Thursday, October 01, 2020

Day 244: Even the Neanderthals

An article in Nature claims that The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals. But not all post-Neanderthals have it; the particularly problematic genes seem to be more common in South Asians than in any other out-of-Africa group. (Africans rarely carry Neanderthal genes.)

MedPage Today reports that ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) wasn't as universal a failure for COVID patients as previously suspected. (It made ventilators look helpful.) It turns out that only about 40% of patients died in hospital afterwards. However, the follow-up on the allegedly surviving 60% wasn't really solid or long-term enough to be entirely convincing.

Forbes reports that Mississippi's mask mandate expired peacefully in its sleep last night.

Massachusetts' cases are up four-sevenths of a percentage point today. While the general grouping of our "red" cities (Lawrence, Framingham, Revere, New Bedford, and the Islands) hasn't changed much, things are getting a little more infected. (Also, maps from last week have been corrected due to PlagueBlogger error.)
(Pop out.)

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