Tech

Want to worry about the next pandemic? Spillover.global has you covered

Enlarge / Researchers with Franceville interdisciplinary Medical Research Centre (CIRMF, Centre Interdisciplinaire Medical de Recherches de Franceville) collect samples from a bat on November 25, 2020 inside a cave in the Zadie region in Gabon. – Working in remote recesses in the hearth of the Gabonese forest, scientists scour caves populated by bats, animals suspected […]

COVID 19 Health Tech

“Are schools safe?” is the wrong question to be asking

Enlarge (credit: MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images ) Is it safe to open schools? From the moment it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic had set up shop in the US, answers to that question have been scrutinized, analyzed, and even politicized. Lost in all of this is the realization that it’s a terrible […]

Sport

NBA players’ vaccine apprehension is the opposite of what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hoped for

On February 1, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar penned a New York Times op-ed calling for NBA players to set an example by taking vaccines for the coronavirus, in order to instill faith in the process among the Black community, due to hesitancy stemming from years of (justified) distrust. Abdul-Jabbar noted data… Read more…

COVID 19 Tech

No sign that antibody memory of the common cold helps against SARS-CoV-2

Enlarge / False color image of viruses attached to a cell’s surface. (credit: NIAID) While the SARS-CoV-2 virus is new to humans, coronaviruses in general aren’t. There have been earlier members of this group of viruses that have raised pandemic fears, while another group regularly circulates widely in humans, causing symptoms of the common cold. […]

COVID 19 Tech

Signs that SARS-CoV-2 is evolving to avoid immune responses

Enlarge / The structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. (credit: University of Arkansas) Over the summer, you could almost hear a sigh of relief rising from the portion of the research community that was tracking the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Viruses, especially those new to their hosts, often pick up mutations that help them […]

COVID 19 Tech

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine looks good in early analysis

Enlarge / Picture of vials of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, seen at the Cotahuma Hospital in La Paz, Bolivia. (credit: Jorge Bernal/Getty Images) Yesterday, the people behind Russia’s leading vaccine, termed Sputnik V, issued a preliminary analysis of its function. The news was quite good: while the trial is […]

COVID 19 Tech

As new COVID cases drop, US may be repeating the same mistakes

Enlarge / Aerial view showing a tractor digging graves in a new area of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida, where COVID-19 victims are buried, in Manaus, Brazil. (credit: Marcio James / Getty Images) While attention has been focused on the worrying new variants of SARS-CoV-2, there has been some good news: despite the evolution of a […]