Positions for a solidarity-based fight against the Covid-19 pandemic & its consequences A contribution by break isolation, Munich The deadly failure of capitalized health systems In April 2020 in the middle of the first Covid-19 wave, we published 12 concrete measures for a solidarity-based fight against the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic in the founding call of our initiative break isolation. At a demonstration in front of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior on May 11, 2020, we loudly demanded that the government immediately implement these measures. Until today, most of the points of this catalog of measures have not been realized or […]
Monthly archives: January 2022
11 posts
Annika Rössler, Lydia Riepler, David Bante, Dorothee von Laer, Janine Kimpel: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 variant (Omicron) evades neutralization by sera from vaccinated and convalescent individuals (December 11, 2021) [Preprint]. Recently, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variant B.1.1.529 (Omicron) has been described. In this study, the authors analyzed titers of neutralizing antibodies of sera from convalescent or vaccinated individuals against the new B.1.1.529 variant and compared them with titers against other Variants of Concern (B.1.1.7, B.1.351, B.1617.2) using replication competent SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Ronen Arbel, Ariel Hammerman, Ruslan Sergienko, Michael Friger, Alon Peretz, Doron Netzer, Shlomit Yaron: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19, in: The New England Journal of Medicine 385 (December 23, 2021) 26, p. 2413-2420. Abstract Background The emergence of the B.1.617.2 (delta) variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and the reduced effectiveness over time of the BNT162b2 vaccine (Pfizer–BioNTech) led to a resurgence of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in populations that had been vaccinated early. On July 30, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Health approved the use of a third dose of BNT162b2 (booster) to […]
Sandile Cele u. a.: SARS-CoV-2 Omicron has extensive but incomplete escape of Pfizer BNT162b2 elicited neutralization and requires ACE2 for infection, Dezember 17, 2021, online in: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.08.21267417. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron, first identified in Botswana and South Africa, may compromise vaccine effectiveness and the ability of antibodies triggered by previous infection to protect against re-infection. Here the authors investigated whether Omicron escapes antibody neutralization in South Africans, either previously SARS-CoV-2 infected or uninfected, who were vaccinated with Pfizer BNT162b2. They also investigated if Omicron requires the ACE2 receptor to infect cells.
Daniel J. Sheward, Changil Kim, Roy A. Ehling, Alec Pankow, View ORCID ProfileXaquin Castro Dopico, Darren Martin, Sai Reddy, Joakim Dillner, Gunilla B. Karlsson Hedestam, Jan Albert, Ben Murrell: New Results. Variable loss of antibody potency against SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 (Omicron) [Preprint], December 20, 2021. The recently-emerged SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 variant (Omicron) is spreading rapidly in many countries, with a spike that is highly diverged from the pandemic founder, raising fears that it may evade neutralizing antibody responses. The authors cloned the Omicron spike from a diagnostic sample which allowed us to rapidly establish an Omicron pseudotyped virus neutralization assay, sharing initial […]
Businesswire.com: Pfizer and BioNTech Provide Update on Omicron, December 8, 2021. On December 8, 2021, Pfizer Inc. and BiontTEch SE announced the results of a laboratory study on their vaccines.
Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Juan Espinosa-Balbuena, Saumitra Jha: Pandemic Spikes and Broken Spears: Indigenous Resilience after the Conquest of Mexico, August 9, 2021. It is well-established that the Conquest of the Americas by Europeans led to catastrophic declines in indigenous populations. However, less is known about the conditions under which indigenous communities were able to overcome the onslaught of disease and violence that they faced. Drawing upon a rich set of sources, including Aztec tribute rolls and early Conquest censuses, we develop a new disaggregated dataset on the pre-Conquest economic, epidemiological and political conditions both in 11,888 potential settlement locations in the […]
Nicole El Karoui, Kaouther Hadji, Sarah Kaakai: Simulating long-term impacts of mortality shocks: learning from the cholera pandemic, November 16, 2021. The aim of this paper is to study the long-term consequence on longevity of a mortality shock. The authors adopt an historical and modeling approach to study how the population evolution following a mortality shock such as the COVID-19 pandemic could impact future mortality rates.
Cured Quail: The reality of denial and the denial of reality, Antithesi / cognord, September 2021. This text was written and published in Greek in September 2021. It was intended as a polemical intervention in a debate about the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the measures and instruments to fight it, and the authoritarianism of the Greek government. It was triggered mainly by the authors’ astonishment (and sadness) that many of their comrades and friends from the radical milieu deny the pandemic, while some of them slowly but surely slip into conspiracy thinking and shocking absurdities. With the text, therefore, the authors wanted […]
Group break isolation: On the failure of the deregulated health care system: Systematic labor transfer to Germany, Episode 1, Munich 2022. For the past 25 years, there has been a massive transfer of highly qualified professionals to Germany very particularly from the poorest countries in the EU and Europe; since 2012, also increasingly from civil war countries such as Syria. According to the German Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer, BÄK), a total of 402,119 physicians were working in Germany at the end of 2019, the majority of them (207,000) in the hospital sector. The number of working physicians with a foreign passport […]
Phillipp Osten: Pockengift. Geschichten aus der Berliner Impfbibliothek, in: Kursbuch 206 (June 2021), p. 20-46. From the journal’s editorial: “Vaccination is hope. Vaccination is almost eschatologically charged. Will it bring us the end of the pandemic? We hope so, but admittedly we don’t know. The virus eludes us through mutation, the vaccine through ordering and production problems, and the organization of vaccination could have begun more efficiently.