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Covid Vaccines in Phase III, New Risk Calculators, and More Coronavirus News

Catch up on the most important updates from this week.

MORE VACCINES ENTER Phase III trials, researchers continue to learn about the long-term impacts of Covid-19, and risk calculation becomes increasingly difficult as the country reopens.

When it comes to vaccine development, there are two big issues on the table, according to WIRED’s Adam Rogers. First you need to develop a safe vaccine that works. Then “you need a communications strategy that explains exactly what the drug does and how it does it” so that people trust the vaccine enough to go get it.

This week, there was plenty of hopeful news related to the first issue. New research found that a century-old tuberculosis shot could help protect against Covid-19, though more research is underway and won’t be completed until early 2021. Meanwhile, two more vaccines, from Novovax and Johnson & Johnson, entered Phase III trials. Unlike its competitors, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine doesn’t need to be frozen and requires only one dose, giving it a leg up. In all likelihood, there will eventually be several viable vaccines, all of which will be necessary to make sure everyone is protected worldwide. Though, as Roxanne Khamsi notes, the fact that most vaccines are being developed in wealthy countries means they might not work as well for people from poorer nations.

source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c_UJwLq8PI

Nothing Eats Viruses, Right? Meet Some Hungry Protists

New genetic evidence builds the case that single-celled marine microbes might chow down on viruses.

Katherine J. Wu Published Sept. 24, 2020 Updated Sept. 25, 2020

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source:https://t.qianzhan.com/caijing/detail/200926-a9be94a9.html

On the dinner plate that is planet Earth, there exists a veritable buffet of viruses — an amount of biomass that is the equivalent of about 25 billion human beings.
So perhaps it’s a bit baffling that scientists have yet to pinpoint a species that deliberately eats viruses for energy.
But mounting evidence suggests that at least one group of organisms might nosh on nutrient-rich viruses: protists, microscopic and often single-celled organisms that scientists have struggled to place on the tree of life. Like viruses, protists seethe in seawater by the billions and trillions — and some might slurp up marine viruses, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

If the findings pan out, they could help flip a centuries-old dogma on its head: Rather than acting only as disease-causing agents of chaos and snuffing out life, viruses might in some cases play a role in fueling and sustaining it.
The new study alone can’t nail the consumptive connection between protists and viruses, said Rika Anderson, a microbial ecologist at Carleton College in Minnesota who was not involved in the study. But protists have been found in a mind-boggling array of habitats, from the rotting stumps of trees to animal guts, and may have evolved at least as many strategies to keep themselves fed.

Why misinformation about COVID-19’s origins keeps going viral

Another piece of coronavirus misinformation is making the rounds. Here’s how to sift through the muck.

MONIQUE BROUILLETTE AND REBECCA RENNER PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

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TWENTY YEARS AGO, data scientist Sinan Aral began to see the formation of a trend that now defines our social media era: how quickly untrue information spreads. He watched as false news ignited online discourse like a small spark that kindles into a massive blaze. Now the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Aral believes that a concept he calls the novelty hypothesis demonstrates this almost unstoppable viral contagion of false news.
“Human attention is drawn to novelty, to things that are new and unexpected,” says Aral. “We gain in status when we share novel information because it looks like we're in the know, or that we have access to inside information.”
Enter the Yan report. On September 14, an article was posted to Zenodo, an open-access site for sharing research papers, which claimed that genetic evidence showed that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was made in a lab, rather than emerging through natural spillover from animals. The 26-page paper, led by Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, a postdoctoral researcher who left Hong Kong University, has not undergone peer review and asserts that this evidence of genetic engineering has been “censored” in the scientific journals. (National Geographic contacted Yan and the report’s three other authors for comment but received no reply.)