You might have already guessed this from the coughs and sniffles around you, but a lot of people are sick right now, and a lot of them have COVID. According to the CDC’s latest data, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are “very high” in every region of the country; national levels have been “very high” for about a month.
Today, for the third time in two years, President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19, the White House said. The president was in Las Vegas—attempting to convince voters, donors, and his fellow lawmakers that he is still the candidate best poised to defeat former President Donald Trump in November—when he fell ill with a runny nose and cough, according to a White House statement. He’s already taking the antiviral Paxlovid and will isolate at his home in Delaware.
You could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Fort McHenry, the pentagon-shaped keep that inspired the bridge’s namesake to write the verses that became our national anthem. You could see it from the pagoda in Patterson Park, another strangely geometric landmark from which I’ve cheered on teams at Baltimore’s annual kinetic-sculpture race. You could see it from the top of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the city’s biggest employer.
Japan is home to an untold number of conveniences and delights that American consumers regularly go without: Faster public transit! Better sunscreen! Lychee KitKats! But as we head into sick season, one Japanese invention would be especially welcome on the U.S. market: an antiviral pill that appears to shorten COVID symptoms, might protect against chronic disease, and doesn’t taste like soapy grapefruit.
The FDA announced yesterday that it had for the first time approved a daily birth-control pill for over-the-counter sales. That’s a big change; once the product, called Opill, is on the market—which may be as soon as early 2024—Americans will be able to buy daily hormonal birth control without a prescription.
Because I am a writer, and because I am a hoarder, my apartment is littered with notebooks that contain a mixture of journal entries and school assignments. Many pages don’t have dates, but I can tell which era of my life they correspond to just by looking at the handwriting. In the earliest examples, from elementary school, my print is angular, jagged; even the s’s and j’s turn sharp corners.
In less than two weeks, you could walk out of a pharmacy with a next-generation COVID booster in your arm. Just a few days ago, the Biden administration indicated that the first updated COVID-19 vaccines would be available shortly after Labor Day to Americans 12 and older who have already had their primary series. Unlike the shots the U.S.
Four days after recovering from a COVID-19 infection, President Joe Biden has tested positive again. When he first got sick, Biden—like more than one-third of the Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19 this summer, according to the U.S. government’s public records—was prescribed Paxlovid, an antiviral pill treatment made by Pfizer. Like many Paxlovid takers, he soon tested negative and resumed his normal activities.