Nasal Spray Prevents Covid Infection in Ferrets, Study Finds

Scientists at Columbia University have developed a treatment that blocks the virus in the nose and lungs, is inexpensive and needs no refrigeration.




November 6, 2020 Donald G. McNeil Jr. NEW YORK TIMES




https://portside.org/2020-11-06/nasal-spray-prevents-covid-infection-ferrets-study-finds




A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released on Thursday by an international team of scientists. The study, which was limited to animals and has not yet been peer-reviewed, was assessed by several health experts at the request of The New York Times.

If the spray, which the scientists described as nontoxic and stable, is proved to work in humans, it could provide a new way of fighting the pandemic. A daily spritz up the nose would act like a vaccine.

“Having something new that works against the coronavirus is exciting,” said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the chairman of immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “I could imagine this being part of the arsenal.”

The work has been underway for months by scientists from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Columbia University Medical Center.

The team would require additional funding to pursue clinical trials in humans. Dr. Anne Moscona, a pediatrician and microbiologist at Columbia and co-author of the study, said they had applied for a patent on the product, and she hoped Columbia University would approach the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed or large pharmaceutical companies that are seeking new ways to combat the coronavirus.

The spray attacks the virus directly. It contains a lipopeptide, a cholesterol particle linked to a chain of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This particular lipopeptide exactly matches a stretch of amino acids in the spike protein of the virus, which the pathogen uses to attach to a human airway or lung cell.Refer someone to The Times.
They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.

Before a virus can inject its RNA into a cell, the spike must effectively unzip, exposing two chains of amino acids, in order to fuse to the cell wall. As the spike zips back up to complete the process, the lipopeptide in the spray inserts itself, latching on to one of the spike’s amino acid chains and preventing the virus from attaching.

“It is like you are zipping a zipper but you put another zipper inside, so the two sides cannot meet,” said Matteo Porotto, a microbiologist at Columbia University and one of the paper’s authors.

The work was described in a paper posted to the preprint server bioRxiv Thursday morning, and has been submitted to the journal Science for peer review.

Dr. Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the therapy looked “really promising.”

“What I’d like to know now is how easy it is to scale production,” he said.

In the study, the spray was given to six ferrets, which were then divided into pairs and placed in three cages. Into each cage also went two ferrets that had been given a placebo spray and one ferret that had been deliberately infected with SARS-CoV-2 a day or two earlier.

Ferrets are used by scientists studying flu, SARS and other respiratory diseases because they can catch viruses through the nose much as humans do, although they also infect each other by contact with feces or by scratching and biting.

After 24 hours together, none of the sprayed ferrets caught the disease; all the placebo-group ferrets did.

“Virus replication was completely blocked,” the authors wrote.

The protective spray attaches to cells in the nose and lungs and lasts about 24 hours, Dr. Moscona said. “If it works this well in humans, you could sleep in a bed with someone infected or be with your infected kids and still be safe,” she said.

The amino acids come from a stretch of the spike protein in coronaviruses that rarely mutates. The scientists tested it against four different variants of the virus, including both the well-known “Wuhan” and “Italian” strains, and also against the coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS.

In cell cultures, it protected completely against all strains of the pandemic virus, fairly well against SARS and partially against MERS.

The lipoprotein can be inexpensively produced as a freeze-dried white powder that does not need refrigeration, Dr. Moscona said. A doctor or pharmacist could mix the powder with sugar and water to produce a nasal spray.

Other labs have designed antibodies and “mini-proteins” that also block the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering cells, but these are chemically more complex and may need to be stored in cold temperatures.

Dr. Moscona and Dr. Porotto have been collaborating on similar “fusion inhibitor” peptides for 15 years, they said in a conference call. They have developed some against measles, Nipah, parainfluenza and other viruses.

But those products aroused little commercial interest, Dr. Porotto said, because an effective measles vaccine already exists and because the deadly Nipah virus only turns up occasionally in faraway places like Bangladesh and Malaysia.

Monoclonal antibodies to the new coronavirus have been shown to prevent infection as well as treat it, but they are expensive to make, require refrigeration and must be injected. Australian scientists have tested a nasal spray against Covid-19 in ferrets, but it works by enhancing the immune system, not by targeting the virus directly.

Because lipopeptides can be shipped as a dry powder, they could be used even in rural areas in poor countries that lack refrigeration, Dr. Moscona said.

Dr. Moscona, a pediatrician who usually works on parainfluenza and other viruses that infect children, said she was most interested in getting the product to poor countries that may never have access to the monoclonal antibodies and mRNA vaccines that Americans may soon have. But she has little experience in that arena, she said.

“I’ve always been a basic scientist,” she said. “I’ve never done drug development or taken anything to the F.D.A. or anything like that.”







Donald G. McNeil Jr. is a science and health reporter specializing in plagues and pestilences. He covers diseases of the world’s poor and wider epidemics, including Covid-19, AIDS, Ebola, malaria, swine and bird flus and Zika.




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'They Had One Job and They Blew It': Progressives Fire Back as Centrist Democrats in House Blame Left for Election Failures

"Don't blame myself and others who are fighting for issues that matter to our communities," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.



by
Jake Johnson, staff writer

[Pelosi must go! --vanishingmediator]



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/06/they-had-one-job-and-they-blew-it-progressives-fire-back-centrist-democrats-house




Reeling in the wake of a poor election performance that will likely leave House Democrats with a significantly smaller majority than expected next year, powerful Democratic leaders and rank-and-file centrist lawmakers used a caucus call Thursday to blame members of the party's left flank and their popular policy proposals for the disappointing outcome—a narrative progressives quickly rejected as an obvious and damaging fiction.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), a former CIA operations officer who is clinging to a 1.2% percentage point advantage over her Republican challenger, led the centrist charge during the heated two-hour call Thursday, attributing losses by moderate members to GOP attack ads tarring them as "socialists" and accusing them of wanting to "defund the police." The ads, according to Spanberger, were made possible by the rhetoric of progressive lawmakers.


House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) delivered a message similar to Spanberger's, warning on the private call that if "we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine, we're not going to win," despite Election Day exit polling showing that 72% of voters favor transitioning to a "government-run healthcare plan.""We need to not ever use the word 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again," Spanberger said, arguing that Democrats should watch Republican ads and adjust their messaging accordingly—advice that ignores the GOP's long record of labeling Democrats, including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and other centrists like Barack Obama, as socialists regardless of how stridently they disavow the label.

Progressives during the caucus call—and subsequently on social media—forcefully pushed back against the notion that the Democratic Party's energetic left flank is responsible for losses by centrists who did not run on any of the policy proposals they are now criticizing.


Angered by the attacks on progressive policies during the Thursday call, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—a self-described democratic socialist who, along with other members of "the Squad," easily won reelection Tuesday—reportedly accused her centrist colleagues of "only being interested in appealing to white people in suburbia," neglecting policies that would drive turnout among and disproportionately benefit people of color.

"Don't blame myself and others who are fighting for issues that matter to our communities," said Tlaib.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also spoke out against the centrist finger-pointing, warning that House Democrats could see even bigger losses in 2022 and 2024 if they don't engage voters motivated by ambitious progressive policy platforms.

"Don't be so quick to blame the progressive members who have been responsible for energizing these groups who will ultimately save the day for the race for the White House," said Jayapal.


Longstanding ideological tensions between House Democrats' dominant moderate faction and the smaller but growing progressive wing are exploding to the surface after the party fell far short of expectations in Tuesday's highly anticipated election, likely losing seats in the chamber after Democratic leaders predicted major gains.


"Look at the toss-up seats on the Cook Political Report," one anonymous Democratic lawmaker told HuffPost. "I'm not sure we won a single fucking one.""Democrats expected to pick up multiple seats in Texas. Instead, it looks like Democrats may lose a seat there," HuffPost's Matt Fuller reported Thursday. "They expected to pick off seats in New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, even GOP strongholds like Arkansas and Missouri. But it looks like Republicans may have held Democrats off at every turn."

Alexandra Rojas, executive director of progressive advocacy group Justice Democrats, said House Democrats have only themselves to blame for the election results after one lawmaker singled out the grassroots progressive organization for criticizing centrist members.

"They had one job and they blew it," Rojas told the Washington Post. "We need a Democratic Party that stands for something more than just being anti-Trump."

Frustrations with House Democrats' abysmal performance—which one unnamed Democratic lawmaker bluntly called a "dumpster fire"—were compounded by the party's worse-than-expected showing in Senate races it hoped to win. Barring Democratic victories in both Senate run-offs in Georgia, Republicans are on track to retain control of the chamber.

In response to the blame being hurled at progressives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) argued in a series of tweets Friday that moderate House Democrats who lost or are at risk of losing their seats should take a closer look at the shortcomings of their own campaigns instead of baselessly claiming left-wing lawmakers are culpable.

"There are folks running around on TV blaming progressivism for Dem underperformance. I was curious, so I decided to open the hood on struggling campaigns of candidates who are blaming progressives for their problems," said the New York Democrat. "Almost all had awful execution on digital. During a pandemic. Underinvestment across the board."

"Ideology plus messaging are the spicy convos a lot of people jump to but sometimes it's about execution and technical capacity," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "Finger-pointing is not gonna help. There's real, workable, and productive paths here if the party is open to us. After all, I got here by beating a Dem who outspent me 10-1 who I knew had bad polling."

The Biggest Loser

Hey Trump, YOU'RE FIRED!

'This Is a Tsunami... Pay Attention': With All Eyes on Election Results, Experts Horrified as Covid-19 Hits New Record

"I dreaded this day... Historic and unprecedented abandonment of the American people."



by
Jake Johnson, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/05/tsunami-pay-attention-all-eyes-election-results-experts-horrified-covid-19-hits-new




With much of the nation's attention understandably consumed by developments in the high-stakes presidential election, the United States on Wednesday reported a daily record of more than 104,000 new Covid-19 infections, the latest alarming indication that—far from President Donald Trump's repeated insistence that the virus is fading away—the deadly pandemic is only getting worse as the winter months approach.

"The count that worries me? Over 100,000 Covid-19 cases yesterday," Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves tweeted Thursday morning. "Deaths up 21%. There has been silence on this from the White House and the Dems. This is a tsunami. Washing over us. Pay attention."

Coming just 24 hours after millions of Americans showed up at polling places across the nation to cast their ballots in the presidential race and down-ballot contests, Wednesday marked the first time the U.S. recorded at least 100,000 new coronavirus infections in a single day.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been warning since June—when the U.S. was reporting around 40,000 cases daily—that the nation could reach 100,000 new infections per day if more aggressive preventative measures were not taken by the federal government in partnership with state and local leaders.

"We're in for a whole lot of hurt. It's not a good situation," Fauci told the Washington Post last week. "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly."

On top of the surge in cases nationwide, coronavirus hospitalizations are also soaring in more than a dozen states, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project.


The latest record-shattering coronavirus figures came days after Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, warned in an internal report dated November 2 that the U.S. is "entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic" and urged the Trump administration to take "much more aggressive action."




"Cases are rapidly rising in nearly 30 percent of all USA counties, the highest number of county hotspots we have seen with this pandemic," reads Birx's report, which was obtained by the Post. "Half of the United States is in the red or orange zone for cases despite flat or declining testing.”

As Birx sounded the alarm behind the scenes and other experts issued similar warnings publicly, Trump continued to hold crowded in-person rallies in the days leading up to Tuesday's election and downplay the severity of the pandemic, which has killed more than 234,000 people in the U.S. alone.

As Common Dreams reported over the weekend, a Stanford University analysis linked 18 of Trump's campaign rallies from June 20 to September 30 to more than 30,000 coronavirus infections and at least 700 deaths.

"That's all I hear about now. Turn on television, 'Covid, Covid, Covid Covid Covid.' A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don't talk about it. 'Covid Covid Covid Covid,'" Trump told a crowd of his supporters in North Carolina late last month. "By the way, on November 4, you won't hear about it anymore."


Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor Baylor College of Medicine, tweeted Wednesday that he has long worried the U.S. would reach 100,000 Covid cases in a single day, a grim milestone he said further lays bare the Trump administration's failures.

"I dreaded this day, here it is. And the lights are off for the entire Executive Branch of our Federal Government," Hotez said. "Historic and unprecedented abandonment of the American people. I'm horrified."

What Democrats Should Learn From the Spate of Socialist Wins on Election Day

It’s not enough to be anti-Trump. Socialists are showing you can win elections by standing for something.

MINDY ISSER NOVEMBER 5, 2020



https://inthesetimes.com/article/dsa-election-2020-democrats-socialism




While many had hoped that Elec­tion Day would result in a sweep­ing rebuke of Trump and Trump­ism, nei­ther a pan­dem­ic nor an eco­nom­ic reces­sion were enough to deliv­er an over­whelm­ing rejec­tion. And although it’s look­ing like­ly that Biden will eke out a vic­to­ry, the 2020 elec­tion was in many ways a bust for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which lost seats in the House and most like­ly did not win a major­i­ty in the Senate.

But demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, pop­u­lar­ized by near-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), had a much bet­ter night. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA), an orga­ni­za­tion that boasts near­ly 80,000 mem­bers nation­wide, endorsed 29 can­di­dates and 11 bal­lot ini­tia­tives, win­ning 20 and 8 respec­tive­ly. There are now demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist cau­cus­es in 15 state­hous­es, includ­ing Mon­tana. (Dis­clo­sure: I am a nation­al­ly elect­ed leader of the orga­ni­za­tion; I sit on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist Labor Commission.)

DSA’s vic­to­ries, both in the pri­maries and the gen­er­al elec­tion, have rolled in as pun­dits and poll­sters decry social­ism as polar­iz­ing and raise fears that social­ist can­di­dates will end up back­fir­ing and get­ting Repub­li­cans elect­ed. Sanders’ sup­posed lack of elec­tabil­i­ty was one of the most com­mon­ly used argu­ments against him in the pri­ma­ry. His pri­ma­ry oppo­nents and promi­nent writ­ers like Jonathan Chait claimed that the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans wouldn’t vote for a social­ist, and that there was no way he could defeat Trump.

While there’s no real way to know for cer­tain if that’s true, it is clear that cen­trist Democ­rats aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly shoo-ins them­selves. Demo­c­rat Jon Ossoff, who lost a con­gres­sion­al spe­cial elec­tion in 2017, looks like he will also lose this cycle’s Sen­ate race in Geor­gia. Demo­c­rat Sara Gideon, who raised $70 mil­lion to run against Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Susan Collins in Maine, has con­ced­ed, and it looks like Demo­c­rat Cal Cun­ning­ham will also lose his run for Sen­ate in North Car­oli­na. Amy McGrath, who ran as a pro-Trump Demo­c­rat, raised near­ly $90 mil­lion and still lost to Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell. The list goes on and on. Even Joe Biden, who seems set to be our next pres­i­dent, often spoke more about beat­ing Trump than any poli­cies he would enact once in office.

Plen­ty of pro­gres­sive can­di­dates also lost, but most can­di­dates nation­al­ly endorsed by DSA sailed through. And while it’s true that many of them had tough pri­ma­ry bat­tles and less dif­fi­cult elec­tions on Tues­day, they still won as DSA mem­bers. All four mem­bers of ​“The Squad” — a pro­gres­sive bloc in Con­gress that includes Demo­c­ra­t­ic Reps. Rashi­da Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ayan­na Press­ley (Mass.) — were reelect­ed to the House. (Tlaib and Oca­sio-Cortez are DSA mem­bers and endorsed by the orga­ni­za­tion.) Pro­gres­sives also added two more DSA-endorsed mem­bers to their squad: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep.-elect Jamaal Bow­man in New York, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep.-elect Cori Bush, the first ever Black Con­gress­woman in Missouri.

Although the cur­rent iter­a­tion of DSA has been around since the ear­ly 1980s, the orga­ni­za­tion only became polit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant dur­ing Sanders’ first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2015, and explod­ed when Trump was elect­ed. Five years is a very short peri­od of time to have helped elect City Coun­cil mem­bers, state sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and mem­bers of Con­gress all across the coun­try. Accord­ing to a 2018 Reuters sur­vey, 70% of Amer­i­cans sup­port a nation­al health care plan — due to Sanders’ pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the uni­ver­sal health­care pro­gram and to the orga­niz­ing and can­vass­ing DSA chap­ters, along with oth­er orga­ni­za­tions like Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed, have done around the legislation.

DSA-backed can­di­dates suc­ceed for a few main rea­sons: They cam­paign on actu­al poli­cies, have a vision of how to gov­ern, and don’t just depend on the fact that they’re not Repub­li­cans. These poli­cies include Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a Jobs Guar­an­tee — pro­grams that would improve the qual­i­ty of life for work­ing peo­ple all over this coun­try. And because poli­cies they sup­port are so pop­u­lar and inspir­ing, DSA-backed can­di­dates attract ded­i­cat­ed can­vassers and orga­niz­ers, will­ing to spend nights and week­ends knock­ing doors and mak­ing calls to get them elected.

Now, thanks to DSA mem­bers across the coun­try, there is a social­ist in Austin City Coun­cil and in both the Rhode Island and Mon­tana State Hous­es. In Penn­syl­va­nia, there are three social­ists who are almost cer­tain­ly head­ed to the leg­is­la­ture in Har­ris­burg. Social­ists in Boul­der, Col­orado worked along­side the ACLU to win a bal­lot mea­sure that guar­an­tees no evic­tion with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and DSA mem­bers part­nered with the labor unions AFSCME and SEIU to pass Preschool for All in Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty, Ore­gon. And in both Flori­da and Port­land, Maine, bal­lot ini­tia­tives for a $15 min­i­mum wage passed.

While it’s clear that most DSA vic­to­ries have been in big cities or more lib­er­al states thus far, it’s impor­tant that we don’t dis­count the incred­i­ble orga­niz­ing hap­pen­ing in the South and in rur­al areas. (Mar­qui­ta Brad­shaw ran a DSA-backed cam­paign for Sen­ate in Ten­nessee but lost; Kim Roney, endorsed by her DSA chap­ter, won a seat on the Asheville City Council.)

And while the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty is loath to give DSA any encour­age­ment, DSA mem­ber Tlaib may have helped to secure Biden’s vic­to­ry in Michi­gan by help­ing to mas­sive­ly increase vot­er turnout from 2016. DSA’s ide­ol­o­gy, focused on a soci­ety that works for all of us instead of the wealthy few, is far more inspir­ing to young and work­ing peo­ple than some­one who is run­ning for office just because they’re not Trump. It might take the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty time to real­ize that (or per­haps it nev­er will), but to the aver­age per­son, polit­i­cal con­di­tions are chang­ing fast — and DSA is play­ing a crit­i­cal role in that transformation.

Wolff Responds: Californias Prop 22 vote

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WQTio1744Q&ab_channel=RichardDWolff

Lady Liberty and Trump