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A new paper published as part of the Cato Working Papers (www.cato.org/workingpapers) posits that travel restrictions imposed from China did not halt transmission of the novel Coronavirus into the United States. The authors write that, "Historically, travel restrictions to prevent the spread of pandemic influenzas have been ineffective at halting or significantly delaying the spread (WHO Writing Group, 2006)." They use what is called the synthetic control method (SCM) to estimate a "counterfactual" (meaning, something has not happened or is not the case) number of COVID-19 cases for the U.S. in the absence of the February 2, 2020 travel restriction (Abadie, 2019; Abadie et al., 2010, 2015; Abadie et al., 2003; McClelland et al., 2017). "We use four different outcome variables to measure [the] number of COVID-19 cases: the cumulative number of new COVID-19 cases, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per million, the number of new cases, and the number of n...

While pangolins can be carriers of coronavirus, they may be able to tolerate it through an unknown mechanism according to a recently published study in the journal "Frontiers in Immunology". "The transmission of pathogens from other vertebrate animals to humans is of particular concern because the resulting diseases, known as zoonoses, have caused major epidemics in the past and continue to pose enormous threats to the human population," the authors state in the journal. The article is entitled, "Pangolins Lack IFIH1/MDA5, a Cytoplasmic RNA Sensor That Initiates Innate Immune Defense Upon Coronavirus Infection." The pangolins in particular, the statement says, "lack two sensors that detect when a virus enters the body and trigger a sometimes dangerously excessive immune response in other mammals. Understanding how pangolins are able to survive coronavirus infections could help in the development of new treatment options for humans." I had t...