President Donald Trump’s advisers warned him as early as late January that the coronavirus pandemic, then taking root in China, could cost countless lives in America. Despite this stark warning, revealed by Bob Woodward in his new book Rage and first reported by CNN, Trump downplayed the pandemic—the exact opposite […]
David Axe
17 posts
Government regulators in the United Kingdom have ordered Cambridge-based pharma AstraZeneca to pause development of its novel-coronavirus vaccine candidate after a patient in the U.K. apparently had an unspecified adverse reaction to the vaccine. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the stand-down order came from the […]
Experts generally agree it will be a heavy lift for the pharmaceutical industry to develop and fully test a safe novel coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year—to say nothing of developing and testing one before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. But even if, by some miracle […]
With the planet still deep in the throes of a horrific pandemic, the development is not exactly a welcome one: There is growing evidence that you can catch the novel coronavirus more than once. In recent weeks, a small number of people in the United States, Europe, and China appear […]
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Tremel was in the cockpit of his Super Hornet fighter soaring 20,000 feet over war-torn Syria on June 18, 2017, when he detected a warplane heading toward a U.S.-backed militia force on the ground. Tremel tried to shoo away the other pilot by firing off […]
For a movie that bills itself as a “grindhouse PizzaGate satire,” there’s precious little grindhouse or Pizzagate in Duncan, the new indie thriller from Austin writer-director John Valley. But it is a satire. A shockingly effective one. Duncan levels its weird, Texas-tinged gaze on profiteering, conspiracy-peddling mass media—your Alex Joneses […]
Over seven months after the novel coronavirus went global, the United States still isn’t testing enough people. Nor is the U.S. delivering results quickly enough to provide meaningful disease surveillance. But virologists Dave O’Connor and Chris Mason had a simple idea for loosening up the testing logjam: pack vans with […]
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Louisville are working on a nasal spray they say can help to prevent COVID-19 infections. The spray could be beneficial to health-care workers and others who are at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. But after months of work, development […]
New Jersey pharmaceutical firm Becton, Dickinson and Company has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a fast, easy-to-use test for novel coronavirus infections. At first glance, the Veritor test system from BD, as the company is widely known, might seem like exactly the thing public-health officials […]
After months of safety trials, large-scale clinical testing is finally getting underway for the leading novel coronavirus vaccine candidates. The Trump administration hopes to approve at least one vaccine for widespread use before the end of the year. However, many experts are skeptical that a vaccine will be ready that […]
The U.S. Army has declared war on the novel coronavirus—and civilian scientists are grateful for the reinforcement. The ground combat branch’s Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland has been working on a range of tests and therapies as well as possible vaccines, the command’s top officer […]
COLUMBIA, South Carolina—Steve Benjamin, the black mayor of Columbia, was pissed. “Take your asses home,” he ordered. It was Saturday evening, May 30, in this city of 140,000. A day of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police had started peacefully. That afternoon, hundreds of people gathered […]
With a flash of light, billowing smoke, and a thunderous roar, American astronauts on Saturday afternoon blasted into space aboard an American spacecraft for the first time since NASA decommissioned the aging, unsafe Space Shuttle fleet in 2011. The first manned flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft not only restores […]
Scientists are closely tracking mutations in the novel coronavirus, hoping that the virus evolves fast enough to give researchers hints about its future, but slow enough that the same researchers can make sense of, and keep up with, the changes. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Efforts to contain the virus […]
The pharmaceutical firm Moderna has reported good results so far in trials of its novel-coronavirus vaccine, inspiring cautious optimism in scientists scrambling to contain the damage from the ongoing pandemic. But these same scientists warn against getting too excited about early results, however positive. The world could still be a […]
You may have seen the headlines: Smoking protects people from the new coronavirus. But this is one case where you shouldn’t believe everything you read. The false narrative put out by a number of news outlets highlights an underlying problem. Scientific studies can be complicated, and it’s easy for non-experts, […]
With the coronavirus pandemic spreading and most of the United States under some kind of shelter-in-place order, a lot of us are feeling pretty alone right now. So it’s the perfect time for science-writer Wade Roush to remind us that, in the cosmic sense, we might have a lot of […]