Browsed by
Category: Health

On the front lines of the pandemic, grocery workers are in the dark about risks

On the front lines of the pandemic, grocery workers are in the dark about risks

The Washington Post reports: By the end of April, employees at a Walmart in Quincy, Mass., were panicking: Sick colleagues kept showing up at work. Other employees disappeared without explanation. The store’s longtime greeter was in the hospital and on a ventilator, dying from covid-19. Local health officials grew alarmed as employees and their relatives reported sick co-workers. Shoppers called to complain about crowded conditions. “We have had consistent problems with Walmart,” wrote Ruth Jones, Quincy’s health commissioner, in an…

Read More Read More

We don’t need to open churches to practice our faith

We don’t need to open churches to practice our faith

Father Edward L. Beck writes: President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he considers houses of worship and their religious services essential. I won’t argue that point. Although obviously not essential for all, they are deemed so by some. Fair enough. He went on: “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important essential places of faith to open right now, this weekend. If they don’t do it, I will override the governors.” But who says…

Read More Read More

East Africa facing ‘triple threat’ from coronavirus, locusts and flooding

East Africa facing ‘triple threat’ from coronavirus, locusts and flooding

The Independent reports: The impact of three separate crises affecting swathes of east Africa at the same time has left hundreds of thousands of people at risk of hunger and sickness, aid workers operating in the region have warned. Like much of the world, countries in the Horn of Africa and other eastern states have been forced to introduce lockdown measures to limit the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. However the virus has arrived in the region at the same…

Read More Read More

In a ‘strategic miscalculation,’ Trump kept foreigners out of the U.S. while helping spread the virus across the nation

In a ‘strategic miscalculation,’ Trump kept foreigners out of the U.S. while helping spread the virus across the nation

The Washington Post reports: In the final days before the United States faced a full-blown epidemic, President Trump made a last-ditch attempt to prevent people infected with the coronavirus from reaching the country. “To keep new cases from entering our shores,” Trump said in an Oval Office address on March 11, “we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.” Across the Atlantic, Jack Siebert, an American college student spending a semester…

Read More Read More

Uncontrolled coronavirus spread continuing in 24 states, study estimates

Uncontrolled coronavirus spread continuing in 24 states, study estimates

The Washington Post reports: The coronavirus may still be spreading at epidemic rates in 24 states, particularly in the South and Midwest, according to new research that highlights the risk of a second wave of infections in places that reopen too quickly or without sufficient precautions. Researchers at Imperial College London created a model that incorporates cellphone data showing that people sharply reduced their movements after stay-at-home orders were broadly imposed in March. With restrictions now easing and mobility increasing…

Read More Read More

Why we can’t be sure we’ll get a coronavirus vaccine

Why we can’t be sure we’ll get a coronavirus vaccine

Ian Sample reports: Earlier this week, England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said the words nobody wanted to hear: “We can’t be sure we will get a vaccine.” But he was right to be circumspect. Vaccines are simple in principle but complex in practice. The ideal vaccine protects against infection, prevents its spread, and does so safely. But none of this is easily achieved, as vaccine timelines show. More than 30 years after scientists isolated HIV, the virus that…

Read More Read More

Brazil minister calls for environmental deregulation while public distracted by Covid-19

Brazil minister calls for environmental deregulation while public distracted by Covid-19

Reuters reports: Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles called on the government to push through further deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, in a video the Supreme Court ordered released on Friday. The video of a ministers’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether President Jair Bolsonaro interfered in appointing leaders of the federal police for personal gain. During the meeting, other ministers spoke, including Salles, with environmental groups saying his remarks prove that the…

Read More Read More

The links between ecological degradation and emerging infectious diseases

The links between ecological degradation and emerging infectious diseases

Wildlife Conservation Society: A WCS special report shows how degradation of ecological systems has significantly increased the overall risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks and has other complex effects on human health. You can read the full report here. The authors are WCS’s Tom Evans, Sarah Olson, James Watson, Kim Gruetzmacher, Mathieu Pruvot, Stacy Jupiter, Stephanie Wang, Tom Clements, and Katie Jung. The report, which draws on detailed case studies, global analyses, modelling, and broad expert consensus, notes that the majority…

Read More Read More

We’re not in this together: How the American aristocracy insulates itself from the pain of the pandemic

We’re not in this together: How the American aristocracy insulates itself from the pain of the pandemic

Ginia Bellafante writes: When the visual history of the pandemic is winnowed down to its defining images, we’ll be struck again by the glare of disparity — the pictures of mobile morgues and long lines at food banks next to those of people who seem to be riding out the crisis on a wave of rhubarb cocktail infusions and early evening beach walks. On the one side, the pervasive physical and economic toll; on the other, the chic home gyms…

Read More Read More

‘We’re not in this together’: Anand Giridharadas on how inequality has shaped the impact of the pandemic in America

‘We’re not in this together’: Anand Giridharadas on how inequality has shaped the impact of the pandemic in America

  The pandemic has prompted many to reflect on how the world works and, importantly, for whom it works. This is at the heart of a new program on Vice TV called “Seat at the Table,” hosted by best-selling author Anand Giridharadas. He has made a career of questioning the seat of power and money in America, and explains to Hari Sreenivasan why society must adapt or fail.

Hydroxychloroquine linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, analysis of 96,000 patients shows

Hydroxychloroquine linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, analysis of 96,000 patients shows

The Washington Post reports: A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a “game changer” in the fight against the virus had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not. People treated with hydroxychloroquine, or the closely related drug chloroquine, were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death,…

Read More Read More

How staying indoors affects your immune system

How staying indoors affects your immune system

Linda Geddes writes: For the past two months, a sizable chunk of the world’s population has been shuttered inside their homes, only stepping out for essential supplies. Although this may have reduced our chances of being exposed to coronavirus, it may have had a less obvious effect on our immune systems by leaving us more vulnerable to other infections. Humans evolved on a planet with a 24-hour cycle of light and dark, and our bodies are set up to work…

Read More Read More

Learning from the Covid-19 failure — before the next pandemic

Learning from the Covid-19 failure — before the next pandemic

Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker write: Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose. Someday, after the next pandemic has come and gone, a commission much like the 9/11 Commission will be charged with determining how well government, business, and public health leaders prepared the world for the catastrophe when they had clear warning. What will be the verdict?” That is from the concluding paragraph of an essay entitled…

Read More Read More

The CDC is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising crucial metrics governors depend on to reopen their economies

The CDC is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising crucial metrics governors depend on to reopen their economies

The Atlantic reports: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. We’ve learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government’s disease-fighting agency is…

Read More Read More

The CDC says coronavirus ‘does not spread easily’ on surfaces or objects. Here’s what we know

The CDC says coronavirus ‘does not spread easily’ on surfaces or objects. Here’s what we know

USA Today reports: Recent guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sheds new light on how coronavirus spreads through surfaces. Though there is the possibility that coronavirus could be transmitted by touching a surface — and then your nose, mouth or eyes — the likelihood of that is lower than person-to-person contact, which is believed to be the primary way coronavirus is transmitted. “COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it…

Read More Read More

Trump says he won’t close the country if second wave of coronavirus hits

Trump says he won’t close the country if second wave of coronavirus hits

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Thursday said “we are not closing our country” if the U.S. is hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections. “People say that’s a very distinct possibility, it’s standard,” Trump said when asked about a second wave during a tour of a Ford factory in Michigan. “We are going to put out the fires. We’re not going to close the country,” Trump said. “We can put out the fires. Whether it is an ember…

Read More Read More