William A. Haseltine, Contributor

Author's posts

Autoantibodies May Be The Driver Behind Severe Covid-19 Reactions

Over 130,000 were in the hospital with severe Covid-19 symptoms in the past two weeks. Emerging evidence suggests one cause of severe Covid-19 reaction may be autoantibodies or antibodies that attack the body and not an invading pathogen.

A Tale Of Two Viruses

Two recent preprints add some nuance to our current understanding of the Covid-19 variants B.1.1.7 and B.1.351—demonstrating that viral variation isn’t an inherently disastrous development, but could become one if we don’t act accordingly.

This Devastating Covid-19 Outbreak In Brazil Is A Warning To The Rest Of The World

Researchers estimate that as many of 76 percent of Manaus residents were infected with Covid-19 by Oct 2020—a proportion that technically exceeds the threshold for population immunity. So why is the city struggling to survive a second wave?

Why Patterns In Covid-19 Variation Might Resemble Seasonal Flu

Waves of influenza, like cold-causing coronaviruses, don’t come and go at random. They’re seasonal, recurring in patterns we can anticipate and plan ahead for. Will this be true of SARS-CoV-2?

For Insight On New Covid-19 Variants, Look To Natural History Of Coronaviruses

Though the human coronavirus 229E isn’t nearly as hot a topic as SARS-CoV-2 these days, it is one of several coronaviruses that have been causing us colds for more than half a century. It also has lessons to teach us about the ability of coronaviruses …

Biden’s Covid-19 Plan Is A Welcome Relief — But It Needs To Go Further

The new administration’s Covid-19 plan signals a new era of competent and responsive leadership. Yet with the death toll surpassing 400,000, the plan needs to go much further.

Billions In Low-Income Nations Will Not Receive Their Vaccine Anytime Soon

Unless there’s a significant increase in production and distribution, billions will not receive the vaccine in 2021, most of which are located in low-income countries, which will result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unnecessary deaths.

Can SARS-CoV-2 Become Even More Troublesome Than The UK And South African Variants?

We are rapidly learning how SARS-CoV-2 mutates to create variants with new characteristics. In a preprint published on January 11, scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science describe an experiment in which they attempt to mimic what occurs natur…

Researchers Identify New Covid-19 Variant In Ohio

Now that we’re ramping up our ability to surveil the virus and follow our leads, we must also pivot from a place of complacency to one of heightened vigilance.

New Covid-19 Variants Reshape Our Understanding Of Reinfection

While Covid-19 reinfections have been reported and confirmed previously, the case of one 45-year-old woman in Brazil is the first to involve the potentially dangerous mutation E484K.