How to Know When (or If) You Need Another COVID Vaccine
What started as a simple recipe for COVID protection—get a jab, come back in three weeks and get another—became a byzantine labyrinth to navigate over the last thirty months. The government has recognized how confusing COVID vaccine schedules have become, and is trying to streamline to make it easier to understand, and to reflect the…
Five Things That Could Save Your Life If You’re Immunocompromised
Hello from day 1,113 of isolation. It’s me, your immunocompromised friend in hell. Most days, it feels like the entire world wants you to eff off and die before they’ll just strap a mask to their flappers. As masking in doctors offices ends and everyone is slowly being forced back into offices and conferences, the…
Healthy adults don’t need annual COVID boosters, WHO advisors say
Enlarge / A vial containing Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine at a vaccination center. A vaccine advisory group for the World Health Organization said Tuesday that, at this point, it does not recommend additional, let alone annual COVID-19 booster shots for people at low to medium risk of severe disease. It advised countries to focus on…
Spike in deadly strep infections linked to wave of flu, RSV...
Enlarge / A microscope image of Streptococcus pyogenes, a common type of group A strep. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid a tall wave of respiratory viruses, health officials in Colorado and Minnesota documented an unusual spike in deadly, invasive infections from Streptococcus bacteria late last year, according to a study published…
Florida surgeon general fudged data for dubious COVID analysis, tipster says
Enlarge / Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo speaks during a press conference at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Florida's health department opened and then closed an investigation into the state's polarizing surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, after a tipster claiming to have insider knowledge alleged that Ladapo "manipulated data"…
US still has the worst, most expensive health care of any...
Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends…
Biden to end US COVID-19 emergency declarations on May 11
Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. President Joe Biden plans to end two national emergency declarations over the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, which will trigger a restructuring of the federal response…
US vaccination decline continues: 250,000 kindergarteners vulnerable to measles
Enlarge / A child getting a vaccination on February 19, 2021, in Bonn, Germany. Routine childhood vaccination coverage continues to slip among US kindergarteners, falling from 95 percent—the target coverage—prior to the pandemic to 94 percent in the 2020–2021 school year and to the new low of 93 percent in the 2021–2022 school year, according…
Over a million could die as China’s COVID wave crashes into...
Enlarge / An elderly female patient with COVID-19 is treated at No. 2 People's Hospital of Fuyang City in China. With China's zero-COVID policy abruptly scrapped last month, the pandemic virus is now ripping through the country's population, and health experts are bracing for a wave of devastation as peak transmission shifts from urban centers…
US COVID death toll would be 4X higher without vaccines, modeling...
Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Without COVID-19 vaccines, the US would have seen four times more deaths from the pandemic virus—an additional 3 million lives…
