The Atlantic – Cases of COVID-19 are rising fast. Vaccine uptake has plateaued. The pandemic will be over one day—but the way there is different now. “This new surge brings a jarring sense of déjà vu. America has fallen prey to many of the same self-destructive but alluring instincts that I identified last year. It… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Medicine
Why the CDC changed its mask guidance, according to an epidemiologist
Vox: “An expert explains why vaccinated people should wear masks in some indoor settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now done an about-face on its masking guidelines for people vaccinated against Covid-19. Back in May, the agency said that people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 could “resume activities without wearing masks… Continue Reading
4 Reasons I’m Wearing a Mask Again
The Atlantic – “Our vaccines are extraordinary, but right now they need all the help they can get…But the pandemic is once again entering a new phase that feels more dangerous and more in flux, even for the people lucky enough to have received their lifesaving shots. A more transmissible variant—one that can discombobulate vaccine-trained… Continue Reading
Most unvaccinated Americans don’t want shots
CNN: “Most in the media have been urging Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. That hasn’t always been the case at Fox News, however. Many of the hosts have peddled anti-vaccine rhetoric. This past week, though, a number of hosts at Fox have taken a more pro-vaccine tone. One reason could be that the… Continue Reading
AI firm DeepMind puts database of the building blocks of life online
The Guardian: “Last year the artificial intelligence group DeepMind cracked a mystery that has flummoxed scientists for decades: stripping bare the structure of proteins, the building blocks of life. Now, having amassed a database of nearly all human protein structures, the company is making the resource available online free for researchers to use. The key… Continue Reading
Outbreak.info
“Outbreak.info is a standardized, searchable platform to discover and explore COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 data from the Center for Viral Systems Biology. Outbreak.info combines together data and metadata from a large number of data sources About the API – This site is a collection of APIs developed from the Su / Wu Labs at Scripps Research… Continue Reading
The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta
The Atlantic: Vaccines are still beating the variants, but the unvaccinated world is being pummeled. “Fifteen months after the novel coronavirus shut down much of the world, the pandemic is still raging. Few experts guessed that by this point, the world would have not one vaccine but many, with 3 billion doses already delivered. At… Continue Reading
OpenSAFELY COVID Vaccine coverage report
“OpenSAFELY is a new secure analytics platform for electronic patient records built on behalf of NHS England to deliver urgent academic and operational research during the pandemic. This is our regular weekly report on COVID-19 vaccination coverage in England using data from 40% of general practices that use TPP electronic health record software. The data… Continue Reading
Big data: With great data comes great responsibility
Open Access Government – “Dr Florian Kerschbaum from the University of Waterloo, argues that with great data comes great responsibility in this big data focus. Big data helps us combat the pandemic and build cleaner tech-nology – amongst many other benefits. We collect exposure data to contain and trace the spread of the coronavirus. Genome… Continue Reading
Have we reached peak ransomware?
ZDNet – “How the internet’s biggest security problem has grown and what happens next. A string of high-profile cyberattacks has made ransomware an impossible issue to ignore – in fact, even world leaders are talking about it. Will this be enough to make cyber criminals think twice? Ransomware has become such a significant problem that… Continue Reading
Move over CRISPR, the retrons are coming
Wyss Institute, Harvard University: “While the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has become the poster child for innovation in synthetic biology, it has some major limitations. CRISPR-Cas9 can be programmed to find and cut specific pieces of DNA, but editing the DNA to create desired mutations requires tricking the cell into using a new piece of… Continue Reading
Over a billion records belonging to CVS Health exposed online
ZDNet: “In another example of misconfigured cloud services impacting security, over a billion records belonging to CVS Health have been exposed online. On Thursday, WebsitePlanet, together with researcher Jeremiah Fowler, revealed the discovery of an online database belonging to CVS Health. The database was not password-protected and had no form of authentication in place to… Continue Reading
