Thomas Barnay, Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)
France’s per-capita death toll from Covid-19 is higher than the average for high-income countries. A lack of prevention and the initial rigidity of the French system are largely to responsible.
Here’s what we know so far about why reinfections happen and what effects they have.
The concept of placebos – which are sometimes called “sugar pills” – has been around since the 1800s.
Wladimir Bulgar/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Drug manufacturers often shun the use of placebos in clinical trials. But research suggests that placebos could play an important role in the treatment of depression, pain and other maladies.
Saponins from plants can destroy viruses and other microorganisms in the same way commercial soaps and detergents do.
Students at a primary school in Nairobi, Kenya, queue to have their temperature taken when public schools fully reopened on 4 January 2021.
Gordwin Odhiambo/AFP via Getty Images
Benta A. Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center
Despite government efforts to provide digital resources for students kept out of school for most of 2020, access to these platforms was deeply unequal
Joe Rogan’s ability to attract young male listeners is particularly powerful in today’s fractured media environment.
Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Image
By sidestepping partisan pigeonholing and appealing to the anti-establishment impulses of young men, Rogan has brought together an audience that advertisers have long coveted.
Gender norms can affect every aspect of a person’s life, including their health.
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Exercise might be the last thing on your mind if you’re at home with COVID. But these gentle breathing exercises can help.
The psychosocial impact of the pandemic and responses to it have been immense, but the Canadian government’s approach to COVID-19 remains divisive.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Canada’s ‘us against them’ COVID-19 strategy is amplifying social division, creating major psychosocial impacts, and has resulted in a significant decrease in trust toward authorities.
Stories build powerful emotional attachments. We root for heroes, boo their opponents and get anxious for the fictional problem to be solved. Facts have very little to do with it.
As the pandemic winds down, continual surveillance of wild animals is vital to ensure that it doesn’t switch to another sphere of life.
Kamil Martinovsky/ shutterstock
A growing body of research shows that COVID-19 protocols should be extended to areas in which there is a human-animal interface such as zoos, wildlife sanctuaries and game farms.
Researchers at Florida International University successfully trained One Betta, a Dutch Shepard, and three other dogs to detect COVID-19 on face masks. The dogs got it right 96% to 99% of the time.
Joe Raedle/Staff/Getty Images North America
Dogs have such sensitive noses that they can be trained to detect the odors of crop pests, endangered species, illegal drugs – and diseases like COVID-19.
Matthew Quaife, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Finn McQuaid, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Manufacturers and health systems have shown that vaccines can be quickly and effectively deployed when accompanied by keen political and financial commitments.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand