Month: March 2022

The Republican National Convention on Tuesday spent more time on the opioid epidemic than the entirety of the Democratic National Convention. In a touching speech, Ryan Holets, a police officer in New Mexico, told a story about how he adopted a child from a person struggling with homelessness and drug addiction. “Today, our beautiful daughter, Hope, is a thriving 2-year-old,” Holets said. “Crystal [the biological mother] is approaching three years of recovery. She is a…

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The National Hurricane Center warned that Hurricane Laura will cause “life-threatening storm surge” reaching up to 40 miles inland and rising up to 20 feet as the storm made landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Laura reached the Gulf Coast after midnight on Thursday morning at an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 strength, with winds reaching 140 mph. After landfall, it weakened to a still dangerous Category 2 storm. During a Wednesday news conference, Louisiana Gov. John…

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Wildfires continue burning in California, with unhealthy air from smoke still cloaking some parts of the state. Combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, the fires are compounding risks that have been brewing for years. Fire officials have grouped some of the smaller fires in an area into complexes to coordinate their response. The largest of these is the SCU Lightning Complex. It had burned more than 365,000 acres as of Wednesday across parts of the southern…

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Hurricane Laura made landfall at 1 am ET Thursday in Cameron, Louisiana, as a fierce Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds. It has since downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, with wind speeds of 75 mph, and is moving north. But perhaps the most dangerous part of the storm may be the storm surge that still threatens coastal areas. Storm surge, or coastal flooding, tends to be the deadliest aspect of hurricanes. It results…

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Before Hurricane Laura made landfall in the United States, it had already proved to be a deadly storm in three Caribbean countries, bringing torrential downpours, flooding, power outages, and other damage that killed over 20 people and has made life dangerous for millions more. As a tropical storm, Laura pummeled the Dominican Republic last weekend with heavy rains and winds, impacting the capital Santo Domingo and the rest of the nation’s 11 million people. According…

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A couple of months ago, President Donald Trump said he told federal officials to “slow the testing down, please.” Now the Trump administration is taking a step that would, in effect, slow down testing. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its testing guidelines to no longer recommend people get tested even when they’ve come into close contact with someone who’s infected. The previous guidelines stated, “Testing is recommended for all…

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To get the US pandemic under control, a growing number of health and medical experts are making a clarion call for an additional testing approach to Covid-19. What we need, they argue, are at-home rapid tests that look for antigens, proteins the live virus makes. These kits would allow anyone to test themselves for the coronavirus any time (and anywhere) for between $1 and $5, and get results in about 15 minutes. No doctors, labs,…

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Tropical Storm Laura, which has been downgraded from a hurricane, made landfall early Thursday morning in Cameron, Louisiana — just 35 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border — as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds. Already, pictures and videos of the storm from Lake Charles, Louisiana, a town about 50 miles north of Cameron, show torn-off roofs, downed power lines, blown-out windows, and dozens of trees ripped from the ground. Louisiana Gov. John…

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As America, and even his own administration, woke up to the threat of Covid-19, President Donald Trump still didn’t seem to get it. Within weeks of suggesting that people social distance in mid-March, the president went on national TV to argue that the US could reopen by Easter Sunday in April. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country,” Trump said in March. “I think it’ll be a beautiful time.” The US wasn’t able to…

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At first, Lauren Nichols tried to explain away her symptoms. In early March, the healthy 32-year-old felt an intense burning sensation, like acid reflux, when she breathed. Embarrassed, she didn’t initially seek medical care. When her shortness of breath kept getting worse, her doctor tested her for Covid-19. Her results came back positive. But for Nichols, that was just the beginning. Over the next eight weeks, she developed wide and varied symptoms, including extreme and…

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