Do the Omicron Numbers Mean What We Think They Mean? - COVID’s winter surge holds a deeper lesson about the perils of interpreting data without a full appreciation of the context. - link
The Supreme Court’s Vexing Mixed Message on Vaccine Mandates - Two rulings reveal just how hard-conservative the core of the Court is. - link
Prince Andrew’s Very Bad Week - A ruling in a New York legal case, in which Andrew is accused of sexual abuse, led to the Duke of York being stripped of his military titles. - link
Making Love in the Land of Oil Rigs - In Tabitha Lasley’s memoir, a study of the insular world of offshore oil rigs becomes an exhibit of the power dynamics between the men who work on them and the women they love on land. - link
The Fall of Boris Johnson - After reports of him and his staff partying during the pandemic, the Prime Minister’s appeal has shattered. - link
From Vox
Could a universal Covid-19 vaccine defeat every variant? -
A woman walks past a mural of a flying white dove dropping Covid-19 vaccine vials in Rome, Italy, in April 2021. The next big challenge for Covid-19 vaccines is to develop one to cover all variants, and perhaps other coronaviruses. | Gregorio Borgia/AP
Scientists envision a shot that could protect against many coronaviruses in one fell swoop.
The Covid-19 vaccines available today are amazing feats of science. Researchers achieved in less than a year what can sometimes take decades: They targeted a new virus with multiple highly effective vaccines that have reached billions of people. They deployed new approaches like using messenger RNA and adenovirus vectors at large scales for the first time, making some of the biggest leaps in vaccine technology in hundreds of years.
But the limitations of these vaccines are becoming apparent, which is why some scientists are calling for an even bigger leap forward in vaccine technology. They envision a universal coronavirus vaccine that could counter every known variant of the virus that causes Covid-19, and even variants that haven’t emerged yet. It’s possible such a vaccine could protect against the whole family of coronaviruses, bolstering long-term immunity and slashing the risks of similar pandemics in the future.
This work is urgent because scientists are finding that protection from Covid-19 vaccines fades over time. And the virus itself is changing, mutating in ways that make it harder for the immune system to counter. The omicron variant has already caused breakthrough infections in large numbers of vaccinated people, and it’s a matter of time before the virus mutates again.
“We must now prioritize development of broadly protective vaccines like the universal influenza vaccines we have been working toward in recent years,” wrote National Institutes of Health researchers David Morens, Jeffery Taubenberger, and Anthony Fauci in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.
This crucial work is a long shot. It hinges on breakthroughs in technology and our current understanding of the immune system, because there’s a lot researchers still don’t know about how our cells defend us from infection. And the universal vaccine approaches that scientists are experimenting with — from universities and even the US Army — have never been used on large scales before.
Even the faint hope of preventing another global cataclysm — and contributing to the end of the one we’re living through now — deserves money and scientific attention, researchers told Vox. It could take years of sustained effort, but some researchers are confident that universal vaccines will emerge.
How do you make a universal coronavirus vaccine?
Before Covid-19 came along, vaccines followed a standard formula. They introduced the immune system to viral threats by injecting weakened or dead viruses, or virus fragments, into the body.
The Covid-19 pandemic was the dawn of a new era of vaccines. Adenovirus vector vaccines (like the one from Johnson and Johnson) and mRNA vaccines (like the ones from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech) deliver genetic instructions to human cells, so they can produce a fragment of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The immune system uses these components for target practice. If the real pathogen arrives, the immune system has an action plan.
The challenge, even with these new vaccine platforms, is that the target practice is very specific, and it doesn’t always translate from one variant to another. If a virus mutates, vaccines can become less effective at stopping disease. Hence the need for a vaccine that can cover a spectrum of threats.
The first task in developing a universal vaccine is deciding how universal to make it. Will it be a vaccine aimed at all the variants of SARS-CoV-2? A vaccine for the broader category of sarbecoviruses that include the pathogens that cause SARS and MERS? Or a vaccine for the entire betacoronavirus genus?
“When we say universal vaccines, the word ‘universal,’ we have to put it in air quotes,” said Morens, who is a senior adviser to Fauci and a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If we were to make a universal vaccine now, the first thing we’d want to do is have it be universal enough to cover all the strains that are circulating in people.”
But the wider the scope of the vaccine, the bigger the challenge.
Most Covid-19 vaccines train the immune system to identify the spike protein of the virus. This is the part of the virus that physically sticks out and starts the infection process by docking with a receptor on human cells. In a vaccine, the spike serves as an antigen — a component that activates the immune system.
Once the virus is identified, the immune system starts making proteins called antibodies. They bind to particular parts of the virus known as epitopes. If the antibodies interfere with the virus enough that they prevent it from causing an infection, they’re called neutralizing antibodies.
The spike protein is easily recognizable for the immune system, so vaccines that target it can generate robust protection. But vaccines also spur the virus to evolve, yielding an advantage to mutated spike proteins that are harder for the immune system to recognize. As a result, the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 has been one of the fastest-mutating parts of the virus, making it a moving target for the immune system.
Sakchai Lalit/AP
Residents wait in line to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Bangkok, Thailand, on January 10.
Scientists are trying two main approaches to get around this problem, according to Deborah Fuller, a professor of microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Strategy 1: Train the body to recognize a mosaic of spike proteins from many variants
One approach is to combine multiple antigens in a single shot. “You simply take as many spike proteins from as many different coronaviruses that are out there, and you decorate a virus-like nanoparticle protein with all of them,” Fuller said. The idea is that if the immune system tastes a sampler platter of enough distinct spike proteins, it will learn to fill in the blanks and cover most, if not all, potential mutations in SARS-CoV-2.
“There is a limit to the number of mutations it can eventually develop to fully evade the immune system, without compromising its own ability to attach to and infect cells,” Fuller said. “Once you get to a certain number of spike proteins, you get all the possible mutations represented within those.”
Using computational biology, scientists can simulate the spectrum of mutations and select the structures that have the greatest chances of providing broad-based immunity.
This is the approach that the US Army is currently investigating by attaching different SARS-CoV-2 spikes to a protein called ferritin. Its vaccine is currently in early clinical trials. (US Army researchers declined to comment until they finished analyzing their early results.)
Strategy 2: Vaccinate against parts of the coronavirus that don’t mutate
The other strategy is to target parts of the virus that stay the same even when the virus evolves, or the parts in common with its relatives (scientists describe these parts as “conserved”). This is the approach Fuller is studying in her laboratory.
Conserved regions are often parts of the virus that are critical to its function; the virus ceases functioning if they mutate. “If you target the parts that are conserved, then that would have, theoretically, protective efficacy against any of the coronaviruses that are out there,” Fuller said. That could extend to every past and future variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the broader group or family of coronaviruses it belongs to.
These conserved regions might be buried on parts of the virus that are less visible to the immune system, or physically difficult for antibodies to access when the virus is whole. But when a virus invades a cell and begins the infection process, fragments of the pathogen can show up on the outside of the host cell, including parts that were previously obscured. Antibodies can then attach to those fragments and get to work.
Such antibodies are described as non-neutralizing because they don’t prevent infection in the first place. But they recruit other players in the immune system, including B cells that manufacture antibodies and T cells that eliminate infected cells.
A universal vaccine that targets conserved regions might not prevent infection, according to Fuller, but it could turn dangerous coronaviruses into bugs that mostly cause minor illnesses. “It builds a level of immunity in the population such that anytime a coronavirus outbreak should occur, it really doesn’t have the fangs anymore to cause a pandemic,” she said.
Sounds straightforward enough, but there are many complications. First, not every conserved region makes a good antigen. Some will be completely ignored by the immune system and fail to generate a response. Second, scientists have to study the whole spectrum of coronaviruses to find out exactly which portions of the virus stay the same. Third, the immune system’s response to a conserved region might not be effective against an infection.
“If we can figure all that out — I’m confident we can — then we can design a universal coronavirus vaccine” that targets conserved regions, Fuller said.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/Qz0tx6oRj_hxGxRtaSC7m4DgwqE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23177715/GettyImages_1237645383.jpg" /> Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Dr. Susan Wu, right, chats with Kimberli Samuel and her daughter Amelle, 7, who got her first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in Arcadia, California, on January 8.
It’s remarkably difficult to vaccinate against respiratory infections
There’s a big difference between drugs that treat illnesses and vaccines that try to prevent them. A doctor would only prescribe a treatment like chemotherapy, for example, after a patient has been diagnosed with advanced cancer; there are just too many risks and side effects for someone in an earlier stage of the disease to take such harsh medicines.
Vaccines, by contrast, are meant to prevent disease in billions of people. Regulators will only approve them if the risks are extremely low and side effects are extremely rare.
As a result, vaccine research is historically slow and expensive. The development costs are high, the timelines span decades, and the payoff is never guaranteed. That is, until Covid-19 came along and triggered a radical shift in this paradigm.
The urgency of the pandemic condensed the vaccine development timeline by injecting cash, inspiring many teams to join the effort, and by lowering administrative hurdles. The research supported by programs like Operation Warp Speed yielded a new generation of vaccines in record time. Beyond funding research on vaccine candidates, the US government promised to purchase millions of doses of their vaccines, even if some of those shots didn’t work out.
But the big limitation of current Covid-19 vaccines is that they were originally designed for the early versions of SARS-CoV-2. These vaccines may not be enough to contain a virus that’s constantly changing, especially since a large segment of the global population remains unvaccinated.
Respiratory viruses are also unusually challenging beasts. They tend to infect the outer cells of airways, known as the epithelium, rather than penetrating deeper into the body. Scientists theorize that the immune system has a harder time getting a lock on these pathogens and maintaining long-term protection after they pass.
“They’ve got a great trick,” Morens said. “They can infect us and cause disease, and make us cough and sneeze and force us to spread them around to others, and they don’t have to fight the big fight with our immune system.”
Then there’s the problem of vaccine testing. In the US, between the 249 million people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine and 67 million Covid-19 cases, the vast majority of the population has been exposed to some part of the virus. That means it’s going to be much harder to find people with zero immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus who can participate in a control group in a clinical trial. (There are workarounds — scientists manage to study cold pathogens and flu viruses even though countless people have antibodies to them — but they require different experimental protocols.)
All of this makes for a huge scientific challenge. Scientists have already been trying for years without success to develop a universal influenza vaccine. And there are many fundamental mysteries still lurking in this area of immunology.
Even a universal vaccine isn’t a silver bullet
Devoting more resources to universal vaccine research is critical, but such vaccines depend on breakthroughs and discoveries, too, so there’s no guarantee that they will come to fruition. “To make a universal vaccine is an order of magnitude more complicated,” Morens said. “Science has never been able to make a universal vaccine to anything, ever.”
And while vaccines are a critical way to keep an infectious disease in check, even a successful universal shot might not be enough to extinguish a pandemic and prevent the next one. For one thing, it’s not clear how long protection from such a shot would last.
“You could have a universal vaccine that covers every single coronavirus, but if the immunity it elicits wanes, it’s not that good,” Morens said. “I would define a universal vaccine not only to cover all the viruses, [but also] to induce durable immunity.”
Then there’s the question of how to deploy a universal vaccine. Would we need another vaccination campaign to get this shot into everyone’s arms, or would it be limited to people in high-risk groups? That might depend on the performance of the vaccine, as well as the state of the health care system and the level of coronavirus transmission. “Public health policies [would] have to be developed to decide who should be vaccinated,” Morens said.
And as we’ve learned from existing Covid-19 vaccines, it’s still important to limit transmission with social distancing and wearing face masks. Testing and sequencing remain critical for understanding the spread and evolution of the virus.
A universal coronavirus vaccine could eventually become one of public health’s most powerful tools. But it will need to work in tandem with all of the other strategies that have proven useful in the past two years.
Why 5G is threatening to cause flight delays -
The Federal Aviation Administration is worried about a new, 5G upgrade scheduled for later this month. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The FAA is worried about your cellphone again.
Your 5G phone could soon start working more like the amazingly fast 5G phone you heard about in TV commercials. On January 19, Verizon and AT&T plan to switch on new cellular frequencies that will boost connections for tens of millions of phones throughout the US. Once these airwaves are activated, you should be able to download an entire movie to your phone in just a few minutes.
This is thanks to the addition of C-band frequency, which could not only improve speeds but also expand 5G coverage. This is welcome news for anyone who owns or plans to buy one of these devices, which will be more than 10 times faster than their 4G predecessors once 5G networks become fully operational. But this update hinges on a familiar yet unexpected critic of cellular technology: the Federal Aviation Administration.
What’s 5G got to do with airplanes? Not much, argue the wireless carriers hoping to deploy the technology. But the FAA says it’s worried that C-band could interfere with some radio altimeters, aircraft safety tools that rely on nearby airwaves. The agency is so concerned that it’s been fighting to delay 5G deployment and has issued guidance that could cause flight cancellations from airports operating near certain 5G antennas, meaning that anyone who flies or has one of these devices could be affected.
Just hours before the launch of the new 5G signals, Verizon and AT&T also agreed to delay the rollout of C-band within two miles of certain airport runways, though the expansion of 5G service will go forward everywhere else. The latest compromise came just a day after the CEOs of 10 of the largest US airlines wrote to Pete Buttigieg warning that the “nation’s commerce will grind to a halt” due to the FAA’s new rules.
“This agreement will avoid potentially devastating disruptions to passenger travel, cargo operations, and our economic recovery, while allowing more than 90 percent of wireless tower deployment to occur as scheduled,” said President Joe Biden in a statement on Tuesday. “This agreement protects flight safety and allows aviation operations to continue without significant disruption and will bring more high-speed internet options to millions of Americans.”
To keep disruptions to a minimum, the FAA is analyzing how individual altimeter models work when C-band is turned on. The agency said on January 16 that it had approved two altimeters used in many Airbus and Boeing airplanes, which cleared about 45 percent of the US commercial airline fleet to fly when these new 5G frequencies are turned on.
The FAA has also imposed nearly 1,500 new restrictions on other aircraft operating in 5G conditions, like extending how much runway certain planes need to land and limiting what kind of hardware pilots can rely on. These regulations won’t just impact commercial planes, but also smaller jets and helicopters, and could wreak havoc on flight schedules. Several airlines have already canceled flights scheduled after the 5G launch, and Boeing has advised airlines not to fly its 777 model, which is one of the most common jets used for long-haul international flights.
But to make 5G a reality, wireless companies spent over $81 billion to buy the rights to use certain parts of the radio spectrum — specifically, the C-band frequencies between 3.7 and 3.98 GHz. Wireless providers use a range of frequencies to send data between cellphones and transmission stations, like phone towers, that connect those devices to the internet. Each band of frequencies comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.
C-band is considered a sweet spot on the spectrum and is a critical part of wireless companies’ 5G ambitions. 5G phones can already connect to what’s called millimeter wave spectrum, which operates at a very high frequency. The millimeter wave frequency band supports very high speeds and can carry a lot of data but doesn’t stretch very far. 5G phones can also connect to low-band spectrum, which operates at a much lower frequency. Low-band frequencies can cover large areas but can only support a small amount of data, which makes it slower. C-band is essentially a middle ground between low-band and millimeter wave, so it covers a good amount of area with pretty high speeds. Once they’re turned on, these frequencies should be enough to finally start to see a real difference between 5G and 4G in your day-to-day life.
Flight regulators are very nervous about this C-band update because of how it might affect certain aircraft’s radio altimeters. This device transmits radio waves from an airplane toward the ground in order to help measure a plane’s altitude. Altimeters are especially useful on a cloudy day or in a mountainous area, when pilots can’t see where they’re landing.
The problem is altimeters rely on parts of the spectrum that neighbor the airwaves used by the C-band. In a nightmare scenario, the FAA thinks that signals sent over C-band could interfere with these altimeters — specifically older altimeters — creating a potential safety issue. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission already determined that 5G would not pose a problem for modern altimeters, and similar 5G technology has already been deployed in Europe with no issue.
To give the airlines more time to address this concern, Verizon and AT&T delayed their C-band rollout twice. The update was originally scheduled for December 5, but the carriers agreed to push that deadline back by a month and then again by two weeks, to January 19, after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stepped in. But the FAA also announced in December that flights that might rely on a radio altimeter could need to be rescheduled if there was a risk of 5G interference. That warning, in effect, pitted Verizon and AT&T against the entire airline industry. With flight cancellations at stake, airlines, as well as the pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions, have rallied against 5G, arguing that their industry can’t handle any more disruption right now.
“Aviation operations are already stretched to a breaking point by the ongoing pandemic,” Sara Nelson, the president of the flight attendants’ union, said in a recent statement. “Adding strain and creating potentially dangerous conditions will only make a bad situation worse.”
There is a peace plan, though it’s precarious. Wireless carriers and airlines agreed at the end of last year to test how well some radio altimeters perform in real- world conditions, and the FAA is continuing to lift restrictions on aircraft, one by one, as airlines prove their altimeters can work when C-band is turned on. The agency has also granted an exemption to some helicopter ambulances that use radio altimeters. And wireless providers have also promised not to transmit C-band at 50 airports selected by the FAA for at least six months, so you can’t blame 5G for any delays or cancellations at any of those airports yet. If you have a 5G phone and live within a mile of one of these airports, though, you might be a bit more frustrated.
But the standoff raises questions about why US regulators weren’t better prepared for this moment. After all, 5G is not the first new generation of wireless technology the FAA has encountered. It’s also possible that history is repeating itself, and the FAA is letting wireless carriers and airlines do the work of proving to the agency that C-band is safe, instead of taking a proactive stance on its own. The FAA only rescinded its unilateral ban on using phones and laptops on planes in 2013, a move that came after a yearslong campaign from the consumer technology industry and frustrated passengers who argued these devices were unlikely to cause interference problems.
Wireless carriers certainly hope they’ve done enough explaining and can finally start the process of turning on C-band, which should bring better 5G coverage to their customers. But we shouldn’t hold our breath. History shows that the FAA is no fan of cellphone technology, and there’s no reason to think the agency won’t stall and disrupt things again.
Update, January 18, 5:30 pm: This story was updated to note a new agreement between the wireless carriers and the Biden administration.
Update, January 18, 11:37 am: This story was updated to include new announcements from the Federal Aviation Administration about flight operations and 5G.
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What you need to know about Biden’s free rapid test program -
Some local governments, like Broward County, Florida, launched free rapid test programs of their own before the federal government’s website went live on Tuesday. | Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images
You can now order free Covid-19 rapid tests that will be delivered to your mailbox — but you’ll only get a few.
The White House’s long-awaited website for ordering free Covid-19 rapid tests is finally live. The new page, covidtests.gov, arrives amid a shortage of rapid tests and a surge in Covid-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant. While this new program isn’t flawless, flooding the country with easily accessible rapid tests could be a powerful tool to fight the pandemic.
Covidtests.gov is part of the White House’s plan to buy and distribute 1 billion rapid tests over the coming months. The end goal of the new testing initiative is to make it easier for people to find out whether they have Covid-19, and if necessary, isolate to curb the spread of the virus. Technically, covidtests.gov wasn’t supposed to launch until January 19, but the government released a “beta phase” version of the site ahead of that deadline, allowing many people to order tests early. Within a few hours of launch, the beta version became the most popular government website by a long shot.
While it represents an improvement over the situation late last year, when rapid tests were not only very difficult to find but also expensive, the Biden administration’s new program comes with some caveats. First of all, each American household can only order four tests — regardless of how many people live there. And some of the people who’ve tried to order tests have already run into technical issues, which could get worse as more users visit the site.
“Hopefully, this isn’t a scenario where those who are able to jump online first are the only ones who can get tests,” Lindsey Dawson, the associate director of HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Recode. Dawson added that the beta launch could help the new Covid-19 site avoid some of the bugs from the early Healthcare.gov days.
Given the frenzy around this new Covid-19 testing option, you probably have some questions about how to navigate the program. Let’s start with the basics of the website.
So this new website lets you order free Covid-19 tests. How hard could it be?
The process is designed to be very straightforward. To order your household’s batch of four at-home rapid antigen tests, go to covidtests.gov, which explains that everyone with a residential address in the United States (as well as people living at overseas diplomatic and military outposts) is eligible to get the tests.
Once you’re on the homepage, click on the bright blue “Order Free At-Home Tests” button, and you’ll get redirected to a special section of the United States Postal Service’s website. (USPS partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services to help with the logistics of the new program, and you can also start your order through the USPS website.) Fill out the form on the page by providing your name, delivery address, and, if you want an emailconfirmation, your email address. The page does have a box with your order information including a spot for a dollar amount, but it does not ask for any credit card information. The dollar amount should remain at $0.00 throughout the ordering process.
Once you fill out that form, click on the bright green “Check Out Now” button, and you should be sent to a new page that includes a USPS tracking number. If you provided your email address, you’ll also receive an email with that same confirmation number. If you live in the continental US, your tests will be shipped with USPS’s First Class Package Service. If you live in Alaska or Hawaii, in a US territory, or at an overseas diplomatic or military address, your tests will be sent through Priority Mail. The site also has a frequently asked questions section that explains how to track your order and how to use the rapid tests once they’re delivered.
Don’t wait to order tests. Because tests are supposed to take between seven to 12 days to ship, the government recommends that people order tests on the site now, rather than waiting until they have symptoms or are exposed to someone with Covid-19. The hope is that everyone in the country will soon have their own mini stockpile of tests to use when they need.
Seems easy enough. What’s the catch?
There’s no catch, but there are several caveats you should keep in mind.
The biggest limitation of Biden’s new free rapid test program is the four-test limit, and for now, there are no exceptions to this rule. While four tests might seem like enough for a small household, rapid tests work best when they’re used in succession, and one person may need more than one test to catch a Covid-19 case.
To prevent the same household from ordering more than four tests, the USPS website is designed to catch people who put in the same address for multiple orders. This might cause some people who live in apartment buildings to encounter an error message saying that someone has already ordered tests for their address. If you run into that problem, double-check that you’re including a specific apartment or unit number when filling out the order form.
“Every website launch, in our view, comes with risk,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday. “We can’t guarantee there won’t be a bug or two.”
For those who don’t have access to a computer or an internet connection, the government has promised to set up a phone line, though it’s not clear when that will go live. This number will be the only option for ordering tests without visiting the online portal. You will not be able to stop by a local post office and pick up the tests in person.
What are my options if I need more than four tests?
Beyond ordering tests on the new government website, you can still buy rapid tests at pharmacies and online — and you might be able to get reimbursed for them. If you are on a private insurance plan, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Plan, you’re entitled to get at least some, if not all, of the cost of up to eight tests reimbursed every month, according to new insurance guidance issued by the Biden administration in January. If you don’t have insurance or rely on Medicare and need more than the four tests provided by the federal government, you should seek out free tests from state or local organizations.
If my private insurance covers rapid tests, how do I get reimbursed?
First things first: Save the receipt for any Covid-19 test you buy. Beyond that, exactly how you get reimbursed for at-home rapid tests depends on which insurance plan you have and where you bought the test.
Some insurance companies have partnered with certain pharmacies so that their customers can get tests without going through the reimbursement process. If your plan doesn’t do this, you should contact your insurance company for details on filing for a reimbursement.
Some insurance companies have made the reimbursement process much easier than others. For instance, if you have UnitedHealthcare, you can already pick up a rapid test for free at any Walmart or Rite Aid pharmacy, as long as you have your insurance card. If you have Kaiser Permanente, you can submit a reimbursement claim through a website. If you have Cigna, you’re facing a more arduous process that involves filling out a paper reimbursement form that must be mailed or faxed to the company. That Cigna reimbursement form is different from the forms you use for other insurance claims.
Getting a rapid test still feels complicated. When will things be easy?
The testing situation is improving, but it’s not perfect. There are still a lot of unknowns that have thrust even more uncertainty into an already very uncertain period of the pandemic. Even with this new federal government website, you don’t know for certain whether your test will actually arrive by the time you’ll need it, or whether you’ll have enough tests to catch a Covid-19 case should you get sick.
Still, covidtest.gov is a great opportunity to stock up on supplies while you can, and the new insurance benefits — if you’re lucky enough to have them — are better than paying full price for at-home tests. No matter how you do it, you’ll probably benefit from having some rapid tests around. And as the experts say, test early and test often. Things will get better.
From The Hindu: Sports
Smriti Mandhana named in ICC T20I women’s Team of the Year; no Indian in the men’s side - The men’s team featured three Pakistanis including skipper Babar Azam, who has been named captain.
Laughable to blame The Hundred for England’s Ashes defeat: Eoin Morgan - Morgan’s comments come after Test skipper Root urged the ECB to ‘prioritise’ his side following the Ashes defeat, implying there has been too much focus on limited-overs cricket since 2015
Sania Mirza to retire after 2022 season - The tennis star says her body is “wearing down”
ICC Test rankings | Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant and Jasprit Bumrah move up - Keegan Petersen, who won Player of the Series against India, has shot up 68 places to 33rd
India vs South Africa 1st ODI | SA wins toss, opts to bat in series opener - India handed debut to all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer
From The Hindu: National News
Village-level people’s panels to be revived - Report says the panels, constituted in 2008, are mostly defunct
Year of hectic activity for Hyderabad-based DRDO labs - Missile launches and testing of other weapon systems were meticulously planned despite the cascading effect of COVID- induced lockdown in 2020
HAL signs contract for export of Advanced Light Helicopter to Mauritius - ALH Mk III is a multi-role, multi-mission helicopter in 5.5 tonne category in extensive use by the Indian armed forces
National Commission for Safai Karamcharis gets 3-year extension - It was set up in 1993 under the NCSK Act 1993 for a period of three years
Opposition to night curfew grows in Mysuru amidst rise in COVID-19 cases - Business and trade organisations have argued that despite the outbreak, the severity of Covid-19 infection is less due to high rate of vaccination and, hence, does not warrant a lockdown
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine: Blinken in Kyiv urges Russia to take peaceful path - Russia denies any plan to attack Ukraine but tensions are high as Russian troops carry out drills.
Hana Horka: Czech singer dies after catching Covid intentionally - Hana Horka’s son tells the BBC his mother was unvaccinated but wanted to acquire immunity.
Essex lorry deaths: Trafficking gang ringleader jailed in Belgium - Vo Van Hong is given 15 years in prison for running a gang that trafficked some of the victims.
Most-wanted: Appeal for 12 UK suspects thought to be hiding in Spain - Men wanted for murder, drug trafficking and supplying guns are among those being sought.
Covid: WHO warns pandemic not over amid Europe case records - France reports nearly half a million new daily cases, with records also broken in Italy and Denmark.
From Ars Technica
Study: Female dolphins have a working clitoris, so they probably enjoy sex - “Every time we looked at the vaginas, it was like this giant clitoris staring us in the face.” - link
COVID-infected hamsters in pet shop trigger animal cull in Hong Kong - Keep your hamsters inside, and don’t kiss them, authorities warn. - link
Google kills YouTube Originals, its original video content group - YouTube content group produced exclusive shows like Scare PewDiePie and Cobra Kai. - link
Some Roku smart TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV - It’s still unclear which TVs are affected. - link
After airline outcry, AT&T and Verizon postpone 5G deployments near some airports [Updated] - Aviation lobby says services will cause “incalculable” disruption to passengers, cargo. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
The Queen’s breasts -
The Queen’s breasts
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful Queen with large breasts.
Sid, the Dragon Slayer, obsessed over the Queen for this reason. He knew that the penalty for his desire would be death, should he try to touch them, but he had to try.
One day Sid revealed his secret desire to his colleague, Nathan the Erudite lawyer, the King’s chief adviser. Nathan thought about this and said that he could arrange for Sid to more than satisfy his desire, but it would cost him 1000 gold coins to arrange it. Without pause, Sid readily agreed to the scheme.
The next day, Nathan got a batch of itching powder and poured a little bit into the Queen’s bra while she bathed. Soon after she dressed, the itching commenced and grew intense.
Upon being summoned to the Royal Chambers to address this incident, Nathan informed the King and Queen that only a special saliva, if applied for four hours, would cure this type of itch, and Nathan advised that only the saliva of Sid would work as the antidote to cure the itch.
The King, eager to help his Queen, quickly summoned Sid to their chambers. Nathan then slipped Sid the antidote for the itching powder, which he put into his mouth, and for the next four hours, Sid worked passionately on the Queen’s large and magnificent breasts. The Queen’s itching was eventually relieved, and Sid left satisfied and hailed as a hero.
Upon returning to his chamber, Sid found Nathan demanding his payment of 1000 gold coins. With his obsession now satisfied, Sid couldn’t have cared less knowing that Nathan could never report this matter to the King and with a laugh told him to get lost.
The next day, Nathan slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the King’s underwear. The King immediately summoned Sid.
Suddenly, the woman sitting at the next table starts choking and gasping for air. Everyone else around just sits there watching, but one of the Rednecks JUMPS up, grabs the woman and yanks her out of the chair. He then pulls her dress up over her head, yanks her panties down and runs his tongue up the crack of her ass. She promptly spits out the piece of meat that was causing her distress.
The Redneck saunters back to his seat with his chest puffed out over a job well done. Everyone in the place is looking at him in disbelief. He looks around at the crowd and loudly says, " Whatchall looking at? You ain’t never seen nobody do the Hind Lick Maneuver before?"
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Sakchai Lalit/AP
