By fishing shards of bacterial DNA from the teeth of bodies in a cemetery, researchers found the starting point for the plague that devastated Eurasia, they say.
Tag Archives: Epidemics
As Monkeypox Cases Rise, Nations Are Urged to Examine Vaccine Stores
The United States has stockpiled millions of doses of two smallpox vaccines, also effective against monkeypox. But the outbreaks so far are clustered in other countries.
Will the End of the Mask Mandate Hobble Our Response to the Next Pandemic?
A recent decision by a federal judge to block the mask mandate is deeply troubling.
Covid on TV, in Movies and in Books: What Will the ‘Covid Plot’ Be?
We have neither a shared language nor a shared understanding of what we’ve just been through. What will the “Covid plot” be in the story we tell of this time?
Public Health Catastrophe Looms in Ukraine, Experts Warn
Even before the war, the country struggled with epidemics of H.I.V., tuberculosis and hepatitis. The conflict threatens to undo decades of progress.
Covid Surge in New Caledonia, in the Pacific, HIts Indigenous Hardest
New Caledonia escaped the coronavirus for a year and a half, but a surge in cases has led to a state of emergency, with the disease disproportionately hurting the French territory’s Indigenous people.
The Covid-19 Pandemic Has Lasted 2 Years. The Next Steps Are Divisive.
As the Omicron variant recedes, cities and states with the longest mask and vaccine mandates are rapidly lifting them. The abrupt shift has unsettled the most vigilant Americans.
The Problem With the Pandemic Plot
Literary novelists are struggling with whether, and how, to incorporate Covid into their fiction.
An Undiscovered Coronavirus? The Mystery of the ‘Russian Flu’
Scientists are grasping for any example that could help anticipate the future of Covid, even a mysterious respiratory pandemic that spread in the late 19th century.
What We Can Learn From How the 1918 Pandemic Ended
Overconfidence, indifference and weariness are perhaps the biggest dangers.
Yes, Omicron Is Loosening Its Hold. But the Pandemic Has Not Ended.
With spotty immunity in the population and a churn of new variants, the coronavirus is likely to become a persistent but hopefully manageable threat.
Animals Infecting Humans Is Scary. It’s Worse When We Infect Them Back.
Mink farms threaten to become a source of new coronavirus variants — and an object lesson in how ‘spillback’ can make deadly diseases even deadlier.
The Omicron Shift in Europe: Pandemic or Endemic?
A number of governments have changed their approaches to the coronavirus to one that is more like how we treat the flu. Public health experts say it’s too soon to make that call.
Beneath a Covid Vaccine Debacle, 30 Years of Government Culpability
Washington has rejected plans to revamp vaccine preparedness for decades and repeatedly paid a price. The Biden administration is at a similar crossroads.
Inside the C.D.C.’s Pandemic ‘Weather Service’
The agency has created an ambitious $200 million center to predict future outbreaks — but diseases are a lot harder to model than storms.
You Should Be Afraid of the Next ‘Lab Leak’
Covid might not have come out of a medical research lab, but it raises some urgent questions about how those facilities operate.
Could Covid Lead to Progress?
Mass tragedies sometimes have unexpected consequences.
Our Covid Failures Don’t Have to Define Our Future
We need to learn the right lessons from the pandemic.
When Will the Covid Pandemic End?
This pandemic winter won’t be like the last one — but it won’t be “normal,” either.
Public Health Officials Under Siege
During the pandemic, they have been the target of protests and of laws intended to curb their powers. Has this left the U.S. less prepared than ever for the next crisis?
Why the Vampire Myth Won’t Die
Bloodsucking monsters are avatars for our cultural anxieties. Especially now.
How Will Blue America Live With Covid?
It can be the safety-above-all caricature that deep-red America has made of it, or it can leave the age of emergency behind.
Why Public Health Is in Crisis: Threats, Departures, New Laws
An examination of hundreds of health departments around the country shows that the nation may be less prepared for the next pandemic than it was for the current one.
Covid Will Be an Era, Not a Crisis That Fades
History repeatedly demonstrates how difficult it is to decisively declare that a pandemic is over.
What if Covid Were 10 Times Deadlier?
Would a deadlier pandemic have yielded different political divides?
Vaccination Mandates Are an American Tradition. So Is the Backlash.
The roots of U.S. vaccine mandates predate both the U.S. and vaccines.
Pandemics Get Forgotten. But Not at This Museum.
The collection of the German Hygiene Museum shows that the same debates recur whenever disease breaks out, even if we don’t remember them.
Covid Spreads in Clusters. We Need to Track Them.
The public health response to a Covid outbreak in Provincetown shows a better way to monitor the disease.
C.D.C. Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox
Infections in vaccinated Americans also may be as transmissible as those in unvaccinated people, the document said, and lead more often to severe illness.
Covid Proved the C.D.C. Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?
The pandemic revealed the glaring weaknesses of the world’s premier public health agency — and just how much work it would take to reform it.
The Vaccines We Have Are Good. But They Could Be So Much Better.
The U.S. needs to be prepared with proactive vaccines that can stop pandemics no matter their origins.
Book Review: ‘The Plague Year,’ by Lawrence Wright
In “The Plague Year,” Lawrence Wright tells the story of the pandemic that upended all of our lives — both the failures to combat it, and the science that saved us.
Times Ends Series on Covid Obituaries, ‘Those We’ve Lost’
A Times obituary series that made the pandemic’s toll personal is ending.
The Disease Detective
Joe DeRisi invented a way to find pathogens that scientists didn’t even know to look for. Can it help prevent the next pandemic?
What Does a Future Without Herd Immunity Look Like?
Many experts now say that the fixation on herd immunity as the only path back to normalcy is misguided.
What Can and Can’t Be Learned From a Doctor in China Who Pioneered Masks
Dr. Wu Lien-Teh helped change the course of a plague epidemic in the early 20th century and promoted the use of masks as a public health tool.
Why So Many People Are Resisting Vaccination
Vaccines helped people overlook their vulnerabilities even as many of them became suspicious of the benefits of those shots.
The Future of Virus Tracking Can Be Found on This College Campus
Colorado Mesa University and the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard have spent the last year exploring new approaches to managing outbreaks.
Experts Call for Sweeping Reforms to Prevent the Next Pandemic
Swift mask mandates and travel restrictions, an international treaty and the creation of new bureaucracies are among the recommendations presented to the W.H.O.
Michael Lewis Chronicles the Story of Covid’s Cassandras
In his new book, “The Premonition,” Lewis looks at the experts who perceived the shape of the pandemic and what could be done to stop it.
Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.
What the Smallpox Vaccine Can Teach Us About the Covid Vaccine
Vaccination campaigns have always, eventually, succeeded.
How the Human Life Span Doubled in 100 Years
Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism.
What the History of Pandemics Can Teach Us About Resilience
Widespread disease outbreaks have the potential to shock societies into new ways of living.
A Kid-Friendly Graphic Novel History of Vaccines
Don Brown’s “A Shot in the Arm!” — Book 3 in his Big Ideas That Changed the World series — couldn’t be more timely.
The Pandemic and the Limits of Science
What have we learned from the year that lasted a century?
Alaska’s Remote Villages Race Against Time and History
The coronavirus has spread into the most remote villages, a reminder of earlier pandemics that ravaged the state. Now there is a rush to deliver vaccines in time.
Fauci Is Giving His Coronavirus Model to the Smithsonian
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s donation of his 3-D virus model to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History comes as museums are working to document the Covid-19 era.
How Plagues Shape the Landscape
From cholera to AIDS, epidemics have given rise to landmarks around the world, be they sculptures, churches or feats of engineering. In this dire moment, their histories resonate.
Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us
The era of the Antonine Plague offers a reminder of what a powerful force nature has been throughout human history.