A heat wave is baking much of the United States this week, with some of the highest temperatures forecasted in Southwestern states battling some of the most troubling coronavirus outbreaks in the country. Arizona, for instance, is currently suffering from one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 with the highest daily reported cases per capita …
Continue reading “Why extreme heat is so alarming for the fight against Covid-19”
In late March, when Covid-19 was first surging, Jake Suett, a doctor of anesthesiology and intensive care medicine with the National Health Service in Norfolk, England, had seen plenty of patients with the disease — and intubated a few of them. Then one day, he started to feel unwell, tired, with a sore throat. He …
Many schools across the US gambled on offering in-person classes in early August, even as their states were still battling uncontrolled spread of Covid-19. In some of those schools, it hasn’t gone well. In Georgia’s Cherokee County School District, for example, there have been at least 80 positive cases since August 3, and more than …
Part of the Escape Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world. Phil Nichols doesn’t get a lot of unannounced visitors at the long-term sober-living house in Cincinnati where he lives. The two US marshals waiting at the door on a March afternoon in 2018 told Nichols they had information …
In the past half-century, the global production of meat has undergone a seismic shift. While meat was once mostly raised on small farms, today almost all the meat we eat comes from industrialized “factory” farms, known as “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs. More than 90 percent of the world’s meat supply comes from CAFOs. …
Continue reading “The next pandemic could come from factory farms”
For months now, it’s been widely accepted that many people infected with the novel coronavirus experience few if any symptoms but can still potentially spread the virus to others. Exactly how many of these people without symptoms are “silent spreaders” has been a mystery. Despite the mystery, the public health message has been clear: We …
Most people who get the coronavirus will fully recover and go right back to their lives. But the latest research suggests that at least 10 percent have long-term symptoms, even after their body has apparently cleared the virus. The condition, known as “long Covid,” has emerged as a scary feature of the pandemic — a …
Continue reading “Scientists haven’t figured out long Covid. Here are 5 of their best hypotheses.”
The US rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine was halted Tuesday as regulators race to investigate rare blood-clotting complications linked to the shot. The move may force thousands of people scheduled to receive the shot this week to scramble for an alternative. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease …
Continue reading “Why Johnson & Johnson shots were paused — and why that’s so confusing”
Wildfires continue burning in California, with unhealthy air from smoke still cloaking some parts of the state. Combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, the fires are compounding risks that have been brewing for years. Fire officials have grouped some of the smaller fires in an area into complexes to coordinate their response. The largest of these …
Continue reading “What makes California’s current major wildfires so unusual”
The National Hurricane Center warned that Hurricane Laura will cause “life-threatening storm surge” reaching up to 40 miles inland and rising up to 20 feet as the storm made landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Laura reached the Gulf Coast after midnight on Thursday morning at an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 strength, with winds reaching 140 …
Continue reading “Hurricane Laura hits Gulf Coast as an “extremely dangerous” storm”