Wired
May 27, 2020
Researchers have spent years teaching robots to shake hands—an effort possibly doomed by a global turn against human contact.

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended social norms, especially greetings. In France, the government has warned against cheek kissing. In New Zealand, a Maori tribe has banned the traditional hongi greeting, in which people press their noses together and inhale each other’s breath.

The Atlantic
April 29, 2020
A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend.

National Geographic
April 17, 2020
When June Almeida peered into her electron microscope in 1964, she saw a round, grey dot covered in tiny spokes. She and her colleagues noted that the pegs formed a halo around the virus—much like the sun’s corona.

STATNews
March 12, 2020
While the coronavirus outbreak poses health risks for everyone, officials have made clear that the elderly are particularly vulnerable.

Consumer Reports
February 26, 2020
A few weeks ago, a Philadelphia resident named Marie received a prescription for a new medication, but the drug wasn’t covered by her insurance. “It was way too expensive for me to get on my own,” she says. (Like other consumers we spoke to, she asked us to withhold her last name to preserve her privacy.) “So I reached back out to my doctor. She directed me to GoodRx, and said I’d be able to afford the medicine with one of their coupons.”

National Geographic
February 15, 2020
Much remains unknown about the novel coronavirus ripping through China, but one thing is certain. The disease can cast a storm over the whole human body. Such has been the nature of past zoonotic coronaviruses, ones that hopped from animals to humans like SARS and MERS. Unlike their common-cold-causing cousins, these emergent coronaviruses can spark a viral-induced fire throughout many of a person’s organs, and the new disease—dubbed “COVID-19” by the World Health Organization on Tuesday—is no exception when it is severe.