CBR Takes Issue With The Rising of the Shield Hero’s Socially Contentious Undertones and "Incel" Fanbase – Bounding Into Comics

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CBR has become the latest outlet to take a tired swing at the wildly popular The Rising of the Shield Hero, as a recently published article questions the series socially contentious undertones and labels its fanbase as incels.

On May 5th, the comic book and pop culture outlet published an article declaring that The Rising of the Shield Hero Is Absurdly Popular for NO Good Reason, in which freelance article writer Timothy Donohoo purports to be baffled by the series continued popularity, opening his article by claiming that the recipe for a potentially terrible anime was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero and that the constant attacks on the series socially contentious undertones were well deserved before proceeding to examine how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

Isekai is easily the most ubiquitous genre in todays anime and manga. While this means the genre has a huge audience of avid fans, it also means that it has plenty of detractors, as well. Often seen as incredibly cliche, if not boring, the faraway fantasy worlds that isekai transports its heroes and viewers to all seem to blend together at this point. Add in a host of social faux pas, and you have the recipe for a potentially terrible anime.

That recipe was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero. With an overpowered protagonist whos seemingly never wrong, topped with socially contentious undertones, the series has gotten its fair share of well deserved flak. Despite this, it continues to find a fanbase, as evidenced by its consistently high ranking on sites like Crunchyroll. Heres a look at how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

The attack on the series continues as Donohoo boasts that the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason, taking issue with the rape accusation leveled against Naofumi Iwatani at the onset of the series for being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement.

Related: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia Wins Crunchyrolls Best Girl Award

Hilariously, after recalling how this plot point led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, Donohoo is forced to acknowledge that sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan.

Fittingly, the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason. The story kicking off with the hero being falsely accused of rape was especially controversial, with many seeing it as being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement, if not wholly opposing it. This led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, though the sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan. Regardless, though this plot point is played for laughs, many felt that the confines of a fantasy isekai might not be the best place to handle such a serious topic.

Turning to the accusations that the series promotes slavery, Donohoo dismisses Naofumis confession that he only enslaved Raphtalia due to his belief that his best bet for survival in a world in which his reputation is torn asunder is an ally who is literally magic-bound to follow him, and pointing to the overall concept of Raphtalias enslavement as supportive evidence for the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert:

The show has also been accused of supporting slavery. Early on, the protagonist actually buys a slave girl and, instead of immediately freeing her or even feeling conflicted over the fact that shes a slave, Naofumi keeps her enslaved to him. Some have excused the plot element through the shows medieval setting, as well as the fact that the hero doesnt treat his slave in a degrading or dehumanizing way. Within the show, Naofumi justifies his needing a slave by saying that no one else would willingly work with him due to his fractured reputation. This hasnt helped the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert' who feels put upon by the world.

Related: Cosplay: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia By Katyushacos

Finally, Donohoo argues that the show itself is just another generic isekai show, taking issue with Naofumis characterization and his displays of unreasonable skill, despite these moments being played primarily for their comedic value:

Even without these unsavory elements, the show itself is just another generic isekai show, and a poorly done one at that. This is exacerbated further by Naofumi constantly winning in some form or fashion, despite him supposedly being the worlds victim. He wins fights with relative ease despite his inexperience with the fantasy game world. Far more experienced gamers and fighters pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Naofumifor some reason. Other characters also constantly come off as incredibly dumb, either blindly worshiping Naofumi or simply acting stupid for the sake of the plot.

After putting forth these legitimate issues, a disingenuously baffled Donohoo questions the series widespread popularity.

Related: Rising of the Shield Hero to Get 2nd and 3rd Seasons

Asserting that the isekai genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before, Donohoo argues that the fact that some viewers may relate to Naofumi as justification for the shows label as an incel fantasy and concludes that the series has more notoriety than it deserves.

Despite all of these legitimate issues, the show continues to develop an audience. Crunchyroll revealed that it was in their Top 20 list of the currently most popular series, in the same ranking as much more acclaimed shows like My Hero Academia, Naruto and One Piece. One justification for the questionable series popularity is the current wave of other generic, poorly constructed isekai shows that seem to somehow find a loyal audience. The genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before.

The controversial elements might actually be a boon for the shows popularity. Some viewers may seek out Shield Hero because of its taboo, almost risque reputation, while others might even sympathize with the protagonist. This would justify the shows label as an incel fantasy, but it would also explain why rampant criticism has failed to break the shows viewership. Another interesting explanation for why the show is so widely watched may be its cult status in the West. The source material was one of the first web light novels to be translated into English, opening a new world of potential readers, and eventually viewers, to an underdog, no-name web novel author. This Western cult status is ironic, given that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism. Nevertheless, the shows popularity, much like its eponymous hero, continues to rise, and it certainly wont be the last generic isekai to get more notoriety than it deserves.

Conversely, according to original The Rising of the Shield Hero light novel printing company Kadokawa Producer Junichiro Tamura, there have been no controversies regarding the series in Japan as Japanese viewers do not see these anime as controversial.

Related: Despite Detractors, The Rising of the Shield Hero Becomes Wild Success With Over 6.2 Million Copies Printed

Ironically, despite multiple admissions that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism, Donohoo fails to consider that this criticism is largely unfounded and put forth by critics in bad-faith.

After the premiere of The Rising of the Shield Heros first episode, many proponents of social justice theory took issue with the use of a false rape allegation as a major plot point, accusing the series of promoting misogyny and calling for the series cancellation.

In their 2019 retrospective, Anime News Network ranked the series as the Worst Anime of 2019, claiming that the adventures of Naofumi were a rallying point for the worst impulses of some of the worst people.

This is further seen in the fact that the purported morally justified and rampant criticism leveled against the series has not prevented CBR from promoting the series in a positive light in order to draw traffic to their website.

Related: Crunchyrolls The Rising Of The Shield Hero Anime Attacked by Feminists and Social Justice Warriors!

Earlier this year, the outlet published an article speculating on the Dungeons & Dragons alignments of the series cast, which makes no reference to misogyny, slavery promotion, or incels.

In an article titled 10 Things You Need To Know About Rising Of The Shield Hero, Naofumis anger and distrust of the world around him is optimistically described as a part of his character development, without which hes identical to every other isekai protagonist.

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CBR Takes Issue With The Rising of the Shield Hero's Socially Contentious Undertones and "Incel" Fanbase - Bounding Into Comics

Rage is a quiet thing: How Hayley Williams and other female artists are writing their way out of trauma – The Independent

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The opening track of Petals for Armor, the debut solo record from Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, feels like a deep sigh. Rage is a quiet thing, she sings, over a tapestry of breaths and hums. Rage... is it in our veins?

The album is a release in multiple senses of the word for Williams. Its her first record without the band that made her famous when she was still a teenager (though her bandmates, Taylor York and Joey Howard, worked with her on the writing and recording of the album, this project stands apart from their work as a unit). Emotionally and lyrically explicit, Petals for Armor touches on raw nerve after raw nerve: the breakdown of her marriage, her grandmothers declining health, and the inherited trauma that has been passed down through the women in her family. Every woman in my family on my moms side... theyve all been abused in almost every sense of the word, she told The New York Times. She began writing the album after entering intensive therapy for the first time, and being diagnosed with depression and PTSD. Trauma echoes through the lyrics, which often speak specifically to women. I think of all the wilted women/ Who crane their necks to reach a window, she sings on Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris.

The albums opening note of rage feels, coincidentally, in conversation with another album released this month. Torontonian synth-pop artist Katie Stelmanis, better known under her band name Austra, opens her fourth album HiRUDiN with the words: You make me so angry. Her previous record, Future Politics, written pre-Brexit and pre-Trump, was a contemplation of power structures in the outside world, but on HiRUDiN, she turns the lens back on herself, writing about the breakdown and aftermath of toxic relationships, and internalised queer shame. HiRUDiN came out of a lot of feelings of disappointment that I was able to channel into new forms of optimism, she tells me. Namely, the importance of healing the self, and how that can actually be a powerful tool in terms of broader activism and politics.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN both exist in a lineage of albums by women reckoning with their pain; Stelmanis nods to Bjorks Vulnicura and FKA twigss MAGDALENE as recent examples of break-up albums that rocked her, and Williams made a playlist of inspirations for her album that included the very vulnerable work of Solange, Beyonce, and SZA. But Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN also share a lightness and an optimism that envisions not only a way out of that pain, but a meaningfulness to it. As Williams said in Rolling Stone last month, I dont think you can get to the good s*** without digging through the bad first. Its like you are trying to find the centre of the Earth how can you find that without cracking through limestone and heavy, hard things?

Ever since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, there has been the question of what its musical legacy will be. There have been angry songs, vengeful songs, satirical songs that have seized on the cultural mood. But a more satisfactory result could be more women, and victims of toxicity and abuse of any gender, feeling able to write honestly about their trauma without making it the focal point of their identity.

The music industry has never had its full-blown #MeToo moment, but Kesha came closest to sparking one when she sued her former producer and manager Dr Luke for alleged sexual and physical abuse in 2014, in a legal battle that is ongoing (he denies her claims). In 2017, Kesha released Rainbow, a cathartic purge of an album; but it was with High Road, released in January, that she reclaimed her party girl identity while celebrating her survival. Though miles away in sound, theres echoes of the liberatory urging of Fiona Apples Fetch the Bolt Cutters an album title that is also becoming a kind of zeitgeist-capturing mantra, encouraging women to cut themselves out of their cages and shout about their realities.

Apples album is unflinching, with lines such as, You raped me in the same bed/ Your daughter was born in. But its also a loose-limbed, defiant dance party, laced with frantic percussion that Apple created by banging on the walls of her house. Its a similar energy, if not sound, to that captured in Song For Our Daughter, the recent album from folk artist Laura Marling. On the albums release, Marling told The Independent: This album represents a triumph over trauma. I found my way through the very complicated reparative process, and it turns out to be quite a cheery album, which is a blessing.

Marling directs her album towards her future child, just as Hayley Williams, on Petals for Armor, also contemplates generational trauma, and how she might feel about her own daughter someday (If my child needed protection from a f***er like that man, Id sooner gut him...). What these albums all share is an envisioning of life after trauma: they are acknowledging but not dwelling on the brutality of the past, and celebrating their complex present, their hopeful future.

Both Petals of Armor and HiRUDiN are albums about healing. They rejoice in the body, and in the bodys place in the natural world. Williams was inspired by a vision of plants growing from under her skin, and the record is underpinned by an extended metaphor that depicts her and other wilted women as blooming flowers fragile, yet persistent. On the funk strut of Watch Me While I Bloom, she strikes a triumphant chord, pulling back her head to truly savour the howl of the line: How lucky I feeeel, to be in my body again. Trauma can make its victims feel robbed of their bodily autonomy, but here Williams wields hers.

Stelmanis, meanwhile, names her record after Hirudin, an anticoagulant peptide found in the saliva of leeches. Its how the predator gets into you, the traces it leaves inside your body when it sucks your blood. But in different contexts, hirudin can also be medicinal. Just as Williams envisions herself as a flower, Austra figures herself part of the natural landscape: on Mountain Baby, backed by the uplifting power of a childrens choir, she likens her relationship to the bittersweet work of climbing to a great height, her love interest the mountain. But amid the pulsating rush of I Am Not Waiting, the very next song,she sings, I am a mountain, before breaking into the delicious refrain, Im over you! Im over you!

There are several of these whiplash moments on the record, which flits between the highs of being in a codependent couple, and the lows of escaping it. Her writing reflects the dizzying feeling of trying to make sense of conflicting memories and emotions, when sifting through the debris of a toxic relationship. I only realised the theme of the record was toxic relationships after Id just about finished writing it, Stelmanis explains. It became clear that there was this linear progression of being in a difficult relationship, getting out of it, and finding safety on the other side. But in terms of track arrangement, that linearity didnt quite work, and instead you get this relatively chaotic back-and-forth. Which I actually think is a more accurate description of real life experience, as nothing is ever actually linear!

Hayley Williams new solo album, Petals for Amor is about healing(Atlantic Records)

The non-linearity will feel familiar to any sufferer of any kind of trauma, a boomerang affliction which can barely affect you at one moment, and leave you debilitated the next. On Petals For Armor, Williams follows a more conventional arc: her three-part release charts a trajectory from darkness to light. But, of course, its not that simple. Shadows cling to the records happiest moments: as she hints on Simmer, with that opening line about rage, you think that youve tamed it, but its lying in wait. By the time she ramps up the motivational surge of Over Yet, after a bright, synth-washed onslaught of positive mantras, she sings mournfully: For all the darkened parts of me... The suggestion of tragedy clings even to her upbeat moments, like the club-facing Sugar On The Rim, where she muses on finding good love after a scarring experience: Maybe we just had to feel it/ So wed know the difference.

Williams and Stelmanis both sound liberated on their new albums, as three-dimensional women carving out winding paths to recovery that encompass anger, vulnerability, grief, and lots of joy, too. For Williams, her video Cinnamon provides an apt visual metaphor for the album as a whole, as she sings about the home in which she lived alone after the breakdown of her marriage. In the video, she sees chameleonic creatures climb down from the walls and furnishings, and stalk her through the house, evoking the paranoia of a PTSD sufferer. She tries to lock herself away inside a room, only to find that the creatures are in there with her. They go wherever she goes. And so, rather than fight any longer, she changes into a bright-coloured costume, and invites her tormentors to dance with her. Her pain becomes part of her performance, and the result is beautiful.

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Rage is a quiet thing: How Hayley Williams and other female artists are writing their way out of trauma - The Independent

5 Recent Comic Book Movies That Were Better Than The MCU’s Offerings (& 5 That Were Worse) – Screen Rant

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Throughout the 2010s, the rate of Hollywood comic book movie releases drastically escalated. The backbone of that movement was theMarvel Cinematic Universe, a 23-part mega-franchise encompassing 11 sub-franchises, most of which stand among the highest-grossing film series of all time. Although its business-oriented structuring has some creative drawbacks, the MCU has never produced a truly bad movie.

RELATED:10 Previous Failed Attempts To Adapt MCU Characters For The Screen

At worst, the MCUs offerings are cookie-cutter blockbusters, like Thor: The Dark World or Doctor Strange; most of the time, theyre fun, entertaining, pretty great movies, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok; and at best, they really connect to the zeitgeist, like Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

There are still plenty of great comic book movies being made outside the MCU, as well as plenty of not-so-great ones that provoke more fan backlash than a Mandarin fake-out. So, here are five recent comic book movies that were better than the MCUs offerings, and five that were worse.

Patty Jenkins was lined up to direct Thor: The Dark World with a more interesting love story and astronger characterization for Jane Foster, but quit after Marvel made some script changes she wasnt happy with. (As it turned out, neither was the Marvel fanbase.)

Jenkinswas instead snapped up by DC to helm Wonder Woman. Jenkins brought a real sincerity to the project, refusing to acknowledge the word cheesy, that made it a more engaging counterpoint to the MCUs bathos.

Warner Bros. gave David Ayer just six weeks to write the script for Suicide Squad before rushing it into production. Somewhere in the movieis the groundwork for an entertaining piece aboutantiheroes, but that potential is buried under generic characterization, on-the-nose exposition (like Rick Flags introduction of Katana), and mind-numbing plot logic.

RELATED:Suicide Squad: 5 Things James Gunn Should Change From The Original (And 5 He Should Keep The Same)

Following Sylvester Stallones abysmal PG-13 attempt at bringing Judge Dredd to the screen in the 90s with Rob Schneider, the 2000 AD icon finally got his due in 2012.

Karl Urban stars in the title role in this ultraviolent hard-R take on the character as he takes a rookie (played wonderfully by Olivia Thirlby) into a high-rise controlled by a drug lord to bring down their operation with brute force.

In 2019, Simon Kinberg, who is somehow the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, tried his hand at directing an X-Men movie after years of writing and producing them. As with every $200 million directorial debut, Dark Phoenix was a complete disaster. Days of Future Past may have a couple of plot holes, but it was a cinematic ride, and Apocalypse had its moments, few and far between.

RELATED:5 Things Fox's X-Men Movies Did Wrong (And 5 They Did Right)

Thanks to the Disney merger, Dark Phoenix was always going to be the final nail in Foxs X-Men franchises coffin a crew somberly going down with their ship but Kinbergs script and direction (not to mention the casts bored performances) didnt do it any favors.

Last year, for whatever reason, Academy voters got it in their heads that Todd Phillips Joker was something more profound and artistic than a derivative, confused, thematically vapid Scorsese knock-off being carried on the shoulders of Joaquin Phoenix and Lawrence Sher. James Mangolds Logan is a much better example of a comic book movie taking influence from the classics of cinema to transcend the trappings of the superhero genre.

Its a bleak neo-western taking cues from Paper Moon in its father-daughter story and Shane in itstale of an aging hero reluctantly called upon for one last act of heroism. In both cases, it doesnt feel like a rip-off of those movies but simply a story exploring the same themes in a different, more modern context.

Hugh Jackmans final performance as Wolverine is a grizzled tear-jerking delight, while Patrick Stewarts bittersweet portrayal of a dementia-ridden Charles Xavier and Dafne Keens subdued, emotionally deep performance as X-23 are quite poignant.

Midway through production on Josh Tranks unusually dark reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise, 20th Century Fox executives got cold feet about the directors weird body horror aesthetic and stepped into reshoot most of it.

RELATED:Fantastic Four: 5 Things The Other Movies Got Wrong (& 5 Ways The MCU Can Get It Right)

The reshoots are painfully obvious, from Kate Maras intermittent use of a blonde wigto the inconsistent, anticlimactic plot. Plus, for reasons unknown, the strangely titled Fant4stic carried over the terrible apropos-of-nothing Reed/Sue/Victor love triangle storyline from the previous movies.

After the first Deadpool movie provided an entertaining enough origin story with an agreeable gag rate, the second one really pushed the boat out as a meta commentary on superhero blockbusters.

At every turn, Deadpool 2 masterfully subverts the audiences expectations, such as thegrim early fate of the X-Force. Plus, the subplot involving Wades dream of reuniting with Vanessa in the great beyond gave the sequel a real emotional connection.

Why did they not just let Guillermo del Toro make Hellboy III with Ron Perlman? Instead, wegot Neil Marshall and David Harbour being given a $50 million check by a Hollywood studio to unsuccessfully mimic what del Toro and Perlman already did perfectly in 2004 and 2008, with needless bloodshed added in post to strain for a gratuitous R rating.

In some parallel universe, theres a Hellboy III directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, and it would probably be included in the best column of this list.

With emotionally resonant voice performances (particularly from Shameik Moore in the lead role), a complex plot that uses lofty sci-fi concepts like interdimensional travel to convey human ideas, and a beautiful animation style that recalls flicking through the pages of a comic book, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse emerged in 2018 as the perfect Spidey movie.

RELATED:Spider-Man: 10 Things We Hope To See In The Spider-Verse Sequel

Into the Spider-Verse reassured fans that Sony wouldnt screw up all of its attempts to tell Spider-Man stories on the big screen even if it screwed up a lot of them.

This is the movie that forced Sony to relinquish some of Spider-Mans film rights to Marvel Studios, allowing his introduction in the MCU. Andrew Garfields bloated second outing as Spidey proves that Sony didnt learn anything from the shortcomings of Spider-Man 3, as they rammed it with terrible villains, and on top of that, it has a bunch of setups for a cinematic universe that never happened.

NEXT:The 10 Darkest Superhero Movies Ever Made, Ranked

NextWhich Ozark Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac Sign?

Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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5 Recent Comic Book Movies That Were Better Than The MCU's Offerings (& 5 That Were Worse) - Screen Rant

The Rising of the Shield Hero Is Absurdly Popular for NO Good Reason – CBR – Comic Book Resources

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Despite a self-insert protagonist who defies all logic and seemingly condones slavery, Shield Hero's popularity is only rising.

Isekaiis easily the most ubiquitous genre in today's anime and manga. While this means the genre has a huge audience of avid fans, it also means that it has plenty of detractors, as well. Often seen as incredibly cliche, if not boring, the faraway fantasy worlds that isekai transports its heroes and viewers to all seem to blend together at this point. Add in a host of social faux pas, and you have the recipe for a potentially terrible anime.

That recipe was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero. With an overpowered protagonist who's seemingly never wrong, topped with sociallycontentious undertones, the series has gotten its fair share of well deserved flak. Despite this, it continues to find a fanbase, as evidenced by its consistently high ranking on sites like Crunchyroll. Here's a look at how one of today's worst anime has become one of its most popular.

RELATED: One-Punch Man: The Blizzard Bunch Beats [SPOILER] in the Weirdest Way

Like nearly every isekai series, The Rising of the Shield Hero began life as a light novel series before becoming a manga and finally, in 2019, an anime. The plot follows Naofumi Iwatani, a college student who is suddenly transported to a magical fantasy world. After discovering the Book of Four Heroes in this world, he is greeted by three other men and is designated as the titular Shield Hero.

Unfortunately for him, everything goes downhill from there. He's not exactly charismatic among the chosen heroes, having been something of an outcast in his original world. This leads to only one female - a cardinal sin in the harem filled worlds of isekai anime - to join his party and, once she does, she falsely accuses him of raping her. From there, he has to learn how to thrive as a hero in a world where his reputation is lower than dirt.

RELATED: Shield Hero or Reincarnated as a Slime: Which is the Better Isekai?

Fittingly, the show's own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason. Thestory kicking off with the hero being falsely accused of rape was especially controversial, with many seeing it as being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement, if not wholly opposing it. This led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, though the sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan. Regardless, though this plot point is played for laughs, many felt that the confines of a fantasy isekai might not be the best place to handle such a serious topic.

The show has also been accused of supporting slavery. Early on, the protagonist actually buys a slave girl and, instead of immediately freeing her or even feeling conflicted over the fact that she's a slave, Naofumikeeps her enslaved to him. Some have excused the plot element through the show's medieval setting, as well as the fact that the hero doesn't treat his slave in a degrading or dehumanizing way. Within the show, Naofumi justifies his needing a slave by saying that no one else would willingly work with him due to his fractured reputation. This hasn't helped the character's real life reputation as an "incel self-insert" who feels put upon by the world.

Even without these unsavory elements, the show itself is just another generic isekai show, and a poorly done one at that. This is exacerbated further by Naofumi constantly winning in some form or fashion, despite him supposedly being the world's victim. He wins fights with relative ease- despite his inexperience with the fantasy game world. Far more experienced gamers and fighters pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Naofumi...for some reason. Other characters also constantly come off as incredibly dumb, either blindly worshiping Naofumiorsimply acting stupid for the sake of the plot.

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Despite all of these legitimate issues, the show continues to develop an audience. Crunchyroll revealed that it was in their Top 20 list of the currently most popular series, in the same ranking as much more acclaimed shows like My Hero Academia, Narutoand One Piece.One justification for the questionable series' popularity is the current wave of other generic, poorly constructed isekai shows that seem to somehow find a loyal audience. The genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before.

The controversial elements might actually be a boon for the show's popularity. Some viewers may seek out Shield Herobecause of its taboo, almost risque reputation, while others might even sympathize with the protagonist. This would justify the show's label as an "incel fantasy," but it would also explain why rampant criticism has failed to break the show's viewership. Another interesting explanation for why the show is so widely watched may be its cult status in the West. The source material was one of the first web light novels to be translated into English, opening a new world of potential readers, and eventually viewers, to an underdog, no-name web novel author. This Western cult status is ironic, given that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism. Nevertheless, the show's popularity, much like its eponymous hero, continues to rise, and it certainly won't be the last generic isekai to get more notoriety than it deserves.

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Scientists concerned that coronavirus is adapting to humans – The Guardian

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Scientists have found evidence for mutations in some strains of the coronavirus that suggest the pathogen may be adapting to humans after spilling over from bats.

The analysis of more than 5,300 coronavirus genomes from 62 countries shows that while the virus is fairly stable, some have gained mutations, including two genetic changes that alter the critical spike protein the virus uses to infect human cells.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stress that it is unclear how the mutations affects the virus, but since the changes arose independently in different countries they may help the virus spread more easily.

The spike mutations are rare at the moment but Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases and a senior author on the study, said their emergence highlights the need for global surveillance of the virus so that more worrying changes are picked up fast.

This is exactly what we need to look out for, Hibberd said. People are making vaccines and other therapies against this spike protein because it seems a very good target. We need to keep an eye on it and make sure that any mutations dont invalidate any of these approaches.

Studies of the virus revealed early on that the shape of its spike protein allowed it to bind to human cells more efficiently than Sars, a related virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002. The difference may have helped the latest coronavirus infect more people and spread rapidly around the world.

Scientists will be concerned if more extensive mutations in the spike protein arise, not only because they may alter how the virus behaves. The spike protein is the main target of leading vaccines around the world, and if it changes too much those vaccines may no longer work. Other potential therapies, such as synthetic antibodies that home in on the spike protein, could be less effective, too.

This is an early warning, Hibberd said. Even if these mutations are not important for vaccines, other mutations might be and we need to maintain our surveillance so we are not caught out by deploying a vaccine that only works against some strains.

The scientists analysed 5,349 coronavirus genomes that have been uploaded to two major genetics databases since the outbreak began. By studying the genetic makeup of the viruses, the scientists worked out how it has diversified into different strains and looked for signs that it was adapting to its human host.

In an unpublished study that has yet to be peer reviewed, the researchers identified two broad groups of coronavirus that have now spread globally. Of the two spike mutations, one was found in 788 viruses around the world, with the other present in only 32.

The study shows that, until January, one group of coronaviruses in China escaped detection because they had a mutation in the genetic region that early tests relied on. More recent tests detect all of the known types of the virus.

Last month, an international team of scientists used genetic analyses to show that the coronavirus likely originated in bats and was not made in a lab as some conspiracy theorists have claimed.

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Scientists concerned that coronavirus is adapting to humans - The Guardian

Yes, COVID-19 is mutating, here’s what you need to know – ABC News

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As the virus that causes COVID-19 traveled out of China and proliferated across the globe, it developed small mutations that accumulated into distinct versions of the virus. Scientists can now tell these versions apart by peering into the viral genome.

For example, here in the United States, there is the "West Coast" version of the virus that came directly from Asia, and a slightly different "East Coast" version which traveled through Europe.

But is one version of coronavirus more dangerous than the other? And should we be afraid of these new mutations?

The short answer according to virologists, is no.

Viruses are constantly copying themselves, so it's rather frequent that some of those copies will have mistakes, or mutations. These mutations are neither inherently good nor bad and are random.

So far, the novel coronavirus responsible for the global pandemic is mutating normally as virologists expected to see based on their experience with other similar viruses.

"Viruses mutate," said Dr. Nels Elde, Ph.D., associate professor of human genetics at the University of Utah. "That's one of the things that makes them such a successful entity."

"The word 'mutation' to people means something bad because it's got that connotation to it," said Dr. Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D., Higgins professor of microbiology and immunology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of CUNY.

This handout illustration image taken with a scanning electron microscope shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 isolated emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.

"It simply means a change in the genome sequence. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad for you at all," Racaniello said. "Plants grow in the spring. Viruses mutate. It's no big deal."

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

But as scientists across the globe learn more about these mutations, many have been eager to use these discoveries to decipher whether the virus is becoming more or less dangerous.

For example, in early March a group of scientists in China identified two different types of the virus, the L-type and the S-type. The L-type was found to be more widespread, leading to early speculation that the virus had evolved into a more infectious version of itself.

More recently, similar research out of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States which has not been peer reviewed identified a common mutation in the virus that began spreading in Europe in early February. The scientists suggested this mutation may have helped the virus spread faster and farther because it is inherently more infectious, generating breathless news coverage about a dangerous "mutant" virus.

But another group of scientists from Arizona State University arrived at a nearly opposite interpretation of the mutations they discovered. Their research led them to believe the virus might become weaker and die off, just like the 2003 SARS outbreak.

So far, the speculation about the virus' infectiousness are guesses, said Racaniello. He said there is no iron-clad evidence that these mutations have made any one version of the virus more contagious, deadlier or more resistant to potential therapies.

That's probably good news for humankind, because it means the vaccines and therapies being tested right now are likely to work against all known versions of the virus.

Scientists are actively monitoring the virus to see if it develops potentially dangerous mutations -- or even if it dramatically transforms into a new "strain" -- a word that has a very specific meaning to virologists but has also been used colloquially to describe the different versions of the virus that exist so far.

A new strain would signal a dramatic event, meaning the virus has mutated so much that it is "functionally different" than its predecessor, Elde said. According to Elde, virologists generally agree there is only one "strain" of novel coronavirus, although there are several versions of the virus in different parts of the world.

In fact, what scientists are observing, in terms of the differences between these viruses, is a phenomenon called viral "isolates," said Racaniello. That's when the genetic material develops slight variations that are not significant enough to make the virus behave in a totally different way.

These small changes happen frequently -- sometimes developing within the same person as the virus spreads throughout the human body.

"You can have different isolates from a single patient, by taking different samples from the respiratory tract and in the lung, for example," said Racaniello. "It does not mean the differences have any significance whatsoever."

"I think the bottom line is we don't really know right now whether mutation signals good news or bad news. It is somewhere in between," said Dr. Jay Bhatt, former medical chief at the American Hospital Association and an ABC News contributor.

"I think we will understand this better in the coming months."

Angela N. Baldwin, M.D., M.P.H., is a pathology resident at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. Sony Salzman is the unit's coordinating producer.

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Yes, COVID-19 is mutating, here's what you need to know - ABC News

Your genes could determine whether the coronavirus puts you in the hospital and we’re starting to unravel which ones matter – The Conversation US

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The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

When some people become infected with the coronavirus, they only develop mild or undetectable cases of COVID-19. Others suffer severe symptoms, fighting to breathe on a ventilator for weeks, if they survive at all.

Despite a concerted global scientific effort, doctors still lack a clear picture of why this is.

Could genetic differences explain the differences we see in symptoms and severity of COVID-19?

To test this, we used computer models to analyze known genetic variation within the human immune system. The results of our modeling suggest that there are in fact differences in peoples DNA that could influence their ability to respond to a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

When a virus infects human cells, the body reacts by turning on what are essentially anti-virus alarm systems. These alarms identify viral invaders and tell the immune system to send cytotoxic T cells a type of white blood cell to destroy the infected cells and hopefully slow the infection.

But not all alarm systems are created equal. People have different versions of the same genes called alleles and some of these alleles are more sensitive to certain viruses or pathogens than others.

To test whether different alleles of this alarm system could explain some of the range in immune responses to SARS-CoV-2, we first retrieved a list of all the proteins that make up the coronavirus from an online database.

We then took that list and used existing computer algorithms to predict how well different versions of the anti-viral alarm system detected these coronavirus proteins.

The part of the alarm system that we tested is called the human leukocyte antigen system, or HLA. Each person has multiple alleles of the genes that make up their HLA type. Each allele codes for a different HLA protein. These proteins are the sensors of the alarm system and find intruders by binding to various peptides chains of amino acids that make up parts of the coronavirus that are foreign to the body.

Once an HLA protein binds to a virus or piece of a virus, it transports the intruder to the cell surface. This marks the cell as infected and from there the immune system will kill the cell.

In general, the more peptides of a virus that a persons HLAs can detect, the stronger the immune response. Think of it like a more sensitive sensor of the alarm system.

The results of our modeling predict that some HLA types bind to a large number of the SARS-CoV-2 peptides while others bind to very few. That is to say, some sensors may be better tailored to SARS-CoV-2 than others. If true, the specific HLA alleles a person has would likely be a factor in how effective their immune response is to COVID-19.

Because our study only used a computer model to make these predictions, we decided to test the results using clinical information from the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak.

We found similarities in how effective alleles were at identifying SARS and SARS-CoV-2. If an HLA allele appeared to be bad at recognizing SARS-CoV-2, it was also bad at recognizing SARS. Our analysis predicted that one allele, called B46:01, is particularly bad with regards to both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. Sure enough, previous studies showed that people with this allele tended to have more severe SARS infections and higher viral loads than people with other versions of the HLA gene.

Based on our study, we think variation in HLA genes is part of the explanation for the huge differences in infection severity in many COVID-19 patients. These differences in the HLA genes are probably not the only genetic factor that affects severity of COVID-19, but they may be a significant piece of the puzzle. It is important to further study how HLA types can clinically affect COVID-19 severity and to test these predictions using real cases. Understanding how variation in HLA types may affect the clinical course of COVID-19 could help identify individuals at higher risk from the disease.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the relationship between viral proteins across a wide range of HLA alleles. Currently, we know very little about the relationship between many other viruses and HLA type. In theory, we could repeat this analysis to better understand the genetic risks of many viruses that currently or could potentially infect humans.

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Your genes could determine whether the coronavirus puts you in the hospital and we're starting to unravel which ones matter - The Conversation US

Conservatives Are Not the Only Ones Who Ignore Facts and the Science – Merion West

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this and countless other scientific findings led the President of the American Sociologicalin his 2005 presidential addressto call upon members to, Prepare to defend against the genomic data juggernaut heading their way down the pike.'

Introduction

The 2020 presidential campaign, particularly on the Democratic side, has thus far placed the concept of facts and the science at center stage. When former president Barack Obama endorsed his former Vice President, Joe Biden, for President of the United States on April 14th, former President Obama asserted that Vice President Biden wouldunlike conservativesadhere to the facts and the science in running his administration. Then, on April 28th, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added her endorsement of Vice President Biden. Secretary Clinton indicated her view that it was necessary to have a president, who listened to the science, put facts over fiction. As such, she suggested that Vice President Bidenunlike President Donald Trumpwould be that person.

Secretary Clintons endorsement of the former Vice President was followed almost immediately by The New York Times podcast When Science Is Partisan in which Frank Bruni stated: From the very start of his administration President Trump has shrugged off expertise, he has outright mocked experts, and he has shown special disregard for science. Even more dangerous he has frequently presented fiction as fact. So, again and again, Democrats have asserted that their Republican counterparts flagrantly ignore the research findings of experts, thereby regularly running afoul of reality. As I will argue, this Democratic line of argument is simply not correct, and I will trace each groups actual willingness to follow the facts and the science, wherever they might lead.

Failings When It Comes to Science

Conservatives, admittedly, either ignore or reject the well-demonstrated theory of evolution. Simply stated our planet (and all of its many species) were not created in six days. Our Universe is at least 14 billion years old, and the sphere on which we live congealed about 4.5 billion years in the past. But, in 2013, roughly 48% of conservative voters believed that creation according to The Book of Genesis is factual. This is as compared to the 67% of Democrats and 65% of Independents who believe humans evolved over time. As such, rather than alienate this large segment of the Republican electoral base, if a reporter asks a conservative candidate if he or she believes in evolution, the candidate will frequently duck the question. This position is a violation of both the facts and the science, and these Republican politicians should be ashamed of themselves for not endorsing the truth. This is a well-known example of conservatives choosing to ignore the evidence.

Turning to progressivesand the subject of abortionwe find that those on the Left either ignore or reject the scientific facts. In an October, 2019 Quillette article I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life Begins. The Answer Was Not Popular, Steve Jacobs reported that he had polled 5,337 biologists asking each of them when life begins and 96% answered, at conception. Only 240 (4%) disagreed. Interestingly, 89% of these biologists self-identified as liberal; 85% said they were pro-choice; 63% were secular, and 92% were Democrats. The bottom line is that the scientific consensus does not materially influence their position on the question of life.

Many on the Left also deny the facts and the data regarding the allegation that rising inequality is occurring in the United States. The statistics that rebut this claim can be found in my article published in Merion West entitled In Reply to McManus: Harping on Income Inequality Ignores the Data.

Now we move on to the hard part. Ever since the polymath Francis Galton coined the term Nature Versus Nurture in the second half of the 19th century, the nature-nurture debate has raged on. As Nstor de Buen wrote in Merion West (When We Debate Biological Differences) this past July, All of these cases have one common thread: the Right will argue that differences between human groups (i.e. men and women, or Caucasians and African-Americans) are explained by biology, while the Left will argue that they are largely the result of socialization and historic circumstances. de Buens essay approaches the genes versus environment question from the Left, while my following arguments all spring from the biological side of this basic disagreement.

The first rejection of the idea of genes and human development (often called scientific racism) came from anthropologist Franz Boas. In his 1938 article entitled An Anthropologists Credo, he wrote,It is my conviction that the fundamental ethical point of view is that of the in-group, which must be expanded to include all humanity. This egalitarian bent was formalized in 1942 by one of Boass students, Ashley Montagu, in his book Mans Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. About this book, Aldous Huxley wrote that where most assume that facts speak for themselves, [Montagu] makes it clear that the facts are mere ventriloquists dummies, and can be made to justify a course of action that appeals to the socially conditioned passions of the individuals concerned.

Both men and much of the world were shocked and horrified by the countless travesties of Nazi Germany; as such, this social scientific idea spread far and wide. In his famous and extremely influential 1970 book, The Struggle of the Scientific Revolution, Thomas Kuhn reported:

Spending a year in a community composed predominantly of social scientists confronted me with unanticipated problems about the differences between such communities and those of the natural scientists among whom I had been trained. Particularly, I was struck by the number and extent of the overt disagreements between social scientists about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods [] Somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry, or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today often seem endemic among say, psychologists or sociologists.

In short, the social sciences were rejecting on ethical grounds the findings of the hard sciences.

Then, in 1972, the Left altered course by asserting that the genetic findings of the hard sciences were simply wrong. Richard Lewontins paper The Apportionment of Human Diversity concluded that 80-85% of the variation within human populations is found within local geographic groups and the differences attributable to traditional race groups are a minor part of human genetic variability and thus race had to be a social construct. This idea that there exists no scientific basis for human races spread quickly through the academy and through much of the media.

Next, in their 1984 book Not in Our Genes, Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin added a purely political goal: equal economic outcomes. In their own words, We share a commitment to the project of the creation of a more socially justsocialistsociety. And we recognize that a critical science is an integral part of the struggle to create that society. Their egalitarian goal was now obvious. Diminishing their stature was the recollection of Robert Trivers, a top-notch evolutionary biologist in his own right, who remembered in Vignettes of Famous Evolutionary Biologists Large and Small that Lewontin would lie openly and admit doing so. Lewontin would sometimes admit [] that some of his assertions were indeed fabrications, but he says the fight was ideological and politicalthey lied and so would he. Further deflating Lewontins image was his 1985 book, The Dialectical Biologist, which he co-authored with Richard Levins. In The Dialectical Biologist,they asserted that there was nothing in Marxist or Leninism that could be contradicted by objective reality.

In 1994, Richard Herrnstein & Charles Murray published The Bell Curve, and the battle was truly joined. A number of books written by social scientists were rushed into print all criticizing The Bell Curve, and a rebuttal to this onslaught was signed by over 50 experts regarding the science of intelligence and published in The Wall Street Journal in December of 1994, as an op-ed entitled Mainstream Science on Intelligence. This article stated in part that Intelligence can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. (These IQ tests) are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments.

Among the books that attacked The Bell Curve was an effort by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman, who published in 1995 The Bell Curve Debate. Their book contained two essays by Leon Kamin. In one of these essays, he engaged in some initial backpedaling. In The Pioneers of IQ Testing Kamin offered that, There is, of course, the theoretical possibility that the genetic theorists are correct. IQ is highly heritable and perhaps differences between races [] are in large measure due to heredity. There are serious scholars who have assumed this, and who have labored to adduce supporting evidence. Their data ought not to be ignored, and they deserve careful scrutiny.

Things remained relatively quiet until 2000 when the project to synthesize the human genome was completed (after which genetic research took off). Also, in 2003, A.W.F. Edwards struck an important blow against the nurture side of the genes/environment debate by publishing a scholarly paper entitled Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontins Fallacy. In this paper, he found that:

It is therefore been proposed that the division of Homo Sapiens into (ethnic or racial) groups is unjustified by genetic data. This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.

This was followed in 2005 by Richard Dawkins writing in The Ancestors Tale that However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics, as there are, highly correlate with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance. And, thus, any vitality remaining in Lewontins 1972 paper was dissipated.

Then, in 2004, the highly regarded scientific journal, Nature Genetics, devoted an entire special edition (Genetics for the Human Race) to the question of whether human races exist, and the journal found that they did. Next, in a March, 2005 op-ed in The New York Times A Family Tree in Every Gene, Armand Marie Leroi asserted that the consensus regarding social constructs was unraveling and that the new genetic data show that races exist. (Note: Lerois book Mutants: On Human Variety and the Human Body, isby farthe very best book that I have read regarding the role of genes in human development. It is readable, short and persuasive.) One of the 2004 papers that appeared in the Nature Genetics special edition was by Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding entitled Genetic Variation, Classification and Race.' It found that Genetic variation is geographically structured, as expected from the partial isolation of human populations during much of their history. Because traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.

As quoted in Philosophy of Race Versus Population Genetics Round, this and countless other scientific findings led the President of the American Sociologicalin his 2005 presidential addressto call upon members to, Prepare to defend against the genomic data juggernaut heading their way down the pike.

The scientific evidence supporting nature over nurture continued to roll in. For example, in a 2007 article by Tarmo Strenze entitled Intelligence and Socioeconomic Success: A Meta-Analytic Review of Longitudinal Research, it was found that, The relationship between intelligence and socioeconomic success has been the source of numerous controversies. These results demonstrate that intelligence is a powerful predictor of success This sent the progressive lefts claim that economic success is due to privilege down in flames. Even African-American academics joined the fray. In the Winter 2008/2009 edition of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the article Why Family Income Differences Dont Explain the Racial Gap in SAT Scores appeared, and it reported that, For Black and White students from families with incomes of more than $200,000 in 2008, there still remains a huge 149-point gap in SAT scores. Even more startling is the fact that in 2008 Black students from families with incomes of more than $200,000 scored LOWER (emphasis in the original) on the SAT test than did students from White families with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000.

In the interim, neuroscientists had joined the debate. Using functional MRI (fMRI), they were confirming what the geneticists had been discovering. In 2010, Ian J. Deary, Lars Penke, and Wendy Johnson published a paper entitled The Neuroscience of Human Intelligence Differences in the journal Nature Reviews: Neuroscience. They found that, Neuroscience is contributing to the understanding of the biological bases of human intelligence differences [] Quantitative genetic studies have established that there are additive genetic contributions to different aspects of cognitive abilityespecially general intelligenceand how they change through the lifespan. They continued, The brains of some people are more efficient than those of others. The biological foundations of these differences are of great interest to basic and applied neuroscience. There are already some well-replicated general findings. Thus, the differential neuroscience of human intelligence, therefore, has a strong mandate and a firm foundation from which to proceed. Later the authors added, The first adequately powered genome-wide studies of intelligence are in progress.

In 2014, a study by Mark Horowitz entitled Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas Among Sociological Theorists was published in the journal Sociological Spectrum. His paper caused quite a storm in the community of social scientists. Horowitz found that, Sociology is a house divided. Just over half of the (sociological) theorists in our sample deny the role of natural selection in shaping a range of human tendencies. Many more are unwilling to acknowledge the plausibility of evolutionary argument applied to sex differences. (Does this not sound at least a little bit like the beliefs held by Evangelical Christians who also deny evolution?) Progressive social scientists lashed out at this study, but both Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker rushed to Horowitzs defense. As Jonathan Haidt wrote in his article Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Studies:

When facts conflict withsacred values, almost everyone finds a way to stick with their values and reject the evidence. On the Left, including the academic Left, the most sacred issues involve race and gender. So thats where you find most direct and I would say flagrant denial of evidence. I think the results of this study do clearly show that political concerns influence the willingness of sociologists to consider a major class of causal factors in human behavior.

To this point, Steven Pinker, in an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled Liberals Deny Science, Too, added that Im not surprised by the findings of this study. Sociology itself is a divided discipline, with radically diverging views on the role of science in general and of course evolution and genetics in particular. Nor am I surprised that gender is the bloodiest shirt. Together with race, gender has always been the biggest impetus for believing in the blank slate, and since the Larry Summers affair almost a decade ago, that has only intensified.

Another uproar came in 2014 with the publication of Nicholas Wades bookTroublesome Inheritances: Genes, Race, and Human History, which asserted that, race has a biological basis, one that is found in the subtle quality of allele frequency. This claim is far more likely than the alternative, that evolution has played no role whatever in shaping present-day societies. (Note: Wade clearly pointed out in the preface of his book that the first half was factual, and the second half was speculation. However, this did not stop 139 geneticists from signing a letter to the editor in The New York Times insisting that the latter portion of Wades book had not yet been demonstrated conclusively.)

A year later, science took a sharp turn away from nurture and toward an almost totally deterministic impact of genes. In an article entitled Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies, J.C. Polderman examined all of the twin studies from 1958 through 2012 (numbering 2,748 separate research projects that looked at 14,558,903 twin pairs, as well as 17,804 human traits). Poldermans meta-analysis was published in the journal Nature Genetics. These scientific researchers found that the observed pattern of twin correlations is consistent with a simple and parsimonious underlying model of the absence of environmental effects shared by twin pairs and the presence of genetic effects that are entirely due to additive genetic variation.

Richard Haier, former editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Intelligence, published a book entitled The Neuroscience of Intelligence in 2017, which found that researchers using functional MRI (fMRI) have concluded that:

Everyone has a notion about defining intelligence and an opinion about how differences among individuals may contribute to academic success and life achievement. Conflicting and controversial ideas are common about how intelligence develops. You may be surprised to learn that the scientific findings about these topics are more definite than you think. The weight intelligence from neuroscience research is rapidly correcting outdated and erroneous beliefs.

He continued, if you already believe that intelligence is due mostly to the environment, new neuroscience facts might be difficult to accept. Denial is a common response when new information conflicts with your prior beliefs. The older you are, the more impervious your beliefs may be. Santiago Casal, the father of neuroscience, once wrote: Nothing inspires more reverence and awe in me than the old man who knows how to change his mind.'

In 2018, Harvard geneticist David Reich published the book Who We Are and How We Got Here, bringing with it the following thoughts: Reich allows readers to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species. Reich delves into how the genetic revolution is transforming our understanding of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal deep inequalities among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals. Even more compelling was the op-ed How Genetics is Changing Our Understanding of Race that Reich wrote for The New York Times in March of 2018. According to Reich, it was found that with Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing [we now know that] differences in genetic ancestry that happens to correlate to many of todays racial constructs are real. Later, Reich followed by writing, I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist, I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among races.' He concluded: I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations (races) are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science.

In 2018, a group of sociologists decided to confront head-on this question, and they published the book Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics. The forward to this tome was penned by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and it offered:

For decades most [social science] scholars and even the general publicat least in the United Statesgenerally accepted the story that races are socially constructed [but] after the initial completion of the genome [project] around the year 2000, some in the scientific community began unearthing vestiges of debates and questions around the science-race linkage. Even prominent scientific journals such as Science and Nature published articles that seemed to reassert the existence of categories that match the traditional understanding of racial groups. These developments have forced social scientists to reconsider race: To ask whether there is any credence to the natural science arguments that there might be a biological and genomic foundation to racial categories.

On January 28, 2020, Charles Murrays latest effort Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class hit bookstore shelves, and another blow was struck against the soft sciences orthodoxy of social construction. According to Murray, All people are equal [but] all groups of people are not the same. Murray also writes:

advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas: gender is a social construct; race is a social construct and class is a function of privilege. The problem is that all three dogmas are half-truths. They have stifled progress in understanding the rich texture that biology adds to our understanding of the social, political, and economic worlds we live inWhy the resistance? Because social scientists have been in the grip of an orthodoxy (gender, race & class) that is sacred stiff of biologyThe core doctrine of the (gender, race & class) orthodoxy in the social sciences is a particular understanding of human equality.

It is not, for Murray, equality in the sense of Americas traditional idealall are equal in the eyes of God, have inherent dignity, and should be treated equally under the lawbut equality in the sense of sameness. in a properly run society, people of all human groupings will have similar life outcomes. (Emphasis in the original) Individuals might have differences in abilities but groups do not have inborn differences in the distribution of abilities. Inside the cranium, all groups are the same.

I firmly believe that all of the aforementioned scientific evidence, findings, and data lead to the conclusion that many members of the progressive left are failing to accept the clear cut truth on a number of issues, thereby doing precisely what they accuse their conservative counterparts of.

Climate Change

But what about climate change? I now turn to that topic, and readers will quickly see why I saved global warming until the end. First, here is an overview of the alleged scientific consensus regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Three surveys of climatologists have determined that 97% of these scientists believe in AGW. This finding has been repeatedly reported in the media. However, what many media outlets never mention is that a nationwide poll taken of meteorologists in 2016 found that Nearly half of weathercasters (46%) are convinced that the climate change over the past 50 years has been primarily or entirely due to human activity, and nearly one quarter (22%) think it is more or less equally caused by human activity and natural events. About one quarter (24%) think the change has been primarily or entirely due to natural events. But 46% is nowhere near 97%. And, far too frequently, media outlets fail to tell the complete story of scientific findings on climate change. As such, I have included below a non-exhaustive list of findings from climate science that might appear very surprising to those who have exclusively followed certain popular treatments of the issue.

Scafetta et al (2017) concluded that The severe discrepancy between observations and modeled predictions found during the 1922-1941 and 2000-2016 periods further confirms, according to the criteria proposed by the AGW theory advocates themselves, that the current climate models have significantly exaggerated the anthropogenic greenhouse warming effect. According to AGW theory advocates own criteria, a divergence between observations and climate models occurring at a bi-decadal scale would provide strong convincing evidence that the global climate models used to support the AGW theory are severely flawed. Thus the models are not able to reproduce the natural variability observed in the climate system and should not be trusted for future planning.

Cerrone & Fusco (2018) the results herein indicate that a progressive cooling has affected the year-to-year climate of the sub-Antarctic since the 1990s.

Kim et al (2018) the Yellow and East China Seas are widely believed to have experienced robust, basin-scale warming over the last few decades. However, this warming reached a peak in the late 1990s, followed by a significant cooling trend.

Morner (2018) The concept of an anthropogenic global warming (AGW) driven by the increase in atmospheric CO2 is compared to the concept of a natural global warming (NGW) driven by solar variability. The application of the AGW concept only rests on models, whilst the NGW concept rests on multiple observational and evidence-based facts. Even more so, the long-term solar variability predicts a new Grand Solar Minimum with severe climatic conditions (type Little Ice Age) to occur in 2030-2050. This violates all talk about an increasing, even accelerating, global warming. Similarly, there is no true treat of a future sea level rise flooding lowlands and islands.

Shen et al (2018) The results showed both future climate change (precipitation and temperature) and hydrologic response predicted by 20 global climate models were highly uncertain, and the uncertainty increased significantly over time.

Abbott & Marohasy (2018) While general circulation models are used by meteorological agencies around the world for rainfall forecasting, they do not generally perform well at forecasting medium-term rainfall, despite substantial efforts to enhance performance over many years. These are the same models used by the IPCC to forecast climate change over decades.

Scafetta et al (2018) Herein, the authors show that such a temperature peak is unrelated to anthropogenic forcing: it simply emerged from the natural fast fluctuations of the climate associated to the El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. By removing the ENSO signature, the authors show that the temperature trend from 2000 to 2016 clearly diverges from the general circulation model (GCM) simulations. Thus, the GCMs models used to support the AGWT are very likely flawed.

Lean (2018) Climate change detection and attribution have proven unexpectedly challenging during the 21st century. Earths global surface temperature rose less rapidly from 2000 to 2015 than during the last half of the 20th century, even though greenhouse gas concentrations continued to increase.

Scafetta & Wilson (2019) The climate warming hiatus observed since 2000 is inconsistent with CO2 AGW climate models [citations omitted].CO2 anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) climate models [citations omitted]. This points to a significant percentage of the observed 19802000 warming being driven by TSI variation [citations omitted]. A number of other studies have pointed out that climate change and TSI variability are strongly correlated throughout the Holocene including the recent decades [citations omitted].

Pei et al (2019) During the period of 0-10,000 years before present, Chinas temperature has closely followed the solar forcing. The correlation is as high as 0.800 (p less than 0.01) for Empirical Orthogonal Function-based reconstruction.

Paudel et al (2019) On a global scale changes in cloud cover were found to be significantly related to changes in solar activity through its effect on the flux of cosmic rays reaching the lower atmosphere [citations omitted] suggesting changes in solar emissions could be related to those in cloud cover and global radiation at the Earths surfaceAnalysis by stepwise regression indicated that since 1970 changes in cloud cover accounted for 61% of the changes in Egwhile the major increase in local fossil fuel consumption, serving as a proxy for anthropogenic aerosol emissions, only accounted for an additional 2% of the changes.

Varotsos & Efstathiou (2019) Based on these results and bearing in mind that climate systems are complicated and complex with existing uncertainties in the climate predictions, it is not possible to reliably support the view of the presence of global warming in the sense of an enhanced greenhouse effect due to human activities.

Kauppinen & Malmi (2019) The IPCC climate sensitivity is about one order of magnitude too high because the strong negative feedback of clouds is missing in climate models. If we pay attention to the fact that only a small part of the increased CO2 concentration is anthropogenic, we have to recognize that anthropogenic climate change does not exist in practice. The major part of the extra CO2 is emitted from oceans (cite omitted), according to Henrys Law. The low clouds practically control the global average temperature. The last 100 years the temperature was increased by about 0.1 degrees C because of CO2. The human contribution was about 0.01 degrees C.

Mao et al (2019) In science, when there are two or more ideas to be employed to explain the recent global warming, we always trust which can fit perfectly all the observed monthly anomaly of GLST from 1880 to now. Until now, no one claims that he can fit perfectly the observed monthly anomaly of GLST from 1880 to now as we do The function with best verification result has also been employed to predict the future behavior of the monthly anomaly of GLST; we can see that the downward trend for the monthly anomaly of GLST had already begun; it will reach the lowest point at 0.6051C in 2111.

Conclusion

Given all of this, it appears that both progressives and conservatives ignore or reject the facts and the science when it suits their ideological need to do so. That said, as I have argued, it appears that the Left is actually more guilty of these transgressions against the truth than the Right. Given this reality, perhaps certain Democratic politicians and media outlets should cease and desist slandering their political adversaries with the mostly false allegation that conservatives regularly reject or at least ignore the facts and the science. Regardless of what the Left decides on that matter, one should always remember what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said on Real Time with Bill Maher in April of 2011: The good thing about science is that it is the truth whether or not you believe it..

Richard W. Burcik is a retired economist and attorney.

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Conservatives Are Not the Only Ones Who Ignore Facts and the Science - Merion West

Coronavirus in Scotland: Charity warns Covid will cause a spike in ME cases – as it calls for ‘harmful’ exercise treatment to be banned -…

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CAMPAIGNERS have called on NHS Scotland to ban an exercise treatment which encourages patients with chronic fatigue to "push through" their symptoms, saying it has left some in a wheelchair.

Charity, ME Action Scotland, is pushing for the change ahead of what it fears will be a surge in cases of post-viral illness in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 21,000 Scots already suffer from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), also known a chronic fatigue syndrome.

Onset typically follows a bout of viral or bacterial infections such as glandular fever or pneumonia, with evidence also suggesting that ME is more likely to arise if the patient felt fearful or anxious during their illness - something which is more likely in a pandemic scenario.

READ MORE: Belle & Sebastian frontman says more must be done for 'urban leper' ME patients

Symptoms include debilitating muscle and joint pain, extreme exhaustion, nausea, dizziness and insomnia.

Most patients will have periods where their condition improves but then relapses, sometimes leaving them bedridden.

Professor Chris Ponting, chair of medical bioinformatics at Edinburgh University and group leader in the MRC Human Genetics Unit, said: "Unfortunately, it is possible that Covid-19 will lead to an increase in the number of people with ME.

"Of those people who have Covid-19 symptoms quite severely, I would expect about 10 per cent to have fatigue-like syndromes after six months.

Currently, many patients with ME in Scotland are prescribed a treatment called Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) which asks patients to continually increase their levels of activity and push through symptoms.

A survey of 2,274 ME patients carried out by research Oxford Brookes University found that 67 per cent of those who underwent GET experienced a deterioration in their physical health.

ME Action Scotland said it has heard from patients who are now housebound or confined to a wheelchair having previously been mobile and able to work.

In 2017, the American Centres for Disease Control removed GET from its recommended therapies for ME following an outcry over a controversial clinical trial.

ME Action Scotland has written to Scotland's Chief Medical Officer and Health Secretary Jeane Freeman asking them to do the same.

READ MORE: ME battle of Scottish rocker - 'I just disappeared'

The PACE study, a randomised control trial with 641 participants from Scotland and England, concluded in 2011 that psychotherapy and exercise could significantly improve and sometimes cure ME.

Patients who claimed GET was actually making them worse were dismissed and accused of hijacking the debate with a "very damaging" agenda.

Unpublished data from the trial was eventually released in 2018 following a lengthy legal battle brought by an Australian patient, resulting in other scientists criticising PACE as fundamentally flawed with "grossly inflated" recovery rates.

A 2019 review of the PACE trial by the UK's Health Research Authority did not find fault with the investigators, however.

Janet Sylvester, of ME Action Scotland, said: We have been campaigning to have GET removed as treatment in Scotland since 2017.

"We are urgently renewing our appeal to have GET removed as treatment in Scotland in the light of the evidence that this harmful treatment not only continues to harm ME patients, but is likely to be recommended to post Covid-19 patients suffering from fatigue related illnesses.

Louise McAllan, from Stirling, was prescribed GET after an acute onset of ME aged 30.

She said: "It would be a six month wait for treatment and during this time I began to recover, but once the treatment began however, I rapidly declined. As my body failed I was told to keep pushing through, that it was just a mindset and that exercising would make me better.

"I trusted them and desperately wanted to be better, so I did what they said and tried to ignore the pain. After treatment I couldnt even lift a fork to my mouth to eat and I remained house bound and unable to walk for many years. I had to give up my job as a teacher and struggled to see friends or do any activity at all.

"Despite how unwell it had made me, I was offered GET several times more by different GPs, who didnt believe that it had made me worse. GET should not be offered to anyone else, it needs to stop immediately."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said it is working with Action for ME to fund research into the biomedical understanding of the illness.

She said: Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) will not be suitable for everyone with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). While some studies report people feel worse after GET, these studies also reflect some people with moderate to mild symptoms of ME/CFS have found GET to be beneficial in treating their condition.

"The risks of treatment must always be explained and discussed before individuals decide to proceed with treatment delivered by a suitably trained GET therapist with experience in ME-CFS.

The findings from two projects we are currently undertaking, to understand the needs of people living with ME/CFS and what practices and provision are available, coupled with the forthcoming update of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellences guideline on ME/CFS that will take account of latest evidence, including patients experiences about GET, will inform developments in care and support for ME/CFS in Scotland.

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Coronavirus in Scotland: Charity warns Covid will cause a spike in ME cases - as it calls for 'harmful' exercise treatment to be banned -...

Dr. Misaki Wayengera: The Man Behind Uganda’s Covid 19 Test Kits – New Vision

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Wayengera is behind the country's effort to manufacture test kits. Courtesy photo

Testing is key for diagnosing and tracking the magnitude of the disease to know how many people have been infected or could infect others.

While people in Uganda have been asked to stay at home to contain the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a few others must continue working to find answers to the pandemic.

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc across the world. Uganda, just like most countries globally, is relying on aggressive screening and testing as the best approach to determine whether the virus is present in communities, and how far it has spread.

Testing is key for diagnosing and tracking the magnitude of the disease to know how many people have been infected or could infect others.

But, the high global demand for testing kits has strained supply.

Production and delivery of testing kits to meet demand is short. In turn, it has led to a rise in fake kits and a race to develop standardized, rapid, and accurate diagnostic tests.

Currently, Uganda is able to conduct over 2000 tests daily, and over 40, 000 tests have been carried out in total, which is much higher than tests conducted by any other East African country. But in South Korea alone, nearly 20,000 people are tested daily.

But not to worry, the number of tests could soon go much higher as Dr. Misaki Wayengera a Clinical Geneticist, Immunologist, and Virologist along with a team of other Ugandan scientists, are developing a cheaper COVID-19 testing kit that could deliver results in a minute or two. For him, it is about offering a homegrown solution to the testing gap.

Love For Science and Country

The innovation is not the first for Wayengera, he also developed the pan-filovirus rapid diagnostic test, a paper-strip test that can detect the Ebola and Marburg viruses in five minutes.

Wayengera is a towering and vibrant figure among his peers. He does not hesitate to share knowledge when he gives his time and is always happy to talk about science.

When I joined medical school, my friends were reading books to pass, I wanted to bring about change, he told a Ugandan television in an interview.

He is patriotic, and always talks about how his works should benefit the country, and develop Africa for Africans. His patriotism is rare to find among professionals, says Ian Peter Busuulwa a digital communications officer with Science Stories Africa and a biotechnologist who engages in agricultural research and science.

He is also passionate about sharing knowledge. He could be in some leading global pharmaceutical company earning lots of money, but Wanyengera finds it necessary to stay in Uganda, working with Makerere University to pass on knowledge to young scientists, he adds.

Who is Dr. Wanyengera

Wayengera is a medical doctor with graduate training, Masters of Science (MSc), Fellowship, and Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in a diverse array of scientific fields including Immunology, Vaccinology, Clinical Microbiology, Genetics, and Filovirology.

It was in 2000 while a medical student, that he picked interest in studying filoviruses that can cause severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and non-human primates.

In 2007 while studying genomes of filoviruses, Wayengera focused his energy on the understanding of Ebola and Marburg viruses with targets for both vaccine and diagnostic development. He successfully developed a rapid testing kit for both viruses.

Wayengera also holds expert skills-training in Bioentrepeneurship and Research and Development.

Serving, Breaking Boundaries

Over the past 10 years, he has served as In-Charge of the Unit of Genetics and Genomics (a super-specialized referral centre for children and adults born with rare, Mendelian disease at the Mulago National Reference and Teaching Hospital Complex, Kampala, Uganda.

He is also In-Charge of the Unit of Genetic and Genomics, Department of Immunology and Molecular Biology at School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences at Makerere University.

Wayengera is also a member of the African Society for Human Genetics (AfSHG) and Ex-Chair of the Education and Coordinated Working Group (ECTWG) of the H3Africa Consortium that empowers African Researchers to be competitive in genomic sciences and nurtures effective collaboration.

My research interests center on pathogens (virus, bacterium and other microorganisms that can cause disease) with a focus on identifying new its molecular targets (minute particles) for research and development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, he says.

Together with his team, Wayengera has not only built the necessary expertise and experience but also established a network of partners from across the academia, industry, and public-private partnerships.

For this work and its impact on the 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Wayengera was listed as the 57th of the 100 most influential Africans of 2015.

Last year (2019), his team won the 1st Prize for the World Health Organisation (WHO) innovation Challenge (Product Development), and he was nominated as REACH Award Finalist - Reaching the Last Mile (REACH/RLM).

Wayengera is currently (2019-2020) The World Academy of Sciences Sub Saharan Africa Regional Partner (TWAS-SAREP) Young Scientist award winner (Infectious Diseases).

He is also the Chair of the COVID-19 scientific committee in Uganda leading the response to the coronavirus.

Providing Solutions

I am excited Dr. Wayengera and his team are in the process of developing a testing kit for COVID-19. There is a huge challenge globally for testing kits. We look forward to this innovation closing this gap. He did the same for Ebola, says Professor Rhoda Wanyenze a Physician, Public Health Consultant, and Dean Makerere University School of Public Health.

It is always good to see scientists use their knowledge to develop innovations that address the critical aspects of health for our society. We keep getting epidemics. Right now besides COVID-19, neighbours DR Congo also have Ebola in the town of Beni, she says.

Professor Wanyenze says Wayengera is working on critical matters developing diagnostics. The STDS-Agx (swab tube dipstick agglutination) COVID-19 test kit developed by Wayengeras team can produce results in a minute or two, compared to the four-to-six hours it takes to get results from the WHO accredited Reverse transcription-polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) based tests that quantitate changes in gene expression, now in use.

Each kit will cost an estimated US$1.07 (about sh4,000), making testing affordable. It is intended for use in rural settings, which often lack laboratory capacity or expertise, says Wayengera.

It is a home-based solution to the evident scarcity of resources for the management of this pandemic globally. Everyone is running to the market and the difference in economic prowess means poor countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa are left with nothing. We must innovate around these shortages to fight the pandemic, he says.

The Makerere University research team expects to have a prototype ready to be put into use next month, pending expert validations.

Three versions of the test kit are being developed. The tests will work by generating solid particles from the reaction of the virus with antibodies or vice versa.

The work has been seed funded by about US$22,000 from the Makerere University Research and Innovation Fund.

Wayengera says an estimated $272,000 will be required to develop a prototype and over $ 0.5million will be needed to mass-produce the kits.

Additional costs will also be incurred for regulatory approval, intellectual property protection, and commercialisation.

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Dr. Misaki Wayengera: The Man Behind Uganda's Covid 19 Test Kits - New Vision

Its In The Genes? Scientists Think Coronavirus Exploits Silent Hidden Mutations In The Body – International Business Times

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KEY POINTS

Health experts have been baffled as to why there are people infected with COVID-19 and yet barely feel the infection while others suffer life-threatening symptoms even if healthy and young. Scientists are looking for answers in the genes of patients, trying to discover mutations that affect the immune response, hoping that it could help in coming up with new treatments.

Profile Of A Severe Case

During the early days of the pandemic, a general profile of a severe case of coronavirus infection started to emerge. They are older adults with pre-existing medical conditions and are likely to be male. As the virus continued to infect more people, a small fraction started to deviate from the general profile.

Health experts are starting to see around 5% of those infected are under the age of 50 and do not have any underlying health conditions. These are the group of patients that interest Dr. Jean-Laurent Casanova, a geneticist and head of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Casanova told the AFP it is possible for someone who joined a marathon in October 2019 to find himself in intensive care, ventilated and intubated in April 2020. He revealed his desire to know if these types of patients have rare genetic mutations that have been triggered by the coronavirus infection. The assumption is that these patients have genetic variations that are silent until the virus is encountered, the doctor said. coronavirus silent mutation in human body may be the one exploited by the virus Photo: TPHeinz - Pixabay

A Huge Global Effort

The geneticist co-founded the COVID Human Genetics Effort, a collaborative work that seeks to know more about the genome of severely-ill young patients in several countries worldwide. These include patients in Europe, Japan, Iran, China, and the United States.

Dr. Casanovas group is also studying those who did not get infected despite being exposed many times. He said their main goal is to know why some are sicker than others, a knowledge that the geneticist said might help them in their quest to develop anti-viral therapies.

Gene Mutations Have A Long History

Scientists have long known that gene mutations can make people more susceptible to an array of infectious diseases, ranging from influenza to viral encephalitis. These gene mutations can also offer protection sometimes.

In the 1990s, a group of researchers found out that some rare mutations of a single gene successfully protected people against HIV infection. This discovery led to a betterunderstanding of how the virus worked and eventually paved the way for scientists to develop new treatments.

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Its In The Genes? Scientists Think Coronavirus Exploits Silent Hidden Mutations In The Body - International Business Times

From blood clots to ‘Covid toe’: Experts confounded by series of medical mysteries – The Straits Times

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LONDON When the first cases of a new coronavirus started to appear in China last December, the disease seemed to be a particularly aggressive respiratory infection. An "urgent notice" that month from the Wuhan health commission warned of "successive cases of unknown pneumonia".

Respiratory symptoms are still the first signs that doctors look for in suspected Covid-19 cases: cough, shortness of breath and fever.

But, less than five months after it was first identified, this new coronavirus is managing to throw up a series of medical mysteries - from blood clots and strokes to digestive problems - that are confounding the scientific community.

From head to foot, Covid-19 causes a fiendish variety of symptoms. Some are relatively mild, such as loss of smell and taste or chilblain-like sores on toes. But others may be fatal, such as when what doctors call an immune storm destroys vital organs. The more this virus is studied, the more complex it appears to be. "Every day we're learning of new tricks that the virus plays," Imperial College London's professor of experimental medicine Peter Openshaw says. "It is remarkable to see a disease unfolding in front of our eyes with so many twists and turns."

The proliferation of complex symptoms is not just a challenge for doctors treating the disease, but also for health systems trying to adapt to the pandemic. In the early months, the focus was on getting hold of ventilators that could help patients with severe respiratory problems. But now hospitals are also scrambling for more kidney dialysis machines and anticoagulant drugs.

A single individual can suffer the disease in more than one form, Prof Openshaw adds. "There are accounts of people experiencing one symptom, for example coughing, appearing to recover or go into remission and then returning with a more serious systemic disease."

With the worldwide death toll from Covid-19 already nearing 260,000 and confirmed cases close to exceeding 3.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, scientists have mobilised at a speed and on a scale unprecedented in the history of medicine, in an effort to understand the myriad ways in which the virus affects the human body. They hope that their research will not only improve clinical care of patients but also help the development of drugs and vaccines.

The initial diagnosis was that it was a respiratory infection, like its sister diseases Sars and Mers which are also caused by coronaviruses.

Respiratory symptoms remain the most common manifestations of Covid-19 in patients who go to hospital, according to a study of almost 17,000 people admitted to 166 UK hospitals carried out by a research consortium from Imperial College and Liverpool and Edinburgh universities. About two-thirds of patients in the study - the largest of Covid-19 hospital patients outside China - were admitted suffering from respiratory symptoms, says Dr Annemarie Docherty of Edinburgh, the lead author of the paper. But that proportion may have been raised by the fact that they reflect the official case definition of Covid-19.

But two other clusters of symptoms also dominate hospital admissions: systemic musculoskeletal symptoms (muscle and joint pain and fatigue) and enteric symptoms (abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea). Many patients suffer from several symptoms simultaneously.

How the immune system reacts to Covid-19 is key to the course of the disease in adults. People who have been suffering with mild to moderate symptoms for a week or so often seem to hit a critical point: usually their immune system gets the virus under full control and sets them on a path to full recovery - but sometimes it goes into overdrive, triggering systemic inflammation and in severe cases a "cytokine storm" that destroys tissues and whole organs.

Inflammation also helps to explain why obesity makes people more susceptible to severe Covid-19. Seventy-three per cent of coronavirus patients in UK intensive care units are overweight or obese, with a body mass index above 25. "Fat cells secrete chemicals that increase the body's inflammatory response," says Liverpool University's professor of child health Calum Semple.

Kidney damage has emerged as another of the most frequent serious consequences of Covid-19, with 23 per cent of patients in intensive care requiring renal support. As with other organs, it is uncertain to what extent the virus is directly attacking the kidneys or whether the harm results more from generalised overactivity of the immune system and consequent changes in the patient's blood circulation.

Cardiovascular disease is the most common pre-existing health condition in people who die of Covid-19, ahead of lung and respiratory disorders such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And many patients without a previous history of heart trouble develop severe cardiac symptoms while they are in hospital.

"When we first heard about the coronavirus we expected people with lung and breathing problems to be most at risk but that has not been the case," says the British Heart Foundation's medical director Nilesh Samani. "We need to understand why the virus is causing so many problems outside the lungs - and cardiovascular complications in particular."

The exaggerated immune response to the virus sometimes causes abnormal blood clotting. If this thrombosis happens in the brain, it may trigger a stroke. Neurologists at University College London (UCL) studied six Covid-19 patients who suffered acute stroke as a result of a large arterial blockage - in five of the cases more than a week after suffering headache, cough and fever and in one patient before other symptoms appeared.

The UCL researchers found all six patients had markedly raised blood levels of a protein fragment called D-dimer associated with abnormal clotting. The findings suggest that early testing for D-dimer could enable doctors to prescribe blood-thinning drugs to people at risk, reducing the chance of stroke or harmful clotting elsewhere in the body. "Early use of anticoagulant drugs might be helpful but this needs to be balanced against their brain bleeding risk," says study leader David Werring.

STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICS

"This study is consistent with the growing evidence that people hospitalised with Covid-19 are at risk from blood clots in multiple locations: the lungs (causing pulmonary embolus), the brain (causing stroke) and the veins (causing DVT)," says professor of cardiovascular medicine Tim Chico at Sheffield University. "The risk of blood clots with Covid-19 appears to be even greater than the increased risk of blood clots seen in other severe illnesses."

The coronavirus also seems capable of attacking the brain and nervous system directly, as well as indirectly through abnormal blood clotting, though the evidence for acute symptoms of neural infection is limited. The effects may show up in the longer term as post-viral fatigue.

Neurons in the olfactory bulb, which transmits information from the nose to the brain, are apparently infected by the virus. Indeed, anosmia - loss of the sense of smell - is one of the most frequently reported symptoms of mild infection, affecting about half of patients and lasting for several weeks in some cases.

The good news for those who develop anosmia is that they are much less likely to become seriously ill with Covid-19. Dr Carol Yan and colleagues at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) reported last week that patients reporting loss of smell were 10 times less likely to be admitted to hospital for Covid-19 than those without loss of smell.

The UCSD researchers suggest that a relatively small dose of virus delivered to the upper airway, where it causes anosmia, may be less likely to overwhelm the host immune response. "This hypothesis is in essence the concept underlying live vaccinations, where low dosage and a distant site of inoculation generates an immune response without provoking a severe infection," they say.

The declining strength of the immune system with age is a partial explanation for the increasing incidence of Covid-19 in older people. PHOTO: AFP

Besides anosmia, the most frequently seen minor symptoms are rashes, pustules and blisters on the skin - including lesions like chilblains that dermatologists are calling "Covid toe".

The results from the study led by Imperial College, Liverpool and Edinburgh universities echo other findings that the disease is much more common in men - who make up 60 per cent of UK Covid-19 hospital admissions - and its severity rises markedly with advancing years (the median age of patients is 72). The strong associations with the male sex and old age are a particular feature of Covid-19 compared with other infectious illnesses.

Data from the UK Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre shows that men make up 71.5 per cent of patients whose disease becomes severe enough to require intensive care treatment. A comparable control group of patients critically ill with non-Covid viral pneumonia was just 54.3 per cent male.

"The reason behind this difference in Covid risk is unknown," says Dr James Gill, honorary clinical lecturer at Warwick Medical School. "There are several schools of thought on the matter, from the assumption that simply men don't look after their bodies as well, with higher levels of smoking, alcohol use, obesity and other deleterious health behaviours, through to immunological variations in genders. Women may have a more aggressive immune system, meaning a greater resilience to infections."

University of Oxford's professor of immunology Philip Goulder points out that several critical immune genes are located on the X chromosome - of which women have two copies and men one. "The immune response to coronavirus is therefore amplified in females," he says.

The declining strength of the immune system with age is also a partial explanation for the increasing incidence of the disease in older people, though it is not clear why this trend is more pronounced in Covid-19 than in many other viral infections.

Children are remarkably - but not completely - resistant to the disease. Just 3 per cent of UK hospital patients are under 18. Again no one knows quite why. But one answer may lie in the "keyhole" through which coronavirus enters human cells, known as the ACE2 receptor. In children these receptors have not developed to their full adult stage and therefore may not fit the "spike protein" that the virus uses to enter cells.

It is also possible that ACE2 develops more quickly in children's upper airways than their lower respiratory tract, allowing them to become infected - and thus able to transmit Covid-19 - without showing the same progression to severe symptoms.

The National Health System in London and the UK Paediatric Intensive Care Society recently alerted doctors to a rise in the number of children suffering from "a multi-system inflammatory state" similar to toxic shock, which might result from the immune system overreacting to viral infection. Italian and US paediatricians have noticed a similar body-wide inflammatory syndrome in children.

This paediatric condition is rare but researchers are investigating, says Prof Semple. "Some respiratory viruses are associated with a systemic inflammatory response, typically two weeks after infection. But this could be a phenomenon of heightened awareness."

Research also shows that children are remarkably - but not completely - resistant to the disease. PHOTO: AFP

For Prof Openshaw, the mysteries of Covid-19 recall the early days of the HIV/Aids outbreak in the 1980s - except that this time, they are unfolding much more quickly. "We need the answers also to appear far faster than they did with HIV," he says.

A global research effort is on to discover human genetic factors that would help to explain why Covid-19 infection varies so much in its symptoms.

Although much of the variation results from environmental and lifestyle factors, scientists are convinced that genetics play a significant role too.

"Experience with other viruses shows that genetics can explain some of the different responses to infection," says Dr Mark Daly, director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland in Helsinki, who is coordinating the global response through the Covid-19 Host Genetics Initiative.

For example, genetic mutations on the CCR5 protein, which HIV uses to enter human cells, make rare individuals resistant to Aids. Researchers may find comparable variations in the human ACE2 protein, entry point of the coronavirus, designated as Sars-Cov-2, that causes Covid-19.

The Covid programme has two overlapping components. One uses human genomes already obtained for other research purposes from volunteers through bodies such as UK Biobank and Genomics England - and looks for differences in DNA between participants who become ill with Covid-19 and those who do not.

The other part obtains the fresh genomes from Covid-19 patients, looking for variations that might explain why some experience only mild symptoms while others become severely ill.

Genomics England, a public body owned by the UK Department of Health and Social Care, is involved in both approaches. Dr Mark Caulfield, its chief scientist, says it is too early to have obtained any results. "But I am confident that reading whole genomes will help to identify variation that affects response to Covid-19 and to discover new therapies."

Prof Daly hopes the initiative will have tens of thousands of human genomes to analyse. "We particularly want to identify a subset of younger individuals with no comorbidities who have a severe response to Sars-Cov-2 infection," he says.

FINANCIAL TIMES

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From blood clots to 'Covid toe': Experts confounded by series of medical mysteries - The Straits Times

MET 2020 Slot booking to commence on July 15, Examination dates available at manipal.edu – Jagran Josh

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MET 2020 Slot Booking: The Manipal Academy of Higher Education will be conducting the Manipal Entrance Test 2020 from July 24 to 27 and August 4 to 7, 2020. According to a recent announcement made, the Manipal Entrance Test 2020 will be conducted in the online mode. The slot bookings for the entrance tests will be open from July 15, 2020, onwards. Candidates who have applied for the entrance test can visit the official website for more details related to the entrance test.

The instructions to be followed by candidates during the slot booking process is available on the official website. Candidates are advised to read through the instructions provided carefully in order to complete the slot booking procedure without any mistakes.

MET 2020 Slot booking Guidelines

Candidates are advised to visit the official website - manipal.edu. To check the demo of the slot booking process for the Manipal Entrance Test 2020 candidates is advised to click on the link provided below.

MET Slot Booking Demo Direct Link

According to the notification available on the official website the MET 2020 examination is scheduled to be conducted in the decided number of cities and all the applications will be able to book their entrance test slots via the Online Test Booking System (OTBS) based on the availability of the seats. It must also be noted that in case a low number of applicants are seen in a particular city, the test centre will be shifted to the nearest city which is available on the OTBS.

The list of cities in each state where the Manipal Entrance Test 2020 will be conducted is available on the official website of MET. Candidates can also check the list of cities through the direct link provided below.

MET 2020 List of cities Direct Link

Manipal Academy of Higher Education conducts the Manipal Entrance Test 2020 for the admissions to the BTech, BTech (Lateral Entry Admissions), BPharm / PharmD, MTech, ME, MPharm / PharmD Post Baccalaureate, MSc Medical Biotechnology, MSc Molecular Biology & Human Genetics, MSc Systems Biology, MSc Genome Engineering, MSc by Research in Life Sciences programmes offered by the university.

Also Read: APSCHE to begin online GATE 2020 sessions for students during COVID-19 lockdown from today onwards

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MET 2020 Slot booking to commence on July 15, Examination dates available at manipal.edu - Jagran Josh

Lohit Group Harnesses Blockchain and Other Advanced Technologies to Provide Financial Independence – Yahoo Finance

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Lohit Group introduces a number of technology-backed platforms including a robust cryptocurrency exchange, to offer advanced financial solutions

DELHI, INDIA / ACCESSWIRE / May 5, 2020 / The world economy is an interconnected grid, where the economic circumstances in one country can have a massive impact on other geographies. This concept is extremely relevant in the present scenario, as the global financial dynamics have taken a turn in the wake of the pandemic. And, it is fair to say that this economic turnaround might well be a cause of concern for years to come. We have hit a roadblock, where millions are searching for jobs to sustain themselves, while employers are looking to hire the right employees for their businesses. Unfortunately, there is a gap that is preventing optimal usage of available resources, and in turn affecting the economy, which is already in a sensitive state. Lohit Group has come up with a technology-based solution to address the problem.

About Lohit Group

Originally founded in 1998, Lohit Group is a technology company that deals in financial services and fund management. Over the years, it has worked with a number of businesses at all scales and helped them succeed by providing various financial services and trading tools. More recently, it has forayed into advanced technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, etc. By harnessing these technologies, Lohit Group aims to create applications, tools, and platforms using which businesses and individuals will be able to weather out the effects of any economic instability.

Major Services

WorkbookingWorkbooking is a multi-faceted and integrated online platform that is aimed to benefit both job-seekers as well as employers. It creates a seamless bridge between businesses and potential employees, thus helping make optimal usage of human resources. The platform is equipped with automatic selection features based on preferred geographic location, timetable, job nature, and salary. While this allows job-seekers to set their preference, it also enables employers to select the right fit for their businesses. All in all, Workbooking is a win-win for both entities, which in turn benefits the entire employment scenario.

In order to keep up the recent economic digitalization, Lohit Group also offers blockchain and cryptocurrency-based products and solutions. The crypto industry is definitely growing in India, especially with a number of foreign investments off late. To leverage that potential, Lohit Group provides the following services - Crypto Wallet, Crypto Exchange, Binary Options.

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Lohit Group Harnesses Blockchain and Other Advanced Technologies to Provide Financial Independence - Yahoo Finance

The Coronavirus Crisis Has Tested the Retire-Early Movement. But Its Followers Are Unbowed, and Its Winning New Fans. – Barron’s

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When Ali and Alison Walker sold their Seattle home, said goodbye to their jobs, and set off on an around-the-world journey in 2018, the markets were still on the upswing and their early retirement was unfolding with hardly a hitch.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic and an abrupt turn in markets that slammed the Walkers investments and confined them to an Airbnb in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, amid global travel restrictions.

Yet the Walkers, like many proponents of the financial independence, retire early movement, seem largely unfazed. FIRE adherents pursue their goals by saving aggressively, and in the past 11 years, many have taken advantage of a historic bull market to build solid nest eggs.

We planned for some type of a black-swan event, says the 46-year-old Ali, who worked in marketing and business development. We couldnt have planned for the coronavirus, but we assumed there would be a tough bear market or a prolonged down market for one reason or another.

Still, the coronavirus crisis is a big test for the FIRE philosophy, with some observers wondering if the crisis will knock devotees off trackor even extinguish the FIRE flame and push those who have achieved their goals back into an office cubicle.

Yet far from dousing interest in FIRE, so far it seems as if the crisis may lead more people to investigate the philosophy. Just as people flocked to the movement in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, those who feel burned by the current crisis may find themselves turning to FIRE strategies in a bid to be more self-sufficient.

What part of biggest unemployment spike in history makes you want to be more reliant on your job? says Tanja Hester, author of the book Work Optional and the FIRE blog Our Next Life. Its a huge reminder that workers are expendable, and there isnt a great safety net out there for us.

Many FIRE adherents start out in good financial shape. They are often financially disciplined millennials or Gen-Xers with well-paid jobs, banking big chunks of their salary in hopes of making an early exit from the workforce. Given their relatively long time horizons, they often take on a lot of investment risk.

Yet even though many pursuing a FIRE strategy invest aggressively, they employ some strategies that may leave them particularly well suited to weather the economic storm. They often emphasize large emergency funds, low costs of living, and well-diversified investments and income streams.

Consider the Walkers: The couple set aside five years of cash to cover their expenses in the case of a sustained downturn, and decided on a conservative annual withdrawal rate of 3% of their savings. They also gave themselves plenty of wiggle room in their budget to pare back expenses if needed.

One of the great things about the FIRE movement is that it talks a lot about the different scenarios you should prepare for before deciding to retire, says the 56-year-old Alison, who had worked retouching images for catalogs and corporate clients.

Marcus Miller, a financial planner who specializes in working with FIRE clients at the Indianapolis offices of Deerfield Financial Advisors, says the philosophy attracts disciplined investors of a cautious mindset. If you take a look at the people who comprise the FIRE movement, its people who often live below their means and have built this war chest to live off of. They may be better equipped to weather a storm like this than the majority of Americans.

Even among the best-prepared, some who are following the FIRE path are likely to face challenges in the current environment. This may be especially true of people who are close to, or just starting, their early retirement. The sharp downturn in the financial markets ratchets up the risk that drawing down investments nowrather than waiting for markets to rebound before tapping investmentscan throw off assumptions about long-term returns and savings growth.

This sequence-of-return risk can have a big impact on what youre able to spend later in your retirement, says Matt Ryan, a financial planner at San Diegobased Creative Capital Management Investments. Two months ago, the people who are close to financial independence and retiring may have been pretty close to their goals, he says. But now they may have to adjust their timing.

Whats more, Ryan says, is that this risk comes as even the most risk-tolerant FIRE investors had become inured to down markets. Theres a recency bias, especially among younger investors who saw the market continuously going up over the last 10 years thats led to an overallocation to stocks.

Generally speaking, he says, investors should have an emergency fund and a portion of their portfolios in conservative investments. Those who dont have adequate savings outside of equities may find themselves in a predicamentneeding income but loath to sell while stocks are down.

For those who find themselves short on cash, the advisor suggests paring back expenses or seeking income from a side gig, two familiar principles of the FIRE movement. People who previously had a side gig may qualify for unemployment under the Cares Act, which extended benefits to freelancers.

I think its definitely a lot harder to pursue financial independence and FIRE in the traditional sense at this exact moment given that most of the economy has just been paused, says Grant Sabatier, a personal-finance blogger and author of Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need.

Sabatier suggests that those who cant pursue the strategy now can still take the time to understand their values and plan how they want to save, spend and invest in the future. Use this moment while were all stuck inside to figure out your relationship with money and how to be more intentional about it when this is all over.

The current environment may lure a new demographic into the world of FIRE. While millennials felt the sting of the 2008 financial crisismany left college loaded with debt during a lousy job marketyounger generations may have known only a bull market. A lot of younger people havent experienced anything like this, Ryan says. Its going to be a wake-up call for those who arent putting enough away in savings or dont have an adequate emergency fund.

Colin Loretz was drawn to the FIRE movement right before the pandemic struck. The 32-year-old freelance software engineer would frequently find himself chasing late invoices from clientsdelays that were exacerbated by his lack of savings to carry him between paychecks. Before committing to financial independence, he used credit cards as a stand-in for an emergency fund, leaving him with considerable personal debt.

While he hasnt begun aggressively investing, he is working to pay off his debt and weighing whether to use his stimulus check to erase that debt or bolster his emergency fund. Loretz, who lives in Reno, Nev., says he feels the crisis has made him more committed to the FIRE principles. I wanted to get out of living invoice to invoice as a freelancer and on to a different path, Loretz says. I dont want to be caught in a situation like this again.

Write to us at retirement@barrons.com

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Meghan Markle Is Poised to Become the Most Prominent Influencer in the World – TownandCountrymag.com

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For designers and retailers, Meghan Markle's influence cannot be overstated. Almost everything she wears sells outeven faster if it's at a relatively affordable price pointand her royal stamp of approval can boost a brand's sales in a way few other people can.

Bianca Gates, the co-founder of the shoe brand Birdies, which Meghan has worn publicly on multiple occasions, says the so-called "Markle Sparkle," is the kind of marketing "you cannot buy."

Or, at least you couldn't buy it before.

But now that Harry and Meghan have stepped away from their senior roles in the royal family, Meghan's endorsement, at least in theory, might be for sale.

Chris JacksonGetty Images

The Sussexes sought financial independence when they left their positions as working royals, giving up other, perhaps more personal, aspects of their proposed planPrince Harry's honorary military appointments come to mindin order to gain it. And Harry and Meghan made it clear that they intended to seek out private income as well, though they haven't explicitly spelled out what exactly that means. (The onset of the coronavirus crisis likely shifted any plans they had to launch their charity, Archewell, or kick off other, more lucrative initiatives.)

It seems unlikely that Meghan would become a full-fledged company spokesperson, endorsing products. And even if the Sussexes relaunch their social media presence, I don't think she'll be doing sponsored posts anytime soon. That kind of overt promotion would be an extreme shift in her own personal brand. But it does seem possible that Meghan might begin to receive free clothes and products, from brands hoping she'll be seen sporting their wares.

PoolGetty Images

Gifting products to celebrities and other high-profile influencers is a common modern marketing practice. Brands will send high-profile influencers items for free in the hopes that they'll showcase them publicly.

The Duchess is certainly familiar with how things in this space work, given her pre-royal career as an actress with her own lifestyle blog. But when Meghan was serving as a representative of the Queen, and receiving public funding, there were numerous rules and protocols she had to abide byone of which governed the type of gifts she was able to receive.

The introduction of the royal family's gift policy, which appears to have been most recently updated in 2003, reads as follow:

The wording of this passage isn't entire clearto whom, exactly, does this apply? Only working royals or a broader swatch of the family? But taking into account the lengths Harry and Meghan have gone to separate themselves financially from the institution of the monarchy, Meghan could indeed find herself untethered from these restrictions. (She would, though, still find herself subject to the necessary social media advertising and gifting rules, if she wanted to actively promote a gift.)

Well never see her Instagramming flat tummy tea.

These gray areas mean that the Sussexes will probably proceed with extreme caution. "Obviously anybody would give them anything, but I think they're going to be really careful," says Elizabeth Holmes, the fashion journalist behind the buzzy "So Many Thoughts" Instagram series about royal style. Holmes notes that she didn't know for certain if Meghan would be able to receive clothes for free.

"I think that Meghan's power as a dresser will continue. There are so few peopleeven among celebritiesthat have the kind of economic power to move merchandise the way that royal women do, so I hope and I think shell choose carefully."

Christine Ross, the creative director of Effervescence Media Group, a company that runs the popular royal fashion blog Meghan's Mirror, agrees. She thinks Meghan might begin to receive gifts from companies, but that she'll choose what to accept "responsibly."

"If an independent woman-owned brand reaches out to her and says 'Would you like to learn more about our brand, well send you a necklace,' I could see that possibly happening," Ross says.

"But Meghan knows how influential her fashion choices are and how much of an economic phenomenon the Meghan effect is. Well never see her Instagramming flat tummy tea."

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Money and relationships: Spouse’s addiction draining your wealth? Deal with it this way – Economic Times

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Managing money and growing wealth is a difficult task even in the normal course. Add to it external and internal threats, the former including macroeconomic factors or exceptional ones like the current Covid crisis. The internal threats can include personality or behavioural issues, such as addictions or bad habits. Excessive shopping, Internet addiction, gambling, drinking or drug abuse can damage both your physical and financial health, often irrevocably.

1. What will be the impact?Addictions invariably help people escape troubling reality or are sought by those suffering from depression and anxiety. These start by eating into their time, taking them away from work, and often resulting in job loss. These are also expensive, demanding a constant supply of money. So the funds for essentials like food, utilities, loan EMIs, rent and investments are diverted towards addictions, and in case of job loss, the existing savings are depleted and debts pile up. Addictions like drinking, smoking or drug abuse also have a huge health and insurance cost, leading to increased medical expenses as well as a rise in health and life insurance premiums.

2. Compulsive shoppingIf your spouses obsession started as a retail therapy to overcome bad moods, help them look for alternatives to be happy. Encourage interaction with family and friends, following hobbies and passions, and physical activities like sports, exercise or even cleaning. To provide them a reality check for finances, work with a monthly budget by listing the income and expenses, separate the essential spending from discretionary, and list your familys goals and the amount needed to save every month to be able to reach these. This will help them focus on how much they can actually afford to shop. To help curb spending proactively, push them to cut up the credit cards, shop only with a list and only for the things they need. If nothing helps, seek a behavioural therapist and a financial counsellor.

3. Internet, gaming obsessionHere, it is important to know the reason: is it a way to avoid work and responsibility, or a harmless timepass that blew up into an addiction? If it is the latter and is in the initial stages, it is best to make a clean break by cutting off the Internet connection. In case of the former, encourage the spouse to talk about the problems, reduce their workload, and indulge in entertainment or fun activities. If, however, it has developed into a full-blown addiction, it is best to seek the help of a behavioural therapist or a psychologist.

4. Drinking, smoking, drugs and gamblingThese are all serious addictions that are typically hard to get rid of and often require professional help. These also have extreme financial consequences. If your spouse is in the grip of one, it is best to seek medical help and therapy. On your part, you will first have to seek financial independence by getting a job. Next, ensure that the partner does not have access to your funds through your bank account or via Net banking. As a next step, seek the help of a financial counsellor, who can ground you in the basics of saving and investing for your and your childrens goals. These self-help measures will ensure that till the time your spouse gets back on track, or even if he doesnt and you need to separate, you will be well-versed in financial planning and will be able to take care of yourself and your financial goals.

If you have a wealth whine, write to us...All of us have been in a financial dilemma when it comes to relationships. How do you say no to a friend who wants you to invest in his new business venture? Should you take a loan from your married brother? Are you concerned about your wifes impulse buying? If you have any such concerns that are hard to resolve, write in to us at etwealth@timesgroup.com with Wealth Whines as the subject.

Disclaimer: The advice in this column is not from a licensed healthcare professional and should not be construed as psychological counselling, therapy or medical advice. ET Wealth and the writer will not be responsible for the outcome of the suggestions made in the column.

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Money and relationships: Spouse's addiction draining your wealth? Deal with it this way - Economic Times

Financially Speaking: Observations that helped navigate portfolios throughout this pandemic – Troy Record

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We like to think that we have had some profound, timeless thoughts that have helped the readers as well as our clients survive the volatility that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic.

We will let you be the judge of that as what follows are some that we have added to our journal over the past couple of months along with quotes from others that we believe are quite perceptive. However, we would first like to start with the following statistics regarding the U.S. stock market as represented by the S&P 500.

Since 1928 the rolling ten-year return of the S&P 500 has been higher approximately 95% of the time and lower just 5%. The more an investor meaningfully alters their asset allocation model in response to market downturns, the percent chances of positive returns over the aforementioned ten year period decreases.

Since 1950 the S&P 500 declines an average of 5% about three times per year; 10% or more approximately once per year; 15% or more about once every four years and 20% or more about once every six years. It is not a question of if another bear market will occur it is question of when.

Every market bear or bull has a catalyst. Quite often those catalysts are unprecedented which is why investors fall into the trap of thinking that it is different this time and that the financial markets will not recover. To date, that stance has always been incorrect. Today, what does your investment strategy say about what you believe?

A skilled T. Rowe Price portfolio manager once wondered aloud, How do you deal with the stress of markets? If you seek comfort, you are in trouble. You have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. (David Eiswert, Portfolio Manager, T. Rowe Price Global Stock Fund)

We have complete confidence that the U.S. Financial Markets have been the most direct route for most investors to obtain financial independence and have no reason to believe that this time is any different.

Historically, the rallies such as the one we are experiencing off the March 23rd lows fade which result in an ultimate retest of those lows. Although likely, this time may be different as the catalyst behind the bear market was different. It was not looming economic weakness brought about by a foreseeable economic event but rather by an abrupt shock to the economy. Investors have to plan for either outcome a retest of the lows or a market that approaches new highs.

It was the rapidity of the decline in the stock market as well as the depth that was most unnerving to investors and what resulted in a pervasive sense of doom.

Eventually there will be a new normal. Over the short- to intermediate-term investors should prepare to look for opportunities in a world where there is less brick and mortar retail and more online; less recreational and business travel (although business will most likely rebound to a certain extent first); less but more costly air travel; more videoconferencing; less need for office space as more people work remotely; when they resume fewer attendees at sporting events, concerts and other public events and more online gaming. Spacing, Spacing, Spacing.

Those that panicked may very well have fatally compromised their long-term financial well-being.

If you have some of your own, please feel free to email us at investment@faganassociates.com Enjoy your weekend. Stay safe. Be well.

Please note that all data is for general information purposes only and not meant as specific recommendations. The opinions of the authors are not a recommendation to buy or sell the stock, bond market or any security contained therein. Securities contain risks and fluctuations in principal will occur. Please research any investment thoroughly prior to committing money or consult with your financial advisor. Please note that Fagan Associates, Inc. or related persons buy or sell for itself securities that it also recommends to clients. Consult with your financial advisor prior to making any changes to your portfolio. To contact Fagan Associates, Please call (518) 279-1044.

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There can be no press freedom with no financial independence – Daily Monitor

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By Dr William Tayeebwa

The coronavirus pandemic, known as Covid-19, continues to wreak havoc that is best captured in numbers of confirmed cases, deaths and recoveries. There is, however, a different data set that should not escape our notice especially on World Press Freedom Day. The pandemic has constricted revenue streams for media organisations, forcing some print titles to suspend operations (Ennyanda) and several others to contemplate cost-cutting measures (such as laying off and furloughing journalists).

Both outcomes are deeply disturbing; if anything, because a robust press takes up a central place before, during and after a pandemic. It is not a stretch to conclude that access to verified and accurate information can mean a matter of life and death. A robust press is an indispensable source of information. It provides a trusted sieve that nips the infodemic of misinformation and disinformation in the bud.

The act of newsgathering and investigation, the researching of stories which are layered with different complexities, is a costly endeavour. Doubly so with restrictive measures, such as public and private transportation that have come in place to stave off the inescapable Covid-19.

If there was any doubt that there cannot be press freedom without financial independence, then its taken covering an unprecedented public health crisis to crystallise this time-honoured truth. The press cannot hold those in power to account if its finances are not on a sound footing. The domino effect in such a scenario is one of loss perpetuating loss.

Either the media organisation will not have the financial capacity to advance investigative journalism or the transition from watchdog to lapdog will subsume its content with puff pieces and officialdom. Neither is a good place for the press to be. It essentially leaves the press in shackles at the whims of those with power.

As it were, the mass media in Uganda are heavily reliant on advertising revenue. This hardly makes them independent because, as an old dictum reminds us, he who pays the piper calls the tune. And its not just corporate interests at play here. The manner in which the National Association of Broadcasters reportedly sought to dip its fingers in governments cookie jar ostensibly for relaying official Covid-19 messages was telling in more ways than one.

The projection of Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) as a vulnerable poor was also equally telling. It is not reassuring if journalists are propped by those they are supposed to hold accountable.

Clearly, the financial model on which independent media in Uganda operate leaves them susceptible to being lapdogs. This squarely leaves press freedom in retreat. This should worry us all because a free, healthy press remains a fundamental test of democracy and open government.

As we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, the need to front a financial model that wont impel the press to make a sacrifice at the altar of survival is greater now more than ever. Its not just humanity that has been brought very low by a very humble assailant in Covid-19. The presss existential threat has also surged to the fore.

It is never comfortable if you are trapped between a rock and hard place. Yet that is exactly where the Ugandan press finds itself. Consumers are evidently reluctant to pay for access to content. It is not just the sales model of revenue generation that is perilous; the advertising model is also in decline. A mixed revenue model has also proven to be hardly helpful. So where does the press go from here?

Options like crowdfunding should be explored; as should grant income and philanthropy. Al Jazeera satellite TV network for instance traces its roots back to grant funding. It started with a $150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar in 1996 and has since proceeded to diversify its income streams.

However, public funding is also a welcome option to all media established media outlets in form of tax exemptions and other forms of assistance.Dr. William Tayeebwa is the Head, Department of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University

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There can be no press freedom with no financial independence - Daily Monitor

Meghan & Harry Hire Beckhams Hollywood Aide But Theyre Beyond Help – CCN.com

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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are busy carving out a new life for themselves in the City of Stars. At least, theyre living on someone elses dime in someone elses mansion in LA, anyway. Now, the Duke and Duchess have reportedly managed to bag the help of Rebecca Mostow.

Mostow might look like your average woman, but shes a 70-year-old celebrity whizz. Rebecca has already proved shes a dab hand at helping a British couple adjust to life in Los Angeles. Victoria and David Beckham hired her to get them used to the American life when they skipped England in 2007.

For all intents and purposes, Rebecca has the kind of resume youd want from an assistant. Shes used to being in the inner sanctum of celebrities, but is hiring her just another desperate attempt to look the part?

Its been a few months now since Meghan and Harry announced their desire to leave Britain behind. After bouncing around Canada, theyve landed in LA. But, where is this ever-elusive financial independence they talk of?

Despite numerous reports of the Sussexes eyeing up properties to buy, theyre shacked up in Tyler Perrys mansion. Are they paying rent? Unlikely, as the arrangement was set up by their mutual friend, Oprah. Plus, Perry has expressed his sympathy for how Meghan has been treated since she married into The Firm. He even flew them in on his $150 million private jet.

Meghan and Harry have a combined net worth of around $30 million. This lifestyle of living in a home that usually costs $200,000 a month to rent isnt going to be sustainable. Charity is all well and good, but it wont be long before patience wears thin. Lets face it, they cant afford the lifestyle they want to lead right now. So, why have they hired an assistant like Mostow?

Its all smoke and mirrors. Its part of the great ploy, the great facade. Everything is crumbling on the inside. But, Meghan seems to think that if you put on a pair of Louboutins and hire a well-known assistant, then the deception will turn into a reality.

Its clear that both Harry and Meghan have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Every single move they make at the moment is an attempt to be something that theyre not. Harry, for his part, looks like a lost little boy navigating a world he has no idea how to handle.

Even Meghan, the cold, calculating seductress, is grasping at straws to find a way to keep this fantasy alive. Is Rebecca Mostow the key to gaining the trust of Hollywoods elite? Or, will she just end up on the long list of people used and abused by a Z-list actress that married a prince?

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.

This article was edited by Samburaj Das.

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Meghan & Harry Hire Beckhams Hollywood Aide But Theyre Beyond Help - CCN.com