COVID-19

It will soon be two years since the virus known as COVID-19 started to roam around the world. The sad toll of this disease—over 5 million victims worldwide—is still incomplete, because we are far from seeing an end to the pandemic. It has been the largest public health crisis in the last century.

While most of us have been staying inside for several weeks, many leave the safety of their homes every day to help us live our lives as normally as possible.

When analysing the potential impact of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy, first of all, we must observe that several studies have shown that, in pregnant women, SARS-CoV-2 infection can have significant negative consequences.

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are specialists who are not surprised by this crisis, and believe that in the future we could be facing other pandemics if we fail to fix the mistakes that led to an increase of animal to human pathogen transmission.

A recent study showed how we can fully restore our olfactory sense after a cold, during which nasal constriction prevents us from smelling even the most intense smells.

As the crisis caused by the new coronavirus deepened and spread, it was to be expected that the phenomenon would be framed in apocalyptic terms. It is something that tends to occur in such contexts.

The mortality rate of COVID-19 remains high, but not as high as its transmission rate, and this good news needs nuances and explanations.

Discussions about the reasonable number of deaths in a pandemic, about whether or not the price for saving people is killing the economy and, ultimately, debates on a life’s value were brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why can vaccinated people still get COVID-19 or even die from the disease?

Courage is not the opposite of fear, nor of caution. True courage is what you do right in the midst of fear.

1. I remember that day, 9/11. It was chaos. Violence, shortage of food. For several days, it was uncertain if there would be more...

I leave the house with gloves and a mask on. When I return, I clean my shoe soles and I wash my gloves with disinfectant. Then I take off my clothes, place them somewhere outside, take off my gloves and mask and wash my hands. Is this normal? Or am I a germophobe?

In the spring of 1936, the members of the Lykov family made a decision that would change their lives forever: they disappeared into the Siberian taiga, completely isolating themselves from the world for the next 40 years.

The Colorado beetle that threatened the potato crop of the former GDR in 1950 might have been an American method of sabotage against the Eastern bloc. A sinister German plot might have been the cause of the Spanish flu. Perhaps AIDS emerged as a biological weapon developed by the United States and has been tested on prisoners and minorities. Every crisis humanity has...