• Social Distancing in Spring of 2020 Effectively Curbed COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany

    Early contact restrictions and school closures prevented over 80 percent of COVID-19 infections and over 60 percent of deaths in Germany within three weeks, a quasi-experimental economic study finds.

  • Life Expectancy Falls in 27 of 29 Nations amid COVID-19

    By Mary Van Beusekom

    According to a study of 29 countries, the magnitude of the dip in life expectancy during the COVID-19 pandemic had not been seen in a single year since World War II in Western Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.

  • A COVID-19-Driven Desire for “Conformity and Obedience” Could Boost Authoritarianism: Psychologists

    Psychologists say that human beings have a built-in code of conduct which helps us stay disease-free. This code includes a fear and avoidance of unfamiliar – and so possibly infected – people. When infection risk is high, this parasite stress behavior increases, potentially manifesting as attitudes and even voting patterns that champion conformity and reject ‘foreign outgroups’ – core traits of authoritarian politics.

  • Mandates Give Rise to Booming Black Market for Fake Vaccine Cards

    By Dora Mekouar

    As more organizations demand proof of inoculation against COVID-19, the black market for fake vaccine cards appears to be booming. Legal experts compare phony vaccine cards to counterfeit money or fake drivers’ licenses.

  • The Closing of Book Revue and America's Misguided Lockdowns

    Book Revue, a 20-yer old cultural and social institution in downtown Huntington on Long Island’s north shore, will be closing its doors in a few days. It is yet another victim of the policy if business lockdowns, which was a misguided and unnecessary response to the Covid. Other countries chose a different, and more effective, path.

  • Biden Unveils Plan of Attack for COVID-19

    By Stephanie Soucheray

    Keep schools open, mandate vaccines for all federal employees, and increase testing—these are three of the goals President Joe Biden outlined Thursday during a briefing on America’s ongoing battle against COVID-19.

  • Apollo Program-Style Pandemic Preparedness Plan

    Last week, the Biden administration announced a new biosecurity plan which it likened to the Apollo program of the late 1960s. This $65 billion proposal would be one of the largest investments in public health in American history and would “remake the nation’s pandemic preparedness infrastructure in the wake of Covid-19.”

  • 9/11 Prepared Firms for COVID-19 Economic Effects

    Companies which experienced the financial impact of 9/11 were more resilient to the economic effects of COVID-19, according to new research.The research is the first of its kind to compare the events of the last eighteen months with 9/11.

  • Israel Was a Leader in the COVID Vaccination Race. So Why Are Cases Spiraling There?

    By Michael Head

    Israel has been one of the focal points of the pandemic in 2021 owing to its rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.Recently, however, Israel has reported significant outbreaks, with over 10,000 confirmed new cases being recorded each day in early September.

  • Vaccine Passport Missteps We Should Not Repeat

    By Alexis Hancock, Adam Schwartz, and Jon Callas

    As they roll out, we must protect users of vaccine passports and those who do not want to use—or cannot use—a digitally scannable means to prove vaccination. We cannot let the tools used to fight for public health be subverted into systems to perpetuate inequity or as cover for unrelated, unnecessary data collection.

  • A Third of Americans Already Had COVID-19 by the End of 2020

    New research estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. The researchers modeled the spread of the coronavirus, finding that fewer than one-quarter of infections (22 percent) were accounted for in cases confirmed through public health reports based on testing.

  • U.S. Intelligence: Origins of COVID-19 Unclear, but Virus “Probably” Not Genetically Engineered

    The U.S. intelligence community (IC) says that the results of its 3-months investigation into the origins of COVID-19 are “inconclusive,” but that COVID was “probably” not developed as a biological weapon or genetically engineered (that is, it was not created by a gain-of-function research).

  • Animal Origin or Lab-Leak Theory? What Sparked the COVID-19 Pandemic

    “We can’t rule out the possibility of a lab accident. It can’t be dismissed entirely, but there’s no evidence for it right now. The weight of evidence that we do have points to this pandemic emerging from markets in Wuhan that sold wildlife, probably illegally,” says University of Utah’s Stephen Goldsgtein. To support the lab-leak theory, “the key piece of evidence that we would want to see is that there is evidence that this virus was present in a lab before the pandemic. Right now, there’s no evidence that this virus was known to humanity before it was first identified in patient samples in Wuhan in December 2019.”

  • The National Stockpile: Modernizing for a Dynamic Response

    By Diane DiEuliis & Patrick Terrell

    Response to a spreading illness in many ways is not rocket science:  treat the sick, protect the vulnerable, and stop the spread – mainly accomplished via the tools and products of biotechnology.  Many are now asking, what could we have done better in the pandemic response? 

  • U.S. Intelligence Community's Report Inconclusive on COVID-19 Origins

    In May, the U.S. intelligence community (IC) was tasked by President Joe Biden to investigate the origins of CVID-19. On Tuesday, the IC delivered its assessment to the White House. The IC report is inconclusive, offering no definitive answer to the question of whether COVID-19 jumped to humans naturally, or was released from a lab.