SAME OLD SONG (UNFORTUNATELY)

Covid-19 continues to cut through American society along racial and socio-economic lines. An article in the Associated Press took a look at how the pandemic continues to reveal racial disparities. According to the article, “Black and Hispanic Americans remain far more cautious in their approach to COVID-19 than white Americans, recent polls show, reflecting diverging preferences on how to deal with the pandemic as federal, state and local restrictions fall by the wayside. Despite majority favorability among U.S. adults overall for measures like mask mandates, public health experts said divided opinions among racial groups reflect not only the unequal impact of the pandemic on people of color but also apathy among some white Americans. Black Americans (63%) and Hispanic Americans (68%) continue to be more likely than white Americans (45%) to say they are at least somewhat worried about themselves or a family member being infected with COVID-19, according to an April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.” https://bit.ly/3F07BaY

ZERO-COVID, ZERO-SENSE?

Beijing continues on its quest to achieve zero-Covid as Omicron continues surging across the country, even as a portion of its citizens grow increasingly hostile to the strategy. Undeterred, the CCP insist that it is the only way forward in slightly delusional terms. Per Channel News Asia,  “China must press ahead with its ‘magic weapon’ zero-COVID strategy, health officials said Friday (Apr 29), despite mounting economic costs and more signs of public frustration in locked-down Shanghai. The government has repeatedly backed its policy of stamping out infections swiftly with lockdowns and mass testing, but it has been severely challenged by the highly transmissible Omicron variant… China’s virus policy is a ‘magic weapon for preventing and controlling the pandemic’, Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission (NHC), told reporters on Friday.” Crazy talk time, I see. https://bit.ly/38CHr1J

HOT IN HERE.

A massive heat wave is pummeling India. The Wire Science has picture gallery that captures just how hot it is in the country. It’s so hot, people can actually cook food on car hoods that have been baking in the sun. https://bit.ly/3MAPefm

HOW RABIES MANAGES TO SURVIVE.

Rabies kills tens of thousands of people a year, mostly in developing countries in Africa and Asia. Scientists have struggled to deal with the disease for centuries. A recent study published in Science demonstrated how individual rabid dog behavior can single handedly create new viral lineages and facilitate dispersal. According to the paper, “We traced rabies transmission in a population of 50,000 dogs in Tanzania from 2002 to 2016 and applied individual-based models to these spatially resolved data to investigate the mechanisms modulating transmission and the scale over which they operate…  Individual variation in rabid dog behavior facilitated virus dispersal and cocirculation of virus lineages, enabling metapopulation persistence. These mechanisms have important implications for prediction and control of pathogens that circulate in spatially structured populations.” https://bit.ly/3vp8o22

Thanks for reading. Let’s be careful out there.