Coronavirus

Dr. Fauci: Double-masking makes 'common sense' and is likely more effective

CDC Order Requires Masks for Travel in US

According to the 11-page order issued on Friday, travelers entering and transiting throughout
the country will be required to wear face coverings in all transportation hubs, which the CDC
defines as including any “airport, bus terminal, marina, seaport or other port, subway station,
terminal, train station, US port of entry or any other location that provides transportation.”

The language of the order largely puts the onus on transit operators to enforce the rule...

interesting to note that if you are among the 34% who contract the disease, your chances of of having a mild symptomology are also enhanced

But if they get a mild case of Covid they might still be able to pass it on to other people?

Covid is killing Native Americans at a faster rate than any other community in the United States, shocking new figures reveal.

American Indians and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to analysis by APM Research Lab shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Nationwide one in every 475 Native Americans has died from Covid since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825 white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans. Native Americans have suffered 211 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 121 white Americans per 100,000.

The true death toll is undoubtedly significantly higher as multiple states and cities provide patchy or no data on Native Americans lost to Covid. Of those that do, communities in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas have been the hardest hit.

Covid is killing Native Americans at a faster rate than any other community in the United States, shocking new figures reveal.

American Indians and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to analysis by APM Research Lab shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Nationwide one in every 475 Native Americans has died from Covid since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825 white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans. Native Americans have suffered 211 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 121 white Americans per 100,000.

The true death toll is undoubtedly significantly higher as multiple states and cities provide patchy or no data on Native Americans lost to Covid. Of those that do, communities in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas have been the hardest hit.
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U.S. Rep Ron Wright of Arlington died Sunday night after a battle with COVID-19. He was 67.

His family and spokesperson confirmed Wright’s death Monday morning. The congressman, who was reelected in November, had been battling cancer.
...
Wright is the first sitting member of Congress to die after battling COVID-19. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow of Louisiana, a Republican, died from complications due to the virus just days before being sworn in.

Donations surge during Covid crisis for work by Prof Chris Exley, author of study linking vaccines and autism

A British academic who has promoted anti-vaccine misinformation has raised more than £150,000 through a university donations portal to support his research during the coronavirus crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

Prof Chris Exley, a chemist at Keele University, authored a 2017 study that claimed tiny amounts of aluminium in vaccines may cause “the more severe and disabling form of autism”.

Health experts have strongly disputed the findings, including Prof Andrew Pollard, chair of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who has previously called the study’s conclusion “bad science”.

Exley, who calls himself Mr Aluminium on social media, encourages followers of his Instagram page to donate to research at his laboratory at Keele University through the university’s online portal. His studies have been shared tens of thousands of times on social media, often by people questioning the safety of vaccines.

A Freedom of Information Act request by the Guardian has found that Exley received £173,612.42 in donations and gift aid from May 2019 to the end of 2020, ranging from £5 to £77,278.12. Donations to his research have surged during the pandemic, with £158,621.27 of the total sent since Covid emerged at the end of 2019.

Initial study brings hope vaccine will reduce Covid transmission

Data from researchers in Israel, which has inoculated swathes of its population, suggests the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is reducing viral load, a key signal that the intervention could diminish the spread of Covid-19.

Evidence that the coronavirus vaccines being deployed globally are dramatically effective in reducing severe disease and death in symptomatic Covid-19 is abundant. But a big question remains unanswered: can they thwart transmission, in other words stop people from passing on the virus?

Preventing the spread of infection is key to reducing the risk of more variants emerging and to achieving herd immunity, scientists say. People with higher viral load tend to be more infectious and are more likely to suffer from severe disease.

To evaluate the impact of the vaccine on transmission, researchers compared data from people over 60 years old and those aged 40 to 60, evaluating data from 16,297 people who had tested positive for coronavirus between 1 December and 30 January.

Israel’s vaccine programme began on 20 December. By the time of analysis, more than 75% of those in the older group were likely to have received their first dose, as had about 25% of the younger group.

Although researchers did not know whether each person had been given their first vaccine dose, their hypothesis was that if the vaccine was reducing viral load, then evidence of that would begin to show up in late January but not before, because of the time required by the vaccine to stimulate the immune system.

As expected, in the last two weeks of January the researchers noted a statistically significant fall in the viral load for the individuals aged over 60, compared with the 40-to-60 group, said the study author, Yaniv Erlich, the chief scientific officer of MyHeritage, a company that runs a large coronavirus testing laboratory in Israel.

The researchers used available demographic data and vaccination rates to estimate the effect of the first dose on viral load reduction, calculating that the vaccine reduced the viral load by 1.6 to 20 times in individuals who tested positive for the virus.

Erlich cautioned that the paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, was just an initial study. While it was understood that a smaller viral load was better, it was not clear whether this reduction would be enough to block transmission. “My expectation is … that if you are positive following vaccination, you probably will transmit the disease to a smaller number of people, on average,” he said.

Stephen Griffin, associate professor at Leeds University’s school of medicine, said the data, though early, was positive but not definitive. Since the study looked at people who had tested positive for the virus, the results suggested that vaccinated people were less likely to pass infection on, potentially, by virtue of the fact they had a reduced virus load, he said.

It remained unclear whether the vaccine stopped people from getting infected altogether – however, this study was not designed to assess that, Griffin said.