Signs of Chaos.

The rent is too damn high.

News Items covers four subjects: (1) World in Disarray, (2) Financialization of Everything, (3) Advances in Science and Technology, and (4) Electoral politics, foreign and domestic. Six days a week, not Sundays. Weekdays by ~6:45am ET. Saturdays: sometime in the morning, usually. News Items is assembled with the assistance of associate editor Tom Smith.

1. New offshoots of the Omicron Covid-19 variant that virus experts say appear to spread easily are on the rise in the U.S., the latest federal data show, underscoring how the virus is mutating and presenting new risks as it proliferates. Two of the Omicron subvariants, both related to the BA.5 version that drove the most recent U.S. surge, are called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1. They were estimated to represent a combined 11.4% of U.S. Covid-19 cases by mid-October, according to estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. BA.5 remains the dominant version of the virus circulating in the U.S. at about 68% of recent cases, according to CDC estimates. But the subvariant landscape has become busier as the virus that causes Covid-19 continues to mutate. Another version virus experts are watching because of its potential to spread easily, called BA.2.72.2, represented an estimated 1.4% of cases in the latest CDC report.  “There’s just a swarm of them,” said Marc Johnson, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. “They all want to be the next big thing.” (Source: wsj.com)

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2. Pfizer and BioNTech, the duo behind the world’s most widely used COVID-19 vaccine, and one of the most successful pharmaceutical products of all time, are developing a trio of vaccines that could spur stronger, broader, and longer-lasting immunity to the coronavirus. BioNTech chief executive Dr. Ugur Sahin and chief medical officer Dr. Özlem Tureci — the husband and wife leaders of the German biotech company that partnered with Pfizer to develop the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty — said in an interview that clinical trials of all three new shots are expected to begin over the next six months. During a visit to the company’s US offices in Cambridge on Friday, the couple emphasized the pandemic isn’t over because new variants are still emerging. “This virus will stay with us for many years, and we are still in the pandemic phase of this outbreak,” Sahin said. “So all of the predictions that the pandemic will [soon] be over are just not true.” (Source: bostonglobe.com)