Covid

The number of breakthrough COVID cases in Massachusetts increased by 6,610 this week.

High-quality respirators such as N95s and K95s are now widely available and provide the best protection against COVID, according to experts. Why aren’t more people wearing them?

I hope everyone in the States had a fantastic Thanksgiving (even if you’re a Dallas Cowboys football fan). I hate to ruin the holiday, but… We have a new variant. I’ve not seen this much anxiety ridden chatter among scientists about a COVID19 variant before. Even among the calm, cool, and collected scientists.

STAT spoke with virus expert Trevor Bedord about the future of the coronavirus, the coming flu season, and whether we’ll need annual boosters

To understand how the pandemic is evolving, it’s crucial to know how death rates from COVID-19 are affected by vaccination status.

Researchers said results highlight the need to continue with face coverings, social distancing and handwashing alongside vaccine programmes

Massachusetts is opening up COVID booster shots to any fully vaccinated resident age 18 or older, effective immediately.

The Pfizer COVID booster shot could be available to all adults by the end of this week.

The US thinks it will be ‘immune’ to what is happening in Europe. That’s wishful thinking

Scientists have evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in white-tailed deer in the U.S. They say the findings could essentially dash any hopes of eliminating the virus in the U.S. — and the world.

Pierre Kory A Wisconsin physician who has been pushing unproven treatments for Covid-19 has lost a paper on a hospital protocol his group says radically reduced deaths from the infection after one …

“It's hard though, when you know that you're doing good for the patients, but they're yelling at you. They're telling you it's not real. They're telling you that you're a murderer."

A concept that took hold in the ’70s has haunted everything from seat belts to masks—and experts won't let it die.

His lies, his illogical defense, and his hubris damage all professional athletes.

Wondering whether to have your kid 5y+ vaccinated against COVID-19? Wondering why you should do this for something that seems no worse than the common cold? There are really good reasons why pediatricians and ID docs are running to get their kids vaccinated. A 🧵 with data. 1/— Chandy John Lab (@ChandyJohnLab) November 5, 2021

Okay so I had some ambivalence about discussing this particular op ed as you might see in my earlier tweets but I genuinely think if I don’t discuss it and its omissions children will be needlessly harmed which means I can’t not to it so here’s a thread. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/mpvCzD1gax— Edward Nirenberg (@ENirenberg) November 5, 2021

A look at how this vaccine technology has been in the works for decades.

Concerns about long-term side effects have helped fuel vaccine hesitancy. An immunologist explains why we can be confident in vaccine safety.

Dan Moren, Six Colors: Apple’s added a few features over the last couple years that help us cope with our current world situation, whether it be unlocking our iPhones with our Apple Watches or improvements to FaceTime. In iOS 15.1 last month, it rolled out the ability to store a digital version of your vaccine […]

Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. Paul D Thacker reports In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.1 But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. On its website Ventavia calls itself the largest privately owned clinical research company in Texas and lists many awards it has won for its contract work.2 But Jackson has told The BMJ that, during the two weeks she was employed at Ventavia in September 2020, she repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns, and data integrity issues. Jackson was …

Safe travel in public transport amid COVID requires wearing a mask properly, showing effects similar to 2-m social distancing.

I’m continuing to update the covdata package in anticipation of a Data Visualization for Social Science course I’ll teach next semester. I revisited the Partisan Trajectories graph, as it seems there’s more that could be done with it. More on that in the future, I hope. For now, here’s an updated version using the 2020 Presidential election as the basis for the deciles, and more recent fatality data. As before, the idea is to take the time series of cumulative COVID-19 deaths and split it into deciles by a county-level quantity of interest.

The Caribbean U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has outpaced wealthy New England states to become the most vaccinated place in America: 73% of its 3.3 million residents are fully protected. The island …

The FDA issued emergency authorizations Wednesday that open the door to mixing and matching of vaccine brands.

Analysis: as Covid cases reach 40,000 a day, scientists think normalisation is partly to blame for the lack of public reaction

Trial was too small to definitively compare combinations, but Moderna may have an edge.

The global collaboration, set up early in the pandemic to give people in rich and poor nations equitable access to vaccines, has fallen short.

Thousands worldwide have taken ivermectin to fight Covid. But what's the evidence?

Gov. Chris Sununu called for the removal of a fellow Republican from his committee position, saying the lawmaker is continuing to spread COVID-19 misinformation.