Prognosis: Misconception

Gilead Sciences announced today that it will charge the U.S. government and other developed countries $390 per vial for its coronavirus-fighting drug remdesivir. That begins to answer a big question as drug companies race to find treatments and develop vaccines for the virus: How much will it cost us? But Riley Griffin and Emma Court report that the Pharmaceutical industry is hoping Covid-19 will give it a chance to rebrand; and get the focus off drug prices.

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Around the world, nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been a hotbed for Covid-19 outbreaks. Because older people are particularly vulnerable, the facilities have had some of the deadliest outcomes during the pandemic. But some nursing homes have done much better than others at containing the virus. Angelica LaVito reports on a Seattle-area assisted living company that learned the lessons of the pandemic early, and has managed to keep outbreaks from raging out of control.

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In Houston, Texas, new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are surging. Some experts expect the virus outbreak to swamp the city’s medical infrastructure by July 4th. Emma Court and Joe Carroll report that if cases keep rising at their current pace in Harris County, which includes Houston, they will triple or quadruple by mid-July. The city’s hospital system may not be able to manage the crisis.

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The NBA is giving players the option to wear a device that tracks their health data when basketball games begin this July. The device - called an Oura Ring - can measure things like the body’s temperature and heart rate. The hope is that it could provide the league with early warning signs that someone may have contracted an illness like COVID-19. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown reports that the move is part of a larger conversation about whether or not wearable technology like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch can help fight the pandemic.

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More than six months into a shape-shifting pandemic that’s killed more than 454,000 people worldwide, it’s clear we are losing the battle against the outbreak. Most experts believe an effective vaccine won’t be ready until well into 2021. So how do we adjust our thinking from beating the virus, to coexisting with it? Michelle Fay Cortez discusses the next phase of the virus, and what public health professionals say we have to do to survive it.

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As soon as the Coronavirus became a pandemic, people began making parallels to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, and reaching even further back to the black death of the middle ages. It makes sense--past pandemics may be our only reference point for whole populations being stricken with illness. But they can also tell us a lot about how economies recover after outbreaks. From the Odd Lots podcast, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal talk to Jamie Catherwood, an expert in finance history, about how Covid-19 is different -- and similar -- to decades-, and even centuries-old diseases.

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If there’s one simple technology that has come to the forefront during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s the face mask. Special masks called respirators are designed to prevent doctors and nurses from catching the virus when they treat infected people. But not all respirators do what they’re labelled to. Fakes and shoddy products abound. And you can’t always tell how many particles a mask can filter just by looking at it. Naomi Kresge reported on how you catch a fake mask – and the lengths one German company is going to, to fight the problem.

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Long before the Covid pandemic, another global health disaster was brewing, threatening to kill millions of people annually. Superbugs – germs even our most potent antibiotics can’t defeat – pose a massive challenge to human health and wellbeing. The coronavirus, of course, isn’t stopped by antibiotics, which target bacteria. Even so, antibiotics have been used liberally for Covid-19 patients. Jason Gale reports that could worsen the superbug crisis.

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It’s now relatively easy to get tested to see if you carry the antibodies for Covid-19. Urgent Care centers and many doctor’s offices are offering the tests widely. But the science is still out on whether or not people who have had Covid-19 become immune to it. Not to mention the possibility that the test you take may not be accurate. Reporter Kristen V. Brown tries to answer the question: is it worth taking the test at all?

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As the pandemic spreads around the world, new hotspots are emerging. Coronavirus is spiking in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and elsewhere, and health experts have called Latin America the new epicenter of the pandemic. But the impact has been uneven. Some countries have successfully slowed the rate of new infections; others see that rate continuing to climb. Jason Gale spoke with the World Health Organization’s top official for the Americas to find out what makes some populations especially vulnerable.

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