Researchers find ‘significant relationship’ between stony coral tissue loss disease and nearby shipping
A virulent and fast-moving coral disease that has swept through the Caribbean could be linked to waste or ballast water from ships, according to research.
The deadly infection, known as stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), was first identified in Florida in 2014, and has since moved through the region, causing great concern among scientists.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison apologises for missing vaccine targets as New South Wales reports record cases during fourth week of stay-at-home order
Australia’s prime minister has apologised for failures in the disastrous coronavirus vaccine rollout as cases in the states of New South Wales and Victoria grew further despite millions living in lockdown.
One day after notably refusing to apologise for a rollout that has fully vaccinated just 12% of the population since February, Scott Morrison said on Thursday: “I’m certainly sorry we haven’t been able to achieve the marks we had hoped for at the beginning of the year. Of course I am.”
Continue reading...Slow-moving storms such as recent deluge in Germany could become 14 times more frequent by 2100
Catastrophic floods such as those that struck Europe recently could become much more frequent as a result of global heating, researchers say.
High-resolution computer models suggest that slow-moving storms could become 14 times more common over land by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario. The slower a storm moves, the more rain it dumps on a small area and the greater the risk of serious flooding.
Continue reading...According to epidemiologists, meeting outside helps minimise infection risks but heat itself has a negligible effect on the virus
With the recent rising temperatures and more people now mixing outdoors as restrictions have been lifted in England, and eased in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, experts explain how much of an effect the weather has on Covid-19.
Continue reading...The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hailed “the best day ever” after completing his pioneering foray into space on Tuesday with three crewmates, among them his brother Mark.
Related: Why is Bezos flying to space? Because billionaires think Earth is a sinking ship | Hamilton Nolan
Continue reading...Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts
The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.
With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.
Continue reading...As temperatures rise and pollution increases, wildfires, floods and extreme winds have battered many parts of the world in the last six months
Continue reading...Analysis: making fully vaccinated travellers returning from places with lower infection rates quarantine, while the virus runs wild here, is difficult to comprehend
Boris Johnson’s pendulum swing from “freedom day” to unlocking with “extreme caution” relayed a shift in the government’s thinking – that the relaxation of almost all restrictions at this stage comes with significant risk. The move to make fully vaccinated people returning from France continue to quarantine – because of the risk of the Beta variant – appears to be another sign of panic setting in.
Delta, the dominant variant in the UK, is far more transmissible than the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. But the danger of Beta has long been its ability to thwart any vaccine shield, particularly the AstraZeneca jab. Beta actually preceded Delta – it was first recorded in the UK in December but never quite took off. In South Africa, it has dominated. It also accounts for about one in 10 new infections in France, but that data includes the French territories of Réunion and Mayotte, where the variant is almost dominant.
Continue reading...Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer
“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.
It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed.
Continue reading...When should you open the windows, wear a mask and take a lateral flow test? As we enter the ‘personal responsibility’ era, here’s an expert guide
Freedom day is here, at least for those of us who live in England, and we’re back in the place nobody wants to be. On one hand: yay, freedom. On the other: an uneasy sense that the relaxation of restrictions has very little to do with the data, and very much more to do with a government that is bored of imposing Covid-related restrictions.
So we arrive on the unwanted (by me) territory of personal responsibility. Which freedoms should you grab with both hands, which should you foreswear for the time being, which should you exercise caution around? How should informed, polite, civic-minded and reasonable sorts conduct themselves? Expertise provided here is from Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield; Prof Christina Pagel, the director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London, which applies advanced analytical methods to problems in healthcare; and Debora Robertson, the co-author of Manners: A Modern Field Guide.
Continue reading...The cognitive scientist explains the link between intelligence and telling fibs – and why lying is such a common form of communication in fields from art to politics
Martin Turpin is a PhD researcher at the department of psychology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who is studying linguistic bullshit. He is the lead author of a recent paper entitled Bullshit Ability As an Honest Signal of Intelligence, which found that people who produce “satisfactory bullshit” are judged to be of high intelligence by their audience.
What made you choose bullshit as a topic to research?
Two main intellectual drives led me here. I think individual human brains are fascinating machines, but there is something far more magical to me about what happens when multiple brains are organised in a network. It can be more rational to have the wrong answer but be part of a group than being a lonely person with the correct answer. That seeming contradiction from the perspective of someone who highly values truth for its own sake makes for a fascinating creature to study.
We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews
In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.
As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.
Continue reading...Chief health officer Brett Sutton says Victoria needs to brace itself for ‘any possibility’
Victoria has entered day two of its latest Covid-19 lockdown to news of a further 19 locally acquired cases.
The state’s health department said all were linked to the current outbreak, which now numbers 43 community cases in total. All but one were active in the community while potentially infectious, as the state identified some 10,000 “primary close contacts”.
Continue reading...International experts say ‘unethical experiment’ could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop
Boris Johnson’s plan to lift virtually all of England’s pandemic restrictions on Monday is a threat to the world and provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants, international experts say.
Britain’s position as a global transport hub would mean any new variant here would rapidly spread around the world, scientists and physicians warned at an emergency summit. They also expressed grave concerns about Downing Street’s plans.
Continue reading...Once a bastion of Covid success, now two of the country’s largest cities are under tight restrictions amid mishandled vaccine program and growing Delta outbreak
At a press conference on Thursday morning, one day after a lockdown was extended by two weeks in Sydney and a few hours before a fifth lockdown would be declared in Melbourne, the premier of New South Wales grew flustered. “One question at a time. I will get to all of them,” Gladys Berejiklian said. “It is not nice being shouted at.”
Australians have a lot of questions. After managing the pandemic better than almost any country in the world, they are now watching the world open up while their own borders remain strictly closed. Meanwhile, just 10% of adults have been fully vaccinated and an outbreak of the Delta variant is slowly spreading.
Continue reading...As the country becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, a growing number of volunteer groups have assembled to fill in gaps in the government response
Every day, before 7am, volunteers gather in front of a house in Yogyakarta. Wearing masks and maintaining distance, they measure and cut panels of wood, smoothing the edges with sandpaper. For the past 11 days, the front yard has been turned into an emergency casket-making workshop. The coffins are painted white, and lined inside with plastic.
The volunteers are lecturers, security guards, artists and police officers who set aside their time to help the community, which is being ravaged by Covid. They work until nightfall.
Continue reading...The preprint endorsing ivermectin as a coronavirus therapy has been widely cited, but independent researchers find glaring discrepancies in the data
The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”.
The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin – a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice – in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November.
Continue reading...Calls for national screening programme as symptoms revealed range from brain fog to tinnitus
The largest ever international study of people with long Covid has identified more than 200 symptoms and prompted researchers to call for a national screening programme.
The study found the myriad symptoms of long Covid – from brain fog and hallucinations to tremors and tinnitus – spanned 10 of the body’s organ systems, and a third of the symptoms continued to affect patients for at least six months.
Continue reading...Outbreak could not have come at a worse time, after military coup caused hospitals to collapse and threw vaccination campaign into chaos
Khin Nwe Soe* went in a taxi, from factory to factory across Myanmar’s main city of Yangon, desperately searching for oxygen tanks for her 21-year-old son. A home test had shown he had Covid-19. He was in pain, able only to lie down, and his oxygen levels had dropped as low as 90%.
“She tried very hard, queuing at every place she could find, because her child needed it,” said Aye Myat Noe*, her daughter, who lives abroad but had called oxygen suppliers to help her mother. “She has a lot of health issues too, including diabetes and heart problems. She is very scared herself … She was seriously risking her life to find oxygen.”
Continue reading...Researchers behind estimate say more needs to be done to raise public awareness of link
Alcohol is estimated to have caused more than 740,000 cancer cases around the world last year, and experts say more needs to be done to highlight the link.
There is strong evidence that alcohol consumption can cause various cancers including those of the breast, liver, colon, rectum, oropharynx, larynx and oesophagus. Research suggests that even low levels of drinking can increase the risk.
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