Is Nose Hair Essential to Fighting Off Colds and Other Viral Illnesses?
Expert advice on whether trimming or waxing your nose hairs might increase the risk of respiratory infections.
C.D.C. Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox
The Delta variant is much more contagious, more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines and may cause more severe disease than all other known versions of the virus, according to an internal presentation circulated within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the agency, acknowledged…
Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday sought to revive the nation’s stalled push to vaccinate Americans against the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, announcing new requirements for federal workers to be vaccinated and urging local and state governments to offer $100 to anyone willing to get a shot voluntarily. His announcement included only federal…
Behind the Masks, a Mystery: How Often Do the Vaccinated Spread the Virus?
The C.D.C.’s new masking advice was based in part on unpublished data showing that the virus can thrive in the airways of vaccinated people.
V.A. Issues Vaccine Mandate for Health Care Workers, a First for a Federal Agency
WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs will require 115,000 of its frontline health care workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the next two months, making it the first federal agency to mandate that employees be inoculated, government officials said on Monday. The move comes as concern is growing that the substantial portion…
Some Are Chasing Extra Vaccine Shots, While Scientists Debate
Many scientists say that vaccinated people probably won’t need booster shots anytime soon. Some are getting them anyway. They are going to local pharmacies, other states or even other countries — anywhere where there is no record of them having been vaccinated — to get extra doses out of concern about the Delta variant or…
Do Mask Mandates Work?
For example, Florida, which last week accounted for more than 20 percent of Covid-19 cases reported in the United States, has reduced its case reporting to once a week and no longer shares testing data or deaths broken down by county. The C.D.C. has a map that shows a summary of Covid-19 data for the…
Albert Bandura, Leading Psychologist of Aggression, Dies at 95
“I began to feel a kinship with the battered Bobo doll,” he wrote. In the end, his work won out, his findings becoming even more relevant in a world where social media and a 24-hour-a-day news cycle have afforded violence models far greater reach. The Bobo doll experiment became a staple of psychology classes around…
When to Take a Mental Health Day
“I think the safe advice is not to be upfront,” said Andrew Kuller, a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Not everybody values mental health, he added, and “unless you’re close with your supervisor, it is a risk.” But say you work at the type of organization where you can tell the truth…
Dr. J. Allan Hobson, Who Studied the Dreaming Brain, Dies at 88
“There was this tendency in the psychoanalytic world to imply that everything was psychodynamic,” he added, noting that some doctors reflexively blamed mothers for their children’s behavior. But Dr. Hobson softened his views in his later years. “He came to believe that psychoanalysis could be useful for treating mental disorders,” Dr. Lydic said, “but he…