Disease Prevention

Why it’s easier to catch a cold, the flu or COVID in the winter Low humidity protects viruses and cold temperatures may blunt some immune responses, making viral infections like colds, flu and COVID-19 more likely. Tina Hesman Saey Science News

...researchers have found that viruses that surge in the winter, including influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — survive best when the relative humidity in the air falls below about 40 percent.

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Mpox has faded in the US. Who deserves the credit? NEW YORK (AP) — Less than six months ago, mpox was an exploding health crisis. What had been an obscure disease from Africa was ripping through European and U.S. gay communities. Precious doses of an unproven vaccine were in short supply. AP NEWS

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So who deserves the credit? It’s an unsettled question, but experts cite a combination of factors.

Will America’s public health reckoning ever come? Despite the many failures of our Covid response, very little about U.S. pandemic infrastructure has changed. But some are still working to find compromise reforms. Rachel Cohrs STAT

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Virtually everyone generally agrees some kind of transformative public health reform is needed — Republicans, Democrats, and the public health agencies themselves. But they disagree on how to go about changes. It doesn’t help that Congress couldn’t agree on putting together a commission to examine the pandemic response.

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