(WASHINGTON) — Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine protects against COVID-19, according to an analysis by U.S. regulators Wednesday that sets the stage for a final decision on a new and easier-to-use shot to help tame the pandemic. The Food and Drug Administration’s scientists confirmed that overall the vaccine is about 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe COVID-19. The agency also said J&J’s shot—one that could help speed vaccinations by requiring just one dose instead of two—is safe to use. That’s just one step in the FDA’s evaluation of a third vaccine option for the U.S. On Friday, the agency’s independent advisers will debate if the evidence is strong enough to recommend the long-anticipated shot. Armed with that advice, FDA is expected to make a final decision within days. The vaccination drive has been slower than hoped, hampered by logistical issues and weather delays even as the country mourns more than 500,000 virus-related deaths. So far, about 44.5 million Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine made by Pfizer or Moderna, and nearly 20 million have received the second dose required for full protection. J&J tested its single-dose option in 44,000 people in the U.S., Latin America and South Africa. Different mutated versions of the virus are circulating in different countries, and the FDA analysis cautioned that it’s not clear how well the vaccine works against each variant. But J&J previously announced the vaccine worked better in the U.S.—72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19, compared with 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa. Still, in every country it was highly effective against the most serious symptoms, and early study results showed no hospitalizations or deaths starting 28 days after vaccination. While the overall effectiveness numbers may suggest the J&J candidate isn’t quite as strong as two-dose competitors, all of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines have been tested differently, making comparisons nearly impossible. While it wouldn’t be surprising if one dose turns out to be a little weaker than two doses, policymakers will decide if that’s an acceptable trade-off to get more people vaccinated faster. J&J was on track to become the world’s first one-dose option until earlier this month, Mexico announced it would use a one-dose version from China’s CanSino. That vaccine is made with similar technology as J&J’s but initially was developed as a two-dose option until beginning a one-dose test in the fall. The rival Pfizer and Moderna vaccines being used in the U.S. and numerous other countries must be kept frozen, while the J&J shot can last three months in the refrigerator, making it easier to handle. AstraZeneca’s vaccine, widely used in Europe, Britain and Israel, is made similarly and also requires refrigeration but takes two doses. If the FDA clears the J&J shot for U.S. use, it won’t boost vaccine supplies significantly right away. Only a few million doses are expected to be ready for shipping in the first week. But J&J told Congress this week that it expected to provide 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by summer. European regulators and the World Health Organization also are considering J&J’s vaccine. Worldwide, the company aims to be producing around a billion doses by the end of the year. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. from https://ift.tt/37IRNK6 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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You May Be Surprised by the Type of American Who is Postponing Basic Health Care During the Pandemic2/23/2021 There’s more than one way to get sick during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can contract the virus, of course, as more than 28 million Americans already have. Or you can dodge the disease but still suffer from the disruption caused by quarantines and social distancing, if they lead you to neglect routine health care. That, a new TIME-Harris Poll survey shows, is just what too many of us are doing. The top-line numbers from the survey of 1,093 participants (a representative sample of the U.S. public) are sobering, with 78% of respondents reporting that they have put off at least some medical services during the past three months of pandemic. Of those procedures, dental exams or cleanings were the most frequently missed, with 30% saying that they have passed on regular oral care. Annual physical check-ups were next at 27%, followed by eye exams at 25%. More troubling—if somewhat less common—were the 15% of people who said they were missing appointments with specialists, including orthopedists, dermatologists and, most worrisome, cardiologists. The 500,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic represents a scary enough figure, but it still trails the 655,000 who lose their lives each year to cardiovascular disease. If even a fraction of heart-disease patients are missing their regular cardiology visits during the pandemic, there could be a bump in that overall mortality number down the line. A similar trend could result from people missing routine cancer screenings. “I am most concerned about an increase in morbidity and mortality due to cases of cancer being detected too late,” says Kelly Anderson, a health services researcher and PhD candidate at John Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Demographics play a significant role in who is staying current with health care during the pandemic and who is letting things slide. In the case of education, for example, good health practices seemed to be inversely associated with academic achievement. Only 16% of people with a high school education or less have put off their routine check-ups during the pandemic, compared to 31% of people with some college and 34% of college graduates. Similarly, lower income Americans appear to be doing a better job of looking after themselves than higher-earners. Just 21% of people in households with less than $50,000 annual income are missing routine physicals, compared to 23% in the $75,000 to $100,000 group and a whopping 35% of those in households earning more than $100,000 annually. In some ways, these numbers are unsurprising. Lower-income and less-educated people tend to be more likely to have chronic health problems and thus have less of an option of skipping their physicals. “Conditions like diabetes and hypertension are more common among people with lower income. They might feel like they just know they can’t miss a check-up, so they make it more of a priority,” says Dr. Jessica Justman, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “People with higher income have more options for diet and exercise and are healthier overall.” Insurance—or lack of it—may be at work too, says Dr. David Buchholz, medical director of primary care at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. People in lower income brackets are disproportionately represented among the uninsured, and thus likelier to lack access to health care to begin with; if they haven’t been getting regular physicals all along, they’d be less likely to describe themselves as missing them now. “If they’re starting from a baseline health care of zero,” Buchholz says, “they’ll still be zero during the pandemic.” For people who do have health insurance, the type of policy is a factor as well. Among those who get their insurance through the public marketplace—where there can often be high deductibles and other out of pocket expenses—62% are saying no thanks to annual checkups compared to just 32% of people on employer-sponsored health care plans. As with so many things, race and ethnicity play a significant role as well, with communities of color suffering more—often lacking health insurance and working in lower income jobs. Among white Americans, 20% report missing their annual check-ups during the pandemic, compared to 29% of Black Americans and 48% of Hispanic Americans. Structural disadvantages that made health care harder to access pre-pandemic would only be exacerbated when lockdowns and economic hardship set in. Anderson also points out that even among low-income Medicaid recipients, there are up-front costs for health care, which may simply not be affordable in the COVID-19 economy. “Even small out of pocket costs can be a major barrier and lead to people forego care,” she says. No surprise at all in our incorrigibly partisan culture, political leanings have played a role in health care decisions in the past year. Throughout the pandemic, blue-staters and Democrats have generally been more compliant with mask-wearing and social-distancing, while red America has pushed back, as one study from the University of Chicago confirmed. But when it comes to health checkups, self-identified liberals were likelier to report letting things slide in the TIME/Harris Poll survey, with 32% saying they’ve skipped annual exams, compared to 27% of moderates and 24% of conservatives. Buchholz thinks at least some of this may have to do with the share of red-staters who believe the pandemic is either a hoax or exaggerated. If they’re continuing to go to bars and restaurants and parties, there’s no reason they wouldn’t go right ahead going in for physicals too. Liberals, by contrast, who tend to fear the pandemic more, might see doctors’ offices as dangerous congregate settings and seek to avoid them. “In red states, people are going about their business,” Buchholz says. “Liberals are hunkering down more.” Some positive findings are buried among the more concerning ones, much of them regarding telehealth, which is clearly experiencing a boom. In our recent survey, only 29% of people reported receiving some of their health care online prior to the pandemic; that figure jumped to 51% during the pandemic era. Here too, race has been a factor, with Black Americans more likely to have been early adopters of telehealth before the pandemic and white Americans only recently tumbling to it. Prior to COVID-19, 38% of Black Americans had used telehealth, a figure that has now jumped to 56%. Among white Americans the before-and-after figures have more than doubled, from 25% to 51%. The racial disparity, Buchholz believes, is one more result of systemic disparities that leave Black Americans with jobs that don’t offer insurance or that don’t allow them to leave work for a check-up. The result: they’ve long been accustomed to finding workarounds like urgent care centers or telehealth. “If we begin with the premise that Blacks have more barriers to health care,” he says, “you imagine they would have gotten smart about health care too, and telehealth is one way.” Unexpectedly, mental health services, which would seem like the kind of care that most lends itself to telehealth since it so often involves nothing more than a conversation, has lagged. Among all respondents, only 24% said they were currently receiving mental health care, down from 29% before the outbreak. Justman believes economic considerations may be one explanation for the decline. In an economy battered by the pandemic, with so many people having lost jobs and income, psychotherapy might seem to some people like a luxury. Transitioning from in-person psychotherapeutic care to telehealth may also be more difficult or uncomfortable for some people than others, Anderson suggests. It’s too early to tell how the health care landscape will change after the pandemic is at last over. Some patients and doctors who have picked up the telehealth habit, for example, may decide they quite like it and stick with it whenever possible. Others may decide they prefer the old face-to-face model. What it’s not too early to say is that a country that already suffers from too much chronic illness will be wise to return at least to its pre-pandemic levels of doctor visits when the coronavirus crisis is in the rear-view mirror. COVID-19 has taken enough lives without our allowing other preventable and treatable diseases to claim still more. Click here to download the full set of data for this survey. from https://ift.tt/3pJNS5Z Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ As of Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, the COVID-19 virus has claimed more than 500,000 lives in the United States, planting yet another grim milestone in a scourge that has wrecked misery in one of the most developed countries in the world. That equates to 1 in 658 Americans in just under a full year since the first reported death directly attributed to the novel coronavirus. Realistically, the death toll of COVID-19 probably neared or surpassed the half-million mark by the end of 2020, based on the widely acknowledged likelihood that not every related fatality has been identified. But now, even going by the known tally, as compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the U.S. has reached this monumental figure. It is also a reminder of the callous mathematics of epidemiology. Last September, TIME memorialized the passing of 200,000 Americans on its cover. Within weeks, there were clear signs of a coming third wave, soon to be followed by a steep rise in deaths—trends for death rates have typically mirrored those for cases, with a lag time of about 10 days. By the end of the year, the toll stood at more than 350,000. Fast-forwarding to the present, cases and deaths in the U.S. have been on a steep decline since the winter holidays, though that trend is showing some signs of turning back upward—which is partially, though not completely, an artifact of a few states revising their figures to better account for both infections and deaths that initially went unreported. (Iowa recently reported 27,000 new cases, due to a new method of reporting, and Ohio recently added 4,000 overlooked deaths.) As a blunt indicator of tragedy, today’s milestone is a reminder that, under the best of scenarios for the vaccine rollout, the number of deaths is likely to exceed that of the highest estimates for the Civil War, the deadliest military conflict in U.S. history. It is also a reminder that the pandemic has been far worse in the United States than anywhere else in the world by the sheer number of deaths. Even by a per capita tally, the U.S. is presently the 8th worst-struck country, behind only a few nations of remotely comparable population or infrastructure. Looking ahead, reported COVID-19 deaths will be the yardstick by which we will soonest know whether the national vaccination campaign has succeeded. Cases, in this context, are not a very useful metric, given that the vaccines are authorized on the basis of their ability to prevent disease; there are some early data showing they also prevent the spread of the virus, but their efficacy on that front is still mostly unknown. As of this writing, 13.1% of the population has received at least the first dose of one of the two currently authorized vaccines, which is a significant accomplishment but still too scant to expect to see a significant decline in deaths. Every morning, after 1 a.m., I run several computer scripts to download the latest figures on cases, deaths and vaccinations. Among the many ways to slice and dice these figures, one of the most obvious is the number of people who died on the previous day, one of the first figures I see crawl across the terminal. This figure fluctuates quite a bit from day to day, thanks to the vagaries of how and when cases are reported based on the day of the week. In 2021, that figure has been under 1,000 only once, last Monday, Feb. 15. The last time it was under that waterline previously was on Nov. 16. On Sunday, Feb. 21, it was 1,235. Only when far fewer than 1,000 Americans die from COVID-19 every day will we be capable of saying with any confidence that the end is in sight. from https://ift.tt/3unFcG9 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Baseball Stadiums Theme Parks Cathedrals: See the Worlds Makeshift COVID-19 Vaccination Hubs2/22/2021 Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, as arriving patients quickly overwhelmed hospitals from China to Italy to New York, officials converted all manner of public spaces into makeshift treatment hubs in a wartime-like effort to save as many people as possible. Now, as cases fall in many countries, public spaces are being changed once again—this time into mass vaccination hubs, where hundreds or even thousands of people can be inoculated against COVID-19 in a given day. Below, see some of the world’s most impressive makeshift COVID-19 vaccination hubs, from New York’s Citi Field to Moscow’s Krylatskoye Ice Palace to the United Kingdom’s Salisbury Cathedral. We’ve also included images from smaller, perhaps less remarkable venues, like high school gyms and a bus-turned-mobile vaccination unit. Combined, these facilities will play a critical role in ensuring the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
from https://ift.tt/3kbrfqb Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ You don’t need a gym membership, equipment or even a big chunk of time to reap the rewards of exercise. In fact, you can squeeze some of the best moves for your body into a busy workday. The key is remembering that “all movement counts,” says NiCole Keith, president of the American College of Sports Medicine and kinesiology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Here are three simple exercises you can easily add to any workday—without cutting too much into your calendar. Walk moreWalking is one of the simplest, most accessible ways to increase your activity. Adding more steps to your day has been found to boost your metabolism and decrease your risk of chronic diseases like hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. A 2008 analysis of studies, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that just 20 minutes of moderate-intensity walking per day was associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease and death during the study periods. Brisk walking was associated with even better health outcomes. (In this analysis, the terms “moderate” and “brisk” generally referred to subjective effort rather than pace.) Walking can also enhance mood, reduce stress and improve sleep. If you make it outside, even better. “Getting fresh air is huge” for mental health, says Holly Roser, a certified personal trainer based in San Francisco. Carving out time for a stroll isn’t the only way to add steps into your day, though. If your workplace has more than one restroom, choose the farther one, Keith suggests. You could also add more walking to your commute; public transit users can try getting off one stop early, and drivers can park farther away from their destination. Even if you’re working from home, there’s plenty you can do to add to your step count. While no one is suggesting you give a sales presentation from your treadmill, you might consider embracing multitasking to get in more steps. “There’s no rule that says you have to sit down every time you take a call,” Roser says. Pace around your office or go walk outside if you don’t need to be at your desk while chatting. The standard step tracker suggests 10,000 steps per day. But if that goal intimidates you, Roser has simpler advice: “Get more than you’re getting now.” Take the stairsAdding stair climbing into your routine doesn’t require any special equipment (or a post-workout shower). Just take the stairs instead of the elevator whenever possible, Keith suggests. If you don’t want to get sweaty during your workday, simply stop before you perspire, she says. To get the benefits of stair climbing, “you don’t have to break a sweat, you just have to be breathing a little harder.” Even low- or moderate-intensity stair climbing increases blood flow, which promotes both heart health and brain function. Increased alertness, better decision-making and enhanced creativity are among the mental benefits you experience “every time you get up and start moving,” Keith says. If you want to rev up your heart rate and generate some internal heat, try a Tabata workout, suggests Tasha Edwards, a health coach and certified personal trainer based in Huntsville, Ala. Exercise for 20 seconds, then back off the pace or rest completely for 40 seconds, repeating for as many minutes as you want. The beauty of Tabata, says Edwards, is its structure. “You’re liable to work hard because you realize it’s only 20 seconds at a time.” Pop some squatsSquats work your entire lower body, including muscles you use all day long. The muscles you engage when squatting are the same ones you need to get on and off the toilet, stand up from a chair or lift a bag of pet food. The benefits of squats and other forms of strength training include improved bone density, cardiovascular health and mood. If you picture heavy barbells and strenuous sessions when you think of squats, think again. You can get many of the benefits with easier sets whenever you can sneak them into your day; for example, if you did 12 body-weight squats every two hours, you could squeeze in 48 squats over an eight-hour workday. “These little ‘movement snacks’ add up over time,” says Kristin Oja, a nurse practitioner and personal trainer. To make squats easier on your knees or for extra support, try a chair-up instead. From a seated position, simply stand up from your chair—holding onto your desk for balance if necessary—and repeat. “If you want to increase the load or the work on a muscle group, all you have to do is slow down your tempo,” says Oja. Instead of moving quickly, count to three as you squat down, then hold at the bottom for a full second before slowly returning to standing. Roser recommends turning household items into weights. She has her clients squat while wearing backpacks or holding jugs of laundry detergent. Not sure when to squeeze in your squats? Edwards suggests pairing them with another habit already in your repertoire. For example, she performs 25 squats whenever she brushes her teeth. Or set a timer to beep at the top of every hour as a reminder to move. This is especially useful when you’re in “long meetings or [working on] a deadline,” says Edwards. Otherwise, “four hours go by,” and you’ve been seated—and getting stiffer—the entire time. Whatever you do, the key to moving more is shifting your mindset. “We need to take ‘just’ and ‘only’ out of our vocabulary,” says Tom Holland, exercise physiologist and author of The Micro-Workout Plan. “The secret to success is consistency.” The short, moderate workout you do always beats the long, intense session you skip. from https://ift.tt/2ZGraRY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have an essay delivered to your inbox every Sunday. Perseverance and Why Feeling Awe Increases EmpathyHere’s a secret: I am a recovering cynic with recurring pessimistic tendencies. It’s hereditary. On a sunny day, my Irish grandfather would look out the window and say: “We’ll pay for this.” And I won’t even get into the generations of head-spinning drama on the Russian side. Lately, for all the obvious reasons, it’s been way too easy to fall into compulsive fretting. But last Thursday, I turned on the news expecting the usual terribleness, and there was the new Mars Rover, a car-sized cosmic miracle of engineering and optimism. And just seeing it, I felt a shocking little flutter of awe and untrammeled joy. Researchers who study awe (and yes, they do, more on that below) describe it as an emotion that arises when “one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one’s mental schemas.” And my mental schemas definitely need updating. I could barely process this display of national functionality. The more I learned, the more awe I felt. I mean, hold on, while we were going about our lives over the last ten years, a legion of brilliant NASA scientists created an unbelievably sophisticated research vehicle, basically, a robotic geologist and astrobiologist designed to search for evidence of past life on Mars. Those engineers started work on this Mars Rover three presidents, two economic collapses, many million-person marches, four annoying new social media platforms, and at least 2,000 streaming services ago. Then, last summer, while we were all overwhelmed with multiple crises, NASA took this magic vehicle, named it Perseverance, put it on a rocket, and sent it nearly 300 million miles across the galaxy to Mars. And after six-and-a-half months, Perseverance arrived at the edge of the thin Martian atmosphere traveling at 12,100 miles per hour. And on February 18th, we turned our weary, jaded eyes to the sky, or rather, to a NASA live stream to witness the impossible, all-or-nothing choreography of a Mars Rover landing. It’s all the more wondrous when you think about the fact that mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California wasn’t controlling Perseverance live during the descent. Communications from Earth to Mars take about 12 minutes. So they just had to have confidence they’d prepared Perseverance for any eventuality and that it could navigate to a precise spot on an ancient Martian lake bed. To do this, Perseverance had to open a parachute at supersonic speed, deploy rockets to guide the descent, and withstand temperatures north of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. An infinite number of things could have gone wrong out there, but they didn’t. Somehow, this human-made machine defied the odds and the entropy that shapes the universe. That feat, the overcoming of incomprehensible distances and even greater odds, is what creates feelings of awe. It’s an emotion that alters our understanding of the world and changes our perspective, whether it’s inspired by contemplating the multiverse, natural phenomenon, or even something scary, like a massive show of power by other humans. And now, when we’re feeling stuck in so many ways, any awe you can find while not leaving your house is a good thing. Better yet, awe often puts “people in a self-transcendent state where they focus less on themselves and feel more like a part of a larger whole,” according to a white paper prepared by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. And that sense of connectedness and humility stokes empathy and generosity, which benefits the species and inspires individual happiness. You don’t have to wait for a Mars Rover for a hit of awe. The deeper you dig, the more closely you observe the world and learn about almost anything in nature or culture, the more awe you find. It’s like looking at a butterfly’s wings through a microscope. Or just becoming more intentionally aware. A.J. Jacobs, the guy who spent a year living biblically and wrote about it, also wrote a book called Thanks a Thousand. And in that book, Jacobs tracks down and thanks every person who had anything to do with his morning cup of coffee, from the farmers to the designer of the cup lids, as well as truckers, mechanics, biologists, smugglers, and goatherds. He reports that the experience, this awareness of the hundreds of people we’re connected to without realizing it, and the ensuing gratitude he felt transformed his life. As for me, I’m going to dig for some awe around here, in New York. I could start by learning something about the entrancing snowy owl that turned up in New York’s Central Park a few weeks ago. And heck, this seems like a good time to share this quote from The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
Read more about what Perseverance will be doing in its years on the red planet from TIME. If you’re new to It’s Not Just You, SUBSCRIBE HERE to get a weekly dose delivered to your inbox for free. Send comments and suggestions to me at [email protected]. COPING KIT ⛱What You Gain When You Give Things Up Arthur C. Brooks of the Atlantic on Lent and why he believes voluntarily sacrificing pleasurable things resets your senses and makes you master of yourself. Fighting with a Family Member About Politics? Try These 4 Steps TIME’s Belinda Luscombe on how families can bridge bitter ideological divides with guidance from organizations like Braver Angels, which uses family and marital therapeutic communication techniques to help folks start talking again. The Sounds of Somewhere Else The New York Times looked at relaxing ambiance videos that will transport you via soundscapes and animated images to relaxing spots like a cafe on a rainy day, a campfire by a lake, or even fictional places like the Twin Peaks Double R Diner. My favorite is this simple audio of 3 hours in a Paris cafe. How to Help and Get Help in Texas in the wake of power outages and food shortages. Feeding Texas, Mutual Aid Houston, Austin Mutual Aid, Feed the People Dallas, and Para Mi Gente in San Antonio are all welcoming donations. Find a list of organizations helping folks in the Dallas area here, and donate to The Rio Grande Valley winter storm assistance campaign here. And there are more resources at The Texas Tribune. EVIDENCE OF HUMAN KINDNESS ❤️Here’s your weekly reminder that creating a community of generosity elevates us all. Since March of 2020, Pandemic of Love Texas has assisted more than 14,000 families struggling with basic needs like food and shelter. So when a catastrophic winter storm hit the Lone Star state this week, leaving millions without power, safe drinking water, or heat, POL volunteers from every state chapter mobilized in response. Of course, we were also facing our own challenges individually, but having resources and a community in place is a privilege.</strong>“Having an existing, on-the-ground infrastructure in place definitely helped us mobilize help quickly,” says Kristin Williamson, a Pandemic of Love Dallas volunteer since July. POL volunteers reached out to families in the Texas network to check on their mental state and respond to their most urgent needs. Here are some of their stories. (Visit Pandemic of Love to find out how you can help.) Joshua is a single father of two young boys in the Dallas area whose wife passed away a few months ago due to COVID-19. Recently, Pandemic of Love was able to crowd-fund support to get his boys winter clothes and boots and provide him with rent relief so he could avoid eviction. Because of the storm, a bathroom pipe burst in his apartment, causing massive flooding. Joshua and his family had to resort to sleeping in their car. Aniah is a single mom of four children in Houston who tapped into POL’s mutual aid network in August to catch up with bills after she was furloughed and waiting for unemployment to kick in. The pipes in her home burst on Wednesday, causing flooding. And when her ceiling and roof insulation caved in, Aniah’s food supply froze over, and she didn’t have enough to feed her family. Esther, who lives just outside Houston, is a single mother of a newborn barely a week old. Things had been tough even before the storm hit. After a high-risk pregnancy and reduced hours at the supermarket where she works, Esther relied on mutual aid for baby supplies. And now, she’s struggled to keep her baby warm and fed without power and running water. Lacretia is a single mom of three living right outside Texas. In October, she requested help from Pandemic of Love to buy warm clothes and holiday gifts for her kids after losing her job. And as of this writing, the family hasn’t had a shower for four days. In the wake of this week’s crisis, Joshua, Aniah, Lacretia, and Esther – along with hundreds of other Texans – received a call or text from a Pandemic of Love volunteer and an immediate boost in the form of a cash transfer to help with gas, a hotel night and food. Each family got a microgrant of at least $250. This story is courtesy of Shelly Tygielski, founder of Pandemic of Love, a grassroots organization that matches those who want to become donors or volunteers directly with those who’ve asked for help with essential needs. COMFORT CREATURES ?Our weekly acknowledgment of the animals that help us make it through the storm. Meet WALDO (left) and BESSIE submitted by RACHEL who writes that she fostered these ridiculously adorable puppies through The Labelle Foundation in Los Angeles. ? Did someone forward you this newsletter? SUBSCRIBE to It’s Not Just You here. from https://ift.tt/3aCxHmI Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Indias Vaccine Rollout Stumbles as COVID-19 Cases Decline. Thats Bad News for the Rest of the World2/19/2021 India’s COVID-19 vaccination scheme looked set for success. For the “pharmacy of the world,” which produced 60% of the vaccines for global use before the pandemic, supply was never going to be a problem. The country already had the world’s largest immunization program, delivering 390 million doses annually to protect against diseases like tuberculosis and measles, and an existing infrastructure that would make COVID-19 vaccine distribution easier. Ahead of the launch, the government organized dry runs, put up billboards touting the vaccines and replaced phone ringing tones with a message urging people to get vaccinated. And yet, one month into its vaccination campaign, India is struggling to get even its health workers to line up for shots. In early January, India announced a goal to inoculate 300 million people by August. Just 8.4 million received a vaccine in the first month, less than a quarter of the number needed to stay on pace for the government’s goal. So far, vaccinations are only available for frontline health workers, and in some places police officers and soldiers. And even that initial interest might be waning. India’s vaccine scheme relies on a mobile phone app that schedules vaccination appointments. On the first day doses were administered, Jan. 16, some 191,000 people showed up. But four weeks later, when those people were summoned for the second dose, only only 4% returned. A. Valsala, a community health worker in the southern city of Kollam who spent months fighting COVID-19 door-to-door, skipped her appointment to get her first dose of the vaccine after a hectic day on Feb. 12. “I don’t feel the need to rush because the worst is over,” she says. “So there is a sense that it is okay to wait and watch since there are concerns about how these vaccines were developed so fast.” Read more: How the Pandemic Is Reshaping India A. Valsala’s comments point to a troubling trend—one reflected in TIME’s interviews with health workers across India. A combination of waning COVID-19 cases nationwide, questions over the efficacy of one of the two vaccines currently authorized for use in the country and complacency are resulting in growing hesitancy to get vaccinated. “There is a reduced perception of threat with regard to the virus,” says Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based epidemiologist. “Had the same vaccines been available during the peak of the pandemic in September and October, the uptake would have been different.” A troubling sign for the rest of the worldPublic health experts are now concerned that the sluggish start could impact the subsequent phases of the vaccination drive, especially when the vaccination scheme is widened next month to include older people and those with preexisting conditions. “In India, people have an inherent trust in doctors,” says Dr. Smisha Agarwal, Research Director at the Johns Hopkins Global mHealth Initiative. “So when [doctors] don’t turn up to get vaccines, it reaffirms any doubts that the general public might have.” In an effort to accelerate the vaccination drive, the government started walk-in vaccinations as opposed to allowing only those scheduled for the day to get the shots. It also set up new vaccination centers across the country. Read more: The U.S. COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Is Getting Faster. But Is It Enough? For now, India might be an outlier: a country with a surfeit of vaccines with few takers. But its experience shows that, while the first challenge is stocking up on vaccine supplies, convincing people to take them can be its own huge task. It might be a portent for the rest of the world as the number of COVID-19 cases decline globally and vaccines become more widely available, warns Dr. Paul Griffin, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. It’s easy to be complacent about getting a vaccine when cases are declining, Griffin says, “but now, when the trajectory looks favorable, is the right time to step back and realize that this will be our reality for a long time if we don’t speed up the vaccinations at this moment.” How India fell behind on vaccinationsDespite being well-positioned, India’s vaccination drive got off to a rough start. The hasty approval of the country’s homegrown vaccine, Covaxin, with little data available while Phase 3 trials were still underway (those remain ongoing) drew criticism from health workers and scientists. The mainstay of India’s vaccination scheme is Covishield, the Indian variant of the vaccine developed by University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which has been approved by regulators in the U.K., the E.U. and elsewhere. However, Covaxin is the only vaccine on offer in some vaccination centers in urban areas and health workers don’t get to choose which jab they receive. “Covaxin might be efficacious but what guides me is data,” says Dr. Nirmalya Mohapatra at the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi, where only Covaxin is available. “We also want vaccines faster because we have seen deaths because of this disease but that doesn’t mean we should cut corners with the data.” Mohapatra has refused to take Covaxin until more data is available. But even for Covishield, there aren’t as many takers as expected. In the western city of Nagpur, fewer than 36% of those scheduled to take the vaccine turned up Feb. 11, as per a Times of India report. In the north, the city of Chandigarh is planning to set up counselling centres to dispel fears about the vaccines. In a hospital in the southern city of Thrissur, Dr. Pradeep Gopalakrishnan was the last one to get the vaccine on the morning of Feb. 8. “No one came in after me, so around 69 doses set aside for the day remained unused,” he says. Experts say the lack of enthusiasm could also be attributed to a decline in cases. India’s daily case average has dropped to less than 12,000—down from more than 90,000 in September. At the peak of the pandemic, health care systems were overwhelmed, with shortages of hospital beds and oxygen cylinders being reported across the country. India’s official COVID-19 tally, now at nearly 11 million, surged to No. 2 in the world, behind the U.S (where it remains to this day).The Vaccine Champions in Read more: France Defying Death Threats to Convert Anti-Vaxxers In a Feb. 4 press conference, the Indian Council of Medical Research said that more than 20% of subjects over age 18 from across the country tested in late December and early January had antibodies for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, meaning they likely had the disease and recovered. Similar studies in Mumbai and Delhi showed even higher levels of antibodies—up to 56%, according to Delhi’s health minister. Several health workers interviewed by TIME said they contracted COVID-19, and were less concerned about getting the vaccine immediately because they believe they have immunity. But health experts warn India is far from herd immunity. And many worry that people not taking vaccines seriously might not bode well for India, given that other countries’ later waves of COVID-19 were even more severe than those early in the pandemic. Already, Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in the country, has seen a COVID-19 spike in recent days, with daily cases above 5,000 on Feb. 18 for the first in two and a half months ‘The worst is not over yet’On a global level too, the tendency to let the guard down might hamper efforts to bring the pandemic under control. Experts say vaccination is necessary not only to get long-term immunity but to also reduce the potential for new mutations, which are largely behind recent surges in cases in the U.K and Brazil. “High vaccination coverage rate reduces the potential for new variants,” says Griffin of the University of Queensland. “The more cases we have in circulation, the more chances there are of generating mutations that confer some kind of benefit to the virus.” Even in countries like the U.S. and the U.K., where vaccination started during a surge in cases, there is a risk that people lose enthusiasm once cases decline. Experts emphasize the need for better communication with the public to ensure that vaccination drives don’t slow down with COVID-19 case counts. “There isn’t any time to wait because the worst is not over yet,” says Agarwal of Johns Hopkins. “Despite the fatigue, ramping up the vaccination is the only and best weapon we have against what might otherwise be a very long winter.” from https://ift.tt/3ayh1gr Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ On Feb. 17, health officials in the UK announced that they are ready to start exposing healthy volunteers to the COVID-19 virus in a carefully controlled study. The so-called human challenge trial is the first of its kind for COVID-19 and will help scientists learn how much virus is needed to cause infection, among other important questions. The practice of intentionally exposing healthy people to a disease-causing (and potentially deadly) pathogen isn’t new in science, but it remains controversial. Scientists must balance the benefits of exposing people—which mostly fall in the realm of new knowledge about the microbe in question and the disease it causes—against the risks of infection and disease. Human challenge trials are especially useful when time is of the essence, and researchers want to quickly test a new drug or vaccine, for example, and can’t wait for a threshold of people to get naturally infected. In those cases, the intentional exposure speeds up the time to getting critical answers about whether a potential new treatment or vaccine works. That was the justification for considering human challenge trials a few months ago to study COVID-19 vaccines. But as COVID-19 case counts continued to rise over the holidays around the world, most vaccine makers quickly reached the number of cases they needed to analyze the effectiveness of their shots. Plus, there are now several vaccines authorized as safe and effective, so the immediate mandate for quickly developing a vaccine has waned. “We are no longer in the mode of, let’s accelerate the approval process for vaccines,” says Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “So the exact justification for [human challenge trials] I think is harder to come by.” U.K. health officials say the challenge trials will seek to answer a different question now: how much virus does it take to cause an infection? That information could shed light on how quickly the virus spreads from person to person—essential in understanding how contagious the virus is, and potentially where more efforts should be focused on trying to contain the virus even when it’s circulating in low levels in a community in order to protect more people from serious illness. Eventually, the challenge studies will also test vaccines. “We have secured a number of safe and effective vaccines for the U.K., but it is essential that we continue to develop new vaccines and treatments for COVID-19,” said Clive Dix, interim chair of the U.K’s vaccine task force, in the statement announcing the trial. “We expect these studies to offer unique insights into how the virus works and help us understand which promising vaccines offer the best chance of preventing the infection.” Knowing the minimum amount of virus needed to trigger an infection “would be interesting,” says Dr. Kirsten Lyke, professor of medicine at University of Maryland who is overseeing a number of COVID-19 vaccine trials. “But is it so interesting that we need to know that? Does that outweigh the risk to the volunteers? I do human challenge models a lot. And they carry with them an extra set of stressors because you really do not want to harm anyone. And this would make me pretty nervous.” Lyke has conducted human challenge trials on treatments for malaria, and her colleagues at University of Maryland have used that approach to study influenza vaccines. But those diseases differ from COVID-19, she says, because there are treatments for them. So after getting exposed to the disease in the trial, if volunteers got very sick, they could quickly be treated. The cholera vaccine recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was also studied in a human challenge trial—because it’s difficult to predict where cholera will break out in the world, it was the only way to test the shot expediently. But in that case, too, any study participants who developed serious disease could be treated with antibiotics. “I’m not quite sure of the urgency in launching a human challenge trial for COVID-19 at this time,” says Lyke. “I would say that most people who actually do human challenge studies come down on the side of being extra cautious toward proceeding on something like this. I certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for someone becoming quite ill.” Emanuel agrees. “I would feel better [with the COVID-19 human challenge studies] if we had a bunch of interventions available that we were sure could prevent people from getting serious illness,” he says. While there are vaccines and several drugs that can reduce that risk, “knowing a little bit more about whether we have appropriate safeguards to make sure no one dies [in these studies] is vitally important.” The U.K. study will start with 90 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30; they will, of course, be fully informed of the risks involved. According to the announcement from U.K. government officials, the participants will be quarantined at the Royal Free Hospital in London for at least 14 days, and will get exposed to the COVID-19 virus via drops in the nose two days after checking in. Doctors will take nasal and blood samples from them every day to monitor changes in the level of virus and in their immune reactions. After two weeks, the participants will return home, though researchers will continue to monitor them for a year. The participants will be exposed to a version of the COVID-19 virus that was circulating last summer—that is to say, not any of the new variants that have emerged from the U.K., South Africa and Brazil in recent months. That may limit the usefulness of the study, experts say, since a key question now is how well currently authorized vaccines can continue to protect against the mutant strains. Lyke also notes that both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are already working on developing boosters and new shots specifically designed to address the mutant strains. That, in theory, further reduces the need for human challenge trials, especially given the fact that the planned study will use an older version of the virus that may no longer be dominant—or even relevant—in a few months. U.K. health officials say the study is a foundation for speeding up future research into new variants and vaccines, so new versions of shots, if they are needed, can reach the public sooner. “Our eventual aim is to establish which vaccines and treatments work best in beating this disease,” said Dr. Chris Chiu, chief investigator for the trial at Imperial College London, in a statement. “But we need volunteers to support us in this work.” from https://ift.tt/3dq3dpO Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ A Learjet 31 took off before daybreak from Helena Regional Airport in Montana in late January, carrying six Veterans Affairs medical providers and 250 doses of historic cargo cradled in a plug-in cooler designed to minimize breakage. Even in a state where 80-mph speed limits are normal, ground transportation across long distances is risky for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, which must be used within 12 hours of thawing. The group’s destination was Havre, Mont., 30 miles from the Canadian border. About 500 military veterans live in and around this small town of roughly 9,800, and millions more reside in similarly rural, hard-to-reach areas across the United States. About 2.7 million veterans who use the VA health system are classified as “rural” or “highly rural” patients, residing in communities or on land with fewer services and less access to health care than those in densely populated towns and cities. An additional 2 million veterans live in remote areas who do not receive their health care from VA, according to the department. To ensure these rural vets have access to the COVID-19 vaccines, the VA is relying on a mix of tools, like charter and commercial aircraft and partnerships with civilian health organizations. The challenges of vaccinating veterans in rural areas—which VA considers anything outside an urban population center—and “highly rural” areas—defined as having fewer than 10% of the workforce commuting to an urban hub with a population not larger than 2,500—extend beyond geography, as more than 55% of them are 65 or older and at risk for serious cases of COVID-19 and just 65% are reachable via the internet. For the Havre event, VA clinic workers called each patient served by the Merril Lundman VA Outpatient Clinic, who live across a vast region made up of small farming and ranching communities and two Native American reservations. And for those hesitant to get the vaccine, a nurse called them back to answer questions. “At least 10 additional veterans elected to be vaccinated once we answered their questions,” says Judy Hayman, executive director of the Montana VA Health Care System, serving all 147,000 square miles of the state. The Havre mission was a test flight for similar efforts in other rural locations. Thirteen days later, another aircraft took off for Kalispell, Mont., carrying vaccines for 400 veterans. In Alaska, another rural state, Anchorage Veterans Affairs Medical Center administrators finalized plans for providers to hop a commercial Alaska Airlines flight on Feb. 18 to Kodiak Island. There, VA workers expected to administer 100 to 150 doses at a vaccine clinic conducted in partnership with the Kodiak Area Native Association. “Our goal is to vaccinate all veterans who have not been vaccinated in and around the Kodiak community,” says Tom Steinbrunner, acting director of the Alaska VA Healthcare System. VA began its outreach to rural veterans for the vaccine program late last, as the Food and Drug Administration approached the dates for issuing emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, according to Dr. Richard Stone, the Veterans Health Administration’s acting under secretary. It made sense to look to aircraft to deliver vaccines. “It just seemed logical that we small propeller-driven aircraft and short-runway capability,” says Stone, a retired Army Reserve major general. Veterans have responded, Stone adds, with more than 50% of veterans in rural areas making appointments. As of Feb. 17, the VA had tallied 220,992 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among veterans and VA employees and 10,065 known deaths, including 128 employees. VA had administered 1,344,210 doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, including 329,685 second vaccines, to veterans as of Feb. 17. According to VA, roughly 25% of those veterans live in rural areas, 2.81% live in highly rural areas and 1.13% live on remote islands. For rural areas, VA has primarily relied on the Moderna vaccine, which requires cold storage between -25°C (-13°F) and -15°C (5°F), but not the -70°C (-94°F) deep freeze needed to store the Pfizer vaccine. That, VA says, makes it more “transportable to rural locations.” The VA anticipates that the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, if it receives an emergency use authorization from the FDA, will make it even easier to reach remote veterans. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech both require two shots, spaced a few weeks apart. “One dose will make it easier for veterans in rural locations, who often have to travel long distances, to get their full vaccination coverage,” says VA spokesperson Gina Jackson. The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee is set to meet on Feb. 26 to review J&J’s application for authorization. Read more: How the U.S. Vaccine Rollout Looks Right Now In the meanwhile, in places like Alaska, where hundreds of veterans live off the grid, VA officials have had to be creative. Flying out to serve individual veterans would be too costly, so the Anchorage VA Medical Center has partnered with tribal health care organizations to ensure veterans have access to a vaccine. Under these agreements, all veterans, including non-Native veterans, can be seen at tribal facilities. “That is our primary outreach in much of Alaska because the tribal health system is the only health system in these communities,” Steinbrunner says. In some rural areas, however, the process has proved frustrating. Army veteran John Hoefen, 73, served in Vietnam and has a 100% disability rating from the VA for Parkinson’s disease related to Agent Orange exposure. He gets his medical care from a VA location in Canandaigua, N.Y., 20 miles from his home, but the facility hasn’t made clear what phase of the vaccine rollout it’s in, says Hoefen. The hospital’s website simply says a staff member will contact the veteran when they become eligible—a “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” situation, as Hoefen describes it. “I know a lot of veterans like me, 100% disabled and no word,” Hoefen says. “I went there for audiology a few weeks ago and my tech hadn’t even gotten her vaccine yet.” VA Canandaigua referred questions about the facility’s current phase back to its website: “If you’re eligible to get a vaccine, your VA health care team will contact you by phone, text message or Secure Message (through MyHealtheVet) to schedule an appointment,” it states. A call to the special COVID-19 phone number established for the Canandaigua VA, which falls under the department’s Finger Lakes Healthcare System puts the caller into the main menu for hospital services, with no information specifically on vaccine distribution. For the most part, VA is using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to determine priority groups for vaccines. Having vaccinated the bulk of its health care workers and first responders, as well as residents of VA nursing homes, it has been vaccinating those 75 and older, as well as those with chronic conditions that place them at risk for severe cases of COVID-19. In some locations, like Anchorage and across Montana, clinics are vaccinating those 65 and older and walk-ins when extra doses are available. To determine eligibility for the vaccine, facilities are using the Veterans Health Administration Support Service Center databases and algorithms to help with the decision-making process. Facilities then notify veterans by mail, email, phone or through VA portals of their eligibility and when they can expect to get a shot, according to the department. Read more: Should Someone With Asthma Get a COVID-19 Vaccine Before Someone With Cancer? Air Force veteran Theresa Petersen, 83, was thrilled when she and her husband, an 89-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, were able to get vaccinated at the Kalispell event. She said they were notified by their primary care provider of the opportunity and jumped at the chance. “I would do anything to give as many kudos as I can to the Veterans Affairs medical system,” Petersen says. “I’m so enamored with the concept that ‘Yes, there are people who live in rural America and they have health issues too.’” VA is allowed to provide vaccines only to veterans currently enrolled in VA health care. About 9 million U.S. veterans are not enrolled at the VA, including 2 million living in rural areas. After veterans were turned away from a VA clinic in West Palm Beach, Fla., in January, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) wrote to Acting VA Secretary Dat Tran, urging him to include these veterans in the agency’s COVID-19 vaccination program. Stone, the VA’s acting under secretary, says the agency does not have the authorization to provide services to these veterans. “We have been talking to Capitol Hill about how to reconcile that,” he says. “Some of these are very elderly veterans and we don’t want to turn anybody away.” KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. from https://ift.tt/3uavmaw Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 Bill Would Fund Genomic Sequencing Expanding U.S. Ability to Identify Virus Mutations2/17/2021 (WASHINGTON) — U.S. scientists would gain vastly expanded capabilities to identify potentially deadlier coronavirus mutations under legislation advancing in Congress. A House bill headed for floor debate would provide $1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. The U.S. now maps only the genetic makeup of a minuscule fraction of positive virus samples, a situation some experts liken to flying blind. It means the true domestic spread of problematic mutations first identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa remains a matter of guesswork. Such ignorance could prove costly. One worry is that more transmissible forms such as the UK variant could move faster than the nation’s ability to get the vaccine into Americans’ arms. “You’ve got a small number of academic and public health labs that have been basically doing the genomic surveillance,” said David O’Connor, an AIDS researcher at the University of Wisconsin. “But there is no national coherence to the strategy.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to shepherd those efforts, aligning with the government’s own advanced detection work, but the COVID-19 legislation would take the hunt to another level. Besides money, the House bill that cleared the Energy and Commerce Committee last week calls for the CDC to organize a national network to use the technology to track the spread of mutations and guide public health countermeasures. In the Senate, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin has introduced legislation that would provide $2 billion. Baldwin says the U.S. should be using gene-mapping technology to analyze at least 15% of positive virus samples. That might not sound like much, but the current rate is believed to be 0.3% to 0.5%. Analyzing 15% of positive samples would expand surveillance by at least 30 times. “Variants represent a growing threat,” said Baldwin. “At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing our testing capacity was essential to our ability to track and slow the spread of the virus — the same is true for finding and tracking these variants.” Genomic sequencing essentially involves mapping the DNA of an organism, the key to its unique features. It’s done by high-tech machines that can cost from several hundred thousand dollars to $1 million or more. Technicians trained to run the machines and computing capacity to support the whole process add to costs. In the case of the UK variant first detected in England, the changes in the virus allowed it to spread more easily and are also believed to cause deadlier COVID-19 disease. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle reports that transmission of the UK variant has been confirmed in at least 10 U.S. states. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told governors on Tuesday that it could become dominant by the end of March. Sequencing 0.3% to 0.5% of virus samples, as the U.S. is now doing, “just doesn’t give us the ability to detect strains as they develop and become dominant,” said Dr. Phil Febbo, chief medical officer for Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops genomic sequencing technologies. The Biden administration has to “set a very clear goal,” he added. “What’s the hill that we are going to charge?” “We need that data. Otherwise, in some ways, we’re flying blind,” said Esther Krofah, who directs the FasterCures initiative of Milken Institute. “We don’t understand the prevalence of mutations that we should be worried about in the U.S.” Even more worrisome than the UK variant is a strain first detected in South Africa that scientists suspect may diminish the protective effect of some of the coronavirus vaccines. That variant has also been identified in the U.S. in a limited number of cases. White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients has called U.S. tracking of virus mutations “totally unacceptable,” saying the nation ranks 43rd in the world. But the Biden administration has not set a target for what level of virus gene mapping the country should be striving for. At the University of Wisconsin, AIDS scientist O’Connor said he and his colleagues started sequencing coronavirus samples from the Madison area “because that’s where we live.” His colleague, virology expert Thomas Friedrich, said a national effort will require more than money to purchase new genomic sequencing machines. The CDC will have to set standards for state health officials and academic research institutions to fully share the information they glean from analyzing virus samples. Currently, there’s a hodgepodge of state regulations and practices, and some of them restrict access to key details. “We need to look at this as a Manhattan Project or an Apollo program,” said Friedrich, invoking the government-led scientific endeavors that developed the atomic bomb and landed men on the moon. The United Kingdom was able to identify its variant because the national health system there has a coordinated gene mapping program that aims to sequence about 10% of samples, he added. Since that happened, there’s been greater urgency about genetic sequencing on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. “The utility of doing this may not have been as apparent to as many people until these variants started popping up,” Friedrich said. from https://ift.tt/3sfeE8j Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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