Edgar, R.C., Taylor, J., Lin, V. et al. Petabase-scale sequence alignment catalyses viral discovery. [Full text – Free] Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04332-2: “Public databases contain a planetary collection of nucleic acid sequences, but their systematic exploration has been inhibited by a lack of efficient methods for searching this corpus, which (at the time of writing) exceeds… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Medicine
Free N95 masks are arriving at pharmacies and grocery stores. Here’s how to get yours
WHYY – “Nearly a week after the Biden administration announced it will deploy 400 million free N95 masks to the public, the high-quality face coverings are starting to arrive at pharmacies and local grocery stores. “Every person is allowed up to 3 free masks pending availability,” the Department of Health and Human Services says. The… Continue Reading
Study identities how antibody levels differ between those who suffer long COVID and those who don’t
“Published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the new findings are the first time scientists have identified how antibody levels differ between those who suffer long COVID and those who don’t. By combining the new data with a few risk factors, Boyman and his colleagues have developed a model that can calculate long COVID risk for any patient… Continue Reading
Charting an Omicron Infection
The New York Times: “In less than two months, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has spread around the globe and caused a staggering number of new infections. Omicron now accounts for more than 99.5 percent of new infections in the United States, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The… Continue Reading
The public library is the latest place to pick up a coronavirus test. Librarians are overwhelmed.
Washington Post: “…As public libraries in the District and across the nation have been pressed into service as coronavirus test distribution sites, librarians have become the latest front-line workers of the pandemic. Phones ring every few minutes with yet another call from someone asking about the library’s supply of free coronavirus tests, often asking medical… Continue Reading
Find a COVID-19 vaccine near you
“Use Vaccines.gov to find a location near you, then call or visit their website to make an appointment. Find COVID-19 Vaccines & Boosters“ Continue Reading
Immune system vs. virus: Why omicron had experts worried from the start
Ars Technica: “Right from omicron’s first description, researchers were concerned about the variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Looking over the list of mutations it carried, scientists could identify a number that would likely make the variant more infectious. Other mutations were even more worrying, as they would likely interfere with the immune system’s ability to… Continue Reading
Starting later this week, some at-risk Americans become eligible for a 4th shot.
The New York Times: “Some people with a weakened immune system can get a fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine as early as this coming week, according to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were updated last week. The C.D.C. endorsed a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for… Continue Reading
Psychological Language on Twitter Predicts County-Level Heart Disease Mortality
Eichstaedt JC, Schwartz HA, Kern ML, et al. Psychological language on Twitter predicts county-level heart disease mortality. Psychol Sci. 2015;26(2):159-169. doi:10.1177/0956797614557867. “Hostility and chronic stress are known risk factors for heart disease, but they are costly to assess on a large scale. We used language expressed on Twitter to characterize community-level psychological correlates of age-adjusted… Continue Reading
Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid?
The Guardian Opinion – Resia Pretorius [Resia Pretorius is the Head of Department and a Distinguished Research Professor in the Physiological Sciences Department, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa] “One of the biggest failures during the Covid-19 pandemic is our slow response in diagnosing and treating long Covid. As many as 100 million people worldwide… Continue Reading
NEW chart for US Covid-watchers – tracks cases in all states and impact on hospitals
Via John Burn-Murdoch, @jburnmurdoch – Stories, stats & scatterplots for @FinancialTimes | Mainly Covid for now | Visiting senior fellow @LSEdataScience | john.burn [email protected] | “Key question with Omicron wave is whether severe disease — hospitalisations & ICU — decouples from cases. In the UK it has, but there are signs the US decoupling is… Continue Reading
Should I Just Get Omicron Over With?
The Atlantic: “If you’re vaccinated, an infection might not make you super sick, but don’t count on it making you super immune, either…Viruses that linger too long in the body could exact a punishing cost—transmission, disease, death. But if they’re cleared out too fast, they might not have enough time to teach the body something… Continue Reading
