Today has been a hard day for finding coronavirus news. Even Google was unable to steer me in the direction of new news as opposed to news that is day-old, beyond its expiration date, or not behind a payment wall. Is no news good news? Who knows with the not-so-novel-any-longer coronavirus.
Some universities including Harvard, Tufts, Wellesley, Yale, and Fordham are making bivalent COVID vaccines mandatory for students, faculty, and staff. The goal is preventing or lessening transmission during the spring semester. The local university has said nothing which does not surprise me given that its home page has absolutely no mention of COVID.
A report by Vanity Fair and ProPublica is the subject of some attention given that it says evidence supports a biosecurity incident at the Wuhan lab in mid-November 2019. The event appeared to be urgent and non-routine. Was this incident the accidental release of some viral strain that resulted in what was at the time called the novel coronavirus? Maybe ... and maybe not. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of the translation from Mandarin to English of the documentation surrounding the incident. A team of independent translators is now reviewing that translation.
Finally, Pfizer is testing a combined COVID-influenza vaccine. That would certainly beat getting a shot in each arm. As for Pfizer's making an mRNA flu vaccine, I decided what the heck and got into a Stage 3 trial of that vaccine. I did get a flu shot; I just don't know if it was the one the pharmacies and clinics are giving or Pfizer's mRNA vaccine. I probably would have signed up to do it even without the financial incentive. We must support science for the public good.
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