Month: September 2021

There’s a long history of natural disasters making people sick. Reports range from cases of Valley fever after the Northridge earthquake in California in 1994 tossed dirt containing spores of Coccidia bacteria into the air, to aspergillus infections caused by victims of the 2011 Japanese tsunami aspirating bacteria-laden water, to people infected and killed by fungi carried on debris from the Joplin, Missouri, tornado, also in 2011. But it can be hard to pinpoint when an infection or reaction is related to mold specifically, because the damage caused by disasters exposes victims to so many substances. “After these flooding events or hurricanes, there's so much going on: Not only are you dealing with a house full of mold, but you're ripping that house apart, so there's drywall and dust an...

Left-handed people comprise only around 10% of the global population, but a quick glance reveals that many key movers and shakers are lefties.  For instance, three out of the last six American presidents were lefties: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Plus, an eclectic slew of outliers who've rocked the world in one way or another had dominant left hands: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, James Baldwin, Nikola Tesla, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, according to a 2019 report and The New York Times.  It's an impressive roster, but what does the data say? Are left-handed people smarter than righties?  Related: Why are people left- (or right-) handed? To investigate this question, researchers looked at the differences...

Twice now, he has been convinced that he was going into cardiac arrest under all that equipment, his body suffocating in the summer heat beneath a respirator, plastic cap, plastic gown and gloves, while helping to treat a patient they believed had covid-19. Gonzalez, 53, has lost nearly 60 pounds since the pandemic started, most of it water weight from sweating beneath the plastic.

Most people are wondering when and how the COVID pandemic will end and there are still no easy answers. The word “endemic” is regularly mentioned, especially among public health leaders and experts as they discuss potential future scenarios. So, it’s important to define exactly it would mean for COVID to be endemic. Scientists predict COVID will become endemic over time but there will still be sporadic outbreaks where it gets out of control. The transition from pandemic to endemic will likely play out differently in different locations around the world. Read more: Israel was a leader in the COVID vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there? ‘Outbreak’, ‘Epidemic’, ‘Pandemic’ and ‘Endemic’ First let’s recap the public health ter...

Jennifer Boral badly wants a Covid-19 vaccine booster shot. An asthmatic with a history of getting colds that develop into serious lung infections, the 41-year-old unemployed real-estate agent in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., is terrified that getting Covid-19 might land her in the hospital or worse.