Pandemic Fatigue

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/well/live/mammograms-older-women.html

A NYT article about whether women 75 years old and older should receive screening mammograms. It is known that breast cancer becomes extremely more common as women age. Therefore it would seem of utmost importance to screen in order to catch cancer in its early stages so treatment can be more effective  and simpler. The caveat here is, since this population is more likely to die of other causes before untreated and undiagnosed breast cancer becomes a threat to their health and lives. It is also impossible to determine which cancers detected on a mammogram might be slow-growing and therefore not warrant treatment. There is also some evidence that breast cancers detected in older women tend to be less aggressive and resolve favorably. The ACS guidelines specify that women with an average risk of developing breast cancer should have yearly mammograms after age 45, changing to every other year after age 55 and continuing every year or two for as long as they have a life expectancy of ten years or more. This conflicts with the US Preventative Services Task Force, which recommends stopping routine screening mammograms at age 75 regardless of life expectancy.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html

An article from the NYT about how to determine what level of infection can provide herd immunity. At this level, the virus will be unable to find susceptible individuals in order to survive. Scientists suggest that the magic number is 70% but it could be only 50%. Sophisticated modeling has  shown that it is possible that there is no community in the word with enough immune residents to resist a second wave. There are some communities that do have significant immunity. This is calculated by the r-naught, which indicates how many people each infected person passes the virus to. The initial calculations assumed that every person in the community mixed randomly with each other person in the community and passed the virus with the same likelihood, which has been shown to be incorrect., since susceptibility could vary from community to community. Researchers in Mumbai did a random household survey to take blood for antibody testing. The results indicated a wide disparity between the city's richest and poorest neighborhoods. One conclusion about London and NYC was that these cities may have reached herd immunity, possibly because of pre-existing immunity to common cold coronaviruses or memory cells which recognize the new coronaviruses, but other experts reject this theory.

. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/nyregion/freshkills-garbage-dump-nyc.html

An article from the NYT about the recovery of the Fresh Kills Landfill. The Arthur Kill is a tidal straight that separates Staten Island from New Jersey. Twenty years ago barges routinely left College Point, Queens loaded with garbage headed for Fresh Kills but this voyage is made no longer since Fresh Kills has been rebranded as Freshkills and a park has been build at the site of the old dump which will receive its first visitors next Spring. The idea for this transformation came from Major Bloomberg during his first term. A problem in the transition from dump to park is adapting 150 million tons of garbage, which involves capping it with plastic, covering it with fresh soil and planting native grasses in the soil and transforming the four mountains of garbage into soft green hills "straddling the convergence of creeks". Henry David Thoreau lived on Staten Island and walked the shore, climbed the hills and may have boated in the wide open streams of Fresh Kills.  Tidal creeks and salt marshes like Fresh Kills are, according to the author, "the lifeblood of the giant Hudson-Raritan estuary, which includes the lower Passaic and Hackensack watershed referred to as the Meadowlands."

Solipsist's Soiree Social Distance

 https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/07/pandemic-hitting-scientist-parents-hard-and-some-solutions-may-backfire

This article in Science mag reports data in Nature Human Behavior about the problems scientist parents have that they always have had but that now have increased logarithmically, if not exponentially, or maybe those are the same thing.  How can a scientist balance professional and parental pressure? This has always been a problem for women, as the peak time for childbirth/rearing corresponds with career expectations. Scientists with children below 5 years of age report working 38% fewer research hours than normal; those raising children between ages 6 and 11 worked 32% fewer hours. The article suggests that teaching loads be redistributed away from professors with small children. One of the professors interviewed said that she is unable to mentor junior colleagues since she is barely surviving with young children at home. What occurs to this writer is: what is going to happen to the development and advancement of scientific thought? 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/climate/trump-methane.html 

This is a NYT article about the weakening by the EPA of a major climate change regulation, rolling back the last major Obama-era climate rule. New studies, in fact, have indicated that the scale of methane pollution "could  be driving the planet toward a climate crisi faster than expected."  The discontinuance of these regulations, viewed by the Trump administrations as "burdensome and ineffective" will garner $100 million a year through 2030 and lead to the release of more than 850,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere concurrently. Robert Howarth, an earth systems scientist at Cornell, last year published a study blaming North American gas production for 1/2 of the global increase in methane emissions of the past decade.  And the next ten will be worse.  The bad news is that emissions are probably higher than what the EPA says they are due to the reliance on self-reported company data by the EPA and some testing that is not comprehensive. 

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901775768/eagles-and-mockingbirds-catch-a-break-as-judge-strikes-down-trump-bird-opinion

This is an article from NPR about a NY federal judge striking down a Trump administration decision to roll back protections for migratory birds. In the ruling that was rolled back, with the judge citing a quote from "To Kill a Mockingbird", companies that killed a migratory bird during their work would no longer face threats of prosecution, The Audubon Society and other conservation groups filed complaints against the Trump administration in 2018. "For decades this law has been a proven incentive to remind companies to do the right thing for wildlife," interim chief conservation officer for the National Audubon Society, Sarah Greenberger said. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted in 1918. Today, a violation of the act is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $15,000 and imprisonment for up to six months. The birds protected by this law include eagles, owls, mockingbirds and vultures.

Dining for Dummies

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/510

This is an article from Science magazine about viruses and their cellular receptors. This is complex because  various factors determine entry of substances into cells, like receptors and transporters, which are proteins. Proteins are encoded by genes, so a particular gene sequence regulates these receptors and transporters which control which tissues in the body are infected. We know that this virus infects various bodily tissues, and not uniformly. The article mentions the Spike protein, by which the virus latches on to the Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme (ACE) 2 to enter cells. ACE2 also functions in things like blood pressure and inflammation. So there you go. This is a pretty technical article but worth getting through. The enzyme ACE (a different enzyme) performs a chemical function, changing the hormone precursor (not the active hormone) Angiotensin I to Angiotensin, which is an antagonist of Angiotensin II. ACE2 is balanced by ACE. Both ACE and ACE2 are highly present in the pulmonary (lung) endothelial cells and blood vessels. ACE2 is also expressed in the intestine, which explains some of the GI symptoms.

The article also goes into the deterioration that causes severe systemic COVID-19. And the immune system involvement in the disease. Immune-mediated damage might involve complement-activation, antibody-dependent enhancement or cytokine release or all of the above. The conclusion is always the same, and sadly not within reach at this point: 

I quote: Therefore, it is essential to identify individuals with early SARS-CoV-2 infection who are at high risk of progression to severe disease, and test antiviral therapies to prevent viral entry and replication. It should not be too difficult to identify these “at risk” patients who are in danger of progressing to severe disease through contact tracing and testing, even prior to symptom onset.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/health/covid-19-vaccine-monkeys.htmThis is an article by Carl Zimmer in the NYT about clinical trials which are proceeding with the J and J vaccine and one made by the Moderna company. An important quality of a vaccine is whether it protects from infection, which is called a challenge. And how long the protection lasts. There is no getting around the protection, but if the duration of the immunity is shorter than necessary, boosting the protection with a second vaccination is the usual course of events. The J and J vaccine uses a vector to carry the Spike protein gene into the body and there the gene makes the coronavirus proteins, which  provoke an immune response. After a single injection of one vaccine, scientists waited for a week, then injected animals with the coronavirus and looked at the amount of protection offered. In 6 out of the 7 vaccines variants, partial protection was provided and the seventh was more powerful because no virus was detected in the challenged, vaccinated monkeys.  J and J is advancing this seventh vaccine into a Phase I human safety trial, which is preliminary to the Phase III efficacy trial.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/business/coronavirus-vaccine-.htm

This is a NYT article about the warp speed fallacy. It is actually about how clinical trials' new audience seems to be Wall St, with the stock price of one small biotech company in Pennsylvania surging based on promising early results. The article points out that this same company announced "encouraging news" about malaria, Zika and cancer vaccines but has never brought a vaccine to market. Shares went up as much as 963%. Insiders trading on the stock, made a big profit. The vaccine needs to be administered by what sounds like a version of an electroporator, which moves DNA into cells.  A 36-person trial was done in April, with reports that the vaccine was well-tolerated and generated an immune response. But no data was presented, meaning that there is no way to tell if it works to protect people against the coronavirus.  

  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/design/bronx-virtual-tour.html This is an article from the NYT about the home of the Bronx Bombers in antiquity. Not in 1967, when I lived there; saw James Brown at the stadium as well as the bombers, ate ice cream at Addie Vallens. The Lenape name for the Bronx is Minnewits. The Bronx is the only part of NYC that is actually attached to the rest of North America (Manhattan and Staten are islands, Brooklyn and Queens are part of Long Island.) The article format is interview with Eric Sanderson, senior conservation ecologist of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who holds my ideal job and is based at the NY Zoological Gardens. To those of my audience who remember the Yanks' transit from the Polo Grounds in Manhattan across the Hudson, salutations. Mr. Sanderson quotes a paper (unnamed) which speculates that during the Pleistocene Era, about 1.5 million years ago, the Hudson River flowed the path of what is now the Harlem River, not along the west side of Manhattan, past the future Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, through Flushing Meadows, and carved out the valley under Jamaica Bay.  Later glaciations rearranged everything. The interviewer's conclusion is that the city's rivers, like its inhabitants, have changed neighborhoods and assumed new identities.