A Big Year of Science

Soso wishes the readers of The Solipsist's Soiree a Happy Christmas and New Year, masked, distant, virtual, etc. Elbow rubs and Soso's version of an oldie for you, updated, gratis a Petula Clark to the tune of "Downtown":

When you're alone and life is making you lonely 

You should never go downtown

When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to stress you out, stay home
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Please avoid the sidewalks where the neon signs are pretty
Please wear a mask
The lights are much brighter here
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So stay home
Things will be great when there’s a vaccine
No finer place for sure, at home
Everything's waiting for you

Don't hang around and let your problems surround you
There are movie shows online
Maybe you know some little places to go to
Where they never close: don’t go

Just listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova
You'll be Zooming too until the Spring is over
You'll get your shot
The lights are much brighter here
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/covid-antibody-treatment.html

Instead of antibody treatments needing to be rationed, they are going unused. How is that explained? The federal government has 532,000 doses of the two Eli Lilly and Regeneron treatments but it is only being given to 20% of patients. Some of this has to do with people's perception that the treatment was only for wealthy people; some don't want to venture out to healthcare settings; some physicians are skeptical of the evidence and want to see stronger data. At Mass General/Brigham, patients are chosen by lottery and many patients refuse the treatment. The data behind these treatments led to the conclusion that the number of patients at risk for severe Covid-disease  who required hospitalization was shorted, even though it was not, as Trump reported, a cure.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/us/politics/stimulus-law-education.html

A NYT article about restoring Pell grants for incarcerated students, a provision included in the higher-education law provisions which are part of the stimulus package. Decades of punitive practices are about to be rescinded with these new bipartisan measures which are meant to restore Pell grants removed during the Clinton administration. President-elect Biden supported the removal of financial aid for convicted felons; now he claims that this was a mistake. I taught in a state prison and fully support the restoration of Pell grants and the expansion of higher educational opportunities in federal, state and county prisons.  The expansion of the Pell grants will make an additional 55,000 students newly eligible for grants. These programs are a lifeline for students and will more than pay for themselves in reducing recidivism, as data has shown. Orange lives matter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/eu-coronavirus-vaccine.html

A NYT article about the EU approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Most of the EU is in the stranglehold grip of the second wave of the pandemic. Publication of the identification of what is described as a "more transmissible" variant of Sars-CoV2 earlier this week led to the borders being closed between Britain and the EU although it is admitted that this variant had already reached the continent. Pfizer will assist with the transport and storage of the vaccine in each country and then each of the countries will be responsible for distributing the vaccine based on the priorities of the individual country. The EU this summer pooled resources to negotiate the best deal with Pfizer, this they are paying less than the US for the vaccine. France and Germany will start shots by the end of the month weeks after England began vaccine administration. The inoculation campaign will get going in earnest in the EU in the first quarter of 2021. Pfizer is working on a schedule for future vaccine deliveries but many European governments are worried that supplies will dwindle.

 

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/english-classes-curriculum-classic-literature-20201221.html

An Inquirer op-ed about a debate on Twitter whether literary classics like The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights are still relevant and should be taught in the classroom. From a justice standpoint, educators are recommending more inclusion of literature that is relevant to the Black experience and Black and brown audiences who want to see themselves represented in the literature they read in school. The op-ed writer agrees with this viewpoint but insists that classics do not become such based on their old, white appeal but because of beautiful writing about the trials of human beings. The writer references Shakespeare as the "first secular writer of fiction in Western history". Writers like Chinua Achebe, Tony Morrison and Ralph Ellison are already included in grade school curricula. A good quote: "If we want our students to be prepared for college, and the world, we should not only update our canon...to hold a mirror to their experiences but hold onto classics for what they are: works of beauty that help us understand each other."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html

Sigh, another coronavirus article, this time about a variant which has acquired properties of increased transmissibility. Evidence that was provided was the rapid spread of the virus through London. The UK went into a deep lockdown and the EU closed its borders to Britain. Was this necessary? Well, the idea of a variant, meaning a mutation in the DNA is common to the understanding of viruses. Within an individual with HIV, many variants exist due to the fast mutation rate of the virus, but every mutant is not successful.  Some DNA mutations do not change the virus' proteins (like the spike, which gets the virus into cells) at all. And some may be selected to increase transmission from person to person. The British variant has about 20 mutations, some of which may make the virus get into cells more easily and also may make it transmit more easily between people. Another concern is that one change, which is a deletion mutation could make the virus more able to avoid the body's own immune defenses. But according to the article, the number being bandied around and tweeted around of 70% more transmissible comes from modeling studies and not actual experiments. It is also possible that human behavior, meaning movement of infected people, could have caused the increases. Experiments have to be done and replicated before such conclusions can be safely reached. The deletion mutants have also been around for months and been identified independently in Thailand and Germany in early 2020. A conclusion mentioned was that immunizing 60% of the population in a year and keeping case numbers down will help minimizing the chances of the virus mutating significantly.

https://www.inquirer.com/wires/ap/scientists-focus-bats-clues-prevent-next-pandemic-20201214.html

An Inquirer article about researchers in Argentina, Brazil and India attempting to minimize the possibility of another global pandemic. It is called a "spillover" when an animal disease jumps from its animal to a human host. Bats are thought to be the intermediary hosts of multiple viruses that have spawned pandemics such as Covid-19, SARS, MERS Ebola, Nipah virus, Hendra and Marburg viruses. Bats have a very high metabolic rate and are very resilient and long-lived. Raina Plowright, an epidemiologist who studies bats suggest that evolution, which provided them with these three advantages also  gave them protection against pathogens. Let's remind ourselves that it is human invasion into bat habitats such as tropical forests that creates the possibility of spillover.

Vaccine Praecox

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/opinion/covid-bats.html

We are at bat thanks to my fave, David Quammen, who I hope is not still saying pangolins are Sars-Co-V2 intermediate hosts, which has not been shown conclusively. Order Chiroptera, mammals, like us. 200 of their species are threatened with extinction. Three of their species feed on bird and mammalian blood, guaranteed not be make them the life of any party. The vampire bat has heat sensors as an adaptation. The reason there is spillover of bat viruses into humans is our intrusion into their habitats, taking guano for fertilizer or transporting them live to market: us creating disruption, as our species is wont to do. I think they are beautiful but I have only once been in a cave (Cuba, 2016). I have had a bat in my house; a mental picture of my husband in his boxers wielding a straw broom is enough to endear them to me. (The bat won.) We may learn from this order; for example, how does the bat immune system tolerate Sars-Co-V2 infection without suffering symptoms. Bats also eat harmful insects and are pollinators, spread seeds and generate fruit trees. They do succumb to diseases like the white-nose syndrome now in 33 US states and Canadian provinces. This fungus has caused a 90% decline in 3 bat species and losses in 4 more. And this syndrome is believed to have been caused by human action.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/science/space/jupiter-saturn-align-christmas-star.html

There are other planets besides Earth and they are doing stuff; in this case Jupiter and Saturn are pulling closer to one another until they are, as now, about a tenth of a degree apart. This is called "the great conjunction" and happens every 20 years, which means, I had better pay attention this go-around. This is the closest visible encounter between these two planets since the Middle Ages. Used to be, in ancient times, this was viewed as a portent of evil things to come, as if things aren't bad enough. So, tomorrow night, look towards the southwest. The planets, though they appear close, will be about 400 million miles apart.

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/covid-vaccine-distribution-us-biden-trump-20201207.html

This from the Inquirer asking President-Elect (I don't mind saying that) Biden to join with other nations in an 180-nation initiative to speed the development, production and distribution of the vaccine. This is called the COVAX or Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility  and includes all of America's traditional allies  as well as China and the developing world, which will receive subsidized access to any vaccines (why not free, editorial comment). Biden is going to return the US to WHO. US needs to rejoin the world: we need it. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/business/covid-vaccine-oxford-astrazeneca.html

From the NYT about AstraZeneca's "blunders". We need and want the best science but mistakes happen especially when so much is at stake. The AZ vaccines was supposed to make up as much as 60% of the total vaccine supply in the US. It seems that the trials were halted in a late-stage study in the US due to neurological illness in one of the study participants, which data was not promptly released.  Oxford researchers provided the Lancet detailed data for the vaccine showing that there may have been some discrepancies in the measurements of the concentration of the vaccine, it having been revised upwards due to an excipient, one of the non-active ingredients. Apparently some of the clintrials participants received half of the intended dose. There is a lot at stake, to repeat, in developing a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic. Although the UK has approved this vaccine, the US is waiting to review all of the data and A-Z may begin a new trial in order to gather comprehensive data on half-strength vaccine protection. People are currently being vaccinated with Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, both of which work by the same mechanism, which is not true of the A-Z or J and J vaccines.

https://www.chop.edu/news/flipping-gene-switch-may-reverse-sickle-cell-disease

From the Inquirer and CHOP news, an article about a study published in NEJM about new studies done using the CRISPR gene editing technology to reverse the effects of sickle cell disease.  The disease affects millions of mostly Black people. The only cure right now is a bone marrow transplant from a closely-matched donor without the disease. This is a cool technology. You see, we have an immature form of the Hemoglobin molecule which has a greater ability to bind oxygen than the molecule which takes over from it at birth, which is the mature form. The CRISPR gene editing doesn't let this switchover take place, so people with the defective Hemoglobin still make the fetal version, which will counteract the effects of the disease.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-doses.html

This is an op-ed piece about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and whether these two-dose vaccines would provide sufficient protection if delivered in a single shot, meaning 1/2 of the strength that is recommended. Has it been investigated whether a single dose mightn't provide sufficient protection. Since this study has not been done and isn't planned, it should be done. This is the recommendation of the authors of the article, one of whom is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. Volunteers from low-risk populations should be tested first. Information about the immune systems of older people suggests that they do not respond as strongly to the single dose, indicating that the single dose trial should be done on lower-risk populations. If a single dose is somewhat less efficient than two doses, the authors suggest that we remember that we would have been thrilled to have a vaccine even less effective than the single dose numbers we are presented with. I was supposed to have the Heptavax series of immunizations (3), as a person working with blood products. I had two severe reactions (fever, inflammation at site) and decided to try to circumvent the third by getting an antibody titer. I had sufficient immunity to Hepatitis virus to be allowed to skip it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/nyregion/nurses-coronavirus-new-york.html?searchResultPosition=3

This is a frightening article about the reuse of N95 masks in NY state, some of which are reprocessed, decontaminated and reused 20 or more times, beyond what they are certified for (5 uses).  After an industrial hygiene firm in Putnam County examined the masks, the state nurses' union filed a complaint that their lives are being put in jeopardy. The materials that are used to decontaminate them also affect the mask's fit, further jeopardizing the nurses' safety against the virus.

 

Covid-19 Delenda Est (C*D*E*)(Covid-19 Must Be Destroyed)

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/health/pandemic-routine-medical-care.html

This is a report of a "natural experiment" we are all participating in against our will and it will change the delivery of medical care forever. Remember that quarterly dental check-up for those of us with periodontal disease? Well, it may become semi-annual or even annual in the future. Health workers have been claiming the overmedication and excessive use of medical care (1st world problem) by Americans. Some Americans have limited or no access to medical care, it should be noted. Dr Scott Ramsey, director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research opines that we are doing lots of things we don't have to do and we may do better as a result of this experiment. In March and April visits to the doctor's office went down 70-80% compared to pre-Covid levels. Many doctors are seeing patients by video, like the pulmonologist I saw in May. Orthopedics has also been affected, with a decrease in steroid injections for back pain and surgeries for spinal  ailments and knee pain. Mammographies have been controversial for years. The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium is collecting data during the pandemic from more than 800,000 women and 100 centers across the nation. Millions of women missed their annual cancer screening during the first wave of the pandemic. It was not until October that the mammography clinics were operating normally. But many women may not return to the clinic for various reasons. It has yet to be determined whether less screening leads to more or less harm.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-patents.html

Soso doesn't award equal time but this op-ed deals with something I wrote about last week. South Africa and India appealed to the WTO to suspend some intellectual property rights protections for the vaccines  in order to "put lives over profits". Readers of Soso know I agree with this philosophy. The writer claims that removing this patent protection may not ensure fair distribution and will discourage medical innovation. We are aware of Banting and Best's decision  to sell the patent for Insulin to the U of Toronto for $1 (sounds like a Canadian). The co-pay for Insulin manufactured by Eli Lilly is $35, which some people cannot afford. The author claims that the only reason companies can afford to give a drug away is that they know their intellectual property is protected. He makes a valid point that there is not a likelihood of a vaccine monopoly. There are 214 Covid-19 vaccine projects throughout the world and 52 are in clinical trials but this doesn't mean that the poorest will be served. And remember that the taxpayer (our) money was given to several of these companies to fund the development and to enable companies to manufacture vaccines before the data is all in. Take the profit out of heathcare especially in articulo mortis.

 

 

Solipsists' Surrender

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/health/covid-19-vaccine-johnson-and-johnson.html

The Solipsist has agreed to surrender the virginity of its oropharynx as a participant in the Ensemble Clinical Trials, which is a Phase III trial hoping to enroll 60,000 people. Swabs will be inserted, blood will be drawn, the stab will follow. The vaccine uses an adenovirus vector, which is from a cold virus which has made replication -deficient, which means it cannot multiply. Instead of the genes it needs to multiply inside your body and produce symptoms, genes have been swapped with Covid-19 DNA encoding instructions to make the spike protein. The hopes is that your body will then generate antibodies which will neutralize the Sars-Co-V2 virus if it is presented. There will be no viral challenge, as that is unethical. From the article, "The adenovirus vaccine technology used in Johnson & Johnson’s trial was developed by Dr. Barouch (Deanconess) in the early 2000s. The company acquired it and used it to make vaccines for Ebola, H.I.V., respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Zika. All told, 100,000 people have received the adenovirus vaccine in clinical trials for those four diseases, without any serious side effects." 

 

 

 

 

 

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/coronavirus-swiss-cheese-infection-mackay.html

This is an NYT article about the "swiss cheese" model of pandemic defense.  The virologist Ian Mackay describes an impenetrable barrier composed of social distancing, hand washing, testing and tracing, ventilation and government messaging. None of these measures is perfect (surprised that vaccination isn't in there somewhere) and each can be envisaged as a slice of swiss cheese. When the holes align, risk of infection is increased. Quenching the transmission of the virus relies on all, not some, of these things. The SC concept came originally from a cognitive psychologist, James T Reason (great name!), who wrote about the swiss cheese model of accidents in his book "Human Error".  The limitations of this model were also noted in his address in 2004. The article goes through the layers re: Covid-19 and talks about the additive successes of multiple layers. Distance, according to Mackay, is the most effective intervention because of aerosolation and the involvement of aerosols in superspreader events. Misinformation can erode any of the layers. Individual responsibility is important but our leadership also has to be working to keep us safe. I think the article should stress that mistrust is a sword that can penetrate all of the most protective layers and that lack of trust in our government is running pretty high.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

This link connects to a Statnews article describing the mRNA vaccine's invention. Pfizer and BioNTech have developed a vaccine consisting of synthetic messenger RNA, a version of the molecule that is transcribed from DNA, the molecule that contains the letters that confer all of our traits and our individuality. The article calls mRNA the recipe book for the body's trillions of cells. And the technology used "tweaks" synthetic mRNA and injects it into bodies to transform them into drug factories. A U of Wisconsin researcher, Katalin Kariko, worked on this molecule with the idea that it could be used to create proteins in the body, antibodies, enzymes or growth agents. But it could easily be destroyed by the body's natural defenses. It could also cause an immune reaction called auto-immune disease, In some autoimmune diseases, the body makes anti-RNA antibodies. So Kariko and collaborators made a hybrid mRNA with modified nucleosides that could avoid rejection. The article calls this development a "starter pistol" for the vaccine sprint. There were other developments to follow and that's why these biotech pioneers are entrepreneurs and live on the edge where the rubber meets the road, as the expression goes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/health/covid-vaccine-blood-test.html

Another NYT Covid-19 article called new day, new marker, since the science is unfolding at such a rapid rate.  Biological markers are signs that predict a response and are sought after in drug development. An anti-cancer compound I worked on was stopped in its tracks when it finally got to be tested in primates (the "gold standard" for drug development achieved after years of cell culture and small animal studies) and it was shown that it reacted with the brain neuraminic acid receptor.If we had had a marker it would have saved time and money. The blood marker PSA or prostate specific antigen supposedly is an indicator of cancer but it has proven an imperfect one at best. The article describes blood markers in monkeys that may predict whether a monkey's immune system  is prepared to wipe out coronaviruses on presentation. Interestingly, the fact that the vaccines seem to be achieving the same degree of efficacy (about 95%) means that they will probably be compared with each other instead of placebo. This is a high bar. The monkeys produced IgG antibodies after they recovered from Covid-19. Then they injected other monkeys with antibodies and exposed them to coronaviruses and the ones that got the highest dose were completely protected. This is the first time it has been shown that antibodies protect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/opinion/covid-vaccines-patents.html

Opinion posted in the NYT decrying intellectual property rights. The article mentions a proposal by India and South Africa asking the WTO to exempt member countries from enforcing trade-related intellectual property rights due to the exceptional circumstances  created by the pandemic. This idea was opposed by the EU, the US and other countries. Vaccines developed by Pfizer, Moderna and A-Z were created using taxpayer money. As such, they belong to taxpayers who will be required to pay for them again and who may not get the vaccines fast enough. 82 percent of the vaccines Pfizer says it can present through next year and 78 percent of of Moderna's have already been sold to rich countries. A-Z has made deals with manufacturers in India and Latin American countries to make sure poor countries have access to the vaccine and not to make a profit during the pandemic. This is not a new problem.  Gilead Sciences, the monopoly owner of sofosbuvir, a breakthrough treatment for Hepatitis C is deadlocked with the government of Brazil. When the drug company got the patents it hiked the price there from $16 to $240 a capsule. If it were produced locally under a compulsory licensing scheme it would be about eight dollars. Keep in mind that this was the drug that won the discoverers the Nobel Prize this year!

Solipsist Epidemiologist

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/health/covid-vaccine-95-effective.html

Hold on a minute, please. 95% efficacy sounds good and boosted Pfizer's and Moderna's stock, as if they weren't getting enough shekels from the US government.  I may have reported on this article before but I wanted to stress, with my solipsist's hat off and my epidemiologist's hat on (full disclosure, my epi is self-taught) that they should be testing all people who got either the vaccine or the placebo for Covid-19 by pcr analysis. According to the article (and convention), researchers wait for participants to develop symptoms and then figure out which  group the illnesses came from. But it seems that in the case of the virus caused by Sars-Co-V2 many asymptomatic cases have been identified by widespread testing of people who are believed to have been in contact with an infected or symptomatic individual. It would be the right and correct thing to do to test everyone who received a treatment, which may represent a revision of practice.  A quote from the article, and worth reiterating, "And so it’s possible that a number of people who got vaccinated in the clinical trials got infected, too, without ever realizing it. If those cases indeed exist, none of them are reflected in the 95 percent efficacy rate."

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/cannabis-united-nations-drug-policy.html

This is a NYT article about the reclassification of cannabis used for medical purposes by the UN Commission for Narcotic Drugs from  a category of drugs including dangerous, addictive drugs like heroin, which will pave the way for its use for medical purposes as has been done safely throughout history, and allow countries to widen patients' access to treatment using this drug.  Products containing cannabis derivatives like CBD are a cornerstone of the wellness industry. One of the implications of this change is a potential change in the reliance on opiates for pain relief. 

 

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6520/1023

This is an article from Science magazine about the various ways schools are stretching their mandates to cope with the Coronavirus crisis. It reflects the changes from when New Zealand, Norway and Japan, having dealt with the crisis, moved cautiously at first then threw open the school doors, with the idea that the need for in-person schooling superseded the danger due to the virus. But things are different now, as the article notes. The virus has revealed disparities between wealthy and poorer communities, some of the latter being unable to provide quality distance education. Some countries are closing bars and restaurants, while keeping schools open. The Czech Republic, Austria and Russia finally gave in and closed schools recently. Outbreaks in schools are not common....Duke U reports on the cases identified in 6 N. Carolina school districts in the first 9 weeks of school (50,000 students and staff)  (197 identified cases acquired outside of school by community spread and 8 cases spread from one person to another within schools, which were determined to be "secondary transmission"). There are asymptomatic cases missing from this data. Sequencing the virus could provide important information about whether the cases within a school are even related. Whether schools should remain open is going to be a continuing question possibly through the end of the school year and an epidemiological, medical and political, moving target.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/style/can-these-period-underwear-crusaders-convert-you.html

A NYT article about fashion, unusual for the SoSo. Let's talk periods that don't end sentences. Bleeding into your underwear. Or, the meeting where you are scheduled to talk and your handbag is at your desk and then you uh-oh. There is a company called The Period Company that sells period underwear. (I just like writing that word.) They want us (well, not me anymore) to break with tradition and consider buying "period panties." A marketing survey revealed that the younger cohort, aged 18-34 would be interest in reusables in order to protect the environment. The older group, 30s and 40s were against this type of product. It is like a type of shapewear with a pad sewn into the crotch. The product is washed and reused. It is time to move on to Period underwear for "that time of the month".

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/upshot/epidemiologists-virus-survey-.html

A NYT survey from The Upshot about how 700 epidemiologists are living now.  24 activities were included in the survey and those answering in the affirmative ranged from 90 to 2%. What things are they doing or avoiding. And when might that change. Going grocery shopping 90%. Seeing friends indoors depends on circumstances (in home of elderly relative or friend 10%, attended small dinner party 9%, church service, 4%). 30% would expect to change after they themselves were vaccinated. A minority said that if highly effective vaccines were distributed it would be safe for Americans to live freely this summer. Most agreed that indoor venues with lots of people present the most danger. At least one of the epidemiologists expects it to be at least the next 12 to 18 months and maybe a few years of masking, which will begin to be "the new normal".

 

December spiking, surging, and zooming towards the solstice

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/technology/deepmind-ai-protein-folding.html

I did my master's thesis on chaperone proteins, which are essential for proper protein folding. When protein folding goes awry, you have diseases like Mad Cow Disease, or when I first met it (we go way back) it was Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The article in today's NYT is about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going about solving the shape of proteins in our bodies. Carbohydrates and lipids and even nucleic acids are found in canonical shapes. By that we mean 3-dimensional shapes, since our bodies are not dimensionless aggregates as shown in textbooks. The company DeepMind, with its system AlphaFold is able to predict a protein's 3-D shape, too late, as the author reveals, to help with our obsession du jour, Sars-Co-V2. DeepMind uses a system modeled, more or less on neural networks, or the network of neurons in the human brain. It identifies patterns in huge quantities of data, such as being able to identify a cat after looking at patterns in photos of cats.  Drugs bind to proteins in our bodies and alter their acitvities, like penicillin binding proteins in bacterial membranes bind to penicillin. If DeepMind can  find proteins and identify their shapes this can be a driver in drug development. It can do this 2/3 of the time, according to one of the developers. Its mistakes are smaller than the width of an atom. This technology can also be used to predict the outcomes of clinical trials. In the past this lab has built systems that outperformed humans at Starcraft video game and the ancient game Go.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/health/coronavirus-vaccine-prisons.html

Another NYT article about how the vaccine, when it comes, will be prioritized. When I worked at SouthWoods state prison, my classroom was next to Medical. I was surprised at how many wheel-chair-bound inmates were arriving and departing. Not the usual George-Raft-Humphrey Bogart scenario of tough inmates in the yard plotting escapes, more of a realization that people spend scores of years, decades locked behind prison walls, invisible, isolated, hopeless and vulnerable. In the case of Sars-Co-V2 which causes the coronavirus, these inmates disproportionately African-American and Latino are in the direct path of disaster. The men in their wheelchairs are often suffering from chronic disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes and various mental illnesses. How would it not be in the interests of humanity to release them or at least to vaccinate them? The article discusses whether the inmate population should be prioritized for administration of some of the first doses of vaccines but they are not ranked by the CDC in the "top tiers". The CDC did prioritize prison guards and others who work in jails. During the summer more than 2200 inmates were sickened and 28 people died at San Quentin SP in California. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/climate/georgina-mace-dead.html

NYT obit for Georgina Mace, who no one has heard of, who was responsible for building the scientific basis for recording endangered species and member of the International Union of Conservation Biologists. In 1990 she was a member of the Zoological Society of London and she solidified the Red List to make it applicable in a rigorous way to be "rapidly applicable to thousands of species." The list incorporates climate change as a danger threat.  From the article "The list has grown to include more than 120,000 species of animals, plants and fungi; some 32,000 are currently listed as endangered."

 

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/science/leaf-stick-insects-phyllium-asekiense.html 

This from the NYT is about eggs received by the Montreal Insectarium supposedly from a leaf insect, Phyllium asekiense. The Covid-19 hiatus from real life is as good a time as any to fulfill your childhood fantasy of breeding insects. Eggs hatch into nymphs, if you remember your insect life cycles. One of the eggs grew and looked like its mom but the other was thin and stick-like (not leaf-like) and had wings. It turned out the two insects, which had been classified as different species,were actually the same species. This is called sexual dimorphism, where the males and females appear totally different. Since the females appear differently from the males (and since this is a descriptive science) how can the puzzle of relating the two sexes be solved, besides of course, the infrequent event that was written about here? What a cool job!                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/business/singapore-lab-meat.html    

A NYT article about lab-grown meat.  Eat Just is an American start-up based in SF which would permit you to satisfy your carnivorous instincts without an animal having to be killed. Although having to pay $50 for a single nugget may seem excessive for conscience-salving, it doesn't seem that this product will be quick to market since regulatory agencies in the US and Europe have not regulated it yet. (Let's focus on a vaccine, shall we?)  The nuggets have been approved by the regulatory agencies in Singapore.