The Coronavirus Unveiled

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, October 9, 2020

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In February, as the new coronavirus swept across China and shut down entire cities, a scientist named Sai Li set out to paint its portrait.

At the time, the best pictures anyone had managed to take were low-resolution images, in which the virus looked like a barely discernible smudge.

Dr. Li, a structural biologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, joined forces with virologists who were rearing the virus in a biosafety lab in the city of Hangzhou. Those researchers doused the viruses with chemicals to render them harmless and then sent them to Dr. Li.

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to 2 Scientists for Work on Genome Editing

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, October 7, 2020 (with Katherine Wu and Elian Peltier)

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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded on Wednesday to Emmanuelle Charpentier andJennifer A. Doudna fortheir 2012 work on Crispr-Cas9, a method to edit DNA. The announcement marks the first time the award has gone to two women.

“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” Goran K. Hansson, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said as he announced the names of the laureates.

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In Reversal, White House Approves Stricter Guidelines for Vaccine Makers

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, October 6, 2020 (with Noah Weiland)

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The Food and Drug Administration released new guidelines on Tuesday for coronavirus vaccine developers — a step that had been held up for two weeks by top White House officials. The guidelines make it highly unlikely that a vaccine could be authorized by Election Day.

The move, which was cleared by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, appeared to be an abrupt reversal a day after The New York Times reported that White House officials, including Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, were blocking the guidelines. Top F.D.A. officials were caught by surprise when they learned midafternoon that the new guidelines had been cleared.

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Friday’s Elk, October 3, 2020

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

…and here we are in October, with the President of the United States hospitalized for Covid-19. Not the timeline I would have expected us to follow back in March.

It looks as if the President’s infection was involved in one way or another with a superspreading event at the White House last Saturday. No one should be surpised that the coronavirus can spread this way. Scientists have been warning us for months now. Here’s a story I wrote back in June. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, October 3, 2020” →