The Virus

I occasionally browse conspiracy-related forums and I came across the, now infamous meme, from Instagram: “Boris Johnson’s dad, Stanley, wrote a novel in 1982 called ‘The Virus’ about the government releasing a deadly Virus into the population as cover for population control through a forced vaccine. I am serious. …

‘Right now I’m scared’ — In the race between Covid-19 vaccines and variants, in some parts of the country, the variants appear to be winning. In a stark message issued at the White House press briefing on Monday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, warned that the U.S. …

Documentary photographer Ivan Agerton started experiencing psychotic symptoms in mid-December, after a mild case of Covid-19. He had trouble sleeping, bouts of paranoia, and auditory hallucinations, the New York Times reports. Agerton shared his story to raise awareness about the condition, which is rare but has affected people around the world who have no history of mental illness. Experts hypothesize that psychosis is a brain-related effect of Covid-19 that may result from the immune response, vascular issues, or surges of disease-related inflammation. Still, as the Times notes, “Much about the condition remains mysterious.”

A handful of coronavirus variants have become household names during the pandemic, including B.1.1.7, the so-called U.K. variant, and B.1.351, the South African variant. There are many others. …

Research published in February in the science journal BMJ showed that people infected with the B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, are more likely to die than people infected with the original strain. This scary news was surprising to some people, writes scientist…

Hospitalized children with the inflammatory syndrome linked to Covid-19 have increased risk for acute kidney injury — For a while, early on in the pandemic, the world sighed with some relief at the apparent low risk the SARS-CoV-2 virus held for children. That sigh turned to an intake of breath with reports of a new syndrome emerging in children, apparently associated with the virus and often coming…

One company is trying to get ahead of the mutating virus — When the pandemic first hit, drugmakers raced to find a Covid-19 treatment in the blood of people who had recovered from the virus. They were looking for antibodies — special immune cells that the body makes in response to an infection — capable of neutralizing the virus. Many scientists thought…

Yale professor Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, shares a working hypothesis — A pandemic, by definition, is a time of devastation. This particular pandemic has wrought severe devastation in an unbearably dark and heavy year. And yet, it has also been a time of astounding progress. Bobbing and weaving among the shadows, the bright light of science has been mesmerizing to watch…