Tag: coronavirus

Science

COVID antiviral pills work against Omicron—when people can get them

 Emma  0 252 

Last week, Pfizer reported that a trio of lab experiments suggest that its COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid, will hold up well against the Omicron variant.  The antiviral was authorized in December for people at high risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19. Unfortunately, despite these promising developments, Paxlovid and other COVID-19 treatments are still in short supply across the country. Half of the 20 million Paxlovid treatment courses purchased by the US aren’t expected to be delivered until June, and the…

Science

Can cannabis protect people from COVID? Buzzy studies can’t say.

 Amy  0 234 

Another study has been published linking cannabis with protective effects against COVID-19, two weeks after similarly buzzy-but-limited research indicated hemp might ward off the virus, too. But once again these results are preliminary and without evidence in living human subjects. They do not mean that smoking marijuana will protect you against SARS-CoV-2 infection.  A large team of researchers conducted experiments on human lung cells and on live mice to see how different cannabis compounds affected the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2. They…

Science

‘Preliminary research’ on COVID has been surprisingly solid

 sykes  0 219 

Before the COVID pandemic, peer-review was the beating heart of scientific publishing. In order for studies to enter the body of scientific knowledge, the expectation was that researchers would submit them to academic journals, which would send the papers out to other experts for edits and revisions before publishing. But it’s a process that wasn’t well-suited to the urgency of the COVID pandemic, when early research could save lives. Peer-review often takes months, and it asks for huge amounts of…

Science

A COVID vaccine for young US children may be closer than ever

 Naomi  0 196 

Members of the last age group to be authorized for COVID-19 vaccinations may soon get their due, and earlier than anticipated. Pfizer and BioNTech are expected to request emergency use authorization for their mRNA vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration as early as today, which would permit children between 6 months and 5 years of age to be vaccinated in a two-dose regimen.  The companies announced last fall that preliminary analyses of clinical trials of two vaccine doses in…

Science

Why the FDA paused monoclonal antibody treatments

 Ingle  0 211 

On Monday evening, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would limit the use of two monoclonal antibody COVID-19 treatments, made by pharmaceutical companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly. Those treatments had been successful at keeping symptomatic patients out of the hospital in earlier waves, but did not work against Omicron, the agency said. A third, less common monoclonal treatment, called sotrovimab, can still be used. The FDA’s decision, based on lab studies of the treatments, mirrors the practices of…

Science

What to do with your old cloth masks

 Emma  0 197 

Every week it feels like something changes when it comes to COVID, be it a new variant, a new spike, a new magic “cure,” or a new shot we all need. But recently, the news hasn’t just been about what’s new. Just last week, the CDC announced that reusable cloth masks aren’t as safe as respirator masks in certain situations. One study showed that fabric coverings can sometimes net as low as 5 percent of aerosolized particles.  For people trying…

Science

Inside the lab using bones to study COVID and hearing loss

 Amy  0 182 

Elizabeth Landau is a science journalist and communicator living in Washington, D.C. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Quanta Magazine, Smithsonian, and Wired, among other publications. Find her on Twitter at @lizlandau. This story originally featured on Undark. In a narrow medical school hallway, Matt Stewart opened a large cabinet to reveal dozens of shelves stacked with wooden boxes and trays, some at least 100 years old. Stewart, tall and silver-haired, pulled out one of…

Science

How much does vitamin D protect us from diseases like COVID?

 Amy  0 203 

“What is this nonsense?” Erica Rice, a social worker from California, remembers thinking while she watched the rambling video her aunt had shared on Facebook. A middle-aged woman in Hunstville, Alabama, stood on her porch telling viewers they needed to get outside and lay in the sun to prevent “the COVID.”  It was April 2020, early in the pandemic—before masks became like a second skin—and Rice assumed the minutes-long clip was just one of the many virus-conspiracy theories plaguing the…

Science

The animal kingdom is full of coronaviruses. Here’s what that means for COVID’s future.

 sykes  0 216 

Every year, the United States Department of Agriculture drops more than six million packets from airplanes across the east coast. The packets are covered in fish oil, and coyotes and raccoons find them irresistible. Inside, past the tasty coating, is an oral rabies vaccine. The goal is to build up herd immunity in wild populations themselves, reported Veterinary Practice News in 2020. When about half of potential rabies carriers are inoculated, transmission falls dramatically. That in turn means that wild…