How Trump let Covid-19 win

As America, and even his own administration, woke up to the threat of Covid-19, President Donald Trump still didn’t seem to get it. Within weeks of suggesting that people social distance in mid-March, the president went on national TV to argue that the US could reopen by Easter Sunday in April. “You’ll have packed churches…

Tropical Storm Laura’s flooding and other impacts on the ground: What we know

Tropical Storm Laura, which has been downgraded from a hurricane, made landfall early Thursday morning in Cameron, Louisiana — just 35 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border — as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds. Already, pictures and videos of the storm from Lake Charles, Louisiana, a town about 50 miles north of…

“Extinction breeds extinctions”: How losing one species can wipe out many more

Earth is now in the middle of a mass extinction, the sixth one in the planet’s history, according to scientists. And now a new study reports that species are going extinct hundreds or thousands of times faster than the expected rate. The researchers also found that one extinction can cause ripple effects throughout an ecosystem,…

What public health experts want critics to know about why they support the protests

As someone with asthma, Meredith Blake was very worried about getting sick in the pandemic. With Covid-19 spreading across America, she stayed inside her home in Boston for 12 weeks, isolating from others as much as possible. Her self-quarantine ended on June 1. After George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis, she…

6 feet away isn’t enough. Covid-19 risk involves other dimensions, too.

When states had strict stay-at-home orders and lockdowns in place, many decisions about the risk of getting the coronavirus were simple. People didn’t have to think about whether dining in a restaurant is safe if the restaurant was closed. Now, that states are opening up — with varying degrees of precautions and adherence in place…

Why a second round of Covid-19 lockdowns might not be as effective

Several states are now seeing a surge in new Covid-19 coronavirus infections and hospitalizations. And the states with more alarming outbreaks — Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee — generally saw few cases early in the pandemic. Many of these states have started to relax the restrictions on movement, businesses,…

Remember the N95 mask shortage? It’s still a problem.

Texas broke records for Covid-19 hospitalizations six times last week, including a record 2,504 hospitalizations in a single day on June 10. South Carolina, North Carolina, Alaska, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas have also all broken records of new cases reported in a single day. Alabama saw a 92 percent increase in its seven-day average of…

CDC reverses guidelines, telling people to get tested for Covid-19 even without symptoms

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reversed changes to its Covid-19 testing guidelines, once again recommending that people without symptoms get tested for the coronavirus if they have come into close contact with someone known to be infected. Click Here: The CDC’s new guidelines now state, “If you have been in…