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      DeSantis ad uses fake AI images of Trump hugging and kissing Fauci, experts say

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 8 June, 2023 - 16:16

    Collage shows three fake images of Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci on the cheek, while three real images of the two men standing or sitting near each other are also shown.

    Enlarge / Screenshot from Ron DeSantis ad shows a collage of real and fake images.

    A Ron DeSantis presidential campaign video shows three pictures of Donald Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci, all of which seem to be fake images generated by artificial intelligence. One professor told Ars today that there is "no doubt" the ad uses fake AI images.

    As reported by AFP yesterday, media forensics experts say the images, which the DeSantis ad passed off as photographs taken during Trump's presidency, have telltale signs of AI. Even non-experts may notice oddities, such as incomprehensible text on a sign that should say "White House" and "Washington."

    Of course, another giveaway is that then-President Trump and Fauci weren't really on hugging and kissing terms. Trump repeatedly attacked Fauci and resisted measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci, who is now retired , was the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

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      Where 2022’s news was (mostly) good: Yhe year’s top science stories

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 31 December, 2022 - 11:06 · 1 minute

    The self-portrait of Webb's mirrors is also looking very sharp thanks to the improved alignment.

    Enlarge / The self-portrait of Webb's mirrors is also looking very sharp thanks to the improved alignment. (credit: NASA/STScI )

    How often does something work exactly as planned, and live up to its hype? In most of the world, that's the equivalent of stumbling across a unicorn that's holding a few winning lottery tickets in its teeth. But that pretty much describes our top science story of 2022, the successful deployment and initial images from the Webb Telescope.

    In fact, there was lots of good news to come out of the world of science, with a steady flow of fascinating discoveries and tantalizing potential tech—over 200 individual articles drew in 100,000 readers or more, and the topics they covered came from all areas of science. Of course, with a pandemic and climate change happening, not everything we wrote was good news. But as the top stories of the year indicate, our readers found interest in a remarkable range of topics.

    10. Fauci on the rebound

    For better and worse, Anthony Fauci has become the public face of the pandemic response in the US. He's trusted by some for his personable, plain-spoken advice regarding how to manage the risks of infection—and vilified by others for his advocacy of vaccinations (plus a handful of conspiracy theories). So, when Fauci himself ended up on the wrong end of risk management and got a SARS-CoV-2 infection, that was news as well, and our pandemic specialist, Beth Mole, was there for it.

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      First efficacy data on bivalent boosters shows they work against infection

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 22 November, 2022 - 18:55

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, speaks alongside COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha during a briefing on COVID-19 at the White House on November 22, 2022, in Washington, DC. Fauci spoke on the updated COVID-19 booster shots and encouraged individuals to get their vaccines. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Enlarge / Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, speaks alongside COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha during a briefing on COVID-19 at the White House on November 22, 2022, in Washington, DC. Fauci spoke on the updated COVID-19 booster shots and encouraged individuals to get their vaccines. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (credit: Getty | Win McNamee )

    The updated bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine increased protection against symptomatic disease compared with the original monovalent vaccine given as recently as two months ago.

    That's the takeaway from a study released Tuesday morning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , which offered the first clinical efficacy data for the bivalent shot since its national rollout in September.

    In adults, the relative effectiveness of the bivalent vaccine's protection against symptomatic infection ranged from about 30 percent to up to 56 percent compared with that of the monovalent vaccine, with the relative efficacy estimated to be larger the more time had passed since a person's last monovalent shot.

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      With BA.5 boosters, Biden officials herald the start of annual COVID shots

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 7 September, 2022 - 11:05

    Syringes filled with COVID-19 vaccine sit on a table at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on April 06, 2022 in San Rafael, California.

    Enlarge / Syringes filled with COVID-19 vaccine sit on a table at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on April 06, 2022 in San Rafael, California. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan )

    The updated COVID-19 boosters targeting the BA.4/5 subvariants now rolling out nationwide are meant to head off a surge of the disease this fall and winter—but they are also meant to signal a shift in the nation's pandemic response, which is moving out of an emergency phase to a place with routine, potentially annual vaccinations against a virus that is clearly not going away.

    In a White House press briefing Tuesday, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci along with other Biden administration officials, repeatedly pushed the idea that this new phase will see COVID-19 vaccinations follow the footsteps of seasonal flu vaccines.

    "It is becoming increasingly clear that—looking forward with the COVID-19 pandemic, in the absence of a dramatically different variant—we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual, updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population," Fauci said.

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      Fauci to step down in December; Biden extends “deepest thanks”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 22 August, 2022 - 16:05 · 1 minute

    Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci gestures as he waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies of Senate Appropriations Committee at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, May 17, 2022, in Washington, DC.

    Enlarge / Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci gestures as he waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies of Senate Appropriations Committee at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, May 17, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Alex Wong )

    Anthony Fauci—President Biden's chief medical adviser and longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—will retire from his government positions this December.

    The 81-year-old infectious disease expert has worked at the National Institutes of Health since 1968, holding the position of director of the NIAID for nearly four decades, since 1984. In that time, he has advised seven presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan. He played a crucial role in the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, notably as a key architect behind PEPFAR, the global AIDS response program begun by President George W. Bush that is estimated to have saved 21 million lives and prevented millions of HIV infections.

    Fauci had noted for some time that he soon planned to step down from his positions, citing his long tenure at the NIH, his age, and his interest in other pursuits. "Obviously, you can't go on forever," Fauci told CNN in July. "I do want to do other things in my career, even though I'm at a rather advanced age."

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      Fauci plans to retire by 2025, wants to heal partisan divide before he goes

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 18 July, 2022 - 18:00 · 1 minute

    Dr. Anthony Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference as it meets at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium on October 12, 1989. Fauci at the time was based in Maryland, but he became a frequent voice for Bay Area residents following the AIDS crisis, even before he became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984.

    Enlarge / Dr. Anthony Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference as it meets at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium on October 12, 1989. Fauci at the time was based in Maryland, but he became a frequent voice for Bay Area residents following the AIDS crisis, even before he became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984. (credit: Getty | Hearst Newspapers )

    Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, says "you can guarantee" he'll step down from his position by January 2025, ending a more than five-decade career as a federal scientist.

    In addition to being the current chief medical adviser to the president, Fauci is the long-standing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Fauci, who is 81 years old, has held the NIAID director position since 1984. He initially joined the institute as a clinical associate in 1968.

    In his nearly four decades as NIAID director, Fauci has advised every sitting president since Ronald Reagan , as well as every administration and every Congress, on infectious disease threats. In his first meeting with the Trump administration in 2017, two years before a novel pandemic coronavirus mushroomed out of Wuhan, China, Fauci provided the same advice he provided to every new administration: We’re likely to see an infectious disease emerge out of left field. Expect the unexpected.

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      Fauci reports COVID rebound, says it’s “much worse” than initial illness

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 29 June, 2022 - 21:43 · 1 minute

    Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC.

    Enlarge / Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Alex Wong )

    The country's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, has been struck by a phenomenon that appears to be becoming more common in the latest stage of the pandemic—rebounding bouts of COVID-19 after a course of the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

    In an interview Tuesday at Foreign Policy's Global Health Forum, Fauci recounted the progression of his infection to his current rebound, which he said has been much worse than his first round with the disease. Fauci—the director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical advisor to the president—is 81 years old and has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and boosted twice.

    He first tested positive on a rapid antigen test on June 15 and experienced "very minimal symptoms." But his symptoms worsened and he began a five-day course of Paxlovid. "And I felt really quite well," Fauci said, adding that he just had mild nasal congestion and fatigue. When he had finished the five-day course, he had reverted to negative on antigen tests for three consecutive days. But, "then on the fourth day—just to be absolutely certain—I tested myself again, and I reverted back to positive … and then over the next day or so I started to feel really poorly, much worse than in the first go-around."

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      New report on how Scott Atlas made herd immunity an unofficial US policy

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 23 June, 2022 - 17:49 · 1 minute

    Image of a man speaking from behind a podium.

    Enlarge / Scott Atlas, a White House adviser, used his position to advocate for allowing the SARS-CoV-2 virus to spread and tried to block testing for it, which would further that goal. (credit: MANDEL NGAN / Getty Images )

    While one congressional committee seems to be grabbing all the headlines recently, other investigations of the Trump administration have continued in the background. One of them is trying to determine how the US's response to the coronavirus pandemic went so wrong that the country ended up with over a million deaths and one of the worst per-capita death rates in the world. In its own words, the committee's goal is "to ensure the American people receive a full accounting of what went wrong and to determine what corrective steps are necessary to ensure our nation is better prepared for any future public health crisis."

    In its latest report , released on Tuesday, the committee details the White House career of Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no infectious disease experience. Atlas' hiring by the White House was expected to be so controversial that he was initially instructed to hide his staff ID from the actual government public health experts. Yet he quickly became a driving force for the adoption of policies that would achieve herd immunity by allowing most of the US population to be infected—even as other officials denied that this was the policy.

    How’d this guy get here?

    Atlas' lack of relevant expertise raises questions as to why he was hired in the first place. The new report details that he wasn't shy about voicing his opinions about the pandemic response, making multiple TV appearances to complain about the policies advocated by actual public health experts. He also directly reached out to a senior government official, calling the US's response “a massive overreaction” to a virus he estimated “would cause about 10,000 deaths.”

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