Bookmarks (38) clear filters

Photo: winnond (Shutterstock)Toilets account for nearly 30% of household water use according to the EPA, which means that replacing old ones with newer, more efficient models can take a serious bite out of your water bill. Unfortunately, the significant up-front costs are a dealbreaker for lots of people, leading so...

At this stage in the pandemic, there’s no point even commenting on how much COVID-19 has changed air travel—that’s a given. And how has that been going? That depends on who you ask. Read more...

Nine months and more than 290,000 deaths into the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is facing a crisis within a crisis. In addition to contending with the spread of a highly contagious virus—and the overcrowded hospitals and overworked medical staff that come with it—we also have to deal with living alongside…Read more...

The FDA’s vaccine advisory panel spent all of yesterday discussing the results of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID vaccine studies. At the end of the day, they voted “yes” to the question of whether the available science suggests the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks. The FDA is expected to move quickly to grant…Read more...

Every vaccine has its side effects, but most are mild and/or rare. If you’ve ever had a sore arm after a flu shot, or even a mild headache or fever, you’ve experienced these. The upcoming coronavirus vaccines will have side effects, too, and they might be a little more severe. That’s not necessarily a bad thing,…Read more...

Repeated brief encounters with the same person are now considered close contact, according to a tweak to the CDC’s definition.Previously, for somebody to be a “close contact,” they had to remain within six feet of you for a stretch of at least 15 minutes. The change recognizes that, according to recent research, you…Read more...

Last month, it looked like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had one of the better plans for bringing students back, which included frequent testing for everyone on campus.“If [students] had adhered to what we had asked them to do, we would have had no more than about 700 cases the entire semester,” the…Read more...

For those fortunate enough to live somewhere with decent public transportation and rely on it to get around, the past six months have probably been a challenge. Even though a lot of our lives have moved into—and stayed in—our homes, not everyone has the option to work or learn remotely. Of course, this has been the…Read more...

Since COVID-19 first started to spread in December 2019, it has made its way around the world. When it came to the United States, there were initially a few cases in Seattle, but the first major hotspot was New York City. Now, a few months later, places like Arizona, South Carolina and Florida are new hotspots for the…Read more...

If you’re one of the millions of people who have either lost their jobs during the pandemic, or have had your hours or workload reduced, you may have considered applying to be a contact tracer. If this is the case—or if you’re just curious about how the process works—you can now enroll in a free online course on…Read more...

You may have seen headlines recently that “patients without symptoms” aren’t driving the spread of the coronavirus. That would seem to suggest that all our measures about masks and distancing are useless—but that’s a misunderstanding of the evidenceRead more...

While protesting is essential in a democracy—a hack, you might say, for making your voice heard between elections—any large gathering carries a risk of COVID-19 transmission. But there are ways to reduce that risk, and many protesters have been organizing with those measures in mind. Read more...

On Wednesday, for the first time since March 12, NYC reported no new deaths from COVID-19. To put that number into perspective, during the peak in mid-April, NYC reported an average of 500 deaths a day. This is encouraging news, and worth celebrating. Preventative measures—closing businesses, the public adopting…Read more...

Now that more and more states are reopening, job seekers might find themselves in the position of having to decide how to approach an in-person job interview. Should you wear a mask? Should you avoid shaking hands? Should you attempt to stay at least six feet away from your interviewers?Read more...

Avoiding large gatherings is part of how we’ve tried to stay safe for the past few months, but protests have something in common with hospital services and (apparently) takeout margaritas: They’re essential to our well-being as a society. Read more...

The CDC has released new guidelines on antibody testing that note it’s possible for a test that’s 90-95% accurate to deliver incorrect positive results more than half the time. That sounds shocking, but it can be true—and it’s important to understand why, if you’re considering getting tested or have already gotten a…Read more...

Contact tracing is a technique epidemiologists and public health officials have long used in the fight against diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It’s an important tool for identifying those who might be sick and keeping the infection from spreading to others. As the nation continues to reopen, contact tracing could…Read more...

Just because restaurants are opening up again doesn’t mean it is safe to go. Reopening restaurants during a pandemic is a new situation, and as with all things COVID-19, we are learning as we go. Before you make your dinner reservations, here are some risk factors and precautionary measures you need to consider. Read more...