The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts

Adam, David

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-00104-8

Cited by 164 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Back in 2020, the first VOC Alpha (B.1.1.7) was detected in the United Kingdom, leading to more than 100,000 confirmed cases in the country. Following the emerging of Alpha variant, there were two other outbreaks originating from South Africa and Brazil, triggered by the Beta (B.1.351) and Gamma (P.1) variants, respectively (Adam, 2022; Liu et al, 2021; Otto et al, 2021). With additional mutation in spike protein, both VOCs were estimated to be 40% -80% more transmissible than the wildtype lineage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimeric mRNA based COVID-19 vaccine induces protective immunity against Omicron and Delta

Zhao

Shaabani

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) exhibit enhanced transmission and immune escape, reducing the efficacy and effectiveness of the two FDA-approved mRNA vaccines currently in use. Here, we explored various strategies to develop mRNA vaccines that offer potentially safer and wider coverage of VOCs. The initial mouse vaccination results showed that the individual VOC mRNAs carrying furin cleavage mutation induced the generation of neutralizing antibody in a VOC-specific manner. Moreover, we discovered that the antibodies produced from mice immunized with Beta-Furin and Washington (WA)-Furin mRNAs cross-reacted with other VOCs. The broad spectrum of generated nAb was further confirmed when vaccinated mice were challenged with the respective live viruses. However, neither WA-Furin nor Beta-Furin mRNA elicited potent neutralizing activity against the omicron variant. Interestingly, in a mix-and-match booster experiment, omicron-Furin and WA-Furin mRNA elicited comparable protection against omicron. Finally, we tested the concept of bivalent vaccine by introducing the RBD of Delta strain into the intact S antigen of Omicron. The chimeric mRNA induces potent and broadly acting nAb against Omicron and Delta, which paves the way to develop vaccine candidate to target emerging variants in the future.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimeric mRNA based COVID-19 vaccine induces protective immunity against Omicron and Delta

Zhao

Shaabani

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…As done in previous articles, the sources of dismisinformation have been mined from the website "Bufale.net," a renowned Italian anti-hoax website [1,2]. Additionally, an independent investigation was conducted to verify that these sources were directly associated with COVID-19-related fake news (Supplementary File 1).…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Officially started in late December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world causing millions of deaths and the collapse of health and economic systems [1]. As of February 2022, the true global death toll fluctuates between 10 and 20 million victims [2]. Although these numbers are dramatic, implementing pharmaceutical (e.g., vaccines) and non-pharmaceutical (e.g., lockdowns) measures has been fundamental to mitigate the novel coronavirus 2019 damage and spread [3,4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemic Emergency in Italy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Web Interest in Sources of Dis-Misinformation, Epidemiologically Dangerous Behaviors, and Vaccine Hesitancy During COVID-19

Rovetta¹

2022

Preprint

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Infodemic Emergency in Italy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Web Interest in Sources of Dis-Misinformation, Epidemiologically Dangerous Behaviors, and Vaccine Hesitancy During COVID-19This paper investigates the web interest of Italian users in sources of COVID-19 dis-misinformation and assumption of behaviors in contrast to the anti-pandemic vaccination regulations. Infodemic keywords have been mined and verified thanks to the fact-checking websites "Bufale.net" and "Butac.it" and then searched on Google Trends. Multi-comparative tests and linear regressions were employed to compare the relative search volumes of the pre-pandemic (2017-2020) and post-pandemic (2020-2022) periods. These findings reveal a drastic and widespread growth in the web interest of Italian netizens towards sources of fake news and illegal and epidemiologically risky practices such as the purchase of counterfeit green passes. Among the investigated keywords, the web interest in disinformation channels such as "ByoBlu" and "Radio Radio" recorded the most significant relative increase, especially during the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The relative search volume towards keywords such as "buy green pass," "unlimited green pass," (buy green pass-related query), "fake green pass cost," "fake green pass where to find it" increased from 40% to 350% during the first week of February 2022. Other relevant queries in the same period were "create fake green pass," "how to create fake green pass," "how to have fake green pass" and "fake qr code green pass". Moreover, the query "cancel vaccine" reached 7% of all web searches containing the word "covid" from January 2021 until February 2022. All related queries concerned the cancellation of the COVID-19 vaccine reservation and were reported as "breakout" (i.e., drastically increasing) and were growing during the first week of February 2022 (from 50% to 110%). Nonetheless, this query could be influenced by the number of new COVID-19 infections (cross correlation=0.46, P<.001, lag=4 weeks). In conclusion, government authorities are recommended to take appropriate action to limit these phenomena promptly.

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“…Official figures show that, globally, the covid-19 pandemic has so far claimed 5.8 million lives 1. But this is highly likely to be an underestimate, and some models indicate that the true excess death toll could be between 12 and 22 million 2. In the UK, 159 295 people have died so far, equivalent to the entire population of York 1…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The public finance cost of covid-19

Appleby

2022

BMJ

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The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts

Cited by 164 publications

References 8 publications

Chimeric mRNA based COVID-19 vaccine induces protective immunity against Omicron and Delta

Chimeric mRNA based COVID-19 vaccine induces protective immunity against Omicron and Delta

Infodemic Emergency in Italy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Web Interest in Sources of Dis-Misinformation, Epidemiologically Dangerous Behaviors, and Vaccine Hesitancy During COVID-19

The public finance cost of covid-19

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