Outbreak
‘It’s going to be a project’: Looking at unconventional efforts to ramp up our coronavirus testing ability
Right now, [coronavirus] gene tests—the most accurate kind—are run only in labs or on special hospital instruments. But [biotech entrepreneur ...
Viewpoint: Coronavirus pandemic has alerted consumers to the ‘silliness’ of organic food marketing
Remember when buying those “non-toxic” cleaning supplies made you feel like you were being a good person? Yeah, those were ...
Why isn’t there an ‘accelerated pathway’ for approving treatments during a pandemic?
Commercial biopharmaceutical discovery is a less than ideal vehicle for responding to an outbreak of a new viral pathogen spreading ...
Gilead’s remdesivir offers little benefit for coronavirus patients in early trial
The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from ...
An essential but ‘disturbing’ question: What if coronavirus is here for good?
Most of the optimistic ideas about what to do about SARS-CoV-2 involve engineering the virus's extinction. We could ramp up ...
Coronavirus antibody tests: Can they return us to ‘normal’?
When will life return to normal, or at least a new normal? A major answer to the question of when ...
Viewpoint: ‘Big Ag’ caused the coronavirus pandemic? Predatory science journal amplifies baseless COVID-19 conspiracy
With the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, agricultural supply chains around the world have been taxed to ensure consistent and ...
We’re using a lot of experimental coronavirus treatments. That could make it harder to figure out what works
Use of unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine could be obscuring clinical trials of other interventions ...
‘Perfect storm’: Why the coronavirus shut the world down, when SARS, Ebola and swine flu didn’t
In the past two decades, the world battled Ebola, SARS and more than one major flu outbreak. Those left tragedies ...
Scouring coronavirus patient genes to answer a question: Why do some people get deathly sick, when others don’t?
COVID-19, caused by the new pandemic coronavirus, is strangely—and tragically—selective. Only some infected people get sick, and although most of ...
Can we trust coronavirus antibody tests never reviewed by the FDA?
The Food and Drug Administration, criticized for slowness in authorizing tests to detect coronavirus infections, has taken a strikingly different ...
Not just the lungs: Coronavirus also wreaks havoc on the brain
As the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide reaches 2 million, clinicians are realizing the disease doesn’t just ravage the ...
Viewpoint: How precautionary public health policy turned coronavirus into a ‘global train wreck’
Worldwide coronavirus response was a failure in risk management ...
Podcast: Coronavirus conspiracies deadlier than the disease? Next pandemic worse? Spit test spots more COVID-19
A dearth of coronavirus tests has exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic in the US and elsewhere, but a newly FDA-approved test ...
‘Sloppy’ CDC lab practices blamed for tainted coronavirus tests in early stages of pandemic
As the new coronavirus took root across America, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted test ...
Genetic analysis tracks spread of 3 primary coronavirus variants
Researchers from Cambridge, U.K., and Germany have used a genetic network technique known as phylogenetic network analysis to reconstruct the ...
Capitalizing on corona: Conspiracy theorists blame COVID-19 on glyphosate, GMOs and the ‘New World Order’
With a quarter of the world’s population currently in lockdown, time has never been better for ..... frauds, as they ...
‘A lot of secrets’ in coronavirus genomes: Why are some strains so deadly, while others remain more mild?
[In 1965, a] group of researchers in England, led by Dr. David Tyrrell, was learning more about the common cold ...
Anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine linked to higher death rate in VA coronavirus patient study
An anti-malarial drug President Trump has aggressively promoted to treat covid-19 had no benefit and was linked to higher rates ...
How Liberia’s decisive response to contain the Ebola outbreak provides a blueprint for how to manage the coronavirus and future pandemics
In April of 2014, an outbreak of a disease named after the Ebola River in Congo was reported in Guinea, ...
‘It’s a cacophony’: Quest for coronavirus treatments undermined by ‘disorganized and scattershot’ US approach
In a desperate bid to find treatments for people sickened by the coronavirus, doctors and drug companies have launched more ...
Did COVID-19 escape from a lab?
A frenzy of speculation has arisen around the idea that the novel coronavirus responsible for the global COVID-19 pandemic might ...
What is it about the coronavirus genome that makes it so dangerous?
In January, scientists deciphered a piece of very bad news: the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The ...
These 2 ‘crucial and very different’ tests could help us contain the coronavirus
Amidst a slew of shortages and logistical hurdles, American researchers are now slowly rolling out two crucial and very different ...
Are vaccines immunity ‘silver bullets’ to protect us against COVID-19? It depends on how quickly the coronavirus mutates.
Recent studies on COVID-19 mutation rates have revealed promising data that has given scientists across the globe a boost in ...
‘Public Panic Pandemic’: How our reaction to the coronavirus makes things worse than they should be
Deconstructing the epidemiology of a global panic ...
Podcast: Don’t treat that fever—Dr. Paul Offit on why many of medicine’s most popular practices are ‘overkill’
Vaccine skeptics, alternative health advocates and anti-GMO activists are regularly lambasted for ignoring evidence that challenges their ideology. As it ...
