scholarly journals Mitigating Covid-19 in the face of emerging virus variants, breakthrough infections and vaccine hesitancy

2022 ◽  
pp. 102792
Author(s):  
Azizul Haque ◽  
Anudeep B. Pant
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inayat Ali ◽  
Shahbaz Ali ◽  
Sehar Iqbal

By the mid of June 2021, after an almost 1.5-year-long COVID-19 pandemic that has significantly affected the world in multiple ways, various vaccines against COVID-19 have arrived and started worldwide. Yet, economic, (geo)political, and socio-cultural factors may influence its uptake at individual and country levels. Several issues will (and already have been reported in media) revolve around this vaccination regarding its accessibility, affordability, and acceptability at an individual level and a country level. Given that in this commentary, we provoke a discussion: Who—a country as well as the individuals—would have access to it, and who would economically afford it, and who would accept it? Centering these intriguing questions, we revisit the body of literature that explicates vaccine hesitancy, refusal, and resistance, and we also draw on the current literature and media reports about vaccination against COVID-19. We suggest that these backdrops need essential attention so that everyone can afford, accept, and have access to it. Otherwise, the current risk in the face of a year-old pandemic will continue.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. e39425
Author(s):  
Gabriela Caracilo Carvalho Bivar ◽  
Maria Eduarda Santini Cesar de Aguiar ◽  
Renata Virgínia Cavalcanti Santos ◽  
Pablo Ramon Gualberto Cardoso

AIMS: The COVID-19 pandemic suddenly and significantly increased hospitalizations for pneumonia with systemic inflammatory disease. Since its appearance, COVID-19 has affected more than 200 countries, with more than 90 million cases and almost 2 million deaths. So far, there is no quality evidence regarding the specific pharmacological therapy for COVID-19; most treatments usually involve off-label use of existing drugs and have unproven efficacy. The global effort converges on the development of a vaccine; however, the greatest challenge is to achieve collective immunization in the face of increasing vaccination hesitancy.METHODS: This study investigated the impact of vaccine hesitancy movements on the goal of COVID-19 immunization in Brazil. An integrative bibliographic review was performed with an electronic search on PubMed and SciELO that yielded 13.535 articles. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied which included 29 interventional and descriptive studies.RESULTS: The results of the 29 studies revealed that the most frequent reasons for hesitation is skepticism about the true interests of the industry and politicians, the lack of trust in research, and inaccurate information on social media.CONCLUSION: The main factors that lead the population not to believe in vaccines were the real interests of industry and politicians, lack of confidence in research, and the amount of false information that circulates massively on social media and because of that it is possible that Brazil will face some challenges in achieving collective immunity due to the anti-vaccine movement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (15) ◽  
pp. 703-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McAteer ◽  
Inci Yildirim ◽  
Ann Chahroudi

Abstract Since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Wuhan, China, in December 2019, scientists have been racing to develop and test novel vaccines to protect against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The speed of scientific discovery related to COVID-19 is unprecedented. With several vaccine candidates already being tested in clinical trials, we pose the question: what will the vaccine hesitant do in the face of this pandemic?


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel G. B. Johnson

AbstractZero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms – intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias C. Owen

AbstractThe clear evidence of water erosion on the surface of Mars suggests an early climate much more clement than the present one. Using a model for the origin of inner planet atmospheres by icy planetesimal impact, it is possible to reconstruct the original volatile inventory on Mars, starting from the thin atmosphere we observe today. Evidence for cometary impact can be found in the present abundances and isotope ratios of gases in the atmosphere and in SNC meteorites. If we invoke impact erosion to account for the present excess of129Xe, we predict an early inventory equivalent to at least 7.5 bars of CO2. This reservoir of volatiles is adequate to produce a substantial greenhouse effect, provided there is some small addition of SO2(volcanoes) or reduced gases (cometary impact). Thus it seems likely that conditions on early Mars were suitable for the origin of life – biogenic elements and liquid water were present at favorable conditions of pressure and temperature. Whether life began on Mars remains an open question, receiving hints of a positive answer from recent work on one of the Martian meteorites. The implications for habitable zones around other stars include the need to have rocky planets with sufficient mass to preserve atmospheres in the face of intensive early bombardment.


Author(s):  
G.J.C. Carpenter

In zirconium-hydrogen alloys, rapid cooling from an elevated temperature causes precipitation of the face-centred tetragonal (fct) phase, γZrH, in the form of needles, parallel to the close-packed <1120>zr directions (1). With low hydrogen concentrations, the hydride solvus is sufficiently low that zirconium atom diffusion cannot occur. For example, with 6 μg/g hydrogen, the solvus temperature is approximately 370 K (2), at which only the hydrogen diffuses readily. Shears are therefore necessary to produce the crystallographic transformation from hexagonal close-packed (hep) zirconium to fct hydride.The simplest mechanism for the transformation is the passage of Shockley partial dislocations having Burgers vectors (b) of the type 1/3<0110> on every second (0001)Zr plane. If the partial dislocations are in the form of loops with the same b, the crosssection of a hydride precipitate will be as shown in fig.1. A consequence of this type of transformation is that a cumulative shear, S, is produced that leads to a strain field in the surrounding zirconium matrix, as illustrated in fig.2a.


Author(s):  
F. Monchoux ◽  
A. Rocher ◽  
J.L. Martin

Interphase sliding is an important phenomenon of high temperature plasticity. In order to study the microstructural changes associated with it, as well as its influence on the strain rate dependence on stress and temperature, plane boundaries were obtained by welding together two polycrystals of Cu-Zn alloys having the face centered cubic and body centered cubic structures respectively following the procedure described in (1). These specimens were then deformed in shear along the interface on a creep machine (2) at the same temperature as that of the diffusion treatment so as to avoid any precipitation. The present paper reports observations by conventional and high voltage electron microscopy of the microstructure of both phases, in the vicinity of the phase boundary, after different creep tests corresponding to various deformation conditions.Foils were cut by spark machining out of the bulk samples, 0.2 mm thick. They were then electropolished down to 0.1 mm, after which a hole with thin edges was made in an area including the boundary


2002 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart M. Haslam ◽  
David Gems ◽  
Howard R. Morris ◽  
Anne Dell

There is no doubt that the immense amount of information that is being generated by the initial sequencing and secondary interrogation of various genomes will change the face of glycobiological research. However, a major area of concern is that detailed structural knowledge of the ultimate products of genes that are identified as being involved in glycoconjugate biosynthesis is still limited. This is illustrated clearly by the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which was the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced. To date, only limited structural data on the glycosylated molecules of this organism have been reported. Our laboratory is addressing this problem by performing detailed MS structural characterization of the N-linked glycans of C. elegans; high-mannose structures dominate, with only minor amounts of complex-type structures. Novel, highly fucosylated truncated structures are also present which are difucosylated on the proximal N-acetylglucosamine of the chitobiose core as well as containing unusual Fucα1–2Gal1–2Man as peripheral structures. The implications of these results in terms of the identification of ligands for genomically predicted lectins and potential glycosyltransferases are discussed in this chapter. Current knowledge on the glycomes of other model organisms such as Dictyostelium discoideum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster is also discussed briefly.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Zubow ◽  
Richard Hurtig

Children with Rett Syndrome (RS) are reported to use multiple modalities to communicate although their intentionality is often questioned (Bartolotta, Zipp, Simpkins, & Glazewski, 2011; Hetzroni & Rubin, 2006; Sigafoos et al., 2000; Sigafoos, Woodyatt, Tuckeer, Roberts-Pennell, & Pittendreigh, 2000). This paper will present results of a study analyzing the unconventional vocalizations of a child with RS. The primary research question addresses the ability of familiar and unfamiliar listeners to interpret unconventional vocalizations as “yes” or “no” responses. This paper will also address the acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments of these vocalizations. Pre-recorded isolated vocalizations of “yes” and “no” were presented to 5 listeners (mother, father, 1 unfamiliar, and 2 familiar clinicians) and the listeners were asked to rate the vocalizations as either “yes” or “no.” The ratings were compared to the original identification made by the child's mother during the face-to-face interaction from which the samples were drawn. Findings of this study suggest, in this case, the child's vocalizations were intentional and could be interpreted by familiar and unfamiliar listeners as either “yes” or “no” without contextual or visual cues. The results suggest that communication partners should be trained to attend to eye-gaze and vocalizations to ensure the child's intended choice is accurately understood.


1971 ◽  
Vol 104 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-330
Author(s):  
R. Lester
Keyword(s):  

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