The Virus Project will begin production of a White Paper and documentary on reopening schools and keeping them open. Research will focus on the K-12 schools that stayed open during the pandemic. The goal is a multimedia asset that addresses this issue and help schools everywhere reopen. The Virus Project was formed to aggregate the best ideas and thinking to provide a platform for innovators to collaborate and find solutions to the COVID-19 crisis. K-12 schools is an area of significant challenge but with noticeable progress. White Paper and Research Study: K-12 schools. Dealing with COVID-19. This White Paper will…
Author: Brett Johnson
MIT researchers have found a new angle: applying AI to detect COVID-19 in an asymptomatic patient. From a cough. Recorded by a phone. Earlier this year, researchers from MIT solicited tens of thousands of recorded “forced” (i.e. not naturally occurring) coughs from over 5,300 subjects – both COVID-positive and COVID-negative – in addition to data about physical symptoms and demographics. They then used that data to train a revised version of their Alzheimer’s model (That had been the target of earlier research with this technology) to distinguish between COVID-infected and COVID-uninfected coughers. MIT researchers had been working on AI cough…
‘The Swiss Cheese Model For Combating Covid-19 Multiple Layers of Pandemic Defense.’ appeared in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal November 14, 2020, Written by Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, a social scientist and physician at Yale University who conducts research in the fields of network science, biosocial science, and behavior genetics. Dr. Christakis is the author of “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live” The Swiss Cheese Model to dealing with the Coronavirus Recent author of a book The Arrow about living with Pandemics. We summarized his article below. …
A newly released study in the academic journal Annals of Internal Medicine casts more doubt on policies that force healthy individuals to wear face coverings. To conduct the study, which ran from early April to early June, scientists at the University of Copenhagen recruited more than 6,000 participants who had tested negative for COVID-19 immediately prior to the experiment. Half the participants were given surgical masks and instructed to wear them outside the home; the other half were instructed to not wear a mask outside the home. Roughly 4,860 participants finished the experiment. 42 people in the mask group, or…
Dexamethasone: The treatment that Trump received for Covid-19 has side effects. Forbes writer and highly credential science and health expert Bruce Y. Lee, offers an entertaining and insightful look at the Dexamethasone and its side effects. Lee points out that it is a corticosteroid, which is a class of steroid hormones that also includes prednisone, methylprednisolone, and hydrocortisone. Dexamethasone has shown promise in decreasing the risk of death for patients with more severe Covid-19 coronavirus infections. But getting dexamethasone isn’t like eating baked ziti. Corticosteroids can have significant side effects, including mood, behavioral, and cognitive effects. The rationale for dexamethasone as…
The Rockefeller Foundation has taken leadership on developing strategies to deal with COVID-19. They have created the position of Managing Director, Pandemics and appointed and expert in the field, Dr. Jonathan “Jono” Quick MD to fill the position. Quick is author of a book entitled “End of Pandemics.” They also have funded an initiative at Arizona State University called The COVID-19 Diagnostics Commons to build a comprehensive database on testing resources. And they have funded a national action plan, the National COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Plan which is described below. Pandemics sicken and kill people in three ways: first by…
The Contagion Conference on Testing will look at the critical issues and challenges posed by COVID-19 and will present technologies and approaches that can enable society to open and avert the need for lockdowns. The Virtual event will be broadcast from New York City and will feature panels on The Conference will present the latest research findings on how testing can control the spread. It will present promising technologies seeking strategic partners to accelerate their development. Presenting firms will include those which received NIH Funding as part of the RADx “Shark Tank” competition which has awarded $437 million in contracts to the…
NEW YORK | October 14, 2020 –A new report by the Duke-Margolis Center provides the first application of a detailed framework to provide guidance on how best to screen for, and stop or reduce the spread of, Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) in schools. The report, Risk Assessment and Testing Considerations for Reducing SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in K-12 Schools, is the first-of-its-kind to offer a risk assessment and testing guidance that can be adapted to reflect the risk of Covid-19 in a school’s community. It also considers the benefits of transmission reduction alongside the costs of testing and of managing “false positive” results. As…