By Kate
Kelland
LONDON
(Reuters) - The case of a man in the United States infected twice with COVID-19
shows there is much yet to learn about immune responses and also raises
questions over vaccination, scientists said on Tuesday.
The 25-year-old from Reno, Nevada, tested positive in April after
showing mild symptoms, then got sick again in late May with a more serious
bout, according to a case report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases medical
journal.
The report was published just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump,
who was infected with COVID-19 and hospitalised earlier this month, said he
believes he now has immunity and felt “so powerful”.
Scientists said that while known incidences of reinfection appear rare -
and the Nevada man has now recovered - cases like his were worrying. Other
isolated cases of reinfection have been reported around the world, including in
Asia and Europe.
In the Netherlands, the National Institute for Public Health confirmed
on Tuesday that an 89-year-old Dutch woman, also sick with a rare form of bone
marrow cancer, had recently died after contracting COVID-19 for a second time.
Dutch media said this was the first known case worldwide of a death
after SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus reinfection.
‘IMPLICATIONS FOR VACCINATION’
“It is becoming increasingly clear that reinfections are possible, but
we can’t yet know how common this will be,” said Simon Clarke, a microbiology
expert at Britain’s Reading University.
“If people can be reinfected easily, it could also have implications for
vaccination programmes as well as our understanding of when and how the
pandemic will end.”
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-reinfection-usa/covid-19-again-reinfection-cases-raise-concerns-over-immunity-idUKKBN26Y1FA
Study predicts over 400,000
excess pandemic deaths in US by end of 2020 By Rich Haridy October 12, 2020
New research, published in the journal JAMA, tracking total
all-cause death rates in the United States has found 20 percent more people
have died in 2020 compared to prior year averages. And, even more strikingly,
only two-thirds of those excess deaths this year can be directly attributed to
COVID-19.
It is difficult to grasp the human cost of this devastating ongoing
global pandemic. One measure that some researchers are looking to is called
"excess deaths."
From year to year, total death counts in the United States
are incredibly consistent. So tracking excess deaths can offer researchers a
useful metric for evaluating the real mortality impact of events like this
viral pandemic.
“Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference
between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected
numbers of deaths in the same time periods,” states the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its page
dedicated to tracking excess deaths in the country.
Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University School
of Medicine have been closely looking at excess deaths in the US since the
pandemic began, and their latest report suggests the impact of COVID-19 is more
significant that the general mortality count indicates.
---- "Contrary to skeptics who claim that
COVID-19 deaths are fake or that the numbers are much smaller than we hear on
the news, our research and many other studies on the same subject show quite
the opposite," explains lead author on the study, Steven Woolf.
The new study looked at data from 2014 to 2020 to determine average
expected mortality rates in a given year. The researchers calculated the United
States could have expected 1,111,031 people to have died between March 1 and
August 1 this year – if this was a normal year.
The real numbers revealed 1,336,561 deaths recorded across
those five months. This amounts to 225,530 excess deaths. That is a 20 percent
increase in all-cause mortality over the first few months of the pandemic.
Even more striking, only 67 percent (or 150,541) of those
excess deaths were directly attributed to COVID-19. The researchers suggest
some of these excess deaths could be unaccounted, or undocumented COVID-19 cases.
But, according to the researchers, the majority are most likely deaths that are
indirectly caused by the pandemic.
"Some people who never had the virus may have died
because of disruptions caused by the pandemic," says Woolf. "These
include people with acute emergencies, chronic diseases like diabetes that were
not properly care for, or emotional crises that led to overdoses or
suicides."
An editorial
from two JAMA editors accompanying the publishing of the new research notes
these kinds of studies are important as they offer insight into the profoundly
far-reaching implications of a pandemic such as this.
“The importance of the estimate by Woolf et al. – which
suggests that for the entirety of 2020, more than 400 000 excess deaths will
occur – cannot be overstated, because it accounts for what could be declines in
some causes of death, like motor vehicle crashes, but increases in others, like
myocardial infarction,” the editorial states. “These deaths reflect a true
measure of the human cost of the Great Pandemic of 2020.”
More
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/excess-deaths-coronavirus-united-states-covid-2020/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=88fefa3a24-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_10_13_08_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-88fefa3a24-90625829
Johnson & Johnson pauses
Covid vaccine trial as participant becomes ill Issued on: 13/10/2020 - 05:02
Johnson & Johnson said Monday it had temporarily halted its Covid-19
vaccine trial because one of its participants had become sick.
"We have temporarily paused further dosing in all our Covid-19
vaccine candidate clinical trials, including the Phase 3 ENSEMBLE trial, due to
an unexplained illness in a study participant," the company said in a
statement.
The pause means the enrollment system has been closed for the 60,000-patient
clinical trial while the independent patient safety committee is convened.
J&J said that serious adverse events (SAEs), such as accidents or
illnesses, are "an expected part of any clinical study, especially large
studies." Company guidelines allow them to pause a study to determine if
the SAE was related to the drug in question and whether to resume study.
The J&J Phase 3 trial had started recruiting participants in late
September, with a goal of enrolling up to 60,000 volunteers across more than 200
sites in the US and around the world, the company and the US National
Institutes for Health (NIH), which is providing funding, said.
The other countries where the trials were taking place are Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa.
With the move, J&J became the tenth maker globally to conduct a
Phase 3 trial against Covid-19, and the fourth in the US.
The US has given J&J about $1.45 billion in funding under Operation
Warp Speed.
The vaccine is based on a single dose of a cold-causing adenovirus,
modified so that it can no longer replicate, combined with a part of the new
coronavirus called the spike protein that it uses to invade human cells.
J&J used the same technology in its Ebola vaccine which received
marketing approval from the European Commission in July.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/20201013-johnson-johnson-pauses-covid-vaccine-trial-as-participant-becomes-ill
Covid-19 reinfection casts doubt
on virus immunity: study Issued on: 13/10/2020 - 02:48
Covid-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time
they are infected, according to research released Tuesday confirming it is possible
to catch the potentially deadly disease more than once.
A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal charts the
first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection in the United States -- the
country worst hit by the pandemic -- and indicates that exposure to the virus
may not guarantee future immunity.
The patient, a 25-year-old Nevada man, was infected with two distinct
variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, within a 48-day time
frame.
The second infection was more severe than the first, resulting in the
patient being hospitalised with oxygen support.
The paper noted four other cases of reinfection confirmed globally, with
one patient each in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador.
Experts said the prospect of reinfection could have a profound impact on
how the world battles through the pandemic.
In particular, it could influence the hunt for a vaccine -- the
currently Holy Grail of pharmaceutical research.
"The possibility of reinfections could have significant
implications for our understanding of Covid-19 immunity, especially in the
absence of an effective vaccine," said Mark Pandori, for the Nevada State
Public Health Laboratory and lead study author.
"We need more research to understand how long immunity may last for
people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and why some of these second infections, while
rare, are presenting as more severe."
Vaccines work by triggering the body's natural immune response to a
certain pathogen, arming it with antibodies it to fight off future waves of
infection.
But it is not at all clear how long Covid-19 antibodies last.
For some diseases, such as measles, infection confers lifelong immunity.
For other pathogens, immunity may be fleeting at best.
The authors said the US patient could have been exposed to a very high
dose of the virus the second time around, triggering a more acute reaction.
Alternatively, it may have been a more virulent strain of the virus.
Another hypothesis is a mechanism known as antibody dependent enhancement
-- that is, when antibodies actually make subsequent infections worse, such as
with dengue fever.
The researchers pointed out that reinfection of any kind remains rare,
with only a handful of confirmed cases out of tens of millions of Covid-19 infections
globally.
However, since many cases are asymptomatic and therefore unlikely to
have tested positive initially, it may be impossible to know if a given
Covid-19 case is the first or second infection.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/20201013-covid-19-reinfection-casts-doubt-on-virus-immunity-study
Mainland China reports 20 new
COVID-19 cases versus 13 a day earlier October 14, 20201:27
AM
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Mainland China reported 20 new COVID-19 cases on
Oct. 13, up from 13 cases a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on
Wednesday.
The National Health Commission said 14 of the new cases were imported
infections originating from overseas. Six of the cases were local transmissions
in Shandong province.
The government of Qingdao, located in Shandong, is conducting a
city-wide COVID-19 testing drive following a series of infections in the city
linked to a hospital designated to treating imported infections.
The commission also said another 18 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases were
reported on Oct. 13, compared with 17 a day earlier. China does not count these
patients as confirmed cases.
Total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at
85,661, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-china-cases/mainland-china-reports-20-new-covid-19-cases-vs-13-a-day-earlier-idUKKBN26Z01M?il=0
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource
centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
Date:
October 12, 2020
Source:
Columbia University
Summary:
A team of researchers has discovered that a variety of exotic electronic
states, including a rare form of magnetism, can arise in a three-layer graphene
structure.
Since the discovery of graphene more than 15 years ago, researchers have
been in a global race to unlock its unique properties. Not only is graphene --
a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice -- the
strongest, thinnest material known to man, it is also an excellent conductor of
heat and electricity.
Now, a team of researchers at Columbia University and the University of
Washington has discovered that a variety of exotic electronic states, including
a rare form of magnetism, can arise in a three-layer graphene structure.
The findings appear in an article published Oct. 12 in Nature Physics .
The work was inspired by recent studies of twisted monolayers or twisted
bilayers of graphene, comprising either two or four total sheets. These
materials were found to host an array of unusual electronic states driven by
strong interactions between electrons.
"We wondered what would happen if we combined graphene monolayers
and bilayers into a twisted three-layer system," said Cory Dean, a
professor of physics at Columbia University and one of the paper's senior
authors. "We found that varying the number of graphene layers endows these
composite materials with some exciting new properties that had not been seen
before."
In addition to Dean, Assistant Professor Matthew Yankowitz and Professor
Xiaodong Xu, both in the departments of physics and materials science and
engineering at University of Washington, are senior authors on the work. Columbia
graduate student Shaowen Chen, and University of Washington graduate student
Minhao He are the paper's co-lead authors.
To conduct their experiment, the researchers stacked a monolayer sheet
of graphene onto a bilayer sheet and twisted them by about 1 degree. At
temperatures a few degrees over absolute zero, the team observed an array of
insulating states -- which do not conduct electricity -- driven by strong
interactions between electrons. They also found that these states could be
controlled by applying an electric field across the graphene sheets.
"We learned that the direction of an applied electric field matters
a lot," said Yankowitz, who is also a former postdoctoral researcher in
Dean's group.
When the researchers pointed the electric field toward the monolayer
graphene sheet, the system resembled twisted bilayer graphene. But when they
flipped the direction of the electric field and pointed it toward the bilayer
graphene sheet, it mimicked twisted double bilayer graphene -- the four-layer structure.
The team also discovered new magnetic states in the system.
More
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201012115949.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
US Politics Betting Odds https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
“There’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say,
‘My life is a little harder than it used to be, at a certain place you’ve got
to say to the people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.’”
Proper Charlie Munger. Berkshire Hathaway, 2008.
I
wonder if he still feels that way.
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