Covid 19

Martin Bazant, MIT professor of mathematics, who built an interactive model that predicts the infectiousness of COVID-19 in different environments, suggests “running strong ventilation, ideally with HEPA air filtration, and opening windows with fans for a few hours before resuming normal occupancy without masks,” he says. In other words, strategic use of windows, fans, and HEPA filters could clear the White House air in less than a day. David Edwards, Harvard bioengineering researcher and entrepreneur, adds that, “There will be dead zones where air does not circulate well—desks, seats, couches, bathrooms,” he says. These places should be identified and addressed by circulating and filtering the air. (A portable HEPA filter could handle that.) … [Read more...] about You can’t use bleach to sterilize the White House. Here’s what experts recommend instead

What does it look like to be the only developed country without a national paid family leave policy? We put our economy at risk, perpetuate systemic inequality, and compound the racial wealth gap. It’s a new mother in Arizona returning to waitressing just three weeks after her C-section to earn gas money to visit her daughter in the ICU. It looks like frontline domestic workers contracting COVID-19 in the workplace and bringing it home to their families. It looks like women rising through the corporate, athletic and academic ranks putting their careers on hold, perhaps permanently. … [Read more...] about In the face of divisive politics, paid family leave should remain a bipartisan priority

Levine was in the national spotlight in August when Jenna Ellis, a campaign advisor for President Donald Trump, referred to her “this guy” on Twitter. The tweet was in response to a news story about Levine telling a Pittsburgh radio journalist to stop misgendering her by repeatedly calling her “sir.” … [Read more...] about Joe Biden picks Rachel Levine, transgender health official, for assistant HHS secretary

Most passengers don’t realize that the airplane is actually the safest part of their journey, in terms of exposure to coronavirus. Swiss made small changes designed to reassure passengers, anyway. Today, Swiss International crews hand every boarding passenger a free hand sanitizer. The least suspected, yet actually most COVID-infected, object on the plane is the seatbelt. Today’s passengers arrive at their seats to find their seatbelt adorned with a small seal that says, I’ve been sanitized. … [Read more...] about Three shockingly obvious ways to make flying less miserable

On Tuesday, January 19, the company announced that in the last quarter of 2020—i.e., when countries around the world were locking themselves inside again due to winter surges in the virus—it added 8.5 million new, paid subscribers, bringing its cumulative, paid subscription base to over 200 million. Wall Street had anticipated a gain of 6 million. In 2020 overall, Netflix added 37 million paid subscribers, a 31% rise from the previous year, when no one knew what COVID-19 was. … [Read more...] about Netflix soars to more than 200 million subscribers. What you need to know