The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned last year that a pandemic caused by a novel strain of influenza would cripple the country‘s response capabilities by driving millions of people into overwhelmed hospitals. The report, which was written before the new coronavirus first surfaced in China, offered these prescient predictions: The deluge of patients would create […]
On March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. A pandemic occurs when a new disease, for which people have no immunity, spreads across the globe, being readily transmitted from person to person. In the last century we’ve had four pandemics, all caused by novel strains of flu, the worst […]
COVID-19 is different from the viral epidemics of the recent past in a few ways: it is more widespread than severe acute respiratory syndrome, more infectious than seasonal influenza and has killed more people than Ebola. And it is different in the way that epidemiologists are tracking its progress. Instead of relying principally on the […]
In recent weeks, many Americans have voluntarily and radically altered their behavior in order to protect others from the novel coronavirus. Those who are less vulnerable are making sacrifices in order to protect those who are more vulnerable: the elderly, the immunocompromised, and—in our country, with its broken social safety net—the uninsured and the poor. […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently granted an “emergency use authorization” of a blood test for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. It is the first such test to receive approval for the U.S. market. And it comes at a time when health experts and leaders are embracing immunity as a […]
Originally published in March 1861 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “In some of the furnace-heated houses of this city, the air is so dry that it is a common amusement of the children to light the gas by a spark of electricity from their fingers. By rubbing one’s feet along the carpet the body becomes so […]
As far back as Icarus’s ill-fated aviation attempt, humans have looked to birds for inspiration in our airborne endeavors. But truly birdlike flight with flexible, feathered wings has long eluded us; for one thing, engineers have struggled to understand how birds control wing feathers. But two new studies could change that. Researchers recently designed and […]
A recent report reveals that one in four rural hospitals are at risk of closure. That means behavioral health in rural communities is quickly becoming less available to populations that already struggle with higher rates of isolation, addiction and access to affordable care. The Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center found that 60 percent of mental […]
Deep beneath the frozen surface of the Arctic swims a sea unicorn. In reality, it’s a whale with a spiral tusk sprouting from its head—the narwhal. Biologists have long debated the purpose of male narwhals’ tusks. The tusk, like those of elephants, are actually elongated teeth. And since narwhals are usually below the sea ice, […]
As the United States struggles to test people for COVID-19, academic laboratories that are ready and able to run diagnostics are not operating at full capacity. A Nature investigation of several university labs certified to test for the virus finds that they have been held up by regulatory, logistic and administrative obstacles, and stymied by the fragmented […]