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Good morning and welcome to Wednesday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 3.96 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.30 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young."
–Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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Pfizer Requests COVID Pill Authorization
 A scientist handling Paxlovid; Image: Pfizer
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🎁 Pfizer asked the FDA for emergency use authorization of its new COVID-19 pill for use in high-risk patients yesterday, putting the treatment on a path to become publicly available by the end of the year.
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🔢 By the numbers… The oral antiviral, called Paxlovid, was shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by 89% in patients with increased risk of severe illness, per clinical trial data published this month.
Pfizer said initial supplies of Paxlovid will be limited.
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The company projects it’ll make around 160,000 courses of treatment by the end of the year but plans to up that number to at least 50 million courses in 2022. The White House has reportedly secured a contract with Pfizer for at least 10 million courses.
📸 The big picture: Should the FDA give the green light to Paxlovid, it would potentially be the second easy-to-use COVID-19 pill available in the U.S.
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The FDA is currently reviewing a COVID-19 pill developed by Merck called molnupiravir and will convene an official advisory meeting on November 30. No such meeting is scheduled yet for Pfizer.
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UK regulators authorized molnupiravir earlier this month after Merck published clinical trial data showing it reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk patients by roughly 50%.
👁️ Looking ahead… Pfizer yesterday announced it will join Merck in licensing its COVID-19 pill to UN-backed nonprofit Medicines Patent Pool, which will work with at least a dozen generic drugmakers to manufacture the treatments for use in 95 low- and middle-income countries.
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EV Startups Surge Past Legacy Automakers
 Image: Giphy
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🎁 Lucid Motors’ market cap passed Ford’s on Tuesday, one day after the EV maker reported its first quarterly financial results as a publicly traded company.
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🤔 Why it’s a big deal: Four years ago, Ford was reportedly considering an acquisition of Lucid as the startup was running out of money. Yesterday, Lucid Motors’ valuation sat around $90 billion – and Ford finished the day around $79 billion.
📈 Zoom out: EV startups are the current talk of the town. Fresh off the biggest IPO of the year, Rivian closed yesterday around a $150 billion valuation, surpassing Volkswagen’s market value and making Rivian the largest U.S. company with zero revenue.
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But not everyone’s buying the hype. Some say the industry is a bubble waiting to pop, while others, like GM CEO Mary Barra, argue current EV valuations prove that older automakers are “so undervalued.”
+Elsewhere… The Lucid Air was named MotorTrend’s 2022 Car of the Year on Monday.
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
Biden Administration Report Card Pt. 3
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🎁 It’s been roughly three months since we last covered President Biden’s job approval rating, which stood around 46% at the time.
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found more than half of Americans disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president (53%), with 44% saying they strongly disapprove.
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Biden’s 41% overall approval rating is the lowest number of his presidency thus far.
🗳️ On the margins: Pollsters also found that if midterm elections were held today, 51% of registered voters would support the Republican candidate in their congressional district compared to 41% for Democrats – the largest GOP midterm lead in the 40-year history of the poll.
 Image: RCP
☝️ Polls, polls, & more polls: RealClearPolitics’ aggregate polling average also shows Biden’s approval rating at its lowest point of his presidency.
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A USA Today/Suffolk University poll this month found VP Kamala Harris’ approval rating is even lower than Biden’s, though a much larger percentage of people were undecided (21% for Harris vs. 3.2% for Biden).
✋ Yes, but... Many of the above polls were conducted before Biden signed the mostly Democrat-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law this week (which polls found was supported by a majority of Americans).
👁️ Looking ahead… Presidential approval ratings are usually a good indicator of what will happen in the upcoming midterm elections.
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Miramax & Quentin Tarantino rn...
 Image: Pulp Fiction
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🎁 Miramax filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing Quentin Tarantino of copyright infringement over his Pulp Fiction screenplay NFT project.
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📜 Background… Earlier this month, the director announced he’ll be auctioning off 7 uncut Pulp Fiction scenes as Secret NFTs – put simply, these NFTs have a publicly viewable portion, and then secret content only visible to the owner. (What are NFTs?)
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In this instance, the secret content includes never-before-seen uncut first handwritten scripts of Pulp Fiction and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino.
🔭 Zoom IN: The lawsuit seems to hinge upon whether selling NFTs based on excerpts of a screenplay qualify as a “publication” of the screenplay. Tarantino retains the rights to some of the film, including screenplay publication, but Miramax argues that NFTs are a one-time sale and not equivalent to publication of a screenplay, so they should own the NFT rights.
📸 Big picture: Studios are attempting to cash in on the NFT gold rush – something we’d compare to exclusive scenes, art, and commentary previously included in DVDs (yep, there are dinosaurs on our team).
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ViacomCBS (Miramax’s controlling shareholder) recently announced a deal with the NFT company Recur to create NFTs based on its intellectual property – and for you Matrix fans, Warner Bros. and Nifty’s are launching an NFT avatar project based on the franchise.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… “From adding a McChicken patty and syrup for a DIY take on chicken & waffles, to swapping the English Muffins for two Hash Browns…the ways to mix it up are endless...” – McDonald's will offer its iconic Egg McMuffin for $0.63 (the OG price) on Nov. 18 to celebrate the sandwich's 50th anniversary.
🔢 Stat of the Day: In a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 60% of Americans say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade
- According to the poll, 62% of Catholics support upholding Roe v. Wade, higher than the national average.
📖 Worth a Read… Meta locks down after Facebook leaks
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
 Image: Compass
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☝️ A $35 million castle with a moat, turrets, and a functioning drawbridge is up for sale in Woodstock, Connecticut.
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🌝 NASA isn't likely to meet its updated Moon landing deadline of 2025, according to a new report by its office of the inspector general.
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📈 Sales at U.S. retail stores, online sellers, and restaurants rose by a seasonally adjusted 1.7% in October compared with the previous month, the Commerce Department said.
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👟 Nike is postponing the release of its collaborative sneakers with rapper Travis Scott after 10 people died at his Astroworld Festival in Houston earlier this month.
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🥇 Netflix launched a new website where it shares the weekly Top 10 rankings of films and TV series by total number of hours viewed (instead of its long-used two-minute viewing time metric).
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📣🗣💬 This Week's Poll Question
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as president?
Approve
Disapprove
Unsure
+Note: Results and the most thoughtful responses will be featured in tomorrow’s newsletter.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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A Vaccine for Alzheimer’s?
 Image: BioSpace
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🎁 A team of UK & German scientists has made a potentially life-changing breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, developing both an antibody-based treatment and a protein-based vaccine shown to reduce symptoms in mice.
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Their study, published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Psychiatry, built off earlier research linking Alzheimer’s disease to misshapen protein deposits in the brain called ‘truncated’ beta-amyloids.
⚙️ How it works: The scientists identified an antibody in mice that neutralizes truncated beta-amyloids while leaving the normal ones alone.
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When they tested a new “humanized” version of the antibody in mice, they found it helped restore nerve cell function, improve memory loss, and reduce beta-amyloid buildup in the brain.
👁️ Looking ahead… Up next – human clinical trials. The researchers are currently looking for a commercial partner to sponsor their therapeutic antibody treatment and vaccine.
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🤗 Dose of Positive
Camel Corral
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 Image: Twitter
Eight camels and a llama were found exploring the streets of Madrid last week after escaping from the circus.
🎪 How it went down: According to the circus, a group of animal rights activists broke into the circus and allowed the animals to escape into the streets.
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Important to note – all nine animals have long been domesticated and wouldn't have survived in the wild.
😅 What a day... Police officers were able to wrangle the group and get them back home safe and sound.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
😴 Sleep On It
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What is the sleepiest animal in the world?
A) Sloth
B) Brown bat
C) Opossum
D) Koala
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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D) Koala
Koalas sleep an average of 20-22 hours every single day.
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All that rest is necessary due to it's strict diet of eucalyptus leaves, which take a long time to digest and provide very little energy output.
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