Browsed by
Category: Health

Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Time magazine reports: The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working. “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in a television interview on Feb. 25, echoing Trump’s…

Read More Read More

Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

The Atlantic reports: It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus? This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress. On Monday, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner…

Read More Read More

The pattern that epidemics always follow

The pattern that epidemics always follow

Karl Taro Greenfeld writes: You are reading this because of your ancestors’ immune system. The odds of your predecessors surviving the myriad microbes that have stalked humanity every step of its march toward becoming Earth’s dominant species were incalculably long. More Homo sapiens have probably died from infectious disease than all other causes combined. Only in the past 150 years, owing to nutritional and medical advances, have we emerged from living in constant worry that a cough or fever or…

Read More Read More

As coronavirus spreads to 18 states, Trump minimizes the health threat

As coronavirus spreads to 18 states, Trump minimizes the health threat

The Hill reports: Patients in 18 states have tested positive or are presumptively positive for the spreading coronavirus as public health officials race to get ahead of the growing worldwide epidemic. Officials in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas said they had identified new cases in the last 24 hours, adding to an outbreak that has infected at least 162 people nationwide. There are worrying signs that the number of cases is poised to grow. [Continue reading…] Politico reports: President…

Read More Read More

What can the coronavirus teach us?

What can the coronavirus teach us?

Bill McKibben writes: There’s nothing good about the novel coronavirus—it’s killing many people, and shutting millions more inside, with fear as their main companion. However, if we’re fated to go through this passage, we may as well learn something from it, and it does strike me that there are a few insights that are applicable to the climate crisis that shadows all of our lives. Some of these lessons are obvious: giant cruise ships are climate killers and, it turns…

Read More Read More

The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The New York Times reports: The new coronavirus knows no national borders or social boundaries. That doesn’t mean that social boundaries don’t exist. “En route to Paris,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram last week, beneath a shot of herself on an airplane heading to Paris Fashion Week and wearing a black face mask. “I’ve already been in this movie,” she added, referring to her role in the 2011 disease thriller “Contagion.” “Stay safe.” Ms. Paltrow did not pose with just…

Read More Read More

Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, center, demonstrates hand-washing to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, left, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, right, in Rocky Hill, Conn., March 2, 2020. AP Photo/Jessica Hill By Michelle Sconce Massaquoi, University of Oregon As the threat from the coronavirus grows, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health officials are stressing the importance of hand-washing. Prevention becomes essential to stopping the spread of the virus because there is no vaccine…

Read More Read More

Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

The Washington Post reports: The coronavirus outbreak sweeping through Iran has delivered a jarring blow to the senior ranks of its government, infecting about two dozen members of parliament and at least 15 other current or former top figures, according to official reports. Among those sickened have been a vice president, a deputy health minister, and an adviser to the head of the judiciary, and the virus has struck at the pinnacle of power, killing an adviser to Supreme Leader…

Read More Read More

Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

NBC News reports: Italy’s government on Wednesday announced it will temporarily close the nation’s schools and universities due to the coronavirus outbreak. State-run RAI radio and the ANSA and LaPresse news agencies reported earlier Wednesday that Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte had agreed on the closure during a Cabinet meeting. Education Minister Lucia Azzolina later said the school closures would be in effect from March 5 through March 15. Earlier Wednesday, Italy had the dubious honor of being the worst-affected country…

Read More Read More

How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

Stephen Buranyi writes: Coronavirus appears to be with us for the long haul. Despite the unprecedented attempts at isolation and containment, with about 50 million people locked down and economic activity virtually halted in China, cases have spiked in recent weeks. Sixty-seven countries are now reporting a total of more than 8,000 infections outside China. The World Health Organization has been wary of using the word pandemic, but last week it advised countries to prepare as if one were imminent….

Read More Read More

Coronavirus is what you get when you ignore science

Coronavirus is what you get when you ignore science

Farhad Manjoo writes: Let us pray, now, for science. Pray for empiricism and for epidemiology and for vaccines. Pray for peer review and controlled double-blinds. For flu shots, herd immunity and washing your hands. Pray for reason, rigor and expertise. Pray for the precautionary principle. Pray for the N.I.H. and the C.D.C. Pray for the W.H.O. And pray not just for science, but for scientists, too, as well as their colleagues in the application of science — the tireless health…

Read More Read More

System failure: Coronavirus tests in U.S. fewer than 500 a day while other nations test patients by tens of thousands

System failure: Coronavirus tests in U.S. fewer than 500 a day while other nations test patients by tens of thousands

The New York Times reports: The coronavirus has found a crack in the nation’s public health armor, and it is not one that scientists foresaw: diagnostic testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention botched its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories. A promised replacement took several weeks, and still did not permit state and local laboratories to make final diagnoses. And the…

Read More Read More

Reality goes viral: Trump can’t rely on lying and bullying to fight a pandemic

Reality goes viral: Trump can’t rely on lying and bullying to fight a pandemic

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write: President Trump rode out the Mueller investigation. He survived impeachment. He has waved away dozens of lesser scandals as though they were nothing more than gnats. But now he faces a challenge unlike any he has confronted before: The coronavirus is continuing its spread around the globe and has arrived in the United States, causing widespread alarm and a precipitous drop in the stock market. Americans should all hope he succeeds in mitigating the…

Read More Read More

Coronavirus unites a divided China in fear, grief and anger at government

Coronavirus unites a divided China in fear, grief and anger at government

A train attendant in Nanchang, China, gestures in solidarity with medical staff departing for the city of Wuhan, Feb. 13, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images By Yuqi Na, Fordham University The coronavirus known as COVID-19 has killed more than 3,000 people and spread into Europe and Latin America, raising fears of a global pandemic. But in China, where the outbreak began, it took just one death to unleash the grief and fury of a nation. On Feb. 7, 34-year-old Dr….

Read More Read More

White House and federal agencies offer conflicting advice on the safety of domestic travel

White House and federal agencies offer conflicting advice on the safety of domestic travel

The Daily Beast reports: Vice President Mike Pence said Monday evening that there has been no ban on domestic travel despite the growing number of 2019 novel coronavirus deaths in the United States. But one government agency is effectively directing its employees not to travel, domestically or internationally, at least for the next several weeks. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has banned all temporary duty assignment (TDY) travel as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the globe, according to…

Read More Read More

Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Commuters jam a Toronto subway platform. Widespread adoption of habits that help prevent infection may boost behavioural herd immunity. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy By Peter Hall, University of Waterloo Amid the carnage of the First World War, a flu epidemic took hold in the front-line trenches and subsequently spread around the world, infecting one-quarter of the world’s total population and ultimately killing more people than the war itself. Before it was over, somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people…

Read More Read More