Category: Articles
The New York Times, January 12, 2023
Three years into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to impress virologists with its swift evolution.
Here are answers to some common questions about the fast-growing variant XBB.1.5.
Continue reading “What To Know About The New Omicron Variant”
The New York Times, January 7, 2023
Three years into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to impress virologists with its swift evolution.
A young version, known as XBB.1.5, has quickly been spreading in the United States over the past few weeks. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that it made up 72 percent of new cases in the Northeast and 27.6 percent of cases across the country.
The new subvariant, first sampled in the fall in New York State, has a potent array of mutations that appear to help it evade immune defenses and improve its ability to invade cells.
Continue reading “Health Experts Warily Eye XBB.1.5, The Latest Omicron Subvariant”
The New York Times, December 7, 2022
In the permafrost at the northern edge of Greenland, scientists have discovered the oldest known fragments of DNA, offering an extraordinary look at an extraordinary ancient ecosystem.
The genetic material dates back at least two million years — that’s nearly twice as old as the mammoth DNA in Siberia that held the previous record. And the samples, described on Wednesday in the journal Nature, came from more than 135 different species.
Continue reading “Oldest Known DNA Offers Glimpse Of A Once-Lush Arctic”
The New York Times, November 26, 2022
On Nov. 26, 2021, the World Health Organization announced that a concerning new variant of the coronavirus, known as Omicron, had been discovered in southern Africa. It soon swept to dominance across the world, causing a record-breaking surge in cases.
Now, a year later, Omicron still has biologists scrambling to keep up with its surprising evolutionary turns. The variant is rapidly gaining mutations. But rather than a single lineage, it has exploded into hundreds, each with resistance to our immune defenses and its own alphanumeric name, like XBB, BQ.1.1 and CH.1.
The New York Times, November 7, 2022
In March 2020, New York City’s hospitals filled up with patients desperately ill with Covid-19. In many cases, when their fluid-filled lungs could no longer give them oxygen, doctors sedated them and put them on ventilators.
The patients who recovered were taken off the machines and anesthesia. Within a day or so, their doctors expected them to wake up.
But that’s when the phone of Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, started lighting up.
Continue reading “Covid Patients Coming Off Ventilators Can Take Weeks To Regain Consciousness”