What to Know About the New Delta Sublineage
As the now ubiquitous Delta variant continues to mutate, it’s spawned a new descendant that’s spread in the U.K. and made its way to the U.S. The Delta sublineage, known as AY.4.2, is characterized by two “S-gene mutations” on A222V and Y145H, both located on the gene that encodes the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2. CDC…
Ocean acidity data affirms predictions of changes to El Nino conditions
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Score one for a key climate change prediction. A multi-institutional research team led by Yale and the University of St. Andrews has confirmed a major finding of climate models regarding changes that may occur to Pacific Ocean currents—including those that drive El Niño events—with just a few degrees of global warming.…
Google’s new data guidance takes a page from Apple’s privacy playbook
Google launched a new “Data safety section” in its Google Play Store on Monday for app developers, building on a pledge the company made in May to increase transparency around how apps hosted on its platforms utilize user data. A video released along with the announcement shows this information will be prominently featured in a…
CDC: Pfizer Vax Kept Teens Out of the Hospital for COVID
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) was 93% effective among adolescents at preventing hospitalization, even during the Delta surge, researchers found. Among 179 patients ages 12-18 with COVID-19, 173 were unvaccinated, including 77 patients admitted to the ICU, 29 patients who were critically ill, and two that died, reported Samantha Olson, MPH, of the CDC, and colleagues,…
Russians return to Earth after filming first movie in space
Yulia Peresild spent 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS) to shoot scenes for the first movie in orbit. A Russian actress and a film director returned to Earth Sunday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS) shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. Yulia Peresild, 37, and Klim Shipenko,…
How Antiviral Pill Molnupiravir Shot Ahead in the COVID Drug Hunt
The pharmaceutical firm Merck announced last week that an antiviral pill it’s developing can cut hospitalizations and deaths among people with COVID-19 by half. The results haven’t yet been peer reviewed. But if the drug candidate, molnupiravir, is authorized by regulators, it would be the first oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19. By contrast, the other…
The truth behind the recent Southwest flight cancellations
More than 2,000 Southwest flights have been canceled over the past few days, frustrating customers and sparking theories on social media. The problems began last Friday, with the airline attributing the mass changes to severe weather and air traffic control issues, which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later confirmed in part. But while the FAA…
Google Bans Ads That Spread Climate Misinformation
The new rules could put pressure on Facebook to take similar steps Credit: Olly Curtis Getty Images Profiting from climate change denial just got a little bit more difficult. The Google ads team announced yesterday it will “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of…
Facebook has an explanation for its massive Monday outage
Yesterday, Facebook users everywhere experienced an unexpected and prolonged service blackout that affected access to all of its apps, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. In the time since, Facebook has published two blog posts explaining what happened. On late Monday evening, the company published the first blog post explaining what caused the dramatic problem. Santosh…
Biden Admin to Buy More At-Home COVID Tests, Expand Free Testing Sites
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is ramping up its purchases of coronavirus tests and making free testing available in more pharmacies across the country, officials at the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team announced Wednesday. “In the past few months testing has increased, particularly at-home testing, a convenient option that came to market earlier this year,”…
Catastrophic floods helped shape the unique landscape on Mars
Billions of years ago, the surface of Mars was dotted with massive lakes created when impact craters slowly filled with water. Eventually, many of the lakes burst their bounds, leading to catastrophic floods that gouged canyons into the surrounding landscape. These short but deep channels may have played an unexpectedly important role in shaping the…
Pregnant and Unvaccinated: Delta’s Deadly Toll
She was having trouble getting a full breath. That was the first thing. The day before, Autumn Carver, seven months pregnant with her third child, had enjoyed a CrossFit class. Now a simple cough was compounded by the breathing issues, which rapidly worsened. It wasn’t long before her husband, Zach Carver, took Autumn to Community…
Remdesivir Appears Effective in COVID Outpatients, Too
Remdesivir (Veklury) reduced risk of hospitalizations by 87% compared with placebo in outpatients at high risk of progression to severe COVID-19, a researcher said. While the raw numbers were small — two in the remdesivir arm versus 15 in the placebo arm — the remdesivir arm had a significantly lower risk of hospitalization (0.7% vs…
Black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain More than 55% of deaths from police violence in the USA from 1980-2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports according to a new study in The Lancet. The highest rate of deaths from police violence occurred for Black Americans, who were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely…
The Lab-Leak Theory of COVID’s Origin Is Not Totally Irrational
Credit: Jay Bendt In June a well-known climate scientist opined on Twitter that “I’d be more likely to believe the COVID lab-leak hypothesis if the people pushing it weren’t largely the same people pushing [bogus] conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and climate change.” He has a point. Early in the pandemic, the lab-leak…
Google’s about to get better at understanding complex questions
Google held an event focused on its most famous tech—its search engine—today to announce a batch of new changes. The event, called Search On, described updates that are on their way in the coming months that could change the way that people search for information, and what they can ask the search giant to find…
Racial Gap in COVID Vaccination Closes
The U.S. has closed the racial gap on COVID-19 vaccination, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), and the Biden administration is taking credit for the win. According to the latest survey data from KFF’s COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor Dashboard, 73% of Hispanic adults reported being at least partially vaccinated, along with 70% of…
Examining the Underpinnings of COVID Anti-Vaccine Sentiment
In the U.S., the reservoir of vaccine resistance is large enough to prevent control of the coronavirus pandemic. Since COVID-19 vaccines were first authorized, over half of all U.S. COVID-19 cases — an estimated 23 million new infections — and more than 300,000 deaths have occurred. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that just from June…
The Pandemic’s Hidden Toll Is Revealed in Excess Death Counts
Many of the unexpected deaths in rural U.S. counties last year were not recorded as caused by COVID Credit: Amanda Montañez The official U.S. death toll from COVID has surpassed 600,000, but the true number is likely much higher. In a preprint study, global health professor Andrew C. Stokes of Boston University and his colleagues…
Canada Starts Cracking Down on Fringe Medical Groups
In his Twitter profile picture, Patrick Phillips, MD, poses with a stethoscope. He tweets about how ivermectin could end the COVID-19 pandemic, encourages his over 36,800 followers to seek vaccine exemptions, and compares getting vaccinated to what Jewish people endured in Nazi Germany. Sound familiar? He wouldn’t be out of place in America’s Frontline Doctors,…