Megan Thee Stallion: Why I Speak Up for Black Women
In the weeks leading up to the election, Black women are expected once again to deliver victory for Democratic candidates. We have gone from being unable to vote legally to a highly courted voting bloc — all in little more than a century. Despite this and despite the way so many have embraced messages about racial justice this year, Black women are still constantly disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life. I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man. After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him. We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place.
My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself
and my friends. Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism
and judgment. Maternal mortality rates for Black mothers are about
three times higher than those for white mothers, an obvious sign
of racial bias in health care. In 2019, an astronomical 91 percent
of the transgender or gender-nonconforming people
who where fatally shot
Beyond threats to our health and lives, we confront so much
judgment and so many conflicting messages on a daily basis.
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A Rapid Test Offers Hope for Community Screening
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
In a small study in San Francisco, Abbott’s BinaxNOW identified infectious people nearly as accurately as a P.C.R. test.
A $5 rapid test for the coronavirus may be nearly as
effective as the slower, more complex polymerase chain
reaction test for identifying people who may spread the
coronavirus, a novel experiment has found. The study,
conducted by scientists at the University of California,
San Francisco, is among the first head-to-head comparisons
of a rapid test and the P.C.R. diagnostic tool under
real-world conditions. But the number of participants was
comparatively small, and the data have not been
peer-reviewed or published. A rapid test still cannot
conclusively determine that an individual is not infected;
the tests are intended primarily to detect the presence of
high levels of the virus, rather than its absence, and are
authorized only to evaluate symptomatic people. At the
moment, anyone who has been exposed to the virus should be
tested by P.C.R., said Joseph DeRisi, an infectious
disease expert at U.C.S.F. and a co-leader of the project.
Still, the finding offers hope that rapid tests can be
used even more widely to help contain a pandemic that is
resurging in the United States. Some epidemiologists have
argued that the country relies too heavily on cumbersome
P.C.R. tests for screening even as the coronavirus flies
through communities.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The new test, Abbott’s BinaxNOW, offers results in 15 minutes, compared with the days or weeks people may have to wait for a P.C.R. result. The Trump administration already has purchased 150 million BinaxNOW tests and plans to ship them to states for use in schools, nursing homes and meatpacking plants. The tests could also be used to screen people in communities where time, trust and resources are in short supply. The study assessed the BinaxNOW in one such community, a largely Latino neighborhood in San Francisco. On three mornings in late September, as commuters emerged from a BART train station in the Mission District, they were offered two nasal swabs: one for a P.C.R. test, the other for the rapid test with a simple readout. The commuters received only the P.C.R. result, by text, but the researchers compared both tests. Of the 878 people who took the tests at the train station, only 26 tested positive on the researchers’ P.C.R. BinaxNOW identified only 15 of them. researchers’ P.C.R. But when they only considered P.C.R. results that corresponded to high viral loads, the researchers found that the BinaxNOW test detected 15 of the 16 people who were most likely to transmit the virus. “This card will do pretty well at detecting the most infectious people, the people who are actually spreading virus,” Dr. DeRisi said, referring to the BinaxNOW. “On the whole, I’m pretty encouraged and very optimistic.”Source
La Grande Barrière de corail aurait perdu la moitié de ses coraux en 25 ans
Selon une nouvelle étude, la Grande Barrière de corail aurait perdu près de la moitié de ses coraux au cours des 25 dernières années. Plus de 3 000 systèmes de récifs différents la composent, et la survie d'innombrables espèces en dépend.
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