Epidemics and pandemics

PUBLIC HEALTHAfter COVID, Texas Is Less Prepared for the Next Pandemic
By Eleanor Klibanoff
Five years after Texas’ first COVID death, the state spends less on public health, vaccination rates have dropped and a distrust of authority has taken hold.
- Read more
PUBLIC HEALTHAmid Growing Numbers of Measles Cases, Chaos Continues at HHS
While continuing to peddle alternative remedies to those suffering from measles, Secretary Kennedy also did an interview in which he implied that contracting measles is better than being vaccinated for it. Unfortunately for Kennedy – and those who have contracted the disease — vitamin A and cod liver oil are not going to cut it in responding to this expanding outbreak.
- Read more

VACCINESCOVID Vaccination Saved More Than 5,000 U.S. Lives in 7 Months in 2023-24, CDC Estimates
By Mary Van Beusekom
COVID-19 vaccination averted more than 5,000 US in-hospital deaths, 13,000 intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and 68,000 hospitalizations in 7 months in 2023-2024, researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated late last week.
- Read more
COVIDHouse Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Releases Final Report
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recently published its final report. The more than 500-page document covers a variety of topics, including vaccines, use of pandemic relief funds, and public health guidance.
- Read more

EPIDEMICSMathematical Models Tackle Covid Infection Dynamics
Even years after the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the workings of SARS-CoV-2 infection inside the human body, including the early activity of the virus and the role of the body’s immune response, has proved difficult to precisely ascertain.
- Read more
COVID ORIGINSDid COVID Come from an Animal Market? Here’s What the New Evidence Really Tells Us
By Mark Woolhouse
I have studied the origins of human viruses for 25 years but, having examined the evidence, I still don’t know how the COVID pandemic began. I do know that the question is important and that debating it should be encouraged, not stifled.
- Read more

PANDEMICSPreparing for a Pandemic That Never Came Ended Up Setting Off Another − How an Accidental Virus Release Triggered 1977’s ‘Russian Flu’
By Donald S. Burke
Overreaction. Unintended consequences. Making matters worse. Self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a rich variety of terms to describe how the best intentions can go awry. Still reeling from COVID-19, the world now faces new threats from cross-species jumps of avian flu viruses, mpox viruses and others. It’s critical that we be quick to respond to these emerging threats to prevent yet another global disease conflagration. Quick, but not too quick, history suggests.
- Read more
BIODEFENSENational Bio and Agro-Defense Facility Comes Under Budget
DHS has commissioned the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas under budget, and has returned $10,082,355.80 in gift funds to the state of Kansas.
- Read more

EPIDEMICSStudies Find Little to No Immunity to H5N1 Avian Flu Virus in Americans
By Lisa Schnirring
The American population has little to no pre-existing immunity to the H5N1 avian flu virus circulating on dairy and poultry farms, according to preliminary findings from ongoing testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- Read more
COVIDStudy Reveals Persistent Risk of Death, Symptoms in COVID Survivors at 3 Years
By Mary Van Beusekom
COVID-19 patients hospitalized with the wild-type virus in 2020 were at a 29% higher risk for death than their nonhospitalized counterparts 3 years later, and even those with mild illness still reported new-onset health consequences.
- Read more

COVID VACCINEGround-Breaking Study Reveals How COVID-19 Vaccines Prevent Severe Disease
A landmark study by scientists at the University of Oxford, has unveiled crucial insights into the way that COVID-19 vaccines mitigate severe illness in those who have been vaccinated.
- Read more
DISINFORMATIONX's Crowdsourced Tool to Counter COVID Untruths mainly accurate, credible: Researchers
By Mary Van Beusekom
Community Notes, a crowdsourced COVID-19 vaccine misinformation countermeasure on X (formerly Twitter), generally corrected false posts accurately and pointed readers to more credible sources, according to researchers who evaluated the posts.
- Read more

PUBLIC HEALTHCOVID May Have Eroded Doctors' Belief That They Are Obligated to Treat Infectious Patients
By Mary Van Beusekom
Broadly disseminated misinformation about the disease — e.g., how the virus spreads, effective treatments, vaccine efficacy and safety, and more – contributed to the erosion of doctors’ commitment to treat infectious disease patients because of doctors’ fear that they would contract the disease.
- Read more
PUBLIC HEALTHOregon Data: COVID Vaccines Not Tied to Sudden Cardiac Death in Young People
By Mary Van Beusekom
A review of death certificates of previously healthy Oregon residents aged 16 to 30 years who died of cardiac or undetermined causes from June 2021 to December 2022 found no link between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac death.
- Read more
PUBLIC HEALTHAction Needed to Improve U.S. Smallpox Readiness and Diagnostics, Vaccines, and Therapeutics: Report
A new report says that action is needed to enhance U.S. readiness for smallpox and related diseases, as well as to improve diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics that could be used in case of an outbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed weaknesses in the ability of U.S. public health and health care systems to adapt and respond to an unfamiliar pathogen, as did challenges during the recent mpox outbreak to rapidly making diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics available at scale.
- Read more

More headlines