From greasy menus to double-dipping, the COVID pandemic will help us say goodbye to some nasty cultural practices.
COVID-19
We got some very good news in the past week. Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna greatly exceeded expectations. But Drs. Seley-Radtke and Bloom argue in the Duluth News Tribune that antiviral drugs will still be needed, no matter how good the vaccines are.
COVID-19 has brought supply chains more prominently into our lives. Those include getting toilet paper onto store shelves, assuring take-out food gets delivered, as well as deliveries being made during the Christmas season. And the first COVID-19 wave revealed our Strategic National Stockpile cupboards were mostly bare. (Spoiler Alert: The "why" has far more to do with logistics than political affiliation.)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would rather allow more Americans to become infected with and die from coronavirus than to allow an imperfect vaccine distribution plan to proceed.
Pfizer's vaccine is based on RNA, which is a very unstable molecule that is prone to breaking down. Storing it at -94° F prevents this, but it creates the logistical difficulty of transporting the vaccine.
The value of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients continues to rise from the ashes of refutation in the medical literature. The latest iteration is a meta-analysis of utilizing the drug early in ambulatory patients' care to lessen the undesirable outcomes of infection, hospitalization, and death. Several of our readers and members of our Board of Scientific Advisors believe that this study is important and that we disregard it at our risk. We are letting a proponent of each side make their case.
People with Type A blood are more susceptible to a particular kind of lung disease, which happens to be triggered by the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The American media focuses on the failures to control the coronavirus in this country, but a larger perspective shows that the virus is out of control in much of the world, especially in Europe. Some other countries are doing worse than the U.S., at least for the time being.
America is now facing its second lockdown. Other countries are verging on a third. Repeated efforts at COVID-19 containment seem elusive. No respite seems in sight – other than hope of a vaccine. Along with concerted efforts in this direction, the vexing incidence of escalating vaccine resistance is raising its ugly head – yet again, stoked by a growlingly effective anti-vax movement and false prophets of vaccine doom. This trend seems to have hit the Black community particularly hard.
We don't have an unlimited supply of diagnostic tests for COVID. So, researchers have developed nine simple questions that can predict whether someone is likely to have the disease.
The first known death from a cyberattack raises the prospect that malware could be more than just a financial crime.
Europe is in worse shape than the U.S. when it comes to new infections, at least for the time being. Without a change in strategy -- and hoping for a vaccine is not a strategy -- going back into lockdown is pointless, as a third (or fourth) wave will emerge when society reopens.