With the already staggering coronavirus case and death toll expected to climb further in the US following Thanksgiving, there’s at least more good news on the vaccine front. The biotech firm Moderna released the final results of its 30,000-person vaccine trial in a press release Monday, reporting a 94.1 percent rate of efficacy. The finding squares with the 94.5 percent efficacy rate the company reported two weeks ago, based on its first interim analysis of trial data. Of the 196 Covid-19 cases in the trial, 185 were in the placebo group and only 11 in the vaccine group, Moderna reported. Even more important, the vaccine — called mRNA-1273 — appears…

CORRIGAN PARK IN Belfast will host Antrim’s Ulster senior football championship tie against Cavan in April. There had been uncertainty over Antrim retaining home advantage after a motion from Cavan to move the game was passed last week. There was concerns due to the limited capacity of under 4,000 at the Belfast vene, which can accommodate 3,700 supporters and has been used as Antrim’s GAA home with Casement Park continuing to be unavailable for use. But Ulster GAA chiefs released their 2022 senior football championship fixtures tonight and confirmed that Corrigan Park can host the game on Saturday 23 April at 2pm. “Following a site visit this week by relevant…

Joe Biden will become the US president during an extraordinary moment in history, one that could very well prove to be the calm before the storm, a brief prelude to dissolution and illiberalism. Trump’s bid to become a full-on authoritarian failed, but Democrats could easily lose the House in a 2022 backlash. Biden could face total congressional opposition, even impeachment — as the recent baseless “stolen election” narrative has shown, if Republicans don’t have any evidence, they’ll just make something up. Or maybe Democrats will keep the House and take the Senate in 2022, and legislation will become possible! Who knows? (The Georgia Senate runoffs are another big question mark.)…

When the Covid-19 pandemic forced much of the US to lock down in the spring of 2020, officials and experts worried the necessary social distancing measures would make another public health crisis — the opioid epidemic — worse. Addiction treatment is traditionally done in person, and restrictions on gatherings and closed businesses would make it much less accessible. So the federal government responded by easing rules for getting into treatment virtually — making it easier for treatment providers to retain patients and attract new ones. Even before the pandemic, experts had been calling for making treatment easier to get in the US, and the new rules were a big step…

THE GPA HAVE released a detailed statement this evening as the dispute with the GAA over player expenses continues. Written by Wexford hurler and GPA National Executive Committee Co-Chair Matthew O’Hanlon, the GPA chief insists it is false to suggest that the group would be happy to allow over training continue. The statement also questions whether the GAA pursued an honest way to negotiate over the recent charter and that if the GAA allows unlimited training, the players would be financially penalised. The statement, in full, reads: “I, like many players, read what GAA Director General Tom Ryan had to say to county boards this week with interest. I have…

With two Covid-19 vaccine candidates expected to be approved for the US market in the coming weeks, a group of experts met Tuesday to advise on which Americans should be immunized first. In a 13-1 vote, they put health care personnel and staff and residents of long-term care facilities at the front of the line. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a panel of independent medical and public health experts, has been meeting for months to think through the question of whom to prioritize during a pandemic while vaccine supplies are still limited. ACIP is highly influential in the US. It makes recommendations on vaccination policy to the Centers…

As if the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t bad enough, America is also seeing a surge in homicides this year. A new report, by the Council on Criminal Justice, found homicides have increased sharply this year across 21 US cities with relevant data: “Homicide rates increased by 42% during the summer and 34% in the fall over the summer and fall of 2019.” Other data, from crime analyst Jeff Asher, found murder is up 36 percent throughout the year so far, compared to the same period in 2019, in a sample of 51 US cities. A preliminary FBI report also found murders up 15 percent nationwide in the first half of 2020.…

The United Kingdom on Wednesday granted temporary authorization for emergency use of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to adults age 16 and older, with the first 800,000 doses of the two-dose vaccine slated to be offered in the country next week. This makes the UK the first country to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA-based vaccine and the first government approval of a vaccine backed by a clinical trial. (Some countries like Russia and China began administering their Covid-19 vaccines before completing large-scale trials.) It’s also the fastest a vaccine has ever gained approval, albeit on a temporary basis. “I’m confident now, with the news today, that from spring,…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested on Wednesday that some people who have been exposed to Covid-19 can quarantine for less than two weeks. The agency said a 14-day quarantine, in which people stay home and avoid interacting with others, is still the safest option if they come into close contact — within 6 feet for at least 15 minutes — with someone who has Covid-19. Anyone who actually contracts the disease should self-isolate until at least 10 days after symptoms begin, and not leave isolation until their fever is gone for at least 24 hours. But the CDC updated its guidelines — which are recommendations, not legal…

Click:小型工作室 DeepMind, an AI research lab that was bought by Google and is now an independent part of Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced a major breakthrough this week that one evolutionary biologist called “a game changer.” “This will change medicine,” the biologist, Andrei Lupas, told Nature. “It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything.” The breakthrough: DeepMind says its AI system, AlphaFold, has solved the “protein folding problem” — a grand challenge of biology that has vexed scientists for 50 years. Proteins are the basic machines that get work done in your cells. They start out as strings of amino acids (imagine the beads on a…