Young Hollywood heart-throbs Aisling Franciosi and Wolfgang Novogratz are featured in a major fashion spread shot in Bermuda at Town & Country magazine’s website. Irish-born Ms Franciosi has appeared in the TV shows The Fall and Game of Thrones and stars in the new movie The Nightingale, a historical drama. American Mr. Novogratz is known […] (Click to read the full article)

I started 132 books this year and finished 127. New this year: a twitter thread of everything I read in...

1. Bernie Sanders says (repeatedly) that he wants the United States to be more like Sweden. Bring it on! No estate or inheritance taxes, no minimum wage, a much higher ratio of consumption taxes to income taxes, an income tax system that is by some reasonable standards far less progressive, school choice, high deductibles and […]

You may recall in the early days of the pandemic, that pharma giant Gilead Sciences -- which has been accused of price gouging and (just last year!) charging exorbitant prices on drug breakthroughs developed with US taxpayer funds -- was able to sneak through an orphan works designation for its drug remdesevir for COVID-19 treatment. As we pointed out, everything about this was insane, given that orphan works designations, which give extra monopoly rights to the holders (beyond patent exclusivity), are meant for diseases that don't impact a large population. Gilead used a loophole: since the ceiling for infected people to qualify for orphan drug status is 200,000, Gilead got in its application bright and early, before there were 200,000 confirmed cases (we currently have over 1.3 million). After the story went, er... viral, Gilead agreed to drop the orphan status, realizing the bad publicity it was receiving.

After a brief dalliance with chloroquine, remdesivir has suddenly been back in demand as the new hotness of possible COVID-19 treatments. Still, a close reading of the research might give one pause. There have been multiple conflicting studies, and Gilead's own messaging has been a mess.

On April 23, 2020, news of the study’s failure began to circulate. It seems that the World Health Organization (WHO) had posted a draft report about the trial on their clinical trials database, which indicated that the scientists terminated the study prematurely due to high levels of adverse side effects.

The WHO withdrew the report, and the researchers published their results in The Lancet on April 29, 2020.

The number of people who experienced adverse side effects was roughly similar between those receiving remdesivir and those receiving a placebo. In 18 participants, the researchers stopped the drug treatment due to adverse reactions.

But then...

However, also on April 29, 2020, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced that their NIH trial showed that remdesivir treatment led to faster recovery in hospital patients with COVID-19, compared with placebo treatment.

“Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo,” according to the press release. “Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo.”

The mortality rate in the remdesivir treatment group was 8%, compared with 11.6% in the placebo group, indicating that the drug could improve a person’s chances of survival. These data were close to achieving statistical significance.

And then...

“In addition, there is another Chinese trial, also stopped because the numbers of new patients with COVID-19 had fallen in China so they were unable to recruit, which has not yet published its data,” Prof. Evans continues. “There are other trials where remdesivir is compared with non-remdesivir treatments currently [being] done and results from some of these should appear soon.”

Gilead also put out its own press release about another clinical trial, which seems more focused on determining the optimal length of remdesivir treatment. Suffice it to say, there's still a lot of conflicting data and no clear information on whether or not remdesevir actually helps.

Still, that hasn't stopped people from trying to figure out just how much Gilead will price gouge going forward:

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices, suggested a maximum price of $4,500 per 10-day treatment course based on the preliminary evidence of how much patients benefited in a clinical trial. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday said remdesivir should be priced at $1 per day of treatment, since “that is more than the cost of manufacturing at scale with a reasonable profit to Gilead.”

Some Wall Street investors expect Gilead to come in at $4,000 per patient or higher to make a profit above remdesivir’s development cost, which Gilead estimates at about $1 billion.

So... we've got a range of $10 to $4,500 on a treatment that we don't yet know works, and which may or may not save lives. But, given that we're in the midst of a giant debate concerning things like "reopening the economy" -- something that can really only be done if the public is not afraid of dying (or at least becoming deathly ill) -- the value to the overall economy seems much greater than whatever amount Gilead wants to charge. It seems the right thing to do -- again, if it's shown that remdesevir actually helps -- is to just hand over a bunch of money to Gilead, say "thank you very much" and get the drug distributed as widely as possible. Though, again, it should be noted that a decent chunk of the research around remdesevir was not done or paid for by Gilead, but (yet again) via public funds to public universities, which did the necessary research. The idea that it's Gilead that should get to reap massive rewards for that seems sketchy at best. But the absolute worst outcome is one in which Gilead sticks to its standard operating procedure and prices the drug in a way that millions of Americans can't afford it, and it leads to a prolonging/expanding of the pandemic.

As it says in Ecclesiastes, of the making of books there is no end. And Seneca is (dubiously) said to...

The year 222 BCE saw the Roman Emperor Elagabalus assassinated by the Praetorian Guard, to be replaced by Alexander Severus,...

So now the rest of the world is discovering virtual communities. I'm feeling very hipster; we were doing it before...

This buffalo chicken wings recipe is truly delicious fried chicken coated with panko breadcrumbs, deep-fried to a golden brown, and tossed with homemade buffalo sauce easy and crowd-pleasing recipe!

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

It’s time to try these homemade Tandoori Garlic Rotis. These delicious flatbreads are extremely easy to make and can easily be customized to suit everyone’s tastes.

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Instant Pot Cranberry Cornbread Bites shaped like Christmas Jingle Bells, pair up for the perfect bite of sweet and tart spiced cranberries.

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Best of the Best Banana Bread recipes - perfectly uncomplicated, which is exactly what we need during these times [recipe]

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

It's a long, long buildup to CEO's soliloquy, it's a long way to go

Knowledge 2020 With the long flights, late nights and early starts, IT conferences might seem endless. But with the shift to the online format becoming standard, for now at least, participants might be spared the trial of endurance.…

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be

The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

Survives another day!

Even though Corporate America has anointed Hillary Clinton as its next President, Senator Bernie Sanders' populist message is already in a week's time raising individual contributions totaling millions of dollars from hundreds of thousands of people! Continue reading →

Green Party's Jill Stein says that what we Fear from Donald Trump is what we have already seen from Hillary Clinton. Continue reading →

All-in-one External cardreader

Plus more ways to support comics creators and new authors launching their books worldwide while social distancing!

The post Social Distancing Roundup: JOHN WICK Livestream, Neil Gaiman reads CORALINE, and an X-MEN ’92 watchalong appeared first on The Beat.

What's the Beat staff reading this weekend? Let's find out!

The post SHUT IN THEATER: Weekend Reading 7 appeared first on The Beat.

While marketing and sales professionals increasingly find themselves drowning in data, a new IBM study finds that nearly two thirds—64 percent--of surveyed CMOs and sales leaders believe their industries will be ready to adopt cognitive technologies in the next three years. However despite this stated readiness, the study finds that only 24 percent of those surveyed believe they have strategy in place to implement these technologies today.

Woohoo!!! SPARK made the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award 2020-21 list! Thanks so much, Florida librarians! You have absolutely made my day!

https://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html 

 

Shaenon: Indoors? Reading? Need piles of comics? For the length of all shelter-in-place advisories, all Narbonic and Skin Horse books you order from the Couscous Store will arrive signed and sketched by me. Stay safe, stay sane, read fun stuff.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Books on pre-order:

• Network Effect by Martha Wells (5 May)
• He's Come Undone: A Romance Anthology with stories by Emma Barry, Olivia Dade, Adriana Herrera, Ruby Lang & Cat Sebastian (12 May)
• Two Rogues Make a Right (Seducing the Sedgwicks) by Cat Sebastian (23 Jun)
• The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho (23 Jun)
• Rogue Myths (Gatekeeper 1) by Layla Lawlor (1 Jul)
• The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal (14 Jul) (ebook order cancelled by publisher, sob)
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor (18 Aug)
• Better Than People by Roan Parrish (25 Aug)
• Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (6 Oct)
• How to Catch a Queen by Alyssa Cole (1 Dec - was 26 May)

Books acquired in April

• and read:
  1. Above Rubies (Clorinda Cathcart's Circle 7) by L.A. Hall
  2. Torches: Acquaintance Old and New (Clorinda Cathcart's Circle 8) by L.A. Hall [1]
• and unread:
  1. Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang [1]
  2. The Switch by Beth O'Leary [1]
  3. The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells [2]
  4. The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells [2]
  5. The Siren Sea by Martha Wells [2]
  6. FIYAH #9 (Winter 2019) edited by Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders [5]
  7. FIYAH #10 - HAIR (Spring 2019) edited by Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders [5]
  8. FIYAH #11 (Summer 2019) edited by Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders [5]
  9. FIYAH #12 - CHAINS (Autumn 2019) edited by Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders [5]
  10. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #38 (July 2018) edited by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link
  11. Uncanny Magazine Issue Thirty-Four(May/June 2020) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Chimedum Ohaegbu, and Elsa Sjunneson
  12. Uncanny Magazine Issue Thirty-Three (March/April 2020) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Chimedum Ohaegbu, and Elsa Sjunneson
  13. Uncanny Magazine Issue Thirty-One (November/December 2019) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Chimedum Ohaegbu, and Michi Trota [5]
  14. Uncanny Magazine Issue Thirty (September/October 2019): Disabled People Destroy Fantasy! edited by Nicolette Barischoff, Lisa M. Bradley, and Katharine Duckett [5]
  15. Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Nine (July/August 2019) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota [5]
  16. Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Eight (May/June 2019) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota [5]
  17. Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Seven (March/April 2019) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota [5]
  18. Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Six (January/February 2019) edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota [5]
• and previously read:
  1. Hammered by Elizabeth Bear
  2. Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer
  3. Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
  4. An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
  5. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
  6. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Technically, I was subscribed to and therefore paying for the issues of Uncanny Magazine all of last year, but it doesn't count as acquired until I actually download and put on the ereader. (totally a rational and thought-out argument and not at all because I don't want to faff with editing them into the relevant to-read pile posts ...)

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[5] Hugo finalist

comments

ETA: You guys are amazing. I was really not expecting to get so many volunteers! I have more than enough people for now. I'm happy to add any additional names to the list for future opportunities. I can't add any more volunteers for this course, otherwise it would end up being all my friends which isn't great for diversity.

My awesome job involves creating free online courses about genomics. The first course I've been fully in charge of is about to go live, and it needs some final quality checks. It's quite exciting IMO: it's about using genomics to identify and avoid antibiotic resistance.

We need people who can put in a couple of hours in the next week, and just play around with the course and see if there are any obvious problems, whether that's technical issues like display problems for your particular hardware and software, or conceptual problems like confusing instructions or something that doesn't make sense. We are definitely not expecting any one individual to go through the whole course in detail, and we're not looking for copy editing or proofreading. I mean, if you have the sort of brain that can't help spotting typos, we don't mind reports of those, but we're mainly looking for something more general than that.

We want people from all backgrounds, so a mix of people who know something about microbiology and genomics, and people who have no idea. I will say that the course is fairly technical, though, so you probably don't want to volunteer if sciencey stuff is hateful or scary to you. We are especially happy to have beta readers who aren't completely fluent in English to be more representative of our target audience.

Other than doing some good for the world, what you get out of it is a £25 Amazon voucher. So in order to get paid you need to be in a position to receive and spend an Amazon voucher. We might possibly be able to acquire vouchers for other countries' versions of Amazon, or else I can informally arrange to swap to something more locally useful. But it's not employment, it's a volunteer thing with a small token of appreciation.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, but if you actually want to sign up you need to interact with my work persona, so I'll ask you to PM me about arranging that. You're also welcome to pass the request on to anyone else who might be interested. The number of available slots is somewhat flexible, probably in the range of 3-5.

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