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A new study finds that people who love terrifying movies are more resilient and less concerned about the current pandemic. It is time to get out the popcorn and see what is on the big screen.

The common cold is a miserable experience, but there may be a silver lining to developing one: Certain kinds may help prevent severe COVID infections.

An increased risk of mortality from COVID-19 has been separately linked to age, race, co-morbidities, and residence in nursing homes. The relative importance or effect of each of these variables – or any possible inter-relationship -- has yet to be determined or investigated. Such determination is critical – both to assess important risk factors in vulnerable groups, and determine the propriety and effectiveness of policy. 

The popular press is replete with descriptive data on the current pandemic on global and national scales and for selected local areas with extreme outcomes. Here we describe regional data from April through December 2020 and analyze commonality among regions, case-fatality rates, and rates of change among daily rates, including "flattening of curves." We hope to Improve understanding of regional differences and trends in the pandemic.

Once again, I reached out to my friends living in an extended care facility to get an update. After all, they were in the first wave to be immunized, weren't they?

If you're like most men, a vasectomy is probably quite far down on your list of hobbies. But, thanks to a less invasive method that came from China, the operation can be performed in a painless half-hour. New York urologist Dr. David Kaufman explains.

Our elderly population living in nursing homes has been a target of COVID-19 and now early vaccination. Was COVID-19 preying upon the weak and frail -- where some co-morbidities more likely to be problematic -- or were nursing home protocols, and the staff administering them, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

How to become a member of the Jonas Salk Society.

Dietary guidelines must be realistic, not idealistic, in order for people to follow them.

So far, the rollout of the COVID vaccine has been an embarrassing mess. There are different rules at different distribution locations, and sometimes they seem to change randomly. And to complicate matters, we're learning about unused, leftover doses. So who gets them? Or do they get thrown out?

The Atlantic says that the new coronavirus strain is a "huge danger." However, the virus already mutated early last year to become more infectious. There's no reason to panic yet.

While we have vaccinated 1.38% of our population, Israel has vaccinated 15.83% of theirs – twice that of its closest competitor (the United Arab Emirates) and 11-fold that our rate [1]. What can we learn and do?

The Lancet once published a controversial study claiming that any alcohol consumption is bad for your health. Now, the same family of journals is coming after you poker players.

A consumer will often attempt to compare the taste of locally-grown organic produce with its national chain-store counterpart. This is not a fair comparison. Regarding taste, the key is not whether it's conventionally grown or organic, but when it is harvested.

Cultured meat, not meat raised listening to Mozart, meat raised in a petri-dish or bioreactor, the emotional connotation of words like privilege, cybersecurity is this generations' asymmetric warfare, and while waiting to be vaccinated, take a moment for delight.

Though politicians and the public love to hate Big Ag and Big Pharma, everybody comes begging for help when the going gets tough. The arguments against biotechnology have been made exponentially weaker by the success of the coronavirus vaccine.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) created queue guidelines for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccines. While vaccination of healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities is already underway, there's much being written about position jockeying for those in the groups that follow. Let's take a deeper dive into these deliberations.

A substantial proportion of frontline healthcare workers are refusing to accept the COVID vaccine. This poses an unacceptable risk to public health. They should take the jab or lose their job.

We need new coronavirus variants like a duodenal ulcer, but they're here – something any virologist would have said was inevitable. Here's a lesson on how mutation works. Plus an explanation of what those crazy letters and numbers mean that you see in the news.

Front-line essential workers – that’s a great phrase, but what does it mean? Are Congressmen and their aides really “essential workers”? [1]

Vaccinating the population of the United States is quite an enterprise. The media has recounted the problems of extreme cold logistics and getting the vaccine from manufacturers to health care workers, along with the delays in the roll-out. But those problems are far more easily solved than the trip from vial to arm.

Can there be winners as well as losers as our climate changes? The truth about science. Is our ability to read some type of repurposed evolutionary skill?

Though we spent about nine months of the year focused almost exclusively on COVID, we did find time to debunk pseudoscientific nonsense. Here are the top 10 junk science and bogus health claims we debunked in 2020.

It's no secret that NSAIDs come with a host of side effects. But how often? And how bad are they? A presentation at the 2020 PAINWeek Conference gives us some numbers. If taken at face value they are horrifying.

The answer is yes if you believe a paper recently published in the British Medical Journal. The article gives data mining for results a bad name. It is more like data dredging – scooping out mud and trash. Not to worry, no patients were harmed in this study, although the popular media couldn't help but report on this new reason to fear surgery and surgeons.