COVID-19 is a precedent-shattering monster of a pandemic. There’s never been anything quite like it. Historians of public health have struggled mightily to find apt comparisons to our current pandemic. They’ve landed most often on the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918. On…
For Jenessa Thomas, a 44-year-old marathon runner and nutritionist in central Oregon, the first surprise was waking up one morning in mid-March with a rapid heartbeat. The next day, she borrowed a pulse oximeter and got a reading in the high 70s, far below the 95-100 normal…
Calvin Munerlyn, a Family Dollar security guard in Flint, Michigan, was shot and killed May 5 after telling a customer to wear a face mask inside the store. A couple days later, a McDonald’s customer in Oklahoma City shot a worker when asked to leave a dining area closed…
15 million people. 20 intensive care beds.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of US scientists made a major discovery. They figured out the molecular structure of the “spike protein” that the SARS-CoV-2 virus uses to invade human cells.
Identifying people who have been infected with COVID-19 and reaching those they may have infected will require 100,000 additional workers in US cities and states, according to a $3.6 billion plan released April 10.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expand, one thing has become clear: there aren’t enough ventilators to go around.
As the novel coronavirus marched through Asia, Europe, and North America earlier this year, Africa had a brief chance to prepare. Then, in typical COVID-19 fashion, a small number of imported cases set a blaze that has reached 49 countries. Africa reported more than 3,600…
Hospitals facing a possible need for 5X to 10X the number of beds they have. Doctors and nurses resorting to bandanas because they lack masks. Refrigerated trucks outside hospitals holding the dead. It’s been more than a century since the US health care system has faced…
Leadership matters. Competence matters. Preparation matters—especially when you’re given advance warning. Above all, organized action by a capable government matters. It’s what happened during past natural disasters, financial crises, and terrorist attacks. Although the…
