SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can float in the air. In particular, it can linger in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, spreading farther than 6 feet from its source. These indoor public spaces are high risk and should be avoided while the virus is still spreading. But, increasingly, people are returning to those spaces: Bars…
What Biden can do to fix Trump’s Covid-19 mess
If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump this November and ends up in the Oval Office in January, he’ll quickly face one of the gravest challenges any president has seen in the modern era: Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be dead from Covid-19. Public trust in scientific and government institutions will be depleted. If the…
How the air travel industry is scrambling to convince people to fly
Kyle Potter, the editor of the travel deals website Thrifty Traveler, is used to flying a lot. But things haven’t been the same since the pandemic. Back in June, when he flew for the first time since Covid-19 hit the United States, it was an eerie experience. “Pretty much everyone just really feels on edge….
You can get reinfected with Covid-19 but may still have immunity. Let’s explain.
Researchers at the University of Nevada have reported that a 25-year-old man was reinfected in June with SARS-CoV-2, the virus the causes Covid-19. He joins a handful of other confirmed cases of reinfection in people without immune disorders — in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Ecuador — where researchers have demonstrated that the genetic…
Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade. Have we learned anything?
Much ink has been spilled over the “replication crisis” in the last decade and a half, including here at Vox. Researchers have discovered, over and over, that lots of findings in fields like psychology, sociology, medicine, and economics don’t hold up when other researchers try to replicate them. This conversation was fueled in part by…
The absurd controversy over Joe Biden’s “transition away from the oil industry”
At the second and final 2020 presidential debate on Thursday, when asked by President Donald Trump if he would “close down the oil industry,” former Vice President Joe Biden said that he intends to “transition away from the oil industry, yes.” Republicans are working furiously to make this supposed admission into a scandal, hoping it…
States need billions to prepare for Covid-19 vaccines. The federal government isn’t helping.
Early results from the two leading US Covid-19 vaccine trials are expected in November, in what will likely be a major milestone in the race to end the pandemic. The final leg of the race, however, will be actually getting people vaccinated. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has offered guidance on…
Why the record low Arctic sea ice this October is so alarming
For the past five months, Melinda Webster has lived on an icebreaker ship frozen in an ice floe near the North Pole. For Webster, a sea ice geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, it was an ideal observatory. She and a team of 14 other scientists set out, as part of the largest polar…
Big Oil’s hopes are pinned on plastics. It won’t end well.
The fossil fuel industry has not been doing well lately. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, growth in global demand had slowed to 1 percent annually. Now, lockdowns and distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus have decimated the industry. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released projections of rapid short-term decline in global…
Death toll from 7.0-magnitude earthquake near Greece and Turkey rises to over 80
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Aegean Sea on Friday, killing at least 80 people, and injuring nearly 1,000 in Turkey and Greece. The earthquake caused the most damage in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, with a population of nearly 3 million people. So far, there have been 79 deaths reported in Turkey and more than 100…