The Solipsist Sans Soiree

https://scitechdaily.com/new-artificial-intelligence-diagnostic-can-predict-covid-19-without-testing/
This is an article from Scitech Daily, about a group from King's College London, Mass General, and a company called Zoe (why would I trust a company with a dog's name) that are working to develop AI to diagnose Covid-19 based on symptoms. This may be of use in communities where access to testing is limited (NJ?) and will be tested in UK and US.  The researchers analyzed data gathered from about 2.5 million people in the UK and US who had been regularly inputting their health status in a COVID symptoms study app, around 0.3 of whom had logged symptoms associated with COVID-19. Of these, 18,374 reported having had a test for coronavirus, with 7,178 people testing positive. They then investigated which symptoms associated with COVID-19 were most likely to be also associated with a positive test. Loss of taste and smell (anosmia) was particularly striking, with two thirds of users testing positive for coronavirus infection reporting this symptom compared with just over 0.5 of the participants who tested negative.  They created a mathematical model that predicted with nearly 80% accuracy whether an individual is likely to have COVID-19 based on their age, sex and a combination of four key symptoms: loss of smell or taste, severe or persistent cough, fatigue and skipping meals. Applying this model to the entire group of over 800,000 app users experiencing symptoms predicted that just under a fifth of those who were unwell (17.42%) were likely to have COVID-19 at that time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-leadership.html

This is an article from NYT about the female leaders of several countries who have demonstrated effective and compassionate leadership, decency, and respect for science, including  Ardern, Merkel, Frederiksen, Marin and Solberg, according to the NYT editors, “dulling the impact of disease upon their people.” Angela Merkel, herself a scientist, acted quickly and calmly to get testing underway for the German people. In Iceland, Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir led the government in offering free testing for all and organizing a thorough tracking system. The editors further suggest that there are “qualities beyond politics, economics and science, qualities of character that can’t be faked, chiefly compassion” that make a good leader in a crisis.  


https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/15/lancet-editorial-trump-administration-coronavirus-response/
Article from the Washpost reporting the Lancet's editorial advoating Trump's replacement by someone who supports the role of the CDC and doesn't allow partisan politics to guide public health policy at the expense of human lives. The editors of the Lancet, in the history-making editorial decry the fact that the CDC “has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser” and lament the removal of a major CDC offical in China last year which left an intelligence vacuum.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/13/opinion/inequality-cities-life-expectancy.html

This is a Sunday Review NYT article with useful graphics of features of cities compared across various cities (wages differentials, life expectancies, educational attainment, portion of work commutes an hour or longer, broadband access, venture capital investments.  Physical mobility is to a great extent controlled by income levels. Average income has soared over the past 50 years in nearly every metro area but have risen largely because incomes for affluent have increased greatly but the graphics tell all.

 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01449-8

This is an article from Nature magazine about the small likelihood that scientists will ever discover how the coronavirus got into people. Since Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of the virus, scientists have been searching genomic databases of animals. They identified RATG13, the horseshoe bat, which is 96% similar to humans. The phylogenetic tree suggests that 50 years have elapsed since the horseshoe bat virus and the human virus shared a common ancestor. This suggests that there was an intermediate host and the pangolin has not been ruled out. Computational biologists and other computer modelers are working on this problem.

Three Soups and Two Breads in a Lock-Down

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system#


This article in Science Magazine points to the possible use of virus in wastewater as a marker for future cases of Covid-19.This Paris report is pre-published in the journal Med Rxiv. " Sewers offer near–real-time outbreak data, because they constantly collect feces and urine that can contain coronavirus shed by infected humans." Sebastien Wurzel is a virologist in the Eau de Paris, the city's water authority. They noted “high concentrations” of viral RNA several days before 10 March, the first day that Paris recorded multiple deaths from COVID-19 and concentrations continued to rise a few days ahead of an acceleration in clinical cases and deaths in Paris." Besides prediction of the development of cases, wastewater sampling also picks up virus associated with the vast number of infected people who do not present symptoms for the disease. This has also been done in Australia.
 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/11/humans-and-neanderthals-co-existed-in-europe-far-longer-than-thought

Writing in Nature and Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology revealed that modern humans were present in Europe at least 46,000 years ago, according to new research on objects found in Bulgaria, and overlapped with Neanderthals for far longer than previously thought. Tools and remains were found at a cave called Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria indicating that modern humans and Neanderthals were present at the same time in Europe for several thousand years, giving them enough time for biological and cultural interaction.

 

https://theconversation.com/your-genes-could-determine-whether-the-coronavirus-puts-you-in-the-hospital-and-were-starting-to-unravel-which-ones-matter-137145
This is from The Conversation, and it describes research on computer models that analyze different alleles in the HLA or Human Leukocyte Antigen System which code for proteins that are on the immune cell membranes and determine the immune response to the coronavirus. The more viral peptides the person's immune system cells can detect,  the stronger the person's immune response to the virus. The model predicts that some HLA types bind to a large number of viral peptides and some don't, a factor in how effect the immune response to viral infection is.

  
 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/technology/plandemic-judy-mikovitz-coronavirus-disinformation.html
This is a NYT article about Judy Mikovitz, a discredited scientist, attacker of Anthony Fauci (not that he is infallible) and social media darling, whose assertion that masks infect people and that mouse viruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome have been discredited but still receive play. Why are people like "Dr. Judy" called pharma whistleblowers and so riveting to the public imagination?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/well/family/coronavirus-pediatricians-worries-children.html This is a NYT article from the Check-Up by pediatrician-writer Perry Klass.  It seems that there is room for every specialty on the Covid-19 boat. Pediatricians are worried for their patients, not only because of some of the strange and worrisome symptoms observed in some children in NYC recently, but also because of the likelihood of parents missing immunization dates for their young 'uns. A pediatrician at Drexel reports that the under-2 set has been receiving their immunizations but the older children are missing vaccines that are usually given at 4 and 11. Even as we are constantly imagining the accelerated progress of a coronavirus vaccine, families are frightened of going anywhere near clinics  or hospitals. What this could presage is resurgent infections, according to the article, from whooping cough to measles, meningitis and bacterial sepsis. This also brings into sharp focus some of the economic disparities in this virus scenario and in health care delivery in general.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/13/wheres-the-data-in-a-pandemic-now-is-no-time-to-sit-on-covid-19-trial-results/ This is a commentary from Stat News' Ed Silverman about the NIH's not releasing the raw data from the clinical trial of Gilead Sciences remdesevir.  Since the conclusions but not the raw data were released (and some of this done during a press conference) it is meant to influence stock prices as much as treatment protocols. “If we can’t see the study protocol and a concise research report, you shouldn’t be talking about it in the news,” said Joseph Ross, a professor medicine and public health at Yale University, who studies clinical trial practices. Were the proper controls done, matched with the experimental subjects?  Beware of only conclusions without the data.