In 2015 I began to wonder when CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had lost its way. Since I am neither Republican or Democrat, I had to wonder if the Obama administration was the problem, the same way Democrats insist Trump is the problem now.

But where does that end? Did the CDC that mishandled H1N1 in 2009 do so because of Obama? Was SARS 2003 botched because of Bush?  Of course not, the issue is bureaucracy creep due to career government employees inside CDC itself, not temporary political appointees like Dr. Robert Redfield, who has become a political pincushion for Democrats despite three decades of HIV research. Meanwhile, Republicans are claiming liberal media is exaggerating coronavirus to hurt Trump this fall.

After the outbreak in China of the COVID-19 virus, Italy has fallen in the middle of the most acute sanitary emergency we ever experienced in a long while. And what's worse, other countries are sadly joining it. As I write this piece, over 15,000 Italians have tested positive to the virus, and over 1000 have already died. Based on very convincing analysis of data from China, we know that the real number of cases is higher by at least a factor 20, if not 100. In these conditions, individuals have to protect themselves and help reduce the spread of the virus with all possible means - most importantly, by staying home and cutting all social contacts.

If you are experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, nausea, dizziness, decreased energy, feeling faint and heartbeat alterations after starting the fad keto diet, you may not have coronavirus or influenza, it may just be the diet.

These are low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets which result in elevated levels of ketones in the blood. A Frontiers in Nutrition study reports that symptoms peak in the first 7 days but dwindle after four weeks. Severity is a wide range because the data are anecdotal, much like the claims of health benefits.

Do you want to believe a mom with no credentials who opposes modern agriculture can keep your baby from getting autism?  Do you want to believe fracking will set your tap water on fire or that COVID-19 was caused by 5G cell phone service in Wuhan?

There are prominent Facebook pages for all of those. An osteopath named Joe Mercola will even sell you supplements to prevent getting coronavirus, and he makes $100 million a year leveraging social media to latch onto to anything people are willing to believe.

The WHO have said many times that governments can stop this disease by containing the virus swiftly and aggressively. Their most recent statement was the most blunt yet. They declared a pandemic, but one that we can stop. They said the question is not whether we can, but whether we will. Many governments have demonstrated this by doing it, including China, South Korea and Singapore. As Dr Tedros, Director General of the WHO put it:

The challenge for many countries who are now dealing with large clusters or community transmission is not whether they can do the same – it’s whether they will.  

Summary: This declaration of a pandemic does not mean that we should say the fight is over - that would lead to unnecessary suffering and death.

With every press conference, the WHO have called on countries to take urgent and aggressive action and this hasn’t changed.

More than 90% of the cases are in just four countries (Iran, Italy, SK and China). Two of those four countries have significantly declining cases (South Korea and China)

81 countries have no cases yet, and 57 have 10 or less.

All countries can still turn the tide on this virus, even ones with community transmission or large clusters. Several countries have shown the virus can be suppressed and controlled.

On January 23, 2020, Illinois reported the state's first laboratory-confirmed case (index case) of  severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19, in a woman in her 60s who had returned from Wuhan, China in mid-January. Subsequently, the first evidence of secondary transmission in the USA was reported on January 30, when her husband, who had not traveled outside the USA but who does suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic cough, had frequent, close contact with his wife since her return and while she was symptomatic, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

640 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces is a planet where the day side temperature exceeds 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough enough to vaporize metal.

And it does. Then, on planet tidally locked planet WASP-76b, winds carry the vapor to the cooler permanent night side, where the iron turns into rain. 

 Like our Moon on its orbit around Earth, WASP-76b is tidally locked. It takes as long to rotate around its axis as it does to go around its star so the day side receives thousands of times more radiation from its parent star than the Earth does from the Sun. It's so hot that molecules separate into atoms, and metals like iron evaporate into the atmosphere. The cooler night side is only around 3,000 degrees.

A new paper tries to "suggest" that a silent killer may be among us - particulate matter so tiny you need an electron microscope to detect it, left behind on furniture by smokers who sat there at some point in the past. Even movie theater seats. And then vapers may be doing the same thing, with nicotine.

This particulate matter, inference goes, jumps from their bodies onto seats, where it waits for you to perch, then leaps onto your body, worms its way through your skin, enters your organs, bioaccumulates, and causes cancer.

A new paper has identified the risk factors for death from COVID-19, also called coronavirus and Wuhan flu, and they are much like any other flu; being older and having pre-existing conditions are the biggest concerns. 

The results are observational from 191 patients and only from two hospitals in Wuhan, China, so caution is warranted when interpreting them even more than with other epidemiological correlation, but along with age showing signs of sepsis, chronic respiratory illness, and having blood clotting issues when admitted to hospital are unsurprisingly the key risk factors associated with the higher risk of death.