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NOTE: Title of Thread has been truncated. Connor Reed, 25, from Wales, fell ill while working in Wuhan, China, last year Said he got sick in November, weeks before first coronavirus case was logged He also believed that local officials in China initially tried to cover up the disease A British man who is believed to be among the first people in the world to catch coronavirus has revealed he fell sick in November last year - weeks before the first official case was logged. Connor Reed, a 25-year-old teacher from Wales who was living in Wuhan when the outbreak...

Small study shows powerful antibody response after first dose Former COVID-19 patients may need only one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to get the effect of two doses, researchers suggested. The disease itself may "prime the body" to produce the antibodies seen with the two-dose regimen, according to an exploratory study reported at the virtual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections that examined titer levels of antibodies in patients who had COVID-19 and those who did not. Mark Mulligan, MD, director of the Vaccine Center at New York University Langone Health in New York City, said that 6...

As the Trump administration seeks ways to penalize China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it need look no further than Tennessee. The Lewisburg, Tennessee-based American Bondholder Foundation holds $1.6 trillion of century-old Chinese debt, including interest, dating to before the founding of the communist People’s Republic of China, that it wants the administration's help in redeeming. There is an estimated $6 trillion or more of the debt outstanding worldwide. The bonds were issued by the Republic of China -- which ousted the imperial government in a coup -- as far back as 1912 and backed by gold; they...

Stage Stores, the parent of off-price banner Gordmans, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas late Sunday night. It is the latest retailer to file during the pandemic, following J.Crew and Neiman Marcus last week. A buyer is being sought for Stage Stores, with investment bank PJ Solomon conducting the auction process, in the hope that they’ll take on the Gordmans brand and at least a portion of the stores. Both Stage Stores and PJ Solomon declined to comment. The retailer filed because it was close to running out of cash and could not obtain additional financing, according to the...

When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case. Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died...

After President Trump announced he would be suspending immigration to the United States to protect the jobs and wages of millions of newly unemployed workers during the pandemic, the Spectator USA reported an “internal battle” broke out in the White House. Sources familiar with the situation told the Spectator that Kushner “is one of the loudest voices pushing back on a full ban and is seeking to carve out exemptions for refugees, temporary workers under the H1B visa program, and farmworkers under the H-2A visa program.” If that’s true, then Kushner achieved a total victory. The ban applies only to...

The Boston Globe newspaper's obituary section spanned a devastating 15 pages in its Sunday edition, as Massachusetts reels from the coronavirus crisis with more than 36,000 cases. Massachusetts has the third greatest coronavirus breakout in the country with more than 1,560 deaths reported so far. While not all the deaths that filled Sunday’s Boston Globe issue were virus-related, there has been a stunning spikes in deaths in the state as a result of the pandemic. 'Never in my life have I seen the obituary listings take up almost a whole page. I can’t imagine what NY and NJ papers look...