Browsed by
Category: Health

Coronavirus, heat wave and locusts form a perfect storm in India

Coronavirus, heat wave and locusts form a perfect storm in India

The Associated Press reports: As if the coronavirus wasn’t enough, India grappled with scorching temperatures and the worst locust invasion in decades as authorities prepared for the end of a monthslong lockdown despite recording thousands of new infections every day. This triple disaster drew biblical comparisons and forced officials to try to balance the competing demands of simultaneous public health crises: protection from eviscerating heat but also social distancing in newly reopened parks and markets. The heat wave threatens to…

Read More Read More

Troll farms from Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook

Troll farms from Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook

NBC News reports: One of the largest publishers of coronavirus disinformation on Facebook has been banned from the platform for using content farms from Macedonia and the Philippines, Facebook said on Friday. The publisher, Natural News, was one of the most prolific pushers of the viral “Plandemic” conspiracy video, which falsely claimed that the coronavirus is part of an elaborate government plot to control the populace through vaccines, and erroneously claimed that wearing a mask increases the risk of catching…

Read More Read More

As America leads world in pandemic death toll, Trump announces U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization

As America leads world in pandemic death toll, Trump announces U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Friday said he is terminating the U.S. relationship with the World Health Organization, making good on his April threat to withdraw from the U.N. health agency he’s repeatedly blamed for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic. “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and directing those funds to worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump said in a brief statement from the White House Rose Garden. The move was…

Read More Read More

It’s healthy to be germophobic now — but not in the long run

It’s healthy to be germophobic now — but not in the long run

By Sophie Strosberg, Undark, May 28, 2020 Let’s face it. We’re all germaphobes now. Anecdotal reports suggest that health anxiety disorders are on the rise in the U.S., in part due to a pandemic-driven fear of contamination and germs. Even people who aren’t experiencing clinically significant health anxiety are likely to be fixated on cleanliness. Witness the depleted shelves of hand sanitizer and disinfectant in just about every store you encounter. I’m no exception. I used to wash my hands…

Read More Read More

How coronavirus contact tracing works in a state Dr. Fauci praised as a model to follow

How coronavirus contact tracing works in a state Dr. Fauci praised as a model to follow

Pairing widespread testing with fast, effective contact tracing is considered essential for controlling the coronavirus’s spread as the U.S. passes 100,000 deaths. AP Images/Rick Bowmer By Jenny Meredith, University of South Carolina After weeks of keeping people home to “flatten the curve,” restrictions on U.S. businesses are loosening and the coronavirus pandemic response is moving into a new phase. Two things will be critical to keep COVID-19 cases from flaring up again: widespread testing to quickly identify anyone who gets…

Read More Read More

Yemen was facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Then the coronavirus hit

Yemen was facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Then the coronavirus hit

Science reports: When Abdulla Bin Ghooth saw the computed tomography scan of the lungs of a colleague’s brother in Aden, Yemen, in April, he knew the outlook was grim. The 55-year-old man had complained of a fever and shortness of breath, and likely had COVID-19. But hospital staff, afraid of the novel coronavirus, sent him home with an oxygen cylinder, says Bin Ghooth, an epidemiologist at Hadhramout University College of Medicine. He pleaded with friends at the ministry of health…

Read More Read More

China escalates the coronavirus propaganda war

China escalates the coronavirus propaganda war

Kathy Gilsinan writes: It was posed as an innocent question, not an accusation. If the U.S. was so concerned about transparency, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying wondered aloud to nearly half a million followers on Twitter earlier this month, why not open its own biodefense lab in Maryland’s Fort Detrick to international inspectors? Hua’s tweet was also an invitation to a conspiracy theory, and a message that, if President Donald Trump was determined to speculate about the virus first…

Read More Read More

Japan ends its state of emergency

Japan ends its state of emergency

Science reports: Japan yesterday declared at least a temporary victory in its battle with COVID-19, and it triumphed by following its own playbook. It drove down the number of daily new cases to near target levels of 0.5 per 100,000 people with voluntary and not very restrictive social distancing and without large-scale testing. Instead, the country focused on finding clusters of infections and attacking the underlying causes, which often proved to be overcrowded gathering spots such as gyms and nightclubs….

Read More Read More

As India’s lockdown ends, exodus from cities risks spreading Covid-19 far and wide

As India’s lockdown ends, exodus from cities risks spreading Covid-19 far and wide

Science reports: One morning in mid-May, Nasim Qureshi suddenly developed a fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Qureshi, a member of Mumbai, India’s street vendor union, rushed to a small private hospital, where doctors gave him a check up but refused to admit him. Later the same day, he was turned away from two more hospitals before he finally found a bed at a municipal hospital. By then, his breathing trouble had worsened—and the hospital only had a few ventilators….

Read More Read More

Coronavirus may become endemic, even with a vaccine

Coronavirus may become endemic, even with a vaccine

The Washington Post reports: There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away. Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox. It is a daunting proposition — a coronavirus-tinged world without a foreseeable end. But experts in epidemiology, disaster planning and vaccine development say embracing that reality is…

Read More Read More

How we make decisions during a pandemic

How we make decisions during a pandemic

By Katherine Harmon Courage, Knowable Magazine, May 26, 2020 With many states and towns lifting strict stay-at-home orders, people are faced with a growing number of new decisions. Mundane logistical questions — Should I go get my hair cut? When can I picnic with friends? What should I wear to the hardware store? — during the Covid-19 pandemic carry implications for personal and public health, in some cases life-or-death ones. When multiplied through the population, seemingly small decisions have the…

Read More Read More

After the pandemic: No one knows what’s going to happen

After the pandemic: No one knows what’s going to happen

Mark Lilla writes: The best prophet, Thomas Hobbes once wrote, is the best guesser. That would seem to be the last word on our capacity to predict the future: We can’t. But it is a truth humans have never been able to accept. People facing immediate danger want to hear an authoritative voice they can draw assurance from; they want to be told what will occur, how they should prepare, and that all will be well. We are not well…

Read More Read More

New research rewrites history of when Covid-19 arrived in U.S. — pointing to missed chances to stop it

New research rewrites history of when Covid-19 arrived in U.S. — pointing to missed chances to stop it

Helen Branswell writes: New research has poured cold water on the theory that the Covid-19 outbreak in Washington state — the country’s first — was triggered by the very first confirmed case of the infection in the country. Instead, it suggests the person who ignited the first chain of sustained transmission in the United States probably returned to the country in mid-February, a month later. The work adds to evidence that the United States missed opportunities to stop the SARS-CoV-2…

Read More Read More

American cities are built for cars, but the coronavirus could change that

American cities are built for cars, but the coronavirus could change that

Doug Gordon writes: As the Covid-19 crisis wears on, a surprising tool has emerged in the effort to slow transmission: city streets. The car has long been king in America’s cities, with spacious roadways edged by narrow sidewalks. But with many sidewalks barely large enough for the six feet required for social distancing purposes, urban residents now find themselves struggling to comply with regulations during even a brief grocery trip. Some have started walking in largely traffic-free streets to get…

Read More Read More

More than a fifth of people in England believe Covid-19 is a hoax

More than a fifth of people in England believe Covid-19 is a hoax

The Independent reports: More than a fifth of people believe that the coronavirus crisis is a hoax, new research suggests. The study, conducted by the University of Oxford, saw 2,500 English adults take part in the Oxford Coronavirus Explanations, Attitudes, and Narratives Survey between 4-11 May 2020. The team of clinical psychologists state that the data from the survey indicates a large number of adults in England do not agree with the scientific and governmental consensus on the Covid-19 pandemic….

Read More Read More

What a week’s disasters tell us about the climate crisis and the pandemic

What a week’s disasters tell us about the climate crisis and the pandemic

The New York Times reports: The hits came this week in rapid succession: A cyclone slammed into the Indian megacity of Kolkata, pounding rains breached two dams in the Midwestern United States, and on Thursday came warning that the Atlantic hurricane season could be severe. It all served as a reminder that the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 325,000 people so far, is colliding with another global menace: a fast-heating planet that acutely threatens millions of people, especially the world’s…

Read More Read More