In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists … Read more
Five years after Covid-19 shut down activities all over the world, medical historians sometimes struggle to place the pandemic in context. What, they are asking, should this ongoing viral threat be compared with? Is Covid like the 1918 flu, terrifying when it was raging but soon relegated to the status of a long-ago nightmare? Is … Read more
We lost about three times as many Americans to COVID-19 as we did in World War II. Certified COVID deaths totaled roughly 1.1 million in the US, while fewer than 420,000 Americans died in the war. That’s more deaths per capita than any other developed nation. Only Peru, Bulgaria, and a few Eastern European countries … Read more
UnlockThis article is free to access. Why? A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus. The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered … Read more