05 Dec 2021

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With the world abuzz over the latest variant of concern emerging Fred and I dig into the details of the Omicron Variant, or more correctly ‘Variant of Concern’ (VOC), and how it fits into the pandemic. We discuss the various reactions around the world to the variant. We discuss what we know and what we don’t about this variant, how transmissible it is, is it more infective and how do ...
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23 Nov 2021

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This week the FDA followed the guidance of the CDC to unanimously expand Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine boosters to everyone 18 and older. The guidance comes on the back of poor uptake of vaccines across the country that have failed to get our population past the line of herd immunity and a spike in cases that are being seen in Europe including Germany, The Netherlands, and Austria,...
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15 Nov 2021

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This week Fred and Nick talk about travel and the updated travel guidelines for entering the United States. Now visitors are welcome into the United States for tourism, not just business or “essential” travel but they will need to show proof of vaccination and will also need to show a negative COVID-19 test taken within 3 days of the departure date. We discuss the options for testing ...
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08 Nov 2021

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    This week the big news is the approval by the CDC that follows last week's recommendation by the FDA to approve vaccines for children aged 5-11 years of age. The committee weighed up the risks and benefits of the vaccines and while there are still rare side effects, the one most worried about being myocarditis, found more often in younger males, the benefits outweighe...
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01 Nov 2021

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Fred Goldstein returns from his travels with his CO2 meter still in hand and apparently beeping at some surprising locations. We discuss what the readings mean, why they might be useful and what he learned from the data gathered on his trip that including flying, conference halls, and waiting areas We also review the latest guidance from the FDA that has approved the Pfizer vaccine fo...
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25 Oct 2021

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  This week Fred Goldstein is off to a conference and traveling internationally so has been navigating the requirements for exit and entry into countries and even states. He is also adding to his travel bag a newly acquired CO2 sensor he plans to use at the conference to understand what it can tell him about air circulation, how easy is it to use, and what information does it pro...
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18 Oct 2021

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Intuitively getting vaccinated does not just protect you but protects those around you but proving this can be challenging with so many confounding factors. This week Fred Goldstein and I look at the concept of Herd Immunity and especially at the local level, and in the case of an elegant paper looking at data out of Sweden at the family unit level. The study benefits from the fact th...
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12 Oct 2021

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  This week Dr. Nick and Fred discuss Fred's recent article Learning to Live with Endemic COVID-19, published in Security Nexus from the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) which he co-authored with Ben Ryan of Baylor University and Deon Canyon of the APCSS. Some governmental leaders and others have said we just need to “learn to live with it” reg...
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04 Oct 2021

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This week we explore the suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 might have come from a laboratory and what the science says. The virus either emerged from another animal, so-called Zoonotic origins, or was leaked from a laboratory, in which case this could be deliberately or accidentally. We dive into the data and explain some of the reasons why despite the coincidence of the virus emerging in a c...
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27 Sep 2021

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This week Dr. Nick and Fred discuss how the pandemic has affected other countries and look into why their data sometimes seems quite different to the United States. We dive into the data from Bangladesh and India to understand why their death rates and rates of infection are lower than what we would expect based on experience here. Despite a low rate of vaccination in Bangladesh they ...
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