Month: May 2021

A highly contagious disease originating far from America's shores triggers deadly outbreaks that spread rapidly, infecting the masses. Shots are available, but a divided public agonizes over getting jabbed. Sound familiar? Newly digitized records — including a minister's diary scanned and posted online by Boston's Congregational Library and Archives — are shedding fresh light on devastating outbreaks of smallpox that hit the city in the 1700s. And three centuries later, the parallels with the coronavirus pandemic are uncanny. "How little we've changed," said CLA archivist Zachary Bodnar, who led the digitization effort, working closely with the New England Historic Genealogical Society. "The fact that we’re finding these similarities in the records of our past is a very interesting ...

Passengers wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the spread of Covid-19 are seen on an escalator at Orlando International Airport. Paul Hennessy | LightRocket | Getty Images When the coronavirus pandemic started to sweep around the world in 2020, a number of governments and health authorities appeared to pin their hopes on "herd immunity." This approach would see the virus spread though society and cause infections, but also provoke an immune response in those who have recovered. If enough people gained these antibodies — say, around 60-70% of the population — then the transmission of the virus would gradually decrease, and those who had not yet been infected would be protected by the increasingly small opportunity the virus had to spread. Tha...

Health officials have pointed out, however, that such successes are largely contingent on getting the US fully vaccinated as quickly as possible. And right now, the rate of vaccination is slowing. The average daily pace of coronavirus vaccinations is down almost 50% from its April peak, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Thursday. Over the past week, about 1.8 million vaccine doses have been administered each day, a 46% drop from the peak rate of nearly 3.4 million per day in mid-April. One expert told CNN that the health community is worried about what lies ahead. Clusters of unvaccinated people may become infected with Covid-19 as they move indoors to beat the summer heat, particularly in the South, noting that a similar situation happened last ye...