Coronavirus News (70)

What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus. .......... One of the questions I get asked the most these days is when the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic. My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus. ........

Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus. Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.

.......... Our foundation is the biggest funder of vaccines in the world, and this effort dwarfs anything we’ve ever worked on before.

It’s going to require a global cooperative effort like the world has never seen. But I know it’ll get done. There’s simply no alternative.

.................. Although eighteen months might sound like a long time, this would be the fastest scientists have created a new vaccine.

Development usually takes around five years.

Once you pick a disease to target, you have to create the vaccine and test it on animals. Then you begin testing for safety and efficacy in humans. ............... this year’s flu vaccine is around 45 percent effective. ......... After the vaccine passes all three trial phases, you start building the factories to manufacture it, and it gets submitted to the WHO and various government agencies for approval. ............... Every day we can cut from this process will make a huge difference to the world in terms of saving lives and reducing trillions of dollars in economic damage. ........... As of April 9, there are 115 different COVID-19 vaccine candidates in the development pipeline. I think that eight to ten of those look particularly promising. ........... two new approaches that some of the candidates are taking: RNA and DNA vaccines. ............ The first candidate to start human trials was an RNA vaccine created by a company called Moderna. ......... Here’s how an RNA vaccine works: rather than injecting a pathogen’s antigen into your body, you instead give the body the genetic code needed to produce that antigen itself. When the antigens appear on the outside of your cells, your immune system attacks them—and learns how to defeat future intruders in the process. You essentially turn your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit. ............. Since COVID would be the first RNA vaccine out of the gate, we have to prove both that the platform itself works and that it creates immunity. It’s a bit like building your computer system and your first piece of software at the same time. ............ We don’t know yet what the COVID-19 vaccine will look like. Until we do, we have to go full steam ahead on as many approaches as possible. ............ The smallpox vaccine is the only vaccine that’s wiped an entire disease off the face of the earth, but it’s also pretty brutal to receive. It left a scar on the arm of anyone who got it. One out of every three people had side effects bad enough to keep them home from school or work. A small—but not insignificant—number developed more serious reactions. ........... The smallpox vaccine was far from perfect, but it got the job done. The COVID-19 vaccine might be similar...............

I suspect a vaccine that is at least 70 percent effective will be enough to stop the outbreak. A 60 percent effective vaccine is useable, but we might still see some localized outbreaks. Anything under 60 percent is unlikely to create enough herd immunity to stop the virus.

.......... The older you are, the less effective vaccines are. Your immune system—like the rest of your body—ages and is slower to recognize and attack invaders. That’s a big issue for a COVID-19 vaccine, since older people are the most vulnerable. ........ we might end up with one that only stops you from getting sick for a couple months (like the seasonal flu vaccine, which protects you for about six months). ................

We need to manufacture and distribute at least 7 billion doses of the vaccine.

.......... In order to stop the pandemic, we need to make the vaccine available to almost every person on the planet. We’ve never delivered something to every corner of the world before. ............... Each vaccine type requires a different kind of factory. We need to be ready with facilities that can make each type, so that we can start manufacturing the final vaccine (or vaccines) as soon as we can. This will cost billions of dollars. Governments need to quickly find a mechanism for making the funding for this available. Our foundation is currently working with CEPI, the WHO, and governments to figure out the financing. ....... Most people agree that health workers should get the vaccine first. But who gets it next? Older people? Teachers? Workers in essential jobs? ........... I think that low-income countries should be some of the first to receive it, because people will be at a much higher risk of dying in those places. COVID-19 will spread much quicker in poor countries because measures like physical distancing are harder to enact. More people have poor underlying health that makes them more vulnerable to complications, and weak health systems will make it harder for them to receive the care they need. Getting the vaccine out in low-income countries could save millions of lives. The good news is we already have an organization with expertise about how to do this in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. ......................... we’re going to scale this thing up so that the vaccine is available to everyone. And then, we’ll be able to get back to normal—and to hopefully make decisions that prevent us from being in this situation ever again. ........



The World’s Biggest Social Virtual Reality Gathering Is Happening Right Now VRChat also works on the desktop without a VR device. ...... V-Ket displays some of the most complex and intricate virtual world architecture you will find anywhere in social VR. ......... V-Ket 4 kicked off at 7pm San Francisco time the evening of Tuesday April 28 (11am Wednesday in Tokyo), and will run for ten days. ........ given the ongoing pandemic where we’re spending even the most mundane parts of our day online, the idea that we’ll someday socialize, shop, play, and even work inside some form of digital environment is becoming a far more recognizable development of our modern era. ......... social VR doesn’t yet feel like the rich experience of virtual life depicted in science fiction like Snow Crash and Ready Player One ..... When I visited China and Japan a few years ago, it was already clear that consumer adoption of virtual reality was far beyond what we currently see in the West. https://www.v-market.work/v4/

Ramayan is world’s most watched show now, breaks all records with 7.7 crore viewership Since March 28, Doordarshan telecast Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan on public demand. It has now become the most-watched show with 7.7 crore viewers......... Ramayan is being telecast again since March 28 on public demand. In fact, when it was telecast for the first time, the serial had broken all records of popularity, and the show has repeated its history again.......... Ramanand Sagar had made a total of 78 episodes of this serial based on Valmiki’s Ramayana and Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas........ For the first time in the country, the serial was originally broadcast from January 25, 1987 to July 31, 1988. Then, every Sunday, at 9.30 a.m. the show was aired on TV. ....... From 1987 to 1988, Ramayan became the most watched serial in the world. ...... Interestingly, when the serial started airing in the country for the first time, people used to remain glued to the TV sets. Since there were less TVs at homes then, most of the people used to gather at some neighbour’s place to watch Ramayan.
Video: Ramayana
Pandemic Prophecy In The Ramayana?

Welcome to Your Sensory Revolution, Thanks to the Pandemic The very idea that there are only five distinct senses took ages to mature, gaining credence in the Enlightenment. This period not only discounted erstwhile senses—such as the sense of “intuition”—but arranged the five senses into a distinctive hierarchy. ........ The Age of Reason empowered the eye as the sense of truth; seeing was believing, said most thinkers in the 1700s. Sight was followed by hearing, understood as more refined than the so-called lower or proximate senses. Those are smell, taste, and touch, senses that had once been held in high esteem in the ancient and medieval worlds, but which lost their currency and became more associated with the animal senses......... These changes took time. Seeing was believing by about 1800, but it had taken centuries for the original iteration of the phrase, “seeing is believing, but feeling’s the truth,” to lose its tactile component............

Once-trusty eyes betray us in the face of an invisible enemy. Seeing is no longer believing. Those who appear perfectly healthy may be unknowing disease transmitters.

........... Desolate city streets are new sights; the absence of airplane contrails strikes many as almost primordial; masks render once-familiar faces unrecognizable. ........ Many urban dwellers hear less traffic and formerly smothered sounds, such as birdsong, now can be heard. ........ Human voices are louder because there are no whispers at six feet. ........ Clammy hamburgers on soggy buns served with limp french fries, anyone? Grocery stores now ration once taken-for-granted staples, notably eggs, milk, and meat. ........ Touch is the obvious sensory casualty in all of this. Centuries of handshaking habits have evaporated; high fives are gone. Outside of families, hugs, kisses, and nuzzles have all been lost with the fear of infection......

In sensory terms, there has been nothing like this....... Even the violence done to the senses by wars, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes is modest in scale and scope compared to this sensory revolution.

......... Thanks to virtual communication, “See ya” and “I hear ya” should remain stable, but “staying in touch” and “getting a grip” could go the way of the sensory dinosaur. .......... But if normalcy eludes us? ...... A whole new world of sensory engagement will emerge, and it could be terrifying. Our soundscape could be civil strife, punctuated with the smell of tear gas and the resounding sting of rubber bullets on flesh. ........ There is no sensory past that can guide us here. It is a genuine revolution of the senses. And it stinks.

What four coronaviruses from history can tell us about covid-19 Four coronaviruses cause around a quarter of all common colds, but each was probably deadly when it first made the leap to humans. We can learn a lot from what happened next ............. 1889, a disease outbreak in central Asia went global, igniting a pandemic that burned into the following year. It caused fever and fatigue, and killed an estimated 1 million people. The disease is generally blamed on influenza, and was dubbed “Russian flu“. ........... Another possibility is that this “flu” was actually a coronavirus pandemic. The finger has been pointed at a virus first isolated in the 1960s, though today it causes nothing more serious than a common cold. In fact, there are four coronaviruses responsible for an estimated 20 to 30 per cent of colds. ......... all four of these viruses began to infect humans in the past few centuries and, when they did, they probably sparked pandemics.

Is the universe conscious? It seems impossible until you do the maths The question of how the brain gives rise to subjective experience is the hardest of all. Mathematicians think they can help, but their first attempts have thrown up some eye-popping conclusions ...... the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”. Physicist Eugene Wigner coined the phrase in the 1960s to encapsulate the curious fact that merely by manipulating numbers we can describe and predict all manner of natural phenomena with astonishing clarity, from the movements of planets and the strange behaviour of fundamental particles to the consequences of a collision between two black holes billions of light years away.......... if we are to achieve a precise description of consciousness, we may have to ditch our intuitions and accept that all kinds of inanimate matter could be conscious – maybe even the universe as a whole.

Scientists know ways to help stop viruses from spreading on airplanes. They’re too late for this pandemic. how easily viruses spread from person to person on airplanes, the novel coronavirus has decimated global aviation. ........... It is a problem of biology, physics and pure proximity, with airflow, dirty surfaces and close contact with other travelers all at play. ........... passengers can still breathe in tiny floating droplets from a coughing passenger seated nearby — before the air carrying those droplets can be vented out of the cabin and filtered. .......

covid-19 is largely spread from one person to another through droplets, such as when people cough or sneeze. ...... Such relatively large droplets, brimming with viruses, generally travel only a limited distance before being pulled down by gravity, sort of like ping-pong balls falling back to the table after being whacked. ........ That is why social distancing guidelines have emphasized the six-foot distance and call for incessant hand-washing, to avoid picking up fallen droplets and bringing them to your face. ....... coronavirus has become airborne in some hospital settings, including during intubation to help breathing. ........ coronavirus can spread by air through “normal breathing,” not just via droplets from coughing ........ was detected in the air beyond six feet from sick people. ..........

...... The company said it tested its “Fresh Lav,” which uses automated ultraviolet lights to kill 99.9 percent of germs in lavatories “after every passenger use” ....... “You’re sitting there and the guy right behind you sneezes. . . . All the filters in the world aren’t going to help you,” Brenner said. “I think the lamp would potentially deal with that.” ............ What takes longer is conclusively proving the long-term safety for people exposed to the light, a type of radiation known technically as far-UVC light. Traditional ultraviolet lights are used to clean water supplies and sanitize operating rooms, but only when no people are under them, because they can cause cancer and eye damage.

China’s coronavirus blues clouds hopes for Labour Day holiday spending spree The government has extended the annual break to give an extra shot in the arm for the economy after months of lockdown ....... But with still more uncertainty ahead, the country’s consumers might not be in the mood to splurge, observers say

The coronavirus won’t kill globalisation, but might just change global business for the better Look out for changes to industrial policies as governments realise the need to prioritise sectors such as medical supplies, to meet domestic needs in time of crisis ...... While companies will push to diversify supply chains and pay more attention to ESG factors, their preference for globalisation – and the profits it brings – won’t change

"These are good people..."

Posted by Alex Romanovich on Friday, May 1, 2020

पूर्व ब्रिटिश आर्मी क्याप्टेन गंजविर राईका नाति, मेजर सुर्जमान राई र फूलमाया राईको छोरा पूर्व इण्डियन आर्मीका मेजर ...

Posted by Tek Gurung on Friday, May 1, 2020