Coronavirus

The first case of the new coronavirus variant, Omicron, also known as B.1.1.529, was detected in southern Africa this month. Just a few weeks ago, South Africa, where the most Omicron infections [...]

In March, 2020, researchers at Emory University published a paper about a molecule called NHC/EIDD-2801. At the time, there were no treatments available for the coronavirus. But NHC/EIDD-2801, [...]

At the start of the American Revolution, ninety per cent of the deaths in the Continental Army were due to disease. Smallpox was especially devastating: nearly a third of those infected died. [...]

The coronavirus pandemic in the United States appears, for the moment, to be in retreat. Since the start of September, daily cases have dropped by a third, and daily hospitalizations have fallen [...]

One morning in March, 2020, Diana Berrent, a photographer and a mother of two from Long Island, woke up with a fever. She had chills, diarrhea, and a heaviness in her chest, and grew concerned. [...]

For most of the year, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the northern tip of Cape Cod, has around three thousand residents. In summertime, however, it becomes a vacation destination and gay mecca. [...]

In 1988, Richard Lenski, a thirty-one-year-old biologist at UC Irvine, started an experiment. He divided a population of a common bacterium, E. coli, into twelve flasks. Each flask was kept at [...]

Near the close of the First World War, Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, rejected a ceasefire request from the Germans. The two sides were actively negotiating the Armistice; it was [...]

The story of the American pandemic has unfolded in three chapters. The first began last January, when the coronavirus emerged and the world was plunged into uncertainty about how covid-19 could [...]

Since just before the new year, Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and economist at Princeton, has been camped out with his family in an apartment in New Delhi. Laxminarayan is the founder [...]