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“It’s supposed to be going down, as it is in other countries,” said the lead author of the report, Steven H. Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The fact that that number is climbing, there’s something terribly wrong.”

The opioid epidemic is a major driver of the worrisome numbers, but far from the sole cause. The study found that improvements in life expectancy, largely because of lower rates of infant mortality, began to slow in the 1980s, long before the opioid epidemic became a national tragedy

Some of it may be due to obesity, some of it may be due to drug addiction, some of it may be due to distracted driving from cellphones

Given the breadth and pervasiveness of the trend, “it suggests that the cause has to be systemic, that there’s some root cause that’s causing adverse health across many different dimensions for working-age adults.”

The risk of death from drug overdoses increased 486 percent for midlife women between 1999 and 2017; the risk increased 351 percent for men in that same period. Women also experienced a bigger relative increase in risk of suicide and alcohol-related liver disease.

The all-cause death rate — meaning deaths per 100,000 people — rose 6 percent from 2010 to 2017 among working-age people in the United States

There’s something more fundamental about how people are feeling at some level — whether it’s economic, whether it’s stress, whether it’s deterioration of family,” she said. “People are feeling worse about themselves and their futures, and that’s leading them to do things that are self-destructive and not promoting health.”

. The general trend: Life expectancy improved a great deal for several decades, particularly in the 1970s, then slowed down, leveled off, and finally reversed course after 2014, decreasing three years in a row.

Obesity is a significant part of the story. The average woman in America today weighs as much as the average man half a century ago, and men now weigh about 30 pounds more

Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton, whose much-publicized report in 2015 highlighted the death rates in middle-aged whites, published a paper in 2017 pointing to a widening gap in health associated with levels of education, a trend dating to the 1970s. Case told reporters their research showed a “sea of despair” in the United States among people with only a high school diploma or less. She declined to comment on the new report.

“When they get up into their 20s, 30s and 40s, they’re carrying the risk factors of obesity that were acquired when they were children. We didn’t see that in previous generations.”

Most people in the United States are overweight — an estimated 71.6 percent of the population ages 20 and older, according to the CDC. That figure includes the 39.8 percent who are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher in adults (18.5 to 25 is the normal range). Obesity is also rising in children; nearly 19 percent of the population ages 2 to 19 is obese.

The average life expectancy in the United States fell behind that of other wealthy countries in 1998 and since then, the gap has grown steadily. Experts refer to this gap as America’s “health disadvantage.”

Death rates from suicide, drug overdoses, liver disease and dozens of other causes have been rising over the past decade for young and middle-aged adults, driving down overall life expectancy in the United States for three consecutive years, according to a strikingly bleak study published Tuesday that looked at the past six decades of mortality data.

The 33,000 excess deaths are an estimate based on the number of all-cause midlife deaths from 2010 to 2017 that would be expected if mortality was unchanged vs. the number of deaths actually recorded by medical examiners.

Outside researchers praised the study for knitting together so much research into a sweeping look at U.S. mortality trends.“This report has universal relevance. It has broad implications for all of society,” said Howard Koh, a professor of public health at Harvard University who was not part of the research team.

The average life expectancy in the United States fell behind that of other wealthy countries in 1998, and since then the gap has grown steadily. Experts refer to this gap as the United States’ “health disadvantage.”

For example, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, cigarette companies aggressively marketed to women, and the health effects of that push may not show up for decades.

Obesity is a significant part of the story. The average woman in the United States today weighs as much as the average man half a century ago, and men now weigh about 30 pounds more. Most people in the United States are overweight — an estimated 71.6 percent of the population age 20 and older, according to the CDC. That figure includes the 39.8 percent who are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher in adults (18.5 to 25 is the normal range). Obesity is also rising in children; nearly 19 percent of the population age 2 to 19 is obese.

An unpublished study conducted by the Israeli Health Ministry and Pfizer showed that vaccination reduced transmission by 89% to 94% and almost totally prevented hospitalization and death, according to press reports. Immunity kicks in fully about four weeks after the first vaccine dose, and then you are essentially bulletproof.

On a positive note, the CDC did say that fully vaccinated people who are asymptomatic don’t need to be tested.

that obvious recommendation should have come two months ago, before wasting so many tests on people who have high levels of circulating antibodies from vaccination.

self-harm among kids increased as much as 300% last year in some parts of the country

The CDC highlights the vaccines’ stunning success but is ridiculously cautious about its implications. Public-health officials focus myopically on transmission risk while all but ignoring the broader health crisis stemming from isolation. The CDC acknowledges “potential” risks of isolation, but doesn’t go into details.

Separating family members was excessive and cruel, driven by narrow thinking that focused singularly on reducing viral transmission risk, heedless of the harm to the quality of human life.

As people yearn to be with their loved ones and rebuild communities, we shouldn’t repeat that mistake. We cannot exaggerate the public-health threat, as we did with hospital visitation rules, and keep crushing the human spirit with overly restrictive policies for vaccinated Americans.

Loneliness has become a public-health crisis. In pre-Covid times, it was estimated that 20% of American’s struggled with loneliness, a figure that has surely multiplied faster than research has been able to measure

n its guidance the CDC says the risks of infection in vaccinated people “cannot be completely eliminated.” True, we don’t have conclusive data that guarantees vaccination reduces risk to zero. We never will. We are operating in the realm of medical discretion based on the best available data, as practicing physicians have always done

I too will invoke “common sense” to answer the big question so many are asking: What am I allowed to do after I’ve been vaccinated? Once a month has passed after your first shot, go back to normal.

More than 10,000 of the 101 million people who were fully vaccinated as of April 30 caught the virus, according to a recent CDC report.

If scientists can't sequence genes from the virus, there's not much chance these people are contagious, and there's not much scientists can learn about the virus by studying them, the CDC and other researchers say.

Investigating the full spectrum of breakthrough infections could provide crucial information, including clues about whether some vaccines are working better than others and whether breakthroughs are happening more in some people than others, Bright and others say.

"These variants are spreading, and if you're just looking at the small percentage, then you're really missing the big picture,"

Careful study of breakthrough infections also could provide useful information for improving the vaccines as well as revelations about possible long-term health effects of these infections on people who don't initially develop symptoms or only become mildly ill.

At least some of those studies include examining the role of variants, according to Dr. Jennifer Verani, who's helping lead the CDC's vaccine effectiveness team.

It’s not just political factions using the issue for partisan advantage – though that is happening as Covid-19 restrictions continue to straddle the quintessentially American tension between individual freedom and the reach of government. Medical experts are engaging in an intense debate over whether the CDC is being too cautious in the way it’s loosening mask guidance or is offering the public conflicting, confusing advice.

The complications of exiting the pandemic – a process that no one currently in positions of power has ever experienced – explain why Biden’s success in getting more than 100 million Americans fully immunized doesn’t mean Covid-19 is no longer perilous or is any less politically treacherous for the White House.

The President’s remarks followed new CDC guidance last week that mean fully vaccinated people can now unmask at small outdoor gatherings or when dining outside with friends from multiple households. Unvaccinated people should still cover their faces.

The Republican National Committee, for instance, blasted Biden for “breaking” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, and the issue has become one of the latest culture war flashpoints for right-wing talk show hosts.

“It’s time for the CDC to start embracing this kind of bifurcated strategy and perhaps giving the unvaccinated a hint of what life can be like if they become vaccinated,” he said.

This is a pretty dangerous time to be unvaccinated, but what (the) CDC is signaling is if you are fully vaccinated, freedoms are just becoming safer and safer for people.”

While public health experts warn that maximizing vaccinations is vital to creating the herd immunity in the population necessary to stop Covid-19 spreading

“It is America. Everybody has an individual right. I think that one of the things we have to be careful about is not shaming people or talking down to them or objecting to their way of life,” Marshall told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “Newsroom” on Saturday.

They’ve been told they don’t need a mask. They need a mask. They’ve been told that even if you have a vaccine, you have to keep wearing the mask,” Marshall said.

the best way to ease such concerns and to get rid of masks for good is to get vaccinated.

Additionally, the CDC recommends passengers get tested again three to five days after arrival and stay home for the first week. "Testing does not eliminate all risk," CDC Director Robert Redfield said. "But when combined with a period of staying at home and everyday precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, it can make travel safer, healthier, and more responsible by reducing spread on planes, in airports and at destinations."

"linger in the air for minutes to hours,"

Many hospitals are now filled beyond capacity,

pandemic fatigue.

And many of those who are sick of taking precautions are getting sick.

, more people are socializing indoors.

"These viruses may be able to infect people who are further than 6 feet away from the person who is infected or after that person has left the space," the CDC said.

A variant first detected in South Africa

Gathering with multiple friends indoors can be dangerous.

"If you go to a party with five or more people, almost certainly there's going to be somebody with Covid-19 at that party,"

more than 50% of all infections are transmitted from people who aren't showing symptoms.

Some patients have been put in hospital break rooms, parking garages and gift shops.

The United States has confirmed at least 76 cases of a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus that was first detected in the United Kingdom.

And the United States ranks 61st in how quickly virus samples are collected from patients, analyzed and then posted to an international database to find new variants.

While it may be more transmissible, there's no evidence this variant first detected in the UK is deadlier or causes more severe disease, the CDC said.

That's an average of 3.5 people getting infected every second.Read More

As of Thursday, it has not been detected in the United States.

That didn't happen. Not even close.

As of Thursday morning, about 10.2 million vaccine doses had been administered, out of roughly 29.3 million doses that have been distributed across the United States, according to the CDC.

You can test

negative

but still be infected and contagious.

And don't think you're invincible -- even if you're young and healthy.

"We see severe illness among healthy, young adults with no apparent underlying causes," Hotez said.

But the cases of Crews, Caputo, and Paul Alexander suggest an additional conclusion: that people whose jobs require them to provide “alternative facts” on a regular basis might eventually break under the strain.

Caputo may well represent the face of a second-term Trump administration. Instead of people with expertise and competence, the White House and Cabinet agencies will contain ideologues with no experience—or, worse, ideologues with a long record of bad judgment and terrible errors

another HHS political appointee, Paul Alexander, regularly sent emails harassing employees of the CDC. He described its deputy director, the physician Anne Schuchat, as “duplicitous” for saying she hoped the country could “take [the pandemic] seriously and slow the transmission … we have way too much virus across the country.” Alexander also regularly sought to censor weekly scientific and statistical reports—the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” to be precise—written by the nation’s most important public-health institution, describing them as “hit pieces” targeting the Trump administration.

in this election year we are grappling with something entirely new. The president, the Republican Party, and its campaign machine are collectively seeking to create a completely false picture of the world

This isn’t just a matter of wishful thinking or a few white lies. The president’s campaign staff needs voters to believe that the pandemic is over, or else that it never mattered; that 200,000 people did not really die; that schools aren’t closed; that shops aren’t boarded up; that nothing much happened to the economy;

that America is ever more respected around the world; that climate change isn’t real; that the U.S. has no legitimate protesters, only violent thugs who have been paid by secretive groups.

It is easy to see why Trump appointees who work in institutions that deal with science and public health might be the first to break: Their jobs require them to grapple every day with data that they have to deny.

The adherents of the QAnon cult may have literally been driven past the point of reason. In order to make sense of the world they can see all around them, they have created an elaborate and obviously false explanation—that an omniscient Trump is fighting a cabal of deep-state satanists and pedophiles.

No wonder Republicans, instead of shunning QAnon believers, are working to elect some of them to Congress in November. They genuinely serve a function, helping Trump supporters navigate the gap between the reality they live in and the fiction they see on Fox and Facebook.

he only historical parallels come, inappropriately, from Stalin’s Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other regimes that created elaborate propaganda versions of the world and then forced people to pretend they were true.

But those alternative realities were backed up by violence. America does not have that kind of police state.

That's far more than can be accommodated initially.

When you add all the priority groups together, they account for half of all U.S. adults

Priority groups include "those who have the highest risk of exposure, those who are at risk for severe morbidity and mortality ... [and also] the workforce that's needed for us to maintain our both health and economic status,"

The general consensus among bioethicists is that the first doses should go to front-line health workers. "Obviously they are being placed at high risk of infection, because they're taking care of people who are infected and infectious

But even within this seemingly clear category, there are questions about who a front-line health worker is. The definition extends beyond doctors and nurses to encompass hospital staff who care for and clean up after COVID-19 patients, nursing home workers and possibly pharmacy staff and emergency medical responders, according to preliminary guidelines from the CDC. Morticians and funeral home workers may also qualify, according to a draft report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, because they handle COVID-19 victims' bodies.

"Health care worker vaccination sounds simple, but if we don't have enough doses, we still have to be really judicious in how we're implementing," Lee said. If everyone who might qualify as a health worker exceeds the initial supply, state and local authorities might have to ration distribution further — for instance, restricting the vaccine to parts of a state that are being hit the hardest.

So who should get it next?

A lot of the decisions will depend on the characteristics of the vaccine itself.

Factors still unknown include who a vaccine is most effective for, who can reasonably access the vaccine and whether people will line up in droves to get it.

suggests that a vaccine could be available to all Americans within 12 to 18 months of its approval

Several organizations have produced reports on prioritizing vaccine distribution, but it's the CDC and its advisory committee that have the greatest influence over how a vaccine is used and distributed in the U.S. by health departments, hospitals and doctors' offices. When ACIP does vote, the committee's advice will provide critical information that state and local health agencies will use to figure out whom to give the first vaccines to and how to reach them.

2 doses = fully vaccinated

< 6 feet + > 15 minutes = close contact

Get within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period, and congratulations—you’ve had a “close contact.”

scientists have known for years that SARS-CoV-2 can hitch a ride in bubbles of spittle and snot small enough to drift across rooms and remain aloft for hours, especially in poorly ventilated indoor spaces. Pathogens don’t slam up against a magic wall “at the six-foot mark,

Nor will viruses bide their time for 14 minutes and 59 seconds before launching themselves noseward at 15 minutes on the dot

5 days = end of isolation

Many people now report strings of negative results early in their symptom course, then positives that persist into their sixth, seventh, or eighth day of sickness or later, raising the possibility that they remain quite contagious past when formal isolation may end. “I find it impossible to believe you can end isolation without testing,”

And yet, many workplaces have already embraced the five-day rule with no exit test, using that timeline as the basis for when employees should return.

Infection + 90 days = no retest

reinfections have gotten more common, and far closer together. They were happening even in the era of Delta; now, with so many immunity-evading Omicron offshoots at the helm, and masks and other mitigation matters mostly vanished, they’ve become a quite-frequent fixture.

The number of people who have caught the virus twice within just a matter of weeks “has grown so much that we should forget these windows,”

the 90-day number, Malaty Rivera said, is no longer relevant. “It has to be deleted from people’s minds.”

200 cases + 10 hospital admissions per 100,000 = mask?

t waiting to just suggest masks at those levels of transmission and hospitalization—not even require them—leaves far too much time for widespread disease, disability, even death, experts told me. A bar that high still lets long COVID slip through; it continues to imperil the vulnerable, immunocompromised, and elderly,

Case rates, Malaty Rivera pointed out, are also a terrible yardstick right now because so many people have been testing at home and not reporting the results to public-health agencies.

A better system would flip on protections earlier—taking a preventive approach, rather than scrambling to react.

He praised Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for taking bold steps early, including declaring a state of emergency when there were only three reported cases on March 9, four days before the federal government followed suit. Thirty states had declared a state of emergency by the time Trump declared a national emergency on March 13.

“They didn’t move fast enough,” said Crossley, of the federal government. “And what you’ve seen is more local and state officials sounding the alarm. “We needed a national response to this event.”

With seven reported infections in the United States by the end of the day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31, and Trump announced strict travel restrictions, barring most foreign visitors coming from China. He also imposed the nation’s first mandatory quarantine in 50 years.

Officials spent three hours war-gaming how they would respond. The drill prompted the state to send 300 employees home early to test their remote work capability. That unmasked a serious problem: A quarter of the team could not perform their jobs at home because they needed access to secure computer systems.

Then he heard the news: The United States had identified its first case of person-to-person transmission involving someone who had not traveled overseas. Also, the World Health Organization classified the coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern.

Chicago Jan. 31: 9,927 cases worldwide, seven cases in the United States

Tallahassee Jan. 30: 8,234 cases worldwide, five cases in the United States

“We are concerned about our public health system’s capacity to implement these measures, recognizing they may inadvertently distract us from our ongoing tried-and-true efforts to isolate confirmed cases and closely monitor their contacts,” according to a previously unreported Feb. 6 letter. “We also worry about the potential to again overwhelm laboratory capacity, recognizing that national capacity has not been adequate to quickly test our highest-risk individuals.”

“In the first few sets of conversations, we were not hearing answers to those questions,” Lightfoot, a Democrat, said of her talks with federal officials. “It was kind of like, either silence, or ‘Do the best you can,’ which was obviously not acceptable.”

she drafted a letter to Trump on behalf of the mayors from Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. They insisted on clear, written directions from the federal government, according to the letter, and worried about diverting health-care resources during flu season, when hospitals were already stretched.

Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province would be forced to quarantine for 14 days, and those who visited other parts of China would be screened for symptoms and asked to isolate themselves for two weeks. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was caught off guard. The directive came with little guidance. Where were local governments supposed to quarantine the travelers? What would they do if someone refused to quarantine? Who was going to pay for the resources needed to quarantine people?

Mount Kisco, N.Y. Feb. 9: 40,150 cases worldwide, 11 cases in the United States

Weeks earlier, Amler had started fitting employees for personal protective equipment and training them on how to use the gear. In January, she watched what was happening in Wuhan with growing concern: “It seemed impossible that it wouldn’t eventually spill out of China into the rest of the world.”

San Francisco Feb. 24: 79,561 cases worldwide, 51 cases in the United States

Trump continued to reassure the public that there was little to worry about. On Feb. 24, he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

But Colfax and his public health staff in San Francisco were seeing something else when they studied the “curves” of the pandemic — graphs showing how many cases were reported in other regions over time.

Wuhan’s curve was climbing exponentially, and other countries, such as Italy, were seeing soaring infection rates as well. Colfax noticed that in every infected region, officials were more and more aggressive about restricting their populations

“It became apparent that no jurisdiction that was where the virus was being introduced, was sort of, in retrospect, thinking, ‘Oh, we overreacted,’ ” Colfax said.

On Feb. 24, Colfax and other health officials assembled their research and met with Mayor London Breed. They made an urgent request: Declare a state of emergency

by the end of the meeting, Breed was convinced. They needed to declare a state of emergency so that they could tap into state and federal funds and supplies, and redeploy city employees. The next day, San Francisco became one of the first major cities in the United States to do so, after Santa Clara and San Diego counties did earlier in the month.

It would take another 17 days, as the virus infected people in nearly every state, before Trump declared a national emergency.

In New Orleans, officials moved ahead with Mardi Gras festivities in late February that packed people into the streets. It was a decision the mayor would later defend as coronavirus cases traced to the celebration piled up.

On Feb. 27, at a White House reception, Trump predicted that the coronavirus would disappear. “Like a miracle,” he said.

“No red flags were given,” by the federal government, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat, later said in a CNN interview. “If we were given clear direction, we would not have had Mardi Gras, and I would’ve been the leader to cancel it.

San Antonio Feb. 29: 86,011 cases worldwide, 68 cases in the United States

The last day of February marked a major turning point for the coronavirus in the United States: The first American who had been diagnosed with the illness died

In a Saturday news conference, Trump described the patient from the Seattle area as a “medically high-risk” person who had died overnight. A CDC official said that the man, who was in his 50s, had not traveled recently — another sign that the virus was snaking through local communities.

During the announcement, Trump asked the media to avoid inciting panic as there was “no reason to panic at all.”

“We’re doing really well,” he said. “Our country is prepared for any circumstance. We hope it’s not going to be a major circumstance, it’ll be a smaller circumstance. But whatever the circumstance is, we’re prepared.”

That same afternoon in San Antonio, the CDC mistakenly released a woman from quarantine who was infected. The woman was one of dozens of evacuees from Wuhan whom the federal government had brought to a nearby military base and then isolated at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease.

the woman had been dropped off at a Holiday Inn near the San Antonio airport and headed to a mall where she shopped at Dillard’s, Talbots and Swarovski and ate in the food court.

As local officials learned details about the infected woman’s movements and how she had been transported at 2 a.m. back to the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, they waited for the CDC to issue a statement. Hours passed, but they heard nothing. “They were like quiet little mouses,” Wolff said. “They were all scared to talk because I think they felt they were going to get in trouble with the president of the United States because he was saying there was not a problem.”

The next day, San Antonio officials declared a public health emergency and filed a lawsuit to prevent the CDC from releasing the 120 people in quarantine until they were confirmed negative for the virus or completed a 28-day quarantine. A judge denied the motion, but the CDC agreed that evacuees must have two consecutive negative tests that are 24 hours apart and that no one with a pending test can be released.

In Oklahoma City, the coronavirus became a reality for Mayor David Holt, a Republican, when the NBA abruptly canceled a Thunder basketball game after a Utah Jazz player tested positive on March 11. Until then, Holt said, the coronavirus felt “distant on many levels.”

Mount Kisco, N.Y. March 3: 92,840 cases worldwide, 118 cases in the United States

Within days, state authorities set up an emergency operations center in New Rochelle and created a one-mile containment zone. Inside the perimeter, schools and community centers shuttered and large gatherings were prohibited.

Through it all, local officials faced backlash from some community leaders who thought they were overreacting.

San Francisco March 5: 97,886 cases worldwide, 217 cases in the United States

Days after San Francisco’s emergency declaration, Breed stood in front of news cameras to announce the city’s first two cases of the coronavirus.

They were not related, had not traveled to any coronavirus-affected areas and had no contact with known coronavirus patients: It was spreading in the community.

By then, Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, a Republican, had announced the cancellation of the Ultra Music festival, a three-day celebration that draws about 50,000 people. Miami was the first city to call off a major music festival, and Suarez faced tremendous backlash

When he tried to order more masks, none were immediately available. By then the entire country was scrambling for protective gear.

Days later, Holt huddled on the phone with other leaders from the United States Conference of Mayors. For about 20 minutes, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, detailed the crisis seizing her city

“She sounded like the main character in a Stephen King novel,” Holt recalled. “She had hundreds of cases, she had dozens of deaths.”

“Any struggles that we’re having, whether it be testing or other issues, or even just convincing our public of the seriousness of the matter, there are some roots back to the time period in January and February, when not all national leadership was expressing how serious this was,” Holt said.

While the mayors held their conference call on March 13, Trump declared a national emergency to combat the coronavirus.

By then, Suarez had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in quarantine. As of Sunday, he remained in isolation, leading the city by phone calls and video chats. He wanted to stop flights into Miami and the governor to order residents to shelter in place as California and other states had already done.

Try to avoid exchanging money or credit cards with the cashier. Use a credit-card reader when possible.

all Americans to wear cloth face masks when out in public, which includes when in the grocery store.

wash your hands with soap and water before going out and when coming home, and use hand sanitizer when out.

If you use gloves, choose disposable ones and throw them before getting into your car or as soon as you get home

Try not to use your phone when in the store. If you do, clean it when you get home.

it’s a good idea to bring your own, mainly to wipe the grocery cart

Wipes can also be used for other high-touch areas in the store like freezer handles or tongs used in self-serve bins.

To be extra cautious, you could heat food in the oven or microwave, though this hasn’t been specifically studied so it’s unclear if there’s a particular length of time needed.

People over 65 and those who have medical conditions that put them at greater risk of hospitalization and serious illness should avoid going to the grocery store, if possible. Try to order groceries online or have a family member or friend deliver them while taking precautions.

Though there have been no documented cases of transmission of the novel coronavirus through food packaging, a recent NEJM study found that the virus can live on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on hard surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel for two to three days.

use self-checkout when possible and use hand sanitizer when you’re done.

experts say wiping down cereal boxes and other packages isn’t necessary. “Use the wipes when you need them,” says Dr. Chapman. If you’re home you can easily wash your hands. “That’s going to reduce your risk as much if not more than trying to wipe everything down,” he says.

instead of being preoccupied with wiping down packaging and containers, focus on washing your hands. “It’s much better to treat your hands, wash your hands, rather than dealing with all the surfaces,”

Your mouth is a gateway to both your respiratory system (your lungs) and your digestive system (stomach). Respiratory viruses like the novel coronavirus are believed to enter the body and reproduce through the respiratory tract, not the digestive tract.

Experts say it is possible that if the virus rubs off from any object to the inside of your mouth, it could infect you if it goes into your respiratory system. But there doesn’t appear to be any risk of infection via your digestive trac

doctors say getting the virus through ingestion of contaminated food seems unlikely. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minn., speculates that the gastric acid in the stomach would kill it. “My own speculation is that the GI route would be very low likelihood compared to known and efficient methods of infection,”

the studies were done in a laboratory with high doses of the virus, so it’s unknown if in real life the virus can be transmitted that way. Most likely if someone were to sneeze or cough on a cardboard container, the virus would degrade more quickly due to environmental factors, such as sunlight.

If you touch virus particles on raw food and then touch your nose, eyes or mouth, that is a potential source of transmission. But experts note that is very unlikely. To be vigilant, thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water, and don’t eat your food with your hands.

Experts urge people not to wash fruits and vegetables with anything but water. The chemicals on wipes and chlorine solutions especially can be dangerous—don’t ingest those.

There’s no evidence that the virus can be transmitted through clothing, but it hasn’t been specifically studied

The good news is it can be killed by doing laundry. So if you were in a grocery store where people near you were coughing, it’s a good idea to remove your clothes when you get home. Don’t shake clothing. Place it in your laundry hamper.

The CDC recommends laundering contaminated clothes in the warmest appropriate water setting and drying them thoroughly.

The CDC says there are no known cases of the novel coronavirus being spread through the fecal-oral route, which is a common route of transmission for stomach viruses like the norovirus.

But a recent study that hasn’t been peer reviewed yet found the virus in the stool of some patients. This route of transmission remains unknown, and experts say it’s unlikely to be contributing significantly to the pandemic.

"We need to hang in there for just a little while longer because we can see a time in the next couple of months where we will have a lot more people vaccinated and we will really be able to blunt infection rates," she added.

Covid-19 cases in the country have seen a slight increase, according to Walensky, while a highly contagious -- and potentially more deadly -- variant is circulating.

"If we choose to invest in prevention right now, we will ultimately come out of this pandemic faster and with fewer lives lost," the CDC director said.

"These findings should be a jolt of hope for all of us and to serve as a catalyst for everyone to roll up their sleeves when the vaccine is available," Walensky said.

"You've got to continue to do what we're doing: more vaccinations and continue to do public health measures until we actually do turn the corner."

So while the US is getting closer to turning the corner, it's not there yet.

more than 70% of people 65 and older have received at least one shot.

That 65 and older population has also seen a larger decline in Covid-19 case rates, death rates and hospitalizations than any other age group and now account for a smaller share of total hospitalizations than they did a few months ago, according to an analysis of CDC data.

More than a quarter of Americans have gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data. About 14% of the US population is fully vaccinated.

vaccines have likely already saved at least 40,000 American lives so far

As more states try to get more shots into arms faster, officials have unveiled timelines for expanded eligibility -- and in many cases have set a date for when the vaccines will be open to anyone 16 and older.

Pfizer's vaccine is the only one available for use by people who are 16 and older while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are both authorized for people 18 and older.

"We will get to the point pretty quickly where we're saying, 'OK, now we're into the really hard phase of this where we're down to the population that is not so willing to get the vaccine,'" Freeman said.

"The hesitancy is worrisome not just here, but all across the country, and I expect as a country we'll get to 50% vaccination rate of the population. But we're going to have a harder time getting from 50% to 70%," Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told CNN earlier this week.

There are quite a few problems with Cruz’s comments. For starters, CDC guidelines recommend that people who’ve been vaccinated should still wear masks and practice social distancing when in public.

“For now, fully vaccinated people should continue to [...] take precautions in public like wearing a well-fitted mask and physical distancing,” reads a March 8 post on the CDC website.

The new President, Joe Biden, will deliver his first prime-time address on Thursday to mark the yearlong mark in the country's struggle with the coronavirus. In addition to giving the country a morale boost and highlighting the light on the horizon, he will hope to showcase his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, expected to finally pass Congress the day before.

Under the new protocols, vaccinated people can visit other vaccinated people indoors without masks or physical distancing. They can also see unvaccinated people from a single household without either precaution if those yet to get the injection are at low risk for severe disease.

These guidelines will allow a real -- if qualified -- return of freedoms once taken for granted for millions of people. They apply two weeks after a second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and 14 days after the single-dose Johnson & Johnson injection.

Already, 60 million Americans know that moment of euphoria that comes with getting a first dose. And more than 30 million are fully protected -- a figure that has just overtaken the total number of US Covid-19 cases.

The announcement on Monday could have an important public health impact in itself. To the majority of Americans who are still waiting, the glimpse of post-vaccination liberation could offer a new incentive to buckle down with social distancing and masking for just a few months longer.

The proven promise of vaccines and the accelerating pace that they are going into American arms -- at a rate of about 2 million or more a day -- offers something like the prospect of a normal summer.

"There is so much that's critical riding on the next two months," CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday. "How quickly we will vaccinate versus whether we will have another surge really relies on what happens in March and April."

"The good news is that it was coming down. The sobering news is that it's starting to plateau a bit," Fauci told a National League of Cities Conference. "The history with this virus has told us when you start to plateau at a level as high as this, which is about 60 to 70,000 cases a day, that you are by no means out of the woods."

"I actually would go further and say that people who are fully vaccinated should be able to travel -- should be encouraged to travel, and that's one of those incentives that we can give as a way for restoring freedoms, that you now are able to travel and go visit your loved ones and go to museums and cultural institutions once you're fully vaccinated," Wen said.

"I think they really haven't gone far enough," Reiner told CNN's Erin Burnett, while suggesting that the CDC was worried about sending a message that might convince non-vaccinated Americans to start taking to the skies.

While the CDC funding request is a big increase from recent years, it comprises just a small slice of Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal for 2022.

The budget materials say $153 million would be allocated for the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program to work on “improving health equity and data collection for racial and ethnic populations.”

The government would also provide $100 million for the CDC’s Climate and Health program as part of a $1.2 billion investment in strengthening resilience to wildfires, floods, droughts and other climate-related disasters.

Overall, HHS is requesting $133.7 billion in discretionary funding — a $25.3 billion, or 23.4%, bump from the enacted budget of fiscal 2021.

"I think it's a great milestone, a great day," Biden said. "It's been made possible by the extraordinary success we've had in vaccinating so many Americans so quickly."

The CDC says masks may still be required by state, local, tribal or territorial laws as well as businesses and workplaces. But some local jurisdictions swiftly announced they would update their own regulations to conform with the CDC guidance, and more are expected to follow.

Unvaccinated people "remain at risk" of illness and death,

Walensky noted that the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are all 100% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, even if they don't prevent 100% of coronavirus infections. They are also effective agains

"We have been doing this for 15 months at this point and not everybody's going to want to shed their masks immediately," she said. "It's going to take us a little bit of time to readjust."

The problem echoes the country’s catastrophic stumbles early in the pandemic, when a lack of testing allowed the virus to spread widely. Currently, only a tiny fraction of all positive coronavirus tests in the United States are forwarded for further sequencing.

t if scientists don’t know what strains are moving through the population, the mutations that matter may pop up undetected.

For months, scientists have been sounding alarms and trying to ramp up genetic sequencing of test samples, but the effort has been plagued by a lack of funding, political will and federal coordination

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday that the government is increasing the level of sequencing nationwide.“We have scaled up surveillance dramatically just in the last 10 days, in fact. But our plans for scaling up surveillance are even more than what we’ve done so far,”

Ultimately, the country needs real-time data — similar to the dashboards now used to track daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths — to track variants and their prevalence across the country

“None of that exists right now. We’re incredibly behind compared to other countries,”

The U.S. effort is so underdeveloped that it’s impossible to say exactly how many virus cases are sequenced daily.

The CDC has warned that the variant found in the United Kingdom — which British scientists said could be up to 70 percent more transmissible — could become dominant in the United States by March.

It also recently contracted with four private companies — Quest, Labcorp, Illumina and Helix — to conduct more sequencing. By mid-February, those contracts should hit full capacity, analyzing 6,000 samples per week, CDC officials said.

Illumina estimates that the country needs to sequence 5 percent of its coronavirus cases to detect a new variant when the variant represents about 0.1 percent to 1.0 percent of the country’s case

However, the United States so far has only sequenced about 0.32 percent of its total cases

the country ranks 38th out of 130 countries reporting whole-genome sequencing data.

The United States has sequenced 84,177 samples out of 25.7 million cases as of Friday, according to a Washington Post analysis. By comparison, the United Kingdom, in ninth place, has sequenced 214,000 genomes — almost 6 percent — of the country’s 3.7 million cases.

Unlike the United States, the U.K. invested in genetic sequencing early on in the pandemic, launching its genomics consortium in March with a $27 million investment and a multimillion-dollar boost late last year.

Even before the emergence of mutations such as the variants first discovered in South Africa and the United Kingdom, U.S. experts had been warning for months about the need for a national standard for genetic surveillance.

In May, the CDC launched a surveillance program for the coronavirus called SPHERES (SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology, and Surveillance). But, in practice, the program relied on a haphazard patchwork of academic labs contributing genetic sequencing on a volunteer basis.

A July report by the National Academies of Science said that “poor funding, coordination, and capacity” had led to a “patchy, typically passive, and reactive” U.S. sequencing effort.

ay Butler, the CDC's deputy director for infectious diseases, who warned that the U.S. is showing a "distressing trend" with cases surging over 75 percent of the country.

The guidance is based on a study out today showing brief exposures to infected individuals and resulted in virus spread

The Vermont Department of Health said the officer wore a cloth mask, gown and goggles and had 22 interactions totaling about 17 minutes with six unmasked inmates who tested positive for the virus.

The updated guidance could change how public health departments across the country conduct their contact tracing, by increasing the pool of potentially infected individuals.

President Donald Trump continues to call for a return to pre-pandemic conditions. The CDC in May released guidelines for reopening schools that Trump later disavowed, saying they were too burdensome.

The U.S. is reporting an average 60,000 cases per day with the Midwest seeing the largest increases in cases.

“I like my freedom” on leaving the store, and pronounced Covid-19 as “nothing more than a flu, really.’’

“Younger people’s more safe,” said Mr. Dechert, 31. “Older people have an issue. Nobody batted an eye for the flu. Now all of a sudden, it’s an election year — Covid.” #styln-signup .styln-signup-wrapper { max-width: calc(100% - 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; }

“Say I have it and I get tested five times, that’s five new cases,” he said. “I know for sure, through E.M.T.s, they count it separately.” (This misconception, spread on social media, has been rebutted; the C.D.C. reports total cases and total tests separately.)

In a Quinnipiac University national poll last month, four out of five likely voters said they believed masks to be effective at slowing the spread of the virus. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the C.D.C., told Congress that wide use of face masks would bring the pandemic under control and might offer more protection than a vaccine.

Doubts about the C.D.C. figures trace back at least to August, when Mr. Trump retweeted a post by a follower of the QAnon conspiracy. Twitter later removed the president’s retweet for violating its rules about sharing disinformation. The false claim arose because doubters of the C.D.C. argued that deaths in people with underlying health problems, such as diabetes or heart disease, were not deaths from Covid-19 — whereas experts said they were.

How will you and the CDC help ensure a well-executed program?

Right, and one of the things that will help tuberculosis control is the test and treat approach, and increasing the proportion of HIV-positive people that are treated. The majority of TB cases currently occur before people are started on anti-HIV medicines.

Partly it's the characteristic of the bacteria: You require long-term treatment for many months, we don't have a vaccine as we do with measles or polio, but partly it's the nature of the control program.

Fundamentally, what happens with tuberculosis will depend on two things. First, how well we implement what we know today, and second, how quickly we get better tools to stop tuberculosis.

If we could figure out which of them are going to develop active TB and provide shorter, more effective treatments for them, then we might really be able to knock down tuberculosis cases.