A statue of Ben Franklin in the center of Penn’s campus
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,110th day of the pandemic.
Ludwig van Beethoven died a little under 200 years ago, in 1827, but the health problems leading to his death at the age of 56 have been the subject of speculation for almost as long.
Born in Bonn in 1770, the great composer is unique given the enormous amount of literature that has been written about his health problems. Recently, geneticists from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn used molecular genetic methods to rule out some theories and state as definitively as one could two centuries later about the cause of death of der Spagnol, the Spaniard, his nickname because of his dark complexion. (It is highly likely he had Moorish blood from an ancestor who served in the Spanish army when they occupied the Netherlands.)
When the maestro was on his deathbed, hundreds of friends and well-wishers came to say good-by and many asked for a lock of his hair as a remembrance. One such lock was clipped shortly after his death by Ferdinand Hiller, a 15-year-old composer and acolyte who had visited Beethoven four times before he died. Hiller passed the lock down to his son decades later and an analysis of the hair at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois found lead levels to be up to 100 times normal. Based on this, many scholars speculated that he contracted lead poisoning from medicine, wine, or eating and drinking utensils.
Only it wasn’t actually his hair, a recent DNA analysis revealed, but the hair of an Ashkenazi Jewish woman, possibly that of the wife of Hiller’s son.
The DNA analysis came about when it occurred to Tristan Begg, a student studying archaeology at the Universität Tübingen, that DNA analysis had advanced sufficiently to be used to analyze locks of Beethoven’s hair.
Another Beethoven scholar, William Meredith, began searching for other locks and the race was on. The Hiller lock was eliminated because it was from a woman. Out of the seven other locks gathered together, one was eliminated because it could not be tested, one was deemed inauthentic, and five were found to have the same DNA. What’s more, two of the five had impeccable chains of custody, giving the researchers a high degree of confidence that these locks were snipped from Beethoven’s head.
The DNA analysis showed DNA variants that made the great composer genetically predisposed to liver disease. In addition, his hair contained traces of hepatitis B DNA, which led to another mystery, namely how could he have contracted the virus, which is normally shared through sex and shared needles.
Little is known of the composer’s sex life but it’s quite likely that he acquired the virus during childbirth, something that is not uncommon. The DNA analysis also showed that he was not related to others in his family line, a finding that has been a great disappointment to the van Beethoven family of Belgium, who, at least according to archival records, shared a 16th-century ancestor with the maestro.
One author of the study, Maarten Larmuseau, a professor of genetic genealogy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, believes that the composer’s father was fathered by someone who was not his grandmother’s husband.
While the DNA analysis offers strong clues, it does not provide definitive answers about the composer’s death nor does it tackle his chronic and very painful gastrointestinal issues that plagued him throughout his adult life.
The DNA analysis does also not attempt to explain Beethoven’s hearing loss, which began when the composer was in his mid-20s and which led to complete deafness later in life.
In other news we cover today, fewer vaccinated people died than non-vaccinated from Covid in 2021, Long Covidfunctional manifestations differ from post-vaccine effects, and the president of Venezuela is missing a major conference after testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.
LONG COVID
Long Covid patients with functional neurologic disorder, or FND, following a SARS-CoV-2 infection had different symptoms than those with FND after receiving a Covid vaccine, a study of retrospective data shows.
Patients with post-Covid FND tended to be older, had more insidious onsets, and had a higher rate of disability, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. Those with FND after a vaccination had symptoms that more closely resembled classic FND: they were younger, had an acute onset, and tremor was the most common phenotype.
UNITED STATES
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found death rates for older Americans were significantly down after at least half of the population had been fully vaccinated. Covid death rates for older Americans fell in the latter half of 2021, a period during which at least half of the population was vaccinated. The death rates were significantly lower for those over 80 and older.
The death rate rose in the same period for those 25 to 54-years old, an age group where vaccine rates lagged.
GLOBAL
The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, cancelled his trip to attend the Ibero-American summit after testing positive for Covid, even though he has since twice tested negative. The news was revealed by the country’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez.
Hong Kong police allowed the first protest since the start of the pandemic to take place, organizers of the rally said. The protest is against proposed reclamation for building “obnoxious facilities” such as refuse collection stations. The city’s police department said that marchers would be required to wear number tags in order to “prevent criminals from mixing”in with the crowd.
Finally, a new study found that human toll of last year’s citywide coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai was more serious impact than expected with respect to the mental health issues of residents. Young adults and migrant workers were among the strongest to be impacted. The study of 2,320 adults found that the rate of depression was at 26.1%, anxiety 20.1%, and suicidal ideation 3.8% while the city was under lockdown, according to the peer-reviewed paper, which was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders last week.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, March 26.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 683.3 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.83 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 656.2 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Sunday at press time is 20,245,782, a decrease of 25,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,205,692, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 40,090, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 135,520 new cases in the period March 16 through March 23, a figure that is down 29% over the same period one week earlier, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll for the same period is 2,060, a figure that is down 2%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 5,020 on March 24, a figure that is down 10% over the preceding 14 days.
Starting on March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis and publish the updated information in the Thursday edition.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded 106.1 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.15 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.7 million, and a reported death toll of 530,831.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with just over 39.7 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.3 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 699,917, has recorded 37.2 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are Japan, with 33.4 million cases, South Korea, with 30.8 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with just under 25.7 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.4 million, and Russia, with just under 22.6 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 269.8 million people in the United States – or 81.3% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.4%, or 230.3 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 673.5 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79% of the same group – or 204.1 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 19.9% of the same population, or 51.1 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 22.9 million people over the age of 65, or 41.8% of that population have also received the bivalent booster.
Starting on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.
Some 69.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.34 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 663,733 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 28.4% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the start of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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