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Category: Health

Global data reveal half Covid survivors may still have symptoms four months after infection

Global data reveal half Covid survivors may still have symptoms four months after infection

Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: Worldwide, 49% of COVID-19 survivors reported persistent symptoms 4 months after diagnosis, estimates a meta-analysis of 31 studies published late last week in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. University of Michigan researchers, who conducted a systematic review on Jul 5, 2021, also found the prevalence of long COVID at 1 month at 37%, while it was 25% at 2 months and 32% at 3 months. Fifty studies were identified in the review, and…

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Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Science reports: With more microbes than cells in our body, it’s not surprising that bacteria and other invisible “guests” influence our metabolism, immune system, and even our behavior. Now, researchers studying mice have worked out how bacteria in the mammalian gut can ping the brain to regulate an animal’s appetite and body temperature—and it involves the same molecular pathway the immune system uses to detect bacterial pathogens. “It’s quite an important finding,” says Antoine Adamantidis, a neuroscientist at the University…

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WHO calculates 15 million people have died from pandemic

WHO calculates 15 million people have died from pandemic

The New York Times reports: An ambitious effort by the World Health Organization to calculate the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has found that vastly more people died than previously believed — a total of about 15 million by the end of 2021, more than double the official total of six million reported by countries individually. But the release of the staggering estimate — the result of more than a year of research and analysis by experts around…

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China’s ‘zero Covid’ mess proves autocracy hurts everyone

China’s ‘zero Covid’ mess proves autocracy hurts everyone

Li Yuan writes: Long before the “zero Covid” policy, China had a “zero sparrow” policy. In the spring of 1958, the Chinese government mobilized the entire nation to exterminate sparrows, which Mao declared pests that destroyed crops. All over China, people banged on pots and pans, lit firecrackers and waved flags to prevent the birds from landing so they would fall and die from exhaustion. By one estimation, nearly two billion sparrows were killed nationwide within months. The near extinction…

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There will be no return to normal for those with unending grief

There will be no return to normal for those with unending grief

Ed Yong writes: Lucy Esparza-Casarez thinks she caught the coronavirus while working the polls during California’s 2020 primary election, before bringing it home to her husband, David, her sister-in-law Yolanda, and her mother-in-law Balvina. Though Lucy herself developed what she calls “the worst flu times 100,” David fared worse. Lucy took him to the hospital on March 20, the last time she saw him in the flesh. He died on April 3, nine days before their wedding anniversary, at the…

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Why the World Health Organization took two years to say Covid is airborne

Why the World Health Organization took two years to say Covid is airborne

Nature reports: As 2021 drew to a close, the highly contagious Omicron variant of the pandemic virus was racing around the globe, forcing governments to take drastic actions once again. The Netherlands ordered most businesses to close on 19 December, Ireland set curfews and many countries imposed travel bans in the hope of taming the tsunami of COVID-19 cases filling hospitals. Amid the wave of desperate news around the year-end holidays, one group of researchers hailed a development that had…

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How we got herd immunity wrong

How we got herd immunity wrong

David Robertson writes: Herd immunity was always our greatest asset for protecting vulnerable people, but public health failed to use it wisely. In March 2020, not long after Covid-19 was declared a global public health emergency, prominent experts predicted that the pandemic would eventually end via herd immunity. Infectious disease epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who advised President Biden, opined in the Washington Post that even without a vaccine, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, would eventually “burn itself out as the…

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Why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens global food supplies

Why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens global food supplies

Tim Lang and Martin McKee write: Reliable access to adequate nutrition is essential for physical and mental health. Vladimir Putin’s illegal reinvasion of Ukraine reminds us that we take our food supply for granted. The consequences will be felt far beyond Ukraine’s borders. The immediate threat is to those under siege. Unable to escape Russian shelling, they are running out of food and water. This is a clear breach of the Geneva Convention, which proscribes “starvation of civilians as a…

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What a single metric tells us about the pandemic

What a single metric tells us about the pandemic

David Wallace-Wells writes: Live long enough in a pandemic and you will see the entire narrative landscape shift, even flip, sometimes more than once. As recently as a month ago, Americans of a certain cast of mind could have still looked to China — and indeed all of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania — with some plausible pandemic envy. Those early lockdowns in Wuhan were brutal, yes; some of the surveillance testing, contact tracing, and quarantine measures imposed in…

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What is the new Covid variant BA.2, and will it cause another wave of infections in the U.S.?

What is the new Covid variant BA.2, and will it cause another wave of infections in the U.S.?

BA.2, one of three main omicron sublineages, is sweeping the world. BlackJack3D/iStock via Getty Images Plus By Prakash Nagarkatti, University of South Carolina and Mitzi Nagarkatti, University of South Carolina A new omicron subvariant of the virus that causes COVID-19, BA.2, is quickly becoming the predominant source of infections amid rising cases around the world. Immunologists Prakash Nagarkatti and Mitzi Nagarkatti of the University of South Carolina explain what makes it different from previous variants, whether there will be another…

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‘We’ve learned absolutely nothing’: Tests could again be in short supply if Covid surges

‘We’ve learned absolutely nothing’: Tests could again be in short supply if Covid surges

Politico reports: The United States could yet again find itself with too few Covid-19 tests if Congress fails to authorize new funds and cases surge, warn White House officials, diagnostic manufacturers and public health experts. The Biden administration estimates that the testing market will remain stable until the early summer, but rapidly falling demand for once-popular at-home Covid-19 tests is leading some manufacturers to cut back. “If we get to a point where companies really are turning off lines or…

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A doctor’s impassioned critique of Big Pharma

A doctor’s impassioned critique of Big Pharma

By Troy Farah, Undark, March 18, 2022 Compared to other high-income countries, the fitness of Americans is in dismal shape — and has been declining for decades. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated health disparities, crisis on top of crisis has compounded to create even more devastating conditions for a growing number of people, especially marginalized groups. There is the diabetes crisis, the obesity crisis, and, of course, the despair crisis, which includes the rising tide of suicides, alcohol poisoning,…

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Another Covid surge may be coming. Are we ready for it?

Another Covid surge may be coming. Are we ready for it?

The New York Times reports: Scarcely two months after the Omicron variant drove coronavirus case numbers to frightening heights in the United States, scientists and health officials are bracing for another swell in the pandemic and, with it, the first major test of the country’s strategy of living with the virus while limiting its impact. At local, state and federal levels, the nation has been relaxing restrictions and trying to restore a semblance of normalcy. Encouraging Americans to return to…

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America is zooming through the pandemic panic-neglect cycle

America is zooming through the pandemic panic-neglect cycle

Ed Yong writes: All epidemics trigger the same dispiriting cycle. First, panic: As new pathogens emerge, governments throw money, resources, and attention at the threat. Then, neglect: Once the danger dwindles, budgets shrink and memories fade. The world ends up where it started, forced to confront each new disease unprepared and therefore primed for panic. This Sisphyean sequence occurred in the United States after HIV, anthrax, SARS, Ebola, and Zika. It occurred in Republican administrations and Democratic ones. It occurs…

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New research points to Wuhan market as pandemic origin

New research points to Wuhan market as pandemic origin

The New York Times reports: Scientists released a pair of extensive studies on Saturday that point to a market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Analyzing data from a variety of sources, they concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus twice spilled over into people working or shopping there. They said they found no support for an…

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Got a Covid booster? You probably won’t need another for a long time

Got a Covid booster? You probably won’t need another for a long time

The New York Times reports: As people across the world grapple with the prospect of living with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future, one question looms large: How soon before they need yet another shot? Not for many months, and perhaps not for years, according to a flurry of new studies. Three doses of a Covid vaccine — or even just two — are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, the studies…

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