Month: August 2020

America’s pandemic conversation has entered a rut, and it’s easy to understand why. After stay-at-home orders blunted this spring’s first surge, much of the United States moved to reopen in the summer, which only spawned more outbreaks. Now, as autumn approaches, along with the prospect of spending more time indoors, the nation stands somewhat divided on whether to lockdown again or continue reopening. About 60 percent of Americans support the prospect of new stay-at-home orders, NPR reports, but nearly the same proportion is willing to spend time at malls, churches, and restaurants or send their child back to in-person schooling. Anthony Fauci thinks this divisiveness is unnecessary and comes from a public misunderstanding over the purpose of the health guidelines....

A trial of the English coronavirus app is getting under way. It will be limited to residents in the Isle of Wight, the London Borough of Newham and NHS volunteer responders to begin with. The app will be available in Apple and Google's online stores, but users will need to enter a code to activate it. The software will tell users to self-isolate for a fortnight if the app detects they have been close to someone else diagnosed with the virus. Baroness Dido Harding - who heads up the wider Test and Trace initiative - had earlier voiced concern about implementing the automated contact-tracing feature because of fears many people who had been falsely flagged might be told to go into quarantine. The app has several other functi...

If Americans don't follow coronavirus prevention measures such as wearing masks and social distancing, the country could be in for its "worst fall" in history, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Thursday. During an interview with WebMD, CDC Director Robert Redfield said a virus surge, along with the upcoming flu season, could create the “worst fall” that “we’ve ever had." Colder weather in the fall will likely drive more people indoors, where health experts say COVID-19 spreads more easily.  Coinciding flu and COVID-19 outbreaks could overwhelm hospitals and drain resources, threatening lives and the response to the pandemic.  Redfield said the CDC is urging people to get a flu shot, and the agency has purchased an extra 10 million doses o...

The 1918 influenza pandemic is the deadliest in modern history, claiming an estimated 50 million lives worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States. By some measures, the toll of the Covid-19 surge in New York City this spring resembled that of the 1918 flu pandemic. In March and April, the overall death rate was just 30 percent lower than during the height of the pandemic in the city, despite modern medical advances, according to an analysis published on Thursday in JAMA Network Open. Many people liken Covid-19 to seasonal influenza while regarding the 1918 flu pandemic as a time of incomparable devastation, said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and lead author of the analysis. “But in reality, what 1918 looked like is basi...