Tag Archives: science

Just in from Gallup Polling: Americans’ willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 rebounded a bit in October, as seen in Gallup polling conducted before Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna made promising announcements about the likely effectiveness of their coronavirus vaccines. Fifty-eight percent of Americans in the latest poll say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine, up from a low of 50% in …

CBS News reports: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell that the United States needs to redouble its efforts to contain the coronavirus as we enter the fall and winter months. The surge could be made worse as families across the country travel and gather for the holiday …

Reuters reports: Johnson & Johnson has paused clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate due to an unexplained illness in a study participant, delaying one of the highest profile efforts to contain the global pandemic. The move comes around a month after AstraZeneca AZN.L also suspended trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine – which uses a similar technology – due …

The New York Times reports: The Chinese city of Qingdao is testing all of its 9.5 million residents after it recorded the country’s first locally transmitted cases of the virus in almost two months. The authorities said that a dozen people in Qingdao, a seaside city in Shandong Province, had tested positive for the virus as of Sunday. Officials said …

The New York Times reports: Throughout its 208-year history, The New England Journal of Medicine has remained staunchly nonpartisan. The world’s most prestigious medical journal has never supported or condemned a political candidate. Until now. In an editorial signed by 34 editors who are United States citizens (one editor is not) and published on Wednesday, the journal said the Trump …

CBS News reports: Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice, and British scientist Michael Houghton were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology on Monday for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. The head of the Nobel Committee, Thomas Perlmann, announced the winners in Stockholm. The medicine prize carried particular significance this year due to the coronavirus …

The Associated Press reports: Timothy Ray Brown, who made history as “the Berlin patient,” the first person known to be cured of HIV infection, has died. He was 54. Brown died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, California, according to a social media post by his partner, Tim Hoeffgen. The cause was a return of the cancer that originally …

From the editors of Scientific American: Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly. The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his …

Reuters reports: Scientists said on Monday they have detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earth’s inhospitable neighbor, a tantalizing sign of potential life beyond Earth. The researchers did not discover actual life forms, but noted that on Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The international …

Reuters reports: Twenty-six scientists, most of them working at universities in Italy, have signed an open letter questioning the reliability of the data presented in the early-stage trial results of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, named “Sputnik-V”. Addressing the editor of The Lancet, the international peer-reviewed medical journal in which Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute published its early-stage trial results, the scientists said …

STAT News reports: A large, Phase 3 study testing a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford at dozens of sites across the U.S. has been put on hold due to a suspected serious adverse reaction in a participant in the United Kingdom. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca, a frontrunner in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine, …

Courthouse News reports: Researchers in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody that has the capacity to block the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, from entering human cells. In a paper published Friday in Nature Communications, the researchers propose that the nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment. Single-domain antibodies, also known as nanobodies, are fragments …

From an open letter published this morning: 81 American Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine have signed this letter to express their support for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election for President of the United States. At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value …

Reuters reports: Moderna said on Wednesday its experimental COVID-19 vaccine induced immune responses in older adults similar to those in younger participants, offering hope that it will be effective in people considered to be at high risk for severe complications from the coronavirus. The analysis looked at subjects given the 100-microgram dose being tested in the much larger Phase III …

Bloomberg reports: A man was infected with the coronavirus after recovering from an initial bout in April in what scientists said was the first case showing that re-infection may occur within a few months. The 33-year-old’s second SARS-CoV-2 infection was detected via airport screening on his return to Hong Kong from Europe this month. Researchers at the University of Hong …

The New York Times reports: Last week, just as the Food and Drug Administration was preparing to issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a Covid-19 treatment, a group of top federal health officials including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci intervened, arguing that emerging data on the treatment was too weak. The authorization is on …

The New York Times reports: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their guidance recently to suggest that people who have recovered from the virus can safely mingle with others for three months. It was a remarkable addition to the body of guidance from the agency, and its first indication that immunity to the virus may persist for at …

The Associated Press reports: With a coronavirus vaccine still months off, companies are rushing to test what may be the next best thing: drugs that deliver antibodies to fight the virus right away, without having to train the immune system to make them. Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help …

Just in from Gallup Polling: With more indications that a vaccine could be close, the next question for health professionals, policymakers and political leaders will be Americans’ willingness to be vaccinated once a vaccine is ready. But many Americans appear reluctant to be vaccinated, even if a vaccine were FDA-approved and available to them at no cost. Asked if they …

CBS News reports: Crew Dragon astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken enjoyed wakeup messages from their young sons early Sunday before readying their ship for a fiery plunge back to Earth and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola to close out a 64-day test flight. Hurley and Behnken, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 30, …