Year: 2024
Beyond breathing: How COVID-19 affects your heart, brain and other organs
AMA It’s easy to be complacent about COVID-19. Most people experience only mild issues – fever and coughing, maybe congestion and shortness of breath. But the coronavirus is capable of causing much more than a simple respiratory illness, affecting organs throughout the body, experts say. “We see people have symptoms from almost head to toe […]
Jan 16, 2024
H5N6 avian flu hospitalizes woman in China
CIDRAP A 59-year-old woman from China’s Sichuan province is hospitalized in serious condition with H5N6 avian flu, Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection said today. The woman is from Ziyang City, her symptoms began on November 25, and she was hospitalized 4 days later. An investigation revealed that she had visited a live-poultry market before her symptoms […]
Jan 16, 2024
How Covid-19’s symptoms have changed with each new variant
BBC With a new variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus causing a spike in cases, it is demonstrating just how much the disease has changed since the pandemic began – and what happened to “Covid toe”. “For almost four years, I’ve managed to dodge Covid-19,” TV broadcaster Mehdi Hasan tweeted a fortnight ago. “But it finally got […]
Jan 16, 2024
How to Make the Most of Your At-Home Covid Test
NYT Here’s what you need to know about when to take a test for accurate results, and how to get kits for free. While Covid has become a regular part of respiratory virus season, community testing centers and drive-through sites where you could determine whether it’s the source of your sniffles have all but vanished. […]
Jan 16, 2024
We Are in a Big Covid Wave. But Just How Big?
NYT Wastewater data has become perhaps the best metric to track the spread of the virus in the U.S., but it’s an imperfect tool. The curves on some Covid graphs are looking quite steep, again. Reported levels of the virus in U.S. wastewater are higher than they have been since the first Omicron wave, according […]
Jan 16, 2024
Board Restricts Doctor’s License Over COVID Misinfo
MedPage Today The Medical Commission in Washington state has restricted the license of Idaho pathologist Ryan Cole, MD. In an order dated January 4 the commission concluded that Cole spread misinformation related to COVID-19 and failed to meet the standard of care for a number of patients during the pandemic. As a result, the commission restricted Cole from […]
Jan 16, 2024
Pediatricians See an Alarming Number of Noodle-Soup Burns
The Atlantic When the weather turns frigid, there is only one thing to do: make a pot of chicken-noodle soup. On the first cold afternoon in early December, I simmered a whole rotisserie chicken with fennel, dill, and orzo, then ladled it into bowls for a cozy family meal. Just as I thought we’d reached […]
Jan 16, 2024
A Big Misconception About the World’s Greatest Infectious Killer
The Atlantic Growing up in India, which for decades has clocked millions of tuberculosis cases each year, Lalita Ramakrishnan was intimately familiar with how devastating the disease can be. The world’s greatest infectious killer, rivaled only by SARS-CoV-2, Mycobacterium tuberculosis spreads through the air and infiltrates the airways, in many cases destroying the lungs. It can trigger inflammation […]
Jan 16, 2024
First polar bear to die of bird flu – what are the implications?
Gavi Avian influenza has killed a polar bear and may have infected other bears. Climate change is a threat to polar bear’s survival. Now they have a new deadly challenge facing them: bird flu. It was recently confirmed that a polar bear from northern Alaska has died from the disease. The current strain of H5N1 influenza has […]
Jan 16, 2024
What if every germ hit you at the exact same time? An immunologist explains
The Conversation When I was younger, I would watch “Batman” on my black-and-white television after school. Usually, Batman would face either the Joker, the Penguin, the Puzzler, Catwoman or any one of his usual opponents. However, on some occasions, Batman would have to face them all at the same time. What would happen if, like […]
Jan 16, 2024