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Vaccines don’t last forever. This is by design: Like many of the microbes they mimic, the contents of the shots stick around only as long as it takes the body to eliminate them, a tenure on the order of days, perhaps a few weeks. What does have staying power, though, is the immunological impression that […]
A new dichotomy has begun to haunt the discourse of the pandemic. With the rise of the super-transmissible Delta variant, experts say any going to get vaccinated, or going to get the coronavirus. For some people, a decent number of us will actually be both. Coronavirus infections are occurring among vaccinated people. They will continue […]
Boghuma Kabisen Titanji was just 8 years old when the hyper-contagious virus swept through her classroom. Days later, she started to feel feverish, and developed a sparse, rosy rash. Three years after being fully dosed with the measles vaccine, one of the most durably effective immunizations in our roster, Titanji fell ill with the very […]
One of the best and toughest parts of being a science writer is acting as a kind of jargon liaison. Weird, obscure, aggressively multisyllabic words appear in scientific discourse; I, wielding nothing but a Google Doc, a cellphone, and the Powers of the Internet™, wrest these terms from their academic hidey-holes and try to pin […]
On Saturday morning, I finally rolled up my sleeve for the vaccine I’d been waiting for all summer: my annual flu shot, a technological marvel that I want to receive every fall. In times without a pandemic, the flu vaccine is a hot fall product that holds a coveted place in the public health spotlight. […]