TimeMagazine 
As of today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) no longer advises mask-wearing in public indoor spaces for most Americans. Using a new method to determine community risk, more than half of U.S. counties—home to about 70% of the nation’s population—do not currently meet the threshold for recommended universal indoor masking, CDC … Read more
0000000000000 (Camden, N.J.) — Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors finalized nationwide settlements over their role in the opioid addiction crisis Friday, an announcement that clears the way for $26 billion to flow to nearly every state and local government in the U.S. Taken together, the settlements are the largest to date among … Read more
In early February, I got the call I’d dreaded for months: my 82-year-old grandfather, Charlie Law, had died. I’d tried to prepare myself as best as I could; Grandpa had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and he had been in physical and mental decline for about four years. Still, I hadn’t seen my grandparents in person … Read more
Over two years since the first cases started appearing in Wuhan, China, there is much we don’t know about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. But a quick resolution to that question is possible: scientists could find bats in a cave somewhere in China or in southeast Asia and trace a chain leading … Read more
COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to trigger a rare inflammatory condition linked to coronavirus infection in children, according to an analysis of U.S. government data published Tuesday. The condition, formally known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, involves fever plus symptoms affecting at least two organs and often includes stomach pain, skin rash or bloodshot eyes. … Read more
Pregnancy-related deaths for U.S. mothers climbed higher in the pandemic’s first year, continuing a decades-long trend that disproportionately affects Black people, according to a government report released Wednesday. Overall in 2020, there were almost 24 deaths per 100,000 births, or 861 deaths total—numbers that reflect mothers dying during pregnancy, childbirth or the year after. The … Read more
In the 40 years that Jennie Kahn has worked as a registered nurse, the last two have been by far the most grueling. A lot of that is due to COVID-19, which transformed health care facilities, including Thomas Health’s hospital system in Charleston, West Virginia, where Kahn works, into triage centers and forced nurses to … Read more
Spirits are high as the students file into the basement of the Galante Funeral Home in Union, N.J., to pick out their caskets. Jessica Polynice, 23, beelines toward the most ornate one in the showroom, joking that she has expensive taste. Others consider the prominently displayed price tags, from $995 to nearly $6,000, and factor … Read more
Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician, medical anthropologist, and mentor to many, died on Monday in Butaro, Rwanda. Partners in Health, the organization he co-founded, confirmed his death in a tweet on Monday. He was 62. Dr. Farmer is survived by his wife, Didi Bertrand Farmer, three children, and thousands of patients and students, like myself, … Read more
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Maria Venetis got a breakthrough case of COVID-19 right around New Year’s Eve. When she called friends to cancel plans, she found herself overexplaining how and where she might have caught the virus—until one friend cut her off. “It doesn’t really matter,” Venetis, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers University, remembers her friend saying. … Read more