medicine

Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke this week about the future of COVID-19 and action dates for vaccines in the USA. Dr. Fauci suggested that vaccines going through official approval schedules now will be available to the "highest-priority people" starting from the end of December, 2020. Highest-priority vaccinations will take place through January, February, March, then on to the general public. Per Dr. Fauci, potentially full NFL stadiums in September of 2021 are "possible."

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Researchers have created something described as a cancer-fighting "stealth bomber" able to slip through the body's defenses unseen to fight cancer. For decades, scientists have been testing oncolytic viruses that preferentially kill cancer cells. The FDA approved an oncolytic virus to fight melanoma in 2015.

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If your old cat is on the path to tooth resorption (TR), the only viable cure is tooth extraction. If your cat shows signs of TR, your cat's veterinary specialist will almost certainly recommend that they remove the affected teeth before TR goes too far. A study published this week worked with a set of feline teeth, sequencing extracted RNA to characterize transcriptomic changes involved in feline TR. Scientists involved in the study aimed to learn more about feline TR so that they might eradicate the disease before tooth extraction becomes necessary.

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Researchers at CSIRO have been performing research on the COVID-19 virus, investigating virus survivability on surfaces. The team found that COVID-19 causing virus last for ten days longer than influenza on some surfaces. The virus has a longer life when on glass, stainless steel, and paper banknotes. It also lasts longer at lower temperatures.

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Researchers from Flinders University and the University of Adelaide in Australia have discovered something interesting in some humans. When in the womb, babies have a temporary artery that runs down the center of the forearm that typically vanishes over time. However, that artery isn't disappearing as often as it used to.

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The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an amendment to the PREP Act that allows pharmacists to administer vaccines to children in all 50 states. This update to the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act) was a third amendment made on August 19, 2020. This authority has several requirements which must be met before vaccinations can be ordered and/or administered.

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This morning the World Health Organization held a press conference in which they outlined the importance of vigilance in the fight against COVID-19. Speaking on the current state of the global pandemic, with regard to containment and advancements in vaccinations, Dr. Michael Joseph Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program, suggested that the disease has a lot of potential to become a lot worse, IF we allow it.

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The world has more or less gotten used to the fact of the COVID-19 coronavirus plaguing almost all countries even as some of those continue to struggle to keep their infection numbers and, worse, death tolls in check. What was previously a race to bring order to a suddenly chaotic world has now become a race to find a cure or, at the very least, a vaccine to prevent infection in the first place. Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly claimed the crown in that race, raising not just doubts but also deep concerns over releasing a vaccine that has not undergone proper and massive testing.

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Fearing skepticism or even outright refusal among some Americans to consider a COVID-19 vaccination, the US Food and Drug Administration has preemptively published its guidelines for the development of a lasting coronavirus treatment. The recommendations, released today, cover the process by which the FDA will eventually approve potential COVID-19 vaccines, at least in part to try to bring "anti-vaxx" advocates onboard.

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At the moment, medical device repair is something that it's high demand because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, medical repair isn't always easy - much like device manufacturers who make our phones and laptops, the corporations that produce medical devices can sometimes make their repair information difficult to access, if that's something that's at all possible.

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Scientists from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a binding site where drug compounds could activate a key braking mechanism in many types of cancer cells. The discovery is said to be a critical step toward developing a potential new class of anti-cancer drugs to enhance the activity of a prevalent family of tumor suppressor proteins.

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An alert from the World Health Organization this week did a bit of a mythbuster on the subject of alcohol during our current global pandemic. Misinformation spread over social networks and person-to-person in text chains over the past few weeks suggested high-strength alcohol could "kill the COVID-19 virus." According to the World Health Organization: "It does not."

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