Women pivoting career to mental health (Washington Post, July 18, 2022)
Covid was vanishing last Memorial Day. Cases are five times higher now. (Washington Post, May 28, 2022)
Virus mutations aren’t slowing down. The vaccines currently deployed were all based on the genomic sequence of the original strain of the virus that spread in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. They essentially mimic the spike protein of that version of the virus and trigger an immune response that is protective when the real virus shows up.
But the variants that have emerged can evade many of the neutralizing antibodies that are the immune system’s front line of defense. “It’s evolving at a fairly rapid rate,” said Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “I do think we need to aggressively consider whether we should update vaccines, and do it soon.” (Washington Post, May 1, 2022)
Covid deaths are no longer overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated. A key explanation for the rise in deaths among the vaccinated is that covid-19 fatalities are again concentrated among the elderly. (Washington Post, April 29, 2022)
Changing the world from the top down: reflections from QUNO, NY (Andrew Tomlinson, July 20, 2020) Summary paper.