Robert J. Gordon, Hassan Sayed: A New Interpretation of Productivity Growth Dynamics in the Pre-Pandemic and Pandemic Era U.S. Economy, 1950-2022, in: NBER Working Paper Series No 30267 (July 2022), online in: https://www.doi.org/10.3386/w30267. Abstract The dismal decade of 2010-19 recorded the slowest productivity growth of any decade in U.S. history, only 1.1 percent per year in the business sector. Yet the pandemic appears to have created a resurgence in productivity growth with a 4.1 percent rate achieved in the four quarters of 2020. This paper provides a unified framework that explains productivity growth in both the pre-pandemic and pandemic-era U.S. […]
Monthly archives: October 2022
5 posts
James D. Ford et al.: Interactions between climate and COVID-19, in: The Lancet Planetary Health Vol. 6,Issue 10 (October 2022) p. e825-e833, online in: https://www.doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00174-7. Abstract In their Personal View, the authors explain the ways that climatic risks affect the transmission, perception, response, and lived experience of COVID-19. First, temperature, wind, and humidity influence the transmission of COVID-19 in ways not fully understood, although non-climatic factors appear more important than climatic factors in explaining disease transmission. Second, climatic extremes coinciding with COVID-19 have affected disease exposure, increased susceptibility of people to COVID-19, compromised emergency responses, and reduced health system resilience […]
Ziyad Al-Aly, Benjamin Bowe, Yan Xie: Outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection [Preprint] (June, 2022), online in: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1749502/v1. Abstract First infection with SARS-CoV-2 is associated with increased risk of acute and post-acute death and sequelae in the pulmonary and extrapulmonary organ systems. However, whether reinfection adds to the risk incurred after the first infection is not clear. In their Study, the authors used the national health care databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs to build a cohort of people with first infection (n = 257,427), reinfection (2 or more infections, n = 38,926), and a non-infected control group (n = 5,396,855) to estimate risks and 6-month […]
Verband Forschender Arzneimittelhersteller [Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies]: Angepasste Impfstoffe zum Schutz vor Omikron [Customized vaccines to protect against omicron] (September 24, 2022), online in: https://www.vfa.de/de/arzneimittel-forschung/coronavirus/omikron-impfstoffe (Retrieved: October 18, 2022). In its article, the Verband Forschender Arzneimittelhersteller e. V. (VFA), representing the interests of 45 pharmaceutical companies in Germany, presents the status of vaccine development against the omicron variant. At the time of publication, there are three vaccines approved in the EU from two companies (BioTech/Pfizer and Moderna) that are adapted to both the original strain and the BA.1. and BA.4./5. subvariants, respectively. In addition, other pharmaceutical companies besides BionTech/Pfizer […]
Daichi Yamasoba, Yusuke Kosugi, Izumi Kimura, Shigeru Fujita, Keiya Uriu, Jumpei Ito, Kei Sato, The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan) Consortium: Sensitivity of novel SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants, BA.2.11, BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 to therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, in: bioRxiv. The Preprint Server for Biology (May 3, 2022), online in; https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.03.490409. Abstract As of May 2022, Omicron BA.2 variant is the most dominant variant in the world. Thereafter, Omicron subvariants have emerged and some of them began outcompeting BA.2 in multiple countries. For instance, Omicron BA.2.11, BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5 subvariants are becoming dominant in France, the USA and South Africa, respectively. In […]