When it comes to COVID-19 deaths, the elderly and those with certain pre-existing conditions are at greater risk, just like they are in any disease that can cause respiratory distress.

Yet demographers are beginning to break down those numbers to highlight disparities in outcomes. A new paper finds that even though men and women are equally likely to contract the virus, men are significantly more likely to suffer severe effects and die. 

What might explain it? Co-morbidities are certainly a factor, though deaths in people of color are higher than in Caucasian-Americans and co-morbidities are dismissed in those because it sounds too much like laying blame.

Early on in this year's coronavirus pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, experts began to explore whether the pool testing approach used in blood banking could be adapted to increase testing capacity in coronavirus diagnostics and protect those with a high mortality risk from the coronavirus. This would protect those at greater risk from asymptomatic individuals, including the medical and care staff that look after them.

Viral infections are challenging because people can be contagious before developing symptoms. Studies have said individuals can spread the coronavirus two days before the onset of clinical symptoms and viral load is at its highest almost a day before any symptoms become apparent. 

If we want to get a snapshot about what the ancient ways really meant for food, we need look no further than the Amazon, where despite living in the most biodiverse place on Earth, people go hungry.

The reason is simple; they don't harness nature, they exist at the whim of it. 

Ribeirinhos live alongside rivers in Brazil's Amazonian floodplain forests but struggle to catch enough fish to eat and can go hungry. The reason is nature. The Purus River undergoes one of the largest annual variations in water levels on the planet. When it floods, large areas of forest become submerged. River fish populations disperse making them much harder to catch. They can't feed themselves even with a sparse rural population

If you can afford a combination of cotton with natural silk or chiffon, those provide the best protection from coronavirus if you are not one of those people hoarding N95 masks.

But, really, unless you are a healthcare worker, the kind of covering makes little difference. Even if you do spend the money for silk, you are unlikely to have a homemade mask fit well enough it is superior to a bandana. And if you are someone who touches your face often, they are all less effective. Your eyes are not covered. Critics are not wrong for wondering if homemade masks are more than placebo, since aerosols can easily slip through gaps in many cloth fibers.

Though coronavirus is known to much of the world by now, it is often used synonymously with COVID-19 by journalists. In scientific reality, there are a vast number of types of different coronaviruses, potentially as many as the thousands of bat species, but most of them can't be transferred to humans and pose no known threat.

SARS-CoV-2 is just one flavor but coronaviruses have been evolving for likely as long as bats have. 

There is no question depression can have physical effects but it is unclear how much of depression is caused by biology and how much is psychology. 

A new study finds there are increased amounts of an unmodified structural protein, called tubulin, in lipid rafts, fatty sections of a cell membrane, compared with non-depressed individuals. Tubulin is part of a protein complex that provides structure to cells. This complex also is involved in binding a specific protein called Gs alpha, or Gsa, which is a signaling molecule that conveys the action of neurotransmitters like serotonin.