“Microbes have the ability to evolve and try lots of genetic variations on a theme very quickly,” David Relman, MD, professor of microbiology at Stanford University and member of the standing committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Threats at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, said during a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies.

Healthcare Strategies · Assessing the Value of Using Genomic Data To Guide Population Health

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Originally for NPR

Dr. David Relman, an esteemed microbiologist, kept returning to the same conclusion as he fielded questions as a guest at Rep. Jerry McNerney’s virtual town hall.

No matter what your fears or concerns, getting a COVID-19 vaccine, Relman said, is far better and safer than getting the virus.

“Were you to come visit any of us in a hospital setting and see what it looks like to be critically ill with COVID, you would be doing everything humanly possible to avoid it,” Relman said at Thursday’s town hall. “It is a miserable, miserable disease. You do not want it.”

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Researchers have long known that the number of human infections from the bat-borne Nipah virus fluctuates from year to year. Now, a new study provides insights into the reasons why.

In a Stanford News Q&A, Stanford epidemiologist Stephen Luby, MD, discussed the findings and how they relate to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Read the rest at Scope

Water sensitive cities show how holistic approaches can counter the health and wellbeing problems associated with urban dryness. About 1.6 billion people live in countries with water scarcity, and this number is projected to double in two decades.

Read the rest at  BMJ

A little known virus may have a lot to teach us about dealing with COVID-19. Discovered 20 years ago, Nipah virus can spread from bats or pigs to humans. Found only in South and South East Asia so far, it kills nearly three-quarters of the people it infects. There is no vaccine for it and no cure, and it has many strains capable of spreading from person to person, increasing the chances of a strain emerging with the ability to rapidly spread beyond the region.

Read the rest at  Stanford News

We find ourselves ten months into one of the most catastrophic global health events of our lifetime and, disturbingly, we still do not know how it began. What’s even more troubling is that despite the critical importance of this question, efforts to investigate the origins of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus and of the associated disease, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), have become mired in politics, poorly supported assumptions and assertions, and incomplete information.

Read the rest at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau revealed that over 40 percent of the U.S. population in the third week of July 2020 exhibited symptoms of anxiety or depression disorder, which are clinical diagnoses. The comparable figure from the same survey given in the January–June 2019 time frame was 26 percent. Symptoms of anxiety or depression disorder included frequently having little interest or pleasure in doing things; feeling down, depressed, or hopeless; feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge; and not being able to stop or control worrying.

Read the rest at  The National Interest

This is not the first time that the world has faced the outbreak of a coronavirus which originated in China.

But the consequences have been very different this time around.

Read the rest at The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Almost since its first emergence, the spreading SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has also been accompanied by a widespread proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, what the World Health Organization (WHO) described as “a massive ‘infodemic’—an over-abundance of information … that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.”

Misinformation can be information that is false or inaccurate, whether deliberately or inadvertently so. Disinformation refers to information that is intended to mislead, whether or not the information is literally true.

Read the rest at Bulletin of Atomic Scientists