Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say

Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say
Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say

Obesity is one of the biggest threats to public health. The number of people with obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of more than or equal to 30, has tripled between 1975 and 2016.

 

Concerningly, children are also becoming more obese – in the UK today, nearly a third of children are overweight or have obesity. Obesity is connected to numerous health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

More recently, obesity has also been shown to increase the risk of severe illness after COVID-19 infection.

We know that there are many factors that can contribute to obesity, and one of them is genetics. Have scientists managed to identify an ‘obesity gene’, or is the genetics of this condition more complicated?

We asked 5 experts in genetics, nutrition, obesity, and neuroscience, “Is there an ‘obesity’ gene?” Here is what they said.

What do we know about the genetics of obesity?

In order to investigate the genetics behind obesity, researchers scan lots of peoples’ DNA to see if they can identify certain genes or variations of genes that correlate with obesity.

Professor Cornelie Nienaber-Rousseau, an expert in nutrition from North-West University in South Africa, says, “Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several loci associated with body mass index and not just a single loci/gene”. However, in rare cases, obesity is caused by a particular syndrome due to a mutation in one gene.

Genes that correlate with body mass index or obesity vary widely in their function. Dr Ivor Ebenezer, an expert in neuroscience from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, says these “genes control the hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and enzymes involved in the regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis.”

 

Why are some genes linked to obesity?

From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn’t make sense that our genes, which we pass down from generation to generation, contribute to a dangerous condition such as obesity.

However, Dr Ebenezer explains that “if we look back in history, to a time when our hunter-gatherer ancestors roamed the earth, we find that early man lived mainly on root vegetables (which are high in carbohydrate) and hunted animals for proteins and fats. There were periods of many days and sometimes weeks when they went hungry. Those who survived were able to store body fat during times of plenty to provide energy during times of hardship. Thus, the majority of us have inherited genes from our ancestors that predispose us to accumulate body fat.”

These genes, which were essential for survival when food was scarce, are now detrimental to those of us who have easy access to food and don’t need to physically exert ourselves.

What other factors contribute to obesity?

Whilst genetics is a factor that influences obesity, it is not the only one. Dr Richard Edwards, an expert in bioinformatics and genetics from UNSW Sydney in Australia, says, “Obesity is an extremely complex trait controlled by interactions between many genetic and environmental factors. One only needs to look at the changes in obesity levels we are seeing in modern populations versus our recent ancestors – our genes have not changed notably during this period.”

We know that our environment strongly influences obesity, as Dr Ebenezer says, “Obesity is due to an excess of energy (food) intake coupled with a decrease in energy expenditure.” Interestingly, however, our environment also interacts with our genetics.

 

Dr Edwards points out that “the biggest genetic factor is most likely an ‘epigenetic’ one – not to do with what genes you have, but rather how they are expressed and controlled.”

Dr Ebenezer explains that “environmental factors, such as maternal starvation or consumption of foods with high sugar content, can produce epigenetic changes in the fetus that can results in obesity in the offspring.”

There may be other factors that influence obesity which are less widely appreciated. For example, Dr Ebenezer says, “More recently, it has been found that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the control of hunger and satiety by modulating the hormones and neurotransmitters involved.”

The takeaway: Whilst genetics does contribute to obesity, it is not the only factor involved, and there is not just one ‘obesity gene’.

Article based on 5 expert answers to this question: Is there an obesity gene?

This expert response was published in partnership with independent fact-checking platform Metafact.io. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter here.

 

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In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots
In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots
In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

Vaccinations are rising in U.S. states where lagging demand left entire regions vulnerable to a Delta-driven surge of coronavirus cases. The shift offers a sign of hope, even as the country’s known cases since the start of the pandemic surpassed 35 million on Saturday.

For the third consecutive week, states with the highest number of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination rates, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday.

In Mississippi, where 44 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated, the seven-day average of people receiving a first dose was 5,203 on July 27, more than triple the average from July 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same pattern is in play for other less vaccinated states where infections are surging. From July 1 to July 28, Louisiana almost quadrupled its seven-day average of administered first doses. And in Missouri, where the Delta variant spurred an outbreak in early July, the number of first doses administered daily almost doubled over a month.

The C.D.C. said on Friday that about 190.5 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and about 164.2 million people were fully vaccinated, some by Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine but many more by the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna.

That still leaves more than half the country not fully vaccinated, including about 48 million children under 12, who are not eligible. Only full vaccination affords high protection from severe disease if someone infected with the Delta variant.

The national outlook is quickly worsening. Louisiana, which was averaging fewer than 400 cases a day at the start of July, is now averaging more than 4,100 cases a day, the most ever. The county that includes Jacksonville, Fla., is averaging almost 1,200 cases a day.

As a whole, daily case reports in the United States have risen 150 percent over the past two weeks, pushing the known pandemic total past 35 million.

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Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health
Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health
Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

It’s no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it’s a lot.

 

Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million people, around 58 percent of whom consume bottled water at least some of the time – the new study estimates what the impact would be if everyone in the city switched completely to drinking bottled water.

The extra production burden would cost an extra US$83.9 million annually and lead to the loss of 1.43 animal species per year on average, the team found, due to the process of extracting and processing the raw materials needed.

There would be approximately 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and 3,500 times more cost in terms of resources, compared with everyone in the city switching over to tap water and nothing else, the researchers worked out.

“The higher environmental impact of bottled water was attributed to the high input of materials (i.e., packaging) and energy needed for bottled water production as compared to tap water,” write the researchers in their published paper.

Those figures are based on the Life Cycle Assessment commonly used by scientists, which weighs up the environmental load of a product over its entire lifespan: raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, and disposal.

In this case, the team did something unusual: they combined the LCA with a similar framework used to measure health, called the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The aim was to see what sort of health trade-offs there might be when weighing up bottled water versus filtered and unfiltered tap water.

(Villanueva et al., Science of the Total Environment, 2021)

While the general consensus is that tap water and bottled water are equally safe to drink – not least because tap water is subject to much stricter regulations from governments – tap water can take on chemicals called trihalomethanes as it’s cleaned, which have been linked to bladder cancer.

The researchers say there is a health risk, but that it’s a very small one. If Barcelona switched en masse to tap water, life expectancy would drop by two hours per person, on average, or about 309 years of life years lost. With filtered water, that risk would go down further, to 36 years.

 

“Tap water quality has increased substantially in Barcelona since the incorporation of advanced treatments over the last years,” says environmental epidemiologist Cristina Villanueva from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

“However, this considerable improvement has not been mirrored by an increase in tap water consumption, which suggests that water consumption could be motivated by subjective factors other than quality.”

Those factors could include risk perception, taste, odor, the impact of marketing campaigns by bottled water companies, and a lack of trust in public tap water quality, according to the researchers.

Consumption of bottled water is rising, and quite sharply in some areas, so it’s important that we’re all aware of the environmental consequences of buying and drinking water this way – not just in the production of the plastic, but also its disposal.

While the researchers admit some limitations to their study – including the Barcelona focus, the difficulty of combining the LCA and HIA measurements, the application of country-wide statistics where they weren’t available for the city, and several other approximations – it’s a worthwhile reminder of the environmental impacts of our choices.

“Our results show that considering both the environmental and the health effects, tap water is a better option than bottled water because bottled water generates a wider range of impacts,” says environmental epidemiologist Cathryn Tonne, also from ISGlobal.

The research has been published in Science of the Total Environment.

 

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Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend
Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend
Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” or “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for the Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

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Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

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transcript

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said a worldwide rise in Covid-19 cases has disparately impacted poorer countries with lower vaccination rates, and that deaths in Africa have spiked 80 percent in four weeks.

When will the pandemic end? My answer was that the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It is in our hands. Almost four million cases were reported to W.H.O. last week. And on current trends, we expect the total number of cases to pass 200 million within the next two weeks. And we know that is an underestimate. On average, in five of W.H.O.‘s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent, or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Which has now been detected in at least 132 countries. Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost. And health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed.

Recent episodes in Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

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Trust in Science Can Ironically Lead to False Beliefs. Luckily, There’s a Solution

Fans of science aren’t immune from swallowing the occasional bit of baloney. Fortunately, reminders that science values a critical eye can go a long way when it comes to sorting robust evidence from misinformation dressed in a lab coat.

 

A study by researchers from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Pennsylvania in the US showed how a broad trust in information that sounds scientific can make pseudoscience sound more appealing.

Four experiments conducted online using between 382 and 605 volunteers compared responses to two fictitious accounts, one claiming cancerous effects of genetically modified organisms, the other involving a viral bioweapon.

The experiments varied the depictions of each story, presenting them in scientific language or using lay terms. On analysis, participants who confessed to trusting in science were unsurprisingly more likely to be influenced by the more scientific-sounding accounts.

Going on these results alone, it ironically makes efforts to promote greater trust in science a win-lose situation when it comes to dispelling conspiracy myths and pseudoscience.

One final experiment gives us some hope. Participants reminded to “think for themselves and not blindly trust what media or other sources tell them” thought twice about their responses, making them less likely to view the stories favorably.   

Retaining a healthy amount of skepticism in the face of scientific-sounding claims isn’t exactly shocking advice.

 

Yet as reliable evidence struggles to stand out in a churning sea of misinformation, there’s a growing need to identify exactly what makes for effective public communication.

“What we need are people who also can be critical of information,” says Dolores Albarracín, a social psychologist affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

“A critical mindset can make you less gullible and make you less likely to believe in conspiracy theories.”

After centuries of steady improvements in medicine and technology demonstrating the worth of science, the majority of people tend to associate scientific endeavors with mostly positive outcomes.

On the whole, most of us tend to think science is a good thing, even if our judgment of who to trust is somewhat complicated.

At the heart of the problem lies an easily distracted human brain shaped by millions of years of evolution. With room for attention at a premium, our brains need to be economical when it comes to identifying the kinds of information that are most likely to benefit us.

 

Unfortunately, human thinking has been shaped less by a need to compute the fundamentals of nature and more by how to work with other human brains. Our cognitive tools are adapted to search for shortcuts – called heuristics – based on language, facial expressions, and even fashion to quickly determine who is on our side and who isn’t.

Being reminded to remain critical can put the brakes on an over-reliance on heuristic thinking, giving our brains a chance to look for more information to build a belief.

While the study emphasizes the need to promote science hand-in-hand with a value in thinking critically, it doesn’t describe a panacea against misinformation.

Few of us are in positions to take the time needed to build beliefs from the ground up; in the end, virtually all of us rely on trusting other people who present themselves as well informed, whether to willfully deceive or simply because they, too, backed the wrong horse.

“People are susceptible to being deceived by the trappings of science,” says Albarracín.

“It’s deception but it’s pretending to be scientific. So people who are taught to trust science and normally do trust science can be fooled as well.”

This research was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

 

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Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3rd Weekend

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” and “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

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Texas Governor Bars Mask and Vaccination Mandates

Many states, cities, businesses and schools have been scrambling to institute new mandates since Tuesday, when federal health authorities recommended that even fully vaccinated people should wear masks again in public indoor spaces in Delta-variant hot spots and urged universal masking in schools.

Not Texas.

In an executive order issued on Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of the nation’s second-largest state, prohibited local governments and state agencies from mandating vaccines, saying that protection against the virus should be a matter of personal responsibility, not forced by a government edict.

The order also reinforced his prior directive prohibiting local officials from requiring face masks, despite growing calls from city leaders for greater flexibility to reverse the renewed spread of Covid.

The daily average of cases in Texas as of Friday was 8,820, according to a New York Times database, a 209 percent increase over the past 14 days. Cities across the state are facing a surge in hospitalizations reminiscent of the alarming spikes that occurred before Covid cases began nosing downward with the advent of vaccine.

With 56 percent of the state’s population unvaccinated — including nearly five million children under 12 who are not eligible — health officials have expressed concern about the state’s vulnerability.

Mr. Abbott is hardly the only elected official who has responded to the C.D.C.’s new guidance with defiance. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, signed an executive order rejecting mask mandates in schools and giving parents the final say on whether their children wear masks.

“In Florida, there will be no lockdowns,” Mr. DeSantis said to cheers at a restaurant in Cape Coral, Fla. “There will be no school closures. There will be no restrictions and no mandates.”

But Mr. Abbott’s executive order reached further. “No governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a Covid-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization,” the order said. It also prohibits any public agencies or private entities receiving public funds, including grants and loans, from requiring consumers to show documentation of vaccinations before entering or receiving a service from the entity.

The order encourages public safety measures such as wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, particularly in areas with high transmission rates, but adds: “No person may be required by any jurisdiction to wear or to mandate the wearing of a face covering.”

Mr. Abbott, who is facing re-election next year, is not against vaccines. He was photographed getting a Covid shot at an Austin hospital on Dec. 22, saying he wanted to show fellow Texans how “safe and easy” it was, according to The Texas Tribune.

And in a statement elaborating on his order, Mr. Abbott said that vaccines “are the most effective defense against the virus” and “remain in abundant supply.”

But he stressed that vaccinations would “always remain voluntary — never forced — in the State of Texas.”

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Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say

Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say

Obesity is one of the biggest threats to public health. The number of people with obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of more than or equal to 30, has tripled between 1975 and 2016.

 

Concerningly, children are also becoming more obese – in the UK today, nearly a third of children are overweight or have obesity. Obesity is connected to numerous health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

More recently, obesity has also been shown to increase the risk of severe illness after COVID-19 infection.

We know that there are many factors that can contribute to obesity, and one of them is genetics. Have scientists managed to identify an ‘obesity gene’, or is the genetics of this condition more complicated?

We asked 5 experts in genetics, nutrition, obesity, and neuroscience, “Is there an ‘obesity’ gene?” Here is what they said.

What do we know about the genetics of obesity?

In order to investigate the genetics behind obesity, researchers scan lots of peoples’ DNA to see if they can identify certain genes or variations of genes that correlate with obesity.

Professor Cornelie Nienaber-Rousseau, an expert in nutrition from North-West University in South Africa, says, “Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several loci associated with body mass index and not just a single loci/gene”. However, in rare cases, obesity is caused by a particular syndrome due to a mutation in one gene.

Genes that correlate with body mass index or obesity vary widely in their function. Dr Ivor Ebenezer, an expert in neuroscience from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, says these “genes control the hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and enzymes involved in the regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis.”

 

Why are some genes linked to obesity?

From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn’t make sense that our genes, which we pass down from generation to generation, contribute to a dangerous condition such as obesity.

However, Dr Ebenezer explains that “if we look back in history, to a time when our hunter-gatherer ancestors roamed the earth, we find that early man lived mainly on root vegetables (which are high in carbohydrate) and hunted animals for proteins and fats. There were periods of many days and sometimes weeks when they went hungry. Those who survived were able to store body fat during times of plenty to provide energy during times of hardship. Thus, the majority of us have inherited genes from our ancestors that predispose us to accumulate body fat.”

These genes, which were essential for survival when food was scarce, are now detrimental to those of us who have easy access to food and don’t need to physically exert ourselves.

What other factors contribute to obesity?

Whilst genetics is a factor that influences obesity, it is not the only one. Dr Richard Edwards, an expert in bioinformatics and genetics from UNSW Sydney in Australia, says, “Obesity is an extremely complex trait controlled by interactions between many genetic and environmental factors. One only needs to look at the changes in obesity levels we are seeing in modern populations versus our recent ancestors – our genes have not changed notably during this period.”

We know that our environment strongly influences obesity, as Dr Ebenezer says, “Obesity is due to an excess of energy (food) intake coupled with a decrease in energy expenditure.” Interestingly, however, our environment also interacts with our genetics.

 

Dr Edwards points out that “the biggest genetic factor is most likely an ‘epigenetic’ one – not to do with what genes you have, but rather how they are expressed and controlled.”

Dr Ebenezer explains that “environmental factors, such as maternal starvation or consumption of foods with high sugar content, can produce epigenetic changes in the fetus that can results in obesity in the offspring.”

There may be other factors that influence obesity which are less widely appreciated. For example, Dr Ebenezer says, “More recently, it has been found that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the control of hunger and satiety by modulating the hormones and neurotransmitters involved.”

The takeaway: Whilst genetics does contribute to obesity, it is not the only factor involved, and there is not just one ‘obesity gene’.

Article based on 5 expert answers to this question: Is there an obesity gene?

This expert response was published in partnership with independent fact-checking platform Metafact.io. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter here.

 

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August 01, 2021 at 07:48AM

In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots
In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

Vaccinations are rising in U.S. states where lagging demand left entire regions vulnerable to a Delta-driven surge of coronavirus cases. The shift offers a sign of hope, even as the country’s known cases since the start of the pandemic surpassed 35 million on Saturday.

For the third consecutive week, states with the highest number of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination rates, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday.

In Mississippi, where 44 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated, the seven-day average of people receiving a first dose was 5,203 on July 27, more than triple the average from July 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same pattern is in play for other less vaccinated states where infections are surging. From July 1 to July 28, Louisiana almost quadrupled its seven-day average of administered first doses. And in Missouri, where the Delta variant spurred an outbreak in early July, the number of first doses administered daily almost doubled over a month.

The C.D.C. said on Friday that about 190.5 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and about 164.2 million people were fully vaccinated, some by Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine but many more by the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna.

That still leaves more than half the country not fully vaccinated, including about 48 million children under 12, who are not eligible. Only full vaccination affords high protection from severe disease if someone infected with the Delta variant.

The national outlook is quickly worsening. Louisiana, which was averaging fewer than 400 cases a day at the start of July, is now averaging more than 4,100 cases a day, the most ever. The county that includes Jacksonville, Fla., is averaging almost 1,200 cases a day.

As a whole, daily case reports in the United States have risen 150 percent over the past two weeks, pushing the known pandemic total past 35 million.

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Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health
Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

It’s no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it’s a lot.

 

Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million people, around 58 percent of whom consume bottled water at least some of the time – the new study estimates what the impact would be if everyone in the city switched completely to drinking bottled water.

The extra production burden would cost an extra US$83.9 million annually and lead to the loss of 1.43 animal species per year on average, the team found, due to the process of extracting and processing the raw materials needed.

There would be approximately 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and 3,500 times more cost in terms of resources, compared with everyone in the city switching over to tap water and nothing else, the researchers worked out.

“The higher environmental impact of bottled water was attributed to the high input of materials (i.e., packaging) and energy needed for bottled water production as compared to tap water,” write the researchers in their published paper.

Those figures are based on the Life Cycle Assessment commonly used by scientists, which weighs up the environmental load of a product over its entire lifespan: raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, and disposal.

In this case, the team did something unusual: they combined the LCA with a similar framework used to measure health, called the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The aim was to see what sort of health trade-offs there might be when weighing up bottled water versus filtered and unfiltered tap water.

(Villanueva et al., Science of the Total Environment, 2021)

While the general consensus is that tap water and bottled water are equally safe to drink – not least because tap water is subject to much stricter regulations from governments – tap water can take on chemicals called trihalomethanes as it’s cleaned, which have been linked to bladder cancer.

The researchers say there is a health risk, but that it’s a very small one. If Barcelona switched en masse to tap water, life expectancy would drop by two hours per person, on average, or about 309 years of life years lost. With filtered water, that risk would go down further, to 36 years.

 

“Tap water quality has increased substantially in Barcelona since the incorporation of advanced treatments over the last years,” says environmental epidemiologist Cristina Villanueva from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

“However, this considerable improvement has not been mirrored by an increase in tap water consumption, which suggests that water consumption could be motivated by subjective factors other than quality.”

Those factors could include risk perception, taste, odor, the impact of marketing campaigns by bottled water companies, and a lack of trust in public tap water quality, according to the researchers.

Consumption of bottled water is rising, and quite sharply in some areas, so it’s important that we’re all aware of the environmental consequences of buying and drinking water this way – not just in the production of the plastic, but also its disposal.

While the researchers admit some limitations to their study – including the Barcelona focus, the difficulty of combining the LCA and HIA measurements, the application of country-wide statistics where they weren’t available for the city, and several other approximations – it’s a worthwhile reminder of the environmental impacts of our choices.

“Our results show that considering both the environmental and the health effects, tap water is a better option than bottled water because bottled water generates a wider range of impacts,” says environmental epidemiologist Cathryn Tonne, also from ISGlobal.

The research has been published in Science of the Total Environment.

 

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August 01, 2021 at 04:48AM
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August 01, 2021 at 06:05AM

Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend
Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” or “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for the Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

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August 01, 2021 at 03:48AM
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August 01, 2021 at 06:05AM

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

new video loaded: Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

transcript

transcript

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said a worldwide rise in Covid-19 cases has disparately impacted poorer countries with lower vaccination rates, and that deaths in Africa have spiked 80 percent in four weeks.

When will the pandemic end? My answer was that the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It is in our hands. Almost four million cases were reported to W.H.O. last week. And on current trends, we expect the total number of cases to pass 200 million within the next two weeks. And we know that is an underestimate. On average, in five of W.H.O.‘s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent, or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Which has now been detected in at least 132 countries. Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost. And health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed.

Recent episodes in Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

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August 01, 2021 at 01:48AM
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August 01, 2021 at 06:05AM

Obesity Is a Far More Complex Question Than a Simple ‘Obesity Gene’, Experts Say

Obesity is one of the biggest threats to public health. The number of people with obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of more than or equal to 30, has tripled between 1975 and 2016.

 

Concerningly, children are also becoming more obese – in the UK today, nearly a third of children are overweight or have obesity. Obesity is connected to numerous health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

More recently, obesity has also been shown to increase the risk of severe illness after COVID-19 infection.

We know that there are many factors that can contribute to obesity, and one of them is genetics. Have scientists managed to identify an ‘obesity gene’, or is the genetics of this condition more complicated?

We asked 5 experts in genetics, nutrition, obesity, and neuroscience, “Is there an ‘obesity’ gene?” Here is what they said.

What do we know about the genetics of obesity?

In order to investigate the genetics behind obesity, researchers scan lots of peoples’ DNA to see if they can identify certain genes or variations of genes that correlate with obesity.

Professor Cornelie Nienaber-Rousseau, an expert in nutrition from North-West University in South Africa, says, “Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several loci associated with body mass index and not just a single loci/gene”. However, in rare cases, obesity is caused by a particular syndrome due to a mutation in one gene.

Genes that correlate with body mass index or obesity vary widely in their function. Dr Ivor Ebenezer, an expert in neuroscience from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, says these “genes control the hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and enzymes involved in the regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis.”

 

Why are some genes linked to obesity?

From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn’t make sense that our genes, which we pass down from generation to generation, contribute to a dangerous condition such as obesity.

However, Dr Ebenezer explains that “if we look back in history, to a time when our hunter-gatherer ancestors roamed the earth, we find that early man lived mainly on root vegetables (which are high in carbohydrate) and hunted animals for proteins and fats. There were periods of many days and sometimes weeks when they went hungry. Those who survived were able to store body fat during times of plenty to provide energy during times of hardship. Thus, the majority of us have inherited genes from our ancestors that predispose us to accumulate body fat.”

These genes, which were essential for survival when food was scarce, are now detrimental to those of us who have easy access to food and don’t need to physically exert ourselves.

What other factors contribute to obesity?

Whilst genetics is a factor that influences obesity, it is not the only one. Dr Richard Edwards, an expert in bioinformatics and genetics from UNSW Sydney in Australia, says, “Obesity is an extremely complex trait controlled by interactions between many genetic and environmental factors. One only needs to look at the changes in obesity levels we are seeing in modern populations versus our recent ancestors – our genes have not changed notably during this period.”

We know that our environment strongly influences obesity, as Dr Ebenezer says, “Obesity is due to an excess of energy (food) intake coupled with a decrease in energy expenditure.” Interestingly, however, our environment also interacts with our genetics.

 

Dr Edwards points out that “the biggest genetic factor is most likely an ‘epigenetic’ one – not to do with what genes you have, but rather how they are expressed and controlled.”

Dr Ebenezer explains that “environmental factors, such as maternal starvation or consumption of foods with high sugar content, can produce epigenetic changes in the fetus that can results in obesity in the offspring.”

There may be other factors that influence obesity which are less widely appreciated. For example, Dr Ebenezer says, “More recently, it has been found that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the control of hunger and satiety by modulating the hormones and neurotransmitters involved.”

The takeaway: Whilst genetics does contribute to obesity, it is not the only factor involved, and there is not just one ‘obesity gene’.

Article based on 5 expert answers to this question: Is there an obesity gene?

This expert response was published in partnership with independent fact-checking platform Metafact.io. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter here.

 

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In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

Vaccinations are rising in U.S. states where lagging demand left entire regions vulnerable to a Delta-driven surge of coronavirus cases. The shift offers a sign of hope, even as the country’s known cases since the start of the pandemic surpassed 35 million on Saturday.

For the third consecutive week, states with the highest number of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination rates, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday.

In Mississippi, where 44 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated, the seven-day average of people receiving a first dose was 5,203 on July 27, more than triple the average from July 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same pattern is in play for other less vaccinated states where infections are surging. From July 1 to July 28, Louisiana almost quadrupled its seven-day average of administered first doses. And in Missouri, where the Delta variant spurred an outbreak in early July, the number of first doses administered daily almost doubled over a month.

The C.D.C. said on Friday that about 190.5 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and about 164.2 million people were fully vaccinated, some by Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine but many more by the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna.

That still leaves more than half the country not fully vaccinated, including about 48 million children under 12, who are not eligible. Only full vaccination affords high protection from severe disease if someone infected with the Delta variant.

The national outlook is quickly worsening. Louisiana, which was averaging fewer than 400 cases a day at the start of July, is now averaging more than 4,100 cases a day, the most ever. The county that includes Jacksonville, Fla., is averaging almost 1,200 cases a day.

As a whole, daily case reports in the United States have risen 150 percent over the past two weeks, pushing the known pandemic total past 35 million.

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August 01, 2021 at 05:48AM

Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

It’s no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it’s a lot.

 

Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million people, around 58 percent of whom consume bottled water at least some of the time – the new study estimates what the impact would be if everyone in the city switched completely to drinking bottled water.

The extra production burden would cost an extra US$83.9 million annually and lead to the loss of 1.43 animal species per year on average, the team found, due to the process of extracting and processing the raw materials needed.

There would be approximately 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and 3,500 times more cost in terms of resources, compared with everyone in the city switching over to tap water and nothing else, the researchers worked out.

“The higher environmental impact of bottled water was attributed to the high input of materials (i.e., packaging) and energy needed for bottled water production as compared to tap water,” write the researchers in their published paper.

Those figures are based on the Life Cycle Assessment commonly used by scientists, which weighs up the environmental load of a product over its entire lifespan: raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, and disposal.

In this case, the team did something unusual: they combined the LCA with a similar framework used to measure health, called the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The aim was to see what sort of health trade-offs there might be when weighing up bottled water versus filtered and unfiltered tap water.

(Villanueva et al., Science of the Total Environment, 2021)

While the general consensus is that tap water and bottled water are equally safe to drink – not least because tap water is subject to much stricter regulations from governments – tap water can take on chemicals called trihalomethanes as it’s cleaned, which have been linked to bladder cancer.

The researchers say there is a health risk, but that it’s a very small one. If Barcelona switched en masse to tap water, life expectancy would drop by two hours per person, on average, or about 309 years of life years lost. With filtered water, that risk would go down further, to 36 years.

 

“Tap water quality has increased substantially in Barcelona since the incorporation of advanced treatments over the last years,” says environmental epidemiologist Cristina Villanueva from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

“However, this considerable improvement has not been mirrored by an increase in tap water consumption, which suggests that water consumption could be motivated by subjective factors other than quality.”

Those factors could include risk perception, taste, odor, the impact of marketing campaigns by bottled water companies, and a lack of trust in public tap water quality, according to the researchers.

Consumption of bottled water is rising, and quite sharply in some areas, so it’s important that we’re all aware of the environmental consequences of buying and drinking water this way – not just in the production of the plastic, but also its disposal.

While the researchers admit some limitations to their study – including the Barcelona focus, the difficulty of combining the LCA and HIA measurements, the application of country-wide statistics where they weren’t available for the city, and several other approximations – it’s a worthwhile reminder of the environmental impacts of our choices.

“Our results show that considering both the environmental and the health effects, tap water is a better option than bottled water because bottled water generates a wider range of impacts,” says environmental epidemiologist Cathryn Tonne, also from ISGlobal.

The research has been published in Science of the Total Environment.

 

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August 01, 2021 at 04:48AM

Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” or “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for the Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

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August 01, 2021 at 03:48AM

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns
Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

new video loaded: Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

transcript

transcript

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said a worldwide rise in Covid-19 cases has disparately impacted poorer countries with lower vaccination rates, and that deaths in Africa have spiked 80 percent in four weeks.

When will the pandemic end? My answer was that the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It is in our hands. Almost four million cases were reported to W.H.O. last week. And on current trends, we expect the total number of cases to pass 200 million within the next two weeks. And we know that is an underestimate. On average, in five of W.H.O.‘s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent, or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Which has now been detected in at least 132 countries. Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost. And health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed.

Recent episodes in Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

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August 01, 2021 at 01:48AM
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August 01, 2021 at 03:05AM

In Vaccine Holdout States, a New Urgency to Administer Shots

Vaccinations are rising in U.S. states where lagging demand left entire regions vulnerable to a Delta-driven surge of coronavirus cases. The shift offers a sign of hope, even as the country’s known cases since the start of the pandemic surpassed 35 million on Saturday.

For the third consecutive week, states with the highest number of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination rates, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday.

In Mississippi, where 44 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated, the seven-day average of people receiving a first dose was 5,203 on July 27, more than triple the average from July 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same pattern is in play for other less vaccinated states where infections are surging. From July 1 to July 28, Louisiana almost quadrupled its seven-day average of administered first doses. And in Missouri, where the Delta variant spurred an outbreak in early July, the number of first doses administered daily almost doubled over a month.

The C.D.C. said on Friday that about 190.5 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and about 164.2 million people were fully vaccinated, some by Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine but many more by the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna.

That still leaves more than half the country not fully vaccinated, including about 48 million children under 12, who are not eligible. Only full vaccination affords high protection from severe disease if someone infected with the Delta variant.

The national outlook is quickly worsening. Louisiana, which was averaging fewer than 400 cases a day at the start of July, is now averaging more than 4,100 cases a day, the most ever. The county that includes Jacksonville, Fla., is averaging almost 1,200 cases a day.

As a whole, daily case reports in the United States have risen 150 percent over the past two weeks, pushing the known pandemic total past 35 million.

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Here’s Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment And Our Health

It’s no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it’s a lot.

 

Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million people, around 58 percent of whom consume bottled water at least some of the time – the new study estimates what the impact would be if everyone in the city switched completely to drinking bottled water.

The extra production burden would cost an extra US$83.9 million annually and lead to the loss of 1.43 animal species per year on average, the team found, due to the process of extracting and processing the raw materials needed.

There would be approximately 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and 3,500 times more cost in terms of resources, compared with everyone in the city switching over to tap water and nothing else, the researchers worked out.

“The higher environmental impact of bottled water was attributed to the high input of materials (i.e., packaging) and energy needed for bottled water production as compared to tap water,” write the researchers in their published paper.

Those figures are based on the Life Cycle Assessment commonly used by scientists, which weighs up the environmental load of a product over its entire lifespan: raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, and disposal.

In this case, the team did something unusual: they combined the LCA with a similar framework used to measure health, called the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The aim was to see what sort of health trade-offs there might be when weighing up bottled water versus filtered and unfiltered tap water.

(Villanueva et al., Science of the Total Environment, 2021)

While the general consensus is that tap water and bottled water are equally safe to drink – not least because tap water is subject to much stricter regulations from governments – tap water can take on chemicals called trihalomethanes as it’s cleaned, which have been linked to bladder cancer.

The researchers say there is a health risk, but that it’s a very small one. If Barcelona switched en masse to tap water, life expectancy would drop by two hours per person, on average, or about 309 years of life years lost. With filtered water, that risk would go down further, to 36 years.

 

“Tap water quality has increased substantially in Barcelona since the incorporation of advanced treatments over the last years,” says environmental epidemiologist Cristina Villanueva from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

“However, this considerable improvement has not been mirrored by an increase in tap water consumption, which suggests that water consumption could be motivated by subjective factors other than quality.”

Those factors could include risk perception, taste, odor, the impact of marketing campaigns by bottled water companies, and a lack of trust in public tap water quality, according to the researchers.

Consumption of bottled water is rising, and quite sharply in some areas, so it’s important that we’re all aware of the environmental consequences of buying and drinking water this way – not just in the production of the plastic, but also its disposal.

While the researchers admit some limitations to their study – including the Barcelona focus, the difficulty of combining the LCA and HIA measurements, the application of country-wide statistics where they weren’t available for the city, and several other approximations – it’s a worthwhile reminder of the environmental impacts of our choices.

“Our results show that considering both the environmental and the health effects, tap water is a better option than bottled water because bottled water generates a wider range of impacts,” says environmental epidemiologist Cathryn Tonne, also from ISGlobal.

The research has been published in Science of the Total Environment.

 

Source link

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Thousands Protest in France Against Health Pass for 3d Weekend

In southern Paris, Ms. Collino, maskless and carrying a French flag, said she was angry that health workers were forced to get vaccinated by this fall, and that access to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms and other indoor venues would be restricted.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

Around her, families waved French flags and protesters shouted “freedom” and “resistance” while carrying makeshift cardboard signs with slogans like “Don’t give in to blackmail” or “No to segregation.”

When the protesters passed a statue of Louis Pasteur, the renowned 19th-century French scientist credited with discovering the principles of vaccination, few seemed to take notice. One elderly man, who was walking past the demonstrators, did. “Pasteur must be turning over in his grave,” he grumbled.

The march there was organized by Florian Philippot, a former member of the far-right National Rally party who has become a figurehead of the anti-health pass movement. Two video journalists for the Agence France-Presse left the march after protesters insulted them, spat on them and prevented them from filming, the agency reported.

“We no longer have the freedom to seek the treatment that we want,” said Ms. Collino, a retired I.T. specialist who lives in the nearby town of Sèvres. She did not trust officials to tell the truth about vaccines and said that she had taken it upon herself to seek out information about the pandemic online.

Her attitude, however, has isolated her from some friends and family who favor the health pass policy, as do a majority of French people, according to recent polls. Millions have rushed to get their Covid shots since the pass was announced. But Ms. Collino said she would rather die than get vaccinated.

“I don’t understand why they are in favor while I’m against,” she said.

Source link

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Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

new video loaded: Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

transcript

transcript

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said a worldwide rise in Covid-19 cases has disparately impacted poorer countries with lower vaccination rates, and that deaths in Africa have spiked 80 percent in four weeks.

When will the pandemic end? My answer was that the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It is in our hands. Almost four million cases were reported to W.H.O. last week. And on current trends, we expect the total number of cases to pass 200 million within the next two weeks. And we know that is an underestimate. On average, in five of W.H.O.‘s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent, or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Which has now been detected in at least 132 countries. Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost. And health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed.

Recent episodes in Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

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August 01, 2021 at 01:48AM

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

new video loaded: Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

transcript

transcript

Delta Variant Drives Global Virus Surge, W.H.O. Warns

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said a worldwide rise in Covid-19 cases has disparately impacted poorer countries with lower vaccination rates, and that deaths in Africa have spiked 80 percent in four weeks.

When will the pandemic end? My answer was that the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It is in our hands. Almost four million cases were reported to W.H.O. last week. And on current trends, we expect the total number of cases to pass 200 million within the next two weeks. And we know that is an underestimate. On average, in five of W.H.O.‘s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent, or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Which has now been detected in at least 132 countries. Hard-won gains are in jeopardy or being lost. And health systems in many countries are being overwhelmed.

Recent episodes in Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

Source link

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Delta Variant and Travel Restrictions in Europe: What to Know

Delta Variant and Travel Restrictions in Europe: What to Know
Delta Variant and Travel Restrictions in Europe: What to Know

Making things even more complex is the fact that the rules frequently change. In Spain, nighttime curfews banning people from being outside between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. were reintroduced in some spots last week, including Barcelona.

“If you’ve come here to party then it could be disappointing, but if you are here for the food, beaches and cultural activities then the restrictions don’t really affect you,” said Mallory Hill, 37, a banker from Seattle, who is traveling around the Catalonian region for the next two weeks with family.

“What’s scary is how quickly the cases are going up here and the trend of vaccinated people getting sick. But there’s also a lot of misinformation and conflicting advice so it’s hard to decide whether we should stay or go all the way back home,” she said. “It looks pretty bad everywhere.”

Even some official advice can be contradictory. On July 26, the U.S. State Department issued a series of “do not travel” advisories for Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Britain because of a rising number of coronavirus cases in those countries, raising the warning level to a 4, the highest. But just days after that warning, the British government announced that fully vaccinated Americans could visit without having to quarantine.

Updated 

July 30, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ET

Visiting Britain can also be challenging, because it uses a complex “traffic light” system that determines restrictions based on which country you are traveling from. The list also changes every three weeks, or earlier, depending on the status of the coronavirus in each destination.

So while Americans coming straight from the United States don’t have to quarantine, if they first visit France, they would be required to quarantine for 10 days and take multiple tests because of concerns over the prevalence of the Beta variant in that country.

Going from Britain to the countries of the European Union isn’t any easier. A growing number of countries in the bloc have imposed additional measures for travelers from Britain, including PCR tests and quarantine, because of the high rate of the Delta variant in Britain. All visitors traveling from Britain to Italy must present a negative Covid-19 test before departure, quarantine for five days upon arrival, and present another negative test at the end of their isolation period.

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The Delta variant is a ‘serious threat’ as contagious as chickenpox, the C.D.C. finds.

The Delta variant is a ‘serious threat’ as contagious as chickenpox, the C.D.C. finds.
The Delta variant is a ‘serious threat’ as contagious as chickenpox, the C.D.C. finds.
The Delta variant is a ‘serious threat’ as contagious as chickenpox, the C.D.C. finds.

The Delta variant is much more contagious, more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines and may cause more severe disease than all other known versions of the virus, according to an internal presentation circulated within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the agency, acknowledged on Tuesday that vaccinated people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant carry just as much virus in the nose and throat as unvaccinated people, and may spread it just as readily, if less often.

But the internal document lays out a broader and even grimmer view of the variant.

The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox, according to the document, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

The immediate next step for the agency is to “acknowledge the war has changed,” the document said. Its contents were first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday evening.

The document’s tone reflects alarm among C.D.C. scientists about Delta’s spread across the country, said a federal official who has seen the research described in the document. The agency is expected to publish additional data on the variant on Friday.

The agency’s new masking guidelines for vaccinated people, introduced on Tuesday, were based on the information presented in the document. The C.D.C. recommended that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in public settings in communities with high transmission of the virus.

But the internal document hints that even that recommendation may not go far enough. “Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential,” the document said.

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