Day: August 3, 2018

Chinese Tariffs on LNG, Oil Aim at US Energy Dominance Agenda

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

China’s targeting of U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports opens a new front in the trade war between the two countries, at a time when the White House is trumpeting growing U.S. energy export  prowess.

China included LNG for the first time in its list of proposed tariffs on Friday, the same day that its biggest U.S. crude oil buyer, Sinopec, suspended U.S. crude oil imports due to the dispute, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

On Friday, China announced retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, and warned of further measures, signaling it will not back down in a protracted trade war with Washington.

That could cast a shadow over U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy dominance ambitions. The administration has repeatedly said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to global allies, while Washington is rolling back domestic regulations to encourage more oil and gas production.

“The juxtaposition here is clear: It is hard to become an energy superpower when one of the biggest energy consumers in the world is raising barriers to consume that energy. It makes it very difficult,” said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and is poised to become one of the largest exporters of LNG by 2019. U.S. LNG exports were worth $3.3 billion in 2017. China is the world’s biggest crude oil importer.

China had curtailed its imports of U.S. LNG over the last two months, even before its formal inclusion in the list of potential tariffs. It had also become the largest buyer of U.S. crude oil outside of Canada, but Kpler, which tracks worldwide oil shipments, shows crude cargoes to China have also dropped

off in recent months.

It comes at a time when the United States has several large-scale LNG export facilities under construction, and after Trump’s late 2017 trip to China that included executives from U.S. LNG companies.

China became the world’s second-biggest LNG importer in 2017, as it buys more gas in order to wean the country off dirty coal to reduce pollution.

“This will not affect the trade but will simply make gas more expensive to Chinese consumers,” said Charif Souki, chairman of Tellurian Inc, one of several companies seeking to build a new LNG export terminal.

China, which purchased almost 14 percent of all U.S. LNG shipped between February 2016 and May 2018, has taken delivery from just one vessel that left the United States in June and none so far in July, compared with 17 in the first five months of the year.

“The U.S. gas industry will be much harder hit by this as China imports only a small volume whereas U.S. suppliers see China as a major future market,” said Lin Boqiang, professor on energy studies at Xiamen University in China.

Crude exports to China

Meanwhile, according to Kpler, crude exports to China dropped to an estimated 226,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, after reaching a record 445,000 bpd in March. Sinopec, through its Unipec trading arm, is the largest buyer of U.S. crude.

China would likely hike purchases from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq if the tariffs slowed U.S. flows, said Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency.

There will be “others who will be offering barrels to China, so it could find itself able to replace lost volumes from the U.S.,” Atkinson said.

With LNG demand expected to skyrocket over the next 12 to 18 months, there are still some two dozen firms seeking to build new LNG export terminals in the United States and tariffs may limit their ability to secure sufficient buyers to finance their proposed projects.

“Cheniere continues to see China as an important growth market and LNG as a “win-win” between the United States and China,” said Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman at Cheniere Energy Inc, which owns one of the two LNG export terminals currently operating in the United States. He added they do not see tariffs as productive.
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Chinese Proposed Tariffs Aim at US Energy Dominance Agenda

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

China’s targeting of U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil exports opens a new front in the trade war between the two countries, at a time when the White House is trumpeting growing U.S. energy export  prowess.

China included LNG for the first time in its list of proposed tariffs on Friday, the same day that its biggest U.S. crude oil buyer, Sinopec, suspended U.S. crude oil imports due to the dispute, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

On Friday, China announced retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, and warned of further measures, signaling it will not back down in a protracted trade war with Washington.

That could cast a shadow over U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy dominance ambitions. The administration has repeatedly said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to global allies, while Washington is rolling back domestic regulations to encourage more oil and gas production.

“The juxtaposition here is clear: It is hard to become an energy superpower when one of the biggest energy consumers in the world is raising barriers to consume that energy. It makes it very difficult,” said Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and is poised to become one of the largest exporters of LNG by 2019. U.S. LNG exports were worth $3.3 billion in 2017. China is the world’s biggest crude oil importer.

China had curtailed its imports of U.S. LNG over the last two months, even before its formal inclusion in the list of potential tariffs. It had also become the largest buyer of U.S. crude oil outside of Canada, but Kpler, which tracks worldwide oil shipments, shows crude cargoes to China have also dropped

off in recent months.

It comes at a time when the United States has several large-scale LNG export facilities under construction, and after Trump’s late 2017 trip to China that included executives from U.S. LNG companies.

China became the world’s second-biggest LNG importer in 2017, as it buys more gas in order to wean the country off dirty coal to reduce pollution.

“This will not affect the trade but will simply make gas more expensive to Chinese consumers,” said Charif Souki, chairman of Tellurian Inc, one of several companies seeking to build a new LNG export terminal.

China, which purchased almost 14 percent of all U.S. LNG shipped between February 2016 and May 2018, has taken delivery from just one vessel that left the United States in June and none so far in July, compared with 17 in the first five months of the year.

“The U.S. gas industry will be much harder hit by this as China imports only a small volume whereas U.S. suppliers see China as a major future market,” said Lin Boqiang, professor on energy studies at Xiamen University in China.

Crude exports to China

Meanwhile, according to Kpler, crude exports to China dropped to an estimated 226,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, after reaching a record 445,000 bpd in March. Sinopec, through its Unipec trading arm, is the largest buyer of U.S. crude.

China would likely hike purchases from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq if the tariffs slowed U.S. flows, said Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency.

There will be “others who will be offering barrels to China, so it could find itself able to replace lost volumes from the U.S.,” Atkinson said.

With LNG demand expected to skyrocket over the next 12 to 18 months, there are still some two dozen firms seeking to build new LNG export terminals in the United States and tariffs may limit their ability to secure sufficient buyers to finance their proposed projects.

“Cheniere continues to see China as an important growth market and LNG as a “win-win” between the United States and China,” said Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman at Cheniere Energy Inc, which owns one of the two LNG export terminals currently operating in the United States. He added they do not see tariffs as productive.
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US Immigration Agency Takes on Female Genital Cutting

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

On a few days over the last year, federal agents approached travelers at several U.S. airports — flights bound for or connecting to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Frankfurt, Germany, and Dakar, Senegal.

The officials — part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — weren’t searching for contraband, or guiding bag-sniffing dogs. They were part of a smaller office within the agency that doesn’t focus on detaining and deporting people. Instead, they were handing out printed materials. They wanted to talk about female genital cutting. 

JFK. Newark. Washington-Dulles. They targeted some of the country’s biggest international airports. In May, they roamed the gates in Atlanta — in the state where an Ethiopian man deported last year was believed to be the first person criminally convicted in the United States for FGC, sometimes referred to as female genital mutilation or FGM.

ICE declined a request to speak with the agents for details about how the initiative is carried out. There are brochures involved and, according to photos attached to the agency’s news releases, male and female agents chat with women about to board flights abroad.

FGC is a federal crime, the agency says it tells travelers. It can have consequences on child custody, and in immigration cases, too, even if the procedure is performed outside the U.S.

An agency spokeswoman told VOA via email that “people were happy to hear that’s why [Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security] was out there with materials. Some folks have never heard of it; many have but don’t understand it, the extent of the problem and how harmful the procedure and associated complications are. And some women had been subjected themselves to FGM.”

The project is modeled after one in the United Kingdom, an “awareness” campaign designed to talk about the risks of FGC, and publicize the criminality of the procedure. 

Removing part of the female genitals for nonmedical reasons is a practice concentrated in a few dozen countries, but performed on a smaller scale in many more, including the United States, where cases have been documented dating to as early as the 19th century. Last year, ICE investigators unraveled the Michigan case of a medical doctor performing FGC on young girls.

Reasons given

The justifications can include religious, cultural or pseudomedical rationales, like when U.S. doctors used the procedure to treat “hysteria.” Hundreds of thousands of women and girls in the U.S. are FGC survivors, or are vulnerable to it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mariya Taher, head of Sahiyo — a U.S. nongovernmental organization that advocates for an end to FGC — has spoken publicly about her experience surviving the procedure. Now, her organization is spearheading its own effort to publicize the stories of other survivors in the U.S., with a video project due out this month.

Does Taher think ICE agents handing out pamphlets and talking to families headed to visit relatives abroad, who are maybe considering having the procedure done on their daughters, or planning to have it done on that summer vacation, is an effective method?

“A large part of prevention is educating that it IS illegal … many people don’t recognize that it IS,” said Taher. She wants to know more about what information is being shared and how the conversations with travelers are happening before passing judgment on the project.

Unintentional effect?

“Any effort about the health, legal consequences, support services, I think is really helpful and beneficial,” Taher said. On the other hand, she noted, “I feel conflict. We’re trying to show that FGC happens across the board, regardless of ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status. … I’m a little afraid, if we’re just targeting certain countries, that we’re unintentionally misrepresenting whom FGC happens to.”

Dozens of U.S. states have passed laws, in addition to the federal legislation, criminalizing FGC. In the Michigan case, doctors who performed the procedure on girls were charged, as well as four mothers who agreed to the medically unnecessary surgeries.
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WHO: Yemen May Be on Verge of New Deadly Cholera Epidemic

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns Yemen may be on the verge of another cholera epidemic, which could be deadlier than previous ones because of widespread malnutrition in the war-torn country.

Yemen has had two major waves of cholera epidemics in recent years.

The World Health Organization reports that an increasing number of cases in several heavily populated areas over the past few weeks indicate the country may be on the cusp of a third major wave of this deadly disease.

WHO’s emergency response chief, Peter Salama, told VOA another cholera epidemic is likely to be more life-threatening than the previous ones because the population is seriously weakened after three years of civil war. Fighting has been raging between the government and rebel forces.

“What we are likely to see is that interplay with cholera and malnutrition occurring more and more and food insecurity,” he said. “And, not only more cases because of that, but even higher death rates among the cholera cases that do occur because people just do not have the physical resources to fight the disease any longer.”

The United Nations is calling for three days of tranquility between August 4 and 6. It wants the warring parties to stop fighting during this period so WHO and its partners can carry out a massive oral cholera vaccination campaign.

Salama said 3,000 health workers are being mobilized in three districts in northern Yemen. Their aim is to vaccinate more than 500,000 individuals above the age of one. Last year, cholera cases in Yemen topped one million in the world’s worst outbreak of the disease.
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African Small Businesses, Farmers Get Protection with Micro-Insurance

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

George Kamau Githome uses a feather duster to clean off hardware and bootleg movies displayed for sale at his kiosk in Mathare, one of Nairobi, Kenya’s largest slums.

Githome and his family of 10 kids recently lost everything they owned in a fire. But he was able to rebuild because he had purchased micro-insurance, a new product making inroads among small-scale African farmers and business owners.

“When they came, they took photos, and saw how helpless I was. I had nothing,” he said. “Then they paid off my loan and supported me with something small. I started this business you see out here and the result you see inside.”

Most African farmers and small businesses operate with no way to protect themselves if disaster strikes. Insurers have been slow to tailor their products to the African continent, experts say, and their methods of operation, using complex contracts distributed through networks of agents, tends to only reach the urban elite.

But that may be starting to change. A handful of companies are now offering inexpensive, tech-driven micro-insurance and are making it easy for ordinary Africans to sign up.

 

The company Githome used, MicroEnsure, offers micro-insurance to small-business owners, ranging from farmers in the bush to small kiosk owners in downtown Nairobi.

 

The East Africa regional director for MicroEnsure, Kiereini Kirika, says mobile technology makes micro-insurance cheaper and easy to use.

“We enable them to be able to enroll as simple as using their mobile phone just by dialing a particular short code on their phone and then registering their product just by using their first name and their last name,” he said.

Henry Jaru, a smallholder farmer in northern Nigeria, is buying micro-insurance from another company, Pula, to protect his family farm from the impacts of poor rainfall, army worm infestations and other threats to their crops.

“Normally by this time the crops would have gone far but you see we’re still planting some of them,” he said. “So I think, we’re hoping that [will protect us if] we experience any shortcoming from the rain or the worms this year.”

 

Pula insures groups of farmers, using publicly available satellite data to track weather patterns, assess the risk and set prices.

 

“When Pula came into the country, they came with the idea of an index insurance, which means that you don’t need to necessarily visit every smallholder farmers,” said Samson Ajibola, Pula’s senior project manager in Nigeria. “You can insure aggregation of farmers under just one policy without necessarily needing to visit each of them.”

Pula also bundles the policies into small loans or purchases of fertilizer so small-hold farmers are automatically insured.

 

But older farmers, like Jaru’s father Thomas, are still skeptical because of bad experiences with insurance companies.

 

“Generally when the time comes for them to pay you, indemnify you, you will not find them,” said Thomas Jaru. “They begin to show you the small print — you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that out of the policy. So, it can ruin the whole thing and people get discouraged.”

 

Micro-insurance providers hope their services can change that perception  and turn a profit while giving Africa’s small farmers and businesses some protection if and when things go wrong.
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WHO: Congo’s Newest Ebola Outbreak Poses Huge Challenge

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Preparations are being made to send thousands of Ebola vaccines next week to North Kivu, the site of the latest outbreak of this deadly disease.

The World Health Organization says it foresees huge difficulties ahead in efforts to combat the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

North Kivu province, the site of the new outbreak, has been riven with ethnic and political clashes for at least two decades.

WHO’s emergency response chief, Peter Salama, said the operation getting under way in North Kivu will be much more difficult and complex than past Ebola response efforts.

Salama was at the forefront of efforts to combat an Ebola outbreak this April in the DRC’s Equateur Province.

“On the scale of degree of difficulty, trying to extinguish an outbreak of a deadly high-threat pathogen in a war zone reaches the top of any of our scales,” he cautioned.

WHO reports four of six suspected cases of Ebola have been confirmed in and around Mangina, a town of about 60,000 people in North Kivu. Around 20 deaths have been reported. Salama, however, said the deaths have not yet been confirmed as Ebola cases.

He said laboratory tests indicate that this particular strain is Ebola Zaire, the same one as in Equateur Province. He added that more information will be forthcoming Tuesday when genetic sequencing results are known.

If confirmed, he said it will be possible to use the same vaccine that was used in Equateur. He told VOA that preparations are under way to deploy vaccines to the affected area next week.

The bad news, he cautioned, is that the Zaire strain carries the highest case fatality rate of any of the strains of Ebola — 50 percent or higher.

“The good news is that we do have, although it is still an investigational product, a safe and effective vaccine that we were able to deploy last time around,” he said. “But, remember last time around — and this is a critical point — we had really large-scale access despite all the logistical constraints to be able to do the contact tracing.”

Salama said security constraints will make moving around in North Kivu far more difficult. He said 3,000 doses of the vaccine that are in the capital, Kinshasa, can be deployed immediately and 300,000 additional doses can be mobilized at very short notice.

Ebola is a constant threat in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the virus thrives in heavily forested areas. The newest outbreak is the 10th since the first one was discovered in 1976.
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From Cancers to Obesity, Small Implant May Replace Life-Saving Drugs

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Remembering to take medications can be challenging for some people. But one day an implant may replace medications that need to be taken orally in certain cases. One lab in Houston is developing refillable implants placed under the skin to potentially deliver life-saving medicine at a low cost for various diseases. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
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Tiny Implant of the Future Means Never Forgetting Some Medicines

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Many people on medication may find it challenging to remember to take the drugs. For some illnesses, an implant may one day replace the need to ingest the medicines.

A lab at Houston Methodist Research Institute is developing unique implants that can potentially deliver lifesaving medication, at a low cost for a variety of diseases.

Unlike current drug delivery implants that use pumps, the implants Alessandro Grattoni and his team are developing use nanochannels to release medication at the molecular level.

“This implant is inserted under the skin of the patient and then delivers the drugs for an extended period of time, for months and potentially years. And they continue releasing the drug until the drug is completely gone,” said Grattoni, chairman of the Department of Nanomedicine at Houston Methodist Research Institute.

The medicines are dispensed in a manner that is similar to the way sand moves in an hourglass. The drugs are released through membranes with the nanochannels inside the implants that range in shapes and sizes from around 2 centimeters to the size of a grain of rice. The differences would help accommodate different implantation sites and different drugs for specific diseases.

“They end up acting like the glands are like artificial glands inside of the body that do the things that the glands in the body normally do — secrete the necessary molecules when they are needed,” said Mauro Ferrari, president and chief executive officer at Houston Methodist Research Institute and an expert in biomedical nanotechnology.

Remote access

The nanochannel delivery system can either deliver a steady and constant dose of a drug, or it can be controlled remotely via a phone or Bluetooth, so drug administration can be increased, decreased or suspended over a period of time.

When treating hypertension or rheumatoid arthritis, Grattoni said, it has been shown that giving the medication at specific times during the day would provide the best efficacy with minimal side effects.

“When you want to deliver the drug at a specific time point, then an implant that can be self-modulating the drug release would make a huge difference,” said Grattoni.

A nanochannel delivery system would allow a patient to live a normal life and receive medication at the same time every day.

HIV prevention, obesity, cancer

Another area of advanced research in Grattoni’s lab involves using the implant for HIV prevention. Patients who do not take medication to prevent HIV would be at risk of being exposed to the virus that causes AIDS. Prevention medication placed inside the implant would ensure the protection of the person at risk and be most helpful in developing countries where access to a medical facility is limited. Refilling the implant would only involve a two-needle injection under the skin.

“Having an implant that would allow you to deliver the medication for maybe an entire year would also be welcome, of course, because in that case, you don’t need to have the patient directly close to a health care facility,” said Grattoni.

Another application fights obesity. A drug that has been found effective with this delivery method could help patients lose fat tissue without having to change their diets.

Grattoni said an implant the size of a grain of rice can help fight solid tumors such as triple-negative breast cancer and melanoma.

“They can be inserted via a needle, just a simple needle, inside of a tumor mass and deliver immunotherapy straight inside of the tumor,” said Grattoni.

NASA’s role

With the help of NASA, research on implants using nanotechnology reached new heights with an experiment conducted in space to solve the problem of astronauts experiencing muscle atrophy because of microgravity.

This application is also beneficial for patients on Earth who experience muscle wasting due to disease or injury. Over a period of two months, a drug that can potentially maintain muscle was placed in an implant containing nanochannel membranes and placed in mice. Researchers are now analyzing the data.

Using the implant for HIV prevention could enter the clinical trial phase within three years. It may take several more years before other applications of the implant are tested on humans as the research continues.
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US Unemployment Drops Slightly; Job Growth Slows

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped slightly in July, while job gains were lower than many analysts predicted.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department shows the jobless rate fell one-tenth of a percent to 3.9 percent, one of the lowest figures in years.

The world’s largest economy also had a net gain of 157,000 jobs, which is less than the monthly average so far this year.

Experts blamed some of the change on closing retail stores, but said the labor market remains tight, with more openings than jobs overall.

A jobless rate of under 4 percent usually prompts employers to raise wages to attract and keep good workers; but, the newest figures show wages grew just 2.7 percent over the past year, which is slightly lower than the inflation rate, meaning that real wages are actually falling slightly.

Peter Cramer of Prime Advisors says one reason wages are not growing faster is the large but shrinking pool of part-time workers who are getting longer hours or full-time work. 

In a VOA interview via Skype, Cramer says so far, there is little evidence that Washington’s many trade disputes have hurt employment, but that could change if the bickering goes on for “six or eight months.”

PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says the U.S. unemployment rate will probably fall to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Faucher writes that as that happens, job growth will slow down because businesses will find it more difficult to recruit new hires. 

‘Strong’ economy

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, said the economy was “strong,” an upgrade from its June assessment, which dubbed the economy “solid.”

The Fed also made clear it expects to raise interest rates in the coming months, going against President Donald Trump’s demands for the independent body to keep rates steady. “I think the economy’s in a really good place,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell told NPR in July.

Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Trump likely will tout a strong economy as his Republican Party looks to maintain its grasp on the U.S. legislative chambers, the Senate and House of Representatives. Yet analysts warned this may not be a winning strategy.

“If this was a prez [presidential election] year, these strong jobs reports would matter so much more for the elections,” CNN election analyst Harry Enten said Friday on Twitter. “As is, the economy is not strongly correlated with midterm outcomes.”
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Pakistani Engineer Turns Straw Waste Into Fuel

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

A Pakistani engineer has designed a system to help developing countries avoid fuel imports by making ethanol with the millions of tons of straw that are wasted each year. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Rare Finds and Loyal Customers at New York’s Poster Museum

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Not many museums can say they have 500,000 items on display, but the Poster Museum in New York can. Established in 1973 in Manhattan by a passionate collector, the museum has the largest collection of posters in the world. Olga Loginova has the story.
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Study: Obese Individuals Shed Flu Virus Longer

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

New research suggests obesity may be a factor in the transmission of the influenza virus.

In a study conducted in Managua, Nicaragua, obese adults spread the influenza virus for significantly longer than non-obese individuals. The findings have significant ramifications, given that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, according to the World Health Organization.

Epidemiologist Aubree Gordon at the University of Michigan started looking into the correlation between obesity and the flu nine years ago. Gordon explained that “during the 2009 influenza pandemic, it became quite clear that obese individuals were at higher risk for severe influenza. And more recently, some studies have shown that obese individuals don’t respond as well to the influenza vaccine.”

Gordon collaborated with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health on a three-year research program that followed 1,783 individuals in 320 households. The researchers visited homes where at least one member reported symptoms of influenza. Researchers collected samples every few days for two weeks, tracking infected individuals and others in the home who agreed to enroll in the study.

When Gordon and her colleagues analyzed the samples, they found that obese adults shed the influenza virus 42 percent longer than non-obese adults — or about a day and a half longer period of shedding the virus.

Weaker immune system

Previous research found that obesity led to chronic inflammation and a poorer functioning immune system. Will Green, a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina’s School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, explained how the immune system works to combat the virus.

“There’s an innate first responder. They’re the ones that immediately show up to fight. And then there’s the adaptive T- and B-cell memory response. You need both pieces, but the adaptive response is really the one that’s been shown to be impaired in obesity,” Green said.

Because obese people have a weakened immune system, there were concerns that the obese people in the study were shedding more of the virus simply because they were sicker. However, scientists imposed strict controls by studying only those adults who were infected but had few symptoms.

“In people who were either asymptomatic — having no symptoms — or just had one minor symptom, obese adults still shed for significantly longer than non-obese adults,” Gordon said. “In fact, they shed [viral DNA] for about twice as long.

“I think this is another piece of evidence that obese individuals really have an altered immune system, and they’re having trouble potentially clearing the infection, which could lead to higher severity,” Gordon added.

Infection rates

Nikhil Dhurandhar, chair of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, cautions that further research is needed. He told VOA that scientists still don’t understand how much the duration of viral shedding is linked to infection rates.

“Is it a huge amount of virus that is getting excreted? Is it very little?” Dhurandhar asked. “And also, what we don’t know is how infectious that is.”

Green also noted that if shedding the virus means that obese people either remain sick or infectious longer, “you can also equate that to the greater loss of work time and higher health care costs.”

Gordon and her colleagues’ study, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, highlights a risk of obesity that isn’t going away anytime soon.

As Gordon told VOA, “Obesity is a growing epidemic, unfortunately, and becoming a huge problem worldwide.”
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