The Daily Mail has turned against the anti-vaxxers it used to champion | Polly Toynbee
As the paper lends its support to a Covid vaccine, don ’t expect any acknowledgement of the damage it did over MMRAnti-vaxxers are as old as the very first vaccine. Edward Jenner, who saved the world from the scourge of smallpox, facedferocious opposition.When Prince Albert unveiled a posthumous statue to him inTrafalgar Square in 1858, it was met withvirulent opposition from anti-vaxxers, backed by the military who regarded Trafalgar Square plinths as exclusively theirs.Pulling down statues is nothing new or “woke”. The Times called for Jenner’s to be removed and within a year of Albert’s death in 1861 it was sh...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - November 13, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Polly Toynbee Tags: Coronavirus Vaccines and immunisation Daily Mail Health Infectious diseases Media Medical research National newspapers & magazines Science Society World news Paul Dacre Source Type: news
The Covid Pandemic: Broadening the Discourse
Thailand’s COVID-19 response an example of resilience and solidarity: a UN Resident Coordinator’s BlogBy Asoka BandarageCOLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Nov 10 2020 (IPS) SARS-CoV-2, the corona virus that causes COVID-19, has been spreading exponentially across the world over the last ten or so months. As of November 6th, according to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, there have been 49,195,581 cases of COVID-19, including 1,241,031 deaths.
More than a third of the global population has been placed on lockdown. The global economy is experiencing the deepest global recession since World War 2 and massive n...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - November 10, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Asoka Bandarage Tags: Featured Global Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies Peace TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news
J. Michael Lane, a General in the Rout of Smallpox, Dies at 84
At the C.D.C., he waged a 13-year campaign to vanquish a deadly infectious disease that had ravaged the world for centuries. Victory came in 1977. (Source: NYT Health)
Source: NYT Health - October 21, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert D. McFadden Tags: Deaths (Obituaries) Smallpox Centers for Disease Control and Prevention World Health Organization Vaccination and Immunization Lane, J Michael (1936-2020) Doctors Source Type: news
Scientists to Infect Volunteers With COVID - 19 in Challenge Trial
Challenge trials have long history, going back to development of smallpox vaccine in 1796 (Source: Pulmonary Medicine News - Doctors Lounge)
Source: Pulmonary Medicine News - Doctors Lounge - October 21, 2020 Category: Respiratory Medicine Tags: Family Medicine, Gynecology, Infections, Internal Medicine, Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, Nursing, Pathology, Pharmacy, Pulmonology, Institutional, Source Type: news
U.K. Plans ‘Challenge Trials,’ Which Will Intentionally Give People COVID-19 to Test Vaccines
On Oct. 20, researchers at the Imperial College of London announced plans for the first human challenge study of COVID-19, which involves deliberately infecting volunteers with the virus that causes the disease, in order to test the effectiveness of vaccines.
The strategy is controversial, as researchers have to weigh the risks of infection against the benefits of learning how well the various vaccine candidates can fight that infection. The strongest argument in favor of the studies has to do with time. If cases of COVID-19 are waning, then the likelihood that people who are vaccinated would get exposed to and potentially...
Source: TIME: Science - October 20, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
U.K. Plans ‘Challenge Trials,’ Which Will Intentionally Give People COVID-19 to Test Vaccines
On Oct. 20, researchers at the Imperial College of London announced plans for the first human challenge study of COVID-19, which involves deliberately infecting volunteers with the virus that causes the disease, in order to test the effectiveness of vaccines.
The strategy is controversial, as researchers have to weigh the risks of infection against the benefits of learning how well the various vaccine candidates can fight that infection. The strongest argument in favor of the studies has to do with time. If cases of COVID-19 are waning, then the likelihood that people who are vaccinated would get exposed to and potentially...
Source: TIME: Health - October 20, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
How do pandemics end? In different ways, but it ’s never quick and never neat | Mark Honigsbaum
Just like the Black Death, influenza and smallpox, Covid-19 will affect almost every aspect of our of lives – even after a vaccine turns upOn 7 September 1854, in the middle of a raging cholera epidemic, the physician John Snow approached the board of guardians of St James ’s parish for permission toremove the handle from a public water pump in Broad Street in London ’s Soho. Snow observed that 61 victims of the cholera had recently drawn water from the pump and reasoned that contaminated water was the source of the epidemic. His request was granted and, even though it would take a further 30 years for the germ theor...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - October 18, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Mark Honigsbaum Tags: Coronavirus Infectious diseases Science Cholera Health Society UK news Source Type: news
In Terms of Child Mortality, It ’s a Good Time for Public Health
Despite the crises of 2020, parents can realistically expect that children born today will outlive them. That wasn ’t always the case. (Source: NYT Health)
Source: NYT Health - October 12, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perri Klass, M.D. Tags: Children and Childhood Infant Mortality Babies and Infants Parenting Epidemics Vaccination and Immunization Smallpox Cholera Antibiotics Source Type: news
Injectable hydrogel could someday lead to more effective vaccines
(American Chemical Society) Vaccines have curtailed the spread of several infectious diseases, such as smallpox, polio and measles. However, vaccines against some diseases, including HIV-1, influenza and malaria, don't work very well, and one reason could be the timing of antigen and adjuvant presentation to the immune system. Now, researchers reporting inACS Central Science developed an injectable hydrogel that allows sustained release of vaccine components, increasing the potency, quality and duration of immune responses in mice. (Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases)
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - September 16, 2020 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
The Great Vaccine Race: Inside the Unprecedented Scramble to Immunize the World Against COVID-19
The cleverest of enemies thrive on surprise attacks. Viruses—and coronaviruses in particular—know this well. Remaining hidden in animal hosts for decades, they mutate steadily, sometimes serendipitously morphing into more effective and efficient infectious agents. When a strain with just the right combination of genetic codes that spell trouble for people makes the leap from animal to human, the ambush begins.
Such was the case with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind COVID-19, and the attack was mostly silent and insidious at first. Many people infected with SARS-CoV-2 remained oblivious as they served as the v...
Source: TIME: Health - September 10, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Magazine Source Type: news
A new theory asks: Could a mask be a crude ‘vaccine’?
The unproven idea, described in a commentary published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is inspired by the age-old concept of variolation, the deliberate exposure to a pathogen to generate a protective immune response. First tried against smallpox, the risky practice eventually fell out of favor, but paved the way for the rise of modern vaccines. (Source: The Economic Times)
Source: The Economic Times - September 7, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Approval of a Coronavirus Vaccine Would Be Just the Beginning – Huge Production Challenges Could Cause Long Delays
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The post Approval of a Coronavirus Vaccine Would Be Just the Beginning – Huge Production Challenges Could Cause Long Delays appeared first on Inter Press Service. (Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health)
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - August 25, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: External Source Tags: Global Headlines Health TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news
The World Health Organization Declares Africa Polio-Free
Nobody will ever know the identity of the thousands of African children who were not killed or paralyzed by polio this year. They would have been hard to keep track of no matter what because in ordinary times, they would have followed thousands last year and thousands the year before and on back in a generations-long trail of suffering and death.
Instead, no African children were claimed by polio this year or last year or the year before. It was in 2016 that the last case of wild, circulating polio was reported in Nigeria—the final country on the 54-nation African continent where the disease was endemic. And with a r...
Source: TIME: Health - August 25, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news
Coronavirus will be with us forever, Sage scientist warns
Sir Mark Walport says, unlike smallpox, coronavirus will not be eradicated by vaccination. (Source: BBC News | Health | UK Edition)
Source: BBC News | Health | UK Edition - August 22, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Bill Gates on How the U.S. Can Course Correct Its COVID-19 Response: ‘You Wish Experts Were Taking Charge’
The U.S. domestic response to the COVID-19 pandemic thus far has been “weak,” Bill Gates believes. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair and Microsoft co-founder told TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park during a TIME100 Talks discussion on Thursday that he’d give the U.S.’s COVID-19 response, “on a relative and absolute basis, not a passing grade.”
But, he added, the U.S.’s funding for vaccine and therapeutic research “has been the best in the world,” so if it coordinates to share resources globally, the U.S. could “potentially score the highest&...
Source: TIME: Health - July 30, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Madeleine Carlisle Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 News Desk TIME100 Talks Source Type: news
