by Atwal Gawande in The New York Times…In a place with one of the highest TB rates on Earth, I saw that the disease could be stopped with the new tools available. And still more are coming. Clinical trials of five TB vaccines with promising early results are now underway. After decades without major advances, we now have a steady stream of innovations. But they won’t matter unless the world commits to deploying them.
W.H.O. declares global emergency over new Mpox outbreak
by Apoorva Mandavilli in The New York Times….The epidemic is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the virus has now appeared in a dozen other African countries.
About 400 million people worldwide have had Long Covid, researchers say
by Pam Belluck in The New York Times…The condition has put significant strain on patients and society — at a global economic cost of about $1 trillion a year, a new report estimates.
Animal apocalypse: Deadly bird flu infects hundreds of species pole-to-pole
by Sharon Guynup in Mongabay…The threat posed by H5N1 extends far beyond the frozen South. Few people realize that the world is currently gripped in another serious pandemic — or, to be exact, a panzootic, the animal equivalent. This virus has now infected more than 500 bird and mammal species.
Americans’ struggle with mental health
by Ellen Barry in The New York Times…We explore why rates of anxiety and depression are higher than they were before the pandemic.
The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence
by James Alwine, et al in The Journal of Virology…Many questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain unanswered and may never be fully resolved. We cannot currently disprove the lab leak hypothesis. Nevertheless, the lines of evidence needed to validate one hypothesis over another are not epistemically comparable (16). Validating the zoonotic origin is a scientific question that relies on history, epidemiology, and genomic analysis, that when taken together, support a natural spillover as the probable origin.
More in this category
The government must say what it knows about covid’s origins
by Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times….The American public, however, only rarely heard refreshing honesty from their officials or even their scientists — and this tight-lipped, denialist approach appears to have only strengthened belief that the pandemic arose from carelessness during research or even, in less reality-based accounts, something deliberate.
W.H.O. ends global health emergency designation for covid
By Stephanie Nolen, The New York Times….The decision has little practical effect but is a significant moment in the struggle against a virus that has killed millions and upended lives throughout the world.
An end to pandemic restrictions could bring thousands to the border
By Miriam Jordan, The New York Times….Title 42, the policy that has allowed the swift expulsion of many migrants at the southern border, will lift on Thursday. Officials are bracing for a new immigration surge.
Are repeat COVID infections dangerous? What the science says
By Cassandra Willyard in Nature…Researchers disagree over how bad it is to be reinfected, and whether COVID-19 can cause lasting changes to the immune system.
The next pandemic could be ‘as infectious as this one but far more lethal’—and make COVID look like a cakewalk, expert warns
By Erin Prater in Fortune Well….The next pandemic could make COVID look like a cakewalk, one expert warned Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in Marina del Rey, Calif.
Let’s imagine we knew exactly how the pandemic started
In a March Guardian editorial that similarly treated the matter of origin as an arcane sideshow, the paper emphasized expanding disease surveillance, protecting natural habitats, reforming factory farming and ramping up lab safety — and concluded that all “this, rather than the blame game, is what politicians should prioritize.”
An even deadlier pandemic could soon be here
A pelican suspected to have died from H5N1 avian influenza on a beach in Peru in December.Credit…Ernesto Benavides/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images
Why are so many Americans dying right now?
According to one tabulation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 300,000 additional Americans have died over the past three years whom we would not have expected to in more normal times. David Wallace-Wells Link to full article in The New...
It ain’t over till it’s over…but it’s never over — emerging and reemerging infectious diseases
Dr. Anthony Fauci reflects on his career and the future of infectious disease.
Get ready for the Forever Plague
While Omicron’s subvariants find new ways to evade vaccines and destabilize immune systems, another pandemic has overwhelmed officials who are supposed to be in charge of public health.
Innovation and crisis: Is our fight against COVID-19 a critical juncture?
The COVID-19 pandemic is widely seen as a potential turning point after which almost everything could be different. But how much?
Resilience: Living beyond fear with the Coronavirus
The first thing to overcome with the coronavirus is fear.
A framework for understanding the COVID-19 crisis & preparing for what is next
Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq shares a framework by which we can understand and respond to the COVID-19 crisis while anticipating its consequences and preparing for what’s next.