Pandemics

Photograph of Antarctic ice bubbles, retrieved from deep within the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contain the Earth's history of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Credit: Thomas Bauska Changes in human activity may have led to atmospheric CO2 levels declining in the 16th century, due to large-scale land use changes in the Americas during New World-Old World contact between 1450 and 1700 CE, suggests a Nature Communications paper. The…

Also, in a disaster, there are no good decisions, there are only least-worse decisions. Every decision will come with a set of consequences. What the government really struggled to do was mitigate the consequences of decisions they felt that they had to take.My personal view is that what the UK’s going through at the moment, it’s quite an expected stage after a disaster. But I wouldn’t want to stop learning lessons from it. I’m quite an active tweeter about the UK government’s Covid inquiry because a lot of the wrong…

By MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen February 7, 2024A collaborative study has revealed a correlation between climate change and the occurrence of pandemics in the Roman Empire, suggesting that climate-induced stress may have played a role in triggering these outbreaks. This research underscores the importance of examining the links between climate change, health, and societal resilience to better prepare for future challenges.Specimens obtained from the seabed offer the inaugural…

Schematic drawing of the relationship between climatic change and sociological, physical, and biological factors influencing infectious disease outbreaks. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk1033 A team of geoscientists, Earth scientists and environmental scientists affiliated with several institutions in Germany, the U.S. and the Netherlands has found a link between cold snaps and pandemics during the Roman…

This year, long-time contributor Sankar Ray (7 January 1941-21 February 2023) moved on to greater, better Books pages in the unknown beyond. Ray, who lived in Kolkata, reviewed a range of books for Hindustan Times tackling those to do with the environment, pandemics, the CIA, politics, slave rebellions and Marxism with equal erudition. Every review he wrote displayed the depth of his knowledge and the breadth of his reading and his contributions enriched the Books page immensely. Sankar Ray (Courtesy the subject)…

Relationships between authoritarian predispositions, media attention, and identifying issues as threats. Credit: Politics and the Life Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1017/pls.2023.12 Those with authoritarian political views are more likely to be concerned about terrorism and border control than a future new health pandemic, new research shows. …

That could make the I-10 blaze complicating LA traffic this week the third fire in the area involving leftover hand sanitizer. A different pallet yard storing sanitizer erupted in flames in downtown Los Angeles in January. And in 2021, a notoriously noxious smell plaguing the LA County town of Carson was linked by officials to a massive fire at a lot storing thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer.As WIRED reported in June, the US Food and Drug Administration lifted regulations on hand sanitizer during the height of the…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How open-source drug discovery could help us in the next pandemic When the covid pandemic hit, our antiviral coffers were bare. After all, developing drugs for diseases that don’t pose an immediate threat isn’t exactly lucrative. But what would happen if we took profit out of the equation and made drug discovery a collaborative process rather than a competitive…

Hundreds of 1199SEIU health care workers staged a rally and sit to block 3rd avenue where some were arrested. They protested against health care cuts in Governor Kathy Hochuls budget on Medicare.Lev Radin | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesMedicare on Friday said it will allow pharmaceutical companies to publicly discuss the program's historic drug price negotiations, dropping a confidentiality requirement that the industry argued violated the First Amendment in lawsuits filed this month.In initial guidance released in March,…

(L-R) Kevin Chambers, Director for COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement, Department of Justice; Hannibal "Mike" Ware, Inspector General, Small Business Administration; Michael Horowitz, Chair, Pandemic Response Accountability Committee; and Roy D. Dotson Jr., Acting Special Agent in Charge, National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator, United States Secret Service; testify during a hybrid hearing held by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis in the Rayburn House Office Building on June 14, 2022 in Washington,…