FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn indicated that his agency would be willing to grant emergency authorization to a coronavirus vaccine, even before it completes Phase 3 clinical trials. This is a reckless gamble and could cause an unmitigated public health disaster.
coronavirus
There are some striking differences between how Europeans and Americans are navigating the pandemic. The latter have a lot to learn from the former.
There are crazier ideas than harsh, indefinite lockdowns to fight the coronavirus. One was proposed by a bioethics professor: Put mind-controlling hormones in the water supply to make people more cooperative.
Large pharmaceutical companies are multinational organizations with incentives to distribute their vaccines broadly.
There are both advantages and disadvantages of studying repurposed drugs to battle COVID-19. In an interview, ACSH advisor Dr. Kathie Seley-Radtke weighs in on this method while providing a glimpse at some of the very promising research now going on in her lab. If you want to know how antiviral drug discovery might tame COVID-19, this is a must-read.
Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's propaganda machine are working in overdrive.
Data suggest that about 3% of Americans, or nearly 10 million people, have been infected with coronavirus. Unfortunately, this data comes from late April and early May, and the virus has spread even further since then. The official COVID-19 case tally, therefore, is a dramatic undercount.
There is a distinction between healthy concern for the coronavirus and deeply unhealthy obsession and paranoia. Guess which side Esquire magazine picked?
Stephanie S. (not her real name) is a teacher in New York City. She is facing some difficult, perhaps even impossible, choices. Will she return to the classroom, where COVID will surely spread? Or refuse to do so, and lose her a job and health insurance? What about remote teaching or a so-called "hybrid model?" Here are her thoughts.
Conspiracy theories are like herpes. Once a person is exposed, he's infected for life and cannot be cured. Worse, the patient is vulnerable to more conspiracy theories.
A few weeks ago the EPA approved specific anti-coronavirus labeling for two Lysol products. But the two are part of a larger list of 470 other disinfectant products that "meet EPA's criteria for use against SARS-CoV-2." In other words, you can use them to kill the virus. I promise that this isn't nearly as boring as it sounds. But, just in case, have the NoDoz handy.
Bill Gates, perhaps the greatest philanthropist the world has ever known, has become the target of unhinged, self-contradictory conspiracy theories that are disturbingly popular.