Multiple reports with this overall ranking of neutralization, relative immune evasion Here are a few: http://cell.com/cell/retrieve/pii/S0092867421004281?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867421004281%3Fshowall%3Dtrue… http://cell.com/cell/retrieve/pii/S0092867421002981?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867421002981%3Fshowall%3Dtrue… https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6534/1103/tab-article-info

The variants of concern/interest fall into a spectrum of immune evasiveness, w/ B.1.351 being most; B.1.1.7, B.1.429 least. This property pertains to potential for reinfection & some reduction in vaccine efficacy My prelim estimates based on publications/preprints, subject to Δ

New data source from HHS using Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data estimates vaccine hesitancy on a county level. While the counties are quite similar to their respective states, it gives us a more granular analysis to adjust strategies. https://aspe.hhs.gov/pdf-report/vaccine-hesitancy

For those who are wondering: There is a slight association (r = 0.34) between the percentage a county voted for Trump in 2020 and estimated hesitancy levels. As @JReinerMD mentioned, GOP state, county and local levels need to do their part to promote vaccination.

There are 3 types of disaster responses: •panicking or freezing; •taking action; and •ignoring the disaster. That last one is the most common response to sudden disasters, like when, for example, a ferry sinks. I didn’t expect it would also be most common in a pandemic.

There is a Twitter account for the Great Barrington Declaration. It is totally silent on what is presently unfolding in India. Is it really possible to watch the surge there and in Brazil and not feel challenged in your beliefs about herd immunity? for otherwise smart people?

2012.09353v1

The global spread of the novel coronavirus is affected by the spread of related mis-information — the so-called COVID-19 Infodemic — that makes populations morevulnerable to the disease through resistance to mitigation efforts. Here we analyzethe prevalence and diffusion of links to low-credibility content about the pandemicacross two major social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook. We characterizecross-platform similarities and differences in popular sources, diffusion patterns, influ-encers, coordination, and automation. Comparing the two platforms, we find diver-gence among the prevalence of popular low-credibility sources and suspicious videos.A minority of accounts and pages exert a strong influence on each platform. Thesemisinformation “superspreaders” are often associated with the low-credibility sourcesand tend to be verified by the platforms. On both platforms, there is evidence of co-ordinated sharing of Infodemic content. The overt nature of this manipulation pointsto the need for societal-level rather than in-house mitigation strategies. However, wehighlight limits imposed by inconsistent data-access policies on our capability to studyharmful manipulations of information ecosystems.

The COVID-19 Infodemic: Twitter versus Facebook

Officials warn that falsified cards could endanger lives and undermine efforts to end the pandemic

‘Ripe for fraud’: Coronavirus vaccination cards support burgeoning scams

Officials decided that strong action was needed to alert the public, doctors to unusual cases and their nonstandard treatment

J&J Covid-19 Vaccine Pause Driven by Risk of Mistreating Blood Clots

10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00869-2

Heneghan and colleagues’ systematic review, funded by WHO, published in March, 2021, as a preprint, states: “The lack of recoverable viral culture samples of SARS-CoV-2 prevents firm conclusions to be drawn about airborne transmission”.1 This conclusion, and the wide circulation of the review’s findings,is concerning because of the public health implications.If an infectious virus spreads predominantly through large respiratory droplets that fall quickly, the key control measures are reducing direct contact, cleaning surfaces, physical barriers, physical distancing, use of masks within droplet distance, respiratory hygiene,and wearing high-grade protection only for so-called aerosol-generating health-careprocedures. Such policies need not distinguish between indoors and outdoors, since a gravity-driven mechanism for transmission would be similar for both settings. But if an infectious virus is mainly airborne, an individual could potentially be infected when they inhale aerosols produced when an infected person exhales, speaks, shouts, sings, sneezes, or coughs. Reducing airborne transmission of virus requires measures to avoid inhalation of infectious aerosols, including ventilation, air filtration, reducing crowding and time spent indoors, use of masks whenever indoors, attention to mask quality and fit, and higher-grade protection for health-care staff and front-line workers.2 Airborne transmission of respiratory viruses is difficult to demonstrate directly.3 Mixed findings from studies that seek to detect viable pathogen in air are therefore insufficient grounds for concluding that a pathogen is not airborne if the totality of scientific evidence indicates otherwise. Decades of painstaking research, which did not include capturing live pathogens in the air, showed that diseases once considered to be spread by droplets are airborne.4 Ten streams of evidence collectively support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted primarily by the airborne route.

Ten scientific reasons in support ofairborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2

Many of those with medical conditions are concerned and nervous about the risk of leaving their homes

‘If we catch Covid, we die’: UK shielders reflect on still feeling unsafe

All adults to be eligible from 1 May, making jab available to at least 400 million more people

Indian expansion of Covid vaccine drive may further strain supplies

NSW Health reclassifies three coronavirus cases to locally-acquired after testing showed they shared same viral sequence as infected family next door

Family of three contract Covid from infected neighbours in hotel quarantine in Sydney

Concerns grow after sharp drop in numbers coming forward, with almost 15% of staff still unprotected

Fears frontline NHS staff are refusing to get Covid vaccine

Using an electronic health records network we estimated the absolute incidence of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) in the two weeks following COVID-19 diagnosis(N=513,284),or influenza (N=172,742),or receipt of the BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccines(N=489,871).Theincidence of portal vein thrombosis (PVT) was also assessed in these groups, as well asthe baselineCVTincidence over a two-week period. The incidence of CVT after COVID-19 diagnosis was 39.0 per million people (95% CI, 25.2–60.2). This washigher thanthe CVT incidenceafter influenza (0.0 per million people, 95% CI 0.0–22.2, adjusted RR=6.73, P=.003) or after receiving BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccine (4.1 per million people, 95% CI 1.1–14.9, adjusted RR=6.36, P<.001). The relative risks were similar if a broader definition of CVT was used. For PVT, the incidence was 436.4 per million people (382.9-497.4) after COVID-19, 98.4 (61.4-157.6) after influenza, and 44.9 (29.7-68.0) after BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273. The incidence of CVT following COVID-19 was higher than the incidence observed across the entire health records network (0.41 per million people over any 2-week period). Laboratory test results, availablein a subsetof the COVID-19 patients,provide preliminary evidence suggestive of raised D-dimer, lowered fibrinogen, and an increased rate of thrombocytopenia in the CVT and PVT groups. Mortality was 20% and 18.8% respectively. These data show that the incidence of CVT issignificantly increased after COVID-19,andgreater than that observed with BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccines. The risk of CVT following COVID-19 is alsohigher than the latest estimate from the European Medicines Agency for theincidence associated withChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (5.0 per million people, 95% CI 4.3–5.8). Although requiring replication and corroboration, the present data highlight the risk of serious thrombotic events in COVID-19, and can help contextualizethe risks and benefits of vaccinationin this regard.

Cerebral venous thrombosis: a retrospective cohort study of 513,284 confirmed COVID-19 cases and a comparison with 489,871 people receiving a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine

Inhaling budesonide found to shorten recovery for over-65s, and over-50s with underlying conditions

Asthma drug helps older people cope with Covid at home – study

App was to have been updated before English lockdown easing, but firms objected to data-sharing changes

Apple and Google block NHS Covid app update over privacy breaches

The director general of the health authority said he “would not hesitate” to use this vaccine if Denmark’s Covid-19 situation was in a worse position.

Denmark abandons AstraZeneca vaccine, EMA to rule on J&J jab next week

Let's talk about the background risk of CVST (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis) versus in those who got J&J vaccine. We are going to focus in on women ages 20-50. We are going to compare the same time period and the same disease (CVST). DEEP DIVE KEY NUMBERS!

In this series, we discuss diving into some of the broader impacts of COVID-19. This week, we talk about the effects of the pandemic on education.

Social and Economic Impacts of COVID: Education

Many scientists critical of University College London Covid-19 forecast as ‘over-confident and over-optimistic’

UCL team’s claim that herd immunity set to be achieved in UK disputed

Political appointees also tried to blunt scientific findings they deemed unfavorable to Trump, according to new documents from House probe.

Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show

FacebookTwitterLinkedInWhatsAppMORE THAN a billion doses of covid-19 vaccine have been made. Now comes the hard part: ensuring every country in the world has access to them. Can distribution be made more equitable? Alok Jha and Natasha Loder are joined by Edward Carr, The Economist’s deputy editor, and Sondre Solstad, senior data journalist.With Seth Berkley of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Runtime: 40 min

Vaccine equity—what does fair distribution look like?

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control.

China admits its vaccines aren't very good

One of the biggest obstacles in America's race to vaccinate against the coronavirus has been that substantial proportions of certain groups choose not to vaccinate.

Red states are vaccinating at a lower rate than blue states

Three-quarters of population could be fully immunised by first week in August, according to forecasts

UK’s Covid vaccine programme on track despite AstraZeneca problems

Covid-19 has brought many changes: we must learn to embrace the good and learn from the bad

‘We need to adapt in order to grow’: how to emerge from lockdown stronger, happier, healthier

NEW EVIDENCE PYRAMID

Throughout the pandemic, a widespread inability to reason counterfactually has been on display. For example, some people apparently think lockdowns don't work. They seem unable to imagine the situation had there *not* been a lockdown. Lockdowns are costly, but they work!

.@POTUS says local doctors would be more effective at getting the message across about vaccines to Trump supporters than the former president would be

10.31234/osf.io/tbrea

This paper asks how strategies of information sampling are affected by a learner’s goal. Based on a theoretical analysis and two behavioral experiments, we show that learning goals have a crucial impact on the decision of when to stop sampling. This decision, in turn, affects the statistical properties (e.g. average values, or standard deviations) of the data collected under different goals. Specifically, we find that sampling with the goal of making a binary choice can introduce a correlation between the average value of a sample and its size (the number of values sampled). Across multiple rounds of sampling, this has the potential of biasing learn- ers’ inferences about the underlying process that generated the samples, specifically if learners ignore sample size when making these inferences. We find that people are indeed biased in this way and make different inferences about the same data-generating process when sampling with different learning goals. These findings highlight yet another danger of inferring general patterns from samples of evidence the learner had a hand in collecting.

The distorting effects of deciding to stop sampling information

EU regulators are reviewing reports of low blood platelets in patients who received any of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna.

EU probes low platelet safety signal with COVID-19 shots

Experts are looking into a possible link.

A Small Number of People Developed This Rare Blood Disorder After Getting a COVID Vaccine—Here's What to Know

What we know about singing and COVID-19

26 states have over 1k people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Hospitalizations in CA, TX, and IL account for almost a quarter of all COVID-19 current hospitalizations.

12 states reported over 5k COVID-19 cases today.

Our daily update is published. States reported 1.5M tests, 164k cases, and 1,869 deaths. A record 79k people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US. Today's death count is the highest since May 7.

The November 11 session of the COVID-19 and the Law Colloquium focused on Access to Justice and Legal Innovation.

COVID-19 and the Law | Access to Justice and Legal Innovation

Epidemiologists from Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease discuss the uncertain future of the COVID-19 outbreak and the possible scenarios for it's end.

COVID-19: What does the end look like?

Also, on pre-print servers, your works looks much better; they have social tools for sharing; and metrics to see how many times your paper has been downloaded. And the newest sites make it super easy to get started.

Cloud drives are great to collaborate, but if you want your research to be widely read before formal publication, pre-print repositories are better alternative. Pre-print entries are persistent, meaning your work will always be available even if you delete that dropbox file.

I'm really surprised to see a lot of academics sharing their working papers/pre-prints from cloud drives (i.e. @Dropbox @googledrive) Don't! Use @socarxiv @SSRN @ZENODO_ORG, @OSFramework, @arxiv (+ other) instead. They offer persisent DOIs and are indexed by Google scholar

Percentage of total worldwide flights tracked appearing in each image above: 2018: 46% 2019: 49% 2020: 65%

The skies above North America at Noon ET on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Active flights 2018: 6,815 2019: 7,630 2020: 6,972 https://flightradar24.com/35.17,-90.21/5

NEW: The Minstry of Education says "The value of the contract was $942,000 for McKinsey to provide feedback on the childcare and school re-opening plans." The rest -- more than $3 million was to assist the COVID-19 recovery planning. #onpoli

BREAKING: CTVNews has learned McKinsey & Company was paid $1.6million to help create the COVID-19 command tables, and $3.2 million to help with the school re-opening strategy. https://mckinsey.com/about-us/covid-response-center/home… #onpoli

The Seminar will try to analyze the macro, institutional and micro financial effects of pandemic shocks. Here are some of the main topics:Insurance companies and pandemic uncertainties: Is it possible to ensure businesses and families for pandemic losses?How to include periodic epidemic shocks in macroeconomic forecasting.Social distancing and the shove to e-banking innovations and changes.Investments behaviors in financial markets during pandemic turbulence.Pandemic turbulence and financial stability.Recovery fund or recovery bund for European growth.Pandemic effect on philanthropy and social finance.Changes of consumer behavior and credit during pandemic crisis.Nudging to neutralize ambiguity and uncertainty aversion of financial investment during pandemic crisis.

PANDEMIC SHOCKS, FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS, MARKETS AND BEHAVIOURS