crew-and-nearly-6000-cattle-missing-off-japan">Gulf Livestock 1</a>, a cargo ship traveling from New Zealand to China, capsized. In an <a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/gulf-livestock-1-loved-ones-of-missing-stockman-william-mainprize-share-tributes-two-years-on/news-story/3fe8dc8ad5787683da4bbae0a0edaa9b">interview</a> last year, the girlfriend of one of the missing crew members said he had spoken of low food supplies on the ship. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-11/why-did-gulf-livestock-1-sail-into-typhoon-maysak/101739560">An investigation</a> by Australia’s ABC cited concerns about the Gulf Livestock 1’s safety, and <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/sitecollectiondocuments/biosecurity/export/live-animals/livestock/compliance-and-investigations/report-144.pdf">photos</a> from an <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity-trade/export/controlled-goods/live-animals/livestock/regulatory-framework/independent-observer-reports#_2019">independent observer’s report</a> produced for the Australian government revealed animals on the same ship in 2019 thoroughly covered in feces. The disaster galvanized protests against shipping animals, leading to New Zealand’s recent ban on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/29/new-zealand-bans-live-animal-exports-from-april-2023">live exports</a> by sea.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4heLVy">
Last year, another botched livestock shipment horrified the public in France: 780 bulls that had been sailing to Algeria had to be <a href="https://splash247.com/nearly-800-animals-die-in-bureaucratic-spat-between-france-and-algeria/">sent back</a> due to a disagreement over their health paperwork — after which they were killed and disposed of. Similarly failed journeys were reported in 2021, when two ships from Spain bound for Turkey, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/how-nearly-3000-cattle-came-to-be-stranded-at-sea-for-three-months">Elbeik and the Karim Allah</a>, together carrying about 3,000 young bulls, were forced to return home after being stranded at sea for three months. The animals were killed on arrival without entering the food supply.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0jNjAo">
A veterinary report on conditions inside the Karim Allah detailed a range of welfare failures, including dead bulls being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/01/cattle-stranded-on-ship-to-be-destroyed-in-port-as-second-vessel-returns-to-spain">chopped up</a> and thrown overboard, and animals with joint inflammation, skin conditions, eye ulcerations, abscesses, and broken horns. On the Elbeik, feces buildup was severe, and many bulls were found dead, starving, or dehydrated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HGwW8r">
Even when a livestock ship arrives at its destination without incident, what happens next is just as controversial. In the EU, slaughter regulations typically require that animals be stunned to render them unconscious before killing to reduce pain and distress, but in North Africa and the Middle East, this is often <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7154608/">avoided or limited</a> in accordance with kosher and halal slaughter rules. Ritual slaughter laws are a highly contentious issue both in European politics and in the animal movement, contributing to debates about religious liberty, pluralism, and animal welfare. And in many countries, halal rules are evolving: In Turkey, for example, more halal butchers are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/31/animal-stunning-slowly-being-accepted-by-turkeys-halal-butchers-say-activists">embracing stunning</a> before slaughter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GBGvMu">
Activists often use videos of slaughter abroad to draw attention to what they see as the horrors of live export. Just ahead of Germany’s announcement that it would end exports, the minister of food and agriculture, Cem Özdemir, received <a href="https://vimeo.com/763325727">undercover footage</a> from the organization Animals International that appeared to show workers in two Lebanese slaughterhouses using ropes to bring cows down onto an already bloody floor. The cattle, identified as German by their ear tags, slip on the floor, have fingers pushed into their eye sockets and, once down, have one leg hoisted upward to immobilize them before their throats are cut. (These apparent abuses aren’t tied to halal slaughter; rather, they reflect cruelty that’s common anywhere in the world where animals are slaughtered.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4IhCMQ">
The German agricultural ministry, responding to my questions about the video for a previous story, did not reference it directly but said it was “unbearable” to see “pictures of dead and injured animals during animal transport and of other animal welfare violations in third [non-EU] countries.”
</p>
<h3 id="mcEKmN">
More nations are banning live export — but that may not be enough
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KyS1Sn">
Ending live exports is popular with the public: A recent <a href="https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-10/aw_eval_revision_swd_2022-329_en.pdf">report</a> on EU animal protection laws <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2022-03/090166e5ea55b805%20%281%29.pdf">found that 94 percent</a> of citizens surveyed supported ending animal shipments to non-EU countries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u6BFBv">
The animal trade poses serious human health concerns, too, that might make EU nations inclined toward a ban: Long animal transport times are known to increase the risk of antibiotic resistance, a recent EU report <a href="https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2022.7586">noted</a> — a problem that the continent has been making a <a href="https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/report/sales-veterinary-antimicrobial-agents-31-european-countries-2021-trends-2010-2021-twelfth-esvac_en.pdf">concerted effort</a> to address. “Every time you transport animals, you create opportunities for disease spread,” said Ann Linder, a research fellow at Harvard Law School studying zoonotic disease. “Stress lowers immunity, and poor ventilation in trucks also helps spread … there is a real risk of pathogens lingering on surfaces, so you are potentially bringing healthy animals into a contaminated environment, and then locking them in there.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LpDGKR">
So far, the route to a ban has been different for each country. In New Zealand, the loss of human life on the Gulf Livestock 1 was a defining moment. In Germany, activists have had a sympathetic ear in agriculture minister Özdemir, a vegetarian who, as Vox has <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian">reported</a>, has championed efforts to make Germany more plant-based.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wUUwk4">
Unsurprisingly, European livestock producers vehemently oppose a ban on live animal exports and have argued the trade <a href="https://www.ifa.ie/farm-sectors/live-export-trade-vital-for-our-e3bn-livestock-sector/">boosts livestock prices</a> by creating more demand for their products. And even for European countries that have prohibited live export to non-EU states, there’s a catch: re-export. Because EU member countries can’t ban exports to each other, nations that restrict animal exports out of the EU can simply sell animals to countries without one. Under Germany’s ban, for example, the sale of cattle to Spain will continue unimpeded. From Spain, where no ban exists, animals are fattened and shipped to non-EU countries for slaughter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VBLuPi">
Spain is one of the EU’s key <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/12/how-a-spanish-tourist-spot-became-a-global-hub-for-live-animal-export">fattening and re-export</a> hubs. Although the Spanish agriculture ministry did not respond to questions for this story, <a href="https://www.mapa.gob.es/es/ganaderia/temas/comercio-exterior-ganadero/informecexgan-septiembre2022_tcm30-636129.pdf">recent government data</a> shows the country exports hundreds of thousands of animals annually to the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. A 2022 EU <a href="https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/960c2212-d7e6-11ec-a95f-01aa75ed71a1/language-en">report</a> put the annual value of Spain’s beef exports at about $1.2 billion, of which 35 percent is live animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sj9Zp7">
To keep the beef trade flowing, Spain buys calves from all over Europe, making it the region’s biggest importer. The country imported 292,000 calves per year between 2015 and 2020, according to the same EU report. One of Spain’s key sources is <a href="https://www.bordbia.ie/farmers-growers/prices-markets/cattle-trade-prices/live-cattle-exports/">Ireland</a>, whose dairy industry was worth <a href="https://www.bordbia.ie/industry/irish-sector-profiles/dairy-sector-profile/">$5.5 billion</a> in 2021.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5QO9JO">
To produce that much milk, the Irish dairy sector impregnates its almost <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/census-confirms-record-numbers-of-cattle-on-irish-dairy-farms-1.4751491">1.6 million</a> dairy cows every year. Since half their offspring are male and unable to produce milk, they’re eventually slaughtered for meat. Some of the calves remain in Ireland and are reared for beef, but tens of thousands are exported for meat or veal production in other EU countries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xXvdHC">
Ireland’s island geography means that process involves a journey of at least 18 hours, inside trucks parked on ferries bound for the nearest EU mainland ports in France. From there, the calves are typically trucked to the Netherlands or Spain. Trucks don’t have milk for the calves, so they make the 18-hour ferry journey, plus a few hours for collection and waiting time on either side, without food. A 2020 video, taken by the European animal welfare groups <a href="https://www.l214.com/">L214</a> and <a href="https://www.eyesonanimals.com/">Eyes on Animals</a>, showed weeks-old calves arriving in France, apparently desperate to nurse, being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/secret-footage-shows-calves-from-ireland-beaten-and-kicked-in-france">beaten and kicked</a> to get them off of feeders provided at rest-stops.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P3nXo5">
In response to questions from Eyes on Animals, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, <a href="https://www.eyesonanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Time-Water-Feed-Roll-On-Roll-Off.pdf">suggested</a> that <a href="https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/hungry-stressed-reveal-plight-thousands-27366370">failure to feed calves</a> on such long journeys violated EU regulations. But Ireland has continued to ship calves overseas without food, exporting over <a href="https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/almost-222000-cattle-exported-to-date-this-year/">220,000</a> of them last year.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A calf that appears to be dead or dying lies on the ground outdoors" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q0CAoRmNSaQkwsSF6L_MVY_KQqc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356398/1920.jpg"/> <cite>Eyes on Animals/L214</cite>
<figcaption>
An investigation by European animal welfare groups Eyes on Animals and L214 uncovered mistreatment of calves traveling through a French port.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K4SxHq">
Rowley of Ethical Farming Ireland (EFI) said her group regularly sends evidence of problems with live export to the Irish government, “but the department repeatedly ignores us, or sends platitudes in return.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qyLkLP">
EFI and three other NGOs sent <a href="https://www.animalsinternational.org/media/irish_live_export/">an open letter</a> to Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine in November, asking for a face-to-face discussion about the possibility of Ireland following Germany’s lead in banning exports outside the EU. “While the Germans are restricting live exports, our government is expanding them, actively seeking new markets,” Rowley said. “It’s totally the wrong direction.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="47rF4V">
In an email to Vox, the Irish government said that its “work in this area is conducted on the basis that no one shall transport animals, or cause animals to be transported, in a way likely to cause injury or undue suffering.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W7OMYi">
The UK in 2020 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/uk-to-become-first-country-in-europe-to-ban-live-animal-exports">promised</a> to end live exports and is expected to soon enact a ban, which might motivate the Irish government to do the same, Rowley said. But an EU-wide ban was equally or potentially more important, she added.
</p>
<h3 id="K4ESQF">
An EU-wide ban might soon be within reach
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mSydkR">
While individual country bans are helpful, only an EU-wide ban can close the re-export loophole and prevent long shipments and slaughter without stunning, said Gabriel Paun of Animals International.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lkQf7T">
“The ethical, economical, and social benefits for the EU to ban live export are clear,” Paun said. Those advantages, he said, include not just mitigating unnecessary suffering, but also the economic benefits of killing and processing animals in Europe instead of sending them to other countries to do the slaughtering. The biggest hurdle, he added, is the myth that Middle Eastern countries with halal regulations would rather import live animals than accept meat slaughtered elsewhere. The reality, based on Paun’s experience in those nations, is that packaged halal meat is already being imported and that people don’t want to import “dirty, wounded [EU] animals.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HVSBkp">
Similarly, in Israel, where animals are slaughtered according to kosher laws, the public is alarmed by the treatment of imported animals, and multiple bills have been introduced in the Israeli parliament to ban the trade, according to Hila Keren of Animals Now, an Israeli NGO. “A <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5304573,00.html">survey</a> conducted in Israel showed that 86 percent of the public support the legislation and 91 percent believe live export involves cruelty to animals,” said Keren. “The price of imported chilled and frozen beef is generally cheaper than the meat of cows slaughtered in Israel,” she added.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cow looks out from the side of a livestock ship, appearing to be gazing at her surroundings." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KCpS8MGbnERKbbq6tF9ZC3wf3ak=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356401/WAM7965.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur / Israel Against Live Shipments / We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
A ship carrying between 20,000 and 30,000 sheep and cows from Australia arrives in Israel after almost three weeks at sea.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZWXENT">
An opening for a European live export ban is not far off, with <a href="https://food.ec.europa.eu/animals/animal-welfare/evaluations-and-impact-assessment/revision-animal-welfare-legislation_en">an overhaul</a> of the EU’s animal welfare and transport laws scheduled for late this year. Countries expected to support ending live exports include Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, given that all five recently <a href="https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-11061-2022-INIT/en/pdf">called for</a> greater restrictions on animal shipments outside the EU. Luxembourg, which banned live animal exports <a href="https://chronicle.lu/category/agriculture-viticulture/39727-luxembourg-prohibits-exports-of-live-animals-for-slaughter-to-third-countries">last March</a>, is another supporter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VFqWlA">
But opposition is significant. Nations with ports that move large numbers of animals, including Spain, France, Ireland, and Romania, are likely to object to a ban, said Anja Hazekamp, a Dutch European Parliament member and vice chair of a recent <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/anit/about">animal transport inquiry</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g02Bqr">
The Spanish agriculture ministry did not respond to questions about export bans. The French government said it “remains opposed to a ban on the export of live animals to third countries for fattening/slaughter,” adding that it would “pay attention” to the upcoming EU revision of animal protection laws.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xcZfdK">
Ireland’s government didn’t answer questions about whether it would support an EU-wide ban but told Vox that it “demands the highest standards of animal welfare during transport” and “facilitates [live export], recognizing its critical importance to the agri-sector.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NgMwYU">
Despite the intransigence of live-exporting nations, Germany’s move to end direct exports to non-EU countries, along with this year’s EU talks, represents the strongest opportunity yet for a change of direction. The outcome will ultimately depend on negotiations between EU countries and a majority vote; a ban could pass over the objections of live-exporting nations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s7zDH2">
Arguments for a ban are currently being tested in Romania, a country that exported over 1.8 million sheep outside the EU in 2019. Dragoş Popescu, a progressive senator there, has championed legislation to end live exports by 2025. But he’s faced steep challenges, with his own party deserting him on the issue, which meant he had to introduce the bill by himself in December, he told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B840E2">
The challenge is to make people aware of live export’s cruelty, he said. “People don’t know about the treatment of the animals. We will need a campaign to raise awareness,” Popescu explained. His campaign will aim to build on the Queen Hind tragedy. “People were shocked by the Queen Hind, by the reality of live export,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KXULX8">
Hopeful as he is, a recent WhatApp message from Popescu reflected just how difficult the fight might be: “The debate [on the bill’s introduction], as expected, was hard. The sheep owners were very loud,” he wrote, adding a bullhorn emoji.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Japan’s plan to ramp up military spending, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="President Joe Biden sits with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in the White House" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vsMEo5FspqKZ9_OiQ6S6gAdRJvM=/243x0:4114x2903/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71869117/1456220203.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
US officials are sold on Japan’s new military posture. Japan’s public might not be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DjT7o2">
US officials this week affirmed their commitment to Japan’s plans for rapidly scaling up defense spending amid rising tensions with China and North Korea after decades of limited investment post-World War II. But despite the support of the US and other allies, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to turn Japan’s Self-Defense Forces into an army to counter threats from their neighbors<strong> </strong>will depend on Japanese people’s willingness to pay for — and staff — the surge.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5wX6p3">
Japan’s new security posture will increase the nation’s military budget by 56 percent, from about 27.47 trillion yen <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/Why-a-record-budget-is-just-the-first-step-to-boost-Japan-s-defense">over five years</a> to about 43 trillion yen (an increase from<strong> </strong>about $215 billion to $324 billion as of market close on Friday). Historically, Japan has kept security spending low due to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/korea-missile-japan-pacifism.html">its constitutional commitment to avoid war</a>, but the country does have a defense budget and has maintained the Self-Defense Forces since 1954.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m8eLJS">
US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with their Japanese counterparts over the past week, putting into motion the new postures outlined in Japan’s new strategy. “We’re modernizing our military alliance, building on Japan’s historic increase in defense spending and new national security strategy,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/us/politics/biden-kishida-japan.html">Biden said in his meeting with Kishida Friday</a>, telling reporters that the US is “fully, thoroughly, completely committed to the alliance.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NNTY5H">
Blinken, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Videos/videoid/870708/dvpcc/false/?dvpTag=Defense+on+Demand%3Ca+href=#DVIDSVideoPlayer581">in a press conference</a> Wednesday with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Austin, and Japanese Minister of Defense Hamada Yasukazu, promised that Japan, under the new security plan, would “<a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3265802/secretary-of-state-antony-j-blinken-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-jap/">take on new roles</a>” in the Indo-Pacific region and “foster even closer defense cooperation with the United States and our mutual partners,” although Blinken did not specify what those new roles would be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m7amx5">
Kishida has <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3206863/east-asia-could-be-next-ukraine-japans-kishida-tells-g7-leaders">cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a> as a warning of the threat Japan and other East Asian nations face from an increasingly militarized China — and has also used Ukraine’s successes on the battlefield in gaining support from international partners to explain Japan’s latest military posture.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AphHoI">
Despite this week’s fanfare and the <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3267110/dod-japan-mod-sign-technology-and-security-of-supply-arrangements/">commitment of the US and other partners to Japanese military expansion</a>, doubts remain as to whether Kishida can convince the Japanese people to agree to commit both the financial and human capital that his proposed scale-up would require.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GAJ9GM">
Both US and Japanese leadership have attempted for years to increase Japan’s defense spending; the US under Trump pushed NATO allies in particular to increase their defense spending to the 2 percent required under NATO member defense spending protocols. Japan has long fostered close ties with NATO, in spite of not being a member state; <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/erp/ep/page4e_001264.html">Kishida in June</a> attended a NATO ally summit, the first Japanese leader to do so. But increased spending and coordination don’t necessarily mean a stronger military, and the “victory laps” as one expert put it, around the announcement have overshadowed the difficulty Kishida and Japan will face in pulling the proposed expansion.
</p>
<h3 id="6OxHfC">
Japan’s historic military investment, reframed
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wBqGrM">
There’s no doubt that Kishida’s plan to ramp up defense spending is significant, but to frame Japan’s new posture as a 180-degree turn from pacifism is misguided. Japan does have its defense forces, and its defense budget <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2022/12/japan-approves-26-3-increase-in-defense-spending-for-fiscal-year-2023/">has increased each year for the past nine years</a>; for the fiscal year 2023, Kishida’s government approved a 26.3 percent budget increase, bringing proposed defense spending to 6.82 trillion yen, or $51.4 billion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="egQhkv">
<a href="https://thediplomat.com/2022/12/japan-approves-26-3-increase-in-defense-spending-for-fiscal-year-2023/">Already in 2023</a>, the government plans to purchase eight F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters and eight F-35B Lightning multirole fighter aircraft, part of a much larger package of F-35s it’s set to acquire from the US. Japan will also continue its development of a sixth-generation fighter with the militaries of Italy and the UK, purchase 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US as it develops its own counterstrike missile capabilities, and ramp up domestic production of missiles including a hypersonic model.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GP6cLp">
But as Tom Phuong Le, an associate professor of politics at Pomona College, told Vox, the new posture puts more emphasis on acquiring tech and weapons systems rather than recruiting people to serve. Particularly in a cultural context in which people often have good jobs by the time they graduate from university and no familial or cultural ties to military service, “what’s the incentive in joining the military and dealing with Russia, and China, and North Korea when you can have a pretty comfortable job in the regular economy?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3Ws15T">
There’s no doubt that the security environment has gotten more dangerous, both in East Asia and elsewhere. Between China antagonizing Taiwan, North Korea testing missiles and nuclear warheads, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is reason for many nations — Japan included — to worry about the future and the possibility of conflict.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rtxswN">
Those concerns have created an environment for proposed policy changes that “the elites have been pursuing for some time now,” according to Phillip Lipscy, director of the Center for the Study of Global Japan at the University of Toronto. “The willingness of the Japanese public to go along with a more muscular defense has probably changed, or at least the leadership has perceived that public sentiment has changed in part due to the war in Ukraine.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QHk8zu">
But, as Mike Mochizuki, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, explained, the circumstances in which Japan would be pulled into direct conflict with either North Korea or China are very limited; “North Korea is not going to attack out of the blue,” he said, and China’s threat to Japan isn’t a direct attack. “The threat is […] a military conflict over the Taiwan Strait and because of Japan’s geographic proximity, because of the US-Japan alliance, and because US military assets in Japan are seen as critical for any kind of viable US military intervention in the Taiwan crisis — because of that, if there is any kind of Taiwan conflict, there is a high probability that China would attack Japanese territory.”
</p>
<h3 id="FYc8l0">
The political reality in Japan complicates Kishida’s plan
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V8Qtz6">
Kishida’s plan to increase defense spending means he’ll likely have to raise taxes — a difficult prospect given Japan’s aging population, whose care is requiring an ever-increasing share of resources. Japan’s <a href="https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/08/10/waking-up-from-the-japanese-debt-dream/">public debt</a> in comparison to its GDP is already the highest of any G7 country, and has been since 1998; increasing the debt burden could strain the Japanese economy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="04OrB5">
Kishida himself is unpopular, tainted by the scandal of his deceased predecessor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/22/japan-begins-inquiry-into-unification-church-in-wake-of-shinzo-abe-killing">Shinzo Abe’s</a> and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) alleged association with the Unification Church, Phuong Le and Mochizuki told Vox. Revelations of the links between the Church, which many in Japan see as an extortive cult, and the government after Abe’s assassination in July torpedoed Kishida’s popularity. Should he decide to hold an election prior to his proposed tax hikes, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-27/japan-s-kishida-says-election-to-come-before-tax-hike-for-defense">as he said in late December he likely would</a>, it could essentially be a referendum on that proposal. If that happens, “there are many Japanese saying [Kishida’s] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f3c457e5-82ee-462f-b8f3-c701a8e4840e">not going to last very long,</a>” Mochizuki told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TeG1uJ">
As Mochizuki explained, “Kishida himself is quite moderate, and he comes from the faction knowns as the Kochikai, which has been more moderate on defense issues, much more open to stable relations with China, and his foreign minister, Hayashi, has those same views.” However, Kishida’s unpopularity has pushed him and Hayashi toward the more hawkish elements of the LDP. “He’s basically acquiesced to the defense side of things,” Mochizuki said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tvZAW3">
“What Kishida’s been trying to do is to get Biden to embrace him,” Mochizuki said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jaeon7">
That political environment, combined with pressure from the US and legitimate regional threats “makes it more likely that Japan is going to take bigger steps,” as Phuong Le said. And though US officials have demonstrated their solid commitment to the US-Japan alliance this week, plans for Kishida’s government to realistically implement the proposed changes have come up short, Phuong Le said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MinofV">
“Both sides aren’t talking about it because they don’t have solutions.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G1WsPW">
<strong>Correction, 9 pm: </strong> an earlier version of this story stated that Japan’s military budget would increase from 27.47 billion yen to about 43 billion yen. The amount is 27.47 trillion yen to about 43 trillion yen.
</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>Count Of Savoy and Alpha Domino catch the eye</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Devils Magic, Shabelle and Bellator please</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FIR by Delhi Police over indecent remarks on cricketers' daughters: Maliwal</strong> - Indecent comments were made on social media on the daughters of India cricketers Virat Kohli and M.S. Dhoni</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>Viacom18 wins Women’s IPL media rights for ₹951 crore</strong> - The much-awaited Women’s IPL will be starting from March 2023 to be held in a one-month window</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>Gauff sets up blockbuster Raducanu clash</strong> - Coco Gauff defeated Katerina Siniakova to set up a second-round clash with Emma Raducanu in the Australian Open</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>First G20 Health Working Group meeting in Thiruvananthapuram from January 18-20</strong> - India assumed Presidency of the G20 on December 1, 2022. It is currently part of the G20 Troika, which also includes Indonesia and Brazil.</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>Local bodies in Kerala empowered to ensure 100% collection of solid waste through Haritha Karma Sena</strong> - Civic bodies can ask the public applying for its services to submit a copy of the user fee card/payment receipt, says the department</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>Andhra Pradesh: ‘Goda Kalyanam’ in Tirupati turns out to be a feast for devotees</strong> - The event marks the end of Dhanurmasam</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>Andhra Pradesh: Mini Annadanam complex to come up in MBC area of Tirumala</strong> - TTD EO inspects the land available in the area to study the feasibility of constructing the complex</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>Rajya Sabha session from January 31 to April 6</strong> - Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2023-24 on February 1.</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>Italy’s most-wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro arrested in Sicily</strong> - Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s most-wanted mafia boss, is captured after 30 years on the run.</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: Romanian police widen probe into controversial influencer</strong> - The British-American influencer is in custody over allegations of human trafficking and rape.</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>Christine Lambrecht: German defence minister resigns after blunders</strong> - Christine Lambrecht’s exit comes amid pressure to allow the delivery of German-built tanks to Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Chances of more survivors from Dnipro strike minimal - mayor</strong> - The death toll rises to 36 after a Russian missile wrecked an apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.</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>Lützerath: German police oust climate activists after clashes near coal mine</strong> - Riot police remove protesters trying to stop the expansion of a coal mine in western Germany.</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>Kyle and Andrew dissect The Last Of Us television premiere</strong> - There’s plenty to <em>ahem</em> chew on as the infected move from prestige game to prestige TV. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1909973">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is pen-centric hardware let down by book-centric software</strong> - Review: Despite excellent hardware, the writing features feel tacked-on. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1904449">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch live: SpaceX set to launch first of five Falcon Heavy missions this year</strong> - A trickle of Falcon Heavy launches may soon turn into a flood. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1909835">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID, RSV and the flu: A case of viral interference?</strong> - Viruses, it turns out, can block one another and take turns to dominate. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1910055">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ChatGPT has investors drooling, but can it bring home the bacon?</strong> - As Microsoft eyes $10B investment, it’s unclear what products can be built on the tech. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1910050">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>To the person who hacked my account, I will find you</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Edit: No you won’t
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/BearEatingToast"> /u/BearEatingToast </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10coc1c/to_the_person_who_hacked_my_account_i_will_find/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10coc1c/to_the_person_who_hacked_my_account_i_will_find/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I need a few brief jokes to tell to a group of elderly people. The punchlines need to be easily understood, and they need to be clean and not making fun of anyone with any kind of disability. Have any brief and fairly original jokes?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
This one is good, although I’ll probably have to emphasize the ‘mispronouncing words’ part, and instead of blonde, the dummy will be me:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
<em>A blonde is flying in a Boeing for the first time. She starts jumping on her seat shouting “Boeing Boeing Boeing”. The pilot, clearly annoyed by this, walks up to her and says “Be silent”. After a couple of seconds the blonde starts jumping again on her seat shouting “Oeing Oeing Oeing”</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And this is okay but I’d like them slightly longer:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
<em>Aman called his twin brother from prison. “Hey remember when we were kids and use to finish each other’s sentences?”</em>
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/LanceFree"> /u/LanceFree </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cmzk6/i_need_a_few_brief_jokes_to_tell_to_a_group_of/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cmzk6/i_need_a_few_brief_jokes_to_tell_to_a_group_of/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man, obsessed with trains finally steals one and immediately crashes it, killing several people…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
At the trial, the man is found guilty of multiple murders and is sentenced to death.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Before he is sentenced, he is offered a last meal, and asks for a single banana, which is given to him. The next day, he is led to the electric chair. They strap him in, pull the switch, and… nothing happens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
There has never been a failure before. Since you cannot punish a person twice for the same crime, the court is forced to let him go free.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Within a week’s time, naturally, the man, who is obsessed with trains, goes and steals another one. He doesn’t care that he can’t drive it or that he failed catastrophically before; he is obsessed with trains and his only desire is to operate one. As before, he crashes it, and kills several people. Again, he stands trial, and again, he is sentenced to death, showing no remorse, only delight that he got to operate the train.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
His last meal request is again a single banana.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When he goes to the chair, the executioner pulls the switch, but nothing happens. As before, he goes free again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The train-obsessed maniac, once more on the loose, wastes no time in hijacking a train and crashes it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
His trial is swift, as this has already happened twice, and he is again sentenced to death. They ask him what he would like for his last meal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“A single banana,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Oh, no you don’t, you son of a bitch. We’re on to you, now. We know all about your little banana trick, and you’re not escaping this time!” The guards refuse his request, and instead serve him a standard last meal of steak, potatoes, and berry cobbler.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The next morning they strap him into the electric chair, pull the switch, and… nothing happens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Did you give him the banana?” demands the head guard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“No, sir! He asked for the banana but we didn’t give it to him, we swear!” says one of the guards.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Turns out the banana had nothing to do with anything. He was just a really bad conductor.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/enlightenedFool721"> /u/enlightenedFool721 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10d6195/a_man_obsessed_with_trains_finally_steals_one_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10d6195/a_man_obsessed_with_trains_finally_steals_one_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Blonde Joke.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Guy says to a Blonde girl.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I bet I can guess when you were born just by fondling your tits,
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
no way says the Blonde, go on then, so 20 minutes later the
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Blonde says OK when was I born?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Guy says: Yesterday.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Blonde says don’t be fucking stupid, have another go…
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Buddy2269"> /u/Buddy2269 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cw2kh/blonde_joke/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cw2kh/blonde_joke/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A boy comes home from school and says to his parents and grandfather, “My teacher assigned me to talk about the American government in class tomorrow. Can you explain it to me?”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The grandfather walks into the living room with the boy. “Well,” he says, “I’m the head of the family, so let’s call me the president. Your father makes all the money for the family, so let’s call him the economy. Your mother does all the chores at home, so let’s call her the working class. Your baby brother is our family’s future, so let’s call him our country’s future.” But before the old man can say anything else, he falls fast asleep on the couch.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
That night, the boy is about to go to sleep in his bedroom, when he wakes up to a terrible smell, followed by crying. The boy knows that his baby brother in the bedroom next to his needs his diaper changed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The boy rushes to his parents’ room and finds them having sex in their bed. He tries to tell them about the diaper that needs to be changed, but the parents are too busy having sex to notice him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Then the boy goes downstairs and finds his grandfather still fast asleep on the couch. He tries to wake up his grandfather, but the old man is a very heavy sleeper.
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The next day at school, the boy’s teacher says, “Yesterday, I asked you to talk about the American government. Can you explain it to the rest of the class?”
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The boy explains to the class, “The economy is screwing the working class, the president is fast asleep, and our country’s future is in deep, deep shit.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/wimpykidfan37"> /u/wimpykidfan37 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cop0x/a_boy_comes_home_from_school_and_says_to_his/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/10cop0x/a_boy_comes_home_from_school_and_says_to_his/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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