Day: October 7, 2020

Wisconsin health officials opened a field hospital Wednesday at the state fairgrounds near Milwaukee to cater to the swelling number of COVID-19 cases threatening to overwhelm hospitals.The 530-bed field clinic was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in April at the request of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ administration. Local leaders had warned about the possibility of area hospitals being overwhelmed, but hospitalizations didn’t reach the point where the hospital was needed, until now.Only 16% of the state’s 11,452 hospital beds were available as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the state’s Department of Health Services. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients reached 853, its highest during the pandemic according to the COVID Tracking Project, with 216 in intensive care.”This alternative care facility will take some of the pressure off our  health care facilities while expanding the continuum of care for folks who have COVID-19,” said Evers.The spike in cases has largely been blamed on the reopening of colleges and K-12 schools as well as people’s refusal to wear masks and practice social distancing. Wisconsin ranked third nationwide this week in daily new cases per capita, making it the hot spot for coronavirus infections.Over 31,000 coronavirus patients are hospitalized nationwide according to the COVID Tracking Project.The hospital, which is designed to provide low-level care, will accept only patients who have already been hospitalized elsewhere for at least 24 to 48 hours, according to the Wisconsin Department of Administration. Patients who qualify will be transported to the facility by ambulance. The facility will not accept walk-ins.It will be staffed mainly by volunteers, state workers, and National Guard members.Several other states moved to set up field hospitals in the early stages of the pandemic — at great expense — only to find that they got little to no use and many were shut down.
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Some top scientists in Britain are calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative government to shift strategy on the coronavirus pandemic and adopt a “herd immunity” approach, allowing people who are less likely to become seriously ill from the virus to return to normal life. “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to coronavirus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this focused protection,” the scientists said in a petition known as the Great Barrington Declaration. A man sells face masks, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, on a street in Manchester, Britain, Oct. 7, 2020.The intervention by scientists from several universities, including the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, comes as surging coronavirus infection rates have put Britain on the brink of tougher lockdown measures. The government’s scientific advisers are calling for “urgent and drastic action.” Infection rates have doubled in the past 11 days. On Tuesday, Britain recorded 14,542 new confirmed cases. Hot spots are popping up across the country, although most are concentrated in the north, where 16 million people are already under partial lockdown.  The authors and co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, named after the Massachusetts town in the United States where it was first drafted and signed in 2020, argue that pandemic lockdowns are having “devastating effects” on public health by upending routine health care and harming mental health.  They warn that tighter restrictions and lockdowns will lead to greater mortality. Professors Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University drafted the declaration.  Many of Britain’s scientific advisers say a herd immunity strategy would be “grotesque” and amount to writing off sick and disabled people. Other critics say it was the approach the Johnson government tried earlier this year, and that it led to more deaths than necessary. Herd immunity The theory of herd immunity is based on the idea that once about 60% of the population has been infected, it becomes immune from further reinfection. That, in turn, provides some protection to those who are not immune because the virus will spread much more slowly or may just disappear. Most of the government’s advisers dismiss herd immunity as a viable strategy, arguing that immunity is only short-term. A person is tested for COVID-19 at a drive-through testing center in a car park in Chessington, Greater London, Oct. 7, 2020.Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the London-based Francis Crick Institute, said herd immunity is unlikely to kick in before vaccines are ready. He also maintained that it is impossible to know who is likely to become seriously ill from the virus. Many government advisers are now urging a national lockdown aimed at lowering the infection rate and avoiding hospitals becoming overwhelmed with the sick. Professor Calum Semple of the University of Liverpool and a member of the government’s main scientific advisory group on the pandemic, told the BBC on Wednesday that a “circuit-breaker” national lockdown was long overdue.  Another government adviser, Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said Wednesday that localized measures are failing, and much more stringent lockdown restrictions are needed. “These local restrictions that have been put in place in much of the north of England really haven’t been very effective,” he said. Impact of lockdowns The infighting among scientists comes as mayors of towns in the north of England have started to question the orthodoxy of lockdowns, fearing that tighter and prolonged shutdowns are causing irreparable damage to their local economies, as well as having a long-term impact on mental health.  Local leaders say they are better placed to know when and how to tighten restrictions, or whether they are needed at all. They fear central governments are not getting the right balance between protecting lives and saving livelihoods and businesses. Andreas Spahiu, owner and manager of Don Vito’s restaurant, is seen inside his premise, which is closing at the weekend due to the coronavirus restrictions, in Newcastle upon Tyne, Britain, Oct. 7, 2020.The signatories of the declaration also argue that lockdowns are having a series of negative impacts. They point to lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes and fewer cancer screenings that they say are affecting working-class people and young people the most. Hospital admissions in England jumped by a quarter in one day this week, and worries are mounting about the ability of the National Health Service to cope as winter sets in. The government’s testing system is also straining to cope with people wanting tests and complaining that they are unable to get them. Further delays are likely, as it emerged this week that there are supply shortages from the diagnostics company Roche because of logjams in the supply chains of swabs, screening kits and reagents, the chemicals needed for the tests. The infighting among scientists is also being mirrored among Johnson’s cabinet ministers. Liz Truss, secretary of state for international trade, is publicly arguing against further lockdown measures, saying it would “set us back hugely.” 
 
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Tech giants Google and Oracle are clashing at the Supreme Court in a copyright dispute that’s worth billions and important to the future of software development.
The case before the justices Wednesday has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.
 
Google has defended its actions, saying what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. But Oracle says Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism” and sued, seeking more than $8 billion.
The case has been going on for a decade. Google won the first round when a trial court rejected Oracle’s copyright claim, but that ruling was overturned on appeal. A jury then sided with Google, calling its copying “fair use,” but an appeals court disagreed.
Because of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, only eight justices are hearing the case, and they’re doing so by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic. The questions for the court are whether the 1976 Copyright Act protects what Google copied, and, even if it does, whether what Google did is still permitted.  
Oracle, for its part, says the case is simple.  
“This case is about theft,” Oracle’s chief Washington lobbyist, Ken Glueck, said in a telephone interview ahead of argument. He compared what Google did to plagiarizing from someone else’s speech. When you plagiarize one line from a speech, he said: “That’s a plagiarized speech. Nobody says, ‘Oh, well, it was just one line.'”
But Google’s Kent Walker, the company’s chief legal officer, said in an interview that Google wrote “every line of code we possibly could ourselves.”
“No one’s ever claimed copyright over software interfaces, but that’s what Oracle is claiming now,” Walker said.
Microsoft, IBM and major internet and tech industry lobbying groups have weighed in — in favor of Google.
The Trump administration, the Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry Association of America are among those supporting Oracle.
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Two scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a method of gene editing. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences jointly awarded the $1.1 million prize to Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the United States. The academy recognized their work on a tool called the CRISP/Cas9 genetic scissors, which allows scientists to cut a string of DNA at a precise position and edit genomes of animals, plants and microorganisms. Applications for the tool include plant breeding and contributing to cancer therapies. The academy said the work of Charpentier and Doudna has “revolutionized the life sciences.” The Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded Thursday, followed by the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Three scientists won the physics prize Wednesday for their discoveries related to black holes. Three scientists also shared the medicine prize for the discovery of Hepatitis C. 
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As the COVID-19 pandemic marches on, new, rapid tests offer hope for pumping the brakes on the virus’ spread.  The United States is falling far short in its testing efforts. More than 4 million tests per day would be needed to control the spread of the coronavirus, according to an analysis by Brown University and A healthcare professional adds the extraction reagent and a patient specimen to Abbott’s BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag rapid test card, Sep. 2020.The right test for the job Experts say that the best test depends on the testing strategy.   “I think there’s definitely a time and a place for all of these tests, as long as they’re used properly,” said Wyllie. Currently, the CDC only recommends COVID-19 testing if people have symptoms or if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person. Because PCR picks up even tiny quantities of the virus it is much more sensitive than antigen testing. This means that PCR can more accurately diagnose COVID-19, particularly as the disease progresses and virus levels wane. “PCR is extremely sensitive. It can detect one molecule [of the virus],” said Michael Mina, epidemiology professor at Harvard University at a press conference. “I want to make it clear that PCR is a terrific tool. If I’m a diagnostic physician, I want to use PCR.”   However, because PCR tests are so sensitive, they may give a positive result when people are no longer contagious. “We’re actually missing people during the peak of their infection and we’re catching them too late,” said Mina.   Some experts say the best approach to tackling COVID-19 is frequent, widespread testing of asymptomatic people. Less-sensitive antigen tests may do the job because they perform well when virus levels are high and detect people when they’re most infectious. Best of all, these tests are cheap and quick. “If my goal is to use testing as a way to remove people who are infectious from the population, that’s where these rapid antigen tests really start to shine,” said Mina. According to Mina, the recent granting of an Emergency Use Authorization to a rapid antigen test is a step in the right direction. This type of simple, paper test could one day be available for use in homes. Although the FDA has not yet approved a home COVID-19 test, it recently provided recommendations for home testing standards, stating that these tests will be a “game changer in our fight against COVID-19.” “I really like the idea of a rapid test that you can do at home,” said Yale’s Wyllie. “This idea that we can get up in the morning and as we’re getting ready for work or whatever, taking a test.” But Wyllie says the success of this approach depends on test sensitivity and how often testing is done. “The problem with antigen tests at the moment is that I just don’t think they’re sensitive enough sometimes.”   Even with daily testing, a low sensitivity test could fail to identify the virus before a person becomes infectious. “In that 24 hours, they could go to a wedding, they could go to a funeral, they could go to a church choir. All these settings that we’re seeing become superspreading events.”How Superspreaders – People and Places – Drive the COVID-19 Pandemic A mix of biology, behavior and location is found to produce a majority of cases The limits of testing Experts agree that no test is perfect. Results depend on many factors such as the type of test, how the sample was collected and when the test was taken. “A negative [diagnostic] test doesn’t exclude the possibility that you will test positive tomorrow if you’re within that 14-day incubation period,” said UNC’s Weber. “I think testing is an important strategy but it’s not a substitute for physical distancing and mask wearing.” Steve Baragona contributed to this report.
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Experts from a global chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Tuesday that the substance used to poison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was from the banned Soviet-style Novichok family of potent nerve agents.  The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, his wife, Yulia, and son, Zahar, pose for a picture in Berlin, in this undated image obtained from social media October 6, 2020. (Courtesy of Instagram @NAVALNY/Social Media)Russia has repeatedly denied accusations that it was involved in the incident and has widely rejected the medical findings by German military doctors that identified the nerve agent last month.  Moscow requested assistance from OPCW on October 1 to confirm the presence of poison. According to a statement of their findings, experts said that an analysis of the samples taken from Navalny prove that a nerve agent from the Novichok family was used against him.  In response to the OPCW findings, the German government said Tuesday that it would talk with European Union partners about its next steps in the investigation.  “Any use of chemical weapons is a serious matter and cannot remain without consequences,” said German government spokesman Steffan Seibert. “These results constitute a matter of grave concern,” the OPCW said. “The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances … (is) … reprehensible and wholly contrary to the legal norms established by the international community.” The Kremlin was accused of using a similar nerve agent in a 2018 in an attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal, an ex-Soviet spy and Moscow critic. Poisoned Former Spy Sergei Skripal Discharged From UK Hospital

        Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal has been discharged from a British hospital more than two months after he was poisoned with a nerve agent and left fighting for his life, health officials said Friday.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, and spent weeks in critical condition.

Britain has accused Russia of poisoning the pair with a military-grade nerve agent, a claim Moscow denies.The poisoning has sparked a Cold War-style diplomatic…
If Navalny’s case is anything like the incident with Skripal, who acted as a double agent for the U.K., punishment could include financial sanctions against Russian officials. In his first video interview since the poisoning, Navalny told prominent Russian YouTube blogger Yury Dud in a segment released Tuesday that the Kremlin critic believes Russian intelligence services are responsible for the attack.  Navalny went as far as accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning.  In the video interview, Navalny alleges that he was targeted by Russian authorities that believed he posed a threat to Putin’s ruling party in the following year’s parliamentary elections. In recent years, the opposition activist has become one of Putin’s most influential critics, in part because of his efforts to wage a combination of protests and anti-corruption campaigns against the Kremlin.   
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The Food and Drug Administration laid out updated safety standards Tuesday for makers of COVID-19 vaccines after the White House blocked their formal release, the latest political tug-of-war between the Trump administration and the government’s public health scientists.In briefing documents posted on its website, the FDA said vaccine makers should follow trial participants for at least two months to rule out safety issues before seeking emergency approval. That requirement would almost certainly preclude the introduction of a vaccine before Nov. 3.President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted a vaccine could be authorized before Election Day, even though top government scientists working on the effort have said that timeline is very unlikely. On Monday, Trump said vaccines are coming “momentarily,” in a video recorded after he returned to the White House.Former FDA officials have warned that public perception that a vaccine was being rushed out for political reasons could derail efforts to vaccinate millions of Americans.A senior administration official confirmed to the AP on Monday that the White House had blocked FDA’s plans to formally publish the safety guidelines based on the two-month data requirement, arguing there was “no clinical or medical reason” for it.But the FDA tucked the information into a memo posted ahead of an Oct. 22 meeting of its outside vaccine advisory panel. The group of non-governmental experts is scheduled to discuss general standards for coronavirus vaccines, part of FDA’s effort to publicize its process and rationale for vaccine reviews. While information prepared for such panels does not carry the weight of a formal FDA guidance document, the release of the information makes clear the FDA plans to impose the safety standards for any vaccine seeking an expedited path to market.To meet the FDA’s threshold, companies would need to submit two months of follow-up from half of their trial participants after they receive their last vaccine dose to show there are no major side effects or health problems. Because vaccines are normally given to otherwise healthy people, the FDA requires strict evidence of their safety.The requirements are aimed at companies seeking rapid approval through the FDA’s emergency authorization pathway. That accelerated process, reserved for health emergencies, allows medical products onto the market based on a lower bar than traditional FDA approval.Initial doses of vaccines for emergency use would likely be reserved for medical workers and people with health conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to coronavirus. Full FDA approval for the general population will require significantly more data and is not expected until mid-2021.An FDA spokeswoman said Tuesday the vaccine guidelines are still “under review” but added that “the FDA has already communicated with individual manufacturers about its expectations.”The White House’s attempt to block the information’s release follows a string of instances in which the Trump administration has undercut its own medical experts working to combat the pandemic. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has been attempting to shore up public confidence in the vaccine review process for weeks, vowing that career scientists, not politicians, will decide if the shots are safe and effective.Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has stoked excitement by saying he expects data on whether the company’s candidate works to be ready in late October. But a number of variables would still have to align for the company to submit, and the FDA to review and green light, a vaccine application before Nov. 3. Pfizer’s competitors Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are working on longer research timelines.Vaccine development typically takes years, but the U.S. government has invested billions in efforts to accelerate the process and help multiple drugmakers prepare multiple candidates. All the doses will be purchased by the federal government for use vaccinating the U.S. population.Beyond exposing the rift between the White House and FDA, the release of the information may have limited practical effect.FDA scientists have been discussing the guidelines publicly for weeks and have made clear that the recommendations have already been shared with each of the vaccine developers.”The companies know what we’re expecting,” said Dr. Peter Marks, head of FDA’s vaccine division, in an online interview last week with the nonprofit Friends of Cancer Research.Instead, Marks said, releasing the guidelines was “an attempt to help the public see what we’re requiring of COVID-19 vaccines.” He added that the guidelines would explain that all upcoming vaccines would be reviewed by FDA’s independent panel of outside vaccine advisers before the agency makes its own final decision. 
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