coronavirus
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Quickies
Quickies: MARS!, Mars?, passwords, and ferrets
Welcome to March 2021! While we’re all… still… processing… March 2020. NPR’s Lulu Garcia Navarro has been collecting stories of “The Moment” when folks realized everything had changed. Perseverance took video of ITS OWN LANDING. Oh, and Space Twitter quickly figured out that the asymmetric parachute had a hidden message. The bizarre pattern was actually useful, so that the orientation…
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Quickies
Quickies: Double masking, direct payments, and Q
Hello and happy Monday! With my new teaching schedule, Thursday and Friday are actually my busiest days, so I’m moving my weekly roundups to Monday for the time being. First off, definitely check out this article on double-masking, and other ways to make your masks more effective amid more contagious strains of the coronavirus. Also from NPR, here’s a look…
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Science
Do I Still Need to Wear a Mask if I Had the Covid-19 Vaccine?
If you’ve already had the Covid-19 vaccine or if you’ve already had the virus, do you still need to mask up in public or with people outside of your social bubble? The answer is yes, and there are both scientific and ethical reasons for you to continue to wear your mask for the near future. Just so we’re clear, wearing…
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Science
Covid-19 Questions: Why Exactly is the Virus More Contagious in Colder Weather?
For months, scientists have predicted that Covid-19 cases would rise as the weather got colder. This wasn’t just speculation; rather was based on what we already know about the structure of common viruses and how exactly colder weather can make them more contagious. Interestingly enough, if you have a stick of butter in your fridge, you already know something about…
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Science
Covid-19 Vaccine Questions: Are mRNA Vaccines Safe? Will They Alter my DNA? How Do They Work?
There has been so much excitement in the news recently about the recently-approved mRNA-based vaccines. But there are also a lot of questions, like how do we know it’s safe? How exactly is mRNA different than a normal vaccine? Do you trust it enough to take it yourself? I can answer a lot of these questions as a scientist who…
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Podcast
COVID-19, mRNA, FDA and Other Important Initialisms
Rebecca chats with Mary Brock and Topher Hunter about the intricacies of the new COVID vaccines, plus what the FDA is doing during approvals. https://media.blubrry.com/skepchick/content.blubrry.com/skepchick/COVID-19_mRNA_FDA_and_Other_Important_Initialisms.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Blubrry | RSS
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Science
Why I Trust the COVID-19 Vaccine
This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: Hey everybody, it’s time for a COVID vaccine update! I last talked about the vaccine on March 195th, or approximately mid-September using the old Julian calendar. In that video, I talked about how it’s okay to be skeptical of…
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Science
The COVID-19 Vaccine is 95% Effective. What Does That Mean? And Why is Herd Immunity via the Vaccine Better than Just Getting the Virus?
Great news has been released in the past two weeks. There are multiple vaccines that are emerging and preliminary results (from Phase III clinical trials) show that at least two are 95% effective. But what exactly does that mean? And why is it better to get the vaccine instead of just getting COVID-19 out in the wild, besides the obvious…
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