David Axe

The universe is expanding. No one with any expertise in astronomy or physics disagrees with that fact. Likewise, nobody really disagrees that, at some point many billions of years in the future, the universe is going to expand too far—and run out of energy for further expansion. At that point, something has to change. That’s where the disagreement begins. There’s a new wrinkle in that cosmological argument, and it’s a doozy. According to a new study from cosmologists Daniela Pérez and Gustavo Romero, both from the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía, the universe has been repeatedly expanding and contracting, and big black […]

Astrobiologists want one thing above all else: to find proof of alien life. That’s easier said than done, of course. Space is vast. Stars, planets, and moons are innumerable. Our probes are few and far between and our telescopes can see only so far and with so much fidelity. But it helps to narrow the search. To that end, a team of astrobiologists led by Artem Aguichine, from Aix-Marseille University in France, has turned its attention to Jupiter, one of the weirder planets in our solar system. “Understanding planetary formation is key to predict the habitability of planets and the search […]

After weeks at a two-year low, COVID cases are on the rise again in some countries. In the United States, there were 100,000 daily new infections, on average–up from 30,000 in mid-March. The trend is intensifying an important debate in epidemiological circles. What’s the best strategy for preventing catastrophic mass death from the worst possible new COVID variants? New restrictions? New vaccines? New therapies? A mix of the three? Whatever consensus takes shape could guide us into the pandemic’s fourth year. But there’s a catch, of course. Public-health costs money. And in the world’s richest country, the United States, a few […]

As if one pandemic weren’t enough, a dangerous new virus is spreading all over the world. Starting around two weeks ago, monkeypox—a pathogen that originated in West and Central Africa and causes flu-like symptoms and a rash—cropped up in places where it’s not usually found. Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom have reported a few dozen cases between them. And now the United States. Authorities in Massachusetts detected the infection Tuesday night, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly confirmed it. But don’t panic. The world has contained outbreaks of monkeypox before. And we’re even better prepared for […]

COVID cases are going up in many countries as dangerous new subvariants evolve faster and faster. At the same time, individual testing is going down. That might seem like a dangerous combination. If authorities can’t accurately keep tabs on where and how fast the virus is spread, they might not be able to help protect vulnerable communities. Fortunately, there’s one way to track SARS-CoV-2 without relying on drive-through testing sites or testing at pharmacies, clinics or hospitals. More and more, scientists are looking for the virus in sewer water. In our toilet flushes, in other words. “Wastewater seems to be the […]

You might not know it by looking around you at all those unmasked faces, but there’s still an awful lot of novel coronavirus out there. And the virus appears to be mutating faster than ever, producing steadily more contagious variants and subvariants. The evolutionary trend with SARS-CoV-2 might not mean there are definitely going to be big surges in infections, hospitalizations and deaths. At least not everywhere or for very long. But it underscores an uncomfortable truth: that despite the lifting of COVID restrictions in most countries that aren’t China, despite many people’s eagerness to move past the pain and uncertainty […]

The COVID wave crashing across China right now not only threatens the billion-and-a-half Chinese, it also poses a serious danger to the rest of the world. Leaving aside the risk to already-fragile global supply chains, there’s a chance that the surge of infections in China will give the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen ample opportunity to mutate into some new and more-dangerous variant. If that happens, the progress the world has made against COVID since vaccines became widely available in late 2020 could slow, if not reverse. “There’s the distinct possibility that things will get out of control in China,” John Swartzberg, a professor […]

The first subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant of the novel coronavirus, was bad. BA.1 drove record cases and hospitalizations in many countries starting last fall. The second subvariant, BA.2, was worse in some countries—setting new records for daily cases across China and parts of Europe. Now BA.1 and BA.2 have combined to create a third subvariant. XE, as it’s known, is a “recombinant”—the product of two viruses interacting “Frankenstein”-style in a single host. With its long list of mutations, XE could be the most contagious form of the coronavirus yet. “From the WHO reports, it does appear to have […]

After spreading across Asia and Europe, the BA.2 subvariant of the novel coronavirus is now dominant in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Right now, U.S. COVID cases are at a six-month low. But what happens next in the U.S. and nearby countries is hard to predict. Looking to Europe for hints isn’t enormously helpful because, on that continent, BA.2 has behaved … unpredictably. Indeed, unpredictability might be exactly what Americans—and everyone else—should expect as the pandemic enters its 28th month. A patchwork of public-health rules, varying vaccination rates and differing amounts of natural […]

The United Kingdom is a month into its latest surge of SARS-CoV-2 infections. It’s not nearly as lethal as previous COVID-19 surges. But that doesn’t mean it’s no big deal. The new wave of cases in the U.K., which is part of a wider wave across Europe and Asia that’s driven by the new BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron variant of the novel-coronavirus, is disproportionately affecting children. More pediatric cases. More hospitalizations. And possibly more long COVID, the poorly understood syndrome characterized by fatigue, brain-fog and other symptoms that can linger months or years after an infection clears up. Experts disagree […]

Remember the COVID deep-cleanse? Two years ago, in the early days of the novel-coronavirus pandemic in the United States, many businesses and even homeowners obsessively sprayed disinfectant on open surfaces, aggressively wiping down and scrubbing every countertop and desk and table. The fear back then was that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen might survive on and spread via surfaces. People were afraid that simply sitting at a table after an infected person would expose them to COVID. That fear was bunk. It was soon apparent from contact-tracing and other epidemiological analyses that COVID spread pretty much exclusively via aerosols, those fine mists we […]

Just a few months ago, it seemed Israel had all but beaten COVID-19. Infections, hospitalizations and deaths were vanishingly low. It’s not hard to see why. The country’s vaccine uptake was high. Most vaccinated Israelis were also boosted, and the health ministry had begun offering a second booster to the most vulnerable residents. Masks were required in indoor public spaces, and a vaccine card was required to enter the most crowded spaces, including restaurants, bars, theaters, and music venues. This strict approach to COVID was working. Then Omicron hit… and everything changed. Israel is now having its worst COVID surge, with […]

Astronomers sifting through data from a NASA planet-hunting satellite have hit the jackpot: a common type of planet 131 light-years away called TOI-1759b, with an extremely uncommon story to tell. Thanks to its close proximity to its host star, the planet’s atmosphere appears to be evaporating into dead expanse of space—extremely fast, by astronomical standards. Watching this radiation-induced “photoevaporation,” reported on in a new study led by Eder Martioli at the Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica in Brazil, could help us understand one of the weirdest mysteries in modern astronomy. As we continue to discover more planets out there beyond our solar […]

Just a couple weeks ago it seemed like the worst was behind us and the wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the new Omicron variant was beginning to ebb in many of the worst-hit places. But epidemiologists warned that some new variant would eventually replace Omicron, potentially driving a new surge in cases. They were right. This week, cases started rising again in several countries. And some experts think an elusive form of Omicron, the so-called BA.2 sublineage, might be responsible. If that’s the case and BA.2 proves even more transmissible than baseline Omicron—the BA.1 sublineage–then we should brace for a […]

Two months after scientists in South Africa alerted the world to the new, highly transmissible Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, the global surge in infections resulting from the variant is finally subsiding. To be clear, exhausted health-care workers in overcrowded hospitals are still fighting to save lives. But many epidemiologists are beginning to look ahead to a post-Omicron world. The pandemic experts The Daily Beast spoke to were unanimous. Omicron is not the end. New variants–“lineages” is the scientific term–are coming. Worse, a host of entirely new coronaviruses lurk in animal populations and could make the leap to human beings […]

After 25 years of development costing nearly $10 billion, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope finally launched on Christmas Day. Assuming there are no hiccups and the six-ton telescope is able to fully deploy its instruments in the next 5.5 months, eligible scientists will begin taking turns pointing its 47-by-70-foot arrays at whatever interests them. Yoichi Tamura, a professor in the Division of Particle and Astrophysical Science at Nagoya University in Japan, already knows what he’s going to do with JWST once his turn comes around. “I would search for the reddest galaxies to identify the furthest galaxies,” Tamura told The Daily […]

About a year ago, a team of astronomers working in Hawaii glimpsed something in the night sky. A four-minute-long flash of light. Depending on who you ask, that flash was either a powerful explosion from 13.4 billion years ago—a virtual snapshot of the universe as it existed just 400 million years after its formation—or a reflection from a hunk of space junk lazily looping around Earth. Scientific treasure—or garbage. Despite a year of heated debate and a flurry of studies, it’s possible we may never know what caused this mysterious flash, dubbed “GN-z11-flash” for the faraway galaxy where it may have […]

There’s a new form of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus—one that experts say is hard to distinguish from the Delta variant using standard polymerase chain reaction, or PCR tests. The appearance of this sneaky “BA.2” subvariant—“sublineage,” is the scientific term—is the latest development in the still-developing crisis that the baseline BA.1 Omicron sparked after health officials in South Africa confirmed the new lineage, with its dozens of key mutations, two weeks ago. The hard-to-distinguish BA.2 sublineage is also a forceful reminder to the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, and the unboosted to get boosted. There’s a lot we don’t know about […]

The new Omicron variant of the novel-coronavirus is, at first glance, pretty frightening. With more mutations compared to other variants—“lineages” is the scientific term—Omicron has the potential to be more transmissible. And as with all new lineages, there’s a chance it might partially evade the COVID vaccines, potentially thwarting to some degree our best defense against the virus and setting us back as the pandemic enters its third year. Startling headlines and cable-news chyrons interrupted the weekend. “Omicron” trended on social media. Some pundits predicted doom. The U.S. stock market dropped more than two points in a single day—its worst dip […]

The two messenger-RNA vaccines for COVID-19 are highly effective. At least early on. But owing to the spread of new and more virulent variants of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, the natural tendency of some vaccinations to wane over time and the rushed way countries have administered vaccine doses, the mRNA jabs from Pfizer and Moderna have been getting noticeably less effective lately. Now there’s a consensus forming among experts that the initial two doses of mRNA aren’t enough on their own. A booster shot isn’t just a good idea for a select few with weak immune systems or jobs that expose them […]

Singapore may be showing us the surprising way the pandemic could end in certain countries: with a surge in cases as the last restrictions on gatherings, businesses and schools finally lift, but a wall of immunity that prevents those cases from landing in the hospital—or, worse, the morgue. But there’s a caveat. It might be difficult for countries with big anti-vaccine populations to duplicate Singapore’s approach, the United States included. Before reopening, Singapore vaccinated 83 percent of its 5.7 million people. That’s 94 percent of the population over 12 years of age. The health ministry hasn’t yet approved under-12s for the […]

Space is full of weird stuff, but more than 1,300 light-years from Earth, there’s a star system called GW Orionis that makes a lot of that other bizarre phenomena seem outright dull. For starters, GW Orionis has three stars rather than the usual one. Two orbit each other, and the third orbits the pair. Already we’re in territory that’s stranger than Star Wars. And that’s not all. The three stars with their clockwork orbits are surrounded by three rings of dust and gas. Such rings—called “protoplanetary disks,” since they possess the building blocks of larger objects like planets and moons—are common. […]

Seven years ago, a pair of scientists scouring high-resolution images of space caught fleeting glimpses of a bright round object peeking from a vast cloud of icy objects more than 2 billion miles from Earth. As if that whole scene wasn’t exciting enough, the object appeared to be a huge comet. Thought to be between 60 and 100 miles wide, it was the biggest comet a human being had ever witnessed. And it seemed to be heading toward us, very loosely speaking. Last month the discoverers of the giant object—University of Pennsylvania astronomers Gary Bernstein and Pedro Bernardinelli—combined their earlier data […]

Good news, maybe. There’s finally a pill for COVID—and it seems to work pretty well. Molnupiravir, a co-development of New Jersey-based Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics in Florida, is the first COVID antiviral medication in pill form. Merck and Ridgeback plan to submit their data to the FDA for possible authorization, though it’s unclear how quickly the agency might act. The FDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Taken orally, the drug appears to cut the death rate from serious COVID in half. “I’m pretty excited about these results,” Leila Hojat, an expert in infectious diseases at University Hospitals in […]

A panel of experts advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just endorsed a plan by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to offer COVID vaccine booster shots to millions of the most vulnerable Americans. But the same 15-member panel wanted the CDC to also consider a new vaccine strategy that wasn’t on the agenda for the two-day virtual advisory meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. Several of the panelists urged the CDC to take a hard look at mixing and matching the three different vaccines the FDA has approved for distribution in the United States in a so-called “heterologous” […]

A key U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel on Friday afternoon voted against a universal booster shot for the most popular COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, the panel endorsed a booster only for certain Americans: those 65 and older plus younger people who are at high risk of disease owing to underlying conditions. The votes by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, could narrow any effort by the health-safety agency to authorize a third shot for many of the 180 million (and counting) Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID. The FDA isn’t required to honor VRBPAC’s recommendations, […]

Coronavirus infections are on the rise. Vaccination rates are lagging. Hospitals are filling up—and so are morgues. And yet a stubborn, right-wing governor not only refuses to take action to limit the virus’ transmission, he’s actively battling local authorities trying to protect their own communities. No, this isn’t Florida or Texas we’re talking about. It’s another Republican-led Southern state suffering a devastating summer COVID-19 surge: South Carolina. But as in Florida and Texas, communities in South Carolina are fighting back. Cities and school boards are advancing mask mandates in open defiance of the state government—and counting on courts to endorse their […]

The Biden administration on Wednesday endorsed booster shots for millions of Americans already vaccinated against COVID-19, proposing they begin in earnest by late September as the ultra-contagious Delta variant wreaks national havoc. The FDA and CDC were still due to sign off on extra shots before most Americans could begin receiving them. And experts broadly endorsed the move given early indications protection offered by safe and effective coronavirus vaccines might wane over time. But coming just days after the feds authorized extra shots for the immunocompromised, and with America’s anti-vaxxer problem showing no signs of abating, the prospect for a smooth […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized vaccine-eligible Americans with immune problems to receive a third dose of the safe and effective two-dose COVID-19 vaccines. The move could lead to a surge in vaccinations as some of the most vulnerable Americans shore up their immune systems against increasingly dangerous new variants of the novel coronavirus. And experts broadly support it given the seemingly relentless surge of the Delta variant. But with some Americans already seeking out third doses on their own, the potential for a new surge of line-skipping by young, healthy people—even as much of the planet remains […]

A space capsule with a hole in it. A rocket that failed 31 miles over Earth’s surface. An orbital lab with misfiring thrusters. That’s the short list of the most dramatic mishaps involving the International Space Station in the last three years. The missteps have one thing in common: They all involve Russian spacecraft traveling to, or already attached to, the station—or station modules that recently arrived from Earth. There was a time, 60 years ago, when the Soviet Union was the world’s indisputable leader in space. The USSR had the first space probes, the most ingenious manned spacecraft, and the […]

Despite high hopes for a so-called vaxx summer, the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus is driving a wild new spike in infections across the United States, especially in areas where a large number of residents have rejected the COVID-19 vaccines. But it’s not just stubborn, unvaccinated adults who are catching Delta and getting really, really sick. The variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—also may be sending children to the hospital at a higher rate than previous variants. And Florida, where the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 appears to be higher than ever, could reach a new frontier of pandemic chaos […]

A volunteer meteorite-hunter made an incredible discovery in March this year while scouring an English field and pleading to the spirit of his late father for assistance. Derek Robson found one of the oldest, rarest space rocks in humanity’s possession partially buried in a horse’s muddy hoofprint. This 4.6-billion-year-old hunk of olivine and phyllosilicates had apparently fallen to Earth a few weeks earlier after traveling from some distant point beyond Mars. Now scientists at Loughborough University, in central England, are gently probing the fragile, two-inch rock. The meteorite’s uncontaminated insides could surrender vital clues about some of the deepest mysteries of […]

There’s a huge blank space in the U.S. military’s long-anticipated report on recent UFO sightings. It’s one we need to fill before we can even start making sense of the 144 sightings of mysterious flying objects the feds have registered since 2004. We need data from the Federal Aviation Authority. The FAA’s logs, drawing on countless sweeps by thousands of air traffic control radars over a span of two decades, could help the Pentagon to create a “baseline” for UFO activity across North America. The agency’s records could help the military figure out just how unusual its own UFO sightings are. […]

President Joe Biden’s plan to spend a couple trillion dollars on infrastructure here on Earth is still working its way through a fractious Congress. In the meantime the Biden administration is going all in on infrastructure in space. That is to say, space stations. In a rebuke of one of ex-president Donald Trump’s less popular space proposals, the Biden administration is working to extend the service life of the International Space Station. At the same time, the administration is clarifying plans for a new station that would orbit the moon. The twin initiatives couldn’t have come at a better time for […]

NASA is finally going to Venus. And the missions—two missions, actually—could shine a light on a planet that, despite being Earth’s closest neighbor, has been cloaked in clouds and mystery for a generation. The space agency on Wednesday announced not one but two missions to Venus, the second planet from the Sun and, at no more than 150 million miles distant, the closest planet to Earth. Mars, the fourth rock from the sun, is 212 million miles from Earth at its closest. “We know a lot about Mars and even Jupiter and Saturn,” John Logsdon, a former NASA adviser and ex-director […]

Nine people affiliated with the New York Yankees have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. By all accounts, this is not a vaccine skeptic problem—all nine had been inoculated. But rather than some kind of disturbing signal that a new normal is more elusive than ever, or that the specific vaccine the mix of staffers and players got was somehow bogus, the apparent outbreak in the baseball team’s clubhouse is a reason for optimism, experts told The Daily Beast. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. […]

The vaccines that the world’s leading pharmaceutical firms have developed to prevent COVID-19 work really well. Against the novel coronavirus, that is. But SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the only coronavirus out there; there are more pathogens like the one that causes COVID-19. And it may be only a matter of time before some new coronavirus jumps from whatever animal population harbors it to human beings. When it does, it could wreak as much havoc as SARS-CoV-2, if not more. That’s what worries a team of scientists led by Barton Haynes and Kevin Saunders at Duke University. And what motivated them, a year ago, […]

It’s not too late for the United States to become the world’s vaccine superpower, producing and exporting enough doses to protect entire countries against COVID-19. Under pressure to help countries such as India that are suffering devastating surges in infections and deaths, the Biden administration has begun to cut through some of the bureaucratic red tape standing in the way. But experts say the White House should be ruthless when it comes to zeroing out rules and regulations that prevent U.S. firms—and the government itself—from shipping more doses overseas. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. […]

The U.S. government appears to be inching closer to green-lighting the first coronavirus vaccine for kids. According to The New York Times and other news organizations, the safe and effective two-shot vaccine from Pfizer could win FDA emergency-use authorization for children and teens aged 12 to 15 as soon as next week. Opening up vaccinations to younger teens would add nearly 20 million people to the pool of Americans who are eligible for inoculation against the scourge that continues to ravage entire countries and has claimed well over half a million American lives. That, in turn, could juice the United States’ […]

By now many Americans have forgotten that astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin weren’t alone as they took humankind’s first steps on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Orbiting some 60 miles overhead in the Apollo 11 command module, 38-year-old Michael Collins enjoyed a brief moment of peace and quiet as the module passed around the dark side of the moon, cutting off all communication with Earth. “It was a wonderful experience,” Collins said in 2016. “The fact that it was quiet—silent, utterly—was good, not bad. It gave me some time off of mission control telling me to […]

India is in the throes of a devastating surge in COVID-19 cases. The wave of infections, propelled by a new variant of the coronavirus, could spill into the United States. Indeed, the Indian variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—is already here. With most states reopening and governors and mayors relaxing mask mandates as pandemic fatigue sets in, realistically just one thing can spare Americans from another spike in cases, experts say. The country must double down on its successful vaccination campaign. Getting tens of millions more jabs in arms in the coming weeks could block the new lineage’s transmission pathways—and stop it […]

COVID infections are up in many U.S. states as new variants spread, state and local authorities end social distancing rules and mask mandates, and pandemic-weary Americans let down their guard. If that weren’t bad enough, fewer and fewer of those same tired Americans are getting tested for the virus. Fewer tests means less data—and less early warning when new variants evolve and spread. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link

The COVID vaccines work. Really well. Isolated infections of vaccinated individuals and a half-baked, non-peer-reviewed study don’t change that. And the vaccines are safe, despite reports of a very small number of women—six out of tens of millions—suffering blood clots after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended states pause administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while the agency looks into the clotting issue. The seemingly alarming news came rapid-fire in the past few days. A man also caught COVID after getting vaccinated in April, according to the New York Post. “It’s crazy […]

Europe has been in a full-blown panic over a coronavirus vaccine the science shows to be safe and effective. Beginning early this month, 20 countries halted distribution of the two-dose vaccine from the consortium of Oxford University and U.K. pharma AstraZeneca, after a Danish woman died of blood clotting shortly after getting a dose. But experts and top health officials are nearly unanimous in objecting to the stoppage, which Europe’s top medical authority on Thursday affirmed was not warranted. There’s no clear link between the clotting and the vaccine, and the panic, experts point out, has been stoked by misinformation. But […]

It’s been less than two weeks since the new coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson won authorization for emergency use from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it’s already developed something of a troubled reputation. The mayor of Detroit waved off thousands of doses—suggesting it was second-rate, before the White House tried to clean up the mess. The Archdiocese of New Orleans condemned the safe and effective one-shot vaccine as “morally compromised.” And a slew of media outlets have probed concerns about perceptions that the jab is less effective than the other two available vaccines. Ignore the naysayers. By some […]

A potentially dangerous new form of the coronavirus, or “lineage,” as geneticists call it, is spreading across New York City, scientists reported this week. They worry the new lineage, B.1.526, could be more transmissible and partially resistant to existing COVID-19 vaccines. In the worst-case scenario, B.1.526 could arrest recent progress reducing new infections and hospitalizations and delay, by weeks or months, the eventual suppression of the pathogen in the state where it exploded last spring. But if there’s a silver lining in B.1.526’s dark cloud, it’s that it shares its worst qualities with several other coronavirus lineages. And many of the […]

Tighten up your face mask or double it up. That’s the latest advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as dangerous new strains of the novel coronavirus spread across the United States and health officials scramble to get vaccines in arms. Wearing a washable cloth mask on top of a disposable medical-style one— “double-masking”—can double the level of protection against the fine airborne droplets that carry the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, a team led by John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 emergency response, concluded in a study the agency released on Wednesday. The CDC’s recommendation is a […]

President Joe Biden has a fleeting chance to help save two of America’s most iconic species. But to protect gray wolves and monarch butterflies, he needs to move fast—and perhaps get a little lucky. Wildlife populations are in decline all over the world, victims of pollution, deforestation, poaching, and the habitat-altering ravages of runaway climate change. But in North America, wolves and monarchs stand out for their beauty and popularity and the role they play as “keystone” species—that is, symbols of entire landscapes and ecosystems that harbor other vulnerable flora and fauna. The two species—one a delicate and short-lived insect and […]

On Friday, Johnson and Johnson released data from large-scale, phase-three trials of its novel coronavirus vaccine. They were promising: The numbers indicate broad effectiveness against known strains of the virus, and could pave the way for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the New Jersey-based company’s shot in a matter of days or weeks. As a bonus, Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine requires just one dose—and keeps for weeks in a standard refrigerator, making it much easier to distribute and administer than the two vaccines that currently have FDA authorization. But there’s a devil in the details: While the Johnson […]

Think of it like an early warning system. With new and more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus emerging all over the world, the U.S. government needs to set up a nationwide regime for detecting and tracking the biology of the coronavirus, experts told The Daily Beast. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source link

The coming year could be pretty bleak here on Earth as the economy tries to recover from the pandemic and vaccine-distribution hits snag after snag. But in space, 2021 promises to be a banner year. New probes, landers, rovers and instruments are pushing deeper into the solar system and beyond, intensifying humanity’s efforts to extract valuable resources, prepare for manned missions and, perhaps most intriguingly, search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. These are some of the most exciting space stories of 2021. It seems like everyone wants to get to the moon these days. There’s a lot of important science we […]

If two doses of a vaccine are 95 percent effective in protecting you from COVID, then taking just one dose should still offer some protection while doubling the number of people a given supply of vaccine can cover, right? It’s not that simple, experts say. And despite everyone from credentialed epidemiologists to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to the U.K. government endorsing some version of the idea, most experts say going rogue on the two-dose regimen could backfire big time. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today. Source […]

A week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to Pfizer’s novel coronavirus vaccine, and with another vaccine from Moderna on the way, the question of whom to vaccinate first looms larger than ever. Vaccinations have begun at hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies all over America. In line with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every state is reserving initial doses of the two-dose vaccine for frontline health care workers and residents and staff of nursing homes—populations that are uniquely vulnerable to the virus owing, respectively, to their exposure to infected people and co-morbidities. Welcome […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization (EUA) to a coronavirus vaccine from New York pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Friday, kicking off a high-stakes effort to immunize millions of Americans buckling under an historic pandemic. Despite the involvement of an American corporation—in partnership with German company BioNTech—the U.S. was not the first Western nation to give the vaccine the go-ahead. The United Kingdom began injecting citizens with the same vaccine on Dec. 8, and Canadian regulators cleared the way for its use in that country a day later. The U.S. authorization for the vaccine to be used on people […]

Chuck Yeager, the legendary pilot who helped to make the United States a world leader in the air and space, died Monday at 97. As an Air Force test pilot, Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier, in October 1947. Six years later he became one of the first people to fly two times the speed of sound. Toward the end of his test-pilot career, Yeager helped to train America’s first astronauts. But Yeager didn’t just excel at what he called “research flying.” He was also a fearsome warrior. He shot down at least a dozen German planes […]

Two vaccines for the novel coronavirus are potentially just days away from being approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a massive step toward widespread distribution in a population with millions of sick patients. But the vaccines aren’t just potential lifelines for a country stuck in the throes of a horrific pandemic. Instead, experts say, they could be pioneers for a new, potentially safer immunization technology, one that could change the way we battle future viral pandemics—and even illnesses like cancer. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside […]

As coronavirus infections skyrocket and hospitals across the United States fill up with serious COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week approved the first-ever rapid home COVID-19 test for emergency use. The All-In-One Test Kit from California biotech firm Lucira Health uses some of the most reliable molecular-RNA technology, takes just 30 minutes, and is more than 90 percent accurate, according to the company. The FDA hopes the kits will result in more people getting tested for the coronavirus, and health experts cheered the development—even as they warned about the potential for individuals to botch the process outside […]

When Pfizer announced its late-stage novel coronavirus vaccine candidate was 90 percent effective on Monday, stock markets soared, critics started taking shots on Twitter, and right-wing conspiracy theories about the timing of the announcement—less than 48 hours after Joe Biden claimed the presidency—quickly proliferated. The public-health implications are massive. Pfizer expects to request emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the end of the month. If that happens, the company could begin shipping doses to front-line health workers and vulnerable populations such as nursing-home residents. Still, experts warned against prematurely declaring victory over the novel coronavirus given just […]

When it comes to treating serious cases of COVID-19, the antiviral drug Remdesivir helps. So do steroids, which can serve to reduce inflammation. And supplemental oxygen, as most Americans familiar with the basics of the coronavirus pandemic might guess, can ease shortness of breath. The jury’s still out on convalescent plasma, however, despite plenty of hype and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) controversy. And you shouldn’t count on getting access to experimental monoclonal antibodies like the ones that Donald Trump says got him back out on the campaign trail—at least not anytime soon. Plus, there are a host of once-promising […]