The spread of Covid-19 among members in a household after one person is infected is “common” and occurs quickly after illness onset, according to a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The person exposed or suspected of having Covid-19 should be isolated before getting tested and before test results come…
Health News
Already, pharmaceutical companies’ predictions about Covid-19 vaccines haven’t come true
Baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra didn’t know anything about Covid-19 — he passed away five years ago — but his quote applies to the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Over the past six months, pharmaceutical companies have made various predictions about their Covid-19 vaccine timelines that have…
How to talk to kids about the election and fraught politics
When I was a kid in the 1980s, politics held minimal appeal. Watching the candidates, nearly always two white men talk about issues, would inevitably make my eyes glaze over. Hearing the grown-ups in my life talk about their preferred candidates held little appeal. I sensed that elections and voting were important but not something…
US coronavirus cases surpass 9 million driven by ‘silent epidemic’ of asymptomatic infections
Coronavirus infections passed 9 million on Friday with the virus spreading across the United States at a faster rate than previously seen. The US added 1 million new Covid-19 cases only 14 days after the nation hit 8 million cases and multiple states continue reporting their highest daily case counts since the pandemic began, according…
Many counties that hosted Trump rallies had a significant increase in Covid-19 cases
A CNN investigation of 17 Trump campaign rallies finds that 14 of the host counties — 82% of them — had an increased rate of new Covid-19 cases one month after the rally. The 17 rallies occurred between August 17 and September 26. CNN evaluated the rate of new daily cases per 100,000 residents at…
About 20% of grocery store workers had Covid-19, and most didn’t have symptoms, study found
Grocery store work puts employees at serious risk for infection, a new study found, particularly those who have to interact with customers. These workers likely became a “significant transmission source” for Covid-19 without even knowing it because most in the study were asymptomatic. The analysis, published Thursday in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is…
Coronavirus fail: How one summer camp’s freewheeling approach led to 118 cases
Here’s what not to do at summer camp. A single Covid-19 positive camper set off a chain of infection that reached more than three-quarters of students, counselors and staffers at a faith-based retreat in Wisconsin over the summer, health officials reported Thursday. Camp organizers had tried to prevent just such a superspreading by requiring proof…
Americans hate political opponents more than they love their own party, study finds
Americans now hate people in the opposite political party more than they love their own party, with disrupting implications about behavior, a new study finds. “Compared to a few decades ago, Americans today are much more opposed to dating or marrying an opposing partisan; they are also wary of living near or working for one,”…
Senators ask HHS, CDC about ‘highly alarming’ excess Covid-19 deaths
Three Democratic US senators have asked the US Health and Human Services Secretary and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director to explain what they’re doing to investigate a “highly alarming” excess of deaths in the United States, above and beyond the more than 200,000 fatalities directly attributed to Covid-19. “Newly released CDC…
This weekend is nuts. Halloween, full moon, time change and just before the election. How do we cope?
This week is a kind of Hell Week, figuratively and literally. Our demons are coming out. The campaign signs dotting the streets in our neighborhoods are strewn in with gravestones and mock murder scenes and skeletons that this year feel a little more personal, having had death hang like a cloud over this year. We’ve…
What we can learn from 1918’s deadly second wave
In the deadly fall wave of the 1918 flu pandemic, millions of people were doomed because they didn’t know what we know now about how viruses and respiratory illnesses spread. We might face a similar fate if some people continue to ignore what a century of scientific progress and hindsight have taught us about ending…
Daily coronavirus cases reached a new high on Thursday with more than 87,100 cases
There have been 87,164 Covid-19 cases reported in the United States as of Thursday night, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, by far the most new cases in a single day since the pandemic began. The previous high was just six days ago, when there were 83,731 new cases reported. The staggering total comes…
Immunity to coronavirus lingers for months, study finds
Immunity to Covid-19 infection lingers for at least five months, researchers reported — and probably longer than that. While the report may seem confusing and contradictory to a similar report out of Britain this week, it really isn’t. People’s bodies produce an army of immune compounds in response to an infection and some are overwhelming…
Federal government says it will pay for any future coronavirus vaccine for all Americans
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will pay for any Covid-19 vaccine that is authorized or approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to allow for “broad vaccine access and coverage for all Americans.” The agency also announced it will help cover a larger portion of the cost of new Covid-19…
Covid-19 antibody therapies show promising early results in separate trials
Days after Eli Lilly and Company said it would stop a trial of its Covid-19 antibody therapy in hospitalized patients because it was not effective, the company on Wednesday published promising interim results from a trial involving patients with mild and moderate Covid-19. Also on Wednesday, biopharmaceutical company Regeneron reported its monoclonal antibody cocktail treatment…
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