As infections are rising again, scientists all around the world are rushing to fight the danger, offering a choice of new treatments and unusual variants of vaccines.
Levels of contagion are setting new records, hospitals are overwhelmed, governments are starting to introduce lockdowns, and not only for unvaccinated people – the picture of the fight against Covid-19 looks quite disappointing. However, there’s still a place for good news: Research teams report positive results while trialling new medicines and vaccine types.
Nasal vaccines
Vaccination will remain one of the most effective tools against Covid-19. As Professor David Dockrell, from the Center for Inflammation Research of the University of Edinburgh, told RT, “vaccines will continue to be a central part of how we control the virus.”
“If we can dampen down the number of infections, and the severity of infections, and also the extent to which the virus can replicate in people when they become infected, then we are slowing down the ability of the virus to change and to mutate,” he explains.
So I think the vaccines still will be a very important part of the preventive strategy. It’s vital that they are available to all the world’s population, irrespective of where people live, and the wealth of the country in which they live.
However, vaccination doesn’t always mean you have to get an injection. For instance, several intranasal Covid-19 vaccines are currently being developed. As the virus gets into the body through the nose, a nasal spray or drops are aimed to produce mucosal immune response and prevent it from getting into the lungs.
In India, a vaccine of this type is already completing Phase 2 of clinical trials. In Russia, a nasal vaccine is undergoing a clinical trial on volunteers. In Thailand, a home-developed product is expected to be trialed on humans next spring. In the US, Universities of Houston and Stanford recently reported good results of their experiments carried out on mice.
Intranasal vaccines can have several potential benefits compared to inoculation.
“They would be easier to use, because they can be self-administered. They wouldn’t need a nurse or clinical settings,” Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology Marcello Ferrada de Noli explained to RT. As a result, he says, there’s hope that fewer people will be reluctant to be immunized. Not so many of us find it pleasant to get a jab – and after all, there are those who are just afraid of needles. Also, it would be much easier to vaccinate children with nasal substances.
However, what concerns Prof. de Noli the most is the duration of the effect of a vaccine of this type. Still, scientists can’t say for sure whether a nasal substance may completely replace a shot. According to Alexander Gintsburg, the head of Moscow’s Gamaleya Center biomedical research institute, which created the Sputnik V vaccine, the nasal version they are working on would serve for an additional protection against the virus, but would not replace the injections.
Chew the virus away?
A nasal vaccine is not the only one being developed. In summer, it was revealed that Russian Defense Ministry scientists were creating a ‘chewing gum’ vaccine, also targeting the mucosal immune response. Meanwhile, a UK firm announced this month that it would conduct a human trial of a skin patch that uses T-cells to confront the virus. Developers hope it would offer longer-lasting immunity than the existing vaccines. Work on a similar project is being done in the University of Queensland, Australia.
While it all looks so promising, Prof. de Noli warns that it would still take a lot of time until these products become available to the public. “I think that discoveries in this field are a very good thing. But if we say ‘We discovered a new type of vaccine’, people will say ‘Aha, so I’m going to wait’. But we need to vaccinate people now,” he points out.
Improving Covid treatment
Vaccines are not a silver bullet, unfortunately, given the not-so-high level of global immunization and the constantly emerging new strains of the virus. “People might get infected despite having had a vaccine, but I still think the vaccine strategy is going to be central to how we manage this kind of virus going forward,” Prof. Dockrell says. “But we will have other strategies that will be very important. We will have other elements. When we put them all together, it gives us the best opportunity that people can live with coronaviruses, and hopefully, the mortality can be limited to much lower extense than what we’ve sadly seen in the last eighteen months.”
Monoclonal antibodies will be central to the ongoing vaccine strategy, Prof. Dockrell explains. These are the antibodies similar to those the body uses to fight the virus. They are produced in labs and given via infusion or injection to boost the patient’s response against certain diseases. Monoclonal antibody treatment is used for people under a high risk of developing severe infection (including older patients 65+ years old or those with chronic medical conditions). It’s already being used in the US, following last year’s FDA approval. Earlier in November, the European Medicines agency recommended authorizing two monoclonal antibody medicines.
In October, UK’s AstraZeneca reported positive results of a Phase 3 study of its antibody combination, which, according to developers, is highly effective in both prevention and treatment of coronavirus.
Researchers are also working on a possibility to save Covid-infected patients from the so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – a situation when the immune system reacts so intensely that kills not only the virus, but the whole organism itself. A drug to ‘calm the storm’ was registered in Russia this year, and it’s already being used on patients.
Another way to fight Covid-19 is to use antiviral drugs. When the pandemic started, medics had to use something already existing (like anti-influenza Favipiravir) or something being authorized for emergency use (like remdesivir). Now, more than a year on, the work to create a special drug to specifically cure Covid-19 is giving its results. This month, Russia registered its first injectable anti-Covid medicine. A bit earlier, the UK became the first country to approve an antiviral pill produced by the US-based companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Another American firm, Pfizer, got positive results from trials of its drug of the same kind. Both firms hope that with a drug in the form of a pill it would be easier to treat people at home.
Appreciating all the efforts on the field of developing anti-Covid treatment, Prof. de Noli points out that still, the key issue now is to reduce the spreading of the virus. “The new medicines are developed for people who already got the disease,” he says.
But we need to prevent people from getting the infection, not let them get infected because we have some new medicine that can cure them.
The same idea is echoed by scientists all over the world quoted in plenty of articles dedicated to the medical gains: it’s great to have the treatment, but none of the drugs may substitute vaccination, as first and foremost, humanity has to adopt preventive measures and stop the pandemic.
France’s education minister has announced plans to boost the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin in an effort to fight the proliferation of wokeism and “develop the culture” of the country’s younger generations.
Speaking on Monday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, a leading figure in France’s war on woke, said that ancient Greek and Latin would become available to sixth formers pursuing vocational courses next year, as well as middle school students.
Blanquer wants sixth formers to have the opportunity to “develop their culture” by reading ancient philosophers while gaining the technical qualifications that the economy demands.
Speaking at a charter signing, alongside counterparts from Italy, Greece, and Cyprus, the minister claimed their joint commitment to the promotion of the classics came at a time when ancient languages were being threatened by American wokeism.
The targeting of the dead languages has been most prominent in the US with Princeton University announcing this summer that it would no longer require classics students to study ancient Greek and Latin; the two vernaculars are often considered the core pillars of the discipline.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton, claimed the ancient languages had been used as a justification of slavery, colonialism, and fascism for 2,000 years.
In a similar move, a Massachusetts high school boasted that it had removed Homer’s Odyssey from the school curriculum as it conflicted with the anti-racist agenda it wanted to teach. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year,” a teacher wrote on social media.
Blanquer told Le Point that such interpretations of the classics were “completely mind boggling.” “To stick categories and a contemporary world view on writings dating back two millennia is an abyssal absurdity,” he added, noting that these civilizations brought us “openness and a search for the universal.”
The minister believes that ancient languages are a common bond for contemporary European nations, noting that the “common linguistic fund” would help spread “common values.”
Blanquer also claimed the classics respond to a demand for logos (language as a tool for reason), in a world where “a lack of reason is spreading like wildfire.”
Last month, the education minister set up a think tank dedicated to President Emmanuel Macron’s war on wokeism.
The liberal or woke agenda, which some in France claim is an Anglo-Saxon import, is likely to be a major feature in the 2022 presidential election, where Macron’s main competitor is likely to hail from the far right of the political spectrum.
“Catastrophic and famine-like conditions” hang over Afghanistan’s farmers and herders, whose needs continue to worsen with the onset of winter, UN humanitarians said on Friday.
Marx, Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh – the revolutionaries’ namesakes – have gathered for a wedding in India’s state of Kerala. Friedrich Engels was the one walking down the aisle.
And this has nothing to do with time travel. In India’s southwestern state of Kerala parents have often named their children after prominent figures in the hammer and sickle movement. The local communist party has been at the helm there for much of the past 60 years, and is still quite popular with voters.
In the town of Athirappilly on Sunday the groom, Friedrich Engels, a namesake of the 19th century German philosopher who helped conceive Marxism, tied the knot with the bride, Bismitha. In attendance were also Engels’s brother Lenin, named after the man behind the 1917 Russian Revolution, as well as the groom’s friends, Marx and Ho Chi Minh, who bear the names of Marxism’s founding father and the Vietnamese revolutionary leader respectively.
All four men are members of India’s Communist Party. Incidentally, Marx is currently working and residing in ultra-capitalist Dubai, but flew back to see his friend exchange wedding vows with his betrothed, as reported by local media.
Another wedding ceremony that took place in June in the state of Tamil Nadu, saw Socialism getting married in front of his brothers, Communism and Leninism, as well as nephew, Marxism.
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Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19 has virtually disappeared so dramatically that some scientists are puzzled as to why it happened. One team suggests the highly infectious Delta strain mutated into extinction on the island nation.
In mid-August, Japan experienced a peak in Covid-19 infections, recording over 23,000 new cases per day. Now the metric is just around 170, with deaths attributed to the disease mostly remaining in single digits this month.
The decline has been attributed by many to high vaccination rates, public acceptance of masks, and other factors, but some researchers say the drop was uniquely significant, compared to other nations with similar conditions.
Ituro Inoue, a geneticist at the National Institute of Genetics, believes that Japan had the good fortune of witnessing the Delta strain mostly rooting out other variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus before then eradicating itself. He explained his team’s theory to the Japan Times newspaper this week.
For some time now, Inoue and his fellow scientists were researching mutations of SARS-CoV-2 and how they are affected by the protein nsp14, which is crucial for the reproduction of the virus.
RNA viruses, like the one causing Covid-19, tend to have a very high mutation rate, which helps them quickly adapt to changes in the environment. However, this opens the door for a so-called “error catastrophe,” when bad mutations pile up and finally cause the full extinction of a strain. The protein nsp14 appears to offer a form of error proofreading that helps the virus genome to stay below the threshold of the “error catastrophe.”
In the case of Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19, the Delta variant’s nsp14 failed at this job, Inoue believes, based on the genetic study of specimens collected from June to October. Contrary to his team’s expectations, there was a lack of genetic diversity, while many samples had many genetic changes in the site called A394V, which is linked to the error-fixing protein.
“We were literally shocked to see the findings,” the researcher told the Japan Times. “The Delta variant in Japan was highly transmissible and [was] keeping other variants out. But as the mutations piled up, we believe it eventually became a faulty virus and it was unable to make copies of itself.”
The theory could be relevant to the previous SARS strain, which was identified in 2003, explaining why it didn’t cause a pandemic. But that would be hard to confirm, since the outbreak ended relatively quickly and didn’t result in the massive collection of genetic data necessary to test the hypothesis.
It’s not clear why Japan had this lucky turn of events, but nothing comparable happened in other East Asian countries like South Korea, where populations are genetically close to that of Japan. Virus mutations similar to those flagged by the scientists have been discovered in at least 24 countries, Inoue said. He and his team plan to publish a paper detailing their findings by the end of November.
Even if the natural extinction theory is confirmed, it is at best a temporary reprieve for the Japanese people. New, more successful strains are likely to eventually find their way into the country, though quarantine measures and immigration control could delay the emergence of new variants in Japan, Inoue believes.
Meanwhile, Tokyo is bracing for a new wave of Covid-19 this winter and is preparing to live with the virus. The government reportedly plans to ease travel restrictions by increasing the number of people it allows to enter the country per day from 3,500 to 5,000.
Greece will soon prohibit unvaccinated residents from entering a litany of public spaces, the country’s prime minister has announced, claiming its current Covid outbreak is largely fueled by those who haven’t received the jab.
Starting next week, the unvaccinated will be barred from entry to restaurants, cafes, theaters, bars, gyms and museums, among other indoor public places, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, noting that a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be accepted as an alternative to proof of vaccination.
“This is indeed a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” he said as he announced the move in a televised address, adding “Greece is mourning unnecessary losses because it simply does not have the vaccination rates of other European countries.”
The new rules are set to take effect on Monday, and will require Greeks to present vaccine certificates to businesses and other indoor establishments to be allowed inside. Those attending religious services mark a rare exception, however, as they will only be asked to present a negative test in order to enter a church or other place of worship.
In a bid to encourage booster vaccinations among the elderly – a population much more vulnerable to Covid-19 – citizens over the age of 60 will be made to renew their certificate after a period of seven months.
While officials had hoped to hit a full vaccination figure of 70% for Greece’s population of 11 million by autumn, the number currently stands at about 62%, according to Reuters. As its weekly case counts continue to soar to record highs, the country reported 7,317 new Covid-19 infections and 63 deaths on Thursday, bringing the totals to more than 860,000 cases and some 17,000 fatalities since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.
The new restrictions in Greece mirror similar policies implemented elsewhere in Europe, with Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each imposing limits on public life for the unvaccinated. Though the Austrian government recently imposed a full lockdown for millions of residents who have not received the shot, some officials in that country are pushing for even harsher policies, including a national stay-at-home order on the jabbed and non-jabbed alike.
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People around the world will need to get a jab against Covid-19 once a year, at least when it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin said in an interview on Sunday, as he praised the quality of its booster shot.
In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper on Sunday, Sahin said he considers the vaccine, co-developed by his company, to be “very effective.”
When asked whether people should be worried about the “breakthrough infections” – in which those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine still developed Covid-19 symptoms – he dismissed such concerns, saying that the jab offers a “90 percent protection” against cases that require intensive care in those aged over 60.
A “very high” level of protection against severe illness lasts for up to nine months, the BioNTech CEO maintained. He said this level starts decreasing “from the fourth month,” however. To maintain the protection, Sahin strongly pushed for booster shots, arguing that they would not just restore levels of antibodies but would potentially help “to break … chains of infection.”
He also encouraged doctors to be “as pragmatic as possible” when it comes to greenlighting vaccination and “not to send people home unvaccinated even though they could be vaccinated without any problems.”
In the future, people might need to get booster shots once a year, the BioNTech CEO believes. He said that he expects protection from a booster shot to “last longer” than the initial immunity one acquires after getting two doses of the vaccine.
“Subsequent … vaccinations may only be needed every year – just like [with] influenza,” he said. Currently, the German Federal Center for Health Education – an agency subordinated to the Health Ministry – recommends a booster shot six months after one gets the second dose of a vaccine. It also says that “booster vaccination makes sense after a minimum interval of about four months.”
Sahin’s interview comes days after it was revealed that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making a combined profit of $65,000 every minute – all thanks to their Covid-19 jabs. That is according to estimates made by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) – a coalition demanding wider access to vaccines.
The PVA estimated that the three companies are to earn a total of $34 billion in combined pre-tax profits this year alone, which roughly translates into more than $1,000 a second and $93.5 million a day.
PVA has slammed the three companies over their refusal to allow vaccine technology transfer despite receiving a combined $8 billion in public funding. Such a move could increase global supply and save millions of lives as well as drive down prices, the coalition said.
“Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold,” said Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa.
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The stars of the Harry Potter films will reunite for a 20-year anniversary special on HBO, minus author JK Rowling. Fans and commenters wondered if Rowling’s absence had anything to do with her views on transgender issues.
‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ premiered 20 years ago this week, catapulting actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson to superstardom. Warner Bros announced on Tuesday that the three stars – as well as a whole range of supporting actors from the franchise – will travel back to Hogwarts for an “enchanting making-of story” airing on New Year’s Day, entitled ‘Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts’.
Conspicuously absent from the production is author JK Rowling. A Warner Bros’ press release made no mention of Rowling, and a lengthy Instagram post by actress Emma Watson thanked fans and fellow cast members, but also made no mention of Rowling, whom other Harry Potter actors said they “owe everything” to.
Rowling’s PR team did not comment on the author’s absence, and the Hollywood Reporter claimed that the author will only appear in the show in archival footage.
Commentators online reckoned that Rowling had been canceled from the retrospective special due to her high-profile clashes with transgender activists. A self-described feminist, Rowling has spoken out against gender-neutral language, arguing that it “erases” the concept of sex and therefore the concept of womanhood. She has also stated that sex is a binary concept, and argued against gender-neutral bathrooms, claiming that by allowing men into women’s bathrooms, women are made less safe.
If I owed my entire career to 1 person, if I’d known her since I was 8, if I was worth $90m because of her, then not only would I defend her when maligned but I would refuse to take part in any reunion that excluded her. But that’s just me. #JKRowlinghttps://t.co/0ay5mhQ1FE
I can’t believe they’re actually shunning JK Rowling
“No you can’t participate in something celebrating the world you made because we are the new Amish but with more Puritan soul and no redeeming features”.
Rowling’s comments on gender issues generated intense backlash from LGBT organizations, and death and rape threats from the most zealous transgender ideologues online. Actors Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson also both spoke out against Rowling’s defense of biological sex last year, with Radcliffe declaring that “transgender women are women,” and apologizing to upset fans “for the pain [Rowling’s] comments have caused you.”
“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” Watson chimed in.
Rowling has repeatedly stated that she is against anti-trans discrimination, but would not change her position on sex. “I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it,” she wrote last year.
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Controversial agriculture laws that saw farmers across India protesting for over a year are going to be rolled back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unexpectedly announced.
“I want to tell the country that we have decided to repeal the three farm laws,” Modi said in a televised address on Friday, which local media described as “stunning.”
The Indian parliament will complete the constitutional process of repealing the agricultural legislation in late November, he added.
However, the PM again defended the divisive legislation, saying that the reform of the sector, which accounts for some 15% of India’s $2.7 trillion economy, was actually aimed at supporting the country’s small farmers.
Whatever I did was for farmers. What I am doing is for the country.
“Maybe something was lacking in our efforts, which is why we couldn’t convince some farmers about the laws,” Modi acknowledged.
The laws, which were introduced last September, allowed farmers to sell their crops outside of the government-regulated wholesale markets, in which they were guaranteed a minimum price.
The government argued that it would see them earning more, but growers feared that that move would, on the contrary, cause a drop in prices and make them hostages to large corporations.
Thousands of farmers joined the protests against what they called “black laws,” and some rallies turned violent. A year later, many demonstrators remain camped along roads outside the capital New Delhi.
And the farmers aren’t planning on going home just yet, with one of their leaders saying on Twitter: “We will wait for parliament to repeal the laws.”
Modi’s concession to the protesters may have been unexpected, but it comes several months ahead of elections in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, as well as two other northern states with large rural populations.
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