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Extreme Consuming Rose In the course of the Pandemic. Right here Are Methods to Minimize Again.

Excessive Drinking Rose During the Pandemic. Here Are Ways to Cut Back.

Andrea Carbone, a 51-year-old paralegal who lives in Florida, wasn’t a big drinker for most of her life. But when the pandemic broke out, she was constantly worried about her job, her health, and the safety of her children.

While many people were able to work from home last year, Ms. Carbone had to go to the office. Some mornings, she cried in her car as she drove down deserted streets and highways to her downtown Tampa office, which looked like a ghost town.

As her stress levels increased, so did her alcohol consumption. Before the pandemic, Ms. Carbone had a glass of red wine with dinner most evenings. But by May their intake had risen significantly. “I noticed that I had a glass of wine as soon as I got home, then a glass with dinner, then we sat down to watch TV and I had another glass or two,” she said. “At the end of the night I drank a bottle.”

Ms. Carbone is far from being alone. The widespread fear, frustration, and social isolation associated with the turbulent events of the past year – pandemic, civil unrest, political upheaval – made stress soaring and many people increased their alcohol consumption. Women and parents of young children appear to be particularly badly affected. A nationwide survey commissioned by the American Psychological Association in February found that one in four adults said they drank more to manage their stress in the past year. This rate has more than doubled for children with children between the ages of 5 and 7.

Another study published in October on the JAMA Network Open found that Americans increased the frequency of their alcohol consumption by 14 percent year over year. However, the same study found a 41 percent increase in the number of days women drank heavily, defined as four or more drinks in a few hours.

“Women have left the labor force disproportionately compared to men. They’ve done a disproportionately large amount of the work around the home, childcare, and child rearing, ”said Michael S. Pollard, lead author of the JAMA study and chief sociologist at RAND Corporation. “So it stands to reason that women would also increase their alcohol consumption disproportionately.”

The mental harm of the past year has resulted in sharp declines in physical health, including widespread weight gain and insomnia. Hospitals across the country have reported an increase in admissions for hepatitis, cirrhosis, liver failure, and other forms of alcohol-related illness. Almost no group was spared.

Driftwood Recovery, an addiction and mental health rehabilitation center in Texas, had so many requests for treatment over the past year that it has a two-month waiting list. Vanessa Kennedy, Driftwood’s director of psychology, said many of her clients are parents who started drinking heavily because they struggled to balance their daily jobs with home schooling and other parental responsibilities.

“They are used to their children going to school happily and having an experienced teacher teaching their children while they go to work and focus on doing well and financially supporting their families,” said Dr. Kennedy. “Her work roles are at odds with her parenting roles, and it has been difficult for her to make room and do these things well.”

Dr. Kennedy has treated a wide variety of patients who turned to excessive drinking in the past year. Some lost their jobs or closed their businesses, leaving them without a daily structure and means to support their families. Others were college students who felt socially disconnected when they were sent home to attend a virtual school, or older adults who drank because they were depressed about being depressed about being able to see loved ones or hugging their grandchildren .

Prior to last year, Gordon Mueller, a retiree who lives in Rochester, NY, rarely consumed more than a drink or two a day. But when the pandemic broke out and the economy and stock market stumbled, Mr Miller was consumed with fear as he followed the news and worried about his retirement account. When Mr Müller sought refuge with his wife at home, his alcohol consumption rose to seven drinks a day: vodka cocktails in the afternoon, wine with dinner and a whiskey nightcap before bed. “We had no idea whether we would get through financially, let alone get sick and possibly die,” he said. “It was just a lot of fear and boredom. Those were the two emotions. “

But many people have found new ways to curb their drinking. In December, Mr. Müller reached out to Moderation Management, an online community that helps people who want to drink less but don’t necessarily have to abstain. He participated in Zoom calls with fellow members and used the organization’s private Facebook group for tips and advice on reducing his alcohol consumption. Then, in January, he decided to give up alcohol for a while to see how he would feel.

“I’m happy to say I haven’t had a drink this year and I feel a lot better: I sleep better and can do more,” he said. “The nice thing about this moderation group is that it’s not all or nothing. You can never drink again or you are a failed alcoholic.”

In Tampa, Ms. Carbone began using a popular app called Cutback Coach, which allows people to track their alcohol consumption and set goals and reminders to develop healthier drinking habits. With the app, Ms. Carbone creates a plan of how much she will drink each week. The app tracks her daily intake, sends her notifications of her goals, and lets her know of her progress, including any calories she’s avoided and the money she’s saved from drinking less. She now has at least two “dry” days a week and has cut her alcohol consumption in half.

“When I see the progress I’ve made, I feel good and I move on,” she said. “I sleep much better. I wake up less at night. I wake up feeling less sluggish, less tired. I’ve been going to the gym more regularly while I couldn’t drag myself there before. “

For people who want to drink less, here are some simple tips that might help.

Instead of relying solely on willpower, every Sunday plan to limit your alcohol consumption to a certain amount each day of the week and stick to it. This is a tactic known as pre-bind that is used by the Cutback Coach to help its thousands of members. The idea behind this is that by committing yourself to a plan and limiting your ability to step back later, you increase your chances of success. Some other examples of pre-engagements include choosing not to keep junk food in your house and encouraging you to exercise by scheduling a workout with a friend. Studies show that pre-commitment is an effective way to change behavior.

Discuss your plan to drink less with your spouse, friend, or family member. They can hold you accountable and help you find healthier ways to manage your stress. For example, plan to go for a walk with your friend or partner at the end of the day instead of opening a bottle. “You may find that you have a buddy who says, ‘Why don’t we play tennis or do something else to relax after work? “Said Dr. Kennedy.” There are many benefits to trying healthy activities instead of wine. “

Establish rules to slow down drinking. Mary Reid, the executive director of Moderation Management, follows a simple rule that helps her avoid heavy drinking: Each glass of wine she drinks must last at least an hour. “My greatest tool is the timing of my drinks,” she said. “We always tell new members that we have stop buttons, but we just ignore them.” Dr. Driftwood’s Kennedy applies a similar rule. She tells people to alternate every alcoholic drink they have with a glass of water.

Some people drink more out of habit than out of an actual desire for alcohol. Try replacing your usual drink with sparkling water or another beverage. Mr. Miller drank a cocktail every evening while watching the evening news. But when he cut down on alcohol, he drank a cup of tea or soft beer while watching the news and found that it only took one drink to have a sip. “Now I still have a glass in my hand, but it has no alcohol,” he said. “It’s almost as if a glass in hand is the habit and not the alcohol.”

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Regeneron to request FDA clearance for antibody drug as preventative remedy

Regeneron to request FDA clearance for antibody drug as preventative treatment

View of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals corporate, research and development headquarters on Old Saw Mill River Road in Tarrytown, New York.

Lev Radin | LightRocket | Getty Images

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced Monday that it would ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the use of its Covid-19 antibody therapy as a preventative treatment.

The therapy, given to former President Donald Trump shortly after he was diagnosed with Covid-19 last year, has already been approved by the FDA to treat adults with mild to moderate Covid-19 and pediatric patients aged 12 and over approved age who tested positive for the virus and is at high risk of serious illness.

Regeneron said it plans to expand the use of its treatment in the United States after a Phase 3 clinical study jointly conducted by the National Institutes of Health found the drug reduced the risk of symptomatic infections in individuals by 81%.

The company also said that people who were symptomatic and treated with the drug resolved their symptoms an average of two weeks faster than those who received a placebo.

“As more than 60,000 Americans continue to be diagnosed with COVID-19 every day, the REGEN-COV antibody cocktail can help provide immediate protection to unvaccinated people exposed to the virus,” said Dr. George Yancopoulos, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron, said in a press release.

The study included 1,505 people who were not infected with the virus but lived in the same household as someone who recently tested positive. Participants received either a dose of Regeneron therapy or a placebo.

The company said 41% of the people in the study were Hispanic and 9% were Black. Additionally, 33% of the participants were obese and 38% were 50 years and older, according to the company.

Regeneron therapy belongs to a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which act as immune cells to fight infections. Monoclonal antibody treatments attracted widespread attention after it was revealed that Trump had received Regeneron’s drug in October.

In recent months, public health officials have raised concerns that emerging, highly contagious variants of coronavirus could threaten monoclonal antibodies on the market. Dr. However, Myron Cohen, who leads monoclonal antibody efforts for the NIH-sponsored COVID Prevention Network, said the drug has shown that it will retain its effectiveness against new strains.

As the world’s attention has shifted to giving Covid-19 vaccines, health experts say treatments are also crucial to ending the pandemic, which, according to compiled data, has topped 31.1 million in just over a year Infected Americans and killed at least 561,800 people from Johns Hopkins University.

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What Bears Can Educate Us About Our Train Habits

What Bears Can Teach Us About Our Exercise Habits

Grizzly bears move through landscapes the same way most people do, preferring flat trails over slopes and gentle speeds over sprints. This emerges from a notable new study of grizzly bears and shows how their outdoor life compares to ours.

The study, which included wild and captive bears, a special treadmill, apple slices, and GPS trackers, expands our understanding of how a natural drive to conserve energy affects the behavior of animals, including ours, and effects on health and that Weight Management Might Have. The results also help explain why bears and humans cross paths so often in the wild, and provide useful reminders of wilderness planning and everyone’s safety.

In recent years, biologists and other scientists have become increasingly interested in how we and other creatures find our way through our environment. And while some preliminary answers crop up about why we move and navigate this way, the results, on the whole, aren’t particularly flattering.

The accumulated research suggests that we humans as a species tend to be physically lazy, with a hardwired propensity to avoid activity. For example, in a meaningful neurological study from 2018, brain scans showed that volunteers were drawn far more to images of people in chairs and hammocks than people in motion.

This seemingly innate preference not to move made sense to us long ago, when hunting and gathering required hard exertion and copious amounts of calories and resting under a tree didn’t. Being inactive is more of a problem now, with food everywhere.

To what extent we share this preference for physical lightness with other species and whether these preferences affect how we and they traverse the world has remained unclear.

Cue grizzlies, especially those who live in Washington State University’s Bear Center, the country’s premier grizzly bear sanctuary and research center. University biologists affiliated with the center study how animals live, eat and interact with people.

For the new study, which was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, they now decided to examine exactly how much energy grizzlies consume when they move in different ways, and how these and comparable numbers do not only affect real behavior Bears could affect us and other animals.

In the beginning, they built a stable enclosure around a treadmill that was originally built for horses. With modifications, it could tip up or down as much as 20 percent while handling the size and weight of a grizzly. At the front of the enclosure, the scientists added a feed box with a built-in rubber glove.

Then they taught the center’s nine male and female grizzly bears – most of whom have been resident at the center since birth and with names like John, Peeka, and Frank – to climb and walk on the treadmill while slicing hot dogs as a reward and accept apples.

“Grizzlies are very food-centric,” says Anthony Carnahan, a doctoral student at Washington State University who led the new study.

By measuring changes in the composition of the air in the enclosure, the researchers were able to track each bear’s energy consumption at different speeds as it walked uphill and downhill. (The bears never ran on the treadmills for safety reasons.) Using this data, the researchers determined that the most efficient pace for the bears, physiologically – the one at which they consumed the least oxygen – was about 2.6 mph.

Finally, the scientists gathered available information about wild bear movements using GPS statistics from grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, as well as map data and comparable numbers from previous studies of humans and other animals migrating through natural landscapes.

When comparing the data, the scientists found that wild grizzlies, like us, seem born to be idle. The researchers expected the wild bears to move at their most efficient speed whenever possible, says Carnahan. In reality, their average pace driving through Yellowstone was a tricky and physiologically inefficient value of 1.4 mph.

They also almost always took the least steep route to get anywhere, even if it required extra time. “They did a lot of side-hilling,” says Carnahan.

Interestingly, these speeds and routes were similar to those used by humans when choosing routes through wild areas, the researchers found.

Overall, the results suggest that the innate urge to avoid exertion plays a bigger role in how all creatures, large and small, normally behave and navigate than we can imagine.

However, the study doesn’t rule out that grizzly bears, like other bears, can move with sudden, breathtaking speed and ferocity if they choose to, Carnahan points out. “I saw a bear walking across a mountain meadow in six or seven minutes than it took me all afternoon,” he says.

The results also do not tell us that we humans are destined to always walk slowly and stick to the apartments, but only that it can require both mental and physical exertion and goal setting to avoid the easiest routes are not adhered to.

Finally, the study is an invigorating reminder that we share nature with large predators, which of course choose the same paths as we do. You can find useful information on safety in grizzly land on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee website.

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Professor says incentives for employees are higher

Professor says incentives for staff are better

According to Nancy Rothbard, professor at the Wharton School, companies should encourage their employees to get vaccinated against Covid through incentives, not mandates.

“There are many challenges to assign employees to do anything,” said Rothbard on Thursday in the “Squawk Box” of CNBC. “Any boss will tell you, it’s a lot more about persuasion than telling a story.”

The question of whether workers need to get vaccines to return to the office has come into focus lately, with around 3 million people shot dead in the US every day. The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly a quarter of the adult American population is fully vaccinated.

While many experts believe it is legal for employers to make vaccines mandatory, business leaders may worry about alienating employees.

“Trying to really motivate people to get vaccinated is going to be a much more popular avenue than mandates, in my opinion,” said Rothbard, a management professor whose research has focused in part on work motivation and engagement.

Companies like Tractor Supply offer their employees one-time cash payments to encourage them to get a Covid vaccine. The aim is to offer hourly workers up to four hours of wages – two hours for each dose of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that require two shots. It also aims to help with paying for Lyft rides to and from appointments.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the only other emergency approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, is just one dose.

Companies should consider employee preferences regarding vaccination status disclosure, Rothbard said, adding that some people are less comfortable sharing personal information of any kind with employers and colleagues.

“There are ways to do this more privately when you want to take a member of staff aside and say, ‘See, have you been vaccinated? … If you haven’t, we need to take alternative precautions'” for the safety of others, she offered.

The debate over vaccine disclosure in the workplace does not reduce the need for Americans to be vaccinated to end the pandemic, Rothbard said. “The term ‘herd immunity’ implies that it has a collective cost, not just an individual choice that people make when they choose to be vaccinated.”

Despite the importance, Rothbard stressed that incentives are likely to be effective in helping companies achieve high vaccination rates among their employees.

“I have a newspaper called ‘Mandatory Fun’. People don’t even like it when they are forced to have mandatory fun when they don’t feel legitimate in the workplace,” she said. “People don’t respond well to mandates. They respond better to incentives and encouragement.”

Evidence of vaccines for customers

Whether or not customers need to show proof of vaccination in order to receive services in a business – such as eating out in a restaurant – has become another controversial issue in the US. Some critics have raised concerns about civil liberty, while proponents of the so-called vaccination passport say that requiring people to prove they have been vaccinated benefits public health and allows the economy to reopen safely.

Last week, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order preventing companies from requiring a customer to provide evidence that they received a Covid vaccine as a requirement for service. In his order, DeSantis claims that Covid vaccine passports “restrict individual freedom and compromise patient privacy”.

Texas governor Greg Abbot issued a similar order Tuesday banning the state government and private entities receiving public funding for requiring Covid vaccination certificates.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, told CNBC on Wednesday that he believed the conversation about reviewing vaccine status was not okay.

“I think we thought about vaccination cards through the wrong lens. I think the way they are likely to be used is to create two access routes to different venues,” Gottlieb said in an interview on Squawk Box . “”

Covid testing may be required along with secondary symptom screening for people who cannot prove they have been vaccinated, said Gottlieb, who is now on the board of directors at vaccine maker Pfizer.

“The other will be in a fast lane. If you can prove that you’ve been vaccinated, you don’t have to provide evidence that you’ve recently been tested,” or go through some sort of symptom screening, Gottlieb said.

“It will be like an E-ZPass where you can either go through the fast lane or if you still want to pay the toll because you think the police are following you with the E-ZPass device, you can stop and stand in line and pay the toll, “he said.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion Inc., and biotech company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Rising Politicization of Covid Vaccines

The Rising Politicization of Covid Vaccines

President Biden on Tuesday called on governors to allow coronavirus vaccinations for all adults within the next two weeks in an attempt to hasten a goal he had previously set for May 1.

However, recent polls and political tides, especially in red states, suggest that just making the vaccine available may not be enough if the country is to achieve herd immunity. Surveys show that a sizable minority of skeptics remain cautious about being vaccinated, with questions about the safety of the vaccine at the center of their doubts.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said the country shouldn’t expect to achieve herd immunity – where a disease effectively stops moving freely between infected people – until at least 75 percent of Americans are vaccinated.

Some states and companies are starting to treat vaccination records as a kind of passport. For example, many cruise lines require proof of vaccination for passengers, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last month the creation of the Excelsior Pass, which will allow citizens to easily show proof of vaccination using a smartphone. Proof of shooting is now required to enter some major venues as per current New York reopening guidelines.

But the political picture is different elsewhere. On Monday, Texas’s Greg Abbott, after Florida’s Ron DeSantis, became the second Republican governor to sign an executive order preventing state agencies and many companies from requiring consumers to be vaccinated.

Dr. Fauci made it clear yesterday that he and the Biden administration would likely stay away from it. “I doubt that the federal government will be the main driver for a vaccination pass concept,” he told the Politico Dispatch podcast. “You can make things fair and equitable, but I doubt the federal government will be the leading element of that.”

According to surveys, it could take a while to vaccinate the entire country.

Almost half of American adults said they received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to an Axios / Ipsos poll published Tuesday. However, there is reason to believe that the surge in vaccinations may soon wear off. Among those who did not get a shot, people were more likely to say they would wait a year or more (25 percent) than they would receive the vaccine within a few weeks of its availability (19 percent). Thirty-one percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t get the shot at all. Partly driving style that is deeply rooted among white evangelical Christians, a core part of the republican base. Surveys have shown that they are among the most anti-vaccine populations.

A separate survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post found that more than a third of the country has little confidence that Covid-19 vaccines have been “properly tested for safety and effectiveness.” Concerning vaccine skepticism, health workers kept an even view of the rest of the population: thirty-six percent of them were not confident.

When it comes to trust, there is no greater measure than whether you would give something to your child. Dr. Fauci has made it clear that herd immunity is not possible for young people without widespread vaccination. Therefore, every destination for the country must include these as well. But nearly half of all parents interviewed by Axios / Ipsos said they probably wouldn’t come first to get their children a vaccine as soon as it becomes available.

Fifty-two percent of respondents with a child under 18 at home said they would likely use the vaccine once their child’s age group became an option, but 48 percent said they would not.

But even as some vaccine skepticism subsides, Americans report that they get together in far greater numbers. Fifty-five percent of the country said they had been with family or friends more than at any time in the past week. 45 percent said they had recently gone out to eat.

Thirty-six percent said they had not practiced social distancing at all in the past week.

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ATAI takes majority stake in mind laptop interface start-up Psyber

Peter Thiel-backed psychedelics start-up ATAI targets schizophrenia

ATAI Life Sciences, a Peter Thiel-supported biopharmaceutical company developing psychedelics for the treatment of mental health, has acquired a majority stake in the US company Psyber.

Psyber is a company that wants to use brain-computer interfaces to treat people with mental illness.

ATAI, calling itself a drug development platform, was founded to acquire, incubate, and develop psychedelics and other drugs that can be used to treat depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental illnesses.

The Berlin-based company, which was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Christian Angermayer, Florian Brand, Lars Wilde and Srinivas Rao, announced its majority stake in Psyber on Wednesday. It declined to reveal what it was offering Psyber in exchange for the majority stake.

In theory, a brain-computer interface enables direct communication between a human brain and an external device.

ATAI said that Psyber’s brain-computer interface technology, which is in its early stages of development, could one day help patients understand how drugs affect activity in their brain while improving the effectiveness and safety of their drugs.

ATAI said it will combine the development of its psychedelic compounds with the ability to record electrical activity in the brain to interpret emotional, behavioral and mental states in real time.

“By combining medicine and BCI-assisted therapy, the patient sits firmly in the driver’s seat as it is tailored to the specific needs of each individual,” said David Keene, director of digital therapy at Atai, in a statement.

Prahlad Krishnan, CEO of Psyber, said BCI has the potential to “change the world” as we know it.

“In the context of mental health, this is no exception, as each patient participating in BCI-based therapy has greater autonomy and is increasingly able to change their feelings and behaviors in order to improve their quality of life,” said Krishnan.

ATAI, which has around 50 employees in offices in Berlin, New York and San Diego, currently works with 14 companies focused on drug development and other technologies. In return for a controlling stake in the drugs and technologies they develop, ATAI helps scientists raise money, work with regulators, and conduct clinical trials. None of ATAI’s drugs have yet been officially approved by regulatory agencies.

Billionaire Thiel initiated a $ 125 million round of investments in ATAI last November and a $ 157 million round of investments in the company in March. According to two sources close to ATAI, an IPO is now planned in the next few weeks.

“The great virtue of ATAI is taking mental illness as seriously as we should have,” said Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, in a statement shared with CNBC last November. “The company’s most valuable asset is its urgency.”

Thiel is a business partner of ATAI co-founder Angermayer and both have made a number of investments together. Beyond investing, it is not immediately clear whether Thiel plays a significant role at ATAI.

“We were introduced back in 2011 because we are both very interested in global politics,” said Angermayer, referring to his first meeting with Thiel, who was born in Germany. “I know many politicians as friends. During the euro crisis, I became a bit of a point of contact for many Americans and Asians who didn’t understand Europe at all. How complicated we are, but also how positive we are.”

Elon’s Neuralink

Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal with Peter Thiel in 1998, founded a brain-computer interface company called Neuralink.

Musk describes it as a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires going into your brain.

Earlier this year, Musk said in an interview that Neuralink wired a monkey to use his mind to play video games.

A YouTube video showing the monkey playing the arcade game pong with his mind was shared by Neuralink on Friday.

Last August, Neuralink conducted a live demo of its technology on three pigs. An audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs Musk named Gertrude.

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Mother and father, Cease Speaking In regards to the ‘Misplaced Yr’

Parents, Stop Talking About the ‘Lost Year’

“They had a sense of resilience and ‘grit’, even prepandemic which I think served them well,” she said. “I see an ability to pan.”

In Dr. Luther’s research actually regressed reports of loneliness for seventh and eighth grade students between spring 2020 and spring 2021 – a reflection of how she suspects how alienating and lonely middle school is for many of them in “normal” times. (“The loners, the introverts, the kids who weren’t popular – they’re fine, thank you,” she said.)

Other new data suggests that the youngest teens may have got through the pandemic year with slightly less wear and tear than older teens. In the fall of 2020, a research team led by psychologist Angela L. Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania surveyed more than 6,500 high school students in a large, demographically diverse school district where families could choose whether their children would attend remotely or in school Person.

They found that students who attended school from a distance, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, exhibited significantly lower social, emotional, and academic wellbeing – with the exception of ninth graders, whose level remained roughly the same. (And who for most of the 20th century were considered to be in the same developmental category as seventh and eighth grade students, teaching in middle schools.)

Overall, according to Dr. Steinberg, the youth who fared best during the pandemic were more likely to be the ones who were able to keep in touch with their friends. And for many middle school students, that means having parents willing to relax their usual rules on social media and screen time.

“Social media mitigates some of the effects of isolation,” he said.

This message, often echoed by experts and educators, should provide some relief to the many parents who feel guilty about the screen time they have given their children over the past year.

Rabiah Harris, a Washington public middle school science teacher, holds a PhD in education that, as the mother of a nearly 12-year-old, allows her to take a philosophical viewpoint.

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Germany well being minister requires lockdown, considers Russian vaccine

Coronavirus anniversary: Europe's slow vaccine rollout

On Tuesday, January 12, 2021, a health care worker will take care of a Covid 19 patient in the intensive care unit of the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Germany would face tough lockdown measures until the end of March if the authorities do not contain a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON – Germany got one step closer to the nationwide lockdown on Friday when Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to standardize the restrictions across the various states.

“The Infection Protection Act is being changed to give the state the necessary power,” said a government spokesman in Berlin on Friday.

The law update is expected to be approved by lawmakers next week, and a lockdown could be imposed shortly thereafter.

Earlier on Friday, German health officials said they were concerned about the rising coronavirus infections in the country and said a nationwide lockdown was needed to end the ongoing third wave.

Germany has faced high rates of Covid infection since last October, and despite an improvement in February, the number of new cases has increased since the end of March.

“Many citizens recognize the need to break this wave with additional measures, and the majority are in favor of stricter rules. A lockdown is needed to break the current wave,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn at a press conference on Friday.

This third wave of the coronavirus is putting pressure on the country’s health system at a time when regional and federal governments are arguing over what to do.

“The number of intensive care patients is increasing far too quickly. Doctors and nurses have been under constant stress for months and rightly sound the alarm,” said Spahn.

“We have to break the third wave as quickly as possible. That means: reduce contacts and reduce mobility. This is the only way to prevent further increases.”

The country reported over 30,000 new Covid cases on Wednesday and around 26,000 on Thursday.

German officials disagreed on the right approach to dealing with emerging cases, while citizens were frustrated with the different regimes between different regions.

Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told CNBC earlier this week: “If we could come to similar measures in all locations, this would help a lot and make it more understandable.”

The German health authorities are pushing for an increase in vaccinations in the country, which has already paid off. On Thursday, the daily vaccination count approached 720,000 compared to around 317,000 a week ago, according to the Ministry of Health.

“I think we’re going to a situation where by the end of this month it will be 4 to 5 million doses a week,” Scholz told CNBC.

Sputnik V.

At the press conference on Friday, the Minister of Health confirmed that, according to Reuters, contract negotiations are currently taking place for the purchase of the Sputnik V vaccine developed in Russia. Spahn added that there is still a question mark over whether these vaccines would be available in the coming months.

The European Medicines Agency started evaluating the Russian shot in early March and will decide whether to recommend it for use in the 27 EU member states. Although the regulator is using an urgent method to verify the effectiveness of Sputnik V, it is unclear when final approval could come.

German authorities previously announced they would consider using the Russian vaccine if the EMA concluded that the shot was effective in preventing the Covid-19 virus.

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Has the Period of Overzealous Cleansing Lastly Come to an Finish?

Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an End?

When the coronavirus spread in the United States last spring, many experts warned of the danger posed by surfaces. The researchers reported that the virus could survive on plastic or stainless steel for days, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that someone could become infected if they touch one of those contaminated surfaces and then touch their eyes, nose, or mouth.

The Americans responded with benefits in kind, wiping groceries, quarantining mail, and clearing Clorox wipes on drug store shelves. Facebook closed two of its offices for a “deep clean”. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority started disinfecting subway cars every night.

But the “hygiene theater” era may have unofficially ended this week when the CDC updated its surface cleaning guidelines to find that the risk of the virus contracting a contaminated surface was less than 1 in 10,000.

“People can be affected by the virus that causes Covid-19 through contact with contaminated surfaces and objects,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, at a briefing at the White House on Monday. “However, there is evidence that the risk of infection transmission via this route of transmission is actually low.”

The approval is long overdue, say scientists.

“Finally,” said Linsey Marr, an airborne virus expert at Virginia Tech. “We’ve known this for a long time, and yet people are still so focused on surface cleaning.” She added, “There is really no evidence anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface.”

In the early days of the pandemic, many experts believed that the virus was mainly spread via large respiratory droplets. These droplets are too heavy to travel long distances in the air, but they can fall onto objects and surfaces.

With that in mind, it made sense to focus on scrubbing every surface. “Surface cleaning is more familiar,” said Dr. Marr. “We know how to do it. You can see people doing it, you can see the clean surface. I think it makes people feel safer. “

Over the past year, however, it has become increasingly clear that the virus mainly spreads through the air – in both large and small droplets that can stay in the air longer – and that cleaning door handles and subway seats is little for safety who contributes.

“The scientific basis for all of these surface concerns is very slim – slim to none,” said Emanuel Goldman, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, who wrote last summer that the risk of surface transfer was exaggerated. “This is a virus that you get by breathing. It’s not a virus that you get by touching it. “

The CDC previously recognized that surfaces are not the primary way the virus spreads. But the agency’s statements this week went further.

“The most important part of this update is that it clearly communicates the correct, low-risk surfaces to the public, which is not a message that was clearly communicated over the past year,” said Joseph Allen, a building security expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Intercepting the virus from surfaces remains theoretically possible, he noted. But many things have to go wrong: lots of fresh, infectious virus particles have to be deposited on a surface, and then a relatively large amount has to be quickly transferred to a hand and then to a human’s face. “Presence on a surface is not the same as risk,” said Dr. All.

In most cases, cleaning with simple soap and water – in addition to washing hands and wearing masks – is enough to keep the chances of surface transfer low, according to the CDC’s updated cleaning guidelines. In most everyday scenarios and environments, people don’t need to use chemical disinfectants, according to the agency.

“I think this is very useful for telling us what not to do,” said Donald Milton, an aerosol scientist at the University of Maryland. “It doesn’t help to spray a lot and spray chemicals.”

However, the guidelines suggest that the area where someone with Covid-19 was in a given location on the last day should be both cleaned and disinfected.

“Disinfection is only recommended indoors – in schools and at home – where a suspected or confirmed case of Covid-19 has arisen within the past 24 hours,” said Dr. Walensky during the White House briefing. “In most cases, fogging, fumigation, and large-area or electrostatic spraying are not the recommended primary methods of disinfection and pose several safety risks.”

The new cleaning guidelines do not apply to healthcare facilities that may require more intensive cleaning and disinfection.

Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, welcomed the new guidance, which “reflects our evolving data on transmission during the pandemic.”

However, she noted that it is still important to clean regularly and maintain good hand washing practices in order to reduce the risk of infecting not only the coronavirus but also other pathogens that may be left on a certain surface.

Dr. Allen said the school and business officials he spoke to this week have expressed relief at the updated guidelines that will allow them to roll back some of their intensive cleaning programs. “This gives many organizations a chance to spend that money better,” he said.

Schools, businesses and other institutions that want to keep people safe should turn their attention from the surface to air quality and invest in improved ventilation and filtration.

“This should be the end of the deep cleanse,” said Dr. Allen, realizing that the misguided focus on surfaces created real costs. “It has resulted in closed playgrounds, it has resulted in nets being removed from basketball courts, it has resulted in library books being quarantined. It has resulted in entire missed school days for a thorough clean. It led to the fact that you can’t share a pencil. So this is all hygienic theater, and it is a direct consequence of the surface transfer not being properly classified as low risk. “

Roni Caryn Rabin contributed to the coverage

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Health

Elon Musk’s Neuralink exhibits video of monkey utilizing thoughts to play Pong

Elon Musk’s Neuralink shows video of monkey using mind to play Pong

Jeff Miller / University of Wisconsin-Madison

Neuralink, the brain-machine interface company founded by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has released a YouTube video of a macaque monkey named Pager playing the Pong video game with his mind.

The 3-minute 27-second video that Musk shared on Twitter late Thursday appears to show the monkey controlling a computer with its brain activity.

“A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

In the video, a narrator tries to explain how pager pong can be played with his mind.

The nine-year-old monkey, who had two Neuralink devices attached to each side of his brain about six weeks ago, learned how to use a joystick to move a cursor over targets on a screen to get a banana smoothie delivered through a straw says the narrator.

He goes on to explain that the company’s “Link” devices recorded pager neuron activity as he interacted with the computer. It was possible because of the more than 2,000 tiny wires implanted in the regions of his motor cortex that coordinate hand and arm movements, the narrator said.

This data was then fed into a “decoder algorithm” to predict pager’s intended hand movements in real time.

After the decoder was calibrated, Neuralink said the monkey could use it to move the cursor where it wanted it instead of relying on the joystick.

In fact, the YouTube video shows pager controlling a paddle in the arcade game Pong while the joystick is unplugged.

Pigs to monkeys

In August, Neuralink ran a live demo of its technology on three pigs. An audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs Musk named Gertrude.

Ultimately, Neuralink, headquartered in San Francisco, wants to increase the speed at which information can flow from the human brain to a machine.

While the technology is still in its infancy, Neuralink hopes their devices will soon enable paralyzed people to operate machines with their minds.

On Thursday, Musk said the first Neuralink product would enable a paralyzed person to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using their thumbs.

The AI ​​is only getting smarter, and Neuralink’s technology could one day allow people to “ride along,” Musk said in a January interview at the clubhouse.

To illustrate the pace of advancement in AI, the innovator – who believes machine intelligence will ultimately outperform human intelligence – pointed to breakthroughs in research laboratories like OpenAI, which he co-founded, and DeepMind, a London AI laboratory, which was acquired by Google in 2014. DeepMind “basically has no more games to win,” said Musk, who was an early investor in the company.

According to Musk, people are already “cyborgs” because they have a tertiary “digital layer” thanks to phones, computers and applications.

“With a direct neural interface, we can improve the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital tertiary layer by many orders of magnitude,” he said. “I would probably say at least 1,000 or maybe 10,000 or more.”

The digital plane he is referring to can be anything from a person’s iPhone to their Twitter account.

Long-term, Musk claims that Neuralink could enable humans to send concepts to one another using telepathy and after death to exist in a “saved state” that could then be put into a robot or another human. He admitted that he was into science fiction.