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40 news posts in Covid-19

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27 Feb 2023

How do you talk to a whole country about Covid-19? Use a GIF.

by Dr Siouxsie Wiles, University of Auckland Image by Stephen Langdon, courtesy of Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie Wiles is a microbiologist and award-winning science communicator based at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her academic research focuses on how the infectiousness of bacteria changes over time and developing new antibiotics. During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, she worked with cartoonist Toby Morris to create simple graphic messages that could get public health information out to the general public quickly and effectively, reassuring and informing people throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. In this guest editorial for Frontiers, Dr Wiles explains how she came to create the famous ‘flatten the curve’ GIF. If you used or lurked on Twitter in March 2020, chances are you saw, or even shared, an animated GIF illustrating how our actions could help ‘flatten’ the Covid-19 ‘curve’. The teal and orange GIF toggled between two scenarios. In the ‘whatever’ approach, a person downplays the seriousness of Covid-19, which soon leads to healthcare capacity being overwhelmed. In the alternative ‘don’t panic, but be careful’ approach, a person is shown promoting such things as staying home when sick, which helps ‘flatten the curve’ […]

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13 Dec 2022

The (un)fair allocation of scarce vaccines and how maths can provide a solution

By Prof Carlos Alós-Ferrer Prof Carlos Alós-Ferrer. Image: Nomis Foundation The Covid-19 global vaccine roll-out is considered one of the greatest achievements in modern medical history, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. However, it was marred by decisions that saw those most in need of a vaccine in some countries wait too long, while those perceived to be least at risk getting them first. Now, Prof Carlos Alós-Ferrer of the University of Zurich writes about how he and his colleagues’ latest research in Frontiers in Public Health shows that one maths procedure can ensure a fair distribution of scarce vaccines across the globe. Remember when Covid-19 vaccines first became available? After many months of lockdowns and  increasing casualty rates, people across the planet were allowed to exhale a collective sigh of relief.  However, as is always the case when new vaccines are developed, there were not enough doses for all who wanted them. Rationing had to be imposed. Unfortunately, the rationing procedures violated elementary ethical principles, which might have led to some elderly and at-risk patients being neglected while younger, healthier citizens were already vaccinated. How did it go wrong? Vaccine acquisition and allocation across the world was as centralized […]

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15 Dec 2021

Are older people more likely to fall for Covid-19 scams than younger people?

By Colm Gorey, science communications manager Image: mimagephotography/Shutterstock.com Not long after the Covid-19 pandemic began, a surge in scams targeting people’s fears was seen across the globe. Yet despite the disease posing a greater threat to older people, it wasn’t known whether this demographic were more likely to fall for these scams. Now, a study published to Frontiers has found that contrary to stereotypes, older people are less likely to fall for the alleged benefits of scams than middle-aged and younger people are. Are older people more likely to fall for Covid-19 scams than younger generations? Despite a prevailing mentality that older people are less up to speed on the latest technology and 21st century scams, new research suggests that cautiousness concerning scams does not vary between age groups. In our highly interconnected age, the opportunities to try and exploit people into handing over large sums of money through various falsehoods are now widespread. Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic also coincided with the start of a new wave of scams. By October of this year, the US Federal Trade Commission reported more than 270,000 Covid-19 fraud cases that cost their victims a total of more than $580m. But […]

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01 Dec 2021

Survivors of severe Covid-19 may have increased risk of death within 12 months of illness

By Conn Hastings, science writer Image: Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock.com A new study shows the long-term implications of severe Covid-19 infection, with such patients demonstrating significantly increased chances of death in the 12 months following the illness. The majority of deaths occurred for a wide variety of reasons, suggesting that severe infection damages overall health. The stark findings highlight the need to reduce the numbers of severe infections through vaccination. Can long Covid kill? Striking findings presented in a new study published to Frontiers in Medicine show that patients who survive severe Covid-19 have more than twice the risk of dying over the following year, compared with those who experience mild or moderate disease or remain uninfected. Unusually, the increased risk of dying was greater for patients who are under 65, and only 20% of the severe Covid-19 patients who died did so because of typical Covid complications, such as clotting disorders or respiratory failure. The study suggests that severe Covid-19 may significantly damage long-term health and highlights the importance of preventing severe disease through vaccination.          ► Read original article► Download original article (pdf) Reality of long Covid Covid-19 can cause severe symptoms and death for vulnerable people, particularly older patients and […]

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28 Sep 2021

Deep dive into global Twitter posts reveals possible drop in negativity towards Covid-19 pandemic

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science writer Image: Sattalat Phukkum/Shutterstock.com An in-depth analysis of more than 120m Twitter posts across the globe has shown that users’ perception of the Covid-19 pandemic became less negative as it has progressed. In a paper published to Frontiers, its authors found a significant decrease in negativity in countries which rolled out extensive vaccination programs, such as the US, the UK, and Canada. The devastation and distress brought by the Covid-19 pandemic to millions of lives goes without question, but trying to gauge an entire planet’s changing perception of the disease over time can seem an almost impossible task. Yet with some estimates showing that almost 4.5bn people now use some form of social media online, researchers are tapping into this vast resource in an attempt to create a clearer picture of how the perception of this life-changing event has shifted since early 2020. Now, publishing their findings in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists from Vanderbilt University in the US and the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil have tapped into one enormous dataset of Twitter posts (tweets) to show that the number of negative posts about Covid-19 is dropping, especially in countries which rolled out […]

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17 Sep 2021

Why is Covid-19 more severe in some patients? Using AI, we found a likely answer

By Dr Emmanuelle Logette, EPFL Blue Brain Project Dr Emmanuelle Logette of the EPFL Blue Brain Project Why does Covid-19 present itself more severe in some patients but not in others? The question has puzzled researchers and clinicians since the start of the pandemic, but recent research from the EPFL Blue Brain Project may have found a major clue to solving the mystery thanks to machine learning. Now, one of those leading the breakthrough research, Dr Emmanuelle Logette, reveals as part of the Frontier Scientists series how even at a very young age she knew she wanted to be a researcher in the fascinating world of genetics. Dr Emmanuelle Logette studied molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Burgundy in France and, in 2002, received her PhD, for her work on the transcriptional regulation of caspase-2, a not very well known member of the caspase family of enzymes involved in apoptosis. In 2006 she joined the laboratory of Dr Jürg Tschopp at the University of Lausanne as a postdoctoral fellow focusing on the signaling pathways involved in DNA repair and apoptosis during tumorigenesis, again trying to better understand the role of caspase-2. Having mainly worked on the oncogenesis field, […]

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12 Aug 2021

Are enteroviruses behind mysterious outbreaks of chronic fatigue syndrome?

By Prof Maureen Hanson, Cornell University Image: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels.com Chronic fatigue syndrome is a long-term illness with a wide range of symptoms, no known treatment, and undetermined origins. However, with as many as 65m people across the world living with the illness, researchers continue to search for answers. Now, Prof Maureen Hanson of Cornell University discusses how she and graduate student Adam O’Neal searched through the research archives to see whether a genus of RNA viruses called enteroviruses are the most likely culprits and whether the findings have implications in future ‘long Covid’ research. Like SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, viruses, enteroviruses (EVs) are RNA viruses that can lead to cause serious illness and death. One type of EV causes poliomyelitis, which is now largely conquered through near-universal vaccination. But no vaccine exists against many other types of EVs, which are free to circulate widely. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates between 10m-15m enteroviral infections occur each year in the US. EVs have long been suspected as causal agents in outbreaks of an illness that is now usually named ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). Outbreaks have been documented since the turn of the previous century and may have […]

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28 Jul 2021

Machine learning and knowledge engineering uncovers significant role of elevated blood glucose in severe Covid-19

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers’ Science Communications Manager A digital reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 primary infection in the lungs. Image: Blue Brain Project/EPFL 2005-2021. All rights reserved Why does Covid-19 present itself more severe in some patients but not in others? The question has puzzled researchers and clinicians since the start of the pandemic, but now new research from the EPFL Blue Brain Project may have found a major clue to solving the mystery thanks to machine learning. Analyzing data extracted from 240,000 open access scientific papers, the findings of a paper published in Frontiers revealed the previously undiscovered roles elevated blood glucose levels have in the severity of Covid-19. What makes one person more at risk of developing severe Covid-19 than someone else? While it is widely accepted that elderly people are the most at-risk during the current pandemic, many young, seemingly healthy people have also been hospitalized by the disease. A number of preexisting conditions are known to contribute to the severity of the disease – such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension – but a more recent finding has highlighted the impact of blood glucose levels among both diabetic and non-diabetic people. Yet the role that glucose plays in the […]

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19 Mar 2021

Tragedy of the Commons: The potential role of individualism in the spread of Covid-19

By Dr Yossi Maaravi, Adelson School of Entrepreneurship at IDC, Herzliya John David Photography / Shutterstock.com Dr Yossi Maaravi of the Adelson School of Entrepreneurship at IDC, Herzliya asks whether the phenomenon of social dilemmas and individualism resulted in worse outcomes for the Covid-19 pandemic?   Covid-19 is a real tragedy. But why did this tragedy hit some countries harder than others? While this question has recently been answered based on population age or health policy, a few months ago, my thoughts drifted to another possible explanation: ‘The tragedy of the commons’. A few months later, these thoughts led to research that has been recently published in Frontiers in Public Health. But the story of the inspiration for this research begins many years back. 16 years ago, when I was still a PhD student, I came across Garrett Hardin’s classic article, The Tragedy of the Commons. I was fascinated by the simple yet powerful phenomenon of social dilemmas described in this article. Social dilemmas are circumstances in which certain behaviors that serve the self-interest of every individual member of society might be harmful to the common good. YESSS!!! My new @FrontiersIn article is OUT!We rely on the "The Tragedy of […]

Figure of a woman in a red bathing suit inside a plastic rectangle on top of a fabric cloth.

Featured news

10 Mar 2021

Use of image and performance-enhancing drugs surged during Covid-19 restrictions

By The University of Hertfordshire Image: Zenza Flarini/Shutterstock 28% of people have used image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) during the Covid-19 pandemic, rising to 32% in the UK, an international study led by the University of Hertfordshire has found. Researchers say this trend is being worsened by ‘fitspirational’ posts on social media pressuring people to achieve the ‘perfect body’. Published today in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers asked more than 3,000 people from 7 different countries, including the UK, about their exercise habits, use of IPEDs and the feelings they have towards their appearance. ► Read original article► Download original article (pdf) They found that 32% of the UK have used IPEDs during the pandemic – 6% for the first time ever – with 43% of those buying IPEDs from the internet, likely without medical supervision or professional advice. The study also found that men were significantly more likely to use IPEDs than women, with 28% of men reporting to have used IPEDs during lockdown compared to 16% of women. IPEDs is a broad term used to capture the range of products available that can alter a person’s appearance, physical or mental performance. IPEDs can include anything from legal products such as proteins, […]

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