‘The coronavirus can cause insomnia and long-term changes in our nervous systems. But sleep could also be a key to ending the pandemic….’

— James Hamblin MD via The Atlantic

Early in the pandemic, a Cleveland researcher examining the structure of the newly identified virus found it could potentially be blocked by melatonin, a physiological hormone that calibrates sleep and the immune response. Subsequent studies have shown that patients taking melatonin, which is available as an over the counter dietary supplement, have reduced rates of Covid infection and better survival. (Trump was given melatonin as well as other more experimental therapies at Walter Reed). Eight clinical trials of melatonin are currently ongoing, making it one of the most studied potential treatments. But is it melatonin per se or the improved sleep it facilitates, and In turn the effect that has on immune function, that improve Covid-19 outcome?

Initially clinicians saw rampant sleep disturbances and attributed them to pandemic anxiety. But long-term neurological sequela after infection, including sleep disturbance, are becoming apparent and appear out of proportion to patients’ level of preoccupation or worry. Post-Covid symptoms were assumed to be autoimmune reactions, similar to those known in the CNS after other viral infections. But autoimmune researchers feel the effects of Covid don’t exactly fit the bill, being more sporadic and widespread. As one put it, it is “haphazard inflammation — less a targeted attack than an indiscriminate brawl,” with symptoms resulting from a number of mechanisms, perhaps similar to myalgic encephalitis or “chronic fatigue syndrome,” which is poorly understood, widely misrepresented, poorly treatment-responsive, and stigmatized. Interestingly, many clinicians and theoreticians believe the sleep disturbance is central in myalgic encephalitis. Impairment of stages of deep (slow wave) sleep dysregulate metabolism and immune response. This reinforces the idea that melatonin treatment should be part of standard practice.

And, with some discipline, routines to regulate sleep are possible during the pandemic, unlike so many other uncontrollable factors in our current lives. Recommendations may sound prosaic but are profound, and include consistent sleep-wake times, even on weekends, scheduled walks, sunlight exposure early in the day, reduction in blue light exposure for at least the last hour before bed, and maintaining meaningful social connections with others. As Hamblin opines, “Sleep like your life depends on it.”

‘…[G]iven the stage in the pandemic we are at, a more transmissible variant is in some ways much more dangerous than a more severe variant. That’s because higher transmissibility subjects us to a more contagious virus spreading with exponential growth, whereas the risk from increased severity would have increased in a linear manner, affecting only those infected….’

— Zeynep Tufekci, associate professor (in information technology, not virology) at UNC, via The Atlantic

David Frum spins out the consequences in The Atlantic:

‘In a bombshell conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state yesterday, President Donald Trump made monkeys of every Republican official and every conservative talking head who professed to believe Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. The president himself made clear that he had only one end in view: overturning the 2020 election.

…[A] president desperate enough to try to steal an election on a recorded line is desperate enough to try a self-pardon. If a president can pardon himself as well as his or her subordinates, a president can order any crime, or commit it himself, with absolute impunity. The very notion of a self-pardon is radically inconsistent with democratic accountability. If Trump tries to pardon himself, his successors must fight his attempt all the way to the Supreme Court. And given the Raffensperger recording, who doubts that Trump will try it?…’

— via The Atlantic

One of the keys to the puzzle appears to be ‘metal-poor disc stars’:

‘…[O]ver the past two years, researchers have rewritten nearly every major chapter of the galaxy’s history. What happened? They got better data.
On April 25, 2018, a European spacecraft by the name of Gaia released a staggering quantity of information about the sky. Critically, Gaia’s years-long data set described the detailed motions of roughly 1 billion stars. Previous surveys had mapped the movement of just thousands. The data brought a previously static swath of the galaxy to life. “Gaia started a new revolution,” said Federico Sestito, an astronomer at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory in France.
Astronomers raced to download the dynamic star map, and a flurry of discoveries followed. They found that parts of the disk, for example, appeared impossibly ancient. They also found evidence of epic collisions that shaped the Milky Way’s violent youth, as well as new signs that the galaxy continues to churn in an unexpected way.
The Gaia satellite has revolutionized our understanding of the Milky Way since its launch in December 2013. Taken together, these results have spun a new story about our galaxy’s turbulent past and its ever-evolving future. “Our picture of the Milky Way has changed so quickly,” said Michael Petersen, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh. “The theme is that the Milky Way is not a static object. Things are changing rapidly everywhere.”…’

— via WIRED

<

p style=”text-align:left;”>Comments?