Month: January 2022

Enlarge / A health worker administers a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to an elderly resident at Ichilov medical center in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Original story 12:41 pm EST: As the ultratransmissible omicron coronavirus variant bears down on the US, the Food and Drug Administration on Monday announced a set of sweeping changes to the availability of Pfizer-BioNTech booster doses.

The regulator expanded access to third doses by authorizing their use for kids 12 to 15 years old. The agency also shortened the interval at which adults and children 12 and up can get a booster after their second dose—moving the time from six months to only five months. Last, the FDA made third doses available to immunocompromised children ages 5 to 11 who may not mount a strong response from only the first two doses.

The FDA’s moves are motivated by omicron and backed by data from Israel, which has a booster program further along than that of the US. In fact, Israeli officials on Monday began offering fourth doses (second booster doses) of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to people ages 60 and over in an effort to sustain high levels of protection in the population. The omicron variant, which is currently powering a vertical rise in cases in the US, has been found to thwart protection from only two vaccine doses, but it can still be defeated with booster doses.

Enlarge / Which popular Square Enix franchises will be graced with a blockchain-based marketplace full of user-created items?

Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda used a New Year’s message this weekend to telegraph the company’s interest in “blockchain gaming” and “decentralized games” as “a major strategic theme for us starting in 2022.” Specifically, Matsuda sees the blockchain as a way to give players “explicit incentives” to create “major game-changing content” and profit from those “creative efforts.”

While Matsuda puts the current majority of players in a “play to have fun” camp, he writes that he foresees “a certain number of people whose motivation is to ‘play to contribute,’ by which I mean to help make the game more exciting.” Most traditional games rely on “personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit” to motivate that kind of user-generated content, Matsuda writes, which is “one reason that there haven’t been as many major game-changing [pieces of] content that were user generated as one would expect.”

But Matsuda sees “advances in token economies” giving players “explicit incentives” for creating in-game content, providing “a tangible upside to their creative efforts.” This will lead to more content being created, in turn attracting more “play to have fun” players and resulting in “self-sustaining game growth,” in Matsuda’s vision.

Enlarge / Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) answers questions in front of the House steps on November 17, 2021, in Washington, DC. (credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) yesterday, though her professional account remains active.

Greene has been an outspoken opponent of COVID-19 vaccines, routinely posting disinformation about the disease, the vaccines, and other health-related information. Her fifth strike on Twitter (yes, her fifth) came after she posted false claims about vaccine safety based on unverified raw data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, also known as VAERS.

“We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, said in a statement.