A Warning From Sweden
Sweden now has among the highest per capita death rates from Covid-19 in the world. Why? The answer is simple. Sweden was lax in its implementation of protective measures in the face of the outbreak, refusing to implement broad stay at home …
Two Weeks And Ten Million Covid Tests In Wuhan
Over the last two weeks of May, all residents over the age of 5 in Wuhan, China were tested for the presence of active SARS-CoV-2 virus replication. The tests identified 300 people with active infection. None of those tested show any signs …
Covid In Kids: A Reason To Be Wary Of Covid Vaccines
More than a dozen Covid vaccines are in development, with many of them already being tested in humans and many more to begin human trials soon. But what do we actually know about these potential vaccines and why might we be wary …
Covid-19 In Children: A Detailed Study Of 10 Italian Children
The current issue of the Lancet carries a study of 10 Italian children diagnosed with a Kawasaki-like syndrome, recently reclassified by the World Health Organization as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome—Children (MIS-C). The study compares the Covid-19 related syndrome to that observed for 19 children with …
Confronting Barriers To Covid-19 Vaccine Acceptance
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is when we will have a Covid-19 vaccine. To that I say, the question is not when, but if. If we don’t have a vaccine, we don’t yet know how safe and effective it …
A Key Protein That Leads To Covid-19 Infection May Be Less Common In Children, Researchers Find
Once inside the body, the virus moves around by attaching to the same ACE2 protein on other tissues deep in the lungs, the heart, and the kidneys. The receptor can also be found in the lining of blood vessels, and possibly even …
The Way That Covid-19 Tricks The Immune System Could Result In More Severe Illness
The virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-2), has a nasty trick up its sleeve. Upon infection, most viruses trigger a vigorous immune response from both arms of the immune system: a lymphoid response and a myeloid response. Interferons released from infected cells …
It’s Too Early For The US Government To Place Risky, Billion Dollar Bets On Covid Vaccines
As American taxpayers, we are justified in asking why the United States government is giving a billion dollars to a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, to develop a very early stage Covid-19 vaccine. Mind you, I am not particularly upset that AstraZeneca is …
What Happens If We Can’t Find A Coronavirus Vaccine That Works?
Last Friday, amidst all the heat, hype, and big bucks that greeted even the most modest advances in Covid-19 vaccine development in the United States, a far more sober assessment came from our friends across the pond: “Why We May Not Get a …
Will Memorial Day 2020 be remembered as the holiday when COVID-19 got the upper hand?
We may have the reason to remember Memorial Day 2020 as the holiday when COVID-19 exploded. Looking around the country over the weekend, there was little evidence that people were making the sacrifices needed to save their own lives and those of …