Food insufficiency and Twitter emotions during a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused worldwide concerns about food insecurity. Tweets analyzed in real-time may help food assistance providers target food supplies to where they are most urgently needed. In this exploratory study, we use natural language processing to extract sentiments and emotions expressed in food security-related tweets early in the pandemic in U.S. states. The emotion joy dominated in these tweets nationally, but only anger, disgust, and fear were also statistically correlated with contemporaneous food insufficiency rates reported in the Household Pulse Survey; more nuanced and statistically stronger correlations are detected within states, including a negative correlation with joy.

The Role of Community Food Services in Reducing US Food Insufficiency in the COVID-19 Pandemic

(p. 2 2016) suggest that "both public and private food assistance programs serve as important mechanisms to tackle the problem of hunger and food insecurity in the United States." Using the HPS data, Bauer (2020) shows that low-income households with children are more likely to suffer food insufficiency and enroll in food assistance programs (e.g., SNAP, WIC, and Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer) during the pandemic. Instead of using the free food access variables from the HPS, we therefore draw on the 2019 County Business Patterns data (US Census Bureau, 2019) to shed light on the role of preexisting Community Food Services (CFS) in mitigating food vulnerability in the states during the current pandemic. [...]while the number of such establishments per 10,000 persons may have changed between 2019 (the most recent year for which data are available at the time of this writing) and March 2020, we suggest that once we control for the main driving forces, such as the spread of the disease and unemployment, which can affect both food insufficiency and CFS capacity, the 2019 CFS establishments per 10,000 persons variable is a reasonable proxy for the amount of experience a given state has with CFS and related establishments and its capacity to deliver free food through such a venue.

Sensing of cytoplasmic chromatin by cGAS activates innate immune response in SARS-CoV-2 infection (preprint)

The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a positive-sense RNA virus. How the host immune system senses and responds to SARS-CoV-2 infection remain to be determined. Here, we report that SARS-CoV-2 infection activates the innate immune response through the cytosolic DNA sensing cGAS-STING pathway. SARS-CoV-2 infection induces the cellular level of 2'3'-cGAMP associated with STING activation. cGAS recognizes chromatin DNA shuttled from the nucleus as a result of cell-to-cell fusion upon SARS-CoV-2 infection. We further demonstrate that the expression of spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 and ACE2 from host cells is sufficient to trigger cytoplasmic chromatin upon cell fusion. Furthermore, cytoplasmic chromatin-cGAS-STING pathway, but not MAVS mediated viral RNA sensing pathway, contributes to interferon and pro-inflammatory gene expression upon cell fusion. Finally, we show that cGAS is required for host antiviral responses against SARS-CoV-2, and a STING-activating compound potently inhibits viral replication. Together, our study reported a previously unappreciated mechanism by which the host innate immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 infection, mediated by cytoplasmic chromatin from the infected cells. Targeting the cytoplasmic chromatin-cGAS-STING pathway may offer novel therapeutic opportunities in treating COVID-19. In addition, these findings extend our knowledge in host defense against viral infection by showing that host cells’ self-nucleic acids can be employed as a “danger signal” to alarm the immune system.

Google searches reveal changing consumer food sourcing in the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on observing Google search trends, this paper examines how the interest and preoccupations of US food consumers has changed since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three fairly distinct periods in terms of food-related searches are observed. First, a concern with food storage emerged starting the week of February 16-22 and continued until mid-April, coupled with some evidence about concerns over food shortages (starting March 1-7). Second, starting the week of March 1-7, a growing interest in more local, direct options for acquiring food emerged. Third, starting the week of March 8-14 and spiking a few weeks later (except for Grubhub), interest in take-out food and home delivery grew, as the stay-at-home orders became more widespread. This was also the week in which searches for food banks and pantries started to take off, just preceding the week of March 22, which saw record increases in initial jobless claims. It is also revealed that demand for breweries and wineries has dramatically dropped.