Atlantic
Viewpoint: Do we still need to wear masks outdoors? Taking face coverings off in restaurants is ‘like watching people put on seatbelts in parked cars, then unbuckling them when they drive’
One systematic overview of COVID-19 case studies concluded that the risk of transmission was 19 times higher indoors than outside ...
Very rare and very expected: Don’t be surprised when some vaccinated people get COVID
[N]early 40 million Americans have received the jabs they need for full immunization. A vanishingly small percentage of those people ...
Viewpoint: This one man may be responsible for spreading more COVID misinformation than anyone else on TV or social media
Alex Berenson: the former New York Times reporter, Yale-educated novelist, avid tweeter, online essayist, and all-around pandemic gadfly [has] has ...
Natural GMO: Whiteflies stole a gene from plants millions of years ago that can protect them from pesticides
Pale, squishy, and smaller than a sesame seed, these sap-sucking bugs terrorize more than 600 plant species, infecting them with ...
Republicans, young people and minorities: How to persuade the vaccine hesitant to get a COVID shot
As the United States screams past 500,000 fatalities, the choice between a deadly disease and a shot in the arm ...
With widespread COVID vaccine hesitancy, the US may never reach herd immunity. Where will that leave us?
For COVID-19, the herd-immunity threshold is estimated to be between 60 and 90 percent. That’s the proportion of people who ...
Why the mounting number of coronavirus mutations portends a potentially troubling future
For most of 2020, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from human to human, accumulating mutations at a steady rate ...
How the coronavirus is mutating, evolving—and getting more difficult to contain
Each day, [the new UK COVID variant] B.1.1.7 is being found in more people in more places, including all around the United States. Experts ...
Over 60 years, vaccines have prevented 4.5 billion cases and saved 10 million lives. Now anti-vaxxers want to roll back the clock
The misleading claims Americans will soon hear about the newly released COVID-19 vaccines are nearly identical to claims made about smallpox ...
Should you abort a fetus with Down syndrome as the Danish do almost universally?
[I]n 2004, Denmark became one of the first countries in the world to offer prenatal Down syndrome screening to every ...
Bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel makes his case for why he wants to die at 75
By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved ...
What you should and shouldn’t worry about in the small print when a COVID vaccine is approved
Over the next few months, the companies behind the leading [COVID] vaccine candidates will start releasing the first data from ...
Right to protection against infection? Do masks and stay-at-home orders violate the Constitution? Check out the Third Amendment
[P]rotesters have resisted [COVID] safety measures under the belief that they violate constitutionally guaranteed liberties… But a profound historical counter-vision ...
Vaccine chaos: Doses likely released first are the hardest to deploy
[T]he COVID-19 vaccine will be a whole new challenge. “The COVID situation is significantly different and more complex than anything ...
Trump did not ‘beat COVID’: Recovering from an illness is not a form of warfare
“Our president is strong and will beat the virus,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “He’s a fighter,” said former press secretary Sarah Huckabee ...
Don’t expect closure on the pandemic. COVID is here for a while even if vaccines prove to work
Whatever the end of the pandemic might look like, the United States is nowhere close to it at the moment; week ...
Will coffee go extinct? Deadly fungus threatens one of the world’s favorite beverages
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, talking about a plant disease might seem frivolous. But around the world, 100 ...
Why going for herd immunity to fight COVID won’t work
The idea of abandoning preventive measures and letting the virus infect people has already gotten traction in [US] administration. [Recently, ...
Behold the sturddlefish: ‘It’s like if a cow and a giraffe made a baby’
“Sturddlefish,” as these [Russian sturgeon and American paddlefish] hybrids were nicknamed after researchers in Hungary announced their creation last month, go shockingly ...
Permanent readjustment: Why COVID-19 is here to stay
If there was ever a time when this coronavirus could be contained, it has probably passed. One outcome is now ...
Viewpoint: How COVID-19 has brought America to its knees
Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical ...
Having your period can be painful, messy, expensive – and optional?
Menstruation has now become an elective bodily process. “Once your periods are established, we can turn them off,” Sophia Yen, ...
Latest partisan flashpoint: Gap between rising confirmed coronavirus infections and relatively flat death rate
President Donald Trump has brushed off the coronavirus surge by emphasizing the lower death rate, saying that “99 percent of ...
Quest for a coronavirus vaccine ‘reinvigorating’ anti-vax conspiracy theories
There is no COVID-19 vaccine, but there are already COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies. Even as vaccines for the disease caused by ...
Prebiotics: How best to protect your skin and why daily showers may not be a good idea
Now couldn’t be a weirder time to question washing. I’ve spent the past three years reporting on how our notions ...
30 years later in Romania: What happened to the babies deprived of human contact?
In 1990, the outside world discovered [Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s] network of “child gulags,” in which an estimated 170,000 abandoned ...
‘This virus has ruined my life’: Some COVID-19 patients have suffered through symptoms for months—with no end in sight
About 80 percent of [COVID-19] infections, according to the World Health Organization, “are mild or asymptomatic,” and patients recover after ...
‘Diagnostic conundrum’: COVID-19 pandemic has given us a lot of clinically depressed people
As a rough average, during pre-pandemic life, 5 to 7 percent of people met the criteria for a diagnosis of ...
