Attention to the Unseen

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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,…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More