When COVID-19 superspreaders are talking, where you sit in the room matters

When COVID-19 superspreaders are talking, where you sit in the room matters

Classroom experiments show how the coronavirus can spread and who’s at greatest risk. Tom Werner via Getty Images By Suresh Dhaniyala, Clarkson University It doesn’t take long for airborne coronavirus particles to make their way through a room. At first, only people sitting near an infected speaker are at high risk, but as the meeting or class goes on, the tiny aerosols can spread. That doesn’t mean everyone faces the same level of risk, however. As an engineer, I have…

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How Amy Coney Barrett’s religious group helped shape a city

How Amy Coney Barrett’s religious group helped shape a city

Adam Wren writes: In 2002, when Amy Coney Barrett moved [to South Bend, Indiana] to begin her academic career, she joined the faculty at the law school where she’d been a student, attended Notre Dame football games and eventually joined a Primal Fitness gym where she’s currently known for her fierce pullup workout. She also connected with one other local community: People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group founded here in 1971. Many aspects of her life dovetail with a…

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The fear of being eaten shapes brains, behavior, and entire ecosystems

The fear of being eaten shapes brains, behavior, and entire ecosystems

Lesley Evans Ogden writes: As high tide inundates the muddy shallows of the Fraser river delta in British Columbia, what looks like a swarm of mosquitoes quivers in the air above. Upon closer inspection, the flitting mass turns out to be a flock of small shorebirds. The grey-brown wings and white chests of several thousand Pacific dunlins move in synchrony, undulating low over the water, then rising up like a rippling wave, sometimes for hours on end. Staying aloft like…

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New England Journal of Medicine: The Trump administration turned a crisis into a tragedy

New England Journal of Medicine: The Trump administration turned a crisis into a tragedy

In an editorial, the New England Journal of Medicine says: Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy. The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins…

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Chaos in the White House

Chaos in the White House

The New York Times reports: The White House that President Trump woke up in on Tuesday morning was in full-blown chaos, even by the standards of the havoc of the Trump era. Aides said the president’s voice was stronger after his return from the hospital Monday night, but at times he still sounded as if he was trying to catch air. The West Wing was mostly empty, cleared of advisers who were out sick with the coronavirus themselves or told…

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Trump, unhinged, demands Barr lock up his foes

Trump, unhinged, demands Barr lock up his foes

Politico reports: Donald Trump mounted an overnight Twitter blitz demanding to jail his political enemies and call out allies he says are failing to arrest his rivals swiftly enough. Trump twice amplified supporters’ criticisms of Attorney General William Barr, including one featuring a meme calling on him to “arrest somebody!” He wondered aloud why his rivals, like President Barack Obama, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton hadn’t been imprisoned for launching a “coup” against his administration….

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Trump’s team trusts Russian intelligence over U.S. intelligence

Trump’s team trusts Russian intelligence over U.S. intelligence

Josh Rogin writes: As the election draws near, President Trump’s political appointees, private lawyers and GOP allies on Capitol Hill are escalating their campaign to help the Russians interfere in U.S. politics. Now they’re effectively asking Americans to side with Russian intelligence services over the U.S. intelligence community — and the president is going along. Over the past few months, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, GOP senators, U.S. lobbyists and pro-Trump media organizations have been working with Russian intelligence…

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‘We need to take away children,’ no matter how young, Justice Dept. officials said

‘We need to take away children,’ no matter how young, Justice Dept. officials said

The New York Times reports: The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare. But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to…

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The molecular biologist, Jacques Monod, saw chance as one of the ‘secrets of life’

The molecular biologist, Jacques Monod, saw chance as one of the ‘secrets of life’

Sean B. Carroll writes: Jacques Monod arrived in Paris to some dreadful news. On June 5, 1944, four years into the German occupation of France during World War II, he was supposed to meet with fellow leaders in the French Resistance when his assistant, Geneviève Noufflard, told him that several commanders within the greater Paris region had just been caught by the Gestapo. Monod was pretty sure that at least one of those arrested knew about the rendezvous he was…

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What Earth owes to black holes

What Earth owes to black holes

Marina Koren writes: The first picture ever captured of a black hole, one situated in the center of another galaxy, was pretty blurry. Seen in silhouette, it appeared fuzzy, as did the ring of hot gas surrounding it. The reaction of the public did not necessarily match the unalloyed joy of astronomers accustomed to extracting cosmic wonders from lines in a graph. To anyone more familiar with black holes from epic space films, this one mostly looked like a flame-glazed…

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Trump’s white supremacy echoes ‘the heart of Nazi ideology,’ alarming Jewish leaders and other opponents of racism

Trump’s white supremacy echoes ‘the heart of Nazi ideology,’ alarming Jewish leaders and other opponents of racism

The Los Angeles Times reports: President Trump has alarmed Jewish leaders and others with remarks that appeared to endorse “racehorse theory” — the idea that selective breeding can improve a country’s performance, which American eugenicists and German Nazis used in the last century to buttress their goals of racial purity. “You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump told a mostly white crowd of supporters in Bemidji, Minn., on Sept. 18. “You have good genes. A lot of it…

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White House won’t conduct contact tracing after ‘super-spreader’ event, creating ‘massive public health threat’

White House won’t conduct contact tracing after ‘super-spreader’ event, creating ‘massive public health threat’

The New York Times reports: Despite almost daily disclosures of new coronavirus infections among President Trump’s close associates, the White House is making little effort to investigate the scope and source of its outbreak. The White House has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, where at least eight people, including the president, may have become infected, according to a White House official…

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Trump returns to White House, seemingly indifferent about who he infects with the coronavirus

Trump returns to White House, seemingly indifferent about who he infects with the coronavirus

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump staged a dramatic return to the White House Monday night after leaving the military hospital where he was receiving an unprecedented level of care for COVID-19. He immediately ignited a new controversy by declaring that despite his illness the nation should not fear the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans — and then he entered the White House without a protective mask. Trump’s message alarmed infectious disease experts and suggested the…

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Powell warns of prolonged economic pain absent help as Trump ends stimulus talks

Powell warns of prolonged economic pain absent help as Trump ends stimulus talks

The New York Times reports: Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, delivered a blunt message to Congress and the White House on Tuesday: Faced with a once-in-a-century pandemic that has inflicted economic pain on millions of households, go big. Hours later, President Trump delivered his own message: Forget it. In a series of conflicting tweets, the president said the economy was “doing very well” and coming back “in record numbers,” suggesting that no additional help was needed while also…

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