Thirteen years ago, a young woman was found dead in small-town Texas. She was nicknamed “Lavender Doe” for the purple shirt she was wearing. Her real identity would remain a mystery until amateur genealogists took up her case.
The most concerning versions of the virus are not simply mutating—they’re mutating in similar ways.
Getting vaccines to hospitals and nursing homes was supposed to be the easy part.
An enigmatic group of microbes seems to have an unusual new ability.
The COVID-19 vaccine will make some people feel sick. But they’re not—that’s the immune system doing its job.
The period after a vaccine is approved will be strange and confusing, as certain groups of people get vaccinated but others have to wait.
The initial results of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine trials were unexpected and confusing, but there’s more data to come.
A year of scientific uncertainty is over. Two vaccines look like they will work, and more should follow.
Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning.
The Trump administration spurred development of a vaccine; the Biden administration has to persuade Americans to take it.
The longer we can prevent infections, the better prepared we will be to treat them.
Soon COVID-19 vaccine makers will release early data from large clinical trials, and the results could be ambiguous.
Trump claims his illness has led him to a coronavirus “cure.” Antibody therapy is still far from that.
The COVID-19 vaccines furthest along in clinical trials are the fastest to make, but they are also the hardest to deploy.
Parents thought Donor 9623 was a genius who spoke four languages, not a college dropout with a criminal record.
The country is facing a monkey shortage.
If the FDA’s emergency authorizations aren’t used responsibly, they could lose their power.
No matter what happens now, the virus will continue to circulate around the world.
So much hope is riding on a breakthrough, but a vaccine is only the beginning of the end.
Since 2000, a strange new type of song in white-throated sparrows has spread across the continent at stunning speed.
We know very little about how reliable tests are for people who don’t feel sick.