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Could this era of social distancing hasten the demise of flu?

Could this era of social distancing hasten the demise of flu?

Zaria Gorvett writes: Back in January 2020, at the end of the Australian summer, the country had 6,962 cases of the flu confirmed via a laboratory test. At this time, Covid-19 was still known only as “the novel coronavirus” and mostly confined to China. Ordinarily, you would have expected to see more and more cases of the flu as the days became shorter and winter descended. Instead, something unexpected happened. By April there were just 229 cases of the flu…

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The blueprint for life, neatly folded

The blueprint for life, neatly folded

By Ivan Amato, Knowable Magazine, October 10, 2020 Squinting through his microscope at salamander cells, late-nineteenth-century biologist Walther Flemming spotted a curious substance deep inside the cells’ nuclei that selectively soaked up the stain he was using. The stuff looked like a skein of wool — until, that is, a cell underwent division. Then the skein separated into fatter, discrete threads: the chromosomes, Greek for “color bodies.” Flemming’s scientific descendants are still squinting, but with ever more powerful molecular, imaging…

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Republican hypocrisy is destroying trust in Supreme Court

Republican hypocrisy is destroying trust in Supreme Court

Donald B. Ayer and Alan Charles Raul write: When a vacancy on the Supreme Court arose nine months ahead of the election in 2016, Sen. Mitch McConnell said in no uncertain terms: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” Now, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than two months before Election Day, as voters are…

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Why Facebook can’t fix itself

Why Facebook can’t fix itself

Andrew Marantz writes: When Facebook was founded, in 2004, the company had few codified rules about what was allowed on the platform and what was not. Charlotte Willner joined three years later, as one of the company’s first employees to moderate content on the site. At the time, she said, the written guidelines were about a page long; around the office, they were often summarized as, “If something makes you feel bad in your gut, take it down.” Her husband,…

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On Facebook, misinformation is more popular now than in 2016

On Facebook, misinformation is more popular now than in 2016

The New York Times reports: During the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms to spread disinformation to divide the American electorate. Since then, the social media companies have spent billions of dollars and hired tens of thousands of people to help clean up their act. But have the platforms really become more sophisticated at handling misinformation? Not necessarily. People are engaging more on Facebook today with news outlets that routinely publish misinformation…

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Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

The New York Times reports: If rising seas cause America’s coastal housing market to dive — or, as many economists warn, when — the beginning might look a little like what’s happening in the tiny town of Bal Harbour, a glittering community on the northernmost tip of Miami Beach. With single-family homes selling for an average of $3.6 million, Bal Harbour epitomizes high-end Florida waterfront property. But around 2013, something started to change: The annual number of homes sales began…

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Microsoft takes down massive hacking operation that could have affected the election

Microsoft takes down massive hacking operation that could have affected the election

CNN reports: Microsoft has disrupted a massive hacking operation that it said could have indirectly affected election infrastructure if allowed to continue. The company said Monday it took down the servers behind Trickbot, an enormous malware network that criminals were using to launch other cyberattacks, including a strain of highly potent ransomware. Microsoft said it obtained a federal court order to disable the IP addresses associated with Trickbot’s servers, and worked with telecom providers around the world to stamp out…

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Syrians ravaged by war are now dying from a pandemic the Assad government has downplayed

Syrians ravaged by war are now dying from a pandemic the Assad government has downplayed

Asser Khattab writes: A few days after Abu Maher was admitted to a hospital in one of Syria’s coastal cities, he felt like he was suffocating. He had managed to secure the small, private room after exhibiting serious COVID-19 symptoms. After struggling to get out of bed, he made his way to the door, where he cried out for someone to help him. Not long afterward, Abu Maher (not his real name) was found lying on the floor by the…

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Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Scott Hershberger writes: The late esteemed English actor Christopher Lee traced his ancestry directly to Charlemagne. In 2010 Lee released a symphonic metal album paying homage to the first Holy Roman emperor—but his enthusiasm may have been a tad excessive. After all, says geneticist Adam Rutherford, “literally everyone” with European ancestry is directly descended from Charlemagne. The family tree of humanity is much more interconnected than we tend to think. “We’re culturally bound and psychologically conditioned to not think about…

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Trump campaign ad twists Fauci comment to wrongly suggest praise of the president

Trump campaign ad twists Fauci comment to wrongly suggest praise of the president

CNN reports: Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context. “In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a…

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‘I feel like I have dementia’: Brain fog plagues Covid survivors

‘I feel like I have dementia’: Brain fog plagues Covid survivors

The New York Times reports: After contracting the coronavirus in March, Michael Reagan lost all memory of his 12-day vacation in Paris, even though the trip was just a few weeks earlier. Several weeks after Erica Taylor recovered from her Covid-19 symptoms of nausea and cough, she became confused and forgetful, failing to even recognize her own car, the only Toyota Prius in her apartment complex’s parking lot. Lisa Mizelle, a veteran nurse practitioner at an urgent care clinic who…

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The rise of Gen Z could foretell the fall of Trumpism

The rise of Gen Z could foretell the fall of Trumpism

Laura Barrón-López reports: The evidence all points in one direction: Americans born after 1996, known as Generation Z, could doom not only Trumpism but conservatism as the country currently knows it. Members of Generation Z who are of voting age — 18- to 23-year-olds — want more government solutions. They rank climate change, racism and economic inequality consistently in their top issues, according to polls, and they participated in greater numbers during their first midterm (in 2018) than previous generations…

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Inspired by ruthless authoritarians, Trump turns power of state against political rivals

Inspired by ruthless authoritarians, Trump turns power of state against political rivals

David Sanger writes: President Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes his presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan. Mr. Trump has long demanded — quite publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to…

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Amateur hour at the Trump White House

Amateur hour at the Trump White House

John F Harris and Daniel Lippman write: Nearly everyone remembers the old cliché: If you can’t trust someone to get the little things right, how can you ever count on them to do the big things? President Donald Trump had better hope that bromide, invoked everywhere from youth sports teams to sales-force training sessions, doesn’t apply to him. As his presidency lurches toward a climactic judgment on Nov. 3, the little things lately have rarely gone more pervasively or embarrassingly…

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