The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been largely missing in action when it comes to effectively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency’s chaotic responses during the Trump administration have now given way to absurdly cautious approaches under the Biden administration. Case in point: On April 27, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky grudgingly […]
Yesterday the Biden administration released a report, “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” that outlines the ambitious goal of “conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.” The administration’s “30 by 30” proposal is consonant with ongoing negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a multilateral treaty which the U.S. […]
Vaccinating billions of people against the COVID-19 coronavirus scourge that continues to rage in South America and South Asia is an urgent matter for the rest of the world. While it appears that the more contagious and lethal B.1.1.7 and P.1 virus variants are blunted by current vaccines, every time the virus infects another person, […]
American women are choosing to have fewer babies and the result is that America’s total fertility rate in 2020 has fallen to a record low of 1.64 births per 1,000 women between 15 and 44 years of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Demographers define replacement fertility as 2.1 children per […]
Researchers estimate that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases and up to 75 percent of new or emerging infectious diseases jumped from animals into humans. This includes the COVID-19 coronavirus which likely spread from bats to people either naturally or possibly through a lab leak. Wouldn’t it be great if wild animals could be […]
Pressure is mounting on President Joe Biden to waive intellectual property rights protections for COVID-19 vaccines. A coalition of developing countries led by India and South Africa are pushing the World Trade Organization to suspend patent rights to the vaccines, arguing that doing so will enable them to get more shots to poor people across […]
Non-biting male mosquitoes genetically modified to contain a self-limiting lethal gene are finally set to be released by on three islands in the Florida Keys. When the insect control company Oxitec’s male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes mate with wild females, they will pass along a gene that overproduces a protein that kills larvae before they mature […]
So far 232 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States. Nearly 142 million Americans (54.2 percent of adults over age 18) have received at least one dose, and almost 97 million (37.4 percent of adults) are fully vaccinated. However, the rate of vaccinations in the United States has recently dropped […]
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucrats imposed a “safety pause” on administering Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine on April 12. The agency recommended that inoculations of the vaccine come to a stop after six women out of nearly 7 million people who received the shot reported experiencing dangerous blood clots. At the time, various […]
President Joe Biden has invited the leaders of 40 countries to participate in a virtual Earth Day climate change summit starting tomorrow. To address the problem of man-made climate change caused by burning fossil fuels that load up the atmosphere with heat-trapping carbon dioxide, Biden is reportedly going to announce during the summit that by […]