Browsed by
Category: Health

The coronavirus is never going away

The coronavirus is never going away

Sarah Zhang writes: The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has sickened more than 16.5 million people across six continents. It is raging in countries that never contained the virus. It is resurging in many of the ones that did. If there was ever a time when this coronavirus could be contained, it has probably passed. One outcome is now looking almost certain: This virus is never going away. The coronavirus is simply too widespread and too transmissible. The most likely scenario,…

Read More Read More

Israel rushed to reopen schools. ‘It was a major failure’

Israel rushed to reopen schools. ‘It was a major failure’

The New York Times reports: As the United States and other countries anxiously consider how to reopen schools, Israel, one of the first countries to do so, illustrates the dangers of moving too precipitously. Confident it had beaten the coronavirus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May. Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school…

Read More Read More

Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Eviction moratoriums have already begun to expire. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images By Katy Ramsey Mason, University of Memphis The United States is on the verge of a potentially devastating eviction crisis right in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Federal, state and local eviction moratoriums had put most of the pending cases on hold. But as the moratoriums expire and eviction hearings resume, millions of people are at risk of losing their homes. That’s because the court process is…

Read More Read More

How the pandemic brought America to its knees

How the pandemic brought America to its knees

Ed Yong writes: How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom. In the first half of 2020, SARS‑CoV‑2—the…

Read More Read More

A vaccine is not going to fix everything

A vaccine is not going to fix everything

The Washington Post reports: In the public imagination, the arrival of a coronavirus vaccine looms large: It’s the neat Hollywood ending to the grim and agonizing uncertainty of everyday life in a pandemic. But public health experts are discussing among themselves a new worry: that hopes for a vaccine may be soaring too high. The confident depiction by politicians and companies that a vaccine is imminent and inevitable may give people unrealistic beliefs about how soon the world can return…

Read More Read More

Measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true impact

Measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true impact

Philip Setel writes: How best to represent the true toll of the Covid-19 pandemic on human lives is an urgent matter. Though loss of life represents the clearest indicator, limited testing, inconsistencies in assigning the cause of death, and even political influence are creating uncertainty over how deaths are being counted and attributed (or not) to Covid-19. It’s simple, really: Limited testing gives a limited picture of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths. While many deaths show fairly clear evidence of…

Read More Read More

One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

The New York Times reports: In early March, Glady’s, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, was bringing in about $35,000 a week in revenue. The Bank Street Bookstore, a 50-year-old children’s shop in Manhattan, was preparing for busy spring and summer shopping seasons. And Busy Bodies, a play space for children in Brooklyn, had just wrapped up months of packed classes with long waiting lists. Five months later, those once prosperous businesses have evaporated. Glady’s and Busy Bodies are closed for…

Read More Read More

A Covid-19 vaccine, amazingly, is close. Why am I so worried?

A Covid-19 vaccine, amazingly, is close. Why am I so worried?

Michael S. Kinch writes: A mere six months after identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus as the cause of Covid-19, scientists are on the precipice of a having a vaccine to fight it. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health recently announced the start of a Phase 3 clinical trial, joining several others in a constructive rivalry that could save millions of lives. It’s a truly impressive a feat and a testament to the power of basic and applied medical sciences. Under…

Read More Read More

Six months into a respiratory pandemic, why are we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

Six months into a respiratory pandemic, why are we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

Zeynep Tufekci writes: I recently took a drive-through COVID-19 test at the University of North Carolina. Everything was well organized and efficient: I was swabbed for 15 uncomfortable seconds and sent home with two pages of instructions on what to do if I were to test positive, and what precautions people living with or tending to COVID-19 patients should take. The instructions included many detailed sections devoted to preventing transmission via surfaces, and also went into great detail about laundry,…

Read More Read More

Concerns about waning COVID-19 immunity are likely overblown

Concerns about waning COVID-19 immunity are likely overblown

Scientific American reports: COVID-19 triggers a strong immune response in most people. Yet several recent studies observed that the amounts of antibodies in those recovering from the virus appear to decline within a few months of infection. The findings set off a frenzy of speculation that immunity to the virus may not last long, throwing cold water on hopes for a vaccine. Many scientists say such worries are overblown, however. A June 18 Nature Medicine study conducted with a small…

Read More Read More

Riding the subway during the pandemic may be safer than you think

Riding the subway during the pandemic may be safer than you think

The New York Times reports: Five months after the coronavirus outbreak engulfed New York City, riders are still staying away from public transportation in enormous numbers, often because they are concerned that sharing enclosed places with strangers is simply too dangerous. But the picture emerging in major cities across the world suggests that public transportation may not be as risky as nervous New Yorkers believe. In countries where the pandemic has ebbed, ridership has rebounded in far greater numbers than…

Read More Read More

How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast

How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast

STAT reports: Never before have prospective vaccines for a pathogen entered final-stage clinical trials as rapidly as candidates for Covid-19. Just six months ago, when the death toll from the coronavirus stood at one and neither it nor the disease it caused had a name, a team of Chinese scientists uploaded its genetic sequence to a public site. That kicked off the record-breaking rush to develop vaccines — the salve that experts say could ultimately quell the pandemic. The colossal…

Read More Read More

Medieval onion and garlic remedy kills antibiotic-resistant biofilms in the lab

Medieval onion and garlic remedy kills antibiotic-resistant biofilms in the lab

Science Alerts reports: As deadly bacteria grow ever more resistant to modern antibiotics, some researchers have turned to ancient medical manuscripts for clues. And it looks like a medieval salve dating back 1,000 years might succeed where many modern antibiotics are starting to fail. The “ancientbiotic”, as the researchers are calling it, was found in one of the earliest known medical textbooks from medieval England, known as Bald’s Leechbook. While many of the remedies included in this tome have not…

Read More Read More

America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

The New York Times reports: Once again, the coronavirus is ascendant. As infections mount across the country, it is dawning on Americans that the epidemic is now unstoppable, and that no corner of the nation will be left untouched. As of Wednesday, the pathogen had infected at least 4.3 million Americans, killing more than 150,000. Many experts fear the virus could kill 200,000 or even 300,000 by year’s end. Even President Trump has donned a mask, after resisting for months,…

Read More Read More

School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

STAT reports: When state officials were deciding whether to shutter their schools back in March, the evidence they had to work with was thin. They knew kids easily catch and spread influenza — and that school holidays and closures have helped slow its spread. But they weren’t sure if the same was true for Covid-19. Now, a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that closing all of a state’s schools was associated with a…

Read More Read More

Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

The Fish Site reports: A range of polysaccharides extracted from edible seaweed have been shown to at least match the efficacy of remdesivir, the current standard antiviral used to combat Covid-19, in new lab-based trials. The study, the results of which have recently been published in Cell Discovery, tests antiviral activity in three variants of heparin (heparin, trisulfated heparin, and a non-anticoagulant low molecular weight heparin) and two fucoidans (RPI-27 and RPI-28) extracted from the seaweed Saccharina japonica. All five…

Read More Read More