At first, doctors told us that COVID-19 was a disease of the lungs. It caused inflammation of the airways and pneumonia. This made breathing difficult or impossible.
But as the pandemic progressed, something strange started to happen.
Mysterious symptoms were being reported that seemed to have nothing to do with the lungs.
Some patients were dying from COVID-19-related strokes. Others had what doctors called “COVID toes.”… Read More
Like face masks, there’s a lot of confusion about whether gloves effectively prevent coronavirus infections.
This is partly due to waffling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It currently doesn’t recommend wearing gloves. But at one point it did.
“As a result, there’s been some confusion,” said Dr. John Whyte. He’s an internist and chief medical officer at WebMD.… Read More
We wipe down our door knobs. We disinfect other “high-touch” surfaces. We even worry about whether the mail is bringing coronavirus into our homes.
But it turns out that we may not need to agonize so much about whether surfaces are contaminated with the coronavirus.
As the pandemic goes on, researchers are learning more about how people get infected. And they have discovered that face-to-face transmission—not catching the virus from touching a contaminated surface—is responsible for most of the spread.… Read More
Perhaps the most annoying thing about wearing a face mask is that they can cause your glasses to fog up.
Not only is it irritating, but it can be dangerous if you are driving or doing something else that requires sharp vision.
Foggy glasses happen when your breath seeps through the top of your mask. The warm air meets the cooler lenses and causes condensation.… Read More
There’s a health danger that is spreading even faster than the coronavirus.
Misinformation about COVID-19 is rampant.
Hundreds of Facebook posts and YouTube videos have gone viral with claims about the pandemic that have no basis in fact.
A study published online in BMJ Global Health has attempted to gauge the problem.[1]
The researchers focused on YouTube. They searched the website for the most popular videos having to do with coronavirus and COVID-19.… Read More
Months ago, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, we advised you to take vitamin D.
At the time, because COVID-19 was so new, there were no studies showing that vitamin D was effective against it. But vitamin D had a strong track record against the flu and other viral respiratory illnesses. Therefore, researchers believed it was likely to work against coronavirus as well.… Read More