The UK and Covid-19 Crisis
Kenneth Surin | counterpunch.org | 2020-04-01
BoJo, though not the proverbial rocket scientist, is much better informed generally (and less demented!) than his orange-hued American counterpart, and so, for instance, knows that hospitals caring for COVID-19 patients need more than 2 ventilators each, and that making egregious suggestions regarding possible "cures" for the virus is best left to those better trained in science and medicine!
counterpunch.org/2020/04/01/the-uk-and-covid-19-crisis/

"Whose University? Our University!" The Struggle for a COLA at UC Berkeley
Jack Wareham, Dylan Burgoon | counterpunch.org | 2020-04-01
On March 5th, in the midst of a campus-wide march and rally, a student protester at UC Berkeley walked into the bustling Free Speech Movement Café, a study spot that borrows its name from Cal's legendary 1960s anti-war protests. "Fellow students!" she shouted, climbing on top of the counter.
counterpunch.org/2020/04/01/whose-university-our-university-the-struggle-for-a-cola-at-uc-berkeley/

Grad Students Continue Withholding Grades During Covid-19 Pandemic
Spread The Strike! | indybay.org | 2020-04-01
Email from graduate student to UCSC Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor on the day Winter quarter grades are due.
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/03/30/18831944.php

Campuses Are Closed, but Student Journalists Are Still Working
Rebecca Duke Wiesenberg | thenation.com | 2020-04-01
Campuses Are Closed, but Student Journalists Are Still Working…
thenation.com/article/society/campuses-are-closed-but-student-journalists-are-still-working/

'Ask the government': Former Celtics star claims NBA season could resume at classified US Air Force site Area 51
rt.com | 2020-04-01
Having held the 2019 Summer League at the University of Nevada, NBA chiefs could find a novel solution to ending the season at a less conventional base in the state

Russian Scientists Use Cold Plasma to Help Combat COVID-19 Spread – Report
sputniknews.com | 2020-04-01
While the new invention can reportedly be used as a cheap and effective disinfectant, it remains to be seen whether it will be effective against the particular strain of coronavirus mankind is currently facing.
sputniknews.com/science/202004011078788592-russian-scientists-use-cold-plasma-to-help-combat-covid-19-spread—report/

Turks baking more than usual during virus lockdown
yenisafak.com | 2020-04-01
More and more Turks are staying home in line with the government's social distancing measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus.To kill time, households have started baking

Scientists Help Governors to Confront Coronavirus in Brazil
telesurenglish.net | 2020-03-31
A videoconference held Tuesday morning brought together Governors of Brazil's northeastern states, including Rui Costa, the Workers' party governor of Bahia, and members of the Scientific Committee of the Northeast Consortium to combat the spread of coronavirus. | RELATED: | Brazil: Opposition Unites Against President, Demands His Removal | Doctors, scientists, physicists, and researchers came together to assist Brazilian governors in taking the right health decisions to confr…
telesurenglish.net/news/Scientists-Help-Governors-to-Confront-Coronavirus-in-Brazil-20200331-0022.html

Language Barriers Leave US Communities out of COVID-19 Info
telesurenglish.net | 2020-03-31
Various communities across the United States (U.S.) are struggling to keep up with information concerning the spread and the dangerousness of the novel coronavirus because of language barriers, a report from Al Jazeera showed Tuesday. | RELATED: | Latin American Trans People Face Discrimination Over COVID-19 | In a city with a long history of receiving refugees like Des Moines, Iowa, not less than 100 spoken languages exist. | Around 22 percent of the students in public schools qualify…
telesurenglish.net/news/Language-Barriers-Leaves-US-Communities-out-of-COVID-19-Info–20200331-0012.html

Visas extended for overseas doctors, nurses and paramedics fighting virus in UK
The Canary | thecanary.co | 2020-03-31
Doctors, nurses and paramedics from abroad are to have their visas extended so they can "focus on fighting coronavirus". | The extension will apply to around 2,800 migrant health professionals who are working for the NHS and have UK work visas which are due to expire before 1 October. | They will be renewed automatically for a year free of charge so they can remain working in the country, the Home Office said. | The changes will also apply to their family members. | Restrictions have also been lifted on how many hours international student doctors and nurses can work for the NHS per week, according to an announce…
thecanary.co/discovery/news-discovery/2020/03/31/visas-extended-for-overseas-doctors-nurses-and-paramedics-fighting-virus-in-uk/

On the Need for Dissent and Debate in These Urgent Times
John Nichols | thenation.com | 2020-03-31
On the Need for Dissent and Debate in These Urgent Times…
thenation.com/article/politics/dissent-debate-massie-aoc/

What not to believe: coronavirus myths you should ignore
The Canary | thecanary.co | 2020-03-30
Britons have been facing a flood of myths about the new coronavirus (Covid-19), according to new research. | No, vodka isn't a good hand sanitiser: | The most widely believed false claim is that vodka can be used as hand sanitiser, according to a YouGov survey of 2,099 adults. In reality, there is not enough alcohol in vodka to effectively kill microbes. But 32% of Britons felt it was probably true that the spirit could help them tackle the virus. | The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, recently suggested that his fellow citizens should drink 50ml of vodka a day to ward off the virus. | Othe…
thecanary.co/discovery/news-discovery/2020/03/30/what-not-to-believe-coronavirus-myths-you-should-ignore/

In a 10-Day Span, ICE Flew This Iranian Detainee Across the Country Nine Times
ProPublica | iranian.com | 2020-03-30
Less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration urged Americans to avoid nonessential travel to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Major airlines slashed their routes. All the while, Sirous Asgari took nine different flights around the country. None of them was by choice. Asgari bounced around on chartered jets from Louisiana to Texas to …
iranian.com/2020/03/30/in-a-10-day-span-ice-flew-this-iranian-detainee-across-the-country-nine-times/

Education Cannot Solve Poverty and Inequality
Shawgi Tell | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-03-28
One of the long-standing stubborn myths about education in American culture is that education is "the great equalizer" and that education is the way to overcome poverty and inequality at the individual and societal levels. The facts show, however, that poverty and inequality are generally increasing every year despite the fact that there are more …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/03/education-cannot-solve-poverty-and-inequality/

[Comment] Offline: COVID-19 and the NHS–"a national scandal"
Richard Horton | thelancet.com | 2020-03-28
"When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety." So wrote one National Health Service (NHS) health worker last weekend. The scale of anger and frustration is unprecedented, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the cause. The UK Government's Contain–Delay–Mitigate–Research strategy failed. It failed, in part, because ministers didn't follow WHO's advice to "test, test, test" every suspected case. They didn't isolate and quarantine. They didn't contact trace. These basic principles of public health and infectious disease control were ignored, for reasons that r…
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30727-3/fulltext?rss=yes

[Obituary] Aron Goldhirsch
Andrew Green | thelancet.com | 2020-03-28
Medical oncologist specialising in breast cancer. Born on April 25, 1946, in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, he died on Feb 26, 2020, in Lugano, Switzerland, aged 73 years.
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30642-5/fulltext?rss=yes

The Italian war-like measures to fight coronavirus spreading: Re-open closed hospitals now
Alessandro Miani, Ernesto Burgio, Prisco Piscitelli, Renato Lauro, Annamaria Colao | thelancet.com | 2020-03-27
As recently highlighted by The Lancet, the Covid-19 outbreak started in Northern Italy has shocked Europe, while it has been questioned if China benefits from an authoritarian advantage in disease response [1,2]. In Italy, after the shutdown of the educational system (schools and Universities will remain closed at least for one month) and the collapse of the touristic sector (90% of travels and reservations cancelled), the Government officially locked down residents of all the region of Milan (Lombardia) and other 11 provinces.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30064-X/fulltext?rss=yes

"Total System Failure": Congress Pushes $2 Trillion Pandemic Bill. Will Dems Allow "Corporate Coup"?
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-03-27
We continue our look at the massive $2 trillion coronavirus relief package

[Research Paper] A phase 1b randomized study of the safety and immunological responses to vaccination with H4:IC31, H56:IC31, and BCG revaccination in Mycobacterium tuberculosis-uninfected adolescents in Cape Town, South Africa
Linda-Gail Bekker, One Dintwe, Andrew Fiore-Gartland, Keren Middelkoop, Julia Hutter, Anthony Williams, April K. Randhawa, Morten Ruhwald, Ingrid Kromann, Peter L. Andersen, Carlos A. DiazGranados, Kathryn T. Rutkowski, Dereck Tait, Maurine D. Miner, Erica Andersen-Nissen, Stephen C. De Rosa, Kelly E. Seaton, Georgia D. Tomaras, M. Juliana McElrath, Ann Ginsberg, James G. Kublin, HVTN 602 | thelancet.com | 2020-03-18
BCG revaccination administered as a single dose ID and both H4: IC31 and H56: IC31 administered as 2 doses IM had acceptable safety profiles in healthy, QFT-negative, previously BCG-vaccinated adolescents. Characterization of the assays and the immunogenicity of these vaccines may help to identify valuable markers of protection for upcoming immune correlates analyses of C-040-404 and future TB vaccine efficacy trials.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30057-2/fulltext?rss=yes

[Correspondence] Future of Chernobyl research: the urgency for consolidated action
Evgenia Ostroumova, Joachim Schàºz, Ausrele Kesminiene | thelancet.com | 2020-03-18
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, continues to create fears and myths about its health consequences, as shown by the large response to a top-rated HBO miniseries devoted to the tragic event. Risk assessments range from recognising an increase in thyroid cancer incidence in exposed children and adolescents (becoming one of the single most established long-term health effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the general population), to claims of hundreds of thousands of deaths due to the accident.
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30675-9/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Results from the first English stool bank using faecal microbiota transplant as a medicinal product for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection
V.L. McCune, M.N. Quraishi, S. Manzoor, C.E. Moran, K. Banavathi, H. Steed, D.C.O Massey, G.R Trafford, T.H. Iqbal, P.M. Hawkey | thelancet.com | 2020-03-16
The methodology developed here enabled successful licencing of FMT by The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency as a medicinal product. This has widened the availability of FMT in the National Health Service via a stool bank and can be applied in other centres across the world to improve access to safe and quality assured treatments.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30045-6/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Association of characteristics of tampon use with menstrual toxic shock syndrome in France
Amaury Billon, Marie-Paule Gustin, Anne Tristan, Thomas Bénet, Julien Berthiller, Claude Alexandre Gustave, Philippe Vanhems, Gerard Lina | thelancet.com | 2020-03-10
Our study suggests that the risk of MTSS was associated with using tampons for more than 6 h, overnight tampon use during sleep, and neither read nor followed tampon insertion instructions in case of reading.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30052-3/fulltext?rss=yes

[Comment] Patchy progress on the ICPD: are we asking the right questions?
Dorothy Shaw | thelancet.com | 2020-03-09
The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) agenda, set in 1994 in Cairo and revisited 25 years later in Nairobi in 2019, included goals for equitable education of women, reduction of infant and child mortality, reduction of maternal mortality, and access to reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning, through its well known Programme of Action.1 The ICPD was ground-breaking in recognising the benefits that empowerment of women and girls would have for themselves, their families, and, ultimately, their countries.
thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30080-2/fulltext?rss=yes

TEXAS 2020 DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY
Theodore de Macedo Soares | tdmsresearch.com | 2020-03-07
Exit Poll Versus Reported Vote Count By Theodore de Macedo Soares The 2020 Texas Democratic Party presidential primary was held on March 3, 2020. Election results from the computerized vote counts differed significantly from the results projected by the exit poll conducted by Edison Research and published by CNN at poll's closing. According to the exit poll Sanders was tied with Biden but lost in the unobservable computer counts by 4.5%. In this election candidate Sanders saw the largest Continue Reading ‚Üí…
tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/07/texas-2020-democratic-party-primary/

[Research Paper] Gender parity at scale: Examining correlations of country-level female participation in education and work with measures of men's and women's survival
Adva Gadoth, Jody Heymann | thelancet.com | 2020-03-05
This study extends past research by examining actionable areas of gender equality and their impact on both male and female survival. While longitudinal research is needed to examine both causality and mechanisms, our findings suggest longevity gains for both women and men, and for all children through reduced maternal mortality, where greater parity in school and work is exhibited.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30043-2/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Access to women physicians and uptake of reproductive, maternal and child health services in India
Nandita Bhan, Lotus McDougal, Abhishek Singh, Yamini Atmavilas, Anita Raj | thelancet.com | 2020-03-05
Higher district availability of women physicians is associated with higher maternal health care utilization but not child health care utilization. Improving gender parity in the physician workforce and rural women physician access may improve maternal health care use in India.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30053-5/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Sport as a vehicle of change for livelihoods, social participation and marital health for the youth: Findings from a prospective cohort in Bihar, India
Nandita Bhan, Kaushik Bhadra, Namratha Rao, Jennifer Yore, Anita Raj | thelancet.com | 2020-03-04
Evidence from India shows that sport can be an instrument supporting pro-social engagement for boys and girls. Further understanding of the gendered nature of sport and the mechanisms linking sport to agency among youth is needed.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30046-8/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Effects of sexual harassment on advancement of women in academic medicine: A multi-institutional longitudinal study
Anita Raj, Karen M. Freund, Jennifer M. McDonald, Phyllis L. Carr | thelancet.com | 2020-03-04
Contrary to our hypothesis, women reporting severe workplace harassment in 1995 were more rather than less likely to advance to full professor. Women seeking advancement may be more vulnerable to sexual harassment in academic medicine vis a vis greater exposure to those who abuse their position of authority.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30042-0/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Gender discrimination and depressive symptoms among child-bearing women: ELSPAC-CZ cohort study
Irena Stepanikova, Sanjeev Acharya, Safa Abdalla, Elizabeth Baker, Jana Klanova, Gary L. Darmstadt | thelancet.com | 2020-03-04
The findings provide the first evidence that perceived gender discrimination is associated with depressive symptoms among child-bearing women. Social intervention programs aimed at reducing gender discrimination can potentially contribute to better mental health of women.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30041-9/fulltext?rss=yes

[Commentary] Gender equality: Framing a special collection of evidence for all
Gary L. Darmstadt | thelancet.com | 2020-03-04
In this issue of EClinicalMedicine, the editors have assembled a special collection of papers which reinforce and extend concepts advanced recently in other Lancet family journals on Gender Equality, Norms and Health [1] and Advancing Gender Equity in Science, Medicine and Global Health [2]. These works in turn, build on decades of scholarship in the study of gender inequalities which to this day have disproportionately impacted women and girls, and even more so women who are poor or from racial or religious minorities or other intersecting aspects of identify which impart social disadvantage.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30051-1/fulltext?rss=yes

[Research Paper] Violence-related knife injuries in a UK city; epidemiology and impact on secondary care resources
Nabeela S. Malik, Beau Munoz, Cynthia de Courcey, Rizwana Imran, Kwang C. Lee, Saisakul Chernbumroong, Jonathan Bishop, Janet M. Lord, George Gkoutos, Douglas M. Bowley, Mark A. Foster | thelancet.com | 2020-03-03
Knife injuries constitute 12 ∑9% of trauma team workload. Violence recidivism and intoxication are common, and females are predominantly injured in a domestic setting, presenting opportunities for targeted violence reduction interventions. 13 ∑9% of injuries involved machetes, with implications for law enforcement strategies.
thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30040-7/fulltext?rss=yes