TimeMagazine 
If you can name the currently circulating coronavirus variants without looking them up, your memory is better than most people’s—even those who are still paying attention to COVID-19. At the moment, the top five variants in the U.S. are called BA.5 (making up about 39% of new cases, per the latest data from the U.S. … Read more
Every morning at 7 a.m., Jane Walsh rolls out of bed and onto her yoga mat. For the next half an hour—before coffee or breakfast or feeding the cats—she bends and stretches her body. “It sets the tone for the rest of the day,” says Walsh, 58, who works in public relations in New York … Read more
The number of Americans killed by alcohol rose by 26% during the first year of the pandemic, according to data released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on Nov. 4. This steep rise occurred from the start of 2019 until the end of 2020, jumping from about 10.4 deaths per 100,000 people to … Read more
At first it seemed like a routine call—something the paramedics had dealt with countless times before. A man in his mid-50s was having a heart attack, and his physician had called for emergency support. But when the paramedics arrived, the physician pulled them aside and told them something peculiar: the man had no cardiovascular symptoms … Read more
Pfizer’s updated COVID-19 booster significantly revved up adults’ virus-fighting antibodies, the company said Friday, releasing early findings from a rigorous study of the new shots. Booster doses tweaked to target the most common Omicron strain rolled out in early September, and the Food and Drug Administration said the latest data should spur more Americans to … Read more
That doctors can peer into the human body without making a single incision once seemed like a miraculous concept. But medical imaging in radiology has come a long way, and the latest artificial intelligence (AI)-driven techniques are going much further: exploiting the massive computing abilities of AI and machine learning to mine body scans for … Read more
The term bariatric is derived from the Greek words for “weight” and “to treat.” Originally, as its name denotes, this form of surgery was aimed at helping people manage obesity. But as medical science’s understanding of bariatric surgery improved, experts recognized that these procedures could also help people with obesity-related health conditions, including Type 2 … Read more
A few weeks ago, I was shopping at my local gardening store here in Asheville, North Carolina, when I got some unsolicited advice about prepping for the apocalypse. “You’ve got to harvest seeds for whatever food you want to eat so that you can grow your own,” the woman at the register told me. She … Read more
Travelers are both the conduit and the canary in the coal mine for new COVID-19 variants, and U.S. health officials are trying to use those realities to keep ahead of variants coming into the country. At four U.S. airports—John F. Kennedy in New York, Newark in New Jersey, San Francisco International, and Atlanta Hartsfield—the Centers … Read more
Before this year, polio didn’t feel like an urgent threat. The disease was eradicated in the U.S. in 1979, and thanks to a global vaccination campaign, it’s endemic (though far from widespread) in just two countries—Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the calculus changed in 2022. In July, an unvaccinated man in New York state contracted polio. … Read more