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Sixty percent of American adults, and 75 percent of children, have been infected with SARS-CoV2. Coupled with immunity-boosting vaccines and medical progress, rates of severe disease, hospitalization, and death are all falling dramatically. Can we declare victory and move on? Or do the threats still facing vulnerable populations require continued precautions? The prospect...
For decades, public health experts warned of a coming pandemic and developed recommendations to prepare—yet when it arrived, the response was a catastrophic failure. With better surveillance, perhaps we could have slowed the worldwide spread of the virus. Had the threat become less politically charged, a consensus-driven strategy might have slowed it down. Certainly, stron...
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to grapple with a long-standing truth: that poor diversity in early and late stage medical research remains a major threat to health equity. Overcoming barriers and challenges to fair representation in research and development will not happen overnight, nor can it be achieved by a single institution. In order to pioneer lasting and su...
As the COVID-19 virus began to burn across the globe last year, virologist Nathan Wolfe had been studying how viruses cross over from wild animals to humans. He was also among the scientists and public health experts sadly prescient about something that is now abundantly clear: The world is woefully unprepared to prevent the spread of novel viral threats. In this conversat...
The decline in trust of scientific institutions over the course of the pandemic is manifested in the number of Americans worried about the truth of scientific progress and the abilities of scientific leaders to be objective and credible. How do we rebuild trust?
Polio is likely to be wiped off the planet in the next two years, a huge triumph for global health. Seventy-four cases of polio were reported in 2015, in contrast to 350,000 when eradication efforts began in 1988. Although polio remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is now a push towards the finish line, with creative strategies in place to attract religious l...
Best known to the public as the Trump Administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, physician Deborah Birx is a clinical immunologist who has also served as US Global AIDS coordinator and a colonel in the US Army. Challenged to speak the truth about COVID-19, she balanced candor and political pragmatism to get out accurate information. Her new book, Sile...
Aromas can trigger memories more forcefully than any other sense. The ability to smell allows us to enjoy nature’s riches, protects us from food gone bad, warns of gas leaks, and provides the perfume of intimacy. It is also the primary communication tool that animals use in the wild. Yet the superpower of smell has historically been under appreciated, the sense people gene...