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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>Protein complex heterogeneity and topology revealed by electron capture charge reduction and surface induced dissociation</strong> -
<div>
Herein, we focus on native mass spectrometry (nMS) combined with a fast, tunable gas-phase charge reduction, electron capture charge reduction (ECCR), and illustrate its utility in the characterization of protein complex topology and glycoprotein heterogeneity. ECCR is illustrated to effectively spread the charge states of tetradecameric GroEL, illustrating Orbitrap m/z measurement out to greater than 100,000 m/z. For both the pentameric C-reactive protein and tetradecameric GroEL, our novel device combining ECCR with surface induced dissociation (SID) lowers the charge states and produces more topologically informative fragmentation. While more native-like fragmentation has previously been illustrated for complexes charge reduced by proton abstraction in solution, this is the first illustration that ECCR can lead to more native-like SID fragmentation of protein complexes. Application to protein glycosylation, one of the most common and diverse protein posttranslational modifications, is also illustrated because glycosylation is important for structural and functional properties and plays essential roles in many key biological processes. The immense heterogeneity resulting from variability in glycosylation sites and glycan composition and structure poses significant analytical challenges that hinder a mechanistic understanding of the biological role of glycosylation. Data for stabilized heavily glycosylated SARS-CoV-2 spike protein trimer and thyroglobulin dimer illustrate that ECCR enables significantly improved resolution of glycan heterogeneity. Without ECCR, the charge states of a glycoprotein complex are not resolved and average mass determination is available only through the use of charge detection mass spectrometry or mass photometry. With ECCR after narrow m/z selection, multiple glycoform m/z values are apparent, providing quick global, glycoform profiling and providing a future path for glycan localization on individual intact glycoforms (e.g., though top-down dissociation).
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.07.583498v1" target="_blank">Protein complex heterogeneity and topology revealed by electron capture charge reduction and surface induced dissociation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>In silico genomic surveillance by CoVerage predicts and characterizes SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Interest</strong> -
<div>
Rapidly evolving viral pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 continuously accumulate amino acid changes, some of which affect transmissibility, virulence or improve the virus' ability to escape host immunity. Since the beginning of the pandemic and establishment of SARS-CoV-2 as a human pathogen, multiple lineages with concerning phenotypic alterations, so called Variants of Concern (VOCs), have emerged and risen to predominance. To optimize public health management and to ensure the continued efficacy of vaccines, the early detection of such variants of interest is essential. Therefore, large-scale viral genomic surveillance programs have been initiated worldwide, with data being deposited in public repositories in a timely manner. However, technologies for their continuous interpretation are currently lacking. Here, we describe the CoVerage system (www.sarscoverage.org) for viral genomic surveillance, which continuously predicts and characterizes novel and emerging potential Variants of Interest (pVOIs) together with their antigenic and evolutionary alterations. Using the establishment of Omicron and its current sublineages as an example, we demonstrate how CoVerage can be used to quickly identify and characterize such variants. CoVerage can facilitate the timely identification and assessment of future SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.07.583829v1" target="_blank">In silico genomic surveillance by CoVerage predicts and characterizes SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Interest</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Rapid Degradation of the Human ACE2 Receptor Upon Binding and Internalization of SARS-Cov-2-Spike-RBD Protein</strong> -
<div>
It is widely accepted that the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus infects humans through binding the human Angiotensin Receptor 2 (ACE2) that lines the nasal cavity and lungs, followed by import into a cell utilizing the Transmembrane Protease, Serine 2 (TMPRSS2) cofactor. ACE2 binding is mediated by an approximately 200-residue portion of the SARS-CoV-2 extracellular spike protein, the receptor binding domain (RBD). Robust interactions are shown using a novel cell-based assay between an RBD membrane tethered-GFP fusion protein and the membrane bound ACE2-Cherry fusion protein. Several observations were not predicted including, quick and sustained interactions leading to internalization of RBD fusion protein into the ACE2 cells and rapid downregulation of the ACE2-Cherry fluorescence. Targeted mutation in the RBD disulfide Loop 4 led to a loss of internalization for several variants tested. However, a secreted RBD did not cause ACE2 downregulation of ACE2-Cherry fluorescence. Thus, the membrane associated form of RBD found on the viral coat may have long-term system wide consequences on ACE2 expressing cells.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.07.583884v1" target="_blank">Rapid Degradation of the Human ACE2 Receptor Upon Binding and Internalization of SARS-Cov-2-Spike-RBD Protein</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Coronavirus Spike-RBD Variants Differentially Bind to the Human ACE2 Receptor</strong> -
<div>
The SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus infects people through binding the human Angiotensin Receptor 2 (ACE2), followed by import into a cell utilizing the Transmembrane Protease, Serine 2 (TMPRSS2) and Furin cofactors. Analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 extracellular spike protein has suggested critical amino acids necessary for binding within a 197-residue portion, the receptor binding domain (RBD). A cell-based assay between a membrane tethered RBD-GFP fusion protein and the membrane bound ACE2-Cherry fusion protein allowed for mutational intersection of both RBD and ACE2 proteins. Data shows Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants have altered dependency on the amino terminus of ACE2 protein and suggests multiple epitopes on both proteins stabilize their interactions at the Nt and internal region of ACE2. In contrast, the H-CoV-NL63 RBD is only dependent on the ACE2 internal region for binding. A peptide inhibitor approach to this internal region thus far have failed to block binding of RBDs to ACE2, suggesting that several binding regions on ACE2 are sufficient to allow functional interactions. In sum, the RBD binding surface of ACE2 appears relatively fluid and amenable to bind a range of novel variants.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.07.583944v1" target="_blank">Coronavirus Spike-RBD Variants Differentially Bind to the Human ACE2 Receptor</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Antigenicity assessment of SARS-CoV-2 saltation variant BA.2.87.1</strong> -
<div>
The recent emergence of a SARS-CoV-2 saltation variant, BA.2.87.1, which features 65 spike mutations relative to BA.2, has attracted worldwide attention. In this study, we elucidate the antigenic characteristics and immune evasion capability of BA.2.87.1. Our findings reveal that BA.2.87.1 is more susceptible to XBB-induced humoral immunity compared to JN.1. Notably, BA.2.87.1 lacks critical escaping mutations in the receptor binding domain (RBD) thus allowing various classes of neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) that were escaped by XBB or BA.2.86 subvariants to neutralize BA.2.87.1, although the deletions in the N-terminal domain (NTD), specifically 15-23del and 136-146del, compensate for the resistance to humoral immunity. Interestingly, several neutralizing antibody drugs have been found to restore their efficacy against BA.2.87.1, including SA58, REGN-10933 and COV2-2196. Hence, our results suggest that BA.2.87.1 may not become widespread until it acquires multiple RBD mutations to achieve sufficient immune evasion comparable to that of JN.1.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.07.583823v1" target="_blank">Antigenicity assessment of SARS-CoV-2 saltation variant BA.2.87.1</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Resolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in human lung tissues is driven by extravascular CD163+ monocytes</strong> -
<div>
The lung-resident immune mechanisms driving resolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans remain elusive. Using mice co-engrafted with a genetically matched human immune system and fetal lung xenograft (fLX), we mapped the immunological events defining resolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in human lung tissues. Viral infection is rapidly cleared from fLX following a peak of viral replication. Acute replication results in the emergence of cell subsets enriched in viral RNA, including extravascular inflammatory monocytes (iMO) and macrophage-like T-cells, which dissipate upon infection resolution. iMO display robust antiviral responses, are transcriptomically unique among myeloid lineages, and their emergence associates with the recruitment of circulating CD4+ monocytes. Consistently, mice depleted for human CD4+ cells but not CD3+ T-cells failed to robustly clear infectious viruses and displayed signatures of chronic infection. Our findings uncover the transient differentiation of extravascular iMO from CD4+ monocytes as a major hallmark of SARS-CoV-2 infection resolution and open avenues for unravelling viral and host adaptations defining persistently active SARS-CoV-2 infection.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.08.583965v1" target="_blank">Resolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in human lung tissues is driven by extravascular CD163+ monocytes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Human Cytokine and Coronavirus Nucleocapsid Protein Interactivity Using Large-Scale Virtual Screens</strong> -
<div>
Understanding the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and the human immune system is paramount to the characterization of novel variants as the virus co-evolves with the human host. In this study, we employed state-of-the-art molecular docking tools to conduct large-scale virtual screens, predicting the binding affinities between 64 human cytokines against 17 nucleocapsid proteins from six betacoronaviruses. Our comprehensive in silico analyses reveal specific changes in cytokine-nucleocapsid protein interactions, shedding light on potential modulators of the host immune response during infection. These findings offer valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying viral pathogenesis and may guide the future development of targeted interventions. This manuscript serves as insight into the comparison of deep learning based AlphaFold2-Multimer and the semi-physicochemical based HADDOCK for protein-protein docking. We show the two methods are complementary in their predictive capabilities. We also introduce a novel algorithm for rapidly assessing the binding interface of protein-protein docks using graph edit distance: graph-based interface residue assessment function (GIRAF). The high-performance computational framework presented here will not only aid in accelerating the discovery of effective interventions against emerging viral threats, but extend to other applications of high throughput protein-protein screens.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.28.569056v2" target="_blank">Human Cytokine and Coronavirus Nucleocapsid Protein Interactivity Using Large-Scale Virtual Screens</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Who deserves economic relief - Preprint T Hilmar March 2024</strong> -
<div>
The economic shock of the Covid-19 crisis has disproportionately impacted small businesses and the self-employed. Around the globe, their survival during the pandemic often relied heavily on government assistance. This article explores how economic relief to business is understood through the lens of deservingness in the public. It examines the case of Germany, where the government has responded to the pandemic by implementing an extensive support program. Notably, in this context, the self-employed are typically outsiders to the state insurance system. Combining computational social science methods and a qualitative analysis, the article focuses on the debate about direct subsidies on the social media platform Twitter/X between March 2020 and June 2021. It traces variation in the patterns of claim making in what is a rich debate about pandemic state support, finding that this discourse is characterised by the concern that economic relief threatens to blur existing boundaries of worth in society. The reciprocity principle of deservingness theory is pivotal in asserting business identities in times of crisis, yet it also reveals a fundamentally ambiguous relationship with the principle of need. Additionally, the claim of justice-as-redress, as a novel dimension of reciprocity, surfaces as an important theme in this debate.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/swndy/" target="_blank">Who deserves economic relief - Preprint T Hilmar March 2024</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Protein design for evaluating vaccines against future viral variation</strong> -
<div>
Recurrent waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection, driven by the periodic emergence of new viral variants, highlight the need for vaccines and therapeutics that remain effective against future strains. Yet, our ability to proactively evaluate such therapeutics is limited to assessing their effectiveness against previous or circulating variants, which may differ significantly in their antibody escape from future viral evolution. To address this challenge, we develop a deep learning method to predict the effect of mutations on fitness and escape from neutralizing antibodies. We use this model to engineer 83 unique SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins incorporating novel combinations of up to 46 amino acid changes relative to the ancestral B.1 variant. The designed constructs were infectious and evaded neutralization by nine well-characterized panels of human polyclonal anti-SARS-CoV-2 immune sera (from vaccinated, boosted, bivalent boosted, and breakthrough infection individuals). Designed constructs on contemporary SARS-CoV-2 strains displayed similar levels of antibody escape and similar antigenic profiles as variants seen subsequently (up to 12 months later) during the COVID-19 pandemic despite differences in exact mutations. Our approach provides targeted panels of antigenically diverse escape variants for an early evaluation of the protective ability of vaccines and therapeutics to inhibit not only currently circulating but also future variants. This approach is generalizable to other viral pathogens.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.08.561389v2" target="_blank">Protein design for evaluating vaccines against future viral variation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Will Europe be forged in crises? The impact of the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises on EU actorness</strong> -
<div>
In this paper, we study the effect of crises on EU actorness, defined as the EU’s capacity to defend its interests and values at the global level. Our research focuses on two major crises, the Covid-19 crisis and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on a process-tracing approach, we analyse four of the Union’s policy initiatives that were proposed, negotiated and implemented to respond to these crises: joint vaccine procurement, common gas purchases, and the COVAX and FARM initiatives. The paper assesses the outcomes of these four initiatives and discusses the extent to which these initiatives led to the development of EU actorness and the achievement of common objectives. The analysis identifies the degree of internal cohesion, and how it is influenced by specific crises, as a key factor in fostering or hampering EU actorness in different policy fields. It also shows that the formal distribution of competences between the EU and the member states in specific policy areas matters little in crisis times, as the EU can resort to emergency competences in such situations. The findings of this paper contribute to the literature on EU actorness and equally provide some insights on policy legacies and learning.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/c3zwt/" target="_blank">Will Europe be forged in crises? The impact of the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises on EU actorness</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 drives escape from mRNA vaccine-induced humoral immunity</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, viral sequencing has documented 131 individual mutations in the viral spike protein across 48 named variants. To determine the ability of vaccine-mediated humoral immunity to keep pace with continued SARS-CoV-2 evolution, we assessed the neutralization potency of sera from 76 vaccine recipients collected after 2 to 6 immunizations against a comprehensive panel of mutations observed during the pandemic. Remarkably, while many individual mutations that emerged between 2020 and 2022 exhibit escape from sera following primary vaccination, few escape boosted sera. However, progressive loss of neutralization was observed across newer variants, irrespective of vaccine doses. Importantly, an updated XBB.1.5 booster significantly increased titers against newer variants but not JN.1. These findings demonstrate that seasonal boosters improve titers against contemporaneous strains, but novel variants continue to evade updated mRNA vaccines, demonstrating the need for novel approaches to adequately control SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.05.24303815v1" target="_blank">Ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 drives escape from mRNA vaccine-induced humoral immunity</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The importance of mothers: The social transmission of COVID-19 vaccination attitudes and uptake</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical importance of widespread vaccination to mitigate the impact of the virus on public health. The current study aimed to investigate which social influences might be most important for predicting attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake among young students in the UK. We focused on the cultural evolution and social transmission aspects, i.e., parent-to-child versus peer-to-peer, of attitudes and vaccine uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic.  A sample of 192 UK students (aged 18 to 35 years old) filled in an online survey including measures for attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake and/or intention, age, and gender. Participants were also asked about their mother’s, father’s, and best friend’s attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake. Finally, they provided a subjective measure of the quality relationship with their parents. Overall, our results suggest that both parents and very close friends are important agents in understanding the students’ attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake. More specifically, our findings suggest the mother’s vaccine uptake as the most salient predictor of students’ attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake, particularly when the students disclose having a positive relationship with their parents. In cases where students’ experience negative relationship with their parents, the best friend’s vaccine uptake may supersede the mother’s influence. Despite these nuances, a general trend emerges from our data suggesting that vaccine uptake could be primarily guided by vertical transmission (i.e., parent to child). Our results have the potential to influence public health strategies, communication campaigns, and targeted interventions to enhance vaccination uptake. Identifying key social predictors can enable policymakers and health authorities to tailor vaccination promotion efforts towards mothers’ and peers’ vaccine uptake to increase overall positive attitudes and vaccine uptake among young people.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.06.24303875v1" target="_blank">The importance of mothers: The social transmission of COVID-19 vaccination attitudes and uptake</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Predictors of mortality among COVID-19 patients at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Northern Tanzania: A hospital-based retrospective cohort study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background COVID-19 disease is a global public health disaster causing a range of social, economic, and healthcare difficulties, border restrictions, high human loss, lockdown, and transportation challenges. Despite it being a global pandemic, there are few studies conducted in Tanzania to examine the predictors of mortality. This disease has caused a significant number of mortalities worldwide but literature shows low mortality and better survival in Africa than in other WHO regions. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the predictors of mortality among COVID-19 patients at KCMC Hospital in Northern Tanzania. Methodology This was the hospital-based retrospective cohort study, conducted at KCMC Hospital in Northern Tanzania among all admitted patients with confirmed COVID-19, from 10th March 2020 to 26th January 2022. The main study event was COVID-19 mortality. The predictors of mortality were determined by using the Weibull survival regression model and the statistically significant results were declared at a p-value of &lt;0.05. Results A total of 547 confirmed COVID-19 patient records were included in the study. Their median age was 63 (IQR; 53-83), about 60% were aged 60 years and above, and 56.7% were males. The most common clinical features were; fever (60.8%), a severe form of the disease (44.4%), difficulty in breathing (73.3%), chest pain (46.1%), and generalized body weakness (71.3%). Of all participants, over one-third (34.6%) died (95%CI; 0.31-0.39). The median survival time was 7 days (IQR; 3-12). The overall mortality rate was 32.33 per 1000 person-days while the independent predictors of higher mortality risk were age ≥60 years (AHR=2.01; 95%CI 1.41-2.87; P&lt;0.001), disease severity (AHR=4.44; 95%CI 2.56-7.73; P&lt;0.001) and male sex (AHR=1.28; 95%CI; 0.93-1.73; P=0.128). Conclusion Mortality was higher in elderly male patients, with a severe form of the disease and those with any comorbidities. Therefore, more attention should be provided to older patients including uptake of the current vaccine and ensuring standard and supportive care at primary health facilities is available.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.05.24303842v1" target="_blank">Predictors of mortality among COVID-19 patients at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Northern Tanzania: A hospital-based retrospective cohort study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Accelerated brain age in young to early middle-aged adults after mild to moderate COVID-19 infection</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Cognitive decline is a common adverse effect of the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19), particularly in the post-acute disease phase. The mechanisms of cognitive impairment after COVID-19 (COGVID) remain unclear, but neuroimaging studies provide evidence of brain changes, many that are associated with aging. Therefore, we calculated Brain Age Gap (BAG), which is the difference between brain age and chronological age, in a cohort of 25 mild to moderate COVID-19 survivors (did not experience breathlessness, pneumonia, or respiratory/organ failure) and 24 non-infected controls (mean age = 30 +/- 8) using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). BAG was significantly higher in the COVID-19 group (F = 4.22, p = 0.046) by 2.65 years. Additionally, 80% of the COVID-19 group demonstrated an accelerated BAG compared to 13% in the control group (X2 = 20.0, p &lt; 0.001). Accelerated BAG was significantly correlated with lower cognitive function (p &lt; 0.041). Females in the COVID-19 group demonstrated a 99% decreased risk of accelerated BAG compared to males (OR = 0.015, 95% CI: 0.001 to 0.300). There was also a small (1.4%) but significant decrease in risk for accelerated BAG associated with longer time since COVID-19 diagnosis (OR = 0.986, 95% CI: 0.977 to 0.995). Our findings provide a novel biomarker of COGVID and point to accelerated brain aging as a potential mechanism of this adverse effect. Our results also offer further insight regarding gender-related disparities in cognitive morbidity associated with COVID-19.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.05.24303816v1" target="_blank">Accelerated brain age in young to early middle-aged adults after mild to moderate COVID-19 infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 Vaccination Booster Uptake Is Related to End of Pandemic Perception: Population-Based Survey in Four Provinces in Indonesia</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Global COVID-19 booster vaccination uptake has been low, particularly in low-middle-income countries (LMICs). However, studies on the determinants of COVID-19 booster vaccination remain limited, especially in LMIC settings. This study aims to describe the determinants of COVID-19 booster vaccination uptake in an LMIC context. We analyzed data from a cross-sectional survey that was conducted in September 2022 in four provinces in Indonesia. Participants (n=2,223) were recruited using multiple-stage cluster sampling. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with booster vaccination status. The proportion of COVID-19 booster vaccination among fully vaccinated adults was 29.5%, while fear of transmission (12.4%) and perceived risk of getting a COVID-19 infection (33.5%) were low. Multivariable analysis showed that people living on Java Island (aOR: 2.45, 95% CI: 1.87-3.24), living in the urban area (aOR: 2.04, 95% CI: 1.60-2.61), being an employee in the formal sector (aOR: 3.99, 95% CI: 1.93 - 8.58), experiencing a side effect from previous vaccination (aOR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.40-2.09), having a history of SARS-COV2 infection (aOR: 2.10, 95%CI: 1.27-3.50), having perception on the upcoming new wave of COVID-19 (aOR: 1.37, 95% CI: 1.07 -1.76), and believing the pandemic has not ended (aOR: 1.29, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.64) were associated with booster shot uptake. Low educational level (aOR: 0.6, 95% CI: 0.39-0.93) inhibited booster vaccination uptake. Current booster dose coverage was considerably lower than the primary vaccination dosage. The low booster vaccination uptake in four provinces was associated with a belief the pandemic has no longer, which might hinder the catch up of wide-population target coverage and COVID-19 control for reduced disease severity and hospitalization. Thus, efforts need to be prioritized in reaching the COVID-19 vulnerable population, which includes elderly and those with comorbidities.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.05.24303828v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 Vaccination Booster Uptake Is Related to End of Pandemic Perception: Population-Based Survey in Four Provinces in Indonesia</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>COVIDVaxStories: Randomized Trial to Reduce COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Populations of Color</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Vaccine Hesitancy <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Storytelling; Behavioral: Learn More (Active Comparator) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Massachusetts, Worcester; Merck Sharp &amp; Dohme LLC <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 E-health Psychoeducation for People With Bipolar Disorders</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Bipolar Disorder; Psychoeducation; COVID-19 Pandemic <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: e-health psychoeducation <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Cagliari; Alessandra Perra <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sulfureous Water Therapy in Viral Respiratory Diseases</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long-COVID; Post COVID-19 Condition; Chronic COVID-19 Syndrome; Post Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Inhalation of Sulfurous Thermal Water; Other: Inhalation of Sterile Distilled non-pyrogenic Water <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Roma La Sapienza; Università degli studi di Roma Foro Italico; Queen Mary University of London; Bios Prevention Srl <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase 3 Study of the Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 and Influenza Combination Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: CIC Vaccine Co-formulated tNIV2 , SARSCoV-2 rS and Matrix-M Adjuvant; Biological: Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine; Biological: Comparator Influenza Vaccine - Fluarix; Biological: Comparator Influenza Vaccine -Fluarix High Dose; Biological: Placebo 0.9% sodium chloride for injection <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Novavax <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of KGR Prescriptions in Suppressing COVID-19 Infection.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Coronavirus Disease 2019; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Combination Product: Kang Guan Recipe (Treat); Combination Product: Kang Guan Recipe (Placebo) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Sheng-Teng Huang <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SHEN211 Tablets for the Treatment of Mild and Moderate Novel Corona Virus Infections (COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: SHEN211 Tablets; Procedure: Placebo for SHEN211 Tablets <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: JKT Biopharma 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>INAVAC Vaccine Phase III (Immunobridging Study) in Healthy Population Aged 12 to 17 Years Old</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pandemic; COVID-19 Vaccines <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: INAVAC (Vaksin Merah Putih - UA-SARS CoV-2 (Vero Cell Inactivated) 5 µg <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Dr. Soetomo General Hospital; Indonesia-MoH; Universitas Airlangga; PT Biotis Pharmaceuticals, Indonesia <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and Safety Study of Self-amplifying mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Administered With Influenza Vaccines in Adults</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: ARCT-2303; Biological: Influenza vaccine; Biological: Influenza vaccine, adjuvanted; Other: Placebo <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Arcturus Therapeutics, Inc.; Seqirus; Novotech (Australia) Pty Limited <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 to Evaluate the Safety &amp; Immunogenicity of IMNN-101 Administered in Healthy Adults Previously Vaccinated Against SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS CoV 2 Infection <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: IMNN-101 <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Imunon <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effectiveness of a Nasal Spray on Viral Respiratory Infections</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Acute Respiratory Tract Infection; Flu, Human; COVID-19; Common Cold <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Nasal Spray HSV Treatment <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: CEN Biotech; Urgo Research, Innovation &amp; Development <br/><b>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>Quantitative Assessment of Energetic Contributions of Residues in a SARS-CoV-2 Viral Enzyme/Nanobody Interface</strong> - The highly conserved protease enzyme from SARS-CoV-2 (M^(Pro)) is crucial for viral replication and is an attractive target for the design of novel inhibitory compounds. M^(Pro) is known to be conformationally flexible and has been stabilized in an extended conformation in a complex with a novel nanobody (NB2B4), which inhibits the dimerization of the enzyme via binding to an allosteric site. However, the energetic contributions of the nanobody residues stabilizing the M^(Pro)/nanobody interface…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mast cell degranulation-triggered by SARS-CoV-2 induces tracheal-bronchial epithelial inflammation and injury</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced hyper-inflammation is a key pathogenic factor of COVID-19. Our research, along with others’, has demonstrated that mast cells (MCs) play a vital role in the initiation of hyper-inflammation caused by SARS-CoV-2. In previous study, we observed that SARS-CoV-2 infection the accumulation of MCs in the peri-bronchus and bronchioalveolar-duct junction in humanized mice. Additionally, we found that MC degranulation triggered by the spike protein-resulted in inflammation 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>Indole Propionic Acid Disturbs the Normal Function of Tryptophanyl-tRNA Synthetase in <em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em></strong> - Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the second-most contagious killer after COVID-19. The emergence of drug-resistant TB has caused a great need to identify and develop new anti-TB drugs with novel targets. Indole propionic acid (IPA), a structural analog of tryptophan (Trp), is active against M. tuberculosis in vitro and in vivo. It has been verified that IPA exerts its antimicrobial effect by mimicking Trp as an allosteric inhibitor of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Lamiaceae family plants and their bioactive ingredients on coronavirus-induced lung inflammation</strong> - Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a family of viruses that cause infection in respiratory and intestinal systems. Different types of CoVs, those responsible for the SARS-CoV and the new global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 in people, have been found. Some plants were used as food additives: spices and dietary and/or medicinal purposes in folk medicine. We aimed to provide evidence about possible effects of two Lamiaceae family plants on control or treatment of CoVs-induced inflammation. 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>Deregulation of interferon-gamma receptor 1 expression and its implications for lung adenocarcinoma progression</strong> - Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) plays a dual role in cancer; it is both a pro- and an antitumorigenic cytokine, depending on the type of cancer. The deregulation of the IFN-γ canonic pathway is associated with several disorders, including vulnerability to viral infections, inflammation, and cancer progression. In particular, the interplay between lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and viral infections appears to exist in association with the deregulation of IFN-γ signaling. In this mini-review, we investigated…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The role of N-acetylcysteine in decreasing neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio in COVID-19 patients: A double-blind, randomized controlled trial</strong> - N-acetylcysteine has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities that could potentially improve the clinical outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. N-acetylcysteine potentially inhibits NLRP3 (NOD-, LRR- and pyrin domain-containing protein 3) inflammasome and results in control oxidative stress and cytokine release in COVID-19 patients. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of N-acetylcysteine in reducing the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in COVID-19 patients. A…</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>Metabolic profiling of milk thistle different organs using UPLC-TQD-MS/MS coupled to multivariate analysis in relation to their selective antiviral potential</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study valorizes the importance of different S. marianum organs as wealthy sources of selective and effective antiviral candidates. This approach can be extended to unravel potentially active constituents from complex plant matrices.</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>Role of Microbiota-Derived Corisin in Coagulation Activation during SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> - CONCLUSION: The microbiota-derived corisin is significantly increased and correlated with activation of the coagulation system during SARS-CoV-2 infection, and corisin may directly increase the procoagulant activity in epithelial, endothelial and monocytic cells.</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>Risks of infection and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 in kidney transplant recipients: A single-center cohort study</strong> - CONCLUSION: In kidney transplant recipients, the infection rate and severity of COVID-19 tended to increase with higher maintenance doses of steroids. Recipients taking &gt;5 mg of prednisolone should be considered a switch from tacrolimus to cyclosporine because cyclosporine may inhibit viral replication and reduce the risk of infection.</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>Metabolic regulation of neutrophil functions in homeostasis and diseases</strong> - Neutrophils are the most abundant leukocytes in humans and play a role in the innate immune response by being the first cells attracted to the site of infection. While early studies presented neutrophils as almost exclusively glycolytic cells, recent advances show that these cells use several metabolic pathways other than glycolysis, such as the pentose phosphate pathway, oxidative phosphorylation, fatty acid oxidation, and glutaminolysis, which they modulate to perform their functions….</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>Transcriptome analysis reveals organ-specific effects of 2-deoxyglucose treatment in healthy mice</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that 2DG has a systemic impact that varies across organs, potentially affecting multiple pathways and functions. The study provides insights into the potential therapeutic benefits of 2DG across different diseases and highlights the importance of understanding its systemic effects for future research and clinical applications.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Repurposing of SARS-CoV-2 compounds against Marburg Virus using MD simulation, mm/GBSA, PCA analysis, and free energy landscape</strong> - The significant mortality rate associated with Marburg virus infection made it the greatest hazard among infectious diseases. Drug repurposing using in silico methods has been crucial in identifying potential compounds that could prevent viral replication by targeting the virus’s primary proteins. This study aimed at repurposing the drugs of SARS-CoV-2 for identifying potential candidates against the matrix protein VP40 of the Marburg virus. Virtual screening was performed where the control…</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>Natural products as a source of Coronavirus entry inhibitors</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant and lasting impact on the world. Four years on, despite the existence of effective vaccines, the continuous emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants remains a challenge for long-term immunity. Additionally, there remain few purpose-built antivirals to protect individuals at risk of severe disease in the event of future coronavirus outbreaks. A promising mechanism of action for novel coronavirus antivirals is the inhibition of viral entry. To facilitate…</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>Antigenic drift and immunity gap explain reduction in protective responses against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and A(H3N2) viruses during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study of human sera collected in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023</strong> - CONCLUSION: The observed reduction in protective antibodies against A(H1N1)pdm09 and A(H3N2) viruses post COVID-19 is best explained by antigenic drift of emerging viruses, and not waning of antibody responses in the general population. However, the absence of influenza during the pandemic resulted in an immunity gap in the youngest children. While this immunity gap was partially closed following the 2022/2023 influenza season, children with elevated risk of severe infection should be…</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>Glycan-directed SARS-CoV-2 inhibition by leek extract and lectins with insights into the mode-of-action of Concanavalin A</strong> - Four years after its outbreak, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains a global challenge for human health. At its surface, SARS-CoV-2 features numerous extensively glycosylated spike proteins. This glycan coat supports virion docking and entry into host cells and at the same time renders the virus less susceptible to neutralizing antibodies. Given the high genetic plasticity of SARS-CoV-2 and the rapid emergence of immune escape variants, targeting the glycan shield…</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>Team Trump’s Merger with the R.N.C. Begins in Texas</strong> - At a Houston meeting, the Republican National Committee elected Lara Trump and Michael Whatley to lead the organization into the general election. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/team-trumps-merger-with-the-rnc-begins-in-texas">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Forty-three Mexican Students Went Missing. What Really Happened to Them?</strong> - One night in 2014, a group of young men from a rural teachers’ college vanished. Since then, their families have fought for answers. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/11/what-really-happened-to-the-forty-three">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lucy Prebble’s Dramas of High Anxiety</strong> - In plays such as “The Effect” and TV shows such as “I Hate Suzie” and “Succession,” the writer has become an expert at getting deep inside worried characters’ heads. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/11/lucy-prebbles-dramas-of-high-anxiety">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joe Biden’s Last Campaign</strong> - Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/11/joe-biden-profile-re-election-campaign-donald-trump">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Legacy of RuPaul’s “Drag Race”</strong> - The drag star brought the form mainstream, and made an empire out of queer expression. Now he fears “the absolute worst.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/11/rupaul-doesnt-see-how-thats-any-of-your-business">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Parenting advice you don’t need to stress about</strong> -
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<img alt="A child lies in bed on their back holding a tablet above them." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ovZJqZDm7NZORkaF3g0vvqq1eLk=/292x0:6709x4813/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73195756/GettyImages_1781825605.0.jpg"/>
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Getty Images/fStop
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
According to experts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gITjDX">
Child-rearing can feel like a crowd-sourced endeavor. An entire market of books exists solely for the purpose of instructing parents on best practices for raising their kids. Every well-meaning person in a parent’s life will proffer their unsolicited opinions. And <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23700540/parenting-advice-endless-recycling-dr-spock-gentle-parenting">online, a new trend or term championed by creators</a> somehow renders every other <a href="https://www.vox.com/parenting">parenting</a> style dangerous or outdated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pm8beQ">
What’s worse is this churn of ideals changes with every generation, says family therapist <a href="https://www.legitparenting.com/">Craig Knippenberg</a>, host of the podcast <em>Legit Parenting</em>. “When I was a kid, it was all discipline and responsibility — that was the main thing parents focused on,” he says. “The turn now, which I really do not like much at all, is this whole gentle parenting and we should focus on our child’s feelings and don’t want them ever to feel hurt.” (Labels aside, any approach to parenting that keeps your kids safe and healthy — and works for you — is fine.)
</p>
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<div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sWosoG">
With constantly changing frameworks and a community of people — online and off — who are quick to point out supposed flaws, there are so many standards to live up to. Aside from the thrum of social judgments, accusations of “wrong” parenting can have very real repercussions. Unknowing outsiders may make calls to a child’s school or to child protective services — which most often and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2106272118">unequally impacts Black and brown families</a>. The pressure to be the “ideal” parent has never been greater. “Parents are always trying to get it right or be perfect,” says licensed clinical social worker <a href="https://shameproofparenting.com/meet-mercedes-parent-coach/">Mercedes Samudio</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071D4YXMT"><em>Shame-Proof Parenting: Find Your Unique Parenting Voice, Feel Empowered, and Raise Whole, Healthy Children</em></a>. The reality is, parents aren’t perfect and neither are their children.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Whunz">
But don’t panic: There are plenty of facets of parenting in which people are naturally sufficient. To assuage your anxiety, here are the domains where experts say parents are doing just fine.
</p>
<h3 id="Td7QnG">
Letting kids look at screens
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pGzE3u">
Throughout her career, Samudio observed as technology’s role grew within families. The shame that some parents might feel for allowing their children to watch TV while they attend to chores is unfounded. “Where do people get the idea that they shouldn’t allow their kids on screen time?” she says. “What measuring stick are you using?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WTfAsd">
Instead, pay attention to how your family utilizes technology: Do your kids enjoy watching <a href="https://www.vox.com/tiktok">TikTok</a>? Maybe you allow your younger child to play on an iPad while you help your older kids with homework. Then, set boundaries for when tech and social media are allowed, and when you’ll put it away, Samudio says. “If it is watching fun TikTok videos, maybe you can do it together,” she says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BHIt3L">
Barring your child from social media or digital devices altogether may prove futile, Samudio says, as they’ll find ways to access it without your knowledge. Creating a technology roadmap for your family is more sustainable than denying screen time or comparing yourself to another family’s ideals.
</p>
<h3 id="stWnNg">
Allowing children to have time to themselves
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eCrjPo">
You’re probably spending enough time playing with your kids, says psychologist <a href="https://www.drjulifraga.com/">Juli Fraga</a>. “I hear that an awful lot,” she says. “[Parents] feel like they have to play with their kids every time that kid wants interaction.” Don’t feel guilty if you send your child off to play by themselves or if you leave them with a babysitter on a Friday night.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LnM2UW">
<a href="https://www.bhavanalearning.com/wp-content/uploads/Milkie_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Marriage_and_Family.pdf">Research</a> shows quality time spent with children is far <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-study-says-quality-trumps-quantity/2015/03/28/10813192-d378-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html">more impactful</a> than the duration of time spent together. When you’re engaging with your kids, eliminate any distractions and tune into them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CpYQI8">
Otherwise, let your kids use their imagination to play on their own or with other children. In cultures around the world, children most often learn from their peers and adults through observation and mimicry, says <a href="https://www.dorsaamir.com/">Dorsa Amir</a>, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/psychology">psychology</a> department who studies kids and culture. By just allowing children to play with no agenda, they are in fact learning, Amir says.
</p>
<h3 id="xxysEr">
Not shielding kids from “negative” emotions
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aV65lE">
Parents are well-intentioned in wanting their children to have a positive childhood. “The problem is,” Amir says, “that that’s not the full spectrum of the human experience.” Emotional pain, social conflict, and boredom are unavoidable in life and can be learning moments for kids. Letting children resolve conflicts on their own or to navigate cooperation among their peers doesn’t mean you aren’t protecting them — you’re just giving them space to process their emotions and to practice social skills, Amir says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6JXxzx">
The first step toward promoting <a href="https://www.vox.com/mental-health">mental health</a> for your children is to take care of your own, Fraga says. Kids can pick up on and internalize their parents’ anxiety, sadness, or fear. “If parents aren’t aware of that,” Fraga says, “they might think that their kid totally has anxiety, not recognizing that there’s anxiety within themselves.” By knowing how to identify and regulate your own emotions, you can <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/parenting/emotion-regulation">teach your children skills</a> like how to name their emotions and talking through different choices they could’ve made in a stressful or emotional situation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y1s4rw">
Samudio also suggests keeping an open dialogue with your children, especially as they get older. “We’re not just communicating to manage conflict, but we’re also communicating … to get to know each other,” she says, “so that way we can actually talk to each other and understand how you’re feeling.” Having established an open line of communication, your child may feel more comfortable broaching topics of mental health should they arise.
</p>
<h3 id="Y23Fod">
Setting boundaries
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WRjQS9">
In modern society, children’s needs and preferences are centered, Amir says, but sometimes at the cost of the parents’ wants and desires. It’s perfectly fine not to cater to your child’s every whim all the time, Amir says. “Your preferences matter, too,” she says. “You have a seat at the table, too.” You won’t be sacrificing your child’s happiness by bringing them along <a href="https://twitter.com/DorsaAmir/status/1615040072012955648">while you run errands</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VY8aLK">
Similarly, the <a href="https://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/style/what-is-gentle-parenting/">gentle parenting</a> movement, where parent and child collaborate on choices and decisions, may have eroded boundaries. But most kids of all ages need boundaries, Fraga says. Take, for example, a boundary such as “You can’t be late for school.” According to Fraga, parents might be unintentionally signaling to their child that they have a choice when saying something like, “It’s time for school. Why don’t you get your shoes on, okay?” Setting and sticking to boundaries means not giving kids an option to do anything other than the task at hand. A statement like, “Put your shoes on. We’re leaving in five minutes,” helps uphold the boundary. “Kids actually respond better to that type of [communication],” Fraga says. “Little kids don’t want power, even if they think they do. It can make them feel really anxious.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SazyVn">
Parents should feel empowered to set boundaries around bedtime, mealtimes, and “whatever they need for their home life to run smoothly,” Fraga says. “Just because a kid might feel bad about something doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.”
</p>
<h3 id="s3Nk3Y">
Cutting kids some slack when it comes to schoolwork
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RM3qVm">
Given parents’ increased access to their kids’ grades online, it’s normal to feel inundated — and stressed — by every incremental change in your children’s academic lives. Try as you might, most parents can’t engineer their child into a top performer and high earner, Knippenberg says. Rather, you can shepherd them through life, protecting them with rules and limits, and supporting them. “You have very little control over who your child’s going to become,” he says. So don’t stress over what elementary school you send them to or if they missed a study session in high school.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HVhsYB">
Instead of hyper-focusing on every aspect of your kid’s school and extracurricular life, give them <a href="https://www.vox.com/even-better/23844294/parents-help-kids-school-homework-bullying-mental-health">space to unwind</a>. Knippenberg suggests allowing children 30 minutes of exercise and a snack after school before they start their homework. If they’re toiling away well into the evening, Knippenberg says it’s okay to ditch the academics for the day. “Turn off the homework and watch a TV show together,” he says.
</p>
<h3 id="f8R188">
Just making it through the day
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vgYvRV">
The greatest parenting achievement, experts agree, is simply keeping your family safe day in and day out. Give yourself some credit for that. Modern parenting in individualistic societies is extremely difficult and parents often have little support. You can cut yourself some slack.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bJUsHP">
However you get from wakeup to bedtime is sufficient so long as you move through the world with kindness, Knippenberg says. “If you, as a parent, are a kind person to your neighbors, the grocery store workers, the gas station attendant, other parents at the school,” he says, “your kids will become kind and that will last them the rest of their lives.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>Do Americans still have a right to privacy?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A protester dressed as a pack of birth control pills dances in front of the US Supreme Court, encircled by other protestors holding colorful signs, on March 25 in Washington, DC." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8mHLIDezAmXzc7v-99xKi3wtlUI=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73195688/480488317.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A protester dressed as a pack of birth control pills dances in front of the US Supreme Court. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
With courts coming for abortion and IVF, it’s hard not to wonder what the Supreme Court will go after next.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U71Kzl">
When the <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus">Supreme Court</a> overruled <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/5/3/23055125/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights-supreme-court-dobbs-v-jackson"><em>Roe v. Wade</em></a>, it swore up and down that its decision didn’t necessarily have any implications for other rights. “‘Abortion is a unique act’ because it terminates ‘life or potential life,’” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for himself and four of his Republican colleagues. He added that “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right</a>” and that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern <a href="https://www.vox.com/abortion">abortion</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a29FgU">
But even as Alito wrote these words, Justice Clarence Thomas drafted a concurring opinion calling upon his Court to eliminate the rights to contraception, <a href="https://www.vox.com/marriage-equality">same-sex marriage</a>, and the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">right “to engage in private, consensual sexual acts</a>.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, published his own opinion disclaiming any desire to come for anyone’s marriage or birth control.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tu7l7V">
All Americans now live in a land of uncertainty, somewhere between Thomas and Kavanaugh. In Alabama, the death of <em>Roe</em> meant that in vitro fertilization clinics closed after that state’s justices ruled that, at least under the state law governing wrongful deaths of children, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2024/2/20/24078513/supreme-court-alabama-ivf-roe-wade-dobbs-abortion-child-embryo">a frozen embryo has the exact same rights as a child</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nped7N">
The clinics are now reopening after the Alabama state legislature, chastened by a nationwide backlash against the court’s decision, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/alabama-fertility-clinic-says-will-resume-ivf-services-bill-passes-pro-rcna141682">enacted legislation protecting IVF</a>. The state supreme court’s original decision targeting IVF, however, contains some language suggesting they <a href="https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/cms/case/343d203a-b13d-463a-8176-c46e3ae4f695/docketentrydocuments/e3d95592-3cbe-4384-afa6-063d4595aa1d">might rule that this new state law is unconstitutional</a>. So it is unclear whether we’ve read the last chapter in this dispute over whether women in Alabama may receive IVF care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H4FhL0">
This also isn’t the only way the right to privacy is under threat. Red states enacted several laws <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/7/10/23789633/supreme-court-lgbtq-lw-skrmetti-transgender-health-care-jeffrey-sutton-sixth-circuit">forbidding physicians from providing transgender health care</a> to children experiencing gender dysphoria. Indeed, at this very moment, the Supreme Court is <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/labrador-v-poe/">considering whether to reinstate such a law in Idaho</a> which was blocked by a lower court. (The specific issue in the Idaho case <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A763/300889/20240220100700247_Poe%20v%20Labrador%20SCOTUS%20Application%20for%20Stay.pdf">turns on a narrow procedural question</a>, but nothing prevents this Court from using that procedural question as an excuse to reinstate the Idaho law.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sGYDmw">
Not that long ago, it would have been hard to imagine either Alabama’s attack on IVF or the red state laws targeting <a href="https://www.vox.com/lgbtq">trans children</a> surviving federal judicial review.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="StZeiG">
The right to an abortion lost in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf"><em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</em></a> (2022) was itself part of a broader “right to privacy,” which guaranteed that our most intimate, personal decisions — decisions like <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1">who we marry</a>, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html">who we have sex with</a>, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/438/">whether and when to have children</a>, and, with some exceptions to prevent abuse or neglect, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/262/390">how we raise those children</a> — will be made by us alone and not by the government.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AkSzVP">
As the Court said in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html"><em>Lawrence v. Texas</em></a> (2003), “In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vHG69i">
Now, however, it is far from clear what, if any, of this right to privacy still exists. Justice Thomas proudly calls for it to be burnt to the ground. And even Kavanaugh’s more moderate <em>Dobbs</em> opinion may simply be a call to freeze the right to privacy in place — leaving existing freedoms like the right to same-sex marriage intact, but refusing to extend the right to privacy to previously unlitigated issues like IVF or trans <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care">health care</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m177cJ">
Our most personal and self-defining decisions — the kinds of choices that we make alone, after praying to our own God, speaking to our own family, and consulting our own doctors — may now belong to the government.
</p>
<h3 id="RhVSC5">
No one knows exactly which rights are protected by the Constitution
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JPjPtW">
One reason the modern right to privacy rests on shaky ground is because it is not explicitly laid out in the Constitution. The oldest Supreme Court decision protecting such a right is more than a century old, and the Constitution includes several provisions <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23219138/supreme-court-roe-wade-substantive-due-process-samuel-alito">protecting so-called “unenumerated” rights</a> that are not itemized anywhere in its text.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TFDHRk">
But one searches the Constitution in vain for specific language protecting, say, the right to choose your spouse, or the right to guide your children’s upbringing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y3X7Oj">
The Court’s earliest right to privacy decisions, moreover, are relics of an era when the justices frequently treated <em>enumerated</em> rights — that is, rights that are explicitly laid out in the Constitution — as optional guidelines that could be ignored.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1Xzk8L">
In <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/262/390"><em>Meyer v. Nebraska</em></a> (1923), the Court struck down a state law which forbade schoolteachers — including teachers at private schools, who are not state employees — from teaching “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/262/390">any subject to any person in any language [other] than the English language</a>” before the student passed the eighth grade.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xT3m9g">
You might think this law would be struck down on First Amendment grounds, since it obviously violates the right to free speech.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vfLlLr">
But four years before <em>Meyer</em>, in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/249/211/"><em>Debs v. United States</em></a> (1919), the Court held that a prominent <a href="https://www.vox.com/unions">union</a> leader and political candidate could be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for giving a speech opposing the draft, and this was just one of an <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/249/47/">orgy of</a> <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/250/616/">World War I-era decisions</a> treating the First Amendment as a virtual nullity. So teachers who wanted to educate their students in a foreign language could not rely on the right to free speech to attack Nebraska’s law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8TWkMD">
Instead, <em>Meyer</em> featured the Court’s earliest articulation of what became the unenumerated right to privacy. Individuals have a right “to marry, establish a home and bring up children,” the Court said, and this right brings with it a parent’s “natural duty” to “give his children education suitable to their station in life.” To fulfill this duty, parents must also be allowed “to instruct their children” in subjects they wish those children to learn.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ipnkOL">
For the next four decades, the Court said little more about the right to privacy — although it did hold that parents have a right to send their children to private (and, specifically, Catholic) schools in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/268/510"><em>Pierce v. Society of Sisters</em></a> (1925). Beginning in the 1960s, however, the Court started to flesh out this right, and to include within it the right to make certain medical decisions without government interference.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fH2Uej">
The first of this second wave of right-to-privacy decisions was <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/"><em>Griswold v. Connecticut</em></a> (1965), which held that married couples have a constitutional right to use contraception.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hU2l6l">
The idea that anyone had a right to sexual autonomy of any kind — even something as seemingly noncontroversial as a married couple using birth control — was reasonably novel in the 1960s. An 1873 federal law known as the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1461">Comstock Act</a>, a law that is still on the books, bans pretty much any kind of contraception, sex toy, abortifacient, or even art or literature depicting nudity or sex, from being mailed. And similar state laws often targeted this kind of material.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KopSPb">
In some cases, this led to art gallery owners being convicted for selling reproductions of famous works of nude art. In other cases, it led to people arrested for providing contraceptives or other forbidden items dying by suicide after being hounded by law enforcement. Anthony Comstock, the anti-sex crusader after whom the federal law is named, once bragged that <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/23678636/supreme-court-anthony-comstock-abortion-mifepristone-matthew-kacsmaryk">15 people targeted by his investigations took their own lives.</a>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6WQ6pQ">
Read in the light of this history, <em>Griswold</em> is best understood as a repudiation of Comstockery. It is also one of the Court’s first articulations of the idea that some aspects of our lives are walled off from government regulation specifically because they are private — and because there are some places where law enforcement officers simply do not belong.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JLrynf">
“Would we <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/">allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms</a> for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?” the Court asked in <em>Griswold</em>, before answering that “the very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xUjhKq">
One reason to fear that this right to privacy is in danger is that one of the Court’s fullest articulations of the right’s scope came with <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113"><em>Roe v. Wade</em></a> (1973), the decision now held up as an icon of judicial overreach by the Court’s current, GOP-appointed majority. As <em>Roe</em> explained, this right extends to “activities relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YEqINU">
Specifically, the Court has said that the right to privacy includes the right to marry a person of our own choosing (1967’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1"><em>Loving v. Virginia</em></a><em>, </em>2015’s<em> </em><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556#writing-14-556_OPINION_3"><em>Obergefell v. Hodges</em></a>); the right to choose our own sexual partners (<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html"><em>Lawrence v. Texas</em></a> in 2003); the right to have, or not to have, children at a time of our choosing (<em>Griswold</em>, 1972’s <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/438/"><em>Eisenstadt v. Baird</em></a>, <em>Roe</em>); and the right to raise those children as their parents deem appropriate, with exceptions prohibiting abuse, truancy, and similar offenses (<em>Meyer</em>, <em>Pierce</em>).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZokR8X">
Read together, these rights provide a strong basis for protecting women seeking IVF or families with transgender children. The Court has said many times that the government may not interfere in our most intimate decisions involving our families, including medical decisions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZkyzLu">
Now, however, all of these rights are potentially threatened by a Supreme Court that has already torn away one key component of the broader right to privacy. And it is far from clear which of the remaining components will survive.
</p>
<h3 id="YgOIsu">
Four ways that the Supreme Court could handle the right to privacy moving forward
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WeKOx7">
It’s dangerous to predict how the current Supreme Court will rule on any issue, or, at least, on any issue where the Court’s current members have not yet staked out an explicit view. The Court’s current majority <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/7/8/23784320/supreme-court-2022-term-affirmative-action-religion-voting-rights-abortion">has a weak attachment to “stare decisis</a>,” the doctrine that courts should be reluctant to overrule previous decisions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jjcMos">
And the Supreme Court has a long history of <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/24086594/donald-trump-supreme-court-trial-immunity-never-going-to-save-us">ignoring constitutional rights</a> even when they are explicitly protected by the Constitution — hence the World War I-era decisions suppressing the First Amendment, or the Jim Crow-era decisions nullifying amendments intended to guarantee equal citizenship to Black people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kW9XzM">
As of now, we know, based on the concurring opinions in <em>Dobbs</em>, that Justice Thomas would likely abolish the right to privacy in its entirety. And we know that Justice Kavanaugh would leave some existing rights, like the right to marry whomever you choose, intact. We don’t know where the rest of the Court’s Republican majority falls along this spectrum.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ptJdT7">
That said, there are four ways that this Court might approach right to privacy cases moving forward, and at least one of these approaches could end in good outcomes for women seeking IVF treatments, or for families with transgender children.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JG6dfk">
The first possibility is that Thomas finds five votes for his sweeping assault on the right to privacy. This outcome is unlikely at the moment, given Kavanaugh’s declaration that he does not support it. But if <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> wins the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2024-elections">2024 presidential election</a>, he could potentially replace some of the Court’s relatively moderate members with hardliners similar to Thomas. And that would mean the death of a long list of rights, from the right to same-sex marriage to the right to contraception.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DPObkE">
In the second and third possibilities, Kavanaugh’s approach prevails, and the Court leaves most of the privacy rights protected by existing Supreme Court precedents in place. No married couple is stripped of their marriage license and no one needs to fear a ban on legal birth control.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EKRb2h">
What distinguishes these two possibilities is how the Court reads a line in its <em>Dobbs</em> decision, which says that the justices will determine which unenumerated rights are protected by the Constitution by asking “whether the right at issue … is rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FKwuo5">
Broadly speaking, the idea of a right to privacy and the right to guide your own children’s upbringing first announced in <em>Meyer</em> are firmly rooted in American legal history and tradition. These rights have been around for more than a century, and can certainly be read broadly enough to encompass, say, the right to decide which medical treatments your child should receive if they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7SqaAz">
That said, the Supreme Court has not yet read the right announced in <em>Meyer</em> to encompass a right to IVF, or a right to provide a child with gender-affirming health care that the government finds objectionable. So it would not be hard for the current, very conservative Supreme Court majority to rule that novel applications of the right to privacy are not part of America’s “history and tradition.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h1qnSV">
And then there is a fourth possibility. Several conservative organizations, including groups with very close ties to Trump, see the right to privacy as a tool they can use to impose their own values on the nation.
</p>
<div id="oNxpAm">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
Before we sacrifice our constitutionally protected right to privacy at the altar of gender identity politics… <a href="https://t.co/wDMwaI94Br">https://t.co/wDMwaI94Br</a>
</p>
— Heritage Foundation (<span class="citation" data-cites="Heritage">@Heritage</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/Heritage/status/748189289876361217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 29, 2016</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lCFy39">
Thus, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-right law firm that <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/3/23472175/supreme-court-303-creative-elenis-first-amendment-lgbtq-religion-website">routinely brings anti-LGBTQ cases to the Supreme Court</a>, has argued that public schools should be forbidden from allowing transgender children to use the bathroom that aligns with their <a href="https://www.vox.com/gender">gender identity</a> because doing so <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/05/17/our-constitutional-right-to-privacy-is-missing-from-bathroom-debate/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=thf-tw">violates the privacy rights of cisgender students</a> who do not wish to share a bathroom with their trans classmates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6bVHga">
The worst possible outcome for transgender youth is that the Supreme Court could transform the right to privacy, long a safeguard of LGBTQ rights, into a sword that can be wielded to force the government to adopt anti-trans <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy">policies</a> — even in jurisdictions where transgender rights enjoy broad local support.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VePjc5">
At least one judge, moreover, has already weaponized the right to privacy to undermine access to birth control. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump judge with close ties to the religious right, ruled in 2022 that the <em>Meyer</em> right to decide how to raise children allows a father who objects to birth control to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/13/23505459/supreme-court-birth-control-contraception-constitution-matthew-kacsmaryk-deanda-becerra">limit his daughters’ access to contraception</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5brFIv">
In any event, the one thing that can be said with certainty about the current Supreme Court is that it is a chaos agent. The justices will do what they want, when they want to do it, regardless of what precedent has to say about the matter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nX1cAb">
And all the rest of us can do is wait to see the fallout.
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>I’m an expert in the end of the world. The Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer made me cry in terror.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5H7tsY94eVOhO-VEMxUI3E_sltw=/0x40:3504x2668/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73195634/GettyImages_90739961.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
The mushroom cloud produced by the first explosion by the Americans of a hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific, in 1952. | SSPL via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As it heads into the Oscars, what <em>Oppenheimer </em>gets right — and wrong — about the threat of nuclear weapons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h7EUzL">
My wife and I went to see <em>Oppenheimer</em> on opening weekend in July, and I wore my best Los Alamos-themed costume. We opted for the biggest screen we could — and as the Trinity test explosion kept on rising higher and higher endlessly upward, I was glad we had sprung for the more expensive IMAX ticket for the sheer spectacle. I could guess, even then, that this film was destined for this weekend’s Academy Awards, where it will compete for 13 <a href="https://www.vox.com/oscars">Oscars</a>, including Best Picture and Best Director.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dYdBil">
But then the final scene rolled around — showing Los Alamos lab director J. Robert Oppenheimer’s vision of rows and rows of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the rockets zooming upward — and then the Earth from space with mushroom clouds rising above the clouds and fire spreading across the globe
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="luEMTE">
As the strings rose to their final jarring crescendo,<em> </em>I found myself unexpectedly and uncontrollably bawling my eyes out. I sat in my chair at the London Science Museum cinema, my shoulders shaking, speechless with tears, trying to gasp out to my wife between sobs what on earth was going on with me. “It’s all still real,” I told her. “The weapons are still there. Every 12 minutes they could kill us and everyone we love. The entire Northern Hemisphere would be gone. We’d all starve to death. Five billion people could die.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Oppenheimer wearing goggles, his face lit from the blast of the bomb as he watches through a circular window." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/92WYJ8ldgNhB8r6UYduxwIT3Qmc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25325204/Screenshot_2024_03_08_at_11.10.44_AM.png"/> <cite>Courtesy of Universal</cite>
<figcaption>
Still from <em>Oppenheimer.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ke3LU3">
I’ve worked at the University of Cambridge’s <a href="https://www.cser.ac.uk/">Centre for the Study of Existential Risk</a> for the past seven years, where we study risks that could lead to human extinction or civilizational collapse — and how to prevent them. Most of our conversations at the pub across the road from the office are about <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate">climate change</a>, engineered pandemics, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">artificial intelligence</a>, and yes, nuclear weapons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7FSeYy">
The most common question I get asked is “doesn’t working on this make you all depressed?” I normally answer with a joke, but the truth is that while those conversations are normally academic, abstract, distanced, and intellectual, <em>Oppenheimer</em> was hitting me emotionally.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m6tHsv">
The USA and <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia">Russia</a> each have <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat">around 1,500 warheads deployed</a> — ready to launch. Each of these is a hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bomb. Many of these, which are 20 times more destructive than those produced by Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project and which destroyed Hiroshima, sit on the top of ICBMs in land-based silos — in the US in <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/why-is-america-getting-a-new-100-billion-nuclear-weapon/">Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado</a> — and are ready for a “launch on warning.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ImunuH">
What this means is that in the event of the detection of a possible incoming nuclear strike, the president — while they are being rushed to the White House bunker — has perhaps 12 minutes to decide whether to launch all of these missiles. Unlike nuclear missiles on submarines, which are designed to evade a first strike, this is a use-it-or-lose-it situation: the silos will get blown up at the end of those 12 minutes. What could happen next is unimaginable — save for the scientists who have imagined it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cL2KFs">
You may remember the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/19/17873822/nuclear-war-weapons-bombs-how-kill">theory of “nuclear winter”</a> from the 1980s. <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-carl-sagan-warned-world-about-nuclear-winter-180967198/">Proposed</a> by Carl Sagan and other US and Soviet scientists, it suggested that the smoke from burning cities could rise up into the atmosphere and block out the sun. Scientists <a href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-230-burning-hamburg-1943">learned</a> during World War II that if conditions are right, a burning city after a bombing can become a firestorm, a freak weather phenomenon where the heat of the fire sucks in air from surrounding areas in a great wind, fueling the fire like a bellows.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fVvaEp">
The nuclear winter theory takes this further: Destroying cities with a hydrogen bomb might also lead to firestorms. That great wind could carry millions of metric tons of black carbon soot from these burnt cities far up into the stratosphere. Once up there, up above rainclouds, that soot might stay suspended for up to a decade. If so, it would act like a massive volcanic eruption or asteroid impact, blotting out the sun and reducing crop yields.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VICOIY">
But scientists have carried out research with today’s much more powerful physics simulations and climate models. Their conclusion?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8mUAGb">
In a 2022 <em>Nature Food </em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">paper</a>, researchers led by Lili Xia find that a full-scale nuclear war could reduce crop yields between 50 percent and 90 percent and kill 2 to 5 billion people. At the top end, this would mean north of 90 percent of the populations of the US, Europe, Russia, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/china">China</a> starving to death. Because of global climate patterns much of this would be concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere — unfortunately where I and most of my family and friends live.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3eWJhv">
This is not a closed debate: The Future of Life Institute, which also studies existential risks, <a href="https://futureoflife.org/grant-program/nuclear-war-research/">recently awarded</a> about $4 million to 10 university groups to explore this in more detail. But it is a scenario that has to be taken seriously. And it was this scenario that left me sobbing and gasping at <em>Oppenheimer</em>’s end.
</p>
<div id="s9LW9y">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
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</div>
<h3 id="yPEZ7F">
<em>Oppenheimer </em>as a warning
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sL9lF3">
Since <em>Oppenheimer</em>’s release, the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, has actively drawn attention to the continued dangers of nuclear war. Nolan spoke about just this subject at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ annual <a href="https://thebulletin.org/support-the-bulletin/conversations-before-midnight-2023/">Conversations Before Midnight</a> just before the main event of the evening, joint headliner yours truly (my co-recipient of the Rieser Award, Christian Ruhl, had talked me out of making too many jokes about Nolan). In his BAFTA acceptance <a href="https://youtu.be/iYlNtbpn7AQ?si=eBTxYffIbeW7i79Z">speech</a> last month, Nolan thanked his cast (standard), his crew (classy), and his producers (shrewd), but ended by thanking a different group. He said:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bXnbbO">
Our film ends on what I think is a dramatically necessary note of despair. But in the real world there are all kinds of individuals and organizations that have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Since its peak in 1967, they’ve done it by almost 90 percent. Of late that’s gone the wrong way. And so in accepting this I want to acknowledge their efforts and point out that they show the necessity and the potential of efforts for peace.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OfMZ8P">
In 1991, as the Cold War came to a sudden end, the Doomsday Clock, <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/what-is-the-doomsday-clock">designed</a> by the Bulletin more than 70 years ago to draw attention to the threat of nuclear holocaust, was set back to 17 minutes to midnight. The plan for nuclear arms negotiators from there on was clear: keep on negotiating bilaterally to get the US and Russian stockpiles from their<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons"> all-time high</a> of over 60,000 combined down to around 200 warheads each, on par with most other nuclear states, then have multilateral negotiations to get the numbers as close to Global Zero as we can while preserving the possibility of deterrence. But as Nolan noted with marvelous English understatement that night at the BAFTAs: “Of late that’s gone the wrong way.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="90hmxm">
From the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to the Open Skies Treaty, the key Cold War pacts that constrained Russia and the US <a href="https://time.com/6334258/putin-nuclear-arms-control/">have been torn up</a> in the 21st century. The only nuclear treaty left, the New START Treaty, <a href="https://www.state.gov/new-start/#:~:text=Treaty%20Duration%3A%20The%20treaty's%20original,force%20through%20February%204%2C%202026.">expires automatically</a> on February 5, 2026. And last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158463688/putin-tells-russian-parliament-the-west-is-fighting-to-dismember-russia">withdrew</a> from New START’s inspections regime.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FM6r1O">
Nuclear risk experts <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/are-nuclear-armed-nations-entering-a-new-arms-race-in-2024-experts-weigh-in/">warn</a> that we are entering a new arms race. China is building hundreds of new <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-09/news/new-chinese-missile-silo-fields-discovered">silos</a> in its northern deserts and could be increasing its number of operational warheads <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF">from around 500</a> to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1207156597/new-pentagon-report-claims-china-now-has-over-500-operational-nuclear-warheads#:~:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20China,of%20the%20continental%20United%20States.">around 1,000</a>. All nuclear weapon states are in the middle of nuclear “<a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3505989/pentagon-tackling-nuclear-modernization-with-proactive-integrated-approach/">modernization</a>”: replacing old warheads, ICBMs, bombers, and submarines and making tweaks like better <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/future-of-warfare/nuclear-weapon-arsenal-more-destructive-risky/">fuzes</a> to control blast timing in ways that will make the warheads more damaging. <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-study-analyses-impact-of-emerging-technology-on-nuclear-safety">New technologies</a> such as highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles or <a href="https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/report/ai-and-nuclear-command-control-and-communications-p5-perspectives/">integrating AI</a> into nuclear decision-making could threaten strategic stability.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fqi7y2">
Meanwhile, the nuclear risk reduction community is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/28/nuclear-experts-russia-war-00108438">not doing well</a>. The biggest funder in the field, the MacArthur Foundation, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/washington-arms-controllers-nuclear-weapons-500126">pulled out</a> in 2021, declaring that its “Big Bet” had not paid off. MacArthur had provided <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/17/22976981/nuclear-war-russia-ukraine-funding-macarthur-existential-risk-effective-altruism-carnegie">around half</a> of all the non-government funding worldwide on nuclear policy. Other funders such as <a href="https://www.longview.org/fund/nuclear-weapons-policy-fund/">Longview</a> have stepped up, but have not been able to plug this gaping hole.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IF3TFL">
One major benefit of Nolan’s work and <em>Oppenheimer</em>, especially if — as it deserves to — it takes home Oscar gold, is that it will continue to draw more attention to the bizarrely neglected area of nuclear risk.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The silhouette of a man working on the atomic bomb." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/d5TCzYtHsNYOf7phDSWcH0Y3tPQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25325226/Screenshot_2024_03_08_at_11.19.47_AM.png"/> <cite>Courtesy of Universal Pictures</cite>
<figcaption>
Still from <em>Oppenheimer</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="LlO3xb">
What <em>Oppenheimer </em>gets wrong about the Manhattan Project
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZrdkwJ">
<em>Oppenheimer</em> is a film that affected me so strongly and has done great good. Will I really be so churlish as to criticize it? Yes, I will. Not for its depiction of Florence Pugh’s <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a44628614/oppenheimer-florence-pugh-jean-tatlock-real-story/">Jean Tatlock</a>, the choice to not include Japanese <a href="https://ew.com/movies/christopher-nolan-responds-to-criticism-for-not-showing-hiroshima-bombing-in-oppenheimer/">perspectives</a>, or for it being “<a href="https://youtu.be/4jqsVoCS17I?si=SyXr90ryMYqzXIpN">too long</a>,” but about two subjects it didn’t touch on.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FyBMOp">
First, the true story of the production of the bomb.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="msDN7c">
Like most films and TV shows about the Manhattan Project, <em>Oppenheimer</em> focuses far too much on Oppenheimer and his Los Alamos scientists. The film never shows <a href="https://www.newschannel5.com/news/the-oppenheimer-film-is-now-playing-heres-the-role-tennessee-played-in-this-history">Oak Ridge</a>, Tennessee, or <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/oppenheimer-overlooks-a-critical-place-in-the-dawn-of-the-nuclear-age/">Hanford</a>, Washington. But these production plants for enriched uranium and plutonium respectively were responsible for more than 80 percent of the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/">budget</a> of the Manhattan Project and most of its staff. It is these locations and people that actually produced the bomb. The Nazis had smart scientists. What they didn’t have was the US’s vast industrial and financial resources. Yet in the film, these remarkable achievements are reduced to marbles that Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer places in a bowl to track the production of the nuclear fuel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LEaNFy">
It was these industrial workers who built the bomb. But after the war, it was the privileged genius scientists who were <a href="https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19481108,00.html">on the front cover</a> of Time magazine, and it is their stories that shaped how we remember the Manhattan Project.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="quY9TN">
This misremembering has important modern implications. It is production that determines “<a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/iranian-nuclear-breakout-what-it-and-how-calculate-it">breakout time</a>” — how long until a state can have enough nuclear material for a bomb. Arms control regimes like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/iran">Iran</a> deal or the Non-Proliferation Treaty focus on monitoring and controlling production facilities, as did the 1981 Israeli air strike on Iraq or the 2010 Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran. It is production that should be our focus.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W5Lh9z">
Second, the film <a href="https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/oppenheimer-2023.pdf">presents</a> the US as desperately behind the Nazis who have, according to Oppenheimer, an “18-month head start” in the nuclear arms race, and suggests that<strong> </strong>“in a straight race, the Germans win.” The Nazis only lose in the film because German physicist Werner Heisenberg “took a wrong turn” by choosing heavy water rather than graphite as a moderator, as revealed in the film by Kenneth Branagh’s Niels Bohr in Christmas 1943.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EU6rML">
But we’ve <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/german-national-socialism-and-the-quest-for-nuclear-power-193949/389AE0447CBA4D207983B0F98E82E20E">known for decades</a> that none of this was true: Hitler had decided against a serious program <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/german-nuclear-weapons-program-nazi-atom-bomb/">at a presentation</a> in June 1942.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vhrp6j">
The Nazis had indeed explored launching their own Manhattan Project: the “Uranverein” <a href="http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/turchetta1/">nuclear weapons program</a> led by Heisenberg. But Heisenberg and Germany’s military planners predicted that it would be a major investment that would only pay off in two to three years. The Nazis could not make such a massive investment of people and raw materials like steel. They had a much <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/53768/the-wages-of-destruction-by-adam-tooze/9780141003481">smaller economy</a>, huge shortages, and a greater need for shells and tanks. And they couldn’t wait for 1944 or ’45 — the Nazis needed a breakthrough in the Eastern Front right then.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i3XeQy">
This was not a technical error, but a strategic decision. The US was at no risk of losing the race, as no other great power — the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, or Nazis — rushed toward the bomb during the war. Moreover in a straight race, there was no possible way for any of them to compete with the vast industrial and financial might of the US.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ylo6gX">
The film could have explored this tragic mistake while keeping its laser focus on Oppenheimer. The official historian of the Manhattan Project stated that at the end of 1943 Oppenheimer was explicitly told by Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the atom bomb program, that the Nazis had abandoned their early program — and Oppenheimer just shrugged.
</p>
<h3 id="N2WRLd">
The Manhattan Project’s lost conscience
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JSATFN">
Most egregiously for me, the film doesn’t show Joseph Rotblat. Rotblat was the only scientist to <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/joseph-rotblats-interview/#:~:text=Rotblat%20left%20the%20Manhattan%20Project,and%20professional%20relationships%20with%20J.">resign</a> from the project, even though he was a Polish refugee whose wife Tola Gryn was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. When D-Day made clear that the Nazis would lose, and Groves told him that the focus of the project had always been the Soviets, Rotblat resigned.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="whkqsw">
In 1957, he <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1995/pugwash/facts/">organized</a> a conference in the small lobster fishing village of Pugwash in Nova Scotia. The Pugwash Conferences would go on to spread key ideas for arms control agreements on nuclear testing, limiting warheads, and banning biological weapons. Rotblat and Pugwash <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1995/rotblat/facts/">shared</a> the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize — one more Nobel than Oppenheimer ever received.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MW2xWr">
Again, this misremembering has important modern implications. The lesson of this tragic mistaken arms race shouldn’t be “never race.” It should be “make sure you know whether or not you’re actually in a race.” This is a lesson we have consistently failed to learn — the US mistakenly thought there was a “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/missile-gap">missile gap</a>” in the late 1950s, and the Soviets mistakenly thought they were in a biological weapons arms race in the early 1970s. In the coming years, states may mistakenly believe they are in a race to develop powerful advanced artificial intelligence systems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VIlFTb">
The “individuals and organizations that have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons” that Nolan paid tribute to — like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Joseph Rotblat, and the Pugwash Conferences — weren’t really shown in his remarkable, magnificent, affecting film. Indeed, they were never supported by Oppenheimer. We’re in a tough spot, facing the possibility of a new nuclear arms race. We need to learn from these successful arms controllers, rather than from Oppenheimer’s failures.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Satwik-Chirag duo sails into French Open final</strong> - This is the duo’s third consecutive final of the year and the third time in this tournament. They won 21-13, 21-16 in the men’s doubles semifinal on Saturday</p></li>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Supreme Court’s responsibility to protect its dignity: Kapil Sibal on SBI plea on electoral bonds issue</strong> - On March 4, the SBI moved the apex court, seeking an extension of time till June 30 to disclose the details.</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>Vishwa Hindu Parishad plans to increase its presence from 60,000 villages to one lakh villages</strong> - The right-wing outfit completes 60 years in 2024, and currently has presence in 32 countries</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>Theme-based rail coach restaurants set to launch this month in Bengaluru railway stations</strong> - The theme-based rail coach restaurants are coming up at Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna Railway Station in Majestic and Sir M. Visvesvaraya Terminal in Baiyappanahalli.</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>Art exhibition in the Nilgiris</strong> -</p></li>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Portugal votes as far right seeks kingmaker role</strong> - Neither the governing Socialists nor conservatives may win outright, boosting the populists’ power.</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>Is Europe doing enough to help Ukraine?</strong> - With US military support stalled in Congress, European leaders are rapidly changing their thinking.</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>Lufthansa faces new two-day strike in Germany</strong> - Cabin crew will go on strike at Frankfurt and Munich airports on Tuesday and Wednesday.</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>Moscow student jailed for pro-Ukraine wi-fi name</strong> - Russia’s ruthless crackdown on dissent has seen thousands of ordinary Russians jailed or fined.</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>Sweden and Canada resume aid to UN Gaza agency</strong> - The decision comes as investigators probe if some UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack.</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>Sixty Four is a beautiful system design toy that reveals something rather dark</strong> - Please do not load up this game if you have real tasks to accomplish, I beg you. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2009024">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>These scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used</strong> - Telltale fractures and microscopic wear marks should be applicable to real artifacts. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2004311">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Florida middle-schoolers charged with making deepfake nudes of classmates</strong> - AI tool was used to create nudes of 12- to 13-year-old classmates. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2008981">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A hunk of junk from the International Space Station hurtles back to Earth</strong> - Three tons of trash from the space station fell to Earth in an unguided reentry. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2008934">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study finds that we could lose science if publishers go bankrupt</strong> - A scan of archives shows that lots of scientific papers aren’t backed up. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2009083">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>I told my wife, “I won the Leslie Nielsen prize at the office today.”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Her: What’s that?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Me: It’s a place where people go to work, but that’s not important right now.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/porichoygupto"> /u/porichoygupto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bau0cv/i_told_my_wife_i_won_the_leslie_nielsen_prize_at/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bau0cv/i_told_my_wife_i_won_the_leslie_nielsen_prize_at/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An older husband and his trophy wife are on a hike when the sun starts to go down.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
An older husband and his trophy wife are on a hike when the sun starts to go down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Husband: Don’t you think we should turn back?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Wife: Don’t worry I have a flashlight. Just a little further.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
It starts to get darker as they enter an isolated swampy part of woods with gnarled trees and distant lighting. Then the flashlight goes out.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Husband: Th-th-this is getting creepy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Wife: You think this is scary? I have to walk out of here alone.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MoronTheBall"> /u/MoronTheBall </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb4k8z/an_older_husband_and_his_trophy_wife_are_on_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb4k8z/an_older_husband_and_his_trophy_wife_are_on_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An Impressive Beard</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
(Based on a true story)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I walked into a rural pub in outback Australia, somewhere in Far North Queensland, and took my place at the bar next to an old timer who had a truly magnificent beard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After a few cold ones, a bit of chat about the local area and the cattle station he worked at, I said to him. " I have to say mate, your beard is really impressive!"
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He smiles and replies “Thanks Mate…. Would you like to know my secret?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I replied emphatically to the affirmative, something along the lines of “Fucken oath I would!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He leans in and says “The secret is; I mix honey and chicken-shit together in a bowl, and rub it into my beard every day.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Oh really! and thats why your beard is so bloody majestic?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Yeah fair dinkum” He continues “The honey makes the beard grow, and the chicken-shit stops me licking the honey out of me beard.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/mundoid"> /u/mundoid </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb29a7/an_impressive_beard/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb29a7/an_impressive_beard/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Attractive women are just looking for security.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I know because I started talking to one and that’s what she yelled.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Gil-Gandel"> /u/Gil-Gandel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb5irw/attractive_women_are_just_looking_for_security/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bb5irw/attractive_women_are_just_looking_for_security/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A guy walks into a drug store and tells the pharmacist he needs something to relieve his sore, itchy butt</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The pharmacist says “it sounds like hemmerhoids.” He hands him a box of 6 suppositories and tells him to use one. If it doesn’t help after an hour then use another."
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guy heads home, opens the box, unwraps the foil and pops it in his mouth. It tastes terrible but figures he can tolerate it to relieve his discomfort. Sure enough, after an hour there’s no relief so he eats another. He does this every hour until all six are gone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guy goes back to the pharmacist and says “I need some more of those suppositories.” The shocked pharmacist says “what the hell did you do, eat them?” “No,” the guy remarks sarcastically, “I shoved them up my ass!!”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AssociationSubject85"> /u/AssociationSubject85 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bavwkf/a_guy_walks_into_a_drug_store_and_tells_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bavwkf/a_guy_walks_into_a_drug_store_and_tells_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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