by Presented by Linda Geddesand produced by David Wat on (#5A5ZZ)
Linda Geddes speaks to Prof Jacky Smith about one of Covid-19’s most consistent symptoms: the persistent dry cough. As winter arrives in the northern hemisphere, how do we tell the difference between the possible onset of the virus and the kind of routine coughs normally experienced at this time of year? Continue reading...
by Melissa Davey and Christopher Knaus on (#5A5YV)
Interim results show vaccine to be 90% effective, but findings have not been peer-reviewed, Australia has only secured enough for five million people, and there are concerns around its storage temperature• Pfizer says vaccine is 90% effective
We mustn’t get carried away but the strong reaction to the Pfizer-BioNTec trial results makes sense“A great day for science and humanity,” said the Pfizer chief executive, Albert Bourla. It was a decent one for stock markets too. The FTSE 100 index rose almost 5% as the US firm and its German partner, BioNTech, reported promising initial results from their Covid vaccine trial.There is an obvious danger of getting carried away – of assuming that rapid vaccine development is now a breeze – but the strong market reaction makes sense. For starters, though the tone around the Pfizer-BioNTech trial has been bullish for weeks, the first batch of data was far better than hoped. A 90% efficacy rate is a very strong number in any phase 3 clinical trial. Continue reading...
There are well-established guards against mathematical errors in other sectors, writes Sabina Ali, so why are risks being taken with public health? Plus Carol Granère on testing failuresYour article (Fault in NHS Covid app meant thousands at risk did not quarantine, 2 November) states that an “oversight” from the programmers is at the source of thousands being put at risk. Why is it considered acceptable to take such risks in public health during apandemic? These failings put us in danger. There are ways of ensuring that the maths does not go wrong by using risk assessment strategies well established in other sectors.The government declining to communicate on the number of people advised to self-isolate isn’t acceptable either. There has been a clear lack of transparency from the conception of the app to its consequences. This can only lead to greater distrust from the public, jeopardising our Covid recovery.
by Written by Tim Harford, read by Mo Ayoub and produ on (#5A4TZ)
The pandemic has shown how a lack of solid statistics can be dangerous. But even with the firmest of evidence, we often end up ignoring the facts we don’t like. By Tim Harford Continue reading...
Technology seen as a vital component in preparations to establish permanent lunar baseWhen astronauts return to the moon in the next decade, they will do more with the dust than leave footprints in it.A British firm has won a European Space Agency contract to develop the technology to turn moon dust and rocks into oxygen, leaving behind aluminium, iron and other metal powders for lunar construction workers to build with. Continue reading...
Observing the sun’s nearest neighbour is always a challenge, so find a viewing location with a clear horizonThere is a beautiful alignment to watch out for in the morning sky this week, as the waning crescent moon heads towards the brilliant beacon of Venus and the seldom glimpsed, inner-most planet Mercury. Continue reading...
If the 2020 election was a referendum on the Trump years, the pandemic provides a test of conservative principles“This is the time to heal in America”. President-elect Joe Biden’s words were directed at a nation suffering after four years of Donald Trump’s dishonesty and fear-mongering. Mr Biden understands Trumpism is arsenic in the water supply of American political culture. It has sloshed around the country, flowing most freely wherever Republicans were in power. Even after the president had clearly lost the popular vote, his Republican enablers embraced his claims about a stolen election rather than denouncing them.Yet Mr Biden wants America to come together not come apart. There is nothing to gain from trading incivilities with Republican opponents. He seeks to bridge divides. Under Mr Trump, the US has become more polarised between educated and less-educated voters; whites and people of colour; haves and have-nots; and urban and rural areas. Mr Biden is right: politics can’t be conducted in a furnace, it’s time to “lower the temperature”. Continue reading...
by Presented by Laura Murphy-Oates and reported by Ca on (#5A3YT)
Medical textbooks are full of anatomical pictures of the penis, but the clitoris barely rates a mention, with many medical professionals uncomfortable even talking about it. Reporter Calla Wahlquist and associate news editor Gabrielle Jackson explain the history and science of the clitoris, and speak to the scientists and artists dedicated to demystifying itYou can read Calla Wahlquist’s piece on why the clitoris is ignored by medical science here. You can also read an edited extract of Gabrielle Jackson’s book Pain and Prejudice here. Continue reading...
Would you harm yourself just to get at someone else? Spite is in us all, but there are unexpected benefits to itOn a memorable episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the curmudgeonly protagonist Larry David is angered by the lukewarm lattes at his local café so he opens a “spite” café. It is an identical coffee shop and right next door, but everything is cheaper. He runs it at a personal financial loss, but is driven by the thought of putting his neighbour out of business. It is magnificently mean-spirited, petty, spiteful – and humorous.A murkier question is can spite be good? It seems counterintuitive to put an optimistic spin on behaviour that, by definition, involves hurting others while incurring harm to yourself. But a new book by Simon McCarthy-Jones explores its benefits. “Spite came from the darkness… It seeks to harm the other and to bring about changes in dominance. Yet it can help us into the light,” writes McCarthy-Jones, an associate professor in clinical psychology and neuropsychology at Trinity College in Dublin. “Spite is a sword of Damocles dangling over our interactions. It has made society fairer and more co-operative.” Continue reading...
If the prime minister were not in his job, he would be railing against the ‘repressive’ regimeAnyone who understands extremism knows populist movements spread like a virus. You stop them early or not at all. Yet at every stage of the growth of the backlash against public health, the bad faith of our compromised prime minister has prevented effective treatment.To stick with the medical analogy, the World Health Organization says humans barely notice a virus when it’s confined to animals in the initial phase. New extremist movements also grow in the dark. Half-mad men and women scuttle around the web, bawling out ideas so ludicrous serious people turn away. Covid had barely begun before David Icke and Piers Corbyn were simultaneously claiming it had been caused by 5G masts and was also a “hoax” – without a thought for the contradiction. Continue reading...
by Melissa Davey (now), Lucy Campbell, Amy Walker, Sa on (#5A0TQ)
France’s new infections more than 2,000 higher than previous record; Italy registers 37,809 new cases; Russia says Covid was main cause in 5,199 cases. This blog is now closed
With it spectacular footage of growth and decay and impassioned speeches about the magic of mushrooms, this documentary is a treat for the eye and earHere is a rather oddly-structured documentary-cum-mission-statement that changes its horse midstream. It starts out as a slickly shot nature film and then morphs into an impassioned screed on how mushrooms can – essentially – save the world. The central figure is Paul Stamets, a Denzil Dexterish figure who studies fungi in Washington state and is an advocate for the life form’s centrality to harmonious natural systems. (Though quite how that squares with developing lethal types of mould to exterminate termites is never explained.)If this film resembles a souped-up TED talk that’s because it presumably took wing from Stamets’ own 2009 TED talk, Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World, and the film contains copious excerpts from his various on-stage lectures: there’s no denying he is a charismatic and persuasive speaker, both to camera and to live audiences. This film, likewise, is a treat for the eye and ear: the liberal use of speeded-up footage of growth and decay is unfailingly spectacular, while Stamets and fellow interviewees have a gift for a memorable turn of phrase. “We will forever exist together within the micro-molecular matrix,” Stamets says at one point. “Mushrooms don’t give a shit,” says academic/author Michael Pollan, at another. Though the fungus-eye-view voiceover, by Brie Larson, with its breathy, quasi-visionary utterances, is less impressive. Continue reading...
Albanerpetontids, originating possibly 250m years ago, snatched prey with ballistic tongue, say scientistsScientists have uncovered the oldest evidence of a “slingshot” tongue, in fossils of 99m-year-old amphibians.The prehistoric armoured creatures, known as albanerpetontids, were sit-and-wait predators who snatched prey with a projectile firing of their “ballistic tongues”. Continue reading...
You put your coronavirus health and policy questions to us. Here are the answersWe asked readers what they wanted to know about coronavirus and health. Haroon Siddique, a reporter on our health team, has the answers. Continue reading...
What makes an elite sports star suddenly unable to do the very thing they have been practising for years? And is there anything they can do about it?Scott Boswell stood at the start of his bowling run-up, immersed in his own very public hell. It was the final of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy in 2001, which should have been the highlight of his cricket career. Instead, he found himself unable to do what he had been doing his entire life.“I became so anxious I froze. I couldn’t let go. It was a nightmare,” Boswell recalled. “How can I not be able to run up and bowl – something that I’ve done for so many years without even thinking about it? How can that happen? What’s going on in my brain to stop me doing that, and to make me feel physically sick and anxious and that I can’t do something that I’ve just done so naturally?” Continue reading...
by Presented by Nicola Davis and produced by Madelein on (#59ZGH)
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked was catastrophic. Ash and pumice darkened the skies, and hot gas flowed from the volcano. Uncovering the victims, fated to lie frozen in time for 2,000 years, has shown they died in a range of gruesome ways. Nicola Davis speaks to Pier Paolo Patrone about his work analysing ancient inhabitants of Pompeii and nearby towns, and what it tells us about the risk people face today Continue reading...
Pfizer has already agreed to supply the US, EU and Japan with hundreds of millions of dosesAustralia’s efforts to secure the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine candidate may be compromised by huge global demand and a lack of local manufacturing capability, experts say, as Labor warns that Australia may struggle to distribute it at the required temperatures.On Thursday, Scott Morrison announced Australia had reached two new deals for Covid-19 vaccines, one for 10m doses with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and another with the US corporate Novavax, which would supply 40m vaccines. Continue reading...
It is right that MPs represent a spectrum of opinion, but there is precedent for Conservative governments being hijacked by a factional minorityIt is unusual for prime ministers to apologise for their policies the way Boris Johnson seeds his lockdown announcements with regret and reluctance. Some of that tone is understandable, but it too often shades into evasion of responsibility. He sounds unwilling to own the choices he has made.The squeamishness is not surprising. Many of Mr Johnson’s instincts are libertarian. If he were not sponsoring the new English lockdown from Downing Street, he might have been among the 32 Tory backbench MPs who voted against it on Wednesday. Many more sympathise with the rebels. Continue reading...
Oregon to decriminalize all illegal drugs in historic first, while voters in many states vote to abolish penalties for possessionOn Tuesday night, a number of US states voted in favor of decriminalizing drugs in an unprecedented drug law overhaul. Thanks to a push by drug reform advocates, in every state where the ballot was proposed, people voted to abolish criminal penalties for possession.Related: US election 2020 Trump v Biden: Democrats say 'results indicate we're on clear path to victory today' – live Continue reading...
The system is inefficient and wasteful, writes a contact worker. Local authority initiatives are doing better, says Austen LynchI am a clinical contact worker for test and trace. Dr David Maisey (Letters, 1 November) should realise that the clinical level (tier 2) of contact tracers – those who call the cases themselves – has been made up of clinical staff at a band 6 level or higher since the beginning, with GPs welcome to join. We have a wealth of clinical experience. The strict instructions to adhere to scripts and policies mean we are not allowed to use it. It’s only recently that the call handler level employees were moved up. This is exploitative and stressful for them and dismissive of those of us with clinical training.Clinical staff have been highlighting from the beginning that there is a problem with families getting too many phone calls. Last week, we received another email from above reminding us that we must follow the policy and get names and numbers for every member of a household until such time as Public Health England/the government change the policy. This is due to limitations in the computer program and, no doubt, to do with the initial privacy concerns, so that no record is matched up with another record. Continue reading...
First fast radio burst found in our galaxy is traced to magnetar 30,000 light years awayFor more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the origins of mysterious and fleeting bursts of radio waves that arrive from faraway galaxies.Now, scientists have discovered the first such blast in the Milky Way and traced it back to its probable source: a small, spinning remnant from a collapsed star about 30,000 light years from Earth. Continue reading...
Tantra, spirit mediums, Obeah – why have things become ‘a bit witchy’ in the art world of late? Our writer takes a trip into deep space to find outLast night, Suzanne Treister took me on a 400bn light-year journey into space. The purpose was to visit her Museum of Black Hole Spacetime, and so, along with a couple of dozen fellow travellers, we jetted off – via a seance led by Treister. Describing the shared journey as we rose up from our chairs, through space, to reach her fantastical museum, Treister hoped that we would “reach an altered state of consciousness, ready to experience visions” that we might “otherwise be unable to experience in our everyday lives”.We drew and described whatever we felt we encountered during 20 minutes in the museum (in my case a monster tree and ersatz Hilma af Klint paintings), before Treister talked us slowly back down to earth. Continue reading...