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My inner engineer tells me that air sampling for biologics, especially COVID-19, may be an important way to help measure and contain the pandemic and opening up.

Right now pretty much everything sucks. It can get mighty depressing, reading about COVID-19 deaths or civil unrest. So let's have some fun! A few minutes of mindless idiocy at the expense of California. Why now? Because their officials decided that my patio umbrella stand is gonna give me cancer. There's even a label to prove it. And if you act now, you'll get some really bad "artwork!"

There are so many risks to consider

How did drinking a large glass of expensive celery juice every morning become the latest health fad? It beats us.

The FDA’s re-analysis showed essentially what we already knew. There's a huge antibiotic effect in the treatment of bacterial pneumonia. The effect is the greatest when looking at the early response to antibiotic therapy, but is still large even when looking at later cure.

A very disturbing paper published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases proposes that vaccines can have unexpected side effects. Some are good, such as protecting against unrelated diseases, while some are bad, such as increasing all-cause mortality. This is highly useful and potentially life-saving information that must not be hijacked by anti-vaxxers.

There are at least 24 different concepts of what constitutes a species. Unfortunately, politics plays a substantial role in the process.

Police-involved shootings, the cultural impact upon the "hard" sciences, urban planning gone awry, and stealthy enemies.

One of the great knocks on our healthcare system is that it emphasizes treatment over prevention. Frailty opens a window on alternate views of that distinction, and how we measure up. 

If your sole goal in life is getting your hands on a can of Lysol spray, be prepared to be bitterly disappointed. The EPA gave its approval for Reckitt Benckiser (which sells the stuff) to make anti-COVID claims for two Lysol products. What's in there that can kill the virus? Time for "The Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell"? I think so.

Shortness of breath, also known as dyspnea, is a patient’s subjective experience. For a long time, we thought that observable measurements, like the degree to which our blood was oxygenated, was consistent with that subjective experience. COVID-19 requires us to rethink those associations.

We have made amazing progress in the treatment of COVID-19. Two therapies – steroids and remdesivir – have already been shown to help. Those who benefit from these treatments owe thanks to patients who volunteered to participate in controlled clinical trials, and the physicians and pharmaceutical companies that lead them.

The world desperately awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, one that will stop the spread of this potentially deadly infection and hopefully allow us all to return to our pre-coronavirus lives. But there's no telling when a vaccine will be found -- if it will at all. With that, ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom, who has decades of experience in drug discovery, believes that the best way forward for now involves use of antiviral drugs, a position he details as co-author of recent piece in the Baltimore Sun. His Op-Ed leads off our June media roundup, a compendium of news sources where ACSH has appeared over the last month.

The coronavirus has mutated to become more infectious. Does that mean it will become more or less lethal? And what implication does it have for a vaccine and herd immunity?

How old is your dog, in dog years? The widely used rule of thumb – human years x 7 – is apparently incorrect. The science behind the new formula tells us something about extrapolation and a lot about how both we, and our canine friends, age. And the Hanks-dog graph is kinda cool, too.

In the world of nutrition, potatoes seem to have fallen from grace. Meanwhile, sweet potatoes still -- largely -- get away scot-free. What is this travesty? We examine the evidence.

The Food and Drug Administration recently published an analysis of antibiotic development looking back over the last 40 years. In addition, the paper was accompanied by a compelling editorial. These papers are well worth reading and are highly recommended for everyone, whether they're familiar with antibiotic development or not. And most notably, the hubris of the FDA analysis is astounding.

While it remains popular to attribute the opioid‐​related overdose crisis to doctors prescribing pain relievers to patients, the evidence shows there is no correlation between prescription volume and non‐​medical opioid use or opioid use disorder.

Vaccines for COVID-19 get most of the headlines. But it is possible, if not likely, that a drug or combination of drugs may be quicker to develop, and possibly will be more effective in controlling the virus. Here's an opinion piece making the case that recently ran in the Baltimore Sun, co-authored by ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom and ACSH advisor Dr. Katherine Seley-Radtke.

We must dismantle the perfect storm of incivility, anti-intellectualism, and tribalism -- worsened by the sewer pipe of social media -- that has gripped our country. In its place, we must foster a culture of intellectualism, skepticism, and empathy. But that lofty goal seems unreachable in the current milieu.

Maybe barbeque and beach trips were modified over the weekend in the face of COVID-19. But surely it's appropriate to have a time-tested cautionary article go with America's birthday.

An interview with the editor of The Lancet where he explains those recent retractions. A story of an ecologic problem in the voice of Rudyard Kipling. A query into fishy meanings of a name.

Much remains biologically uncertain about COVID-19, especially when it comes to its infectiousness. For example, how many particles must be taken to allow the virus to begin to replicate within oneself? On the other hand, the virus particle itself is subject to well-established laws of physics. So, when it comes to masks and social distancing, how can physics inform our understanding? Let's take a look.

Researchers in the journal Physics of Fluids  just published a visualization of the dispersion of droplets from simulated coughing. It's worth a look.

Strict lockdowns might work in some countries, but they aren't going to work everywhere. Americans, in particular, reject such restrictions on liberty, which is why a strict lockdown is sort of like abstinence-only sex education.