Tag: immune system
What’s the Worst-Case Scenario for BA.2.86?
One thing we crave after our collective pandemic experience is certainty. If a potentially powerful new variant is out there, we need some answers about it: How fast is its evolution? Will it spread as quickly and widely as Omicron? And will the vaccine be effective against it?
In this episode, I talk with Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. They know a lot, and they are very honest about all the things they don’t know. A few
There’s a New Drug for Eczema—Actually, a Ton of New Drugs
Up until a few years ago, Heather Sullivan’s 14-year-old son, Sawyer, had struggled with eczema his entire life. When he was just a baby, most of his body would be covered in intensely itchy rashes that bled and oozed when he couldn’t help but scratch. His family tried steroid creams, wet wraps, bleach baths, and all of the lotions. They tore up their carpet and replaced their sheetrock in hopes of eliminating triggers. At 15 months, he went on cyclosporine,
What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life
Turn your mind for a moment to a friend or family member you cherish but don’t spend as much time with as you would like. This needn’t be your most significant relationship, just someone who makes you feel energized when you’re with them, and whom you’d like to see more regularly.
How often do you see that person? Every day? Once a month? Once a year? Do the math and project how many hours annually you spend with them.
Is COVID Immunity Hung Up on Old Variants?
In the two-plus years that COVID vaccines have been available in America, the basic recipe has changed just once. The virus, meanwhile, has belched out five variants concerning enough to earn their own Greek-letter names, followed by a menagerie of weirdly monikered Omicron subvariants, each seeming to spread faster than the last. Vaccines, which take months to reformulate, just can’t keep up with a virus that seems to reinvent itself by the week.
But SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary sprint might not be
11 COVID Questions People Still Have, Answered
For almost two years, answering readers’ COVID-19 questions was part of my job as the writer of this magazine’s daily newsletter. We discussed what activities were safe in the early days of the pandemic, when and where to slap on a mask, what to make of new coronavirus variants, and more. So when my partner came down with a fever one night this summer, I thought it was my time to shine.
Things didn’t quite go that way.
Your Negative COVID Test Is Basically Meaningless
In early May, 27-year-old Hayley Furmaniuk felt tired and a bit congested, but after rapid-testing negative for the coronavirus two days in a row, she dined indoors with friends. The next morning, her symptoms worsened. Knowing her parents were driving in for Mother’s Day, she tested again—and saw a very bright positive. Which meant three not-so-great things: She needed to cancel with her parents; she had likely exposed her friends; a test had apparently taken three days to register what
You Are Going to Get COVID Again … And Again … And Again
Two and a half years and billions of estimated infections into this pandemic, SARS-CoV-2’s visit has clearly turned into a permanent stay. Experts knew from early on that, for almost everyone, infection with this coronavirus would be inevitable. As James Hamblin memorably put it back in February 2020, “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus.” By this point, in fact, most Americans have. But now, as wave after wave continues to pummel the globe, a grimmer reality is playing out. You’re
The Next Big COVID-Vaccine Gamble
Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, the spring weather’s just barely warming, but regulators in the United States are already wringing their hands over a tricksy fall brew: the contents of the COVID shot that vaccine makers are prepping for autumn, when all eligible Americans may be asked to dose up yet again (if, that is, Congress coughs up the money to actually buy the vaccines). In a recent advisory meeting convened by the FDA, Peter Marks, the director of
Could Paxlovid Treat Long COVID?
Updated at 2:55 p.m. on May 10, 2022
In the two years since she caught the coronavirus, 38-year-old Jessica McGovern has cycled through “well over 100 drugs, supplements, and therapies” to try to keep her long-COVID symptoms at bay. In almost all cases, she told me, the interventions were to no avail: Exhaustion, weakness, and aches still lashed her to the couch; she still felt suffocating chest pain that worsened when she inhaled; her upper body was still haunted by
The Risk of Ignoring Long COVID
The world was slow to recognize long COVID as one of the most serious consequences of the coronavirus. Six months into the pathogen’s tear across the globe, SARS-CoV-2 was still considered an acute airway infection that would spark a weeks-long illness at most; anyone who experienced symptoms for longer could be expected to be dismissed by droves of doctors. Now long COVID is written into CDC and WHO documents; it makes a cameo in the newest version of President Joe