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Category: Health

Being kind to others is good for your health

Being kind to others is good for your health

Marta Zaraska writes: Newspapers started writing about Betty Lowe when she was 96 years old. Despite being long past retirement age, she was still volunteering at a cafe at Salford Royal Hospital in Greater Manchester, UK, serving coffee, washing dishes and chatting to patients. Then Lowe turned 100. “Still volunteers at hospital”, the headlines ran. Then she reached 102 and the headlines declared: “Still volunteering”. The same again when she turned 104. Even at 106, Lowe would work at the…

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25% of global population may not get a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, experts warn

25% of global population may not get a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, experts warn

STAT reports: As wealthy governments race to lock in supplies of Covid-19 vaccines, nearly a quarter of the world’s population — mostly in low and middle-income countries — will not have access to a shot until 2022, according to a new analysis. As of mid-November, high income countries, including the European Union bloc, reserved 51% of nearly 7.5 billion doses of different Covid-19 vaccines, although these countries comprise just 14% of the world’s population. Meanwhile, only six of the 13…

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How science beat the coronavirus — and what it lost in the process

How science beat the coronavirus — and what it lost in the process

Ed Yong writes: In Fall of 2019, exactly zero scientists were studying COVID‑19, because no one knew the disease existed. The coronavirus that causes it, SARS‑CoV‑2, had only recently jumped into humans and had been neither identified nor named. But by the end of March 2020, it had spread to more than 170 countries, sickened more than 750,000 people, and triggered the biggest pivot in the history of modern science. Thousands of researchers dropped whatever intellectual puzzles had previously consumed…

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How climate change is ushering in a new era of pandemics

How climate change is ushering in a new era of pandemics

Jeff Goodell writes: Jennifer Jones spent most of her summer at home, as so many of us did, trying to avoid the plague. Jones, 45, lives in Tavernier, a community in the Florida Keys just south of Key Largo, and passed a lot of time in her yard, puttering around with plants. At some point, a mosquito landed on her. That’s not unusual in Florida, and Jones doesn’t remember this mosquito bite in particular. But it was not a garden-variety…

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How the ‘deep state’ scientists vilified by Trump helped him deliver an unprecedented achievement

How the ‘deep state’ scientists vilified by Trump helped him deliver an unprecedented achievement

The Washington Post reports: The timing of the hastily arranged White House “vaccine summit” last Tuesday bewildered many invitees. It was days before the authorization of the first coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and German firm BioNTech — and nearly a week before millions of vaccine doses would be loaded onto trucks bound for every state in the nation. Wouldn’t those milestones and the mass vaccination effort that followed be what the White House would want to spotlight? That was…

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The CDC needs social science

The CDC needs social science

By Robert A. Hahn, Sapiens, December 11, 2020 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the primary agency in the United States that monitors, predicts, and responds to chronic disease, injury, outbreaks, and pandemics, should have social science at its heart. It does not. Despite decades of trying to get the agency to take the social sciences more seriously, and some movement on its part, insights from anthropology, along with other social sciences, have yet to penetrate the…

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To prevent the next Covid-19, we must prioritize biodiversity

To prevent the next Covid-19, we must prioritize biodiversity

Susan Lieberman and Christian Walzer write: From the most remote terrestrial wilderness to the most densely populated cities, humans are inexorably changing the planet. We have put 1 million species at risk of extinction, degraded soil and habitats, polluted the air and water, destroyed forests and coral reefs wholesale, exploited wild species, and fostered the proliferation of invasive species. And we have caused a global climate crisis. This planetary neglect and mismanagement helped pave the way for the Covid-19 pandemic….

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White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation

White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation

The Washington Post reports: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what happened. The threat came on the same day that President Trump tweeted that the FDA is…

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Trump and his cronies got coronavirus care many others couldn’t

Trump and his cronies got coronavirus care many others couldn’t

The New York Times reports: Ben Carson, Chris Christie and Donald J. Trump are not the sturdiest candidates to conquer the coronavirus: older, in some cases overweight, male and not particularly fit. Yet all seem to have gotten through Covid-19, and all have gotten an antibody treatment in such short supply that some hospitals and states are doling it out by lottery. Now Rudolph W. Giuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract Covid-19, has acknowledged that…

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Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic

Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic

The Washington Post reports: Early in the pandemic, Joo Park noticed a worrisome shift at the market he manages near downtown Washington: At least once a day, he’d spot someone slipping a package of meat, a bag of rice or other food into a shirt or under a jacket. Diapers, shampoo and laundry detergent began disappearing in bigger numbers, too. Since then, he said, thefts have more than doubled at Capitol Supermarket — even though he now stations more employees…

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In 2020, normal became exceptional

In 2020, normal became exceptional

BuzzFeed reports: Helped by geographic isolation or governmental response or both, infections are low to nonexistent in several countries, particularly in the Asia Pacific, where life looks practically normal. Some people even occasionally forget there’s a pandemic going on. “I feel like there were days I forgot there was a pandemic, especially on days I wasn’t going out so much, just staying in my area,” said Jade Dhangwattanotai, a 25-year-old software developer in Bangkok. “In my day-to-day life, yes, I…

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Over the last week, Covid-19 killed more than twice as many Americans as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined

Over the last week, Covid-19 killed more than twice as many Americans as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined

Deadliest days in American history: 1. Galveston Hurricane – 8,0002. Antietam – 3,6003. 9/11 – 2,9774. Last Thursday – 2,8615. Last Wednesday – 2,7626. Last Tuesday – 2.4617. Last Friday – 2,4398. Pearl Harbor – 2,403 — 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 (@Sundae_Gurl) December 9, 2020 According to Worldometers, between December 1 and December 7, 13,433 Americans died from Covid-19.

This winter, fight Covid-19 with humidity

This winter, fight Covid-19 with humidity

Joseph G. Allen, Akiko Iwasaki and Linsey C. Marr write: We have a great set of tools that can help slow the spread of this virus: masks, social distancing and hand-washing, as well as healthy building strategies such as ventilation and filtration. And there is one more healthy building tool that we can use this winter: maintaining relative humidity in the 40-to-60-percent range. Relative humidity is the term for how much water vapor is actually in the air compared to…

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The Covid-19 vaccines were designed almost a year ago

The Covid-19 vaccines were designed almost a year ago

David Wallace-Wells writes: You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all…

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Leading Covid-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna decline invitations to White House ‘Vaccine Summit’

Leading Covid-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna decline invitations to White House ‘Vaccine Summit’

STAT reports: Both Pfizer and Moderna, the two major drug manufacturers likely to receive emergency authorizations for a Covid-19 vaccine in the coming weeks, have rejected invitations from President Trump to appear at a White House “Vaccine Summit” on Tuesday, according to two sources familiar with the event’s planning. The Trump administration has openly feuded with Pfizer in recent weeks over its involvement in Operation Warp Speed and the timing of a data release showing its vaccine to be highly…

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The pandemic’s final surge will be brutal

The pandemic’s final surge will be brutal

Whet Moser writes: In the spring, during the first COVID-19 surge in the United States, the rising death toll reached a sobering peak in April—a seven-day average of 2,116 daily deaths. This past weekend, the seven-day average of U.S. deaths from COVID-19 broke that record twice, at 2,123 on Saturday and 2,171 yesterday, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Yesterday, the seven-day averages for all four of the primary metrics that the COVID Tracking Project follows—tests, cases,…

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