vox--2020-12-11--A new era of celebrity tabloids, minus the snark

Over the past few months , I have heard some new rumors about celebrities .
Did you know that Jennifer Lopez orders the spicy rigatoni when she dines at Carbone ?
Or that Blake Lively ’ s career is stalling a bit ?
Also , David Schwimmer is , tragically , not very nice .
And if you were curious about what Leonardo DiCaprio is like during sex , he allegedly wears headphones .
None of these things really matter , and whether they ’ re even true — none of them have been “ confirmed , ” by any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the point .
They ’ re slivers of rather banal ( besides the headphones ) gossip from the Instagram account Deuxmoi , a rare bright spot in the digital world during an otherwise gloomy year .
Though Deuxmoi accepts nearly everyone who requests to follow it , the fact that it is a private account means that to find the drama , there ’ s only one place to go .
Deuxmoi is in the business of blind items , where anonymous tipsters send in tidbits of information or sightings of celebrities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A certain A-list actor may be said to be cheating on his wife , for instance , but we can only guess as to whom ( whereas the more mundane intel , like a pasta order , is fair game to attribute to a certain person ) .
Celebrity media is nearly as old as the idea of a celebrity , but talking about stars takes on new meaning in a time when many people have described themselves as starved for gossip .
With more idle time separated from family and friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as literally escaping on vacation — chatter about the scandalous , enviable , or surprising goings-on of the rich and famous provides a way out of the endless boredom of quarantine .
Deuxmoi , and the endless gossip or “ tea ” accounts like it , is thriving in 2020 .
Since March , Deuxmoi has grown its 45,000 followers more than tenfold .
TikTok Room , an Instagram account devoted to niche drama between TikTok stars , has grown from 300,000 followers to nearly 2 million in the same time span .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact-checking , but they offer a choose-your-own-adventure for readers , who perhaps care less about the end game of finding the truth and are just happy to be along for the ride .
This has always been the case with gossip and blind items , which , to their credit , have laid the groundwork for some of the biggest celebrity scandals in history .
Yet in providing seemingly low-stakes fun for readers , the industry can often end up derailing individuals ’ lives in the process .
The new generation of Instagram @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead , they ’ re asking , “ Can gossip be good ?
” What is Deuxmoi , the anonymously run celebrity gossip Instagram account ?
Like so many of this year ’ s most engrossing cultural phenomena , Deuxmoi was born out of quarantine boredom .
Its owner has remained anonymous during its rise in popularity , though we know she is a woman based in New York who does not work in the entertainment industry ( I ’ ll refer to her as simply “ Deuxmoi ” in this piece @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happened to gain 45,000 Instagram followers from a project she and a friend started in 2013 .
But with the page mostly dormant for the past few years , she took advantage of a slow news day in March to post a few blind items she thought were interesting .
Then she encouraged followers to send in their own .
As thousands of new people have flocked to the page , more and more tea has been spilled .
Some followers are regular folks who happen to have had run-ins with celebs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and many more work in hospitality spaces where celebrities often expose their best and worst behavior .
A few highlights over the past few months : James Corden might be the next Ellen DeGeneres ( in the bad way ) .
Adrian Grenier has nice-looking genitals .
Sex and the City actor Chris Noth hates when you take his picture .
Someone once saw Bernie Sanders ordering tomato soup at the Senate cafeteria .
Celebrities said to be famously nice include Steve Carell , Drew Barrymore , Luke Wilson , the Hadid sisters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not : Marisa Tomei , Leslie Mann , and the aforementioned “ Rude Ross.
” Again , these are not necessarily “ facts ” like you would expect to read in a reputable newspaper or magazine , nor does Deuxmoi pretend to be a reporter .
“ I don ’ t consider myself a news source , ” she told me .
“ I ’ m honestly like the moderator of a live message board.
” When I ask her what ’ s valuable about Deuxmoi versus traditional tabloids , she explains that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re trying to sell , whereas her posts are composed entirely of screenshots of direct messages or emails she receives with little or no commentary .
“ What I ’ m receiving is what everyone else is seeing , ” she says .
This , in turn , lets her audience piece together whatever narrative they want .
“ The community of people that the account generated is honestly the most interesting thing about the account , ” she says .
“ They ’ re very , very active in participating .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll get an answer in sometimes less than a minute .
It ’ s crazy.
” That community now includes more than 460,000 followers , who show up not only for the drama but for the intra-Deuxmoi language and the hyperspecific inside jokes .
Bring up “ studio execs , ” for instance , and Deuxmoi superusers will recall the hilarious days-long back-and-forth between unnamed people purporting to be film studio executives arguing over which celebrities could get any project produced ( Emma Stone , Dwayne “ The Rock ” Johnson ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( Channing Tatum has apparently “ lost momentum ” ) , and other tidbits like “ Kaitlyn Dever is this generation ’ s Laura Dern ” or “ Blake Lively needs to find her niche , which is honestly whatever Jen Garner has just about aged out of playing.
” “ That was one of my favorite things ; people went crazy for that , ” Deuxmoi says with a laugh ( though she believes not all of the people said to be involved were “ execs , ” more like assistants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was really funny , but it was also an insider ’ s take on what ’ s going on .
That ’ s what the account is all about .
You don ’ t have to take it all so seriously.
” The messy history of blind items and the celebrity rumor mill Obviously , this is meant to be fun .
To follow Deuxmoi is not only to read industry insiders ’ takes on famous people ’ s careers but also to feel like a studio executive yourself , keeping tabs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as though you ’ re in charge of casting your own film project .
That celebrity gossip is interesting to us as people is nothing new , but the blind item format — the tidbits too legally or morally risky to publish outright — has a more recent history .
In Alyssa Bereznak ’ s thorough retelling of how blind items changed Hollywood for the Ringer in 2018 , she explains that the first modern blind item column began in the New York media scene in the 1890s , when a Civil War @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hired a team of underlings to pass on rumblings about the Manhattan elite .
But the current gossip landscape was mostly built 100 years later with the rise of the internet : Sites like Perez Hilton , Socialite Rank , Lainey Gossip , Crazy Days and Nights , the Shade Room , and Blind Gossip trafficked largely in rumors about society ’ s elite rather than fact-checked reporting .
Though the now-defunct Gawker also regularly published investigative journalism , its longtime tagline was “ today ’ s gossip is tomorrow ’ s news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media figureheads were often described in an editorial voice that was as entertaining as it was snarky .
Though they often refused to name names , these websites were the first to report , however indirectly , on many of the biggest celebrity scandals in history .
Crazy Days and Nights published one of the first whispers of the NXIVM scandal in 2012 , six years before cult leader Keith Raniere was charged .
Gawker blogged about the Louis C.K .
sexual misconduct allegations in 2012 , five years before the New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blind item about politician John Edwards ’ s infidelity in 2007 while his wife was being treated for cancer ; he would admit to it three years later .
Harvey Weinstein was a fixture in blind items because rumors about his serial sexual abuse had circulated for years ; Lainey Gossip founder Elaine Lui told Vox in 2017 that “ for the 15 years that I ’ ve been reporting , that ’ s how long I ’ ve been hearing about it.
” Yet the rumor mill goes both ways — Weinstein @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who threatened to expose him in legacy media gossip channels .
When whispers circulated of certain actresses “ sleeping their way to the top , ” for example , many of them were actually victims of the producer ’ s abuse .
“ Though tabloids like the Enquirer do sometimes pursue stories with an admirable moral end goal , they ’ re also frequently guilty of using their aggressive reporting to assert culturally conservative viewpoints , ” Bereznak writes .
As entertainment journalist Dave Quinn , who ’ s covered celebrities since the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , tells me , blind items are as powerful as they are unwieldy .
“ Look at what the media and the tabloids can do to someone ’ s psyche — what it did to Britney Spears , to Princess Diana.
” Deuxmoi intentionally steers clear of more serious topics , partially for legal reasons ( her website includes a lengthy disclaimer that it publishes rumor , not fact ; she says hasn ’ t faced any legal issues yet ) , but also because Deuxmoi herself isn ’ t as interested in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the stupid stuff , ” she says .
“ I like the coffee orders and I like what products they buy .
[ My readers ] want the salacious stuff .
They want to know who ’ s [ secretly ] gay and who does drugs.
” These are the types of messages — cheating rumors , addiction — that Deuxmoi will blur out to protect the identity of the accused , turning them into blind items rather than potentially expose a celebrity to a serious allegation that may or may not be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the side of the press , thanks to both the First Amendment and a 1964 Supreme Court decision that states that in order to make a libel or defamation claim , a celebrity must prove that a news publication knew the information was false and published it anyway , thereby acting with “ actual malice.
” Publicists and celebrities themselves often refrain from commenting on blind items because to do so would essentially confirm that the rumor is true .
Enty , the anonymous entertainment lawyer behind the blind items site Crazy Days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 that he hadn ’ t been sued once in 10 years , and only occasionally receives an angry email from a celeb .
Over the past decade , contemporary celebrity coverage has come to be defined by its deference to famous people ; the snarkiness characteristic of aughts tabloid culture has largely fallen out of fashion ( the performative pearl-clutching and racist , sexist dog whistles of the British tabloids aside ) .
When I spoke to a co-founder of the popular Instagram account Comments by Celebs , which posts Instagram comments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me their aim is to avoid negativity altogether .
“ Our whole goal is that we would never want the person in the picture to look at it and be like , ‘ Wow , really sucks that they posted that , ’ ” she said .
Quinn attributes this to the introduction of social media , which has dramatically altered the relationship between the famous and the press .
“ There was this big boom with sites like Perez Hilton , where [ the coverage ] was very negative and nasty — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What ’ s changed is that social media has allowed celebrities to break their own stories and control their own narratives , ” he says .
“ Once they were able to do that , the negative tones kind of disappeared , and we focused a little bit more on understanding from their own point of view.
” The more cynical take might be that as celebrities have been able to create more direct relationships with fans , entertainment media lost much of its power to control the opinions of its audience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portray themselves as endearing and accessible rather than elitist and aloof , in order to gain the trust of readers , journalists had to adopt a more sympathetic tone or risk being written off as mean , jealous , or manipulative — or worse , face the terrifying wrath of a celebrity ’ s digital stan army .
( Said one writer who provoked legions of Nicki Minaj fans in 2018 with a marginally critical tweet , “ I wouldn ’ t wish this on my worst enemy.
” ) Media mistrust is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s enjoyment of blind items and gossip websites .
“ I ’ m showing you an honest perspective .
This is the exact information I receive ; you can choose to believe it or not , ” Deuxmoi says .
Yet even she faces skepticism from her followers .
“ They ’ re under the impression that a lot of publicists write in with fake information , but I don ’ t get that at all .
The ones that I ’ ve gotten that I think have been written by publicists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the top to paint the celebrity in a good light .
But that doesn ’ t happen that often.
” Lui of Lainey Gossip says some of that cynicism stems from the way the Kardashians have changed the business of fame .
“ We see what ’ s on [ their ] show and we ’ re like , how much of this is scripted ?
They ’ re so good at manipulating a narrative that it ’ s permeated how we think about all celebrities , ” she told The Cut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if [ Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas ] are getting photographed every day , that they ’ re probably fake ; that this is a faux-mance .
But I don ’ t think it ’ s a faux-mance .
I think they ’ re really into each other.
” We ’ ve seen what happens when public trust in media erodes — allegations of “ fake news ” can curdle into ambiguousness about what is or is not factual , allowing misinformation to spread unchecked .
But as Deuxmoi herself says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be all that serious .
We all need a little gossip now Like so many quarantine trends — bread baking , tie-dyeing , Animal Crossing , cottagecore — celebrity gossip offers an escape that doubles as a salve for anxiety .
While products literally designed to chill us out have also gone viral in recent years , for some of us , that sense of peace can only come from , say , the podcast Who ?
Weekly , which details the daily drama of C-list celebrities about whom you have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Loret de Mola , a 30-year-old development creative at a streaming platform in New York , had always been ambiently interested in celebrity news , having years ago discovered Who ?
Weekly .
But since the start of the pandemic , the rest of her podcast diet — which previously included the New York Times ’ s The Daily and NPR ’ s Radiolab — has taken a back seat .
“ I just couldn ’ t devote myself to listening to them , ” she says of hard news shows .
Who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve turned to when I just want to chill , and I ’ ve been wanting to chill a lot during this time .
It ’ s the only form of news I look forward to now.
” “ I downloaded the Calm app , ” Loret de Mola adds , “ but I ’ m not fucking listening to Calm , I ’ m listening to celebrity gossip or watching C-list influencers open stuff they got in the mail on Instagram.
” The pandemic has made gossip “ essential again , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mel Magazine , from Deuxmoi to the Gossip Girl reboot to Ben Smith ’ s oft-juicy media column at the New York Times or the rise of the Hollywood Fix , a bare-bones operation in which one guy with a camera follows famous TikTok stars around various LA hot spots and interviews them for his YouTube channel .
Regardless of what Pope Francis , who described gossip as “ a plague worse than Covid ” says , it ’ s clear people are yearning for something to talk about that doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Good gossip , therefore , has become even juicier .
Some of this year ’ s lowlights include actor Dominic West being photographed possibly cheating on his wife with co-star Lily James in Rome and later hiding from paparazzi in a bush ; prominent New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin reportedly being caught masturbating on a Zoom call ; and a minor Pennsylvania politician who was accused of running a Twitter account in which he pretended to be a gay Black Trump supporter .
( The account in question may in fact belong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Ellen DeGeneres was finally forced to reckon with her terrible professional reputation — which the gossip columns had warned about for years — while Lea Michele was alleged to have once threatened to defecate in a fellow Glee cast member ’ s wig .
Is the gossip boom a sign of a thirst for the return of mid-2000s tabloid snarkiness ?
Not quite , argues Deuxmoi .
“ My followers don ’ t describe it like that .
A majority of the stuff I post is from people who ’ ve had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospitality .
It ’ s not manufactured information , like a publicist telling a reporter what to write or how to spin it , which I think happens a lot in other news outlets.
” There are downsides to running an incredibly popular gossip account .
For one , Deuxmoi says she ’ s extremely burned out from checking Instagram “ any free moment that I have , from the minute I wake up , ” and disseminating information to her followers .
She took a three-day break from posting over Thanksgiving and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I definitely had a breakdown , ” she says .
“ In the beginning , it was fun and it was a distraction , but I talk to friends about it and I ’ m like , ‘ Why the hell am I even still doing this ?
’ ” In getting into the business of celebrity gossip , she ’ s felt the weight of the same pressure to kowtow to audiences that famous people themselves deal with .
Conversely , her experience running Deuxmoi has also forced her to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gray areas that go unreported .
Audiences may flock to blind items for black-and-white scandals with a clear-cut cast of heroes and villains , but it ’ s possible that while they ’ re there , what they ’ re finding is actually more nuance .
“ A lot of people were ‘ ruined ’ for me because it forced me to take off my rose-colored glasses , which kind of sucked because you do want to see them as special , ” she says .
Instead , she discovered what the tabloids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They ’ re just like us : human .
”

Over the past few months, I have heard some new rumors about celebrities. Did you know that Jennifer Lopez orders the spicy rigatoni when she dines at Carbone? Or that Blake Lively’s career is stalling a bit? Also, David Schwimmer is, tragically, not very nice. And if you were curious about what Leonardo DiCaprio is like during sex, he allegedly wears headphones.
None of these things really matter, and whether they’re even true — none of them have been “confirmed,” by any real journalistic standards — is somewhat beside the point. They’re slivers of rather banal (besides the headphones) gossip from the Instagram account Deuxmoi, a rare bright spot in the digital world during an otherwise gloomy year. Though Deuxmoi accepts nearly everyone who requests to follow it, the fact that it is a private account means that to find the drama, there’s only one place to go.
Deuxmoi is in the business of blind items, where anonymous tipsters send in tidbits of information or sightings of celebrities, sometimes with names attached, sometimes without. A certain A-list actor may be said to be cheating on his wife, for instance, but we can only guess as to whom (whereas the more mundane intel, like a pasta order, is fair game to attribute to a certain person).
Celebrity media is nearly as old as the idea of a celebrity, but talking about stars takes on new meaning in a time when many people have described themselves as starved for gossip. With more idle time separated from family and friends and other forms of escapism — such as literally escaping on vacation — chatter about the scandalous, enviable, or surprising goings-on of the rich and famous provides a way out of the endless boredom of quarantine.
Deuxmoi, and the endless gossip or “tea” accounts like it, is thriving in 2020. Since March, Deuxmoi has grown its 45,000 followers more than tenfold. TikTok Room, an Instagram account devoted to niche drama between TikTok stars, has grown from 300,000 followers to nearly 2 million in the same time span. They may not be subject to rigorous fact-checking, but they offer a choose-your-own-adventure for readers, who perhaps care less about the end game of finding the truth and are just happy to be along for the ride.
This has always been the case with gossip and blind items, which, to their credit, have laid the groundwork for some of the biggest celebrity scandals in history. Yet in providing seemingly low-stakes fun for readers, the industry can often end up derailing individuals’ lives in the process. The new generation of Instagram tabloids is attempting to change that dynamic. Instead, they’re asking, “Can gossip be good?”
What is Deuxmoi, the anonymously run celebrity gossip Instagram account?
Like so many of this year’s most engrossing cultural phenomena, Deuxmoi was born out of quarantine boredom. Its owner has remained anonymous during its rise in popularity, though we know she is a woman based in New York who does not work in the entertainment industry (I’ll refer to her as simply “Deuxmoi” in this piece). She said she’d happened to gain 45,000 Instagram followers from a project she and a friend started in 2013. But with the page mostly dormant for the past few years, she took advantage of a slow news day in March to post a few blind items she thought were interesting. Then she encouraged followers to send in their own.
As thousands of new people have flocked to the page, more and more tea has been spilled. Some followers are regular folks who happen to have had run-ins with celebs, others are in the entertainment business, and many more work in hospitality spaces where celebrities often expose their best and worst behavior.
A few highlights over the past few months: James Corden might be the next Ellen DeGeneres (in the bad way). Adrian Grenier has nice-looking genitals. Sex and the City actor Chris Noth hates when you take his picture. Someone once saw Bernie Sanders ordering tomato soup at the Senate cafeteria. Celebrities said to be famously nice include Steve Carell, Drew Barrymore, Luke Wilson, the Hadid sisters, and Pink. Celebrities who are not: Marisa Tomei, Leslie Mann, and the aforementioned “Rude Ross.”
Again, these are not necessarily “facts” like you would expect to read in a reputable newspaper or magazine, nor does Deuxmoi pretend to be a reporter. “I don’t consider myself a news source,” she told me. “I’m honestly like the moderator of a live message board.” When I ask her what’s valuable about Deuxmoi versus traditional tabloids, she explains that traditional tabloids often have narratives they’re trying to sell, whereas her posts are composed entirely of screenshots of direct messages or emails she receives with little or no commentary.
“What I’m receiving is what everyone else is seeing,” she says. This, in turn, lets her audience piece together whatever narrative they want. “The community of people that the account generated is honestly the most interesting thing about the account,” she says. “They’re very, very active in participating. If I ever have a question, I’ll get an answer in sometimes less than a minute. It’s crazy.”
That community now includes more than 460,000 followers, who show up not only for the drama but for the intra-Deuxmoi language and the hyperspecific inside jokes. Bring up “studio execs,” for instance, and Deuxmoi superusers will recall the hilarious days-long back-and-forth between unnamed people purporting to be film studio executives arguing over which celebrities could get any project produced (Emma Stone, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), whose careers were getting “cold” (Channing Tatum has apparently “lost momentum”), and other tidbits like “Kaitlyn Dever is this generation’s Laura Dern” or “Blake Lively needs to find her niche, which is honestly whatever Jen Garner has just about aged out of playing.”
“That was one of my favorite things; people went crazy for that,” Deuxmoi says with a laugh (though she believes not all of the people said to be involved were “execs,” more like assistants or other industry folk). “It was really funny, but it was also an insider’s take on what’s going on. That’s what the account is all about. You don’t have to take it all so seriously.”
The messy history of blind items and the celebrity rumor mill
Obviously, this is meant to be fun. To follow Deuxmoi is not only to read industry insiders’ takes on famous people’s careers but also to feel like a studio executive yourself, keeping tabs on the minutiae of celebrity power rankings as though you’re in charge of casting your own film project.
That celebrity gossip is interesting to us as people is nothing new, but the blind item format — the tidbits too legally or morally risky to publish outright — has a more recent history. In Alyssa Bereznak’s thorough retelling of how blind items changed Hollywood for the Ringer in 2018, she explains that the first modern blind item column began in the New York media scene in the 1890s, when a Civil War hero named William d’Alton Mann hired a team of underlings to pass on rumblings about the Manhattan elite.
But the current gossip landscape was mostly built 100 years later with the rise of the internet: Sites like Perez Hilton, Socialite Rank, Lainey Gossip, Crazy Days and Nights, the Shade Room, and Blind Gossip trafficked largely in rumors about society’s elite rather than fact-checked reporting. Though the now-defunct Gawker also regularly published investigative journalism, its longtime tagline was “today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news,” where rumblings about New York media figureheads were often described in an editorial voice that was as entertaining as it was snarky.
Though they often refused to name names, these websites were the first to report, however indirectly, on many of the biggest celebrity scandals in history. Crazy Days and Nights published one of the first whispers of the NXIVM scandal in 2012, six years before cult leader Keith Raniere was charged. Gawker blogged about the Louis C.K. sexual misconduct allegations in 2012, five years before the New York Times did. Page Six ran a blind item about politician John Edwards’s infidelity in 2007 while his wife was being treated for cancer; he would admit to it three years later. Harvey Weinstein was a fixture in blind items because rumors about his serial sexual abuse had circulated for years; Lainey Gossip founder Elaine Lui told Vox in 2017 that “for the 15 years that I’ve been reporting, that’s how long I’ve been hearing about it.”
Yet the rumor mill goes both ways — Weinstein also is alleged to have smeared those who threatened to expose him in legacy media gossip channels. When whispers circulated of certain actresses “sleeping their way to the top,” for example, many of them were actually victims of the producer’s abuse. “Though tabloids like the Enquirer do sometimes pursue stories with an admirable moral end goal, they’re also frequently guilty of using their aggressive reporting to assert culturally conservative viewpoints,” Bereznak writes.
As entertainment journalist Dave Quinn, who’s covered celebrities since the mid-2000s, most recently at People magazine, tells me, blind items are as powerful as they are unwieldy. “Look at what the media and the tabloids can do to someone’s psyche — what it did to Britney Spears, to Princess Diana.”
Deuxmoi intentionally steers clear of more serious topics, partially for legal reasons (her website includes a lengthy disclaimer that it publishes rumor, not fact; she says hasn’t faced any legal issues yet), but also because Deuxmoi herself isn’t as interested in the hardcore drama. “I like the stupid stuff,” she says. “I like the coffee orders and I like what products they buy. [My readers] want the salacious stuff. They want to know who’s [secretly] gay and who does drugs.” These are the types of messages — cheating rumors, addiction — that Deuxmoi will blur out to protect the identity of the accused, turning them into blind items rather than potentially expose a celebrity to a serious allegation that may or may not be true.
The law is typically on the side of the press, thanks to both the First Amendment and a 1964 Supreme Court decision that states that in order to make a libel or defamation claim, a celebrity must prove that a news publication knew the information was false and published it anyway, thereby acting with “actual malice.” Publicists and celebrities themselves often refrain from commenting on blind items because to do so would essentially confirm that the rumor is true. Enty, the anonymous entertainment lawyer behind the blind items site Crazy Days and Nights, told Vanity Fair in 2016 that he hadn’t been sued once in 10 years, and only occasionally receives an angry email from a celeb.
Over the past decade, contemporary celebrity coverage has come to be defined by its deference to famous people; the snarkiness characteristic of aughts tabloid culture has largely fallen out of fashion (the performative pearl-clutching and racist, sexist dog whistles of the British tabloids aside). When I spoke to a co-founder of the popular Instagram account Comments by Celebs, which posts Instagram comments to and from celebrities, she told me their aim is to avoid negativity altogether. “Our whole goal is that we would never want the person in the picture to look at it and be like, ‘Wow, really sucks that they posted that,’” she said.
Quinn attributes this to the introduction of social media, which has dramatically altered the relationship between the famous and the press. “There was this big boom with sites like Perez Hilton, where [the coverage] was very negative and nasty — it was like the takedown journalism years. What’s changed is that social media has allowed celebrities to break their own stories and control their own narratives,” he says. “Once they were able to do that, the negative tones kind of disappeared, and we focused a little bit more on understanding from their own point of view.”
The more cynical take might be that as celebrities have been able to create more direct relationships with fans, entertainment media lost much of its power to control the opinions of its audience. Once famous people were able to portray themselves as endearing and accessible rather than elitist and aloof, in order to gain the trust of readers, journalists had to adopt a more sympathetic tone or risk being written off as mean, jealous, or manipulative — or worse, face the terrifying wrath of a celebrity’s digital stan army. (Said one writer who provoked legions of Nicki Minaj fans in 2018 with a marginally critical tweet, “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”)
Media mistrust is also at the root of many people’s enjoyment of blind items and gossip websites. “I’m showing you an honest perspective. This is the exact information I receive; you can choose to believe it or not,” Deuxmoi says. Yet even she faces skepticism from her followers. “They’re under the impression that a lot of publicists write in with fake information, but I don’t get that at all. The ones that I’ve gotten that I think have been written by publicists are so saccharine and sweet and totally over the top to paint the celebrity in a good light. But that doesn’t happen that often.”
Lui of Lainey Gossip says some of that cynicism stems from the way the Kardashians have changed the business of fame. “We see what’s on [their] show and we’re like, how much of this is scripted? They’re so good at manipulating a narrative that it’s permeated how we think about all celebrities,” she told The Cut earlier this year. “We assume that if [Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas] are getting photographed every day, that they’re probably fake; that this is a faux-mance. But I don’t think it’s a faux-mance. I think they’re really into each other.”
We’ve seen what happens when public trust in media erodes — allegations of “fake news” can curdle into ambiguousness about what is or is not factual, allowing misinformation to spread unchecked. But as Deuxmoi herself says, maybe it doesn’t have to be all that serious.
We all need a little gossip now
Like so many quarantine trends — bread baking, tie-dyeing, Animal Crossing, cottagecore — celebrity gossip offers an escape that doubles as a salve for anxiety. While products literally designed to chill us out have also gone viral in recent years, for some of us, that sense of peace can only come from, say, the podcast Who? Weekly, which details the daily drama of C-list celebrities about whom you have to ask, “Who?”
Laura Loret de Mola, a 30-year-old development creative at a streaming platform in New York, had always been ambiently interested in celebrity news, having years ago discovered Who? Weekly. But since the start of the pandemic, the rest of her podcast diet — which previously included the New York Times’s The Daily and NPR’s Radiolab — has taken a back seat. “I just couldn’t devote myself to listening to them,” she says of hard news shows. Who? Weekly “has been something I’ve turned to when I just want to chill, and I’ve been wanting to chill a lot during this time. It’s the only form of news I look forward to now.”
“I downloaded the Calm app,” Loret de Mola adds, “but I’m not fucking listening to Calm, I’m listening to celebrity gossip or watching C-list influencers open stuff they got in the mail on Instagram.”
The pandemic has made gossip “essential again,” as Joseph Longo put it in Mel Magazine, from Deuxmoi to the Gossip Girl reboot to Ben Smith’s oft-juicy media column at the New York Times or the rise of the Hollywood Fix, a bare-bones operation in which one guy with a camera follows famous TikTok stars around various LA hot spots and interviews them for his YouTube channel. Regardless of what Pope Francis, who described gossip as “a plague worse than Covid” says, it’s clear people are yearning for something to talk about that doesn’t involve the latest horrors of the day.
Good gossip, therefore, has become even juicier. Some of this year’s lowlights include actor Dominic West being photographed possibly cheating on his wife with co-star Lily James in Rome and later hiding from paparazzi in a bush; prominent New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin reportedly being caught masturbating on a Zoom call; and a minor Pennsylvania politician who was accused of running a Twitter account in which he pretended to be a gay Black Trump supporter. (The account in question may in fact belong to Patti LaBelle’s son.) Ellen DeGeneres was finally forced to reckon with her terrible professional reputation — which the gossip columns had warned about for years — while Lea Michele was alleged to have once threatened to defecate in a fellow Glee cast member’s wig.
Is the gossip boom a sign of a thirst for the return of mid-2000s tabloid snarkiness? Not quite, argues Deuxmoi. “My followers don’t describe it like that. A majority of the stuff I post is from people who’ve had normal interactions or people who work in hospitality. It’s not manufactured information, like a publicist telling a reporter what to write or how to spin it, which I think happens a lot in other news outlets.”
There are downsides to running an incredibly popular gossip account. For one, Deuxmoi says she’s extremely burned out from checking Instagram “any free moment that I have, from the minute I wake up,” and disseminating information to her followers. She took a three-day break from posting over Thanksgiving and was inundated with demands for new content. “I definitely had a breakdown,” she says. “In the beginning, it was fun and it was a distraction, but I talk to friends about it and I’m like, ‘Why the hell am I even still doing this?’” In getting into the business of celebrity gossip, she’s felt the weight of the same pressure to kowtow to audiences that famous people themselves deal with.
Conversely, her experience running Deuxmoi has also forced her to reevaluate her relationship with celebrities and the gray areas that go unreported. Audiences may flock to blind items for black-and-white scandals with a clear-cut cast of heroes and villains, but it’s possible that while they’re there, what they’re finding is actually more nuance.
“A lot of people were ‘ruined’ for me because it forced me to take off my rose-colored glasses, which kind of sucked because you do want to see them as special,” she says. Instead, she discovered what the tabloids have been saying for years: “They’re just like us: human.”


vox--2020-12-11--A less miserable winter

A less miserable winter

Winter is never the easiest time .
It ’ s cold .
It ’ s dark .
It ’ s icy and snowy and windy .
It puts the “ season ” in “ seasonal affective disorder.
” And this winter , the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 , is extra complicated .
The end of the pandemic might be in sight , but we ’ re not there yet , not by a long shot .
So we know that we won ’ t have all the things to look forward to that we once had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ friends , bundling up for a night out at a restaurant or bar , the relief of running on a treadmill at the gym while the streets outside are slick and dangerous .
It ’ s going to be rough ; some might even call it miserable .
We ’ d like to help you make it less miserable .
Vox has brought together some of our coziest minds — and tapped the experts — to help you figure out how to navigate this winter .
Join us as we roll out tips @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( indoor ) hobby , how to bake magical bread , and how to keep your houseplants from calling it quits .
We ’ ll be checking with people who know how to deal with small-space living and long , dark winters .
We hope it ’ ll help make things less terrible — maybe even a little joyful .
How to keep your houseplants ( and yourself ) less miserable this winter , by Umair Irfan A Scandinavian local explains how to make it through winter , by Melinda Fakuade How to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alanna Okun How do you handle a tiny living space ?
We asked a Below Deck crew member , by Alex Abad-Santos A patio expert explains how to make winter socializing tolerable , by Alex Abad-Santos This sourdough recipe takes all day .
That ’ s what makes it great , by Brian Resnick How to find fitness motivation after this trainwreck of a year , by Alex Abad-Santos

Winter is never the easiest time. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s icy and snowy and windy. It puts the “season” in “seasonal affective disorder.”
And this winter, the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, is extra complicated. The end of the pandemic might be in sight, but we’re not there yet, not by a long shot. So we know that we won’t have all the things to look forward to that we once had: gatherings at home with family and friends, bundling up for a night out at a restaurant or bar, the relief of running on a treadmill at the gym while the streets outside are slick and dangerous. It’s going to be rough; some might even call it miserable.
We’d like to help you make it less miserable. Vox has brought together some of our coziest minds — and tapped the experts — to help you figure out how to navigate this winter. Join us as we roll out tips on how to pick up a new (indoor) hobby, how to bake magical bread, and how to keep your houseplants from calling it quits. We’ll be checking with people who know how to deal with small-space living and long, dark winters. We hope it’ll help make things less terrible — maybe even a little joyful.
How to keep your houseplants (and yourself) less miserable this winter, by Umair Irfan
A Scandinavian local explains how to make it through winter, by Melinda Fakuade
How to get a hobby this winter, by Alanna Okun
How do you handle a tiny living space? We asked a Below Deck crew member, by Alex Abad-Santos
A patio expert explains how to make winter socializing tolerable, by Alex Abad-Santos
This sourdough recipe takes all day. That’s what makes it great, by Brian Resnick
How to find fitness motivation after this trainwreck of a year, by Alex Abad-Santos


vox--2020-12-11--How to find fitness motivation after this train wreck of a year

Winter will suck .
We gathered some of Vox ’ s coziest minds to help you make it suck less .
One of the things I miss most about my pre-pandemic life was being in a room of sweaty people .
I ’ m not a fan of sweat or people separately and independently , yet somehow I very much enjoy group fitness classes .
The adrenaline , the motivational yelling , the excitement and fear of performing one more squat in front of an attractive instructor , and the 60 minutes of separation from my phone — something about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since March , I haven ’ t been able to go to one .
Because of fears of Covid-19 spread in closed spaces , Barry ’ s and similar companies like F45 , SoulCycle , and Rumble shut their doors across the country .
Cities like New York and Los Angeles haven ’ t allowed them to reopen , citing health reasons ( some cities are allowing group fitness to reopen with reduced capacity ) and some fitness companies have called it quits altogether .
And as the pandemic continues to intensify , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to happen until a vaccine is fully accessible .
For fans of Barry ’ s , group fitness , gyms , and exercise in the last nine months have been an exercise in adaptation .
Some classes are now offered outside .
Some companies have accelerated and created apps .
Some instructors are on Zoom , allowing for real-life interactions , kind of .
But none of these options are quite the same as getting into a room full of sweaty people and working out while someone yells motivating things at you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our lives , exercise included .
And as the weather gets colder and outdoor classes aren ’ t as viable an option — and as the pandemic gets worse and possibly results in more shelter-in-place directives — it could all change again .
So how does one maintain a semblance of a routine ?
Or even simpler , how can you motivate yourself to do anything beyond get out of bed ?
I posed these questions to Charlie Meredith , a senior curriculum mentor at Barry ’ s .
Meredith has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through Zoom via the company ’ s online classes for the last nine or so months , and on top of that has been working out , too .
Here ’ s what he had to say about exercising and tips and tricks to stay motivated even though we may not want to .
No one has dumbbells , and that ’ s okay One of the oddest ways the pandemic has changed the economy is how ordinary objects have become so difficult to find .
Because of a broken supply chain — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to purchase dumbbells themselves — there ’ s now a dumbbell shortage .
During the pandemic , prices for dumbbells have skyrocketed , with sellers pricing them out of normal ranges .
“ Dumbbells are rarer than 24K gold these days , ” Meredith said .
Heavy household objects , including bags of flour , can be good makeshift weights ; a loaded backpack can work in a pinch , too .
Or , if they ’ re willing , find a small child or a neighbor ’ s Chihuahua and curl them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as heavy and might not get you the same strength results as weights , resistance bands could be a good investment .
“ Don ’ t forget about resistance bands , kettlebells , water jugs , and wine bottles , ” Meredith said .
“ Last , but not least — use your body weight .
There are so many platforms out there that provide fierce and effective body-weight workouts.
” Meredith explained that you don ’ t need a lot of equipment to get started or to keep your routine going .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ these days ” Since the pandemic shut down gyms and fitness studios in March , I ’ ve turned my living room into a workout station .
Every morning I drag my coffee table out of the way , unroll a yoga mat , and do a Barry ’ s online class via Zoom .
It ’ s nowhere near the same thing as working out in the studio , but it works for me .
One of the things I reluctantly do and what Meredith encourages is to keep your “ camera @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule is that I don ’ t do this for any class earlier than 7 am , but I ’ ve found that keeping the camera on makes me less inclined to half-ass the workout .
I can ’ t skip bear planks or cheat my squat if someone ’ s watching .
But there ’ s another benefit , Meredith explained .
“ Barry ’ s At Home is the best because you can work out with your camera on and the instructor can watch and provide form cues , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and if you have any specific questions reach out directly to the instructor.
” Having taken a lot of these classes , form corrections are usually only slightly embarrassing .
But they are valuable in that they will likely keep you from tweaking your lower back , or remind you to keep your knee from caving during lunges .
It ’ s nice to have a real-life fitness professional tell you if you ’ re doing a certain movement right , versus following along on an app and not really knowing what “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be kind to ourselves One of the most heartening things that Meredith , whose arms seem to be as thick as my entire torso , told me was that the pandemic has made him adjust his exercise habits , too .
Shared bemoaning and general complaint is a strong motivator for me , so hearing how fitness people have their off days made me feel better .
“ These are difficult times and we are all mentally being put through the wringer .
Be kind to yourself , do things that make you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ Take time out of each day and dedicate it to yourself.
” He said that consistency and balance are challenging , considering all the curveballs the pandemic has thrown at him .
But he found clarity by acknowledging that this life-altering event is in fact a life-altering event .
It ’ s important to take that into account when we ’ re being hard on ourselves , he said .
Part of establishing consistency is understanding that we ’ re not expected to go all out every single day .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a level of intensity or taking a recovery day , he said , is as important as going hard and crushing goals .
“ Even if it ’ s 10 minutes , something is better than nothing ” Another way to look at it might be to stop focusing on results , and putting more emphasis on how exercise can make you feel .
Meredith says exercise now feels , more than ever , like a mental health release .
And those moments are valuable and may motivate you to show up on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like it .
Taking honest stock of what ’ s happened , and what options are available , can be grounding and even motivating .
“ Remind yourself that the ability to move your body is a gift ; to sweat is a privilege , ” Meredith told me .
“ Even if it ’ s 10 minutes , something is better than nothing.
” Whether that ’ s a Barry ’ s class , or a yoga class , or taking a walk , or learning something new like jumping rope , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re going to do and one that you enjoy doing .
And perhaps those building blocks of feeling good and gratitude can slowly build into something resembling consistency and a routine , or bring back the pre-pandemic motivation .
“ Personally I have never done a workout and regretted it , ” Meredith told me .

Winter will suck. We gathered some of Vox’s coziest minds to help you make it suck less.
One of the things I miss most about my pre-pandemic life was being in a room of sweaty people. I’m not a fan of sweat or people separately and independently, yet somehow I very much enjoy group fitness classes. The adrenaline, the motivational yelling, the excitement and fear of performing one more squat in front of an attractive instructor, and the 60 minutes of separation from my phone — something about it all clicks for me.
And since March, I haven’t been able to go to one.
Because of fears of Covid-19 spread in closed spaces, Barry’s and similar companies like F45, SoulCycle, and Rumble shut their doors across the country. Cities like New York and Los Angeles haven’t allowed them to reopen, citing health reasons (some cities are allowing group fitness to reopen with reduced capacity) and some fitness companies have called it quits altogether. And as the pandemic continues to intensify, it seems like reopening isn’t going to happen until a vaccine is fully accessible.
For fans of Barry’s, group fitness, gyms, and exercise in the last nine months have been an exercise in adaptation. Some classes are now offered outside. Some companies have accelerated and created apps. Some instructors are on Zoom, allowing for real-life interactions, kind of. But none of these options are quite the same as getting into a room full of sweaty people and working out while someone yells motivating things at you.
The pandemic disrupted every single routine in our lives, exercise included. And as the weather gets colder and outdoor classes aren’t as viable an option — and as the pandemic gets worse and possibly results in more shelter-in-place directives — it could all change again.
So how does one maintain a semblance of a routine? Or even simpler, how can you motivate yourself to do anything beyond get out of bed?
I posed these questions to Charlie Meredith, a senior curriculum mentor at Barry’s. Meredith has been teaching Barry’s classes outdoors and through Zoom via the company’s online classes for the last nine or so months, and on top of that has been working out, too. Here’s what he had to say about exercising and tips and tricks to stay motivated even though we may not want to.
No one has dumbbells, and that’s okay
One of the oddest ways the pandemic has changed the economy is how ordinary objects have become so difficult to find. Because of a broken supply chain — and because many gym-goers never previously had to purchase dumbbells themselves — there’s now a dumbbell shortage. During the pandemic, prices for dumbbells have skyrocketed, with sellers pricing them out of normal ranges.
“Dumbbells are rarer than 24K gold these days,” Meredith said.
Heavy household objects, including bags of flour, can be good makeshift weights; a loaded backpack can work in a pinch, too. Or, if they’re willing, find a small child or a neighbor’s Chihuahua and curl them. And while they aren’t as heavy and might not get you the same strength results as weights, resistance bands could be a good investment.
“Don’t forget about resistance bands, kettlebells, water jugs, and wine bottles,” Meredith said. “Last, but not least — use your body weight. There are so many platforms out there that provide fierce and effective body-weight workouts.” Meredith explained that you don’t need a lot of equipment to get started or to keep your routine going.
“Dumbbells are rarer than 24K gold these days”
Since the pandemic shut down gyms and fitness studios in March, I’ve turned my living room into a workout station. Every morning I drag my coffee table out of the way, unroll a yoga mat, and do a Barry’s online class via Zoom. It’s nowhere near the same thing as working out in the studio, but it works for me.
One of the things I reluctantly do and what Meredith encourages is to keep your “camera on” during the classes. My rule is that I don’t do this for any class earlier than 7 am, but I’ve found that keeping the camera on makes me less inclined to half-ass the workout. I can’t skip bear planks or cheat my squat if someone’s watching. But there’s another benefit, Meredith explained.
“Barry’s At Home is the best because you can work out with your camera on and the instructor can watch and provide form cues,” he said. “Hold yourself accountable, and if you have any specific questions reach out directly to the instructor.”
Having taken a lot of these classes, form corrections are usually only slightly embarrassing. But they are valuable in that they will likely keep you from tweaking your lower back, or remind you to keep your knee from caving during lunges. It’s nice to have a real-life fitness professional tell you if you’re doing a certain movement right, versus following along on an app and not really knowing what “feels” right.
Screw expectations and be kind to ourselves
One of the most heartening things that Meredith, whose arms seem to be as thick as my entire torso, told me was that the pandemic has made him adjust his exercise habits, too. Shared bemoaning and general complaint is a strong motivator for me, so hearing how fitness people have their off days made me feel better.
“These are difficult times and we are all mentally being put through the wringer. Be kind to yourself, do things that make you happy and spark joy,” he said. “Take time out of each day and dedicate it to yourself.”
He said that consistency and balance are challenging, considering all the curveballs the pandemic has thrown at him. But he found clarity by acknowledging that this life-altering event is in fact a life-altering event. It’s important to take that into account when we’re being hard on ourselves, he said.
Part of establishing consistency is understanding that we’re not expected to go all out every single day. Listening to your body and taking down a level of intensity or taking a recovery day, he said, is as important as going hard and crushing goals.
“Even if it’s 10 minutes, something is better than nothing”
Another way to look at it might be to stop focusing on results, and putting more emphasis on how exercise can make you feel. Meredith says exercise now feels, more than ever, like a mental health release. And those moments are valuable and may motivate you to show up on days when you don’t feel like it.
Taking honest stock of what’s happened, and what options are available, can be grounding and even motivating. “Remind yourself that the ability to move your body is a gift; to sweat is a privilege,” Meredith told me. “Even if it’s 10 minutes, something is better than nothing.”
Whether that’s a Barry’s class, or a yoga class, or taking a walk, or learning something new like jumping rope, the best workout is the one you’re going to do and one that you enjoy doing. And perhaps those building blocks of feeling good and gratitude can slowly build into something resembling consistency and a routine, or bring back the pre-pandemic motivation.
“Personally I have never done a workout and regretted it,” Meredith told me.


vox--2020-12-11--The FDA has authorized the first Covid-19 vaccine in the US

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday evening granted an emergency use authorization ( EUA ) to the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech , making it the first Covid-19 vaccine in the United States to begin distribution outside of clinical trials .
The first 6.4 million doses could ship within days .
The announcement came after an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration , the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee , voted 17 to 4 , with 1 abstention , to recommend and EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine .
The committee specifically voted on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outweigh the risks in people aged 16 years and older .
The highly anticipated regulatory green light means health workers facing high exposure to the disease and residents of long-term care facilities can now start receiving the first doses of the two-dose vaccine .
That a vaccine for a disease only discovered late last year would be ready so quickly is already an unmatched scientific feat , but the fact that it ’ s also based on a new technology that yielded 95 percent efficacy in preventing disease makes the announcement all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to develop a new vaccine to prevent this novel , serious , and life-threatening disease in an expedited timeframe after its emergence is a true testament to scientific innovation and public-private collaboration worldwide , ” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in a statement .
The approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the US follows green lights from regulatory agencies in Canada and the United Kingdom .
Next week , the vaccine advisory committee will consider another EUA for the Covid-19 vaccine using a similar approach developed by Moderna .
But an EUA is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must then be shipped to health facilities and administered in two doses .
These steps present their own challenges , ranging from keeping the vaccine at the frigid temperatures it requires to getting patients to come back for a follow-up shot .
Meanwhile , many of the health systems administering shots are struggling to care for a huge surge of hospitalized Covid-19 patients .
This rollout will be part of the largest vaccination effort in history .
But there will not be enough doses for everyone at the outset , even for people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Pfizer and BioNTech expect to produce 50 million doses of their vaccine around the world before the end of the year , enough for 25 million people — half of which has been pledged for the US .
The first doses to roll out will be a crucial test of the vaccine distribution system in the United States , as well as a test of public acceptance and of the integrity of the clinical trial process .
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is cleared for emergency approval .
Now what ?
One of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ getting it where it needs to go .
That ’ s complicated by the fact that the vaccine requires temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius ( minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit ) or lower , some of the coldest temperature constraints of any Covid-19 vaccine under development .
Maintaining the cold chain from factories to distribution hubs to hospitals is crucial ; otherwise , the vaccine may spoil and become ineffective .
Pfizer has developed its own temperature-controlled shipping containers that use dry ice to maintain the recommended temperatures for their vaccine for up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will require ultra-cold freezers , and not many clinics have the requisite hardware , so timing the shipments will be key .
There may also be shortages of dry ice .
The next hurdle is figuring out who gets the vaccine first .
The 6.4 million doses available at the outset are nowhere near enough to quench the raging Covid-19 pandemic that is still reaching new peaks in daily hospitalizations and fatalities .
An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted at the beginning of this month on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personnel , as well as staff and residents of long-term care facilities .
But these groups alone add up to about 24 million people , so states and local governments and health groups are having to narrow these groups further .
Pfizer and BioNTech ’ s vaccine also has to be administered as two doses spaced 21 days apart .
That poses a problem because experiences with other vaccines show that people are really bad at getting follow-up shots .
As many as half of patients failed to get their second dose of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For the Covid-19 vaccine , side effects from the first dose , scheduling conflicts , or supply shortages may inhibit recipients from getting the second dose .
The good news is that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may offer some protection against Covid-19 from the first dose , although it takes a few days for the shielding to build up .
In fact , some experts , including former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb , argued that the entire allotment of doses should be given to as many people as possible , as fast as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give to people as second shots .
“ We should get as many shots in our arms as possible right away , ” he told USA Today on Monday .
“ The idea that we need to cut ( the doses ) in half and give half of it now and hold onto it , so we have supply in January to get the second dose … I just fundamentally disagree with that.
” But other experts say there isn ’ t yet enough data on a single dose to know whether it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the broader population .
Meanwhile , the FDA is likely to authorize another Covid-19 vaccine in the coming weeks , clearing the way for the distribution of 25 million doses of the Moderna vaccine , enough for 12.5 million people on the two-dose regimen .
Moncef Slaoui , the scientific lead for Operation Warp Speed , the program from the Department of Health and Human Services to accelerate and deploy Covid-19 vaccines , said he expects 20 million Americans will be vaccinated in December , 30 million more in January , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccines with promising early results are approved .
The clinical trials for Covid-19 vaccines must continue , but they ’ re going to get harder to complete as placebo participants leave to get vaccinated An EUA is a critical step , but it ’ s not full approval , and it signals that the FDA still wants answers to key questions , like long-term safety .
The standards for an EUA for a vaccine is that there is an urgent public health need , the proposed vaccine may have a beneficial effect , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The FDA also set a minimum threshold of 50 percent efficacy for a Covid-19 vaccine , a line that several vaccines have completely vaulted .
So far , Pfizer and BioNTech are only reporting two months of observational safety for their phase 3 clinical trial , although the companies have committed to continue monitoring their more than 43,000 trial participants .
But at the same time , Covid-19 is spreading rampantly in the United States , and more than 20,000 people in Pfizer and BioNTech ’ s trial have received a placebo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them vulnerable to the disease .
Of the 178 reported cases of Covid-19 in the trial pool , 169 were in the placebo group .
Of those , 9 in the placebo group and 1 in the vaccine group experienced severe Covid-19 .
As time goes on , more people in the placebo group will likely get sick and some will fall severely ill , requiring hospitalization .
Without intervention , some of these people in the placebo group may die .
The EUA now presents a huge dilemma for the clinical trial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be at risk of Covid-19 , but if they receive the vaccine , it would diminish the value of the trial and make it harder to answer questions about safety and efficacy , particularly in vulnerable subgroups like older adults .
And since this is a double-blind clinical trial , neither the recipients nor the companies know who received the vaccine and who received the placebo .
Vaccinating the placebo group would require breaking this blind , and if participants find out which group they ’ re in , they could change their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may engage in riskier behavior while people in the placebo group may end up taking more precautions if they decide not to get vaccinated themselves .
Those changes in behavior will make it harder to isolate the effects of the vaccine .
William C. Gruber , senior vice president for vaccine clinical research and development for Pfizer , told the FDA vaccine advisory committee on Thursday that the company has an ethical obligation to inform trial participants that the vaccine has received an EUA , but they are working on coming up with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trial as much as possible .
“ Eligible participants in the placebo group will have the option to receive the vaccine , ” Gruber said .
“ We are currently in discussions with the FDA about the best way to vaccinate placebo recipients.
” Gruber added that the study will continue for 24 months regardless , with ongoing monitoring of the trial participants .
This sort of large-scale and long-term follow-up is key because there may be rare complications that emerge that weren ’ t detected over a shorter time frame or were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participants in the trial .
Already , the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the UK has revealed that people with severe allergies could face complications .
“ [ T ] he expectation would be that subjects with known severe reaction — allergic reaction — should not take the vaccine until we understand exactly what happened here , ” Slaoui told reporters on Wednesday .
More people receiving this inoculation will further clarify any problems and concerns .
But it will take months before the vaccine will start to constrain new Covid-19 cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to have immunity before the spread starts to slow down .
And while the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has demonstrated effectiveness against disease , it ’ s still not clear how well it prevents asymptomatic infection .
Scientists don ’ t yet know if people who are vaccinated could still transmit the virus to other people without getting sick themselves .
That means that until there is widespread vaccination , hospitals will still be battling severe Covid-19 as case numbers reach grim new heights .
And handwashing , social distancing , and mark-wearing will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months to come , even for people lucky enough to receive a vaccine .

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday evening granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, making it the first Covid-19 vaccine in the United States to begin distribution outside of clinical trials.
The first 6.4 million doses could ship within days.
The announcement came after an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, voted 17 to 4, with 1 abstention, to recommend and EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The committee specifically voted on whether the benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine outweigh the risks in people aged 16 years and older.
The highly anticipated regulatory green light means health workers facing high exposure to the disease and residents of long-term care facilities can now start receiving the first doses of the two-dose vaccine.
That a vaccine for a disease only discovered late last year would be ready so quickly is already an unmatched scientific feat, but the fact that it’s also based on a new technology that yielded 95 percent efficacy in preventing disease makes the announcement all the more remarkable.
“The tireless work to develop a new vaccine to prevent this novel, serious, and life-threatening disease in an expedited timeframe after its emergence is a true testament to scientific innovation and public-private collaboration worldwide,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in a statement.
The approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the US follows green lights from regulatory agencies in Canada and the United Kingdom. Next week, the vaccine advisory committee will consider another EUA for the Covid-19 vaccine using a similar approach developed by Moderna.
But an EUA is only one step forward.
The vaccine must then be shipped to health facilities and administered in two doses. These steps present their own challenges, ranging from keeping the vaccine at the frigid temperatures it requires to getting patients to come back for a follow-up shot. Meanwhile, many of the health systems administering shots are struggling to care for a huge surge of hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
This rollout will be part of the largest vaccination effort in history. But there will not be enough doses for everyone at the outset, even for people placed at the front of the line. Pfizer and BioNTech expect to produce 50 million doses of their vaccine around the world before the end of the year, enough for 25 million people — half of which has been pledged for the US. The first doses to roll out will be a crucial test of the vaccine distribution system in the United States, as well as a test of public acceptance and of the integrity of the clinical trial process.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is cleared for emergency approval. Now what?
One of the first challenges for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is getting it where it needs to go. That’s complicated by the fact that the vaccine requires temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) or lower, some of the coldest temperature constraints of any Covid-19 vaccine under development. Maintaining the cold chain from factories to distribution hubs to hospitals is crucial; otherwise, the vaccine may spoil and become ineffective.
Pfizer has developed its own temperature-controlled shipping containers that use dry ice to maintain the recommended temperatures for their vaccine for up to 10 days. But longer storage will require ultra-cold freezers, and not many clinics have the requisite hardware, so timing the shipments will be key. There may also be shortages of dry ice.
The next hurdle is figuring out who gets the vaccine first. The 6.4 million doses available at the outset are nowhere near enough to quench the raging Covid-19 pandemic that is still reaching new peaks in daily hospitalizations and fatalities.
An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted at the beginning of this month on a set of guidelines that prioritize health care personnel, as well as staff and residents of long-term care facilities. But these groups alone add up to about 24 million people, so states and local governments and health groups are having to narrow these groups further.
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine also has to be administered as two doses spaced 21 days apart. That poses a problem because experiences with other vaccines show that people are really bad at getting follow-up shots. As many as half of patients failed to get their second dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, for example. For the Covid-19 vaccine, side effects from the first dose, scheduling conflicts, or supply shortages may inhibit recipients from getting the second dose.
The good news is that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may offer some protection against Covid-19 from the first dose, although it takes a few days for the shielding to build up. In fact, some experts, including former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, argued that the entire allotment of doses should be given to as many people as possible, as fast as possible, rather than withholding injections to give to people as second shots.
“We should get as many shots in our arms as possible right away,” he told USA Today on Monday. “The idea that we need to cut (the doses) in half and give half of it now and hold onto it, so we have supply in January to get the second dose … I just fundamentally disagree with that.”
But other experts say there isn’t yet enough data on a single dose to know whether it will provide enough protection from the virus for the broader population.
Meanwhile, the FDA is likely to authorize another Covid-19 vaccine in the coming weeks, clearing the way for the distribution of 25 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, enough for 12.5 million people on the two-dose regimen.
Moncef Slaoui, the scientific lead for Operation Warp Speed, the program from the Department of Health and Human Services to accelerate and deploy Covid-19 vaccines, said he expects 20 million Americans will be vaccinated in December, 30 million more in January, and 50 million more in February as more vaccines with promising early results are approved.
The clinical trials for Covid-19 vaccines must continue, but they’re going to get harder to complete as placebo participants leave to get vaccinated
An EUA is a critical step, but it’s not full approval, and it signals that the FDA still wants answers to key questions, like long-term safety. The standards for an EUA for a vaccine is that there is an urgent public health need, the proposed vaccine may have a beneficial effect, and that there are no approved alternatives. The FDA also set a minimum threshold of 50 percent efficacy for a Covid-19 vaccine, a line that several vaccines have completely vaulted.
So far, Pfizer and BioNTech are only reporting two months of observational safety for their phase 3 clinical trial, although the companies have committed to continue monitoring their more than 43,000 trial participants.
But at the same time, Covid-19 is spreading rampantly in the United States, and more than 20,000 people in Pfizer and BioNTech’s trial have received a placebo rather than the actual vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to the disease. Of the 178 reported cases of Covid-19 in the trial pool, 169 were in the placebo group. Of those, 9 in the placebo group and 1 in the vaccine group experienced severe Covid-19. As time goes on, more people in the placebo group will likely get sick and some will fall severely ill, requiring hospitalization. Without intervention, some of these people in the placebo group may die.
The EUA now presents a huge dilemma for the clinical trial. People in the placebo group may be at risk of Covid-19, but if they receive the vaccine, it would diminish the value of the trial and make it harder to answer questions about safety and efficacy, particularly in vulnerable subgroups like older adults.
And since this is a double-blind clinical trial, neither the recipients nor the companies know who received the vaccine and who received the placebo. Vaccinating the placebo group would require breaking this blind, and if participants find out which group they’re in, they could change their behavior. People who received the vaccine may engage in riskier behavior while people in the placebo group may end up taking more precautions if they decide not to get vaccinated themselves. Those changes in behavior will make it harder to isolate the effects of the vaccine.
William C. Gruber, senior vice president for vaccine clinical research and development for Pfizer, told the FDA vaccine advisory committee on Thursday that the company has an ethical obligation to inform trial participants that the vaccine has received an EUA, but they are working on coming up with ways to maintain the integrity of the trial as much as possible.
“Eligible participants in the placebo group will have the option to receive the vaccine,” Gruber said. “We are currently in discussions with the FDA about the best way to vaccinate placebo recipients.”
Gruber added that the study will continue for 24 months regardless, with ongoing monitoring of the trial participants. This sort of large-scale and long-term follow-up is key because there may be rare complications that emerge that weren’t detected over a shorter time frame or were not present in the selected pool of participants in the trial.
Already, the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the UK has revealed that people with severe allergies could face complications.
“[T]he expectation would be that subjects with known severe reaction — allergic reaction — should not take the vaccine until we understand exactly what happened here,” Slaoui told reporters on Wednesday.
More people receiving this inoculation will further clarify any problems and concerns. But it will take months before the vaccine will start to constrain new Covid-19 cases since tens of millions of people would need to have immunity before the spread starts to slow down. And while the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has demonstrated effectiveness against disease, it’s still not clear how well it prevents asymptomatic infection. Scientists don’t yet know if people who are vaccinated could still transmit the virus to other people without getting sick themselves.
That means that until there is widespread vaccination, hospitals will still be battling severe Covid-19 as case numbers reach grim new heights. And handwashing, social distancing, and mark-wearing will remain the orders of the day for months to come, even for people lucky enough to receive a vaccine.


vox--2020-12-11--EU leaders agree to deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030

It might have taken 21 hours , but the European Union ’ s 27 member states have agreed to toughen targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 — a vast improvement from the 40 percent target set in 2019 .
Last December , the European Commission — the political bloc ’ s executive arm — unveiled the European Green Deal , which set the goal for reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 .
Now , five years after the Paris climate agreement , the EU has agreed to cut emissions even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the worst effects of climate change will be impossible without strong leadership .
The increased target is featured in the EU ’ s $ 2.2 trillion coronavirus recovery and long-term budget package that was finalized on Friday .
The plan will be officially announced on December 12 at the UN ’ s Climate Ambition Summit 2020 , which will be the largest gathering of leaders from governments , businesses , and civil society groups since the Paris accord was signed .
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen celebrated the decision in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposal ” to slice emissions would put the EU “ on a clear path towards climate neutrality in 2050.
” The agreement , reached after final talks began on Thursday , faced some hurdles .
Poland held up the process by demanding that future emissions targets be determined by GDP , meaning the bloc ’ s poorer countries — like Poland — could pollute more than wealthier ones .
It was an unsurprising ask as Poland ’ s economy relies on using coal , a big emissions contributor .
That issue was tabled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meet next year on the matter .
That paved the way for the historic announcement , one that could hopefully make the EU a greater leader in curbing climate change .
The EU is demonstrating leadership on curbing greenhouse gas emissions The EU as a bloc has long cared about cutting emissions , but Friday ’ s announcement shows just how serious it is .
“ It demonstrates a strong commitment inside Europe to figure out how to put together political support for climate change , ” David Victor , professor of international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Diego , told me .
Victor called the newly agreed-upon targets the “ most aggressive so far.
” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany , which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU , said it was “ worth losing a night ’ s sleep ” to get the deal done .
“ I don ’ t want to imagine what would have happened if we hadn ’ t been able to achieve such a result , ” she added during statements to the press Friday .
Others , like European Council President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ action — agreed , declaring that the announcement proved Europe is the “ leader in the fight against climate change.
” But not everyone thinks the plan ’ s cuts are enough .
Pascal Canfin , chair of the European Parliament ’ s environment committee , wanted the cuts to be 60 percent , not 55 percent .
“ Having the parliament supporting 60 percent helps the progressive countries in the council to drive ambition upwards , ” Canfin told the Guardian back in October .
And it ’ s not like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It must now do the hard work of turning that ambition into reality .
“ Announcements are relatively easy , ” Victor said .
“ What ’ s really hard is implementation .
There ’ s no date for that .
That process is ongoing.
” “ The details really matter , and many of the details are unknowable until real governments start trying to meet these targets , ” Victor continued , “ but it is certainly possible.
” Still , the stricter emissions benchmark is the latest EU commitment to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope now is that it follows through on its pledge .

It might have taken 21 hours, but the European Union’s 27 member states have agreed to toughen targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 — a vast improvement from the 40 percent target set in 2014.
Last December, the European Commission — the political bloc’s executive arm — unveiled the European Green Deal, which set the goal for reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Now, five years after the Paris climate agreement, the EU has agreed to cut emissions even further amid rising concern that saving humanity from the worst effects of climate change will be impossible without strong leadership.
The increased target is featured in the EU’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus recovery and long-term budget package that was finalized on Friday. The plan will be officially announced on December 12 at the UN’s Climate Ambition Summit 2020, which will be the largest gathering of leaders from governments, businesses, and civil society groups since the Paris accord was signed.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen celebrated the decision in a tweet, saying their “ambitious proposal” to slice emissions would put the EU “on a clear path towards climate neutrality in 2050.”
The agreement, reached after final talks began on Thursday, faced some hurdles. Poland held up the process by demanding that future emissions targets be determined by GDP, meaning the bloc’s poorer countries — like Poland — could pollute more than wealthier ones. It was an unsurprising ask as Poland’s economy relies on using coal, a big emissions contributor.
That issue was tabled, though, with members agreeing to meet next year on the matter. That paved the way for the historic announcement, one that could hopefully make the EU a greater leader in curbing climate change.
The EU is demonstrating leadership on curbing greenhouse gas emissions
The EU as a bloc has long cared about cutting emissions, but Friday’s announcement shows just how serious it is.
“It demonstrates a strong commitment inside Europe to figure out how to put together political support for climate change,” David Victor, professor of international law at the University of California San Diego, told me. Victor called the newly agreed-upon targets the “most aggressive so far.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said it was “worth losing a night’s sleep” to get the deal done. “I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t been able to achieve such a result,” she added during statements to the press Friday. Others, like European Council President Charles Michel — who has urged bolder action — agreed, declaring that the announcement proved Europe is the “leader in the fight against climate change.”
But not everyone thinks the plan’s cuts are enough. Pascal Canfin, chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, wanted the cuts to be 60 percent, not 55 percent. “Having the parliament supporting 60 percent helps the progressive countries in the council to drive ambition upwards,” Canfin told the Guardian back in October.
And it’s not like the EU will just magically meet its targets. It must now do the hard work of turning that ambition into reality.
“Announcements are relatively easy,” Victor said. “What’s really hard is implementation. There’s no date for that. That process is ongoing.”
“The details really matter, and many of the details are unknowable until real governments start trying to meet these targets,” Victor continued, “but it is certainly possible.”
Still, the stricter emissions benchmark is the latest EU commitment to lead on addressing climate change. The hope now is that it follows through on its pledge.