HBO Doc ‘The Last Cruise’ Gives Insight Into Nightmarish Covid-19 Outbreak
In the first few minutes of The Last Cruise, a new HBO documentary directed by Hannah Olson, the skies are clear, the waters blue, and aboard the Diamond Princess, aerobics classes involving hundreds are in full swing. The date is January 20, 2020, and …
Moderna And Pfizer Vaccines Prevent Infection As Well As Disease: Key Questions Remain
Ever since the US vaccine rollout officially commenced in December, a question that has been top of mind is whether the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines created by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech would perform as well under real-world conditions as they did in the …
Persistence Of Covid-19 Antibodies Varies Widely From Person To Person
One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Covid-19 is why the neutralizing antibodies our bodies generate in response to the virus tend to dwindle in number so quickly. A small minority of studies, including one completed in Iceland last summer, have observed …
From Cats And Dogs To Minks And Mice, Covid-19 Variants Are Infecting The Ecosystem
To witness a dog come down with Covid-19 is a curious thing. Though mine have been spared, I have a friend whose two dogs got sick in addition to the rest of their family. In videos my friend sent me, I could …
New Study Predicts Immune Protection May Vary For Different Covid-19 Vaccines
After more than a year of lockdowns, isolation, and great loss of human life, the slow but steady rollout of Covid-19 vaccines has given us all a much-needed glimmer of hope. As of March 22, the total number of doses administered worldwide …
Preventing Fecal-Oral And Fecal-Aerosol Transmission Of Covid-19
Last year, I conducted an interview with a friend who traveled to Shanghai and was forced to quarantine in a hotel for 11 days under the supervision of local health authorities. He was brought hot meals, subjected to temperature checks twice daily, …
The Covid Pandemic Is Not Over: The Past May Be Prologue
Public health officials have told us that we are in a race between Covid-19 vaccines and the virus. But in order for us to win, we need a much longer track. With a slight decline in new infections—likely the result of a …
New Study Using Live Virus Explores Whether Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Protects Against Variants
When new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, were discovered to be circulating around the world, the first question for many was whether they would present a serious problem for nascent vaccination programs against Covid-19. While the answer still eludes …
Lessons From The Past And Present For Controlling Covid-19: Polio
This article is the first in an ongoing series about what we can learn from successful efforts to vaccinate against other diseases and apply to interventions against Covid-19. Though we’ve cycled through many kinds of public health interventions in our struggle to …
More Cause For Concern Around Covid-19 And Schools
Earlier this week I wrote a column which raised an alarm around whether it was worth sending our children into school when we know that more transmissible and possibly more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variants are circulating. Now, new reports from Italy of a …