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Analyzing dozens of cases around the world yields some practical lessons.
"At a fundamental level, this study reminds us that groundwater recovery has happened, so it is possible for communities to turn things around. So when we learn from history, we can find some parts we’d actually like to repeat."
The Phase 2 trial is not definitive, but it comes as vaccine access is severely restricted.
Daily squirts of a safe, over-the-counter allergy nasal spray may prevent COVID-19 infections from taking hold, according to results published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. In a mid-staged trial, the spray appeared to reduce infections by promising 67 percent, though a larger trial will need to confirm that robust efficacy.
The trial was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial conducted by researchers at Germany’s Saarland University between March 2023 and July 2024. The study included 450 healthy adults, about half of whom (227) spritzed their noses three times a day with the generic antihistamine nasal spray, azelastine, which can be purchased over the counter in the US. The placebo, meanwhile, was a spray with an identical composition except for the absence of the antihistamine. The two groups had similar mixes of previous COVID-19 vaccination and infection statuses.
After about 56 days of frequent mistings, only five people using the allergy spray (2.2 percent) caught a SARS-CoV-2 infection, while 15 people using a placebo (6.7 percent) got the pandemic infection. That 4.5 percentage-point drop represents a 67 percent reduction in COVID-19 cases, though the numbers here are small. Still, the researchers noted that the five people using the allergy spray who contracted COVID-19 took more time to get the infection than the 15 in the placebo group (31 days versus 19.5). This could hint that the spray held off some infections from exposures early in the trial. And when the allergy spray users did get COVID-19, they were positive on a rapid antigen test for less time than those infected in the placebo group (3.4 days versus 5.1 days), suggesting they cleared the virus a bit faster.
Intriguingly, people using the allergy spray also had fewer respiratory infections overall compared with those in the placebo group (21 infections versus 49 infections). This was particularly the case for rhinovirus infections, the cause of the common cold. These findings are backed by several earlier studies suggesting that azelastine can fight off various viruses that try to invade our noses. Overall, the findings suggest that the allergy spray may protect against COVID-19 using a general antiviral mechanism that can guard against other respiratory viruses. But what that mechanism might be on the mucus membrane of the nose is unclear for now. {read}
from the study: The use of azelastine nasal spray may help to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infections.
This duration was selected to encompass multiple incubation periods of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants and to enable the detection of infections occurring under clinical conditions.13 In case of acute respiratory symptoms, confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, or knowledge/suspicion of close contact with a SARS-CoV-2-infected person, 1 puff of the nasal spray per nostril was applied 5 times daily over a period of 3 days.
gece aşkımızın sessiz tanığı olsun,gökyüzünün sükunetine iltica edelim simsiyah kadifenin üzerine dökülmüş elmas tozlarının sığınağı olmaktan kaçırmayalım
From the person who got hit with a callout post by an apparently-wholly-LLM-run blog:
I’ve talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.
Context: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, atte
In a chaotic meeting, ACIP voted not to recommend a prescription requirement for Covid-19 vaccines. Some panelists seemed unaware of the poi
With a lack of data and confusing language, the panel tabled the vote indefinitely.
I have many comrades who describe themselves as anti-AI, and I’ve had some very spirited, productive, but heated debates with those people because I don’t think AI is exceptional. That means that I don’t think it’s exceptionally evil. The argument that it’s the fruit of the poisonous tree, that it was made by bad people in bad ways, so you shouldn’t use it—I think it’s very foolish. That is not the merit on which we judge technology.
Sci-fi author/tech journalist Cory Doctorow on his new book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.
More signs and portents, folks.
“The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things: big foundational models that lose billions of dollars every year. When the AI investment mania halts, most of the models are going to disappear, because it just won’t be economical to keep the data centers running. The collapse of the AI bubble is going to be ugly. Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market, and they endlessly pass around the same $100 billion IOU. AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.”
Yeah. I mentioned long ago how the AI tech demos were outrageous, overblown, completely unnecessary bullshit while noticing how the bullshit can be dialed down and the tech applied to completely different material for useful results.
The most egregious example was when Amazon announced that cashiers were now out of a job because now you could just walk into [an Amazon Go store], grab stuff off the shelf, and walk out again, and the AI knows what you took. There wasn’t an AI. It was three people in India watching each customer through a network of cameras in the ceiling trying to guess what you put in your bag.
I suspect that the same reason was behind the shuttering of Żappka stores - AI turned out to be Actually Indians and the whole thing promptly went to shit.
Doctorow also calls out some irrational Butlerian jihadi bullshit like desperate whataboutism and speaks about clever use of open-source algorithms like that image search based on contents.
The retracted study on ChatGPT in education was already cited hundreds of times.
[Wayback Machine version]
White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says "the memes will continue" - Ars Technica
Lawyer calls it "outrageous that the White House would make up stories."
