Space is full of weird stuff, but more than 1,300 light-years from Earth, there’s a star system called GW Orionis that makes a lot of that other bizarre phenomena seem outright dull. For starters, GW Orionis has three stars rather than the usual one. Two orbit each other, and the third orbits the pair. Already we’re in territory that’s stranger than Star Wars. And that’s not all. The three stars with their clockwork orbits are surrounded by three rings of dust and gas. Such rings—called “protoplanetary disks,” since they possess the building blocks of larger objects like planets and moons—are common. […]
David Axe
61 posts
Seven years ago, a pair of scientists scouring high-resolution images of space caught fleeting glimpses of a bright round object peeking from a vast cloud of icy objects more than 2 billion miles from Earth. As if that whole scene wasn’t exciting enough, the object appeared to be a huge comet. Thought to be between 60 and 100 miles wide, it was the biggest comet a human being had ever witnessed. And it seemed to be heading toward us, very loosely speaking. Last month the discoverers of the giant object—University of Pennsylvania astronomers Gary Bernstein and Pedro Bernardinelli—combined their earlier data […]
Good news, maybe. There’s finally a pill for COVID—and it seems to work pretty well. Molnupiravir, a co-development of New Jersey-based Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics in Florida, is the first COVID antiviral medication in pill form. Merck and Ridgeback plan to submit their data to the FDA for possible authorization, though it’s unclear how quickly the agency might act. The FDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Taken orally, the drug appears to cut the death rate from serious COVID in half. “I’m pretty excited about these results,” Leila Hojat, an expert in infectious diseases at University Hospitals in […]
A panel of experts advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just endorsed a plan by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to offer COVID vaccine booster shots to millions of the most vulnerable Americans. But the same 15-member panel wanted the CDC to also consider a new vaccine strategy that wasn’t on the agenda for the two-day virtual advisory meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. Several of the panelists urged the CDC to take a hard look at mixing and matching the three different vaccines the FDA has approved for distribution in the United States in a so-called “heterologous” […]
A key U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel on Friday afternoon voted against a universal booster shot for the most popular COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, the panel endorsed a booster only for certain Americans: those 65 and older plus younger people who are at high risk of disease owing to underlying conditions. The votes by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, could narrow any effort by the health-safety agency to authorize a third shot for many of the 180 million (and counting) Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID. The FDA isn’t required to honor VRBPAC’s recommendations, […]
Coronavirus infections are on the rise. Vaccination rates are lagging. Hospitals are filling up—and so are morgues. And yet a stubborn, right-wing governor not only refuses to take action to limit the virus’ transmission, he’s actively battling local authorities trying to protect their own communities. No, this isn’t Florida or Texas we’re talking about. It’s another Republican-led Southern state suffering a devastating summer COVID-19 surge: South Carolina. But as in Florida and Texas, communities in South Carolina are fighting back. Cities and school boards are advancing mask mandates in open defiance of the state government—and counting on courts to endorse their […]
The Biden administration on Wednesday endorsed booster shots for millions of Americans already vaccinated against COVID-19, proposing they begin in earnest by late September as the ultra-contagious Delta variant wreaks national havoc. The FDA and CDC were still due to sign off on extra shots before most Americans could begin receiving them. And experts broadly endorsed the move given early indications protection offered by safe and effective coronavirus vaccines might wane over time. But coming just days after the feds authorized extra shots for the immunocompromised, and with America’s anti-vaxxer problem showing no signs of abating, the prospect for a smooth […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized vaccine-eligible Americans with immune problems to receive a third dose of the safe and effective two-dose COVID-19 vaccines. The move could lead to a surge in vaccinations as some of the most vulnerable Americans shore up their immune systems against increasingly dangerous new variants of the novel coronavirus. And experts broadly support it given the seemingly relentless surge of the Delta variant. But with some Americans already seeking out third doses on their own, the potential for a new surge of line-skipping by young, healthy people—even as much of the planet remains […]
A space capsule with a hole in it. A rocket that failed 31 miles over Earth’s surface. An orbital lab with misfiring thrusters. That’s the short list of the most dramatic mishaps involving the International Space Station in the last three years. The missteps have one thing in common: They all involve Russian spacecraft traveling to, or already attached to, the station—or station modules that recently arrived from Earth. There was a time, 60 years ago, when the Soviet Union was the world’s indisputable leader in space. The USSR had the first space probes, the most ingenious manned spacecraft, and the […]
Despite high hopes for a so-called vaxx summer, the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus is driving a wild new spike in infections across the United States, especially in areas where a large number of residents have rejected the COVID-19 vaccines. But it’s not just stubborn, unvaccinated adults who are catching Delta and getting really, really sick. The variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—also may be sending children to the hospital at a higher rate than previous variants. And Florida, where the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 appears to be higher than ever, could reach a new frontier of pandemic chaos […]
A volunteer meteorite-hunter made an incredible discovery in March this year while scouring an English field and pleading to the spirit of his late father for assistance. Derek Robson found one of the oldest, rarest space rocks in humanity’s possession partially buried in a horse’s muddy hoofprint. This 4.6-billion-year-old hunk of olivine and phyllosilicates had apparently fallen to Earth a few weeks earlier after traveling from some distant point beyond Mars. Now scientists at Loughborough University, in central England, are gently probing the fragile, two-inch rock. The meteorite’s uncontaminated insides could surrender vital clues about some of the deepest mysteries of […]
There’s a huge blank space in the U.S. military’s long-anticipated report on recent UFO sightings. It’s one we need to fill before we can even start making sense of the 144 sightings of mysterious flying objects the feds have registered since 2004. We need data from the Federal Aviation Authority. The FAA’s logs, drawing on countless sweeps by thousands of air traffic control radars over a span of two decades, could help the Pentagon to create a “baseline” for UFO activity across North America. The agency’s records could help the military figure out just how unusual its own UFO sightings are. […]
President Joe Biden’s plan to spend a couple trillion dollars on infrastructure here on Earth is still working its way through a fractious Congress. In the meantime the Biden administration is going all in on infrastructure in space. That is to say, space stations. In a rebuke of one of ex-president Donald Trump’s less popular space proposals, the Biden administration is working to extend the service life of the International Space Station. At the same time, the administration is clarifying plans for a new station that would orbit the moon. The twin initiatives couldn’t have come at a better time for […]
NASA is finally going to Venus. And the missions—two missions, actually—could shine a light on a planet that, despite being Earth’s closest neighbor, has been cloaked in clouds and mystery for a generation. The space agency on Wednesday announced not one but two missions to Venus, the second planet from the Sun and, at no more than 150 million miles distant, the closest planet to Earth. Mars, the fourth rock from the sun, is 212 million miles from Earth at its closest. “We know a lot about Mars and even Jupiter and Saturn,” John Logsdon, a former NASA adviser and ex-director […]
Nine people affiliated with the New York Yankees have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. By all accounts, this is not a vaccine skeptic problem—all nine had been inoculated. But rather than some kind of disturbing signal that a new normal is more elusive than ever, or that the specific vaccine the mix of staffers and players got was somehow bogus, the apparent outbreak in the baseball team’s clubhouse is a reason for optimism, experts told The Daily Beast. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. […]
The vaccines that the world’s leading pharmaceutical firms have developed to prevent COVID-19 work really well. Against the novel coronavirus, that is. But SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the only coronavirus out there; there are more pathogens like the one that causes COVID-19. And it may be only a matter of time before some new coronavirus jumps from whatever animal population harbors it to human beings. When it does, it could wreak as much havoc as SARS-CoV-2, if not more. That’s what worries a team of scientists led by Barton Haynes and Kevin Saunders at Duke University. And what motivated them, a year ago, […]
It’s not too late for the United States to become the world’s vaccine superpower, producing and exporting enough doses to protect entire countries against COVID-19. Under pressure to help countries such as India that are suffering devastating surges in infections and deaths, the Biden administration has begun to cut through some of the bureaucratic red tape standing in the way. But experts say the White House should be ruthless when it comes to zeroing out rules and regulations that prevent U.S. firms—and the government itself—from shipping more doses overseas. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. […]
The U.S. government appears to be inching closer to green-lighting the first coronavirus vaccine for kids. According to The New York Times and other news organizations, the safe and effective two-shot vaccine from Pfizer could win FDA emergency-use authorization for children and teens aged 12 to 15 as soon as next week. Opening up vaccinations to younger teens would add nearly 20 million people to the pool of Americans who are eligible for inoculation against the scourge that continues to ravage entire countries and has claimed well over half a million American lives. That, in turn, could juice the United States’ […]
By now many Americans have forgotten that astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin weren’t alone as they took humankind’s first steps on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Orbiting some 60 miles overhead in the Apollo 11 command module, 38-year-old Michael Collins enjoyed a brief moment of peace and quiet as the module passed around the dark side of the moon, cutting off all communication with Earth. “It was a wonderful experience,” Collins said in 2016. “The fact that it was quiet—silent, utterly—was good, not bad. It gave me some time off of mission control telling me to […]
India is in the throes of a devastating surge in COVID-19 cases. The wave of infections, propelled by a new variant of the coronavirus, could spill into the United States. Indeed, the Indian variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—is already here. With most states reopening and governors and mayors relaxing mask mandates as pandemic fatigue sets in, realistically just one thing can spare Americans from another spike in cases, experts say. The country must double down on its successful vaccination campaign. Getting tens of millions more jabs in arms in the coming weeks could block the new lineage’s transmission pathways—and stop it […]
COVID infections are up in many U.S. states as new variants spread, state and local authorities end social distancing rules and mask mandates, and pandemic-weary Americans let down their guard. If that weren’t bad enough, fewer and fewer of those same tired Americans are getting tested for the virus. Fewer tests means less data—and less early warning when new variants evolve and spread. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
The COVID vaccines work. Really well. Isolated infections of vaccinated individuals and a half-baked, non-peer-reviewed study don’t change that. And the vaccines are safe, despite reports of a very small number of women—six out of tens of millions—suffering blood clots after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended states pause administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while the agency looks into the clotting issue. The seemingly alarming news came rapid-fire in the past few days. A man also caught COVID after getting vaccinated in April, according to the New York Post. “It’s crazy […]
Europe has been in a full-blown panic over a coronavirus vaccine the science shows to be safe and effective. Beginning early this month, 20 countries halted distribution of the two-dose vaccine from the consortium of Oxford University and U.K. pharma AstraZeneca, after a Danish woman died of blood clotting shortly after getting a dose. But experts and top health officials are nearly unanimous in objecting to the stoppage, which Europe’s top medical authority on Thursday affirmed was not warranted. There’s no clear link between the clotting and the vaccine, and the panic, experts point out, has been stoked by misinformation. But […]
It’s been less than two weeks since the new coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson won authorization for emergency use from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it’s already developed something of a troubled reputation. The mayor of Detroit waved off thousands of doses—suggesting it was second-rate, before the White House tried to clean up the mess. The Archdiocese of New Orleans condemned the safe and effective one-shot vaccine as “morally compromised.” And a slew of media outlets have probed concerns about perceptions that the jab is less effective than the other two available vaccines. Ignore the naysayers. By some […]
A potentially dangerous new form of the coronavirus, or “lineage,” as geneticists call it, is spreading across New York City, scientists reported this week. They worry the new lineage, B.1.526, could be more transmissible and partially resistant to existing COVID-19 vaccines. In the worst-case scenario, B.1.526 could arrest recent progress reducing new infections and hospitalizations and delay, by weeks or months, the eventual suppression of the pathogen in the state where it exploded last spring. But if there’s a silver lining in B.1.526’s dark cloud, it’s that it shares its worst qualities with several other coronavirus lineages. And many of the […]
Tighten up your face mask or double it up. That’s the latest advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as dangerous new strains of the novel coronavirus spread across the United States and health officials scramble to get vaccines in arms. Wearing a washable cloth mask on top of a disposable medical-style one— “double-masking”—can double the level of protection against the fine airborne droplets that carry the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, a team led by John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 emergency response, concluded in a study the agency released on Wednesday. The CDC’s recommendation is a […]
President Joe Biden has a fleeting chance to help save two of America’s most iconic species. But to protect gray wolves and monarch butterflies, he needs to move fast—and perhaps get a little lucky. Wildlife populations are in decline all over the world, victims of pollution, deforestation, poaching, and the habitat-altering ravages of runaway climate change. But in North America, wolves and monarchs stand out for their beauty and popularity and the role they play as “keystone” species—that is, symbols of entire landscapes and ecosystems that harbor other vulnerable flora and fauna. The two species—one a delicate and short-lived insect and […]
On Friday, Johnson and Johnson released data from large-scale, phase-three trials of its novel coronavirus vaccine. They were promising: The numbers indicate broad effectiveness against known strains of the virus, and could pave the way for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the New Jersey-based company’s shot in a matter of days or weeks. As a bonus, Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine requires just one dose—and keeps for weeks in a standard refrigerator, making it much easier to distribute and administer than the two vaccines that currently have FDA authorization. But there’s a devil in the details: While the Johnson […]
Think of it like an early warning system. With new and more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus emerging all over the world, the U.S. government needs to set up a nationwide regime for detecting and tracking the biology of the coronavirus, experts told The Daily Beast. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
The coming year could be pretty bleak here on Earth as the economy tries to recover from the pandemic and vaccine-distribution hits snag after snag. But in space, 2021 promises to be a banner year. New probes, landers, rovers and instruments are pushing deeper into the solar system and beyond, intensifying humanity’s efforts to extract valuable resources, prepare for manned missions and, perhaps most intriguingly, search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. These are some of the most exciting space stories of 2021. It seems like everyone wants to get to the moon these days. There’s a lot of important science we […]
If two doses of a vaccine are 95 percent effective in protecting you from COVID, then taking just one dose should still offer some protection while doubling the number of people a given supply of vaccine can cover, right? It’s not that simple, experts say. And despite everyone from credentialed epidemiologists to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to the U.K. government endorsing some version of the idea, most experts say going rogue on the two-dose regimen could backfire big time. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source […]
A week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to Pfizer’s novel coronavirus vaccine, and with another vaccine from Moderna on the way, the question of whom to vaccinate first looms larger than ever. Vaccinations have begun at hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies all over America. In line with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every state is reserving initial doses of the two-dose vaccine for frontline health care workers and residents and staff of nursing homes—populations that are uniquely vulnerable to the virus owing, respectively, to their exposure to infected people and co-morbidities. Welcome […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization (EUA) to a coronavirus vaccine from New York pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Friday, kicking off a high-stakes effort to immunize millions of Americans buckling under an historic pandemic. Despite the involvement of an American corporation—in partnership with German company BioNTech—the U.S. was not the first Western nation to give the vaccine the go-ahead. The United Kingdom began injecting citizens with the same vaccine on Dec. 8, and Canadian regulators cleared the way for its use in that country a day later. The U.S. authorization for the vaccine to be used on people […]
Chuck Yeager, the legendary pilot who helped to make the United States a world leader in the air and space, died Monday at 97. As an Air Force test pilot, Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier, in October 1947. Six years later he became one of the first people to fly two times the speed of sound. Toward the end of his test-pilot career, Yeager helped to train America’s first astronauts. But Yeager didn’t just excel at what he called “research flying.” He was also a fearsome warrior. He shot down at least a dozen German planes […]
Two vaccines for the novel coronavirus are potentially just days away from being approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a massive step toward widespread distribution in a population with millions of sick patients. But the vaccines aren’t just potential lifelines for a country stuck in the throes of a horrific pandemic. Instead, experts say, they could be pioneers for a new, potentially safer immunization technology, one that could change the way we battle future viral pandemics—and even illnesses like cancer. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside […]
As coronavirus infections skyrocket and hospitals across the United States fill up with serious COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week approved the first-ever rapid home COVID-19 test for emergency use. The All-In-One Test Kit from California biotech firm Lucira Health uses some of the most reliable molecular-RNA technology, takes just 30 minutes, and is more than 90 percent accurate, according to the company. The FDA hopes the kits will result in more people getting tested for the coronavirus, and health experts cheered the development—even as they warned about the potential for individuals to botch the process outside […]
When Pfizer announced its late-stage novel coronavirus vaccine candidate was 90 percent effective on Monday, stock markets soared, critics started taking shots on Twitter, and right-wing conspiracy theories about the timing of the announcement—less than 48 hours after Joe Biden claimed the presidency—quickly proliferated. The public-health implications are massive. Pfizer expects to request emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the end of the month. If that happens, the company could begin shipping doses to front-line health workers and vulnerable populations such as nursing-home residents. Still, experts warned against prematurely declaring victory over the novel coronavirus given just […]
When it comes to treating serious cases of COVID-19, the antiviral drug Remdesivir helps. So do steroids, which can serve to reduce inflammation. And supplemental oxygen, as most Americans familiar with the basics of the coronavirus pandemic might guess, can ease shortness of breath. The jury’s still out on convalescent plasma, however, despite plenty of hype and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) controversy. And you shouldn’t count on getting access to experimental monoclonal antibodies like the ones that Donald Trump says got him back out on the campaign trail—at least not anytime soon. Plus, there are a host of once-promising […]
Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly on Tuesday halted one of two trials of a major new novel coronavirus therapy after independent safety monitors observed an unspecified problem with the testing. The Data Safety Monitoring Board froze trials of the Indiana company’s monoclonal antibody drug bamlanivimab, which was being administered in combination with the antiviral drug remdesivir. The board didn’t freeze separate trials testing bamlanivimab on its own, and the move doesn’t mean the company’s drug is unsound. But it does raise a slew of new questions about an antibody treatment that has been aggressively flogged by Donald Trump, who took a similar […]
The experimental novel coronavirus drug Donald Trump took last week is not, as the president claims, a cure for COVID-19. The monoclonal antibody cocktail, under development by New York pharma Regeneron, seems promising, experts and health officials say. But it and a similar antibody cocktail from Indiana firm Eli Lilly—also touted by the president—are still in trials. It’s too soon to say exactly what they do and how well they do it, and the president’s bluster about them is just the latest in a pattern of pandemic braggadocio. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s […]
One month after regulators in the United States and United Kingdom froze trials of a British novel coronavirus vaccine candidate, U.S. testing is still on hold. That has big implications for the urgent, multi-billion-dollar effort to produce a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine. The testing pause could slow development efforts by Astrazeneca, the U.K. pharmaceutical company, and, in turn, leave two rival pharmaceutical giants alone as leading developers of coronavirus vaccines. The problem? Both of those firms are developing the same basic type of high-tech—and potentially risky—messenger-RNA vaccine, one that has never been successfully rolled out in modern medicine.. Welcome to Rabbit […]
The experimental drug President Trump received at the White House hours after being diagnosed with COVID-19 was provided under a “compassionate use” program usually reserved for patients who exhaust other treatment options, the manufacturer said Friday. News of the president consuming the so-called “polyclonal antibody cocktail,” made by New York-based pharma Regeneron, broke around the same time the administration announced Trump was being taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland for treatment. The therapy in question, which some developers refer to as “monoclonal,” combines two lab-grown proteins that attach to the spike proteins on the surface of the […]
If the Trump administration tries to push out a novel coronavirus vaccine before it’s fully tested, there are three committees of independent experts who could stand in its way. It’s a testament to the massive stakes of this kind of work that some of their names are effectively kept secret. These committees—two in government and one in the private sector—keep tabs on vaccine-testing, sign off on new drugs and vaccines, and advise the government on how to deploy a new inoculation. But it remains to be seen just how much clout they have if the government decides to skirt science and […]
The possibility that the American population might be able to achieve some kind of herd immunity to the novel coronavirus without a vaccine seems to be slipping away. Or at least that’s the worrying implication of a new study that appeared Friday in The Lancet, a medical journal. Experts said the research clarifies the desperate need for a vaccine, and the risk of letting up on social distancing and other safety measures in the meantime. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
President Donald Trump’s advisers warned him as early as late January that the coronavirus pandemic, then taking root in China, could cost countless lives in America. Despite this stark warning, revealed by Bob Woodward in his new book Rage and first reported by CNN, Trump downplayed the pandemic—the exact opposite of what any responsible leader should do, experts told The Daily Beast. As a result, tens of thousands of Americans have died unnecessarily, the same experts said. “This will be case study for decades to come in schools of health for how things can go wrong,” Anthony Alberg, a University of […]
Government regulators in the United Kingdom have ordered Cambridge-based pharma AstraZeneca to pause development of its novel-coronavirus vaccine candidate after a patient in the U.K. apparently had an unspecified adverse reaction to the vaccine. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the stand-down order came from the U.K. Data Safety Monitoring Board, which oversees pharmaceutical trials. The U.K. board coordinated with American regulators in making its decision, HHS stated. A “standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data,” a spokesperson for AstraZeneca told Statnews. Source link
Experts generally agree it will be a heavy lift for the pharmaceutical industry to develop and fully test a safe novel coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year—to say nothing of developing and testing one before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. But even if, by some miracle of science, a safe and effective vaccine were ready in the next couple of months, many Americans might not be able to get their hands on it. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
With the planet still deep in the throes of a horrific pandemic, the development is not exactly a welcome one: There is growing evidence that you can catch the novel coronavirus more than once. In recent weeks, a small number of people in the United States, Europe, and China appear to have caught COVID-19 again after recovering from the disease a previous time. The prospect of reinfection has implications for immune response, herd immunity, and vaccine strategy. But conversations with public-health and immunization experts suggest these high-profile cases of reinfection may actually be encouraging—even if they also raise some spooky red […]
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Tremel was in the cockpit of his Super Hornet fighter soaring 20,000 feet over war-torn Syria on June 18, 2017, when he detected a warplane heading toward a U.S.-backed militia force on the ground. Tremel tried to shoo away the other pilot by firing off bright decoy flares. But the Syrian aviator ignored the warning and dropped bombs on the militia position. Tremel reacted in seconds, firing two air-to-air missiles that sliced off the other plane’s tail. It was a dramatic display of American pilots’ traditional prowess in air-to-air combat. Since the Vietnam War, U.S. fighters […]
For a movie that bills itself as a “grindhouse PizzaGate satire,” there’s precious little grindhouse or Pizzagate in Duncan, the new indie thriller from Austin writer-director John Valley. But it is a satire. A shockingly effective one. Duncan levels its weird, Texas-tinged gaze on profiteering, conspiracy-peddling mass media—your Alex Joneses of the world—and cracks them wide open. “The movie’s about a guy out of his depth and led by an array of crackpot beliefs,” Valley told The Daily Beast. “That’s it. We can all relate to that.” The story is simple. A fictional Jones-style TV personality gets an anonymous tip about […]
Over seven months after the novel coronavirus went global, the United States still isn’t testing enough people. Nor is the U.S. delivering results quickly enough to provide meaningful disease surveillance. But virologists Dave O’Connor and Chris Mason had a simple idea for loosening up the testing logjam: pack vans with $5,000 worth of testing equipment and drive them around key locations in badly-hit communities with low testing rates and lagging test turnaround times. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Louisville are working on a nasal spray they say can help to prevent COVID-19 infections. The spray could be beneficial to health-care workers and others who are at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. But after months of work, development of the spray is now on hold owing to a lack of money—a common problem among drug-developers as more and more possible coronavirus vaccines and therapies compete for a limited pool of research funding. The Pitt-Louisville spray delivers a molecule called Q-griffithsin, which is found in nature in a red algae […]
New Jersey pharmaceutical firm Becton, Dickinson and Company has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a fast, easy-to-use test for novel coronavirus infections. At first glance, the Veritor test system from BD, as the company is widely known, might seem like exactly the thing public-health officials have been clamoring for since SARS-CoV-2 first reached the United States early this year. But a closer look at BD’s data reveals limits to the new test’s effectiveness. And that underscores how difficult it can be to quickly develop a coronavirus test that’s both fast and accurate. The FDA approved BD’s […]
After months of safety trials, large-scale clinical testing is finally getting underway for the leading novel coronavirus vaccine candidates. The Trump administration hopes to approve at least one vaccine for widespread use before the end of the year. However, many experts are skeptical that a vaccine will be ready that quickly. And even when a vaccine is ready, actually deploying it could be easier said than done. With or without a vaccine, America is in for a long, difficult fight against a stubborn and deadly virus that, as of Friday, had infected nearly 2.8 million Americans and killed more than 129,000, […]
The U.S. Army has declared war on the novel coronavirus—and civilian scientists are grateful for the reinforcement. The ground combat branch’s Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland has been working on a range of tests and therapies as well as possible vaccines, the command’s top officer told reporters last week. “Our researchers and scientists are using all of our assets to develop countermeasures to detect, treat and defeat the virus,” Brig. Gen. Mike Talley said. Source link
COLUMBIA, South Carolina—Steve Benjamin, the black mayor of Columbia, was pissed. “Take your asses home,” he ordered. It was Saturday evening, May 30, in this city of 140,000. A day of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police had started peacefully. That afternoon, hundreds of people gathered at the state capitol building at the southern end of the city’s bustling Main Street. They held signs. They chanted. They sang hymns. But they didn’t break any laws. Nothing burned. What happened next maps onto the experiences of other, bigger cities across the United States. The demonstration escalated, and the […]
With a flash of light, billowing smoke, and a thunderous roar, American astronauts on Saturday afternoon blasted into space aboard an American spacecraft for the first time since NASA decommissioned the aging, unsafe Space Shuttle fleet in 2011. The first manned flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft not only restores the United States’ ability to launch people into orbit, it also signals a possible new era of space exploration. Thousands of people tuned into livestreams of the historic launch from NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center near Orlando. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and President Donald Trump flew […]
Scientists are closely tracking mutations in the novel coronavirus, hoping that the virus evolves fast enough to give researchers hints about its future, but slow enough that the same researchers can make sense of, and keep up with, the changes. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Efforts to contain the virus and treat the people it infects both hinge in part on the pathogen’s mutation rate. So far, SARS-CoV-2 is cooperating. The virus is mutating at a rate, and with effects, that most experts consider normal. “I’ve not seen any evidence of mutations that should cause significant concern,” Oscar MacLean, a University […]
The pharmaceutical firm Moderna has reported good results so far in trials of its novel-coronavirus vaccine, inspiring cautious optimism in scientists scrambling to contain the damage from the ongoing pandemic. But these same scientists warn against getting too excited about early results, however positive. The world could still be a long way from having a working vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, to say nothing of deploying that vaccine on a large scale. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link
You may have seen the headlines: Smoking protects people from the new coronavirus. But this is one case where you shouldn’t believe everything you read. The false narrative put out by a number of news outlets highlights an underlying problem. Scientific studies can be complicated, and it’s easy for non-experts, including reporters, to misread their findings. The data on smoking and COVID-19 is buried in a wide-ranging report from Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Source link
With the coronavirus pandemic spreading and most of the United States under some kind of shelter-in-place order, a lot of us are feeling pretty alone right now. So it’s the perfect time for science-writer Wade Roush to remind us that, in the cosmic sense, we might have a lot of company. On other planets and their moons. On asteroids hurtling through space. On meteorites that occasionally plummet to Earth’s surface. “The more places we look, the more evidence we find that Earth doesn’t have a unique claim on the building blocks for life or the conditions needed to support life,” Roush […]