Friday, November 1

COVID-19

How chemicals like PFAS can increase your risk of severe COVID-19
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COVID-19

How chemicals like PFAS can increase your risk of severe COVID-19

Nearly a year before the novel coronavirus emerged, Dr. Leonardo Trasande published “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer,” a book about connections between environmental pollutants and many of the most common chronic illnesses. The book describes decades of scientific research showing how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, present in our daily lives and now found in nearly all people, interfere with natural hormones in our bodies. The title sums up the consequences: Chemicals in the environment are making people sicker, fatter and poorer. As we learn more about the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, research is revealing ugly realities about social and environmental effects on health – including how the same chronic illnesses associated with exposure to endocrine-disrupting compounds also increase your risk...
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History tells us trying to stop diseases like COVID-19 at the border is a failed strategy
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COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

History tells us trying to stop diseases like COVID-19 at the border is a failed strategy

To explain why the coronavirus pandemic is much worse in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, commentators have blamed the federal government’s mismanaged response and the lack of leadership from the Trump White House. Others have pointed to our culture of individualism, the decentralized nature of our public health, and our polarized politics. All valid explanations, but there’s another reason, much older, for the failed response: our approach to fighting infectious disease, inherited from the 19th century, has become overly focused on keeping disease out of the country through border controls. As a professor of medical sociology, I’ve studied the response to infectious disease and public health policy. In my new book, “Diseased States,” I examine how the early experience of outbr...
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Video: Current rates of vaccine hesitancy in the US could mean a long road to normalcy
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COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

Video: Current rates of vaccine hesitancy in the US could mean a long road to normalcy

Poltical scientist Matt Motta studies the social and political determinants of anti-science attitudes. In this Q&A, he answers questions about the current levels of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. and how that might affect the country’s ability to achieve herd immunity after a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available. Matt Motta, a scholar who studies political and science communication, explains why herd immunity may be difficult to achieve in the U.S. How many people plan to take a COVID-19 vaccine? Our understanding is that the number of Americans who plan to refuse a vaccine for COVID-19, when it becomes available, is quite pervasive. Somewhere between 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 Americans plan to refuse a vaccine depending on the survey and how you ask the questions. Research that my colleagues and ...
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In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, what should you say to someone who refuses to wear a mask? A philosopher weighs in
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, what should you say to someone who refuses to wear a mask? A philosopher weighs in

Multiple studies have shown that masks reduce the transmission of virus-loaded droplets from people with COVID-19. However, according to a Gallup poll, almost a third of Americans say they rarely or never wear a mask in public. This raises a question: Can the anti-maskers be persuaded to wear masks? To some, it might appear that such a question has no ethical dimension. Wearing masks saves lives, so everyone should do it. Some even believe anti-maskers are simply selfish. But as a philosopher who studies ethics and persuasion, I argue that things are more complicated than that. Kant on love and respect To start, consider one of the most influential ethical frameworks in Western thought: that of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, morality is ultimately about respec...
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Challenge trials for a coronavirus vaccine are unethical – except for in one unlikely scenario
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COVID-19

Challenge trials for a coronavirus vaccine are unethical – except for in one unlikely scenario

The world urgently needs a vaccine for COVID-19. Only when a vaccine is approved and people are safe can countries fully end their lockdowns and resume normal life. The trouble is that such vaccines usually take years to develop and test for efficacy and safety. Recently, some bioethicists have proposed a way of speeding up this testing process by several months. Researchers would put volunteers in quarantine with access to the best medical care, give these volunteers one of the trial vaccines and then directly expose them to the coronavirus. This type of intentional exposure is called a challenge trial, and since researchers would not have to wait for subjects to encounter the virus in the normal course of their daily lives, it could result in a vaccine much faster than a normal trial. R...
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Latin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown
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COVID-19

Latin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown

It’s a pandemic within the pandemic. Across Latin America, gender-based violence has spiked since COVID-19 broke out. Almost 1,200 women disappeared in Peru between March 11 and June 30, the Ministry of Women reported. In Brazil, 143 women in 12 states were murdered in March and April – a 22% increase over the same period in 2019. Reports of rape, murder and domestic violence are also way up in Mexico. In Guatemala, they’re down significantly – a likely sign that women are too afraid to call the police on the partners they’re locked down with. The pandemic worsened but did not create this problem: Latin America has long been among the world’s deadliest places to be a woman. Don’t blame ‘machismo’ I have spent three decades studying gendered violence as well as women’s organizing in Lati...
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9 reasons you can be optimistic that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be widely available in 2021
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COVID-19

9 reasons you can be optimistic that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be widely available in 2021

As fall approaches rapidly, many are wondering if the race for a vaccine will bear fruit as early as January 2021. I am a physician-scientist and infectious diseases specialist at the University of Virginia, where I care for patients and conduct research into COVID-19. I am occasionally asked how I can be sure that researchers will develop a successful vaccine to prevent COVID-19. After all, we still don’t have one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Here is where the current research stands, where I think we will be in five months and why you can be optimistic about the delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine. 1. Human immune system cures COVID-19 In as many as 99% of all COVID-19 cases, the patient recovers from the infection, and the virus is cleared from the body. Some of those who have had...
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Sketchy darknet websites are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic – buyer beware
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COVID-19, TECHNOLOGY

Sketchy darknet websites are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic – buyer beware

Underground markets that sell illegal commodities like drugs, counterfeit currency and fake documentation tend to flourish in times of crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. The online underground economy has responded to the current crisis by exploiting demand for COVID-19-related commodities. Today, some of the most vibrant underground economies exist in darknet markets. These are internet websites that look like ordinary e-commerce websites but are accessible only using special browsers or authorization codes. Vendors of illegal commodities have also formed dedicated group-chats and channels on encrypted instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Telegram and ICQ. The Darknet Analysis project at the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group here at Georgia State Universit...
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Kids are bigger coronavirus spreaders than many doctors realized – here’s how schools can lower the risk
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COVID-19

Kids are bigger coronavirus spreaders than many doctors realized – here’s how schools can lower the risk

The first U.S. schools have reopened with in-person classes, and they are already setting off alarm bells about how quickly the coronavirus can spread. Georgia’s Cherokee County School District, north of Atlanta, had over 100 confirmed COVID-19 cases by the end of its second week of classes, and more than 1,600 students and staff had been sent home after being exposed to them. By the third week, three of the district’s high schools had temporarily reverted to all-online learning. Schools in Mississippi, Tennessee, Nebraska and other states also reported multiple cases, quarantines and temporary school closures. Deciding whether to open schools for in-person classes during a pandemic is a complex decision. Children often learn better in school, where they have direct contact with expert t...
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The ethical case for allowing medical trials that deliberately infect humans with COVID-19
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COVID-19

The ethical case for allowing medical trials that deliberately infect humans with COVID-19

Despite the urgent need to beat COVID-19, health officials may be delaying the development of an effective vaccine. Authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere are yet to authorize an ethically charged research procedure called “human challenge trials.” Challenge trials entail deliberately infecting volunteers with the disease – which explains the official reticence – but they could substantially expedite the development of a vaccine. The debate over human challenge trials has been raging for months among health professionals and academics. But only now – some eight months into the pandemic – are authorities in the U.S. beginning to consider them in a bid to speed up the vaccine-development process. Sitting and waiting A vaccine has to go through multiple stages before it can be rolled out. Af...
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