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SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage sourceNHSYoung people have shared stories of the debilitating effects of long Covid as they urge others to get jabbed.A new NHS video features the experiences of three previously healthy people as part of a drive to encourage vaccine uptake.It comes as the government says it has met its target of offering all 16 and 17-year-olds in England a Covid jab.They are being invited to book an appointment with their GP or visit a walk-in centre.More than 360,000 young people aged 16 to 17 in England have now been immunised.The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said more than a million letters and texts were sent out in the three weeks since the age group became eligible for a jab.All those aged 12 to 15 and considered at-risk in England have also been invited for a vaccination, the government said.According to the latest figures, more than 47.6 million people in the UK – about 87% of over-16s – have now received at least one vaccine, with more than 41.6 million – 76% – having had both jabs.On Sunday 32,253 new Covid cases were reported across the UK, as well as a further 49 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.What do young people need to know about the vaccine?Should all children get a vaccine? How many people have been vaccinated so far? What are the symptoms of long Covid?While the younger a person is the lower their overall risk from coronavirus, young adults can still get long Covid – which is when symptoms of the disease persist for an extended period.The latest figures for England show people aged 18 to 34 now make up more than a fifth of those admitted to hospital with the virus, four times higher than at the peak last winter, and most of those are unvaccinated.’Exhausted just walking to shops’In the video to encourage young people to get vaccinated, previously healthy long Covid sufferers share their experiences, from being bed-bound to thinking they might die.Megan Higgins, 25, and Ella Harwood, 23, were both previously healthy and active but are now suffering with extreme fatigue due to long Covid.Ms Higgins, a special needs tutor from London, said that eight months on she still “can’t even walk around the shops without getting exhausted”.”Long Covid is debilitating, so please, get vaccinated. I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through what I have,” she said.image sourceNHSMs Harwood, an illustrator from London, said she was bed-bound for seven months and fears she will “never be the same again”.In the clip, support worker Quincy Dwamena, 31, described himself as a “healthy young guy” but said he delayed getting the vaccine and became seriously ill.”I ended up being hospitalised and thought I was going to die,” he said.Having two doses of the vaccine approximately halves the risk of experiencing symptoms which last more than 28 days after infection, according to the Office for National Statistics.Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “Regardless of whether you’re young, fit and healthy, these harrowing stories really show that Covid-19 can affect anyone. “I encourage everyone to come forward for both their jabs as quickly as possible as vaccines are the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones from serious illness.”The government has been pushing to increase vaccine uptake among young people, with companies such as Asda and Deliveroo offering incentives to those who get a jab.Meanwhile, pop-up vaccine sites have been opened across the country at sites such as London-based nightclub Heaven, as well as football stadiums and festivals.FIVE GIRL BANDS THAT MADE A STATEMENT: Moments where real life and music mergedDO ARGUMENTS SOLVE ANYTHING?: Hayley Pearce considers the best way to handle a fight

As the pandemic takes an unexpected direction, Americans again must reckon with twists in scientific understanding of the virus.When the coronavirus surfaced last year, no one was prepared for it to invade every aspect of daily life for so long, so insidiously. The pandemic has forced Americans to wrestle with life-or-death choices every day of the past 18 months — and there’s no end in sight.Scientific understanding of the virus changes by the hour, it seems. The virus spreads only by close contact or on contaminated surfaces, then turns out to be airborne. The virus mutates slowly, but then emerges in a series of dangerous new forms. Americans don’t need to wear masks. Wait, they do.At no point in this ordeal has the ground beneath our feet seemed so uncertain. In just the past week, federal health officials said they would begin offering booster shots to all Americans in the coming months. Days earlier, those officials had assured the public that the vaccines were holding strong against the Delta variant of the virus, and that boosters would not be necessary.As early as Monday, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to formally approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has already been given to scores of millions of Americans. Some holdouts found it suspicious that the vaccine was not formally approved yet somehow widely dispensed. For them, “emergency authorization” has never seemed quite enough.Americans are living with science as it unfolds in real time. The process has always been fluid, unpredictable. But rarely has it moved at this speed, leaving citizens to confront research findings as soon as they land at the front door, a stream of deliveries that no one ordered and no one wants.Is a visit to my ailing parent too dangerous? Do the benefits of in-person schooling outweigh the possibility of physical harm to my child? Will our family gathering turn into a superspreader event?Living with a capricious enemy has been unsettling even for researchers, public health officials and journalists who are used to the mutable nature of science. They, too, have frequently agonized over the best way to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.But to frustrated Americans unfamiliar with the circuitous and often contentious path to scientific discovery, public health officials have seemed at times to be moving the goal posts and flip-flopping, or misleading, even lying to, the country.Most of the time, scientists are “edging forward in a very incremental way,” said Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and a co-founder of two popular websites, bioRxiv and medRxiv, where scientists post new research.“There are blind alleys that people go down, and a lot of the time you kind of don’t know what you don’t know.”Biology and medicine are particularly demanding fields. Ideas are evaluated for years, sometimes decades, before they are accepted.Cathy and Mark Baum visited Mr. Baum’s mother at an assisted living center in Reston, Va., in 2020. Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesResearchers first frame the hypothesis, then design experiments to test it. Data from hundreds of studies, often by competing teams, are analyzed before the community of experts comes to a conclusion.In the interim, scientists present the findings to their peers, often at niche conferences that are off-limits to journalists and the general public, and hone their ideas based on the feedback they receive. It’s not unusual to see attendees at these meetings point out — sometimes harshly — every flaw in a study’s methods or conclusions, sending the author back to the lab for more experiments.Fifteen years elapsed from the description of the first cases of H.I.V. to the identification of two proteins the virus needs to infect cells, a finding crucial to research for a cure. Even after a study has reached a satisfying conclusion, it must be submitted for rigorous review at a scientific journal, which can add another year or more before the results become public.Measured on that scale, scientists have familiarized themselves with the coronavirus at lightning speed, partly by accelerating changes to this process that were already underway.Treatment results, epidemiological models, virological discoveries — research into all aspects of the pandemic turns up online almost as quickly as authors can finish their manuscripts. “Preprint” studies are dissected online, particularly on Twitter, or in emails between experts.What researchers have not done is explain, in ways that the average person can understand, that this is how science has always worked.The public disagreements and debates played out in public, instead of at obscure conferences, give the false impression that science is arbitrary or that scientists are making things up as they go along.“What a non-scientist or the layperson doesn’t realize is that there is a huge bolus of information and consensus that the two people who are arguing will agree upon,” Dr. Sever said.Is it really so surprising, then, that Americans feel bewildered and bamboozled, even enraged, by rapidly changing rules that have profound implications for their lives?Demonstrators opposed to vaccine mandates outside Duke Hospital in Durham, N.C., in July.Cornell Watson for The New York TimesFederal agencies have an unenviable task: Creating guidelines needed to live with an unfamiliar and rapidly spreading virus. But health officials have not acknowledged clearly or often enough that their recommendations may — and very probably would — change as the virus, and their knowledge of it, evolved.“Since the beginning of this pandemic, it’s been a piss-poor job, to say it in the nicest way,” said Dr. Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.Leaders in the United States and Britain have promised too much too soon, and have had to backtrack. Health officials have failed to frame changing advice as necessary when scientists learn more about the virus.And the officials have not really defined the pandemic’s end — for example, that the virus will finally loosen its stranglehold once the infections drop below a certain mark. Without a clearly delineated goal, it can seem as if officials are asking people to give up their freedoms indefinitely.One jarring backtrack was the mask guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency said in May that vaccinated people could drop their masks, advice that helped set the stage for a national reopening. Officials did not emphasize, or at least not enough, that the masks could be needed again. Now, with a new surge in infections, they are.“It can be really difficult for public perception and public understanding when these big organizations seem to reverse course in a way that is really not clear,” said Ellie Murray, a science communicator and public health expert at Boston University.It does not help that the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization, the two leading public health agencies, have disagreed as frequently as they have in the past 18 months — on the definition of a pandemic, on the frequency of asymptomatic infections, on the safety of Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women.Most Americans have a decent grasp of basic health concepts — exercise is good, junk food is bad. But many are never taught how science progresses.People signed up to receive their first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Queens this month.Byron Smith for The New York TimesIn 2018, 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 18th in their ability to explain scientific concepts, lagging behind their peers in not just China, Singapore and the United Kingdom, but also Poland and Slovenia.In a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center, many Americans correctly identified fossil fuels and the rising threat of antibiotic resistance, but they were less knowledgeable about the scientific process..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And basic tenets of public health often are even more of a mystery: How does my behavior affect others’ health? Why should I be vaccinated if I consider myself low-risk?“People weren’t primed before to understand a lot of these concepts,” Dr. Madad said. “We should have known that we couldn’t expect the public to change their behaviors on a dime.”Both information and disinformation about Covid-19 surface online, especially on social media, much more now than in previous public health crises. This represents a powerful opportunity to fill in the knowledge gaps for many Americans.But health officials have not taken full advantage. The C.D.C.’s Twitter feed is a robotic stream of announcements. Agency experts need not just to deliver messages, but also to answer questions about how the evolving facts apply to American lives.And health officials need to be more nimble, so that bad actors don’t define the narrative while real advice is delayed by a traditionally cumbersome bureaucracy.“They’re not moving at the speed that this pandemic is moving,” Dr. Murray said. “That obviously creates a perception in the public that you can’t just rely on those more official sources of news.”The first day of school at an elementary school in Newark, Calif., this month.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesIn the middle of a pandemic, health officials have some responsibility to counter the many spurious voices on Twitter and Facebook spreading everything from pseudoscience to lies. Risk communication during a public health crisis is a particular skill, and right now Americans need the balm.“There are some people whose confidence outweighs their knowledge, and they’re happy to say things which are wrong,” said Helen Jenkins, an infectious disease expert at Boston University.“And then there are other people who probably have all the knowledge but keep quiet because they’re scared of saying things, which is a shame as well, or just aren’t good communicators.”Health officials could begin even now with two-minute videos to explain basic concepts; information hotlines and public forums at the local, state and federal levels; and a responsive social media presence to counter disinformation.The road ahead will be difficult. The virus has more surprises in store, and the myths that have already become entrenched will be hard to erase.But it’s not too much to hope that the lessons learned in this pandemic will help experts explain future disease outbreaks, as well as other urgent problems, like climate change, in which individual actions contribute to the whole.The first step toward educating the public and winning their trust is to make plans, and then communicate them honestly — flaws, uncertainty and all.

A woman who broke her hip while roller-skating at the age of 12, forcing her to abandon her dream of playing football, has said she cried when she found out she had a place on the GB women’s wheelchair basketball team at the Paralympics.Lucy Robinson, 22, from Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, said: “None of us expected it and I just started crying.”The primary school teacher, who is the youngest member of the team, was diagnosed with avascular necrosis following her injury, meaning the blood supply to the end of her bones is disrupted.She said she wanted to inspire other young people to change their life through sport.Video journalist: Chris WaringFollow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

A woman who broke her hip while roller-skating at the age of 12, forcing her to abandon her dream of playing football, has said she cried when she found out she had a place on the GB women’s wheelchair basketball team at the Paralympics.Lucy Robinson, from Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, said: “None of us expected it and I just started crying.”The primary school teacher, who is the youngest member of the team, was diagnosed with avascular necrosis following her injury, meaning the blood supply to the end of her bones is disrupted.She said she wanted to inspire other young people to change their life through sport.Video journalist: Chris WaringFollow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage sourceGetty ImagesA disinformation campaign claiming that the Covid-19 virus originated from an American military base in Maryland has gained popularity in China ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the virus origins.In May, US president Joe Biden ordered a 90-day probe into whether the Covid-19 virus came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal. Until then, the “Wuhan lab leak” theory had been dismissed by most scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory. But now as the report is due to be released, China has gone on the offensive. In the past few weeks, Chinese sources have been amplifying a baseless claim that Covid-19 was made in the US. Using everything from rap music to fake Facebook posts, experts say the propaganda efforts have been successful at convincing the domestic Chinese audience to cast scepticism on international criticism of the country’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic. But, experts say, it has done little to legitimise China to the outside world.What are the allegations?Most Americans may have never heard of Fort Detrick, but it is becoming a household name in China.Chinese propagandists have pushed a conspiracy suggesting that the Covid-19 coronavirus was made and leaked from the military installation in Frederick, Maryland, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Washington DC.image sourceGetty ImagesOnce the centre of the US biological weapons programme, it currently houses biomedical labs researching viruses including Ebola and smallpox. Its complicated history has sparked speculation in China.A rap song by the Chinese nationalist group CD Rev suggesting nefarious plots being hatched by the lab was recently endorsed by Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman. The rhythms of the song -“How many plots came out of your lab/How many dead bodies hanging a tag/What are you hiding/Open the door to Fort Detrick” – are awkward, but its sentiment “speaks our mind,” Mr Zhao wrote in a tweet in August.image sourceTwitterMr Zhao, who is known for his aggressive style of diplomacy, has played an important role in spreading the “US origin” theory. Several tweets from his account last year first drew wide attention to Fort Detrick. “What’s behind the closure of the biolab at Fort Detrick?” he wrote in July 2020, “When will US invite experts to investigate the origin of the virus in US?”In recent months, his calls have been joined by Chinese diplomats based in various countries, and the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV even aired an hour-long special report, “The Dark History behind Fort Detrick”, focusing on breaches of containment at the lab in 2019, to bolster claims of lax lab security echoed by Chinese officials and state media. A related hashtag has had more than 100 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent.”We see a more sustained campaign involving more numerous and geographically spread accounts to promote the narrative,” about Fort Detrick, says Ira Hubert, a senior investigative analyst at social analytics firm Graphika.Another popular theory, pushed by the nationalist tabloid the Global Times, attempts to connect the virus’s origins to a US coronavirus expert, Dr Ralph Baric, and researchers at Fort Detrick. The newspaper suggested that Dr Baric created a new human-infecting coronavirus, citing a paper the North Carolina-based researcher co-authored about the virus’s transmission from bats in Nature Medicine.In an editor’s note, the journal said it was aware the paper was being used to spread the false theory, but the note was not included in the Global Times report.The newspaper also launched an online petition calling for Chinese netizens to sign an open letter demanding a World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation into Fort Detrick. People could “sign” the letter with a single click, and the appeal reportedly gathered more than 25 million “signatures”. Propaganda from Switzerland to Fiji Experts say Beijing is seeking to bring non-Chinese audiences into the dispute about Covid-19 origins to further muddy the waters.A clear example unfolded in July, when Chinese state media outlets began relentlessly reporting on criticism written in a Facebook post by “Wilson Edwards”, a user claiming to be a Swiss scientist.”Mr Edwards” argued that Washington was “so obsessed with attacking China on the origin-tracing issue that it is reluctant to open its eyes to the data and findings.”But the Swiss embassy in China later said that there is no registry of a Swiss citizen with the name, and urged Chinese media to remove “false” news reports. Experts believe “Wilson Edwards” likely does not exist, but is instead a fictitious propaganda profile. His Facebook page was launched on the day that he published the Covid-19 post. A new Twitter account under the name of “Wilson Edwards” also tweeted out the same message on that day. The “Wilson Edwards” story appears to have first been reported through an obscure Fiji-based Chinese-English bilingual outlet, the Voice of South Pacific.Though it is unclear whether Voice of South Pacific is backed by the Chinese state, its mobile app is developed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of state news agency China News Service, the first major Chinese state-owned outlet to report on Edwards’ claims.The BBC found that even before Edwards’ Facebook post drew wide media attention, it had been shared by hundreds of Facebook accounts which claim to be based in Southeast Asia, for example, “Eastman Tyla” in Malaysia and “Tyree Schmidt” in Indonesia. “Tyla” and “Schmidt” also circulated a long and identical list of pro-China news stories on their Facebook pages, praising Beijing’s handling of the pandemic. image sourcefacebookThere is no conclusive evidence as to who operates these social media accounts, they often direct-quote phrases used by China’s state spokespersons or from major Chinese state media outlets. And Graphika, the social analytics firm, has identified a network of fake and covert pro-China accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube who are key amplifiers of the Fort Detrick theory. How a fake network pushes pro-China propagandaThe disinformation tactics used by ChinaWhat does this say about China’s propaganda? China’s latest global influence campaign over Covid-19 may not have made the country many new friends overseas, but analysts say it has been successful in convincing Beijing’s domestic audience. “For the most part, the biggest concern [of the Chinese government] is domestic legitimacy,” Georgia State University Global Communication Assistant Professor Maria Repnikova told the BBC. More Chinese diplomats have recently surged onto Twitter, which is banned in the country, but their combative messages appear to aim at a domestic audience. Prof Repnikova says China has blurred the boundaries between domestic and external propaganda for years, but this strategy doesn’t come without risks, as the less effective external messaging could put strain on China’s foreign relations. Meanwhile, Chinese state media have cherry-picked more foreign sources, and foreign video bloggers have played an increasingly prominent role in Beijing’s disinformation drive. These efforts aim at “legitimising China from the outside,” according to Prof Repnikova.The uptick of foreign elements in China’s disinformation campaign signals a change in Beijing’s propaganda strategy. “It’s not just about telling a story,” Prof Repnikova says, “It’s about creating a story.”

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage sourceGetty ImagesA disinformation campaign claiming that the Covid-19 virus originated from an American military base in Maryland has gained popularity in China ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the virus origins.In May, US president Joe Biden ordered a 90-day probe into whether the Covid-19 virus came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal. Until then, the “Wuhan lab leak” theory had been dismissed by most scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory. But now as the report is due to be released, China has gone on the offensive. In the past few weeks, Chinese sources have been amplifying a baseless claim that Covid-19 was made in the US. Using everything from rap music to fake Facebook posts, experts say the propaganda efforts have been successful at convincing the domestic Chinese audience to cast scepticism on international criticism of the country’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic. But, experts say, it has done little to legitimise China to the outside world.What are the allegations?Most Americans may have never heard of Fort Detrick, but it is becoming a household name in China.Chinese propagandists have pushed a conspiracy suggesting that the Covid-19 coronavirus was made and leaked from the military installation in Frederick, Maryland, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Washington DC.image sourceGetty ImagesOnce the centre of the US biological weapons programme, it currently houses biomedical labs researching viruses including Ebola and smallpox. Its complicated history has sparked speculation in China.A rap song by the Chinese nationalist group CD Rev suggesting nefarious plots being hatched by the lab was recently endorsed by Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman. The rhythms of the song -“How many plots came out of your lab/How many dead bodies hanging a tag/What are you hiding/Open the door to Fort Detrick” – are awkward, but its sentiment “speaks our mind,” Mr Zhao wrote in a tweet in August.image sourceTwitterMr Zhao, who is known for his aggressive style of diplomacy, has played an important role in spreading the “US origin” theory. Several tweets from his account last year first drew wide attention to Fort Detrick. “What’s behind the closure of the biolab at Fort Detrick?” he wrote in July 2020, “When will US invite experts to investigate the origin of the virus in US?”In recent months, his calls have been joined by Chinese diplomats based in various countries, and the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV even aired an hour-long special report, “The Dark History behind Fort Detrick”, focusing on breaches of containment at the lab in 2019, to bolster claims of lax lab security echoed by Chinese officials and state media. A related hashtag has had more than 100 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent.”We see a more sustained campaign involving more numerous and geographically spread accounts to promote the narrative,” about Fort Detrick, says Ira Hubert, a senior investigative analyst at social analytics firm Graphika.Another popular theory, pushed by the nationalist tabloid the Global Times, attempts to connect the virus’s origins to a US coronavirus expert, Dr Ralph Baric, and researchers at Fort Detrick. The newspaper suggested that Dr Baric created a new human-infecting coronavirus, citing a paper the North Carolina-based researcher co-authored about the virus’s transmission from bats in Nature Medicine.In an editor’s note, the journal said it was aware the paper was being used to spread the false theory, but the note was not included in the Global Times report.The newspaper also launched an online petition calling for Chinese netizens to sign an open letter demanding a World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation into Fort Detrick. People could “sign” the letter with a single click, and the appeal reportedly gathered more than 25 million “signatures”. Propaganda from Switzerland to Fiji Experts say Beijing is seeking to bring non-Chinese audiences into the dispute about Covid-19 origins to further muddy the waters.A clear example unfolded in July, when Chinese state media outlets began relentlessly reporting on criticism written in a Facebook post by “Wilson Edwards”, a user claiming to be a Swiss scientist.”Mr Edwards” argued that Washington was “so obsessed with attacking China on the origin-tracing issue that it is reluctant to open its eyes to the data and findings.”But the Swiss embassy in China later said that there is no registry of a Swiss citizen with the name, and urged Chinese media to remove “false” news reports. Experts believe “Wilson Edwards” likely does not exist, but is instead a fictitious propaganda profile. His Facebook page was launched on the day that he published the Covid-19 post. A new Twitter account under the name of “Wilson Edwards” also tweeted out the same message on that day. The “Wilson Edwards” story appear to have first been reported through an obscure Fiji-based Chinese-English bilingual outlet, the Voice of South Pacific.Though it is unclear whether Voice of South Pacific is backed by the Chinese state, its mobile app is developed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of state news agency China News Service, the first major Chinese state-owned outlet to report on Edwards’ claims.The BBC found that even before Edwards’ Facebook post drew wide media attention, it had been shared by hundreds of Facebook accounts which claim to be based in Southeast Asia, for example, “Eastman Tyla” in Malaysia and “Tyree Schmidt” in Indonesia. “Tyla” and “Schmidt” also circulated a long and identical list of pro-China news stories on their Facebook pages, praising Beijing’s handling of the pandemic. image sourcefacebookThere is no conclusive evidence as to who operates these social media accounts, they often direct-quote phrases used by China’s state spokespersons or from major Chinese state media outlets. And Graphika, the social analytics firm, has identified a network of fake and covert pro-China accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube who are key amplifiers of the Fort Detrick theory. How a fake network pushes pro-China propagandaThe disinformation tactics used by ChinaWhat does this say about China’s propaganda? China’s latest global influence campaign over Covid-19 may not have made the country many new friends overseas, but analysts say it has been successful in convincing Beijing’s domestic audience. “For the most part, the biggest concern [of the Chinese government] is domestic legitimacy,” Georgia State University Global Communication Assistant Professor Maria Repnikova told the BBC. More Chinese diplomats have recently surged onto Twitter, which is banned in the country, but their combative messages appear to aim at a domestic audience. Prof Repnikova says China has blurred the boundaries between domestic and external propaganda for years, but this strategy doesn’t come without risks, as the less effective external messaging could put strain on China’s foreign relations. Meanwhile, Chinese state media have cherry-picked more foreign sources, and foreign video bloggers have played an increasingly prominent role in Beijing’s disinformation drive. These efforts aim at “legitimising China from the outside,” according to Prof Repnikova.The uptick of foreign elements in China’s disinformation campaign signals a change in Beijing’s propaganda strategy. “It’s not just about telling a story,” Prof Repnikova says, “It’s about creating a story.”

The intruder stalks its prey with stealth and precision, preparing to puncture its quarry’s armor. Once inside, the aggressor forces its host to produce more intruders, and then causes it to explode, spewing out a multitude of invaders who can continue their rampage on a wider scale.The drama, depicted in a microscopic video of SARS-CoV-2 infecting bat brain cells, provides a window into how the pathogen turns cells into virus-making factories before causing the host cell to die.The video was produced by Sophie-Marie Aicher and Delphine Planas, virologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who won honorable mention in a microscopic video competition sponsored by Nikon, the photography company.Filmed over 48 hours with an image recorded every 10 minutes, the footage shows the coronavirus as red spots circulating among a mass of gray blobs — the bat’s brain cells. After they are infected, the bat’s cells begin to fuse with neighboring cells. At some point, the entire mass bursts, resulting in the death of the cells.Ms. Aicher, who specializes in zoonotic diseases — those that can be transmitted from animals to humans — said this infectious juggernaut was the same in bats and humans, with one important distinction: Bats ultimately do not get sick.In humans, the coronavirus is able to evade detection and cause more damage in part by preventing infected cells from alerting the immune system to the presence of the invaders. But its special power is the ability to force host cells to fuse with neighboring ones, a process known as syncytia that allows the coronavirus to remain undetected as it replicates.“Every time the virus has to exit the cell, it’s at risk of detection so if it can go straight from one cell to another, it can work much faster,” Ms. Aicher said.She said she hoped the video would help demystify the virus, and make it easier for people to understand and appreciate this deceitful nemesis that has upended billions of lives.“It’s important to help people get past the scientific jargon to understand that this a very sophisticated and clever virus that is well adapted to make humans sick,” she said.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage sourceGetty ImagesThe arrival of the highly infectious Delta variant “does raise some big questions” about New Zealand’s pandemic response, a minister has said.Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said the variant “changes the game considerably” and makes existing protections “look less adequate”.It comes as the country announced a further 21 confirmed cases in the latest outbreak of the virus.New Zealand had quashed earlier Covid outbreaks with rapid, strict lockdowns.The country was praised for its efforts, which effectively stopped the spread of the virus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly referred to New Zealand as “our team of five million”.According to Johns Hopkins University data, there have been 3,016 total confirmed cases in the country, and 26 reported deaths. But authorities recently announced a snap lockdown after one man tested positive in Auckland with the Delta variant. There are now 72 active cases. Seven schools in the city have reported positive cases among students, and the country has also announced six infections in the capital, Wellington. Officials are now warning that they will probably extend the Auckland lockdown, which is set to expire on Tuesday.Covid map: Where are cases the highest? Covid vaccines: How fast is worldwide progress?Speaking to the media on Sunday, Mr Hipkins said eliminating the virus inside New Zealand was still the government’s aim. “The reality though is that a virus that can be infectious within 24 hours of someone getting it – that changes the game considerably,” he told the televised Q+A political talk show on Sunday. “It does mean that all of our existing protections… start to look less adequate and less robust,” he said, adding that it raises “some pretty big questions about what the long-term future of our plans are”.”At some point we will have to start to be more open in the future.”According to the New Zealand ministry of health website, as of Thursday more than 960,000 people were double vaccinated, and nearly 1.7 million had received a first dose, in a population of just under five million. But critics have questioned the speed of the vaccine rollout. New Zealand has one of the lowest number of fully vaccinated people among the OECD – an international group of countries that are among the world’s most prosperous economies. Earlier this month Prime Minister Ardern announced that national borders would remain closed until the end of this year. The aim was to vaccinate the population by then, she said. After that the country would move to a new individual risk-based model for quarantine-free travel.

Start with a web search. Consider a third-party tool. Expect frustration.This year, some Americans can do something that was previously impossible: look up the price of care before going to the hospital.A new federal rule requires hospitals to post the prices they negotiate with private insurers.The data is a rich source of new information. We used it to show that some insurers are paying twice or three times as much as their competitors for basic services — and that paying cash rather than using your coverage can often lead to a lower price.But most hospitals have not yet posted the required data. Even when they have, finding it can take time and legwork. Also, you may need to be a computer programmer to open it.“Get some coffee and hydrate, because it’s going to be a while,” said Touré McCluskey, a co-founder of the health start-up Redu Health, which has collected some of the data files. “There is information out there, but it’s not consumer-friendly.”To help those who want to try, we interviewed several researchers who have spent months collecting the data. They recommended several simple strategies.What you’ll need to know to startBefore you start looking for prices, you’ll want to know what kind of health insurance you have — both the name of your insurer and also details like whether you picked an H.M.O. plan during open enrollment or went with a P.P.O. option.Insurers often have a half-dozen rates within the same hospital. Some are specific to which plan you picked and to whether you bought the insurance through the Obamacare marketplace or a specific employer. Others have to do with what network you opted into when you signed up for coverage.Knowing the type of insurance you have will help you make the most sense of which prices in the data apply to you.Then do a web searchFor most hospitals, the data is posted on a page labeled “price transparency.” Many researchers say they begin looking for price files through a search on Google for that phrase and the hospital’s name.“That search should lead you to a top result that has something to do with price estimates billing, or patient information,” said Morgan Henderson, a health economist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County who worked with The Upshot to collect the price files used in our recent articles. “Sometimes what you want is way at the bottom of that page, or you have to follow a few links.”The page should look something like this one from MedStar Hospital Center, the largest hospital in Washington, D.C.The hospital’s price transparency site will probably have multiple sections and links, and the labeling of the price files isn’t always clear. You’ll want to look for something like a “comprehensive machine-readable file” or “negotiated price list.”It’s also worth opening up files that are described as containing “standard charges” or a “chargemaster.” Here’s how those look at Indiana University Health:When you open the files, you see it actually has the hospital’s negotiated rates and cash prices, too.Here’s what you’re looking forThe government has not created a standard format for hospitals to report their price data, and each hospital seems to take a slightly different approach.Some post their data in Excel or CSV files, which you can open using free software like Google Sheets. But some use JSON files, a data format typically used by computer programmers and professional data scientists that ordinary people might struggle to open.“I have training in health economics and policy, and I’m working on a machine with a lot of memory space,” said Morgane Mouslim, also a health economist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, who helped The Upshot collect and standardize data files. “If a file isn’t in Excel, you might need additional software.”A typical data set lists prices by procedure for each insurer, like this one from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania:The five-digit figures to the very left of this spreadsheet are CPT codes, which hospitals use to describe each service they offer. Most files also have short descriptions for each code, but they can be confusing. Code U0003, for example, is translated as “PR COV 19 AMP PRB HIGH THRUPUT” — a jargony way of describing a coronavirus test.To look up the cost of a specific service you expect to get at a hospital, you most likely have to call the facility and ask what CPT codes it will bill for your visit.You may also see other numerical codes, sometimes labeled procedure codes or revenue codes, like in the file below from Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock, Ark. You probably don’t need to pay much attention to those and should focus on the CPT codes. (If the CPT codes are not labeled, you can generally recognize them as the ones that are five digits.)Usually, you should see dollar figures representing real prices. But you could run across files where the price is listed as “variable,” meaning it could differ for two patients with the same insurance who received the same care under different circumstances.Molly Smith, vice president for public policy at the American Hospital Association, gave the example of a patient who comes to the hospital for a flu vaccine versus one who happens to get one while there for surgery.“In the contract we generally negotiate the price of the primary service, but if it’s a secondary service, maybe 15 percent is taken off,” she said. “It’s not possible to reflect that in these files.”The files should also include two other prices: the “charge” or “gross price,” which is the sticker price for a given service that hospitals often use as a baseline for negotiating discounts. There should also be the “cash” price, which is what the hospital bills patients who don’t use insurance. Whether this price is available to patients with insurance varies from hospital to hospital. Some low-income patients may qualify for even steeper discounts based on how little they earn.Once you find the data point you’re looking for, there may be additional work to understand it. Most hospitals list the prices as dollar figures, but some display the data as a percent of the gross charge — meaning patients will need to do math to understand their costs.What if I can’t find anything?Most hospitals have not posted the required data, so that may happen a lot.For example, on N.Y.U. Langone’s price transparency website, you can find only standard charges and a patient estimator tool, which uses information about your insurance plan to generate a custom estimate of how much you’ll pay for a certain procedure.Those tools provide limited information. The standard charges can tell you the maximum you could pay for a given service, and the patient estimator shows the out-of-pocket costs associated with simple services like mammograms and blood tests. When a Times reporter tried to use N.Y.U.’s site in late July, however, it generated error messages for all services explored.A representative for N.Y.U. Langone declined to comment on why the hospital had not posted its full data.With compliance rates still low, the federal government is promising to increase enforcement. It has sent nearly 170 warning letters to noncompliant hospitals, and plans to increase the penalties for noncompliance from $109,500 annually to as much as $2 million.If you believe a hospital has not posted the required information, you can file a complaint with the federal government notifying it of the issue.Soon, third-party sites might helpSome health care experts say the large data files will become more useful after third-party data companies clean and organize the information, so that patients can search across multiple hospitals and health care services.One data transparency company, Turquoise Health, has already created a free price lookup tool. Others are expected soon.See something surprising? Tell us about it.The Times has looked into data sets from 60 hospitals so far. But many more are out there.If you notice something surprising in a hospital price file — exceptionally high prices, for example, or large variations in what a service costs — we’d love to hear about it. You can email us with what you’ve found.