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Business

60% of US Population Has Reduced Protection Against COVID-19: Data

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  • NBC News analyzed the most recent CDC data on the vaccination status of people in the US.
  • About 60% of the US population are heading into winter with reduced protection against COVID-19.
  • The news comes as the FDA authorized booster shots of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines. 

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An analysis of data from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) suggests that around 60% of the US population could be entering the winter season with reduced protection against COVID-19.

NBC News carried out the analysis using CDC data from November 17.

It showed that a booster was recommended for 97,875,391 people. This number consisted of Americans who were fully vaccinated with Pfizer and Moderna more than six months ago and Johnson & Johnson more than two months ago.

The recipients are now are within the boundary of those at risk for reduced vaccine efficacy, the outlet reported.

The figure also included people who were only partially vaccinated. 

Those with reduced or no protection, including more than 100 million Americans who have not received the vaccine, make up nearly 60% of the US population, according to NBC News.

On Friday, the FDA expanded its emergency authorization to include booster shots of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for all adults.

Americans who are over 65 or in higher-risk categories were already eligible for the booster. 

The analysis comes after an NBC interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday, where the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stated: “What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted.” 

Similar reports came from the White House COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday. Elderly people and residents of long-term care facilities were among the first to be vaccinated last January, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director. 

The highest risk remains among the unvaccinated, who are still 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated.

Walensky said US hospitals are experiencing an “increase in emergency department visits among adults 65 and older, which are now again higher than they are for younger age groups.” 

In the briefing, Walensky and Fauci both insisted that boosters were working and pressed anyone who was eligible to get their shots ahead of the busy holiday season.

CDC data states that nearly 10% of the US population has already received their booster shots. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sports

Ohio State Quarterback Jack Miller’s OVI Charge Reduced to Reckless Operation

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The charge for operating a vehicle while impaired against Ohio State backup quarterback Jack Miller was dropped during his arraignment at the Franklin County Municipal Court on Thursday morning.

Miller pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor traffic ticket charge of reckless operation and was ordered to pay a $150 fine.

Ryan Day said Miller could be back with the team as soon as Thursday afternoon.

“We’re gonna take a real hard look at that today and just get the final details of it, but it looks like here this afternoon we’re going to reinstate him back on the team,” Day said.

Miller had been suspended from the Ohio State football team since Nov. 5, when he was arrested for OVI and for driving in marked lanes. The charge for driving in marked lanes was also dismissed on Thursday morning.

Prior to his suspension, Miller was Ohio State’s third-string quarterback. In four game appearances this season, Miller has completed seven of 14 passing attempts for 101 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions. Quinn Ewers has been Ohio State’s third-string quarterback behind C.J. Stroud and Kyle McCord for the past two games while Miller has been suspended.

A four-star recruit in the class of 2020, Miller is his second season with the Ohio State football program.

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Health

COVID-19 hospitalization reduced by low-cost antidepressant – study

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Treatment using the antidepressant “Fluvoxamine,” which is typically used to treat mental health conditions such as depression and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), reduced the risk of hospitalization among high-risk COVID-19 patients, a study published in The Lancet Global Health medical journal found.
Fluvoxamine, sold under the brand name “Luvox,” is a serotonin inhibitor that helps restore serotonin levels in the brain. Developed in the 1990s, Fluvoxamine is known to have anti-inflammatory properties, researchers believed studying the drug’s effects on COVID-19 symptoms could lead to breakthroughs in COVID treatments. Several more severe COVID symptoms are caused by inflammation, as the immune system overreacts to the infection.

The test group for the study was 1,500 immunocompromised people in Brazil who had been recently infected with COVID-19 and were in the high-risk category for serious illness. Half the group took fluvoxamine at home for 10 days, while the rest received a placebo.

Among participants who received the antidepressant (100 mg twice daily for 10 days), 11% needed hospitalization or extended medical care, compared to 16% of those who received a placebo – marking a 32% decrease in relative risk.

The promising results could be a boon in lower-income nations, where vaccine distribution has not been as swift as it has in wealthier countries and existing COVID treatments remain too expensive for the general population.

Nurses attend to a patient suffering from COVID at a hospital in Tehran last month. (credit: MAJID ASGARIPOUR/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY) VIA REUTERS)

Standard IV antibody treatments cost upwards of $2,000, while the newest experimental pill made by American pharmaceutical giant Merck costs about $700 per treatment. Fluvoxamine distribution could dramatically reduce the costs of care globally, as the antidepressant pills cost far less.

“We hope it will lead to a lot of lives saved,” Dr. Edward Mills, who helped lead the research, told the Associated Press.

Questions remain, however, about the proper dosage amount of the antidepressant for COVID symptoms. Researchers will also continue studying the efficacy of Fluvoxamine mixed with other generic and lower-cost treatments. Researchers added that further evidence was needed to establish its benefit in vaccinated people, as most of the study’s participants were unvaccinated.

The researchers have shared their results with the US National Institutes of Health and hope to also receive a recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO) for Fluvoxamine treatment.



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Health

Alcohol consumption can be reduced through brief medical interventions: study

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Short one-on-one discussions about alcohol consumption in a doctor’s office may reduce patients’ drinking levels, according to a study. 

Findings published in the Addiction journal indicated that brief interventions, described as conversations lasting under an hour and targeted to motivate changes in a patient’s risky drinking behavior, resulted in a reduction of one drinking day per month.

“A reduction of one drinking day per month may not sound like much, but small individual reductions can add up to a substantial reduction in population level harms,” Emily Tanner-Smith, lead author and associate professor at the University of Oregon, said in a news release posted to EurekAlert on Thursday.

AMERICANS DRANK MORE TO RELIEVE STRESS AMID PANDEMIC, ESPECIALLY WOMEN

Study authors noted that the findings were inconclusive for brief interventions delivered in emergency department and trauma centers, but did take effect when conducted in general medical settings, like a primary care clinic. 

“Brief interventions have been shown to help with lots of health issues,” Dr. D.J. Moran, director of psychological services at Long Island University (LIU) Post in New York, and who was not involved in the study, told Fox News. “Alcohol abuse can be influenced in primary care settings if the general practitioner takes the time to do this kind of intervention.”

Short one-on-one discussions about alcohol consumption in a doctor’s office may reduce patients’ drinking levels, according to a new study. 

According to the study, general medical settings may be ideal because they present significant opportunity to screen for alcohol and drug use across non-treatment seeking patients of varying ages receiving services at the clinic for a wide array of other medical conditions.

The study involved a systematic review and meta-analysis of data from 116 trials and 64,439 total participants. It investigated the efficacy of brief interventions for alcohol and other drug use delivered in various types of medical settings.  

According to the authors, the process behind the brief interventions involves screening patients to identify unhealthy use, followed by a discussion targeted to the identified level of substance abuse before a referral for treatment or other substance-related services. 

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“If effective, these interventions offer a potentially cost-efficient method for addressing unhealthy substance use, particularly among non-treatment-seeking patients,” study authors wrote.

The report did note however, there was limited evidence regarding the effects of drug-targeted brief interventions on drug use.

“Given their brevity, low cost, and minimal clinician effort, brief interventions may be a promising way to reduce alcohol use, one patient at a time,” Tanner-Smith wrote in the release. 

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Technology

Guilty Gear Strive Loading Times Reduced, But Not By The Devs

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Screenshot: Arc System Works

The incredibly long Guilty Gear Strive loading times that have persisted since its launch four months ago have finally been fixed, but not by the developers at Arc System Works. As is often the case, the job instead fell to an independent engineer, whose custom executable reduces the PC version’s initial wait by up to 75%.

As we covered back in June, Guilty Gear Strive is plagued by persistent issues on boot, specifically the inordinate length of time it spends connecting to Arc System Works’ servers. Strive currently forces players to wait several minutes as it performs its startup routines, which is, hilariously, more than enough time to beat games like Super Mario 64 and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (via speedrunning, but I digress).

That’s where the utility called Totsugeki comes in. Developed by Weilu “optix2000” Jia and named after Guilty Gear veteran May’s infamous dolphin attack, Totsugeki is a standalone executable that acts as a proxy between the game and the servers to which it so valiantly spends time establishing connections. The best part is that it doesn’t require any installation or convoluted tinkering as long as you’re on PC; just download, run, and enjoy.

I’m not at all technologically minded, so here’s an explanation of how it works from Jia himself:

[Guilty Gear Strive] makes a new TCP connection and a new TLS connection every API call it makes. And it makes hundreds of them in the title screen.

Totsugeki solves this by proxying all API requests through a keepalive connection.

What this means is instead of doing 4 round trips (TCP + TLS + HTTP) for each API call, it only needs to do 1 (HTTP only). This shortens the loading time by a factor of FOUR! For example, if you live in the EU and have ~300ms ping to the GGST servers, you usually see something like 300ms * (1 TCP round trip + 2 TLS round trips + 1 HTTP Request round trip) = 1.2 seconds per API call.

This multiplied across all 127 API calls needed to get to the main menu means it takes a whopping 152 seconds (2.5 minutes) to load into GGST.

With Totsugeki, this is brought down to a mere 38 seconds.

This has the added bonus of reducing GGST server load, as TLS negotiation is one of the most CPU intensive tasks today.

In layman’s terms, Totsugeki condenses the over 127 separate connections Guilty Gear Strive normally makes to Arc System Works’ servers into far fewer. This saves a lot of the time those connections spend establishing themselves, which has the effect of dramatically increasing the speed with which the game loads if you, like many players, happen to live outside of Japan.

Totsugeki also comes with an option to load even more quickly—known as Unga Bunga, another fighting game community in-joke—but Jia warns these speeds are unsafe compared to the base settings, and may cause weird bugs or break Guilty Gear Strive.

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“Once again someone with a bit of time on their hands fixed the biggest issue with a fighting game,” wrote one grateful fighting game player on Twitter.

Jia’s response? “You end up having a bit of time when you have to wait five minutes to get into the game.”

 



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Health

English study finds 50-60% reduced risk of COVID for double-vaccinated

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A person walks past a sign informing about a vaccination centre in Greenwich park, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain, July 18, 2021. REUTERS/Beresford Hodge

  • Imperial estimates effectiveness against asymptomatic cases
  • Unvaccinated prevalence three times higher than for vaccinated
  • Young people drove infection rise before school holidays

LONDON, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Fully-vaccinated people have an around 50 to 60% reduced risk of infection from the Delta coronavirus variant, including those who are asymptomatic, a large English coronavirus prevalence study found on Wednesday.

Imperial College London researchers said people who reported receiving two vaccine doses were half as likely to test positive for COVID-19, adjusting for other factors such as age, whether or not the people tested had COVID-19 symptoms.

Focusing on those who had COVID-19 symptoms, effectiveness rose to around 59%, according to the study, which covered a period when the Delta variant completely displaced the previously dominant Alpha variant.

The estimates, which did not break down effectiveness by vaccine, are lower than those reported by Public Health England for Pfizer (PFE.N) and AstraZeneca’s (AZN.L) shots. read more

The researchers said this was not surprising or worrying, given that PHE estimates were based on those who have symptoms and get tested, while the Imperial study is designed to pick up more people.

“We’re looking at effectiveness against infection amongst a random sample of the general population, which includes asymptomatic individuals,” Imperial epidemiologist Paul Elliot, who leads the study, told reporters, adding that even those who had symptoms in the study might not have got a test otherwise.

“So again, it’s a different bunch of people.”

The study found that the link between infections and hospitalisations, which had previously weakened, had started to reconverge, a move which coincides with the spread of Delta among younger people who may not be fully vaccinated.

PHE has said that Delta carries a higher risk of hospitalisation, though vaccines offer good protection against severe disease. read more

The researchers said that overall, prevalence in unvaccinated people was 1.21%, three times higher than the 0.40% prevalence in fully vaccinated people, and that the viral load among people with COVID was also lower in vaccinated people.

YOUNG PEOPLE

The researchers were presenting the latest findings of Imperial’s REACT-1 prevalence survey, which showed there was a fourfold increase in infections in a month to reach 1 in 160 people in England.

The latest survey, conducted between June 24 and July 12, covers the time ahead of a peak in daily reported infections on July 17, and found that the rise was fuelled by spread in younger people.

Imperial professor Steven Riley said that 5- to 24-year-olds accounted for 50% of all infections, even though they are only 25% of the population.

Schools have now shut for summer holidays, and cases have fallen from that peak despite legal coronavirus restrictions ending on July 19.

“We’ve shown that prior to the recent dip, young people were driving the infections,” Riley told reporters.

“These data support the idea that there is uncertainty about what might happen in September when schools return and we have increased indoor mixing, because of the patterns of infection that we saw driving the growth.”

Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Giles Elgood

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Health

Arthritis diet: Painful symptoms can be reduced with apple cider vinegar as a drink

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Arthritis is an inflammatory condition that causes pain and swelling in the joints, which can restrict mobility and damage the joints. Arthritis medications are usually effective, though some people also look to alternative treatments to relieve their symptoms, including apple cider vinegar.

A lot of patients use home remedies for arthritis, including apple cider vinegar (ACV), to reduce their reliance on pain medication, said eMediHealth.

The health site added: “If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, ACV may exhibit anti-inflammatory properties that can help reduce joint inflammation and pain, but this is yet to be verified by science.

“It may also speed up weight loss, which is another major plus for people with arthritis.

“Excessive body weight not only makes one more prone to arthritis, but it can also exacerbate the condition once it occurs.”

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Apple cider vinegar’s health claims have been well documented since ancient times.

Centuries later, a British nurse, Margaret Hills, who developed rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and later osteoarthritis in the early 1960s, popularised using apple cider vinegar specifically to manage arthritis symptoms.

Hills claimed that consuming apple cider vinegar helped her to lead a pain-free life.

She promoted the approach in a book and later established a clinic promoting apple cider vinegar’s effectiveness at helping to treat arthritis and the symptoms associated with the condition.

How to use

Applying apple cider vinegar to affected areas of the skin may help treat psoriatic arthritis, said Dr Nicole Avena, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a visiting professor of health psychology at Princeton University in New Jersey.

She added: “Always start off with diluted ACV, mixing equal parts vinegar and warm water, to make sure your skin or scalp can tolerate it.

“Be especially careful when applying ACV near an open wound.

“Gently pat it on with a cloth, using just a few tablespoons.

“ACV can help change the affected area’s pH levels to lessen flaking.”

The most common way of using apple cider vinegar as a treatment for various ailments is by drinking it.

However, vinegar is highly acidic, and it’s advised that before consuming, dilute it with water to prevent damage to your teeth.

Another recommended use for this product as an arthritis treatment is to apply it topically for local pain relief, said Healthline.

The site continued: “Using a cotton ball, apply vinegar to the affected area twice a day.

“To prevent irritation, consider diluting the solution with an oil such as coconut oil or olive oil and massage it into your skin. If you notice an adverse reaction, stop using it immediately.

“Many people believe that adding apple cider vinegar to your bath before bed can also help to relieve arthritis pain.

“Add one cup of the vinegar to your evening bath and sit in the solution for 20 to 30 minutes. This can help reduce overnight stiffness and swelling.”



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Technology

Developer tells how he became ineligible for the reduced App Store fees after a mistake

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Apple announced last year the new App Store Small Business Program, which allows small developers to pay a reduced commission to Apple for sales made through the App Store. However, developer Sean Harding shared his story on Twitter about how he became ineligible for this program even though he’s an independent, small developer.

Apple has traditionally charged a 30% fee on every sale made through the App Store, whether it’s an app or in-app purchase. After several complaints, the company announced that developers who earned up to $1 million in proceeds during the previous year could apply to a program to have this rate reduced to 15%.

Harding, who has been developing iOS apps independently for some time, decided last year to “get more serious” about his apps. He formed a small private company (LLC) and created a new business account on Apple Developer, when he requested the migration of his apps to this account.

However, afraid of having troubles to join the App Store Small Business Program, he contacted Apple Support for further clarification. Apple didn’t properly answer his questions.

So I did what I thought was the right thing. I emailed Apple and asked them for clarification. If transferring the app would make me ineligible for the Small Business Program, it wasn’t worth it. The first response I got back did not answer the right question. So I wrote again.

The second response also did not answer the right question. So I wrote again. The third response said, “Since, you are not enrolled into the small business program yet, You are able to transfer the application and then submit your enrollment.”

In the same email, Apple also said that the company would not be able to guarantee his eligibility in the program after the apps were transferred, which seemed ambiguous to Harding.

Rather than pressing for clarification a fourth time, I interpreted it to mean “a transfer won’t disqualify you, but we’re not going to guarantee anyone acceptance.” So, I did the transfer, submitted my Small Business Program application, and waited.

Unfortunately, after the transfer was complete, Apple rejected Harding’s apps for the App Store Small Business Program on the grounds that since his apps were transferred from one account to another, they were no longer eligible for the reduced fee. Apple later told the developer that any app transferred after January 1, 2021 is ineligible for the program, which is something the company didn’t clarify to Harding before.

While Harding is aware that he made a mistake in requesting the transfer of apps from one account to another when he was unsure about the result, he argues that Apple failed to provide a clear response and also failed to rethink his situation.

We don’t know if the company will ever make exceptions for cases like this, but if you’re a developer, be aware that transferring your apps from one account to another may result in you never being able to join the App Store Small Business Program.

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Business

Live updates: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have reduced effectiveness against South African variant, new studies show – The Washington Post

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  1. Live updates: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have reduced effectiveness against South African variant, new studies show The Washington Post
  2. New funding for testing, Biden plan to reopen schools, South Africa distributes J&J vaccine: Latest 11Alive
  3. Lab studies suggest Pfizer, Moderna vaccines can protect against coronavirus variant CNN
  4. Iqbal Survé: Greater co-operation with BRICS countries will help SA navigate Covid-19 storm IOL
  5. OPINION | SA on the right track as it prepares to acquire vaccines from fellow BRICS members SABC News
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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