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This Day in COVID: August 11, 2020

Details

Fauci says he has serious doubts Russia's COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective

The nation's top infectious disease expert said he doubts the efficacy of Russia's COVID-19 vaccine.

ABC

Russia registers virus vaccine, Putin’s daughter given it

Speaking at a government meeting Tuesday, Putin said that the vaccine has undergone proper testing and is safe.

Politico

COVID-19 state mask mandates can't be avoided using HIPAA or constitutional 'exemptions'

And it is neither morally nor legally defensible to knowingly skirt mask requirements.

NBC

Study: The most and least effective face masks to use during the pandemic

Researchers at Duke University tested 14 different common face masks to see which could filter the most air particles. While surgical masks and multi-layer homemade cotton masks showed promising results, bandanas and neck gaiters were not as effective. Here's what that means for you.

CNBC

University Of Maryland Delays In-Person Classes Until At Least September 14

The semester will still begin August 31, but classes will be held online for the first two weeks at least due to the ongoing pandemic. On-campus students are asked to stay inside as much as possible.

DCist

Life lessons from a 102-year-old who survived Covid, the Spanish flu and two types of cancer

Gerri Schappals, 102, has survived so much: She was born the year of the Spanish flu pandemic and caught it as a baby; in the '80s and '90s she survived breast then colon cancer; and in May, she contracted Covid-19 and fully recovered.

CNBC

Authoritarian Weaknesses and the Pandemic

Carnegie Endowment

Undocumented in the Pandemic

With The Marshall Project and the Pulitzer Center, a look at one immigrant mother's struggle to keep her children safe and housed.

PBS

Moderna says uncertain about coronavirus vaccine patent exclusivity

Reuters

India's Modi urges ramped up testing and tracing to beat coronavirus

Reuters

I’m a COVID-19 long-hauler and an epidemiologist – here’s how it feels when symptoms last for months

The Conversation

Teen vapers up to 7 times more likely to get COVID-19 than non-e-cig users, says new Stanford study

“Being a 21-year-old, I should not be spending six days in the hospital for lung complications,” said one young vaper who survived coronavirus.

NBC

Facebook says it has taken down 7 million posts for spreading coronavirus misinformation

Washington Post

A negative COVID-19 test does not mean recovery

Pandemic policy must include defining and measuring what we mean by mild infection.

Nature

Trump expected to give update on U.S. COVID-19 vaccine development -White House

Reuters

Mexico's new warning labels on junk food meet supersized opposition from U.S., EU

Reuters

Lost art: Measuring COVID-19’s devastating impact on America’s creative economy

This study estimates the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the creative economy, which is comprised of industries such as film, advertising, and fashion as well as creative occupations such as musicians, artists, performers, and designers.

Brookings

America’s uniquely bad Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 18 maps and charts

The US’s coronavirus epidemic is among the worst. Here’s what you need to know.

Vox

Argentina death toll from coronavirus tops 5,000 as new cases spike

Reuters

COVID-19 threatens plans to eliminate and control infectious diseases, PAHO Director says

Countries must balance COVID-19 response with maintaining essential services to manage and prevent infectious diseases. Washington, D.C., Aug. 11, 2020 (PAHO)— The pandemic of COVID-19, which has killed over 390,000 people in the Americas, is threatening regional plans to eliminate and control infectious diseases including tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis and others, PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne said today.

PAHO

New Zealand On Alert After 4 Cases Of COVID-19 Emerge From Unknown Source

The cases came after 102 days with no community spread. The four are members of the same family. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a three-day period of high restrictions due to the new cluster.

NPR

UPDATE 1-Russia becomes first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, says Putin

Reuters

Our Mission

The COVID-19 History Project is a curated archive of the events and policy decisions surrounding the emergence of COVID-19.

The pandemic era of 2020-2022 saw massive increases in restrictions on daily life—enforced by the government and by social stigma—accompanied social protests that roiled cities worldwide

In the United States alone, trillions of dollars were spent by the federal government to offset the forced closure of businesses and the devastation of normal life.

The impacts of these policy decisions are still being felt today.

Some would like us to forget the actions and people that played a significant role during the pandemic.

But we of the COVID-19 History Project don't want to forget. Through our work, we hope there will always be an archive to learn from and interpret this fascinating, disturbing, time in world history.

The Timeline

In order to learn from the mistakes of the past, and give COVID-19 decision makers the credit—both good and bad—they deserve, we have compiled a media timeline from every day of the pandemic.

We have endeavored to make the timeline comprehensive without being duplicative, following the major trends as they unfolded.

We provided analyses for each month highlighting major events, but encourage readers to make their own conclusions about these events as well.

This Day in COVID: August 11, 2021

Details

‘Our Situation Is Apocalyptic’: Bangladesh Garment Workers Face Ruin (Published 2020)

The New York Times

White House: Getting vaccinated against COVID "most important" step in hurricane preparedness

Axios

What will it be like when COVID-19 becomes endemic? | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

In a Q&A, Yonatan Grad, Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, discusses what endemic COVID-19 will look like.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation - npj Vaccines

Nature

The Delta Variant Isn't As Contagious As Chickenpox. But It's Still Highly Contagious

A leaked CDC document compared it to the highly contagious children's disease. Data does not support this claim. Nonetheless, the variant is one of the world's most contagious respiratory diseases.

NPR

What are the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic? These 5 trends give us a glimpse

The World Economic Forum

Ground vibrations recorded by fiber-optic cables reveal traffic response to COVID-19 lockdown measures in Pasadena, California - Communications Earth & Environment

Changes in ground vibrations suggest decreased traffic volume and increased average speed in Pasadena, California during the COVID-19 lockdown, according to analyses of data from a Distributed Acoustic Sensing array

Nature

A differential equations model-fitting analysis of COVID-19 epidemiological data to explain multi-wave dynamics - Scientific Reports

Nature

Therapeutic efficacy of macrolides in management of patients with mild COVID-19 - Scientific Reports

Nature

Thousands In Germany Thought They Had Their Vaccine. It May Have Been Saline Instead

More than 8,000 people may have been given a fake COVID vaccine in the spring. A nurse is suspected of making the switch.

NPR

Most Parents Don’t Want Their Schools to Require COVID-19 Vaccination, But Most Favor Requiring Masks for Unvaccinated Children and Staff | KFF

Worries about Long-Term and Serious Side Effects are Parents’ Top Concern; Hispanic and Black Parents Are More Likely than White Parents to Cite Access and Cost Issues As schools around the country prepare to reopen, a majority of parents of school-age children say they do not want their children’s schools to require students to get…More

KFF

Covid vaccine: Fertility and miscarriage claims fact-checked

Posts claiming Covid vaccines cause miscarriages are not supported by scientific evidence.

BBC

Altered platelet and coagulation function in moderate-to-severe COVID-19 - Scientific Reports

Nature

Reasons for success and lessons learnt from nanoscale vaccines against COVID-19 - Nature Nanotechnology

Almost all currently used vaccines against COVID-19 consist of either non-viral or viral nanoparticles. Here we attempt to understand the reasons behind the success of such advanced nanoscale vaccine technologies compared with clinically established conventional vaccines, and the lessons to be learnt from this potentially transformative development in the adoption and acceptance of nanotechnology for medicine.

Nature

Mortality in individuals treated with COVID-19 convalescent plasma varies with the geographic provenance of donors - Nature Communications

Regional differences in SARS-CoV-2 variants may affect treatment outcome. Here, the authors show that near-sourced convalescent plasma has higher efficacy, as defined by death within 30 days of transfusion, than plasma sourced more than 150 miles away.

Nature

How Will the Coronavirus Evolve?

Delta won’t be the last variant. What will the next ones bring?

The New Yorker

Coronavirus surge pushes Cuba's healthcare system to brink

Reuters

A modified SEIR model to predict the behavior of the early stage in coronavirus and coronavirus-like outbreaks - Scientific Reports

Nature

Coronavirus: What do we know about the artemisia plant?

Artemisia plant extracts have anti-malarial properties, but there's no evidence they can combat Covid-19.

BBC

Charlotte sees a ‘dramatic uptick’ in kids’ coronavirus cases before school starts

Axios

Covid-19 vaccines: the contracts, prices and profits

Raised charges and Covax deals on order books of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca

The Guardian

Poland’s vaccine skeptics create a political headache

The core areas of support for the Law and Justice party are also the wariest of vaccines.

POLITICO.eu

Facebook shuts accounts in anti-vaccine influencer campaign

Russia-based marketing firm sought to pay social media influencers to smear Covid vaccines

The Guardian

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine: rare blood clot syndrome has high mortality rate

Researchers found that clots occurring after first dose of Oxford jab affected otherwise young and healthy people

The Guardian

As vaccine mandates spread, protests follow — some spurred by nurses

A new round of protests like last year’s has sprung up in recent days, fueled in part by nurses who have also been finding audiences on social media.

NBC News

Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women May Opt to Receive the Vaccine (Published 2020)

The New York Times

Dallas school district defies governor’s ban and announces a mask mandate. (Published 2021)

The New York Times

Tensions over school mask mandates roil this Mississippi town

The simple back-to-school precaution of masking has become a source of controversy in Mississippi and around the country as millions of students prepare to enter the academic year and rates of COVID-19 infection soar.

PBS

YouTube suspends Sen. Rand Paul for 7 days over videos questioning the efficacy of masks

Paul accused the "leftwing cretins" at YouTube of "acting as an arm of government and censoring their users for contradicting the government."

Business Insider

Reports: FDA to OK COVID booster shots for immunocompromised people

The update would include Pfizer and Moderna

Spectrum News

Perspective | Why this stage of the pandemic makes us so anxious

The Washington Post

‘It absolutely wrecked me.’ How a lab came back from the pandemic

Science | AAAS

The big drop in American poverty during the pandemic, explained

The lesson from the past year: Poverty is a policy choice.

Vox

Pining for the Intimacy of Pandemic Pods (Published 2021)

The New York Times

Credit ratings are punishing poorer countries for investing more in health care during the pandemic

Low-income countries that sought to spend more on health care during the pandemic have been hit with ratings downgrades, while others avoided borrowing entirely.

The Conversation

How the Pandemic Forced Japan to Rethink Its Work Culture

'Changes that would normally take years in Japan happened in just a few months,' writes Nomura CEO Kentaro Okuda

Time Magazine

Why the 'Great Remote Work Experiment' may have been flawed

We've lived through a global remote-work experiment. But is our assessment of work-from-home flawed since we didn't have a choice?

BBC

CDC urges COVID vaccines during pregnancy as delta variant surges

The advice comes as hospitals in hot spots around the U.S. see disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus. The CDC recommendation echoes recent guidance from top obstetrician groups.

PBS